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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 24: 1878
   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
     __________________________________________________________________

A Golden Prayer

   (No. 1391)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 30, 1877,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Father, glorify Your name." John 12:28.

   IN the first part of my discourse this morning I shall strictly keep to
   my text, as the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and endeavor to show
   what it teaches us with regard to Him. These are His own words and it
   would be robbery to borrow them until first we have seen what they
   meant as they fell from His lips. Their most golden meaning must be
   seen in the light of His sacred Countenance. Then, in the second part
   of my sermon, I shall try to point out how the petition before us may
   be used by ourselves. I pray that Divine Grace may be given us that it
   may be engraved upon our hearts and that each one of us may be taught
   by the Holy Spirit daily to say for himself, "Father, glorify Your
   name."

   I would suggest that these words should be to all the Lord's people in
   this Church their slogan for another year and, indeed, their prayer
   throughout life. It will as well behoove the beginner in Grace as the
   ripe Believer. It will be proper both at the wicket gate of faith as at
   the portals of Glory. Like a lovely rainbow, let the prayer, "Father,
   glorify Your name," arch over the whole period of our life on earth. I
   cannot suggest a better petition for the present moment, nor, indeed,
   for any moment of our pilgrimage. Let us close the old year with it and
   open the door of the new to the same note.

   As for the past, "Father, glorify Your name in the present. Fulfill
   this desire unto Your servants and in the future do it yet more
   abundantly!"

   I. Let us look, then, at the words, first of all, IN RESPECT TO OUR
   LORD JESUS CHRIST. They occur in the following connection. He had
   worked a notable miracle in the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The
   fame of the miracle had attracted many to hear Him. Enthusiastic crowds
   had gathered and He had become so extremely popular that the Pharisees
   said, "the world has gone after Him." The people were willing to have
   made Him a king--and a great concourse met Him with branches of palm
   trees and cried, "Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel that comes in
   the name of the Lord."

   Our Lord passed in royal but humble pomp through the streets of
   Jerusalem, riding upon a colt, the foal of an ass. This public
   manifestation, the renown of the miracle and the general talk of the
   populace led to strangers hearing of Him and enquiring about Him. And
   certain intelligent Greeks of a very respectable order--for their mode
   of address to Philip shows their superior behavior--asked to be
   introduced to Him. They wished to "see Jesus," not, of course, merely
   see Him in the streets, for that they could do if they pleased without
   applying to Philip. No, they wanted an interview with Him. They wanted
   to learn more about His teaching and His claims.

   I suppose that the sight of these Greeks greatly gladdened the heart of
   the Savior, for He delighted to see men coming to the light. He seemed
   to say within Himself, "Behold the nations come to Me. The Gentiles
   arise and seek their Savior." He saw in those Greeks the advance guard
   of the Gentile world. He looked upon the strangers with delight,
   regarding them as representative men, the first of myriads who, from
   the ends of the earth and the islands of the sea, would come flocking
   to Him to behold the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Our Lord
   rejoiced in spirit! His heart was glad within Him and He began to
   address Himself to the people round about--and to the Greeks who
   mingled with the throng.

   At that very moment the thought flashed across the Savior's mind, "But
   these nations who are to be born unto Me and to be saved by Me, cannot
   be so born without birth-pangs, nor saved unless I endure unspeakable
   suffering as their Redeemer." This fact came vividly before our Lord's
   mind and it rushed over His spirit like a raging torrent. He saw that
   He could not become the seed corn of a great harvest unless, first of
   all, He should fall into the ground and die. He was the one grain of
   wheat upon whom all depended and He must lose comfort and life--and be
   buried in the earth--or else

   He would abide alone and bring forth no fruit. He saw the vicarious
   suffering which lay in His way and His soul was troubled.

   Do not imagine that our Savior dreaded death, in itself considered. He
   was far superior in sacred courage and strength of mind to any of His
   servants and yet many of them have welcomed death! And others of them,
   such as the martyrs, have endured it in its most terrible forms,
   without fear, even expressing a holy delight in glorifying the name of
   God by their mortal agony. Our Lord was not less brave than these in
   prospect of His departure. But never let it be forgotten that the death
   of Christ was a very peculiar one and, in fact, stands alone by itself!
   His death was the vindication of Justice. It was the death of the
   Sin-Bearer. It was a sacrificial, substitutionary, expiatory death--and
   this is very different from the death of a pardoned and justified
   Believer who passes out of the world resting on the Atonement and
   supported by a sense of having been reconciled to God by the great
   Sacrifice.

   Our Lord was called to bear the enormous load of man's
   transgressions--over His holy soul the dark shadow of human guilt must
   pass--and on His sensitive spirit must be made to meet the iniquity of
   us all. His saints' deaths are blessed in the sight of the Lord, but He
   must be made a curse for us that we might be blessed in Him! And as the
   mind of Christ clearly perceived this lying in the way of that triumph
   among the Gentiles which gave Him joy, there was a struggle in His
   soul--and that struggle was manifested before the assembled people. The
   Greeks desired to see Jesus and they did see Him in a very remarkable
   manner--so that they must have been astounded at the sight! If they
   expected to see a king, they did, indeed, behold a royal soul, but they
   saw Him in such grief as falls not to the lot of common men. If they
   wished to see somewhat of His greatness of spirit and power of mind,
   they did see it, but it was a power which did not transfigure His face
   with glory, but filled it with an agony marring all its beauty!

   I shall not be too bold if I say that Gethsemane was rehearsed in
   public upon the occasion before us. Our Lord says His soul was
   troubled. He felt a sort of foreshadowing of that midnight among the
   olives in which His soul was "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death."
   It was out of that conflict that our text came--in fact, our text is to
   His suffering in the midst of the crowd what, "nevertheless not as I
   will, but as You will," was to the agony of Gethsemane, or what, "It is
   finished," was to the passion upon Calvary. It was the culminating
   point, the climax and the conquest of a great mental battle! And when
   He had thus spoken He seemed to shake Himself clear of the agony and to
   emerge from it with the memory of it still upon Him--but with His face
   set like a flint to go forward to the bitter and the glorious end--this
   being now His watchword, "Father, glorify Your name."

   I shall need to call your attention, dear Friends, briefly here, first,
   to the trouble of the Redeemer's soul. I always tremble within myself
   when I try to speak of the inner conflicts of our blessed Lord, for it
   is so easy to make a mistake and darken counsel by words without
   knowledge. His Person is complex and, therefore, we readily confuse.
   Yet He Himself is but one and it is equally dangerous to make over nice
   distinctions. Loving jealousy of our Lord's honor makes us feel that we
   scarcely know how to speak of Him! I remember an earnest admirer of the
   arts who, in pointing with his walking-stick to the beauties of a
   famous picture, pushed his cane through the canvas and ruined it. And
   it is possible that in our enthusiasm to point out the beauties and
   points of interest in the life and death of our Lord, we may spoil it
   all.

   I fear lest in my ignorance I should make sorrow for myself by
   dishonoring Him for whose honor I would gladly lay down and die. Help
   me, O Divine Spirit! This much is clear, that our Savior's heart was
   full of trouble. He who could still the sea and bid the storms retreat
   was tempest-tossed in His own soul and cast about Him for anchorage. He
   who could drive the fever from its lair, or send a legion of demons
   into the deep was, nevertheless, troubled in spirit and cried, "What
   shall I say?" Master of all worlds, supreme among the angels and adored
   at His Father's right hand, yet He confesses, "Now is My soul
   troubled."

   Lord of all, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
   How near akin it makes Him to us! How human! How compassed with
   infirmity! We worship Him and rightly so, but still He is a Man and a
   mourner. We call Him Master and Lord, and we do well, yet He not only
   washed His disciples' feet, but His own feet trembled in the rough
   places of the way. He felt those same commotions of spirit which make
   our hearts sad within us and cause us to pour out our souls within us.
   Do not think of the Lord Jesus otherwise than as of a dear Brother born
   for adversity, or a faithful Husband sharing all our lot, being bone of
   our bone and flesh of our flesh. Did you cry out in anguish, "Now is my
   soul troubled"? Then remember that your Lord has used the same words!

   Are you half distracted? Are you tossed to and fro in your thoughts? Do
   you ever ask, "What shall I say?" Jesus understands by sympathy what it
   is you mean. Do you look around you and feel that you know not what to
   do and does your trembling heart suggest that you should pray, "Father,
   save me from this hour"? In all this you may see the Well-Beloved's
   footprints--you are not upon a new and strange track. He leads you
   through no darker rooms than He went through Himself. With the same
   afflictions He has been afflicted--there is nothing in them novel or
   surprising to His sympathetic heart! Beloved Friends, let me invite you
   to consider that not only did our Lord thus suffer, but it is joyful to
   reflect that He suffered all this without sin!

   Therefore it follows that mental conflict is not, in itself,
   sinful--even the shrinking back of the flesh from suffering is not
   necessarily evil. And the question, "What shall I say?" and the
   apparent distraction of the spirit, for the moment, as to what shall be
   its course, are not, in themselves, criminal. There could be no sin in
   the Lord Jesus and, consequently, there is not, of necessity, sin in
   our inward struggles, though I am very far from venturing to hope that
   in any one of them we are quite clear of fault. Our Lord's Nature was
   so pure that however much it was stirred, it remained clear. But in our
   case, though the stirring is not sinful, it sets in motion the sin
   which dwells in us and we are defiled.

   Yet I do not believe that all those depressions of spirit which come of
   sickness, or all those wanderings of mind in the heat of fever, or all
   the shrinking and drawing back from pain which are essential to our
   humanity are set down as sin by our heavenly Father--though sin is
   doubtless mixed with them. If they are sinful in themselves, yet surely
   they are blotted out as soon as written down, for "like as a father
   pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him." He pities
   rather than censures or condemns! You do not judge your children
   harshly for what they say when they are racked with pain or prostrated
   by weakness! You bear with their little fancies and temper and the
   like, and you never taunt them with their follies afterwards!

   Neither can I think that our heavenly Father would have us doubt our
   interest in Christ because, in our semi-delirium, we could not realize
   His love. Nor would He have us question the Divine Grace which is in us
   because our feverish thoughts were near akin to despair. When the true
   heart struggles to love and trust and obey, but the poor brain is
   tortured with dark thoughts, the conflict is not all sinful, nor any of
   it necessarily so. There may be an awful struggle in the soul and yet
   the Father may be glorified. The sin lies not in the conflict but in
   the defeat, if there is defeat. The guilt is not in the shrinking from
   pain, but in permitting that natural feeling to hinder us from duty or
   to lead us to rebel against chastisement. "If it is possible, let this
   cup pass from me," is not a sinful utterance if it is followed by,
   "nevertheless not as I will, but as You will."

   I feel so glad to think our Lord, when He was passing through this
   inward conflict, spoke out His feelings. It is instructive that He
   should have done so, for with His strength of mind He was quite capable
   of preserving a self-contained attitude and keeping His agony to
   Himself. Yet you notice that neither here, in which case He spoke so
   that others heard Him, nor at Gethsemane, in which case He took three
   of His disciples to be with Him and went to them again and again for
   sympathy--nor even on the Cross, in which case He cried aloud, "My God,
   My God, why have You forsaken Me?" did He endeavor to conceal His
   emotion from others.

   It may be that by this He intended to teach us wisdom. He would show us
   by His own example that it is well for us not to be too much shut up
   within ourselves. Smother not your sorrow, tell it out or it may gather
   an ungovernable heat! That is the worst of grief which cannot weep or
   moan. Draw up the sluices--give a vent to pent up feelings! Even though
   it is but a child who hears your tale, it will relieve your mind to
   tell it. Anything is better than banking up the fires and concentrating
   all the heat within the soul. Act not the stoic's part--be not ashamed
   to let it be known that you are a man--a man who can grieve and be
   troubled even as others!

   It may sometimes be well to follow the poet's advice who says--

   "Bear and still bear and silent be, Tell no man your misery,"

   but I question if the occasions are very frequent. At any rate, such is
   not the command of our Lord, nor does His example point in that
   direction. In speaking out, our Lord gives us a full permit to speak,
   too. We might have said, "No, I will not tell what is going on within,
   lest my weakness should seem to dishonor God." Now we know that our
   Lord did not dishonor the Father by saying, "Now is My soul troubled,"
   and by revealing the inward conflict of His soul! Neither will

   the fact of our speaking out our grief necessarily dishonor our God.
   Jesus wept and we may weep. Jesus told His sorrow to His friends and
   you may do the same.

   In thus speaking, our Lord affords us the best of help, for His
   fellow-feeling is a grand support. Did He say, "Now is My soul
   troubled"? and did He scarcely know what to ask? But did He, at the
   last, still triumph and resign Himself into His Father's hands? Then,
   girt about by the same power, we also will encounter the same sorrow
   after our measure and endure until we triumph as He did! Even though in
   the triumph there should be clear evidence of our personal weakness,
   yet we will not regret it since by that means our God shall be the more
   surely glorified by the more distinct revelation of His power. I will
   say no more about the trouble of our Redeemer because I would now ask
   you to fix your thoughts, for a minute, upon the firm resolve which the
   text sets forth.

   There is a battle, but from the very first moment to the last of it
   there is really no question in the Savior's mind about what He means to
   do--His purpose was settled beyond disturbance. The surface of His mind
   was ruffled, but deep down in His heart the current of the Redeemer's
   soul flowed on irresistibly in the ordained channel. He was always
   straitened till He had been baptized with the appointed Baptism.
   Observe the question raised and see how really it was answered in His
   heart before He asked it. "Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I
   say? 'Father, save Me from this hour?'" Must men be unsaved and Jesus
   be delivered from the lowering storm? If so, yonder Greeks need not ask
   to see Him, for there will be no "life look" at Him!

   The disciples round about need not cling to Him as their helper, for
   there is no help in Him unless He dies to redeem the sons of men! Shall
   men, then, be unredeemed? Shall the blood of Atonement not be spilled
   and no man be ransomed from going down to the Pit? Shall He remain
   alone, the grain of wheat unsown? If He does, He will be happy enough
   and glorious enough, for Heaven is all His own! Does He need men to
   make Him blessed? Does He require worms of the dust to make Him
   glorious? Should He remain alone, He will still be God and Lord!

   But, shall the death penalty be left to be borne by men, guilty men,
   who deserve to bear it? Shall there be no Cross, no Calvary, no open
   tomb, no Resurrection, no gates of Heaven set wide open for coming
   souls? There is the question and you see in the text how resolutely
   Jesus had settled it! He says in effect--"Father, glorify Your name by
   My death! For this purpose have I come to this hour, that by My agony
   and bloody sweat, by My Cross and passion, I may redeem the sons of
   men. Redeemed they must and shall be, cost Me what it may! I have
   resolved to bear the penalty and magnify Your Law and I will perform
   it, though Hell itself is let loose against Me and all its waves of
   fire dash over Me. I will endure the Cross and despise the shame to
   honor You, My Father."

   Observe right well that the text indicates the deep intent which
   steadied our Lord's resolve. Why is Christ resolved to die? Is it to
   save men? Yes, but not as the chief reason. His first prayer is not,
   "Father, save My people," but, "Father, glorify Your name." The Glory
   of God was the chief end and objective of our Savior's life and death.
   It is that the Father's name may be illustrious that Jesus would have
   souls redeemed! His passion had for its main intent the exhibition of
   the attributes of God. And, Brothers and Sisters, how completely He has
   glorified Jehovah's name! Upon the Cross we see the Divine Justice in
   the streaming wounds of the great Substitute--for the Son of God must
   die when sin is laid upon Him! There, also, you behold infinite Wisdom,
   for what but Infallible Wisdom could have devised the way whereby God
   might be just and yet the Justifier of him that believes?

   There, too, is love--rich, free, boundless love--never so conspicuous
   as in the death of man's Redeemer! To this day it still remains a
   question concerning the Atonement which of the letters is best
   written--the justice, the wisdom, or the love. In the Atonement the
   Divine attributes are all so perfectly glorified that no one crowds out
   the other--each one has its full display without, in the least degree,
   diminishing the glory of any other! Our blessed Lord, that the Father
   might be glorified, pushed on to the end which He had set before Him.
   Whatever conflict might be within His spirit, His heart was fixed upon
   bearing our load to the death and suffering our penalty to the end.

   Now, Brethren, I will detain you here with but one other thought--it is
   this--the grand result which came of it was that God was, in very deed,
   greatly glorified and to this fact special testimony was given. A Voice
   was heard out of Heaven saying, "I have both glorified it and will
   glorify it again." That Voice speaks of the past--the Incarnation of
   Christ had glorified the name of God. I am unable to describe to you
   how much luster the love of God receives from the fact of the Word
   being made flesh and dwelling among us! It is the mystery of mysteries,
   the marvel of all marvels that the Creator should espouse the nature of
   His creature and that He should be found in fashion as a man!

   Oh, Bethlehem, you have exceedingly magnified the condescension of God!
   Angels might well sing, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace,
   goodwill towards men." Nor Bethlehem, alone, but Nazareth and the 30
   years which our Lord spent on earth all illustrate the condescension,
   the pity, the long-suffering of God. Did God dwell among us 30 years?
   Did He abide in humility in the carpenter's shop for the best part of
   that time and did He afterwards come forth to be a poor Man, a Teacher
   of peasants, a Friend of sinners, a Man of Sorrows, despised and
   rejected of men? Could the Holy and the Just, the Infinite and the
   Glorious thus, as it were, compress infinity into so small a space and
   marry Deity to such poverty and shame? It was so! Then tune your harps
   anew, you seraphs, to tell the amazing love and condescension of
   "Immanuel, God with us."

   Well spoke that Voice--"I have glorified it." But listen yet again, for
   it adds--"and will glorify it again." To my mind that word, "again,"
   sounds like certain voices I have heard in the Alps. The horn is
   sounded and then follows an echo--no--twice, thrice and perhaps 50
   times the music is distinctly repeated! The voices follow each other in
   gradually melting strains. The metaphor is not complete, for in this
   case the echoes increase in volume. Instead of diminishing, they wax
   louder and louder. Lo, Jesus hangs upon the Cross and dies--and God is
   glorified, for Justice has his due. He lies in the grave till the third
   morning, but He bursts the bonds of Death! Lo, God's great name is
   glorified again, since the Divine power, truth and faithfulness are all
   seen in the Resurrection of Christ!

   Yet a few more days and He ascends into Heaven, the Man, the God--and a
   cloud hides Him from our sight--He has glorified the Father's name
   again by leading captivity captive! Then comes Pentecost and the
   preaching of the Gospel among the heathen. And then is the name of God
   glorified by the outpouring of the Spirit! Every conversion of a sinner
   and every sanctification of a Believer is a fresh glorifying of the
   name of the Father! And every reception of a perfected one into
   Heaven--and surely they are entering Heaven every day, troops of them
   climbing the celestial hills, drawn upward by almighty love--everyone,
   I say, in entering into Paradise glorifies Jehovah's name again!

   And, Brothers and Sisters, by-and-by, when the whole earth shall be
   filled with His Glory, then will the Father glorify His name again.
   When in His own time the Lord shall descend from Heaven with a shout
   with the trumpet of the archangel and the voice of God--and when He
   shall reign among His ancients gloriously--we shall hear the gladsome
   acclamation, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!"
   And when comes the end and He shall have delivered up the kingdom to
   God, even the Father, and God shall be All in All--then shall the
   eternal echoes roll along the glories of the great Father God! The
   glorious name of the one Jehovah shall, through all space and all
   eternity, be magnified and the prayer of our once suffering but now
   exalted Savior shall be fully answered, "Father, glorify Your name."

   II. Now, Brothers and Sisters, we will use our text IN REFERENCE TO
   OURSELVES. May the Holy Spirit direct

   us in doing so. I pray that this text may be our prayer from this time
   forth, "Father, glorify Your name." Have you, dear Hearers, ever prayed
   this prayer? I trust I am addressing many to whom it is a very familiar
   desire and yet I question if any here have ever presented it so
   earnestly as those from whom it has been forced by suffering and grief.
   God's birds often sing best in cages--at any rate, when they have been
   loose a little while and their notes grow somewhat dull--He tunes their
   pipes again if He puts them away awhile and clips their wings.

   Now this text, as far as we are concerned, whenever we can use it,
   indicates conflict ended. Sometimes we are in such a condition that we
   do not know which way to turn. We are in great affliction. It may not
   be so much outward trouble as distress of mind which is worst of all.
   The water has leaked into the ship and that is worse than an ocean
   outside. The vessel begins to fill. You use the pumps, but cannot keep
   it afloat. At such times you cry, "What shall I do? What shall I say?
   Where can I look? I am oppressed and overwhelmed."

   But there is an end of the conflict when you turn round and cry,
   "Father! Father!" A child may have lost its way and it may be sobbing
   its heart out in its distress, but the moment it sees its father, it is
   lost no longer--it has found its way and is at rest. Though there may
   be no difference in your position, nor change in your circumstances,
   yet if you catch a sight of your heavenly Father, it is enough--you are
   a lost child no more. When you can pray, "Father, glorify Your name,"
   then there is no more question about, "What shall I say?" You have said
   the right thing and there let it end.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, concerning this next year upon which we are
   entering, I hope it will be a year of happiness to you--I very
   emphatically wish you all a Happy New Year--but nobody can be confident
   that it will be a year free from trouble. On the contrary, you may be
   pretty confident that it will not be so, for man is born to trouble as

   the sparks fly upward! We have each, beloved Friends, some dear faces
   in which we rejoice--may they long smile upon us! But remember that
   each one of these may be an occasion of sorrow during the next year,
   for we have neither an immortal child, nor an immortal husband, nor an
   immortal wife, nor an immortal friend and, therefore, some of these may
   die within the year.

   Moreover the comforts with which we are surrounded may take to
   themselves wings before another year shall fulfill its months. Earthly
   joys are as if they were all made of snow--they melt even as the hoar
   frost and are gone before we conclude our thanksgiving for their
   coming. It may be you will have a year of drought and shortness of
   bread--years lean and ill-favored may be your portion. Yes, and yet
   more--perhaps during the year which has almost dawned, you may have to
   gather up your feet in the bed and die to meet your father's God. Well
   now, concerning this approaching year and its mournful possibilities,
   shall we grow gloomy and desponding? Shall we wish we had never been
   born or ask that we may die? By no means!

   Shall we, on the other hand, grow frivolous and laugh at all things?
   No, that were ill-becoming in heirs of God. What shall we do? We will
   breathe this prayer, "Father, glorify Your name." That is to say, if I
   must lose my property, glorify Your name by my poverty! If I must be
   bereaved, glorify Your name in my sorrows! If I must die, glorify Your
   name in my departure. Now, when you pray in that fashion, your conflict
   is over! No outward fright nor inward fear remains if that prayer rises
   from the heart! You have now cast aside all gloomy forebodings and you
   can thoughtfully and placidly pursue your way into the unknown
   tomorrow. Pass on, O caravan, into the trackless desert! Still proceed
   into the wilderness of the future which no mortal eye has seen, for
   yonder fiery cloudy pillar leads the way and all is well!

   "Father, glorify Your name," is our pillar of cloud and, protected by
   its shade, we shall not be struck by the heat of prosperity! "Father,
   glorify Your name," is our pillar of fire by night--nor shall the
   darkness of adversity destroy us, for the Lord shall be our light!
   March on, you pilgrims, without a moment's delay because of fear. Tarry
   not for a single instant, this being your banner and your watchword,
   "Father, glorify Your name." Torturing doubts and forebodings of the
   future all end when the glorious name is seen over all!

   Secondly, our text breathes a spirit which is the surrender of self.
   When a man can truly say, "Father, glorify Your name," he begins to
   understand that saying of our Savior concerning the corn of wheat
   falling into the ground and dying, for that prayer means, "Lord, do
   what You will with me. I will make no stipulations, but leave all to
   You. Remember that I am dust and deal tenderly with me, but still
   glorify Your name. Do not spare me, if thereby You would be less
   glorious. Act not according to my foolish wishes or childish desires,
   but glorify Your name in me by any means and by all means."

   The prayer means I am willing to be made nothing of so that God's will
   may be done. I am willing to be as one dead and buried, forgotten and
   unknown if God may be magnified. I am ready to be buried and sown
   because I believe that this is the way by which I shall grow and bring
   forth fruit to God's praise. This surrender includes obedient service,
   for our great Master goes on to say, "If any man serves Me, let him
   follow Me." True self-renunciation shows itself in the obedient
   imitation of Christ. "Father, glorify Your name" means waiting the
   Lord's bidding and running in His ways.

   If the petition is written out at length it runs thus--"Help me to copy
   my Savior's example. Help me to follow in His blessed footsteps! This
   is my desire--passively to honor my heavenly Father by bearing His will
   and actively to glorify Him by doing His will. Lord, help me to do both
   of these and never let me forget that I am not my own, but wholly my
   Lord's." The prayer appears to me to be most properly used when it is
   made a personal one--"Father, glorify Your name in me. I am the
   recipient of so much mercy, get some glory out of me, I pray You."

   Beloved, I think you must have noticed in this world that the man who
   really lives is the man who more than his fellows has learned to live
   for others and for God. You do not care for the preacher whose
   objective is to display his own powers. You go away dissatisfied after
   hearing his bravest orations! But if any man shall only desire your
   soul's good and God's Glory, you will put up with much eccentricity
   from him and bear with many infirmities because, instinctively, you
   love and trust the man who forgets himself.

   Now, what you see in preachers I beg you to try and consider in
   yourselves. If any of you are living for yourselves, you will not be
   loveable. If you even act that your ambition is to be loved, you will
   miss your mark. But if you will love for love's sake. If you will seek
   to be Christ-like. If you will lay yourselves out to glorify God, to
   increase His kingdom and to bless your fellow men, you will live in the
   highest and noblest sense! Seek not your own greatness, but labor to

   make Jesus great and you will live! Christians live by dying! Kill
   self, and Christ shall live in you and so shall you, yourself, most
   truly live!

   The way upward in true life and honor is to go downward in
   self-humiliation. Renounce all and you shall be rich! Have nothing and
   you shall have all things! Try to be something and you shall be
   nothing! Be nothing and you shall live! That is the great lesson which
   Jesus would teach us, but which we are slow to learn. "Father, glorify
   Your name" means let the corn of wheat be buried out of sight to lose
   itself in its outgrowth. O Self, you are a dead thing--may you be laid
   deep in the sepulcher! You rotten carcass, for such you have become
   since Jesus died for me--you are an offense to me! Away with you! Do
   not poison my life, mar my motives, spoil my intents, hinder my
   self-denials and defile the chastity of my heart! You prompt me to make
   provision for the flesh--away with you, away with you! "Father, glorify
   Your name."

   In our text, in the next place, a new care is paramount. The man has
   forgotten self and self is buried like a grain of wheat and now he
   begins to care for God's Glory. His cry is, "Father, glorify Your
   name." Oh, if you can get rid of self you will feel in your heart a
   daily intensified longing to have the name of God glorified! Do you not
   feel, sometimes, sick at heart as you gaze upon this present
   generation? My soul is often pained within me when I see how everything
   is out of joint. Everything is now denied which from our youth we have
   regarded as the sacred Truth of God! The Infallibility of Scripture is
   denied! The authenticity of one portion is challenged and the
   Inspiration of another called in question--and the good old Book is
   torn to pieces by blind critics!

   Eternal Truths of God, against which only blaspheming infidels used to
   speak, are now questioned by professed ministers of Christ! Doctrines
   which our sires never thought of doubting are now trailed in the mire
   and that by those who profess to be teachers of God's Word! "Father,
   glorify Your name" comes leaping to our lips because it is burning in
   our heart--burning there in holy wrath against the treachery of men!
   Indignation arises from our jealousy and our eager spirits cry, "Oh,
   that God would glorify His name!" To many of us this is our heaviest
   care. Brethren, we desire the Lord to glorify that name in ourselves by
   preventing our impatience in suffering and keeping us from faintness in
   labor. We beseech our heavenly Father to destroy our selfishness, to
   cast out our pride and to overcome every evil propensity which would
   prevent His getting glory out of us!

   Our soul is even as the clusters of the vine which belong to the owner
   of the vineyard--our whole nature is as the fruit for which the great
   Vinedresser waits. Here, fling me into the wine vat! Let every cluster
   and every grape be gathered and pressed! Great Lord, cast me into the
   wine vat of Your service and then squeeze out of me every drop of the
   essence of life! Let my whole soul flow forth to You! Let the ruddy
   juice burst forth on the right and on the left--and when the first rich
   liquid of my life is gone--then even to the utmost let me be pressed
   till the last drop of the living juice which may bring glory to You
   shall have come forth! Fling all away that will not turn into Your
   Glory, but use all that can be used--glorify Your name to the utmost!

   O great Father of my spirit, the desire of Your child is to glorify
   You, for if You are a father you should have honor from Your children.
   "Honor your father" is the first commandment with promise and it is
   precious in our eyes. From our inmost hearts we pray, "Our Father which
   are in Heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come." Now, see how
   that desire is divested of all sorrow by our casting it upon God. The
   prayer is not, "Father, help me to glorify Your name," but it is,
   "Father, glorify Your name." Your glory is too much for me to
   fathom--glorify Yourself! In Your Providence, so arrange my position
   and condition as to glorify Your name! By Your Grace, so sustain me and
   sanctify me that I may glorify You. I cannot do it, but You can and the
   desire which I was glad to feel, I am glad, also, to bring by faith to
   You. "Father, glorify Your name."

   And now, Brothers and Sisters, if you can pray in that fashion, your
   confidence will come back to you. If you have been greatly distracted,
   calm peace will visit you again, for now you will say, "I will bear the
   Lord's will and will be content. I cannot quarrel with my Master's
   dealings any more, for I have asked Him to glorify His name and as I
   know that He is doing it, I cannot murmur. How can I struggle against
   that which is really glorifying my Father?" Your heart will cease to
   question and to quake--and nestle down beneath the eternal wings in
   deep and happy peace! Filled with patience, you will take the cup which
   stood untasted and grasp it with willingness if not with eagerness. "It
   is to glorify God," you will say--"every drop of this cup is for His
   Glory"--and therefore you will put the chalice to your lips and drink
   straight on, and on, and on till you have drained the last drop and
   find that "It is finished."

   I know you will not fail to do this if your soul has really felt the
   power of this prayer--"Father, glorify Your name." Why, sometimes it
   seems to me that it were worth while to pray to be burned at a stake to
   the death, if by martyrdom we could glorify God! I do not desire such a
   death and yet, from one point of view, I have often envied martyrs
   those ruby crowns which they cast at the feet of their dear Lord. How
   honorable in them to have glorified God by so much suffering! Surely he
   is the grandest creature God has made who glorifies Him most. And who
   is he? Not the tall archangel of whom Milton sings, whose wand might
   make a mast for some great admiral, but the most insignificant nobody
   who has long laid upon her bed of weariness and there has praised the
   Lord by perfect patience!

   She, though apparently the least, may be the greatest glorifier of the
   Father! Perhaps the tiniest creature God has made will bring Him more
   glory than leviathan that makes the deep to be hoary and causes the
   waters to boil like in a pot. That which most thoroughly yields itself
   to God. That which most completely annihilates itself into the eternal
   All--is most glorifying to Him! May God in His infinite mercy bring us
   to this self-annihilation, this desire only for His Glory! Strive after
   it, Beloved, by the power of the Holy Spirit!

   One word to those of you who will have no sympathy with this sermon.
   You know that hymn in which the enquirer asks?--

   "Iff find Him, if I follow, What reward is here?"

   and the answer is--

   "Many a labor, Many a sorrow, Many a tear."

   Very discouraging this, is it not? You who look for mirth and selfish
   pleasure turn away in disgust. Yet the lines are very true. Jesus
   Himself said, "Except a man take up his cross and follow Me, he cannot
   be My disciple." But mark you, the day will come when those who were
   willing to suffer for Christ will be counted to be the only sane
   persons who ever lived! And when those who looked to the main chance
   and cared for self--and disregarded God, faith in Christ and love for
   their fellow men--will be regarded as having been mere idiots and
   drivellers!

   Listen to this parable! It is spring time and yonder is a farmer
   walking the furrows and sowing his seed. Those who know nothing of
   farming mock him for his wastefulness with his grain. He is far too
   wasteful of good food. He is the wise man, is he not, who locks his
   granary door and preserves his corn? Why should he go and fling it into
   the cold, thankless ground? Wait till the end of June when the bloom is
   on the wheat! Wait till July and August have brought the months of
   harvest and you shall see that he who gave his wheat to die shall,
   amidst the shouts of, "Harvest home!" be reckoned to have been wise and
   prudent!

   And he who kept the door of his granary bolted through his sluggishness
   and selfishness shall then be seen to be only fit for Bedlam, for he
   has no harvest except a mass of tangled weeds. Scatter, scatter your
   lives for others! Give yourselves up to Jesus! He who in this respect
   hates his life shall find it, but he that keeps it shall lose it!
   Still, O you ungodly, if you live to yourselves, God will yet have
   Glory and even Glory out of you! You shall not rob Him of His honor,
   nor tear a jewel from His throne! God will be glorified by you and in
   you in some form or other. Your everlasting lamentations, because of
   your great selfish mistakes, will vindicate the wisdom and the justice
   of God to all eternity!

   In a future state, though you gnaw the flesh of your right arms for
   very anguish and sorrow and passion, you will be obliged to acknowledge
   that the warnings of the Gospel were true and that God is just! Your
   well-deserved griefs shall help to make up the burden of that song
   which shall eternally celebrate the wisdom and goodness of God, for you
   will have to confess that Jesus was right and you were wrong! You will
   have to admit that to believe in Him and to be His disciple was the
   right thing--and that to despise Him and to live unto yourself was what
   He told you it would be-- destruction and ruin. God grant His blessing
   for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Catechism for the Proud

   (No. 1392)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JANUARY 6, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For who makes you to differ from another? And what have you that you
   did not receive? Now if you did receive it, why do you glory, as if you
   had not received it?" 1 Corinthians 4:7.

   THE Corinthian Church was exceedingly gifted. Perhaps no other Church
   of the period had in it so many persons of education and talent. The
   Apostle says of them, "In everything you are enriched, in all utterance
   and in all knowledge, so that you come behind in no gift." Alas, its
   Divine Grace was not in proportion to its gifts and, consequently, a
   proud spirit was developed in the Church which manifested itself in
   divisions and contentions. Parties were formed. One said, "I am of
   Paul," and probably prided himself on the depth of his thought. "I am
   of Apollos," said another, and probably gloried in the brilliant
   eloquence of his language. "I am of Cephas," cried a third, and boasted
   in the plain, unvarnished practicality of Peter's teaching.

   "You are all wrong," exclaimed a fourth, "and I will have nothing to do
   with you. I am of no sect and no system, for I am of Christ and exclude
   you all because I wish to promote love and unity." Party leaders are
   sure to be found where there is a party spirit--and party spirit is a
   fungus which grows upon the dunghill of conceit! The Apostle grieved
   greatly to see that the brethren had no discipline, could not keep rank
   and were not content to work under anybody or with one another. He
   lamented that each man wanted to be foremost and he was so ashamed of
   them that he thanked God that he had baptized none of them!

   Probably the adherents of the various parties had only used their
   leaders' names to make a sect in order that they, themselves, might be
   made the more prominent. They gloried in men that other men might glory
   in them. From all this may we, as a Church, be preserved! May God grant
   that whatever gifts and talents we may have, we may always be filled by
   His good Spirit so abundantly that we may walk in all lowliness of
   spirit and abide in hearty, loving union with each other. Our Apostle
   displayed great wisdom in his rebuke of the Corinthians. He did not cry
   down their talents. He did not say that it was altogether a thing of no
   value to be able to argue, to be able to preach, to be able to discern
   spirits, or to be able to speak with tongues.

   This is a mode of procedure which suggests itself very readily, but it
   is not a good one. You very seldom lower a man's opinion of himself by
   undervaluing his gifts. He knows that you are treating him unfairly and
   he, naturally, resents the injustice and becomes more proud than ever.
   He remembers the fable of the fox and the sour grapes and is fully
   persuaded that you only decry his abilities because you do not possess
   them yourself! Pride is not to be cured by injustice! One devil will
   not drive out another! Pride often finds fuel for itself in that which
   was intended to dampen its flame. The man who is undervalued feels that
   if his gifts are despised by others. He knows their value, if nobody
   else does, and so he has another reason for considering himself to be a
   person of superior abilities.

   The Apostle follows a far more sensible course--he does not deny the
   talent, but asks where it comes from! He does not irritate, but cuts
   deep while he asks one or two questions which strike at the very root
   of self-esteem. In effect these questions were as follows, "If you are
   a superior person and a man fit to be a teacher of others, from where
   did you obtain this superiority? If you are different from the common
   people, who makes you to differ? If you are a person of remarkable
   gifts, how did you come to possess them? If all your distinguishing
   abilities are gifts from God, why do you boast? Why do you exalt
   yourself? What have you which you have not received? If you received
   everything as the gift of Divine charity, why do you glory as if you
   had not received it?"

   These questions may well hide pride from man and I pray that such may
   be the result upon our minds while at this time we pursue the train of
   thought suggested by the text. To this end we shall need the assistance
   of the Holy Spirit, for nothing is more difficult than to overcome our
   self-conceit. Pride takes a thousand forms and hides itself under
   number-

   less disguises. Many talk of lowliness, but humility still remains
   among the rarest of jewels! Many take pride in what they call having no
   pride about them--it is very easy to be proud of not being proud--and
   perhaps some Brothers and Sisters here are in that condition. Perhaps
   we, ourselves, have said, "No, we are not such fools as to boast." That
   is not boasting, I suppose?

   "I could not be vainglorious," says one. "I know too much of my
   unworthiness to give myself airs and ride the high horse," says
   another. Quite so, my Friends, and yet at the bottom of such a speech
   there may lie a world of self-confidence! In fact, your humble
   confessions may be only another form of blowing your own trumpets. It
   is easy to be proud while sneering at pride and to glorify self while
   denouncing all self-exultation. There was great truth in Plato's
   observation when Diogenes trampled on his valuable carpets and said, "I
   trample upon the pride of Plato?" "Yes," said Plato, "and with greater
   pride."

   There are some who are never more ostentatious than when they cry down
   all display and never more insolent than when opposing insolence. Pride
   is a subtle serpent-like vice--it will insinuate itself into the most
   secret chamber and hide in the most unlikely places! It will speak like
   an angel of light and cringe and fawn and display a mock modesty which
   might almost deceive the very elect! It will blush and be diffident and
   hesitating, while all the while Lucifer himself is not more puffed up!
   To deal blows at this vice of vanity we shall meditate upon our text
   and pray God to bless it to us.

   First, we shall note that the verse contains a great and comprehensive
   Truth of God. And secondly we shall observe, as God shall help us, the
   teaching which may be derived from it.

   I. Our text contains within itself A GREAT AND COMPREHENSIVE TRUTH OF
   GOD--namely, that whatever advantages any of us possess over our fellow
   men we have received from God. "Every good gift and every perfect gift
   is from above and comes down from the Father of Lights." "The living
   God gives us richly all things to enjoy." "He gives to all life, breath
   and all things." Everything that we are which is not sinful and
   everything that we have which is worth having, we owe to the bounty of
   our God.

   And this is true, first, as to all sorts of temporal advantages. Begin
   at the very lowest--we owe our physical strength and personal
   comeliness to the Lord. Some persons are born with a fine frame, well
   knit, healthy, vigorous, strong, fitly proportioned. And others exhibit
   a beauty of person and countenance which gives them great influence and
   wins much admiration. One of the most common vices in the world and one
   of the most silly, is the propensity to boast in mere animal force or
   physical beauty, whereas the man had no hand in making one single bone
   or muscle or sinew of his frame! Nor has the fairest daughter of Eve
   been the creator of her own loveliness! No credit is due to the strong
   man for his strength nor to the beautiful for their beauty. Strength
   and beauty are gifts, not virtues.

   There are some who consider the strongest man to be the best and
   measure themselves by their capacity to lift weights, or to inflict
   blows--forgetting that horses and elephants can bear greater loads--and
   lions and tigers can be fiercer in battle. Mere force belongs to beasts
   and to steam engines even more than to men! And a man of gigantic
   strength is outdone at every step by the most common machinery. As for
   beauty, one of its most potent charms lies in its modest
   unconsciousness--it is greatly marred when accompanied by vanity. It
   may seem natural that a peacock should expand its tail in
   self-admiration, for the bird knows no better. But for a man or woman
   possessed of reason to gaze in the glass and admire their own bright
   eyes, glossy hair and delicate features is contemptible vanity!

   Lovely is the modesty which does not even think of itself, but like the
   sweetly perfumed violet hides itself among the leaves to be sought out
   by those who have pleasure in lowly worth. O fine lady, why so haughty?
   Did you make yourself? Then be proud of yourself! O strong athletic
   man, why so arrogant? Are you your own creator? Did you, O man, or
   woman, give yourself strength or comeliness? Those legs of a man so
   swift for running--has the runner fashioned them himself? Those eyes of
   woman, so bright for fascination--did she kindle their wondrous light
   herself? No, these personal advantages are evidently gifts distributed
   at the Divine pleasure.

   The Lord has made one athletic while another is born a cripple--one is
   uncomely and another fair as beauty's self. We meet with persons who
   are born blind, or deaf and dumb, or deformed in limb, or weak in spine
   and, therefore, we see that our vigor of physical frame is the gift of
   Providence. To each favored one we may say, "What have you that you did
   not receive? Now if you did receive it, why do you glory, as if you had
   not received it?" Position, too, in this world is a thing very commonly
   boasted of. This man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth--another
   man comes into the

   world with nothing silvery about him. The first man boasts because he
   is a gentleman and has come from a wealthy fam-ily--but what had he to
   do with it?

   What determined the place of his birth? What but a Providential
   arrangement altogether apart from himself? And after all, in the matter
   of birth we are all pretty much upon a level if we trace our pedigrees
   to their common meeting-place in the father of all living. Among the
   numerous kinds of pride this is one of the most ridiculous--the boast
   of blood and vaunting of ancestry! What can there be of all inherited
   position and rank for which we can claim merit? However great the
   privilege, no credit is due to those who have it, for we may say to
   each one, "What have you which you have not received?"

   Some men are vainglorious because they claim to have made their own
   position--we have even heard them say that they made themselves! I
   observe that persons who boast of being self-made usually worship their
   supposed maker with great fervency and endeavor to lead others to pay
   the same homage. But I would ask such, "Who gave you the opportunity to
   become what you have become? From where did you get that natural talent
   and force of character which have brought you to the front?" The
   "self-made man" can only be so called in a very restricted sense, or
   else the speech is false and blasphemous.

   If a man has prospered, his prosperity has come of God's kind
   permission--"The Lord makes poor and makes rich." And if he has fought
   his way up from penury and obscurity to dignity and position among the
   sons of men, he owes it to the gentleness of God, who "raises up the
   poor out of the dust." Education, the gift of prudent parents,
   opportunity, the gift of Providence--these have all united to make the
   man prosperous--what has he that he has not received? Some glory in
   their talent and knowledge. But here again, if a man commits himself to
   the nobler pursuits of science and learning and renounces the more
   groveling ambitions of mere wealth and station. If he endeavors to
   search out the secrets of Nature so as to become useful to his fellow
   men--if he should succeed and rise to be numbered with great master
   minds--has he not received it all?

   From the beginning, were there not natural predilections and
   propensities and talents and capacities bestowed upon him which have
   been denied to others who have been equally industrious, but could not,
   in the nature of things, become equally eminent? From where, also, has
   come the health which has enabled the student to persevere in laborious
   research? Many have been slain by their devotion to their books. The
   brain is very sensitive and many, in burning the midnight oil, have
   consumed the oil of life at the same time! To whom, then, does the
   successful student owe his continued mental vigor? The greatest
   philosopher may wisely thank God that he is not a lunatic! It may be
   many a time, in the pursuit of knowledge, he has, in the straining of
   his faculties, come very near to the overstraining of them. "Great wits
   to madness often are allied" and frequently only the merciful
   interposition of Heaven has spared the deep student from the madman's
   fate. What has he that he has not received?

   As to wealth, where some are apt to indulge a vulgar vanity, what is
   there in it, after all? Certainly it is to a man's credit that he did
   not, in the commencement of his life, squander his money in wanton
   waste and self-indulgence. It is to a man's credit that he put his
   shoulder to the wheel and toiled on and did not consume his days in
   idleness, or fall into habits of drunkenness and dissipation which are
   the roots of nine-tenths of the poverty in the land. It is to his
   credit that he has been economical and so has kept the wolf from the
   door and risen to a competence. But still, what has he that he did not
   receive? These very habits and discretions may be traced to training,
   or to force of mind, or to happy example and they are, therefore,
   things received.

   As for the man's success--it is not only due to his industry, for
   sickness or accident might have made him unable to earn his bread, or
   lack of employment might have hampered him. An ill turn in trade would
   have swept away his little capital, or, trusting in others, he might
   have found himself robbed of all. Are there not many who are
   industrious and prudent and all that, and yet nothing seems to prosper
   with them, or if they do have a little season of prosperity it is soon
   over? They have not, perhaps, all the wit of some and, therefore,
   become the prey of hucksters--nor have they all the vigor of mind which
   is necessary in these days of competition. Alas, some have grown rich
   by wickedness and have heaped up curses for themselves--but as far as
   wealth is a blessing--no man possesses it apart from God's goodness.

   What do the Scriptures say? "You shall remember the Lord your God; for
   it is He that gives you power to get wealth." If any man will sit down
   and trace his progress in life, he will say of each of his mercies,
   "This, also, comes to me from the goodness of the Lord. It is He who
   has prospered me. I might have exerted myself as I have done, but
   unless the

   Lord had built the house, they who built it would have labored in vain.
   Unless the Lord had kept the city, the watchmen had wakened in vain.
   Even if I have labored as in the very fire and risen early and sat up
   late, yet all would have come to nothing unless His good hand had been
   with me."

   Let us remember this and never indulge the pride which robs God of His
   praise. It would be a sad thing if we were to become as besotted as
   ungrateful Israel, of whom the Lord said, "She did not know that I gave
   her corn and wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold." Nor is
   it only for the power to get that we are indebted to the Lord, for the
   retaining of our substance is equally of His favor. Riches take to
   themselves wings and fly away--and the rich man may be, all of a
   sudden, stripped of all his treasure. Houses are soon plucked down
   unless the Lord keeps them. For the continued supplies of our needs let
   us thank the Lord who daily loads us with benefits! O man of learning,
   it is the Lord that gives you power to acquire knowledge--otherwise all
   your efforts would be fruitless and your mind would prove to be a
   barren waste!

   All faculty, capacity, attainment and influence come from Him. It is He
   that gives you power, if you are a member of the Christian Church, to
   take a high position in it and to become a leader of others. If you
   have any experience by which you can comfort the afflicted. If you have
   any knowledge of His Word by which you can instruct the ignorant. If
   you have the Spirit of God resting upon your utterance to convince and
   awaken, to confirm and to edify--if in anything you are favored to
   bless the Church or the world--you owe this to the great Giver of all
   good. Bless Him, therefore, and boast not! If any man is prepared to
   deny our doctrine, we may leave him to his own ungrateful pride--but
   let him tremble lest, like Nebuchadnezzar, he should be stripped of all
   power and made, in his fall, to acknowledge the hand of the Lord.

   You shall always find that men upon their knees, if they are sincere,
   bless God for all they have. And the better a man grows and, I will
   venture to add, the more common sense he gains, the more ready is he to
   trace all that he has and is to the good hand of his God! Certainly the
   more Grace he has and the more he becomes like his God, the more
   earnestly does he refuse any credit for himself! And the more sweetly
   does he sing the Psalm, "Non nobis domine"--"Not unto us, not unto us,
   O Lord, but unto Your name give glory." Like Paul, he cries, "By the
   Grace of God I am what I am."

   We have thus set forth the great general Truth of God which holds good
   as to all temporal advantages. I believe it to be an equally sure Truth
   as to all gracious privileges. The Apostle says, "Who makes you to
   differ?" Now, my Brothers and Sisters, those of us who have been saved
   by Divine Grace do differ from others. We differ greatly from what we
   used to be! We differ sensibly from ourselves in our former state and
   we also differ greatly from others who are still unregener-ate, for if
   the Grace of God did not make our character to be different from that
   of the ungodly, where would its value be? The Lord has taught us what
   others do not know! He has quickened us with a life which others do not
   feel! He has given us a sorrow which the world has never felt and,
   blessed be His name, He has endowed us with a joy with which worldlings
   cannot intermeddle.

   There is a very great difference between him that fears God and him
   that fears Him not. "Now, who makes you to differ?" is the question to
   be thought of, this morning, by every saved one. I believe that the
   Doctrines of Grace would never be doubted if men would follow this
   question to its legitimate conclusions. Why am I different from other
   men if I am so? It has been by the hearing of the Gospel as the means,
   but I must ascribe it to Divine Grace and not to chance, that I was
   born where the Gospel was preached and not left under the influence of
   Popery or heathenism. There is distinguishing Sovereignty in the birth
   of one man in London and the birth of another in Timbuktu. Neither
   individual had anything to do with that most important item in his
   life.

   You might have been born in a kraal of the Hottentot instead of in the
   midst of a family of believers in Christ. The very privilege of hearing
   the Word of God, you must thankfully acknowledge to be a gift from the
   hand of God! Others even in your own country may not have been equally
   favored, for they may not have had such earnest parents, nor have heard
   so earnest a minister. You were placed where many have been
   converted--it may be in the country or in London you were early carried
   to listen to a man whose way of putting the Gospel was warm-hearted,
   affectionate and likely to be used of God. There, again, is the
   Sovereignty of God to be seen--that one should be found under a cold,
   dead ministry and another should hear a soul-saving preacher.

   Yet further, there were some who heard the same sermons as you did and
   were not converted and you were. How come? Will you take the glory for
   it? Were you better disposed? Was there something in your nature
   superior to that of others? It is true you paid more earnest attention,
   but why? What led you to do so? Was there some natural betterness

   about you? No, dear Friend, you will not dare to say so! At any rate,
   if you said so in the heat of controversy, you would not repeat it on
   your knees! No Christian will say, " Lord, I was better than other
   people and, therefore, I am saved and they are not." No, in prayer we
   are all Calvinists! In prayer we all agree to ascribe the whole of the
   praise to the Grace of God! "Who makes you to differ?" has but one
   answer from Christian people--it is the Grace of God that has done it.

   The Apostle next acknowledges that we possess many blessings, but
   declares that we have received all of them from God. Is that true? Let
   us enlarge upon the question. I speak only to professed Believers in
   Christ. You had, at first, conviction of sin--did that arise
   spontaneously or did the Spirit convict you of sin? Repentance towards
   God--was that worked in you by the Holy Spirit, or was it the outgrowth
   of your own free will? You have faith--I venture to ask you if that
   faith is the gift of God? If it is not, I advise you to get rid of it,
   for it will never save you! The faith which saves the soul is always
   spoken of in Scripture as the gift of God! Since your conversion you
   have exhibited some measure of holiness, but was that worked in you by
   the Spirit or is it the fruit of your natural excellence? Who is to
   have the praise for it? You have grown in knowledge--have you been
   taught of God, or did you teach yourself? If you were your own teacher,
   I know what kind of scholar you are! They say that when a man is his
   own lawyer, he has a fool for his client and it is very much the same
   when a man is his own teacher in Divine things.

   You have also gained experience. You have felt love to Christ. You have
   burned with zeal--were these good things the gifts of God to you--or do
   you claim credit for them as having sprung up in your heart as weeds
   grow in a garden without sowing or watering? Ah, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, I know there is no exception to this rule among the children
   of God--they all confess that their Divine Graces have been received of
   the Lord. Whatever their doctrinal views and sentiments, let them but
   speak with God in prayer or praise and they will all say, "It was all
   Your work as far as it was good! And unto You be all the honor of it
   from the first to the last. You have worked all our works in us."

   Friend, if your Grace did not come from God, it is worthless! But if it
   did come from the Lord, let Him have the glory for it and do not boast
   as though you had not received it! I need to call your attention to the
   way in which the text is worded. It is not said, "Who made you to
   differ?" but, "Who makes you to differ?" Who distinguishes you now? It
   was God who made you to differ at the first--that we all admit. Who
   makes you to differ now? Suppose you were left to yourself--could you
   continue in your state of Divine Grace? Suppose the Grace of God were
   gone--what would become of you? Is there one man among us who could
   keep his own soul alive as long as it takes for the eye to blink if
   God's upholding Spirit were withdrawn?

   Is there any folly, is there any fault, is there any crime into which
   the best saint here would not soon plunge if it were not for the
   restraining Grace of God? Who dares trust himself? What is it that
   makes us continue to differ from the very worst but the Grace of God?
   And who shall make us to differ in days to come? To whom do you look
   for your future preservation? Are you your own keepers? Do you hope
   that you yourselves, unaided, shall persevere in the road to Heaven?
   You are not, I trust, so presumptuous! Between this spot and yonder
   golden gates there will be battles in which we shall surely be slain
   unless Jehovah shall cover our heads! There are wilderness places into
   which we shall be sure to wander and lose ourselves forever unless the
   Shepherd of Israel shall lead us like a flock.

   We know that it is so from past experience and present consciousness.
   The longer I live--and I think it is so with most Christians--the more
   I feel that everything must be of Grace from first to the last if I am
   to be saved. Grace chose us and Grace redeemed us! Grace calls us!
   Grace renews us! Grace preserves us and Grace must perfect us, or else
   nothing will come of all our hopes and desires! Our religion will all
   be a flash in the pan, a disappointment at the last and a failure
   forever. Today I stand here to say that if I have served the Lord from
   my youth up, He led me into His ways. If I have preached His Gospel
   faithfully to the utmost of my knowledge, it has been because His grace
   has urged me to. If any souls have been won to Christ. If a Church has
   been built up. If young preachers have been encouraged. If the savor of
   the Gospel has been spread abroad--for these things and all else that
   has been done I disclaim even the shadow of credit!

   I loathe the thought! Unto God, alone, be the honor! He has worked in
   me to will and to do of His own good pleasure. When I bear this
   personal testimony I feel quite sure that every Brother and Sister
   here, according to his position and condition, will agree with me in
   his own case. If there is any virtue. If there is any praise. If there
   is anything that is honest or of good repute--unto the Lord and unto
   the Lord, alone, be the praise! If we are without these things the
   fault is our own--if we have no Grace, if we have not obtained mercy,
   if we are still unbelievers and disobedient--on our own heads must rest
   the responsibility and the sin!

   But this by no means contradicts the present Truth of God that if there
   is any goodness in us it is the workmanship of Him who began to save us
   and will not cease from His work till He has finished it. Thus I have
   spoken of the great general

   Truth.

   II. Now we come to ITS TEACHINGS. The first teaching of this great
   Truth of God is that which we have already enlarged upon. It is useful
   as a rebuke to pride. If any Brother is filled with vanity, let him
   answer the question, "Who makes you to differ?" True, you are no more a
   drunkard, but why should you boast of your sobriety? Is it not your
   duty? True, you are no more the companion of evildoers, but who was it
   that took you out of their company and gave you a new heart and a right
   spirit? What is it that keeps you out of the ways of the wicked at this
   moment?

   It is true you know something of the things of God, whereas others are
   blinded and the world lies in the Wicked One. But who opened your eyes?
   What do you say? You were born blind as they were--who opened your
   eyes? Did you bring light to your own soul? Think of what you used to
   be. Let any of us look back to our first estate and we shall surely be
   compelled to lay our finger on our mouth and silence every boast
   forever! Think of what we would be if Divine Grace were to leave
   us--how a hasty temper would soon ruin some of us, how natural levity
   would carry others of us off our feet--how depression of spirit would
   lead some to despair and carelessness would draw others to presume.
   Think of how in many ways our besetting sin would overthrow us if it
   were not for the preserving Grace of God!

   Brothers and Sisters, if we say, concerning anything in us that is
   good, "This is mine and I congratulate myself upon having produced it,"
   we are robbers and liars! Acknowledge that what you have is received
   from God! Admit that it belongs to the great Giver and that you,
   yourself, belong to Christ, and you may take the comfort of every good
   gift you have--but once say, "This is no gift, it is my own"--and you
   are uttering a lie and you are acting a knavish part in defrauding the
   great King of His lawful revenue of praise! Yes, and you are also
   acting the part of an idolater, making yourself into an idol and
   lavishing incense to please your own foolish vanity. God grant that
   from a sense of being beggars and nothing but beggars, daily receiving
   alms at the gate of Mercy, we may be led to behave ourselves in His
   Presence and among our fellow men with all lowliness of spirit. "Now if
   you did receive it, why do you glory, as if you had not received it?"

   Secondly, this great Truth becomes an excitement to gratitude. If all I
   possess I have received and if all I am is due to the distinguishing
   Grace of God, then let me bless the Lord in the depths of my soul!
   Silence is often the noblest form of worship. I delight to sit before
   the Lord and feel that unspeakable mercy can only be acknowledged by
   unspeakable thankfulness. O God, if You had left me where I was. If You
   had left me to go on in sin, what might I have been by now? What a
   servant of the devil! What a well-tutored tempter of others should I
   have grown to be! Into what shame and disgrace might I have fallen! By
   what frightful habits might I have been enthralled! Some of you, my
   dear Hearers, would have been dead long ago if it had not been for the
   Grace of God--for you were killing yourselves in sin!

   Some of you would have been damned long ago if Divine Grace had not
   stopped you, for you were riding headlong into Hell and did not go at a
   common prudent pace, as many do, along the broad road. Oh, I say again,
   what might not some of us have been by now if the Lord had not stepped
   in with His preventing and converting mercy! Let us, therefore, while
   we bless Him quietly in the deeps of our own soul, yet oftentimes
   overflow with praise, such as men may hear. Let our hearts flow over,
   for surely they are full! It is a good thing to spill a bowl of
   gratitude on an ungrateful man's floor--to make him feel that if he
   does not bless God, others will do so and will not be ashamed to do it
   to his face!

   This gratitude should take the shape of continual obedience. Nothing
   which Jesus bids us do should be too hard for us and nothing that He
   has bid should be forgotten. When we were in bondage under sin we
   thought if the Lord did but forgive us we should become the most
   warmhearted and loving servants in His employ. When I had the irons on
   my wrists and when I sat in sackcloth and ashes in the thick darkness
   of despair, if anyone had said to me, "The Lord will have mercy upon
   you and make a minister of you," I would have replied, "Then I will
   preach with all my heart and soul." I should have hoped to preach a
   hundred times better than I have ever done!

   If it had been put to any one of you, do you not think you would have
   said, "I will serve Him with my whole being. Redeemed by His blood,
   pressed to His bosom as a dear, returning child--clothed in the best
   robe, with a ring on my finger and shoes on my feet--I will live to my
   Father's praise, yes, live with such intensity that even Apostles and
   martyrs shall not excel me." You have not done so, my Friend, but the
   text calls you and me to do it and suggests to us a gratitude which
   shall manifest itself in effort and glow in every action of our daily
   life.

   Again, my text has another lesson. It is a reminder of
   responsibilities. God has made a great difference between you and
   others in many respects. He has given you a great many
   blessings--remember that where much is given, much will be required. If
   you have 10 talents, have you brought in the proportionate interest? If
   you possess five talents, have you brought in a five-fold return? It is
   to be deeply regretted that some of those who have the most ability to
   do good are doing the least. There are men with large wealth who do not
   give half as much as many with meager means. I know persons of great
   attainments in spiritual knowledge who do not teach one half as much as
   newly converted lads and girls who occupy their posts in the school
   right earnestly and teach what little they know.

   I regret to say that those who could fight best are often the last to
   go to battle--and those who could plow best most often leave the plow
   rust--while feebler hands are worn to the bone. Brother, I will not
   deny that you have much knowledge, nor question that you have much
   experience, nor debate with you your right to be our superior if you
   are so! But will you kindly be so good as to exceed us in consecration,
   in self-denial, in earnestness and in holiness? In estimating our
   personal character, let us not so much calculate what we could be, as
   what we are. Let us not so much consider what we might be if we could,
   but what we really are doing for the Lord, for that is the matter of
   most importance! You may be a well of water, but you will get no credit
   for it at the last--the reward comes for the cup of cold water that was
   given to a disciple in the name of a disciple!

   You may be a great bale of cloth, but you will get no honorable mention
   for it at the Last Great Day--the commendation will be to those of whom
   the Lord shall say, "I was naked, and you clothed Me." You may have a
   fat larder and a fine buttery, but the honor shall only come to you at
   the last if it can be said, "I was hungry and you gave Me meat. I was
   thirsty and you gave Me drink, sick and in prison and you visited Me."
   God grant we may all think of our responsibilities so that you who
   could take long strides may not be satisfied to walk like little
   children--and that you who could do a giant's work may not be satisfied
   with attempting that which might be credit enough to a dwarf--but is
   not at all worthy of your greater powers.

   Learn another lesson. The Truth of God before us is a suggestion of
   great tenderness in dealing with others! Allow me, for a minute, to
   press that consideration upon you. "Who makes you to differ?" Who but a
   gracious God has renewed your heart? Yet you met, the other day, with a
   man fast bound with bad habits and you said, "Nothing can be done with
   such a wreck of a man. I will not waste words upon him." Another day
   you heard of an effort made in the back slums, among the lowest of the
   low, and you said, "I do not think much can come of it." Now, my dear
   Friend, "Who makes you to differ? What have you that you did not
   receive?"

   It would be better to drink into the spirit of holy John Bradford,
   whose window looked upon the road to the gallows at Tyburn. As from day
   to day he saw poor condemned prisoners carried in the cart to die, he
   was known to say, "There goes John Bradford but for the Grace of God."
   If you feel so, let me ask you why cannot the Grace of God cause others
   to fear God as well as yourself? Cannot the Grace of God make other
   sinners to believe in Jesus as you do? I have never despaired of the
   salvation of any man since the Lord saved me. I know no heart that God
   cannot win if He could conquer mine! If you believe in your heart the
   precious Doctrines of Grace, you cannot be hopeless of any, but you
   must be ready to hope for those in whom there is nothing to encourage
   expectation! We ought never to look for desert in others, since the
   Lord did not look for desert in us. If Jesus loved us when there was no
   reason in us for that love, we ought just as freely to love our fellow
   men!

   The last lesson is not for the Christian. It is for any of you here who
   wish you were saved. The text is an encouragement for seekers. You have
   begun another year and you are yet unsaved? But still you desire, if it
   is possible, to become children of God. Now, do you know an eminent
   Christian? "Yes," you say, "I do." Perhaps it is your grandmother, or
   it may be some earnest Christian minister. You greatly admire those
   people, do you not? Now remember that there is nothing good in them but
   what they have received from God! The Lord can give the same Grace to
   you--and you can receive even as they have received. Do you believe
   that? It is true whether you believe it or not!

   The Lord, in His abundant mercy can give to you what He has given to
   the best of His saints, whoever you may be. "Then what have I to do?"
   one asks. What you have to do is, according to the text, to be a
   receiver. That is all--and that is the easiest thing in the world!
   Anybody here can be a receiver! When you go past the offering box for
   the College, perhaps some of you cannot be givers, however much you may
   wish to be. But if I were to put a man at the door with a shilling or a
   guinea for each one--anybody could receive it if he chose! Reception is
   a faculty which belongs to us however

   low we may sink. When a person is covered with rags, covered with
   filth, covered with disease, he can still become a receiver! And even
   if he cannot stretch out his hand, he can find ways and means for
   receiving.

   Receiving implies neither strength, nor merit, nor wisdom. It requires
   no power, no faculty, no virtue, no anything! The power to be a
   receiver dwells with the weakest of the weak and the worst of the
   worst. The emptier you are, the more room there is for reception! The
   blacker you are, the more room to receive washing! The more foul you
   are, the more reason to receive cleansing! The more sick and near to
   death, the more room to receive healing! Will you have the blessing
   which God in Christ Jesus is ready to give? If you will be saved,
   listen to the voice of God and live! If you are willing to accept His
   Son Jesus Christ as your Savior and, from this time forth put your
   whole trust in Him, you shall be saved! May He by His Grace lead you,
   now, to become a receiver, for it is written--"As many as received Him,
   to them gave He power to become the sons of God; even to them that
   believe on His name." Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Speak For Yourself--a Challenge!

   (No. 1393)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, DECEMBER 9, 1877,

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself." John 9:21

   THOSE of you, dear Friends, who were present this morning, will
   remember that our subject was "Jesus Christ Himself." [No. 1888, Vol.
   23. "Jesus Christ Himself."] We dwelt upon His blessed Person. Our
   faith is fixed on Him, our affections are drawn to Him, our hopes all
   bend toward Him. Though everything He said or did is precious, yet
   Jesus Himself stands first in our judgment. To know Him, to believe
   Him, to love Him is the very essence of our Christianity. Tonight we
   change our theme. There is an "himself in our text this evening--an
   "himself," 'tis true of a much humbler order. How do we each stand for
   himself?

   Our individuality and the personal responsibilities which fall upon
   ourselves in reference to Christ must not be lost sight of. If, for
   instance, a spiritual miracle has been worked upon us and we are
   obliged to confess. No, if we are delighted to confess that He has
   opened our eyes--then we are bound, especially those of us who are of
   ripe understanding, who may be said to be of full age--we are bound to
   bear our own personal testimony for Him. The allegation and the appeal
   may alike apply to each one of us, "He is of age; ask him: he shall
   speak for himself." Jesus Christ Himself bore our sins, as we heard
   this morning. He gave Himself for us. He served us, not by proxy, but
   by personal consecration.

   He served us, not by alms doled out pitifully, but by His life
   surrendered as a Sacrifice to God cheerfully. If He has thus commended
   His love to us, what less can we do in return than bear our own brave,
   bold, personal testimony for Him? What a parallel there is between this
   man's case and our own. He had suffered from a grievous, personal evil.
   He was born blind! So we were born in sin--sin had cast its blindness
   over our faculties from our very birth! We shall never forget the
   midnight of our nature. We could not see even the beauties of Christ
   Himself, though resplendent as the sun at noonday, so blind were we!

   This man was personally delivered from his ailment and so have we been
   delivered, I trust. I know many here who can say that whereas they were
   blind, now they see! You have received, as the blind man did, a
   personal blessing, being endowed with sight. The blemish that blighted
   your life has been healed! It is not that somebody sees for you and
   tells you what he sees, but you see for yourself. It is not merely
   imputed to you that you see because you have been told what somebody
   else saw. No, you have no proxy in the matter, no sponsor in the
   business. You yourself are conscious that a work of Divine Grace has
   been worked upon you, whereas you were blind now you see--and you know
   it!

   The blind man was cured through personal obedience to Christ's command.
   He heard a special call addressed to him--"Go, wash in the pool." He
   went and came back seeing! And many here present have heard the voice
   which says, "Believe and live," and it has come to you, not as a
   general exhortation, but as a special direction. You have believed and
   you live! You have washed and you have come back seeing! Well now, all
   this is personal, therefore your Lord and Master has a right to expect
   a personal testimony from you of His power to save! You are of age.
   When any ask you, I trust you will speak for yourself. Speak up and
   speak out for your Master without hesitancy or fear!

   I. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN SAVED MEN ARE POSITIVELY COMPELLED TO SPEAK FOR
   THEMSELVES. They must of necessity bear their personal witness. What
   else can they do when friends desert them? Father and mother were quite
   willing to acknowledge this young man--that he was their son--quite
   willing to bear their witness that he was born blind. But they would
   not go any farther. They could have gone farther if they liked, but
   they were afraid of that sentence of excommunication which the Jews had
   already agreed upon--that if any man confessed that Jesus was the
   Christ he should be put out of the synagogue.

   So, feeling very little compunction in declining to take any
   responsibility themselves, for they had great and probably well-founded
   confidence in their son's power to take care of himself, they did, as
   it were, abandon him. They threw upon him the stress and burden of
   giving a plain answer which would have incurred such disgrace. They
   backed out of it. They had no wish whatever to become the subjects of
   persecution because their blind son had been blessed with sight. The
   young man who had been blind must, therefore, do battle, himself, for
   the good Lord who had bestowed so great a benefit on him. "Ask him,"
   said his parents, "he will speak for himself."

   There are times with many young people when their parents, if they do
   not frown upon their religion, at least turn the cold shoulder to them
   and show no sympathy with their faith or their feelings. Some of us are
   rejoiced when our sons are converted. We are not ashamed to stand by
   them and to defend them and to protect them whatever may come of it.
   But there are fathers and mothers who have no liking for the things of
   God and so their children, if they are converted, have a hard time of
   it. I have known even some who profess to be disciples of Christ hold
   back very suspiciously and leave others to champion the Master's cause
   when it has come to a hard push.

   In a conversation you expected to hear that old gentleman speak up
   bravely for the truth of the Gospel but he did not. You knew he was a
   member of a Christian Church, yet he very cautiously held his tongue
   for a long time and then quietly said something about not casting
   pearls before swine. Probably he had not any pearls, or possibly he was
   a swine himself. How else could you account for such awful cowardice?
   But some have known in youthful ardor what it is to be compelled to
   come out so defiantly as to risk the charge of presumption because
   everybody else seemed to be deserting the doctrine! It is their duty to
   defend!

   It is lamentable how many seem afraid of being compromised. "Ask him;
   ask him; he will speak for himself," is their puny pretext while they
   prudently retire behind the bushes out of rifle range, never coming
   forward unless, perhaps, you should win the victory--when they would
   most likely come up to share the spoils. Whenever a man is placed in
   such a condition that he finds himself deserted in the battle for
   Christ by those who ought to be at his back, then let him disdain
   retreat and say right gallantly, "I am of age: I will speak for myself.
   In the name of God I will bear my witness." Christian men, however
   reserved and backward their natural disposition may be, are compelled
   to speak out when they are very much pressed.

   These Pharisees took this man and questioned him rather closely. They
   put questions to him by way of examination and cross-examination. "What
   did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?" And so on. He does not
   appear to have been disturbed or disconcerted by the questions. He
   acquitted himself grandly. Self-contained, quiet, shrewd,
   immovable--his mind was made up and with a thorough mastery of the
   situation he was ready for them. He did not hesitate. Well now, I trust
   if ever you and I are brought to book and questions are put to us, even
   though it is with intent to entangle us, we shall never be "ashamed to
   acknowledge our Lord or to defend His cause." Surely we might expect to
   be struck dumb if we were ever ashamed to speak of Christ when we are
   commanded to do it!

   If it comes to a challenge, "On whose side am I?" shall I ever hesitate
   to say, "I am with Immanuel, the crucified Savior"? If ever they get us
   into a corner and say, "You, also, were with Jesus of Nazareth," oh may
   God give us Grace to be prompt and not think twice--"Of course I was,
   and of course I am still! He is my Friend, my Savior, my All in All--
   and by His Grace I will never blush to acknowledge His name!"
   Christians must come out and bear, each man for himself, a clear and
   distinct testimony. When others revile and slander our Lord Jesus
   Christ, it becomes imperative of us to commend and extol Him.

   They said to this man, "Give God the praise. We know that this Man is a
   sinner." Then he spoke right gratefully with a heart bubbling up with
   thankfulness. "He has opened my eyes! One thing I know, that, whereas I
   was blind, now I see." But when they went the length of saying, "As for
   this Fellow, we know not from where He is," he spoke up still more
   heroically. He turned upon his assailants and shamed them with their
   marvelous ignorance, "that you know not from where He is." And he
   fought for his Master so cuttingly that they were compelled to throw
   away the weapons of debate and take up stones of abuse with which to
   stone him! Oh, if they speak ill of Christ, shall we be quiet? Does the
   oath make our blood chill and shall we never have a word of rebuke for
   the blasphemer?

   Shall we hear the cause of Christ denounced in society and for fear of
   feeble man refrain our tongue or smooth the matter over? No, let us
   throw the gauntlet down for Christ and say at once, "I cannot and I
   will not refrain myself. Now the very stones might speak. When my dear
   Friend--my best of friends--is thus abused, I must and will proclaim
   the

   honors of His name." I think Christian people in this country do not
   take half the liberty they might. If we speak a word of religion or
   open our Bibles in a railway carriage or anything of that kind, they
   say, "cants!" They may play cards, I suppose, in a public conveyance
   with impunity. They may make night hideous with their howls. They may
   utter all sorts of profanities and sing lascivious songs at their sweet
   will, but we are cants if we take our turn!

   In the name of everything that is free we will have our turn! And every
   now and then I like to sing, to their annoyance, one of the songs of
   Zion, for they sing the songs of Babylon loud enough to annoy us. Let
   us tell them that while we live in a land of liberty and rejoice that
   Christ has made us free, we shall no more be ashamed of His testimonies
   than they are ashamed of their iniquities! When they begin to sin in
   private and blush to utter a lewd word, then maybe the time--no, and
   not even then--for us to keep our religion to ourselves. Thus you see
   there are times when men-- quiet, reserved men--must speak! They will
   be traitors if they do not!

   I do not think this blind man was at all talkative. The brevity of his
   replies seems to indicate that he was a cautious speaker, but they
   drove him to it. He was like the stag at bay. He must fight, however
   gently disposed. And I think there is scarcely a Christian man or woman
   that has been able to go all the way to Heaven and yet quietly hide
   himself and run from bush to bush, creeping into Glory. Christianity
   and cowardice? What a contradiction in terms! I think there must have
   been times when you have felt inclined to say to yourself, "Well now,
   cost what it may. I may become an outcast in society--I may be
   ridiculed by the rough and I may lose respect among the polite--but for
   Jesus Christ and for His Truth I must bear witness." Then has it come
   true of you, "He is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself."

   II. We pass on to another remark. IT IS ALWAYS WELL TO BE PREPARED TO
   SPEAK FOR YOURSELF. This man was evidently ready to do so. When his
   parents said, "Ask him: he shall speak for himself," I think there was
   a little twinkle in the father's eye as he spoke--meaning to say, "You
   will catch a Tartar. He can speak for himself. We have known him a good
   many years while he has been blind and he has always had a pretty sharp
   reply for anybody that thought him a fool! If you imagine, now, that
   you will get much out of him by way of food for your mirth or fun, you
   are mightily mistaken. He will be more likely to spoil you than you to
   spoil him."

   And as they handed him over to the inquisitors, though they were
   unkind, I suppose they did not feel that he was a tender chicken that
   needed much of their care. They seemed to say, "He is of age, he has
   come to years of maturity; ask him. Only ask him. He will speak for
   himself, we guarantee you." And so, indeed, he did! Now I want to have
   a band of Christian people here much of that sort--who, when asked
   anything about their holy faith can so answer that they are not likely
   to be often the butts of ridicule and scorn because they shall prove
   more than a match for their adversaries! But how, you will ask, are we
   to be prepared to speak for ourselves?

   On the outset it is well to cultivate a general habit of
   open-heartedness and boldness. We have no need to intrude and push
   ourselves into people's way and so become a nuisance and a bore to
   them. Far from it! Let us walk through the world as those who have
   nothing to conceal, conscious of the integrity of our own motives and
   the rightness of our heart before God. We need not to wear armor and
   sleep in it like the knights of old, knowing rather that the Truth of
   God unarmed is the best apparel. Let us show that we have nothing to
   cloak or cover, nothing to disguise or hide--that the Gospel has worked
   in us such an honesty and frankness of spirit that nothing can make us
   blush, no foe can cause us fear.

   Let us tell what we believe as true because we can vouch for its
   truthfulness. Let us choke those who laugh at these things, not so much
   by our combat as by our character. Let us prove to them that we have a
   solid reason for our simple protest--that we have actually received the
   Divine Grace in which we earnestly believe! Our words will have weight
   when they see that the fruit of our piety accords with the flower of
   our profession. There is great power in this manner of answering the
   adversary. Take heed however, when you speak, to be sure of your
   ground.

   This man was. "Whether He is a sinner or not," he said, "I know not."
   So he offered no opinion on a subject of which he could not be
   positive. But where he had hard facts on his side there was nothing
   vague in his statement--"One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind,
   now I see." This is an argument which the most astute fool would find
   it difficult to answer! As the blind man looked them full in the face
   it was enough to bewilder them! And there are some of you in whom such
   a change of character has been worked that you could truthfully say, "I
   know I am not the man I used to be. My manner of life from my youth is
   well known to many, if they would testify. But now God, by the Gospel
   of His Son, has opened my eyes, renewed my heart, cleansed my leprosy
   and set my feet in the way of peace."

   Even those who scoff at the Gospel are, in the cases of many of us,
   unable to deny the remarkable and beneficial change it has worked!
   There is a moral uprightness, here, about which we need be very rigid.
   Put your foot down and say, "No, you cannot misjudge this. You may
   philosophize, if you like, but the old-fashioned simple Gospel of the
   children changed me and made me love that which before I hated, and
   hate that which before I loved. That is a thing you cannot deny. One
   thing I know." And it is well, like this man, to have the facts ready
   to recite. "A man named Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and sent
   me to the pool to wash. And I washed and I came seeing."

   Let them have the plan of salvation, as you first perceived it, very
   succinctly and plainly put before them. It is often the very best
   answer you can give to those who question in order to carp and discuss
   with a view to disparage. Let them have it with the gush you had it at
   the time. As the Lord has dealt with your soul, so tell them what He
   has done for you! He must be a hard-hearted man who can sneer at the
   simple statement of your own conversion. The change it has worked in
   you will be a fact which he cannot argue with. Though he should think
   you deluded and call you an enthusiast, there is nothing so difficult
   for him to grapple with as your candor and confidence. "He opened my
   eyes." There is the point! "He opened my eyes! And if He opened my
   eyes, then He was of God. God must have been in such a matter as that,
   for I was born blind."

   With meekness and fear give a reason for the hope that is in you to all
   those who oppose you! Christians should at all times, also, be as this
   man was--quite ready to bear abuse. "You were altogether born in sin."
   I do not suppose the blind man cared one atom what they had to assert
   or to insinuate on that score. Their scorn could not deprive him of his
   sight! He merely shook his head and said, "I can see. I can see. I was
   blind, but now I see. Pharisees may abuse me, but I can see. They may
   tell me I am this, that and the other, but I can see. My eyes are
   open!" So, child of God, you may often say to yourself, "I may be
   ridiculed. I may be ridiculed as Presbyterian, or Methodist, or
   Baptist, or Schismatic, or whatever they like--it does not matter--I am
   saved! I am a changed man. The Grace of God has renewed me! Let them
   call me what they like."

   Some people are very sensitive of satire. They shrink from and seem
   upset at a jest and what men call, "chaff," grates upon them. What a
   baby a man is who cannot brave a fool's laugh! Stand upright, young
   man, and when you go back to that drapery establishment show a bold
   front. You that go to work at some of the big factories and have been
   quizzed and bantered because of your religion, gather up your courage
   and say, "Here I am, five feet ten high, or six feet, or whatever else
   it may be, and shall I be ashamed to be laughed at for Christ?" Pooh!
   You are not worth the boots you stand upright in if you are put down by
   their play. I have no doubt many a soldier in the barracks finds it
   hard to keep up his spirits when comrades taunt him with scoff and
   scorn in their rough way. But after all, dear Friends, should not
   common manliness nerve us with fortitude?

   When we have got hold of a thing that we believe to be right, we should
   be greenhorns to let it go for fear of a giddy prank or a paltry
   grimace. Let them laugh! They will be tired of teasing us when they
   find out that our temper triumphs over their senseless tricks. Let them
   find merriment if they can, poor simpletons. I sometimes feel more
   inclined to smile than to be sad over the jokes that are coined at my
   expense. Their playful sallies may relieve some of the pitiful sorrows
   that light unawares on their lonely hours. Melancholy holds carnival in
   this mad world. Ghosts and goblins haunt the merriest brain! What if
   for once, now and then, they get a living object for their sport, and
   I, myself, become the butt of their buffoonery--there is no fear that
   it will harm me--the only danger is that it will hurt them. Be of that
   mind, dear Friends, and do not care for any of their silliness.

   This man born blind whose eyes were opened was prepared to meet the
   Pharisees and speak up for himself because he felt intense gratitude to
   Him who had bestowed on him the priceless gift of sight. You see all
   through the narrative that though he did not know much about Jesus, he
   felt consciously that He was his true Friend and he stuck to Him
   through thick and thin. Now, you and I may not know much about our
   Lord--not one tenth of what we hope to know--but He has opened our
   eyes! He has forgiven our sins! He has saved our souls! And, by His
   Grace, we will stick to Him, come what may.

   If your gratitude to Him is always at its full heat, I am not afraid
   but whenever you are taunted, whenever, at any time, you are put to the
   test, you will be faithful to your Friend and able to say with a sound
   conscience--

   "I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, Or to defend His cause

   Maintain the honor of His Word, The glory of His Cross."

   III. EVERY SAVED MAN AND WOMAN SHOULD WILLINGLY SPEAK FOR HIMSELF ABOUT
   CHRIST. I

   have said that you will be driven to it. I have also bid you to be
   prepared for it when you are driven to it. But now I have to urge that
   you ought willingly to do it. Are we not all debtors to Christ if,
   indeed, He has saved us? How can we acknowledge that debt if we are
   ashamed of Him? His testimony is--"He that believes and is baptized,
   shall be saved." Does the Baptism save us? No, verily, but he that
   believes is bound to be baptized that he may thus confess His Lord!
   Baptism is the answer of a good conscience towards God. It is the
   disciple's grateful response to his Master's gracious call. You know
   how it is put--"He that with his heart believes, and with his mouth
   makes confession of Him, shall be saved."

   I may not lawfully forbear to confess if I inwardly believe. Why should
   I? If I owe so much to Him shall I--can I-- think of not confessing
   Him? I am sure if there were a commandment issued that we were not to
   acknowledge our Lord, that we were to tell no man, that we must hide
   the secret from kinsfolk, friends and neighbors--to me it would be most
   distressing. But He does bid us acknowledge Him and bear our testimony
   to Him. We hail the command! We account it most seemly and fitting--and
   we cheerfully obey it. Is it not so? How ought we each, willingly, to
   speak up for Christ because we, each one of us, know most about what He
   has done for us! No one here knows all that He has done for me. I think
   I hear you say, "'Tis true, but then you do not know what He did for
   us."

   No, no--we are over head and ears debtors to Him. Oh, what mercy He has
   shown to some of us! If the world could know our state before
   conversion it might almost make our hair stand upon end to read the
   story of our lives. How the Grace of God has changed us! O what a
   change! What a change! Should ravens become doves and lions become
   lambs, your pretentious scholars might expound or mystify the
   phenomenon in a word or two of Greek terminology. But this conversion
   comes across us every day! And scientific men are silent, while
   scoffers meet it only to make mouths at it. The change is infinitely
   greater than when dry bones are raised and clothed with flesh! When
   stones begin to melt and run into streams, it is nothing in point of
   marvel to the regeneration we have experienced!

   We must talk about it! We know more about it than others and we are
   bound to be the honest narrators of the wondrous narrative. The more
   individual testimonies are borne to Christ, the more weight there is in
   the accumulated force of the great aggregate! If I, in the mass, bear
   witness for Christ in the name of you all, saying, "The Lord has done
   great things for us whereof we are glad," I hope there is some honor to
   Christ and some influence to take effect. But if 10, 20, 30, 50 were to
   rise one after the other and say, "The Lord has done great things for
   me," and each one were to tell his own tale, how much more conviction
   would be worked!

   I have heard of a lawyer in the United States who attended a
   testimonial meeting among his neighbors. He was a skeptic, if not a
   thorough unbeliever, when he entered the place. He sat with his pencil
   and paper and took notes of the statements of his neighbors. When he,
   afterwards, reviewed the evidence, he said to himself, "Now, if I had
   these 12 or 13 persons in the witness box on my side, I should feel
   quite sure of carrying my case. I live among them. They are not the
   most learned people I ever met with, but they are very honest,
   trustworthy people. They are plain spoken and though each one has told
   his tale, they all come to the same point and all bear witness to one
   fact--that there is such a thing as the Grace of God--and that it does
   change the heart. Well," he said, "I am bound to believe it after all
   this testimony."

   And he did believe, by God's Grace, and he became a Christian! Of this
   I am certain--that if Christian people were more often to tell their
   testimony to the power of Jesus Christ in their hearts, the cumulated
   witness would tell on many a thoughtless mind and multitudes would come
   to believe in Jesus! The Holy Spirit delights to acknowledge and bless
   such true stories as you can tell! Do I hear one and another of you
   say, "They can do without my story"? No, my Friend, I would answer we
   cannot dispense with your evidence because the diversities of their
   experience are as numerous as the individuals converted, although there
   is unity in the operation of the Holy Spirit.

   Our Lord opened the eyes of many blind men. He unstopped the ears of
   many deaf people. He loosed the tongues of many that were dumb and we
   cannot count how many lepers He cleansed. But each patient could tell
   you his own symptoms and the minute particulars of his own healing.
   Your story, too, has its special interest while it contributes to the
   general narrative. At least you would be sorry if it were not so. "The
   Lord shall count, when He writes up the people,

   that this man was born there." I know you would like your name to be
   mentioned, then, and I think it would be worth your while, now, to
   mention the mercies you have received in just the manner you received
   them.

   To speak for myself, I believe that God, in converting me, manifested a
   way of His own that exactly suited my need. My case was so like yours
   as to produce sympathy, but so unlike yours as to provoke special
   gratitude--and thus it was, doubtless, with each one of you. Your
   career, your character, your circumstances differed in each instance.
   As a great master seldom paints the same picture twice, so the Master
   Artist, God, seldom, (I think never), works precisely the same in any
   two hearts. There is a difference and in that difference there is an
   illustration of the manifold wisdom of God. Therefore we need your
   story. Besides, your testimony may touch the heart of somebody like
   yourself.

   Little Mary over yonder says, "Well, I am nobody, only a nurse-maid.
   The Lord Jesus Christ has cleansed me and made me His. 'Tis true, but
   you can do without my tale." No, Mary, we cannot. Perhaps your
   testimony will exactly suit another little lass like yourself. A little
   maid waited on Naaman's wife. Who but she could have told her mistress
   that there was healing for Naaman or that he could go to a Prophet in
   Israel and be made whole? Tell your story gently and quietly and at
   proper times, but let it be known. "Oh," says the old man, "but I am so
   feeble. You could dispense with my saying anything." No, father
   William, we cannot. You are just the man whose few words have full
   weight. You meet, every now and then, with choice opportunities of
   leading souls to the Savior.

   "I am too old to think about these things," says one. But you might
   tell how the Lord has dealt with you in your old age and maybe it will
   strike home. Why, you working men, if you were all to speak up for
   Christ, as I know many of you do, what an effect would be produced!
   What an influence you would have on others like you! Of course, when
   they hear us preach, they say, "Oh well, you know, he is a parson. He
   says it professionally. It is his business to say it." But when you
   tell of what the Lord has done for you, it becomes the talk--it is
   repeated over and over again! I know what Tom says when he gets home.
   He says to his wife Mary, "What do you think of that Jack that I have
   been working with?

   "Why, he has been talking to me about his soul and he says his sin is
   forgiven him. And he seems such a happy man. You know that he used to
   drink and swear the same as I do, but oh, he is a wonderfully different
   man now! And I should say, from what I see, there must be something in
   it. Well, he asked me home, the other night, and his place is so
   different from ours." "There, you hold your tongue," Mary will answer
   up pretty sharply! "If you brought your wages home to me regularly
   every week, I could lay them out for you better." "Ah," says he, "and
   that is what I have been thinking. It is just because he is a religious
   man that he brings his wages home, and I think there is something real
   about his conversion, do you know?

   "He does not drink as I do. He does not mix up with all manner of larks
   and follies. I should not have thought so much of it had the parson
   spoke to me. But now I really do think there is something good and
   genuine in the Grace of God he talks about. You and I had better go
   next Sunday evening to the Tabernacle, or somewhere else, and hear
   about it for ourselves." Ah, there are many, many souls brought to
   Christ in that way! We cannot do without your testimony then, Jack,
   because your conversation is suitable to your own class. And you, Your
   Ladyship, you say, "I love the Lord, but I do not think I possibly
   could say anything in my circle and walk of life." Couldn't you? Ah,
   but I am sure you will easily surmount this little difficulty if you
   attain a little more growth in Divine Grace!

   We had one among us whose rank entitled her to move in an upper sphere
   of "society," but her choice enabled her to prefer the humble
   companionship of the Church. Her silvery locks, some of you well
   remember. She has left us now. She has gone home to Glory. Among the
   aristocracy her lot was cast. Yet with gentle, quiet, bland simplicity
   she introduced the Gospel wherever she went. Many and many have come to
   these pews to listen to your minister, who had never been here but for
   her calm, beautiful, unobtrusive, holy life--and the nerve with which,
   anywhere, at any time, she could say--"Yes, I am a Christian. What is
   more, I am a Nonconformist. And what you will think worse, I am a
   Baptist. And what you will think worst of all, I am a member of the
   Tabernacle." She never blushed to acknowledge our blessed Redeemer's
   name, nor to acknowledge and befriend the lowliest of His disciples.
   Her faith you do well to follow! In whatever circle we move, let us
   strive to become centers of influence.

   Thus have I tried to show you, dear Friends, that each one has a
   witness to bear--a privilege to be prized no less than a duty to be
   discharged--because a gift you have received qualifies you for a
   service you are asked to render. Suppose that the soldier, when he
   marched to battle were to say, "I need not load my gun. I need not fire
   in the day of battle, seeing that on the right and on the left there
   are good marksmen picking off the enemy." Yes, but when you are in

   full musketry fire your bullet has got its billet and the billet for
   your bullet is not the billet for any other bullet! Therefore let it
   go, let it go! We must all fire, Brothers and Sisters! Not some, but
   all must fire and our charge must be this, "One thing I know, whereas I
   was blind, now I see. Therefore do I bear witness to my Lord. Let who
   will, deny it, He has opened my eyes."

   IV. Lastly, AS EVERY CHRISTIAN, BEING OF AGE, HAS TO SPEAK FOR HIMSELF,
   WE MEAN TO DO IT.

   WE MEAN TO DO IT. For my own part, I mean to do so. That which I
   believe to be true I have spoken to you from my youth up. I have
   offended a good many at times. I shall offend a good many more, I hope,
   because that is not a matter I have ever taken into consideration. Is
   this true? Is it a necessary truth? Is it essential that it be spoken
   plainly and published widely? Away it goes like a hand grenade flung
   into the midst of the crowd! May every minister of Christ-- and I trust
   the rightness of the thing will be more and more recognized--take
   courage to speak for his Master! Speak out, never with bated breath,
   but in the name of Him that sent him--in the name of God--with a
   courage that befits his commission!

   A trembling lip and a coward countenance in a minister show him to be
   unworthy of the office which he pretends to sustain. We must set our
   faces like a flint and bear testimony to the Truth of God--to the whole
   Truth of God--and nothing but the Truth as far as God shall teach it to
   us. And will not you, my fellow members, and you Christian people here
   of all sorts--will you not, also, take up this resolution--"We are of
   age and we mean to speak for ourselves"? You cannot all preach. I hope
   you will not all try. What a world of tumult and disorder we should
   have if every man and woman felt a call to preach! We would have a
   Church all mouth and then there would be a vacuum somewhere. There
   would be no hearers left if everybody turned preacher!

   No, it is not to seek precedence in public assemblies, but to exert
   influence in private society that you are called! By a good
   conversation, with a speech seasoned with salt, at home among friends,
   kinsfolk, or companions--to the dozen or to one--make known what love
   has done, what Grace has done, what Christ has done! Make it known!
   Make it known among your servants, among your children, among your
   trades people--wherever you go, make it known--make it known! Wear your
   regimentals wherever you go! I do not like to see a Christian soldier
   ashamed to show the scarlet. Oh, no, put it on! It is an honor to serve
   His Majesty. If there is anything in Christianity that you are ashamed
   of, get out of it!

   Do not pretend to believe if you are afraid of betraying your
   profession--but if you receive the Gospel and believe it as the
   Revelation of God--never blush to admit it, but be brave to avow it at
   all times and in all places. "Well," says one, "I am so retiring." I
   know you are, Brother. Come, then, drop a little of your modesty and
   distinguish yourself a little more for your manliness. Have I not,
   sometimes, told you of the soldier who was retiring in the day of
   battle, but they shot him for a coward? It will not do to be retiring
   when duty shall urge, or where danger shall summon you to the front. I
   have heard of a man with the face of a lion and the heart of a deer.
   Beware of a too retiring disposition. Disreputable things are sometimes
   disguised in polite words and so diffidence may be dastardly and
   caution may be cowardly.

   Be valiant for your Lord and Master! Play not the traitor's part by
   your silence as you would scorn to do it by your speech--

   "Ashamed of Jesus?! That dear Friend

   On whom my hopes of Heaven depend!

   No! When I blush, be this my shame,

   That I no more revere His name." Break the ice, then, and speak to
   somebody about this blessed message before you go to rest. Will you
   resolve to do so? Take care that you defer not till your heart grows
   cool and the words you purpose freeze on your lips. No, but do it and
   the thing will grow upon you. Presently you will greet the opportunity
   as much as you now shrink from the necessity. It will bless your life.
   I think it is Horatius Bonar who says--

   "He lives long who lives well!

   All else is being flung away.

   He lives longest who can tell

   Of true things truly done each day.

   Be what you seem. Live your creed.

   Hold up to earth the torch divine! Be what you pray to be made. Let the
   great Master's steps be yours. Fill up each hour with what will last.
   Buy up the moments as they go.

   The life above, when this is past, Is the ripe fruit of life below.

   Waste not your being! Give to Him

   Who freely gave it, freely give. Else is that being but a dream,

   'Tis but to be and not to live."

   Dear Friends, some of you who are Believers in Christ have never yet
   confessed Him! I hope that you will resolve from this night to declare
   yourselves His disciples and become His faithful followers. You are of
   age. "Yes," says one, "I am of rather full age, for I am over fifty."
   Others of you are older than that and though you are Believers in
   Christ you have never confessed Him! It will not do, Brothers and
   Sisters. It will not do. It will not do to die with. It does not do to
   think of now. When He comes, happy shall they be that were not ashamed
   of Him! But when He comes in His Glory with all His holy
   angels--trembling shall take hold on those that thought and said they
   loved Him but never dared to bear reproach for His name's sake or to
   suffer shame for the Gospel! I hope these reflections will make you
   very uneasy, and constrain you to say, "Please God, I will join a
   Christian Church before this week is over." If you are a Believer in
   Christ, I charge you not to trifle with the voice of conscience, but to
   pay your vows to the Most High!

   Alas! Alas! There are some that cannot speak for Christ in any way
   whatever, because they do not know Him! He never opened your eyes.
   Never try to talk of matters you do not understand, nor pretend to bear
   witness to mercies you have not experienced. Remember the Christ we
   preach is not only the Christ of history who was crucified, dead and
   buried, but He is a living Christ at this moment, still among us by His
   Spirit--changing our natures, turning and guiding the current of our
   thoughts and lives, purifying our wishes and motives, teaching us to
   love each other, admonishing us to be pure, entreating us to be gentle,
   giving us a heart to aspire after those things that are above instead
   of groveling among those things that are below!

   Now, if you have never met this Christ, you cannot bear witness to His
   power. But He is to be found! Trust in Him! He is Divine--He is the Son
   of God! His blood is the blood of the great Sacrifice of which Moses
   spoke and of which all the Prophets bore witness. He is the last great
   Sacrifice of God. Come and trust Him. And when you trust Him, that
   trust shall be like the woman's touching of the hem of His garment. No
   sooner had she touched Him than she was made whole, for virtue went out
   of Him. That virtue still goes out of His sacred Person whenever the
   simple touch of faith brings the sinner into contact with the Savior!
   May the Lord lead you to believe in Jesus and when you have believed
   through Divine Grace, come forward and confess His name! So shall you
   be numbered with His saints now and in Glory everlasting!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Day of Salvation

   (No. 1394)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JANUARY 13, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Behold, now is the day of salvation." 2 Corinthians 6:2.

   NONE can change the outward features of a day. The kings of the earth
   cannot command for themselves bright days nor inflict upon their
   enemies days of tempest. It belongs to a higher than they to command
   the morning and cause the daystar to know its place. It is little they
   can do in reference to the light, the sun, the clouds or the rain. They
   cannot bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades nor loose the bands of
   Orion. Still, rulers and governors and kings have accomplished much in
   shaping the social character of the days of their subjects. Sometimes,
   like the king of Nineveh, they have proclaimed days of fasting and
   their subjects have been clothed in sackcloth. On other occasions they
   have exercised the prerogative to ordain days of feasting, as Ahasuerus
   did at the palace of Shushan, when for 180 days, "He showed the riches
   of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty," by
   filling the capital with feasting.

   Kings of the older stamp were more able to affect the days of their
   people than they are now. In former times, when men had less wit and
   more faith in the fable of divine right than they have now, despots
   could cause a thick darkness over all the land, even darkness that
   might be felt. They made war according to their own fancy or
   frenzy--and what is that but moral midnight? What does war mean but
   crime, suffering, death, poverty? Is it not usually the sum of all
   villainies? Everything that is evil either marches with it or follows
   in its train! The very thought of war for our beloved country darkens
   our heavens. Alas, with what a light heart have despots drawn the sword
   and sought to wade through slaughter to imaginary glory, shutting the
   gates of Mercy on mankind that they might seize a province or avenge a
   jest.

   Kings can also brighten men's days when they have a mind to be
   quiet--they make peace and then the nations bask in the sun and earth
   covers her battlefields with verdure. Peace gives the poor world
   respite to bind up her gaping wounds and remedy a little of the
   mischief of the bloody fight. Hard labor and stern self-denial are not
   grudged by the suffering peasants if they may but have breathing time
   and the land may enjoy her Sabbaths. But why should such toil and
   suffering have been demanded? Simply because kings quarrel and their
   subjects must die to end the strife!

   Princes have also, on occasion, exercised their prerogative by
   proclaiming days of amnesty and oblivion--a long rebellion has been
   crushed out and there has been no fear of its return--and so the
   monarch has thought it best to refrain from undue severity and overlook
   the evil which he has subdued. Accordingly, he proclaims that the past
   shall be blotted out if, by a certain time, rebellious ones will
   surrender, yield up their arms and promise loyalty. Such days are calm
   and clear and bring light to despairing rebels who saw no end but the
   gallows tree. Thus, for humiliation or rejoicing, for war, for peace,
   or for pardon, monarchs can set their seal upon a day and mark it with
   their signature in history.

   If earthly monarchs can somewhat affect the days of men, what, then,
   can be done by the King of kings? The Creator of day and night can
   surely order all our lights and shades! The Ancient of Days is He who
   can give us "mornings without clouds" or make the day dark with gloom!
   How often has He made the sun of prosperity to gladden us and how
   suddenly has He shrouded us beneath the thick clouds of adversity! Our
   days are in His hands and He is Lord of all! You and I, looking back,
   may well bow before the power and majesty of the Eternal who has such
   infinite power over us that none of us can stop His hand nor say unto
   Him, "What are you doing?"

   The Lord has had His days of vengeance--are they not written in the
   book of the wars of the Lord? How terrible was the hour when He opened
   the sluices of the firmament that the rain might descend in torrents
   and bade the fountains of the great deep rise to meet the descending
   floods! How dreadful were the 40 days wherein the floods above the
   firmament, in tumultuous mirth, leaped downward to embrace their
   brethren of the ocean till the whole earth was covered with one
   all-devouring deluge and sea monsters whelped and stabled in the
   palaces of kings! That was the decree of Justice and the day of
   vengeance of our God.

   Such days have been at other times, as, for instance, when He poured
   Hell out of Heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah! When He overthrew Pharaoh
   and all his host in the midst of the Red Sea. And when His sword stayed
   not from blood till Hivite and Perizzite and all the Canaanites fell
   before the hand of Joshua because the iniquity of the people was full
   and the hour of execution had arrived. Those were the "dies irae," and
   there is another far more terrible yet to come, when Heaven and earth
   shall flee away before the face of Him that shall sit upon the Great
   White Throne. Blessed be God, we are not, at this time, living under
   the rod of vengeance, but our text tells us that "now is the day of
   salvation"!

   When it is a day of vengeance, the Lord does His strange but necessary
   work thoroughly, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,
   says the Lord." The Prophet said of Him, "The Lord revenges and is
   furious." Well did Miriam sing, "The Lord is a man of war, Jehovah is
   His name." But when He puts on the silken robes of mercy and proclaims
   with a silver trumpet the day of salvation, "blessed are the people
   that know the joyful sound." I trust that we are among that happy
   company and have heard with the inner ear the note of Divine Grace! At
   any rate, the Lord has set a period of salvation, even from the
   Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus to this present hour. The day of salvation
   has not been suspended--it lasts on and it shall last till the Lord
   shall descend from Heaven with a shout--then shall come the judgment
   and strict Justice shall sit upon the throne.

   The Apostle, when he was writing this very wonderful sentence, dreaded
   lest men should not avail themselves of its great Truth. Read the first
   verse of the chapter--"We then, as workers together with Him, beseech
   you, also, that you receive not the Grace of God in vain." The day of
   salvation is a great favor from God and it would be a fearful thing if
   we should live in it and miss its privilege! Dear Hearers, it is only
   of Divine favor that we enjoy this day of amnesty, oblivion and
   forgiveness and, therefore, we beseech you not to let its golden hours
   pass over you in vain! This is the great anxiety of my heart at this
   time in addressing you. I have great fear lest some of you should live
   in the day of salvation and yet die without being saved!

   I fear some of you should live in the midst of light with blinded eyes,
   should dwell with deaf ears where the silver trumpet sounds and so the
   Kingdom of God should come very near to you and yet you should not
   enter it. It will be sad, indeed, if you should see strangers from afar
   brought into the Kingdom of Heaven and yourselves, who live on its
   borders, should be utterly thrust out! May the Holy Spirit bless the
   words which shall now be spoken so that the evil which we fear may not
   come upon you, but that you may receive this Grace or favor of God to
   your eternal good! That you may not receive this Grace in vain I shall
   try, first, to show the grand reason for this day of salvation.
   Secondly, I shall speak of the glorious day itself. And thirdly, for a
   minute or two I shall dwell upon the dark shade which may close that
   day if the Spirit does not lead us into salvation.

   I. First, then, THE GRAND REASON FOR THIS DAY--"Now is the day of
   salvation." Will you kindly read the context in order to understand why
   there is a present day of salvation? I will take you a little away from
   the text to the 20th verse of the preceding chapter and ask you to bear
   in mind that the division into chapters is purely arbitrary and we need
   take no notice of it whatever. The Apostle says, "Now, then, we are
   ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray
   you in Christ's stead, be you reconciled to God. For He has made Him,
   who knew no sin, to be sin for us that we might be made the
   righteousness of God in Him."

   Here, then, is the secret of the whole matter. This day is the day of
   salvation because, "He has made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us
   that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." There could
   have been no day of salvation if a Savior had not appeared! And if that
   Savior had not become our Substitute and Surety, salvation would have
   been denied us by the stern voice of Justice. But now Christ has come
   into the world and died for sin--and because He has finished all the
   works which He undertook, the Lord our God proclaims for us the day of
   salvation. Notice that, according to the context, this is the day of
   salvation because we may now be reconciled to God.

   "We pray you in Christ's stead, be you reconciled to God." The Lord
   would not set His ministers to pray men to be reconciled to Him if
   peace were out of the question. He would not send us upon an impossible
   errand! God is already reconciled to every sinner who has an interest
   in the blood of Jesus. Towards those the Lord is full of peace. Nothing
   is needed to reconcile God to the believing man. The great thing that
   is required is to bring men to believe in Jesus Christ that they may be
   reconciled to God! The feud between you and God, poor prodigal child,
   need not be continued! You

   quarreled with your Father and you went into the far country. And now
   you have spent your substance, but your Father sends you this message,
   "Be reconciled. Come home, a loving reception awaits you. Return at
   once."

   Because Jesus has died, the partition wall is broken down--the great
   gulf between a holy God and unholy man is bridged by the atoning blood!
   You may be reconciled. There is no reason why the terrible quarrel
   should continue and, therefore, because reconciliation is possible, it
   is a day of salvation! As long as a man remains an enemy to God he
   cannot, of course, be saved, for enmity to God is the very essence of
   his ruin and the sting of his condemnation. While a man lives in enmity
   to God he is and must be under the power of an evil spirit which curses
   him! Therefore reconciliation to God is absolutely necessary to the
   enjoyment of salvation. I repeat, because reconciliation is possible,
   this day of salvation has come!

   Next, lest anyone should exclaim, "But how is it and why is it that so
   great a gift is conferred? I cannot understand it and therefore I am
   plunged in doubt"--the plain statement of the 21st verse explains it
   all--"He has made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us." Here is the
   grand doctrine of Substitution! Oh Soul, if you believe in Christ Jesus
   you shall be saved because He stood in your place! He took your sin and
   the Lord made Him to be sin on your account and exacted at His hand
   satisfaction for your iniquity! He bruised Him and put Him to grief so
   that He was made a curse for us and bore in our place the wrath of
   Heaven. Now, therefore, the righteous God will not, cannot, need to
   vindicate His Law a second time! If He has made the Lord Jesus to be
   sin for us, then He need not visit us for sin nor punish the same
   offense a second time. No, it would be injustice to lay sin once upon
   the Substitute and afterwards upon the sinner--therefore well may there
   be a day of salvation proclaimed since Christ has finished
   transgression and made an end of sin!

   To help us to understand Mercy's great expedient, still better, the
   Holy Spirit tells us that the Divine design in Christ Jesus is to make
   us the "righteousness of God" in Christ. Wonderful expression! I shall
   not attempt to enter into its fullness, but I will content myself with
   saying that the two expressions of the verse set forth the imputation
   of sin to Christ and of righteousness to us--the substitution of Christ
   in our place and the standing of our souls in Christ's place--in terms
   so forcible that he must be determined not to believe the doctrine who
   does not see it in the words before us.

   Our Lord is not merely made a Sin Offering, but He is made SIN--and we
   are not merely made righteous in Christ, but we are made RIGHTEOUSNESS,
   itself--yes, and the righteousness of God, too--which is the very
   highest conceivable righteousness! I never wish to strain expressions,
   nor push them one inch beyond their proper meaning, but I think it is
   difficult to do here, since the language is so very forcible and
   explicit. If the doctrine which I have explained were intended to be
   taught, I do not see how it could be more clearly stated.

   Now, Soul, if you desire salvation, see how God can give it to you! As
   He takes your sin and lays it upon Christ, so He takes Christ's
   righteousness and lays it upon you! He looks at you as if you were as
   righteous as His Son who represents you! He treats you as if you had
   been obedient to all His Laws. He looks upon the model Man, Christ
   Jesus, the perfect humanity, and He sees in Christ all His people and
   treats them accordingly. He looks upon His people as if they,
   themselves, had magnified the Law and made it honorable by a sinless
   life. Wondrous doctrine, this, and he that believes it shall find rest
   in his soul! And it is because of it that we are authorized to come
   forth this day and declare the day of salvation! The guilt of the
   believing sinner is put away, for Christ has carried it--and now
   righteousness belongs to the sinner, for God imputes it to him without
   works--therefore this is the day of salvation!

   Still keeping to the context and illustrating the grand reason for the
   day of salvation in another way--will you kindly read the verse,
   itself, which contains our text? " 'For He says, I have heard you in a
   time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I helped you.' Behold,
   now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation." It is a
   quotation! Paul says, "He says." Where does God say that? We have no
   difficulty in discovering--it is in the 49th of Isaiah, which passage
   should be carefully read by you and heartily pondered. I wish to call
   your special attention to it as opening up the glorious reason for the
   famous proclamation of which we are preaching.

   That chapter, from the 6th to the 12th verse eminently applies to the
   Messiah, that is, to our Lord Jesus Christ. Of whom else could the
   Prophet have spoken as in the 7th verse, "Thus says the Lord, the
   Redeemer of Israel, and His Holy One, to Him whom man despises, to Him
   whom the nation abhors, to the Servant of rulers"? Who is this but our
   Lord as He stood before Herod and Pilate? To this very day He is
   abhorred of the Jews--they mention Him ordinarily by the

   name of, "the Crucified," and to them that term is the embodiment of
   the utmost scorn! We glory in that word, but to them it is the essence
   of contempt. "He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows, and
   acquainted with grief."

   We are sure that Isaiah spoke concerning Him, the Crucified, whom we
   adore1 And our next enquiry is, what did he say of Him? Read the 5th
   and 6th verses: "And now, says the Lord who formed Me from the womb to
   be His Servant, to bring Jacob again to Him, though Israel is not
   gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and My God
   shall be My strength. And He said, It is a light thing that You should
   be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the
   preserved of Israel: I will also give You for a light to the Gentiles,
   that You may be My salvation unto the ends of the earth."

   Beloved, are you not glad to hear these words? If you are not curious
   to hear me, but eager to hear my Master's Truth of God, your heart will
   be rejoiced at this blessed news--that Christ has come to be the
   salvation of the Gentiles! We were out in the cold. We were the younger
   branch of the family and the heir despised us! We had not yet come into
   our portion--we were left in darkness and in sin! But now our turn has
   come and we are favored. From the day when Jesus said, "Go you into all
   the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," our privileges
   began! From the day when Paul said, "Seeing you put it from you, and
   judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the
   Gentiles," ours has been a day of favor and the portion which once
   belonged only to the seed of Abraham we have obtained! Only we have
   obtained it to a far larger extent and we see more clearly its deep
   spiritual meaning and wealth of blessing!

   What was veiled under types and shadows is evidently set forth before
   our eyes. Beloved, tell it all over the world that today salvation has
   come to the Gentiles and especially to the dwellers in the islands! How
   remarkable it is that islands are so often alluded to in the Scriptures
   and that they receive the Gospel so much more readily than any other
   parts of the world. As for the ends of the earth, surely we are
   intended by that term, for our forefathers dwelt where Phoenicians made
   distant and dangerous journeys to find tin and other metals--and our
   land was thought to be upon creation's verge, inhabited by a barbarous
   people of uncouth tongue and yet to us, even to us, has the Gospel
   come, and now--

   "The British islands are the Lord's, Here Abraham's God is known

   While powers and princes, shields and swords, Submit before His
   Throne."

   Jehovah, the God of the whole earth is our God at this day! In this let
   us exult, for it proves that to the Gentiles the day of salvation has
   come!

   Further, Isaiah goes on to say in the 8th verse, "Thus says the Lord,
   In an acceptable time have I heard You." Mark this well. God saves us
   because He heard the Lord Jesus! There is the secret of all the answers
   of Divine Grace to the prayers of penitents! He says, "I have heard You
   in an accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation." In the
   lonely watches of the night our great Intercessor prayed for His own.
   He lived a life of supplication and He prayed not in vain, for He once
   said to the Father, "I know that You hear Me always," and indeed it was
   always so. His prayers may be said to have reached their highest point
   when He offered the marvelous intercession recorded in John 17 and
   followed it up by His strong cries and tears in the Garden when He
   poured out His soul in agony, where, while prostrate among the olives
   He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground.

   Mysterious was that bloody sweat! Oh you precious drops, you fell not
   by chance! What did you write on the soil of Gethsemane in crimson
   hieroglyphs? You wrote upon the earth the reversal of the curse which
   fell upon the ground and the ending of the day of wrath in the day of
   salvation! That sacred sweat bedewed a garden which henceforth yields
   the oil of joy, by which Believers may anoint their faces with
   gladness! Jesus was heard in that He feared and, therefore, to the
   chief of sinners it is a Gospel of good cheer! "In an acceptable time
   have I heard You." Is it not wonderful that Jesus made intercession for
   transgressors in the Garden who as yet had not learned to pray for
   themselves?

   I trust that among those who hear me there are persons unconverted as
   yet who, nevertheless, are special objects of the Redeemer's
   intercession and who shall find salvation because their great
   Substitute was heard on their account. We were all heard when our Great
   High Priest was heard! The Father's answer to Him was an answer of
   peace to all His people. It is added, "In the day of salvation have I
   helped You." Help came to the Man, Christ Jesus, in His hour of agony.
   The Father helped Him and there appeared unto Him an angel
   strengthening Him. How must that angel have

   marveled as he saw the face of the Incarnate God red with a sweat of
   blood! The whole scene is beyond conception--the prostrate Savior in
   agonizing pangs utters strong cries and is helped of His God--

   "His earnest prayer, His deepening groans,

   Were heard before angelic thrones!

   Amazement wrapped the sky--

   'Go, strengthen Christ!' The Father said!

   The astonished seraph bowed his head,

   And left the realms on high."

   The angel came to strengthen our Champion, not to join in the fight.
   None could share the conflict. Jesus must tread the winepress alone.
   But the angel was empowered to communicate strength to the Manhood of
   Christ and he did so. Then it was that being helped in His hour of
   need, our Master took the appointed cup full of woe and drank it to its
   utmost dregs and said, "It is finished!" 'Twas then that by one
   dreadful draught He pledged the Justice of God and gave this day of
   salvation to the sons of men! You see, then, that our present day of
   privilege has come to us through the Lord's hearing and helping our
   Daysman and Redeemer.

   But, Beloved, salvation comes to us, also, because according to the 8th
   verse it is written, "I will preserve You, and give You for a Covenant
   of the people, to establish the earth." Jesus is now God's Covenant
   with man and that Covenant is one of peace and favor. The Lord says to
   each believing man, "Your sins will I remember no more. A new heart
   also will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you. You
   shall be Mine. I will sanctify you and glorify you with My Son. Behold,
   in token of My faithfulness I have given My Son to be the Seal, the
   Surety, and the sum of My Covenant. Behold, I have given Him for a
   Covenant to the people, a Leader and Commander for the people."
   Brothers and Sisters, you are not under the Covenant of Moses
   today--you are under the Covenant of Jesus! You are not under Law, but
   under Grace! And because of this, today is the day of salvation!

   I cannot at this time enlarge upon the other blessed verses which make
   up the 49th of Isaiah, but let me say it is because Christ is now
   anointed to give liberty to all captives and say to them, "Go forth."
   It is because He brings the darkened ones out of death-shade and says,
   "show yourselves," that, therefore, this is a day of salvation. And,
   furthermore, when we are delivered from bondage and darkness, then,
   because Christ is a Shepherd and leads His flock. And because He makes
   them to feed in the ways and finds pasture for them in high places.
   Because He protects them from hunger and thirst and gives them springs
   of water to drink of--it is because of all this that now is the day of
   salvation!

   I will not further enlarge, but only say as I now preach the day of
   salvation, as I have tried to do with the utmost boldness and fullness,
   if any of you enquire, "How is it? How is it? Why is Grace so free at
   this day?" I shall tell you that the cause is quite as marvelous as the
   fact--that the day of salvation is as surprising as salvation
   itself--and that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who has done and is
   doing it all, is the most wonderful of all! In His eyes I see the stars
   which can shine away the midnight of despair! In His hands I see the
   majestic might which can break the fetters of Satanic bondage! And in
   His face I see the sacred guidance which shall bring the sacramental
   host of His elect safely Home, in unbroken ranks, to the land of the
   tearless eyes!

   II. Now, kindly leave Isaiah and turn back to the text. Under the
   second head we have to speak upon THE GLORIOUS DAY ITSELF, for the day
   of salvation is rich with blessing. First, I would commend that day
   because of its fourfold excellence. Read again the verse in which our
   text stands. Although the words must be regarded as spoken, in the
   first place, to our Lord, the best expositors say that they are also
   addressed to His Church in Him. The word came to Him as the Head and
   Representative of His people and so to His chosen as one with Him.

   So then, Beloved, in this day of salvation our prayer will be heard--"I
   have heard You in a time accepted." Dear Hearer, if you will sincerely
   pray in the name of Jesus, you will be heard! Are you very guilty? Ask
   for mercy and you will be heard. "I have heard You in an accepted
   time." Have you condemned yourself? Have you written your own death
   warrant? Are you bowed down with a sense of guilt? Pray and pray, and
   pray again! Oh, Brothers and Sisters, pray, I beseech you! If you are
   between the jaws of Hell, still pray, for now is the day of
   salvation--and it is a day in which he that asks, receives, he that
   seeks, finds and to him that knocks it shall be opened!

   Secondly, we are further told that this day help will be given. What
   does it say? "In the day of salvation have I helped You." Are you
   helpless, are you hopeless? This is a day in which God will come to
   your relief! Do you need strength to break the chains of habit? Do you
   need power, even, to repent? Do you need help to feel your
   helplessness? Do you need

   anything and everything? "Behold," He says, "in the day of salvation
   have I helped You." He will help you, only ask Him, only trust Him.
   When there was a great straitness of business in the Manchester
   district during the American war, and many were out of work and
   starving, many instances occurred in which persons were found near to
   death's door, "clamming" as they called it, or dying of starvation.

   When they were kindly visited and asked why they did not apply for
   relief, they answered that they could not ask. British independence, as
   we call it. And a very noble spirit it is within proper bounds! It was
   strong within them and many a man said, "I could not bring myself to
   ask." I admire that spirit between man and man, but I do not admire it
   when it touches the matter of the soul and lies between a poor
   worthless sinner and the great and ever-blessed God! Do not be proud
   and say, "I cannot bring myself to ask," for behold, your prayer will
   be answered now and whatever help you require will be freely given you!
   Does not that one fact show that we live in the day of salvation?

   And then it is added, "Behold, now is the accepted time," so that the
   third blessing is that coming sinners will be accepted. If you will
   come to God, He will not reject you, whoever you may be! However poor
   your repentance and weak your faith, it is a gracious time and the Lord
   will freely accept your sincere desires for His Son's sake. Does not
   this fact encourage you to come? The door of Mercy is open and no man
   can shut it! The Lord Jesus has never yet rejected a coming sinner and
   He never will, for it is written, "Him that comes to Me I will in no
   wise cast out." It is a season of acceptance, not of rejection--come
   and partake in the blessing!

   And then the fourth excellence is that it is a time of salvation, of
   which we will speak at greater length. You need saving? Be glad, then,
   that it is salvation's own day. All that can be needed to secure the
   salvation of a sinner has been fully prepared by Christ and is now
   freely presented in the preaching of the Word of God to every soul that
   is willing to receive it. Jesus was born to save! He died to save! And
   He lives to save! Now, let me point out that this ought to be
   peculiarly pleasant news to those who are heavily laden with guilt. I
   have known the day when, if I had heard such words as these I try to
   speak, I think I should have leaped at them at once as a hungry dog
   does at a bone!

   Sinners, this is the day of salvation, not a day of justice! Come and
   confess your sin--you shall not be accused, condemned and punished--but
   freely forgiven! It is a day in which you may mourn to think you have
   sinned, but need not despair nor indulge a single unbelieving thought,
   for that would be unsuitable to the time which is a day of good
   tidings. From now till the day when you shall pass out of this mortal
   state it is one long and blessed day of Divine Grace! There was a week
   of creation and the Lord God performed great wonders of creating power
   and put not forth His left hand to destroy--so now there is a day of
   salvation and all around, angels of love are hovering, still
   singing--"Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards
   men."

   God is saving all that come to Him by Jesus Christ. Everything
   proclaims salvation! The air is full of gentle voices. In fact, your
   very existence, continued by long-suffering, is a message of Grace.
   Your being found in a house of prayer this morning has an eye towards
   your being saved! Your eager attention gives me hope it shall be so.
   Shall it not be accomplished now by your believing in Jesus? The
   fountain to wash your guilt away is filled! The "best robe" to cover
   you is prepared! The finger ring of everlasting love is ready to be put
   on your finger and the shoes of gladness and of peace are waiting you.
   Oh, poor Soul, today I have nothing to preach but salvation--salvation
   through the blood of Jesus Christ! "Go you into all the world and
   preach the Gospel," said our Lord Jesus. And that Gospel is salvation,
   free salvation to the sons of men!

   The Truth of our text should also be very encouraging to those who are
   fighting against inward sin. I know some who can trust Christ for
   pardon, but their chief difficulty is how they can be made holy. I
   greatly delight in seekers in whom this is the main thought--not so
   much to escape punishment as to avoid future sin. Well, if you are
   fighting against evil in the name of Jesus Christ, do not be
   discouraged--you will master it because it is the day of salvation and
   it is written, "They shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His
   people from their sins." Do I address a drunk? Has the intoxicating cup
   a strange fascination for you and have you gone back to drinking, after
   having often loathed yourself for it?

   You need not be a slave to it any longer, for this is the day of
   salvation from that sin! By faith in Christ you shall be delivered out
   of that deadly snare! Or have you been tempted to some other gross
   iniquity which holds you spellbound? Does a certain vice fix its
   serpent eyes upon you and enchant you till you can no longer restrain
   yourself? Rejoice, then, for this is the day of salvation from sin!
   Neither saint nor sinner need sit down under the power of any sin, for
   in Christ

   Jesus' name we can overcome the power of evil. Do not excuse yourselves
   by talking of besetting sins--you must thrust away all sin--you must
   overcome temptation, for if any sin shall totally vanquish you, you
   will be lost forever since it is only to "him that overcomes" that the
   crown is given.

   How, then, can you overcome? Why, only by the power of Christ, who bids
   us this day lay hold upon salvation from sin! Come to Him and trust
   Him--and He will destroy the works of the devil within you. While this
   is very encouraging to penitents and to those who are fighting with
   sin, it should be equally cheering to tried Believers. Beloved, are you
   in deep trouble just now? Is your spirit overwhelmed within you? Be of
   good cheer, for this is the day of salvation! It is not a time for
   saints to die in--it is not a day in which the enemy shall triumph over
   Believers--it is for us the day of salvation! Be glad, then, O you who
   are assailed by the enemy. Though your foe may put his foot upon your
   neck, yet he cannot crush your life out, but you may boldly cry,
   "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy: when I fall, I shall arise again!" It
   is the day in which Believers must be saved!

   Did not Christian, in "Pilgrim's Progress," find it so from the very
   day in which he left the City of Destruction to the time when he passed
   through the river and said, "I feel the bottom, and it is good"? He had
   days of conflict, days of weariness and days of deep distress of
   mind--but all along he was saved--saved from the lions, saved from
   Giant Despair, from the flatterer's net and saved from the last river
   with its chill floods. We also live in the day of salvation. "Ah," said
   a Popish bishop once to one of our martyrs, "You are a heretic and you
   will be damned." "My lord," said the heroic man, "there I am at a pass
   with you. I may be burned, but I never shall be damned." "Why so?" said
   his adversary. The man replied by quoting that passage in the old
   translation, "There is therefore now no damnation to them that are in
   Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."

   Who shall condemn those for whom Christ has died? It is the day of
   salvation, not of accusation! It is the day of victory, not of defeat,
   not of captivity, much less the day of destruction to the true people
   of God! Let us, then, as is most right, hang out the streamers of joy
   and with glad music set our souls in fit trim to keep the feast of
   salvation! And do you not think this Truth of God should encourage all
   who are at work to win souls for Jesus? Brothers, if I had my pick of
   days, I should like to go forth and preach the Gospel when it was a day
   of salvation, wouldn't you? One likes to go down the river with the
   tide--and if you can have a fair wind, as well, it is grand sailing!
   But surely, now, whenever you seek souls you have wind and tide with
   you, for it is the day of salvation! God is saving men! It is His daily
   business and His crowning glory and He has set His heart on it!

   Just as I remarked that Ahasuerus ordained a season of feasting and
   banqueted the people and there is no doubt that they did feast at a
   royal rate, so when the infinite Jehovah proclaims a day of salvation
   the people shall be saved and there shall be no question about it!
   Thousands upon thousands of erring ones shall repent and believe and so
   shall be saved to the glory of His Grace. Do not tell me that London is
   very wicked--I know it is. But the Lord has many people in this city
   and He will redeem them from all iniquity. Our rural population may
   also be, in many places, perishing in gross darkness, but "the Lord
   knows them that are His." He has jewels in yonder cottages and He will
   make them to be His own. His chosen are hidden away in the dark mines
   of iniquity, but He will find out His gold and purify it. His
   everlasting purpose shall not fail and His infinite pity shall not be
   stopped!

   Glory be to His blessed name! He will accomplish all His purposes, for
   this is the day of salvation and His people shall be called to Him by
   some means, by any means, by every means! They shall be brought up out
   of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay. And they shall know that
   the Lord saves not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit! I think I
   have worked out this point sufficiently. "Now is the day of salvation."
   I wonder whether anybody misunderstands me? Dear Friends, you know we
   commonly call this year, 1878, a year of Divine Grace. We are quite
   right, for it is so. We say Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, and so
   it is--it is Jesus Christ's year!

   Any time between the first of January and the last of December in which
   you seek Him, He will be found of you. Suppose you try it now? There
   cannot be a better hour! Here, where many have found Him, consecrate
   that seat on which you sit. Dear Brothers and Sisters, may the Holy
   Spirit help you to do so by now saying, "I would be reconciled to You,
   my God, by the great Mediator. I would accept this salvation which you
   have freely set before me." I pray you do so!

   III. To some of you I have spoken these many years, getting, now, into
   the 25th year, and shall I speak in vain? Our

   last word was to be something about A DARK CLOUD WHICH MAY DARKEN THE
   CLOSE OF THIS DAY OF

   SALVATION. I pray it may not, yet I fear it. My dread is lest you
   receive this great favor in vain, lest you live in this day

   of salvation and yet are lost. That will be for me a calamity, for I
   shall lose my labor and more--there will be your mother's tears all
   lost, your father's prayers all lost--and your Sunday school teacher's
   earnest instructions all lost and other ministers' frequent invitations
   all gone for nothing!

   May it not be so, for that is unprofitable for you as well as for us.
   You will have lost all those Sabbaths, all those Bible readings, all
   those pricks of conscience. I know some of you are very attentive
   hearers and yet you have not found Grace in this day of salvation.
   Salvation is all round you, yet you have it not! You have wasted golden
   opportunities. Ah, there will come a day when you will wish for another
   Sabbath but it will be denied you! Your last sermon shall have been
   heard and your last warning shall have been received. Do not lose, I
   pray you, the privileges you enjoy of being born in a Christian land,
   of having an open Bible and of listening to an earnest ministry! Do not
   let those who never enjoyed such privileges have, in the eternal world,
   the advantage over you!

   Do not let Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre and Sidon have to tell you that
   it is more tolerable for them in Hell than for you! The Lord Jesus
   assures us that it will be so if you have been hearers of the Gospel
   and lived in the day of salvation and refused this Divine Grace. The
   text says it is a day--and a day comes to an end! These are not words
   of mine, but the words of Scripture. Again, He limits a certain day,
   saying in David, "Today if you will hear His voice." Do you not see
   that the day of salvation, though it has lasted 1,800 years and more,
   is still a day and will surely end? The opportunity of mercy will not
   last forever--let none deceive you as to that matter! The hope of
   Divine Grace will end with the day of Divine Grace. Let not the
   smooth-tongued ministers of the devil who enter the pulpits of Christ
   now-a-days delude you as to any vain hope that another day of Grace
   will come!

   I have no such flattering message to speak to you, but I speak as this
   Book teaches. If you let this day of salvation pass and if you glide
   into another world unsaved, you are lost forever. I know no more, but I
   know that this Bible so declares it. "These shall go away into
   everlasting punishment and the righteous into life eternal." Do not
   indulge vain dreams! If the Lord speaks of a day, be sure that He has
   limited the day--and if He declares this to be the day of salvation,
   you are not authorized to expect that another such period will ever
   come. "If He that despised Moses' Law died without mercy under two or
   three witnesses" (listen to that!)--"of how much sorer punishment,
   suppose you, shall he be thought worthy, who has trod under foot the
   Son of God?"

   Oh, yield to the Lord Jesus! Accept His salvation and trust Him at
   once! I pray you, in Christ's place, be reconciled to God. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Family Reformation--or, Jacob's Second Visit to Bethel

   (No. 1395)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there."
   Genesis 35:1.

   THERE are critical times in most families--times when much decision of
   character will be needed on the part of the father to guide things
   aright. They say there is a skeleton in every closet and, if so, I
   would add that occasionally the unquiet spirit takes to troubling the
   household and needs to be laid low. There are times when the evil in
   the hearts of the children and in the nature of the parents becomes
   especially energetic and brings about difficulties and perplexities, so
   that if a wrong turn were taken, the most fearful mischief would ensue.
   And yet, if there is Divine Grace in the hearts of some or all of the
   family, a strong and gracious hand at the helm of the ship may steer it
   right gallantly through the broken waters and bring it safely out of
   its dangers to pursue its journey much more happily in the future.

   Now, such a crisis had come to Jacob's family--things had reached a sad
   pass and something had to be done. Everything seemed out of gear and
   matters could not continue any longer as they were. All was out of
   order and threatened to become much worse. Even the heathen began to
   smell the ill savor of Jacob's disorganized family and the one
   alternative was mend or end. A stand must be taken by the head of the
   house. There must be reform in the household and a revival of religion
   throughout the whole family. If you notice, Jacob himself was in a bad
   way. His business was to remain in Canaan a mere sojourner, dwelling in
   tents, not one of the people, but moving about among them, testifying
   that he looked for "a city that has foundations, whose Builder and
   Maker is God."

   He expected to inherit the land, but, for the time being, he was to be
   a stranger and a sojourner as his fathers Abraham and Isaac had been.
   Yet at Succoth we read that he built booths--scarcely houses, I
   suppose--but more than tents. It was a compromise and a compromise is
   often worse than a direct and overt disobedience of a command. He dares
   not erect a house, but he builds a booth and thus shows his desire for
   a settled life. And though it is not ours to judge the purchase of land
   at Shechem, still, it looks in the same direction. Jacob is endeavoring
   to find a resting place where Abraham and Isaac had none. I will not
   speak too negatively, but the Patriarch's acts look as if he desired to
   find a house for himself where he might rest and be on familiar terms
   with the inhabitants of the land.

   Now the Lord his God would not have it so. The chosen family was
   intended, by the Divine purpose, to dwell alone and maintain a peculiar
   walk of separation. The seed of Abraham was ordained to be, in the
   highest sense, a Nonconformist tribe, a race of separatists! Their God
   meant them to be a distinct people, entirely severed from all the
   nations among whom they dwelt and so they must be. But the inclination
   to be like their neighbors was very manifest in Jacob's family. The
   spell of Esau's greatness had, no doubt, affected the clan of Jacob.
   They had, from the Patriarch, himself, down to the youngest child, made
   very willing obeisance before "my lord Esau," and the homage paid was
   not without its effect.

   That obeisance was an act which, from some points of view, we cannot
   condemn, but it was scarcely becoming in one who was a Prince with God
   and elect of the Most High--and its effect could not have been
   elevating. The sons seem to have taken very readily to paying homage to
   profane Esau, though they were not little children, but young men. They
   bowed before their noble-looking uncle with his grand band of warriors
   and were, perhaps, fascinated by the charms of so warlike a member of
   the family, whose sons were dukes and great ones in the land. It added
   importance to the shepherds to feel that they were related to a great
   captain!

   Now that they had come to Shechem and their father had purchased a
   piece of land there and had built booths, they felt themselves to be of
   some importance--and they must go visiting, for everybody loves
   society. And now comes the mischief of it. Jacob's only daughter must
   visit with the prince of the people. The daughter of Israel is invited
   to the dances and the assemblies of the upper circles of the land. It
   is winked at by the father, possibly, and the brothers aid and

   abet it. She is often away at the residence of Shechem, the fine young
   Hivite prince, a very respectable gentleman, indeed, with a mansion and
   estates. But there comes an evil matter of it not to be mentioned.

   Then her brothers, in their hot anger, run into a sin that was quite as
   evil as Shechem's crime, by way of making some amends for their
   sister's defilement. With dastardly treachery they slay the whole of
   the Shechemites and so bring the guilt of murder upon a family which
   ought to have been holiness unto the Lord! Children of God cannot mix
   with the world without mischief! The world does hurt to us and we to it
   when once we begin to be of the world and like it. It is an
   ill-assorted match. Fire and water were never meant to be blended. The
   seed of the woman must not mix with the seed of the serpent. It was
   when the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and
   took of them as they pleased, that the deluge came and swept away the
   population of the earth.

   Abundant evil comes of joining together what God has put asunder. The
   corpses of the Shechemites and the indignation of all who heard of the
   foul deed were the direct result of the attempt to blend Israel with
   Canaan! And now Jacob's household is filled with fear and the old man,
   himself--a grand man and a Believer, but a long way off from being
   perfect--cries out to his sons, in great distress, "You have troubled
   me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the
   Canaanites and the Perizzites! And I, being few in number, they shall
   gather themselves together against me and slay me. And I shall be
   destroyed, I and my house." To this his sons only replied, "Should he
   deal with our sister as with an harlot?"--taking his rebuke in a rough
   fashion and by no means showing any sense of shame.

   They do not appear to have been the worst of his sons and yet their
   rage and cruelty were most terrible. And when they were charged with
   their crime they justified it. Wretched, indeed, was the condition of
   Jacob's household! That family was badly arranged from the very
   beginning. Polygamy needed not to be denounced in so many words in
   Scripture, because the specimens given of it are all so thoroughly bad
   that no one can doubt that the thing is radically vicious in its
   mildest form. It worked shockingly in the case of Jacob. His wife
   Rachel, whom he loved so well, had, I fear, been the cause of the
   introduction into the family of idolatry in the form of teraph, or
   symbol-worship. She had learned it from her father, Laban, and secretly
   practiced it. And if Jacob was aware of it, he did not like to say
   anything to her, his darling, the queen of his soul.

   Those bright eyes which had charmed him years ago--how could he dim
   them with tears? The children of Leah took up their mother's cause and
   the sons of the handmaids sided with each other--and this made trouble.
   The many mothers of the family created difficulties and complications
   of all sorts, so that the household was hard to arrange and keep in
   good order. It was not what a believing household should be and it is
   not amazing at all that affairs so thoroughly went awry that it
   appeared as if even the salt was losing its savor and the good seed was
   dying before it could be sown in the earth and made to bring forth
   fruit! A stand must be made. Something had to be done and Jacob must do
   it.

   The Lord comes and He speaks with Jacob. And since the good man's heart
   was sound towards God's statutes, the Lord had only to speak to him and
   he obeyed. He was pulled up short and made to look at things and set
   his house in order. And he did so with that resolution of character
   which comes out in Jacob when he is brought into a strait, but which at
   other times is not perceptible. We shall take up this incident at this
   time and may God grant that we may find practical teaching in it for
   ourselves and for our families, by the guidance of His gracious Spirit.

   Notice, first, God having appeared to Jacob--what was to be done?
   Secondly, what happened in the doing of it? And thirdly, what followed.

   I. First, then, WHAT WAS TO BE DONE? The first thing to do was to make
   a decided move. God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell
   there." You must hasten away from Shechem, with its fertile plains, and
   make a mountain journey up to Bethel and dwell there. You have been
   long enough near these Shechemites. Mischief has come from your being
   so intimate with the world. You must cut a trench between yourselves
   and the associations you have formed and you must go up to Bethel and
   remain there.

   Every now and then, dear Brothers and Sisters, we shall find it
   necessary to say to ourselves and to our family, "We must come out from
   among worldlings. We must be separate. We are forming connections which
   are injurious to us and we must snap the deceitful bonds. We are being
   led into habits and customs in the management of the household which
   are not such as God would approve. We are doing this to secure favor of
   one and doing that to escape frowns from another--and we are not
   walking straight with the Lord--therefore, to bring us back to our
   moorings, we must come

   right out and go to Bethel, to the place where God met with us at the
   first. We must go to our first trysting place and meet with our Lord
   again, cost whatever the journey may.

   "Though some may feel it to be a cross, yet we must begin again and
   work upon the old lines. Back to our old Puritanism and precision we
   must go and renew our vows. Let us go right away from worldliness and
   get to the Bethel of separation and draw near to God again." Have you
   ever found, Beloved, when you have been very deep in business and very
   much in the world that you begin to feel heart-sick and cry, "It won't
   do, I must get out of this! I must retreat into a holy solitude and
   enjoy a little quiet communion with God"? Have you not sometimes felt,
   concerning your family, "We are not serving the Lord aright, nor
   becoming more holy or devoted. Everything appears to be going downhill.
   We must steer the other way. We must alter our present declining state,
   in the name of God, or else we cannot expect to have His blessing." I
   know that you have come to such a place and have resolved to take a
   decided step. May the Lord help all of us when we see clearly that
   something is to be done. May we have Grace to end sinful hesitation and
   set about amendment at all hazards.

   Now they must revive old memories. "Go up to Bethel and dwell there.
   And make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto you when you fled
   from the face of Esau, your brother." A revival of old memories is
   often most useful to us, especially to revive the memory of our
   conversion. The memory of the love of our espousals, when we went after
   the Lord into the wilderness and were quite satisfied to be denied and
   disowned of all--so long as we might but dwell near to Him--that memory
   is right good for us! It is well to recall that hallowed hour when we,
   for the first time, set up a family altar and with our dear ones bowed
   before the Lord! Then we felt that the separated place was a very sweet
   one and we were most glad to get right away from the world and to live
   with Christ and in Christ and for Christ and like Christ.

   We cannot help blushing as we remember those early days. We did not
   think that we should have fallen so far short of our ideal. Let the
   recollection of Bethel, then, come over us to make us remember the
   loving kindness of the Lord and mourn over our own spiritual
   declensions. Are you singing--

   "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed,

   How sweet their memory still,

   But they have left an aching void

   The world can never fill"?

   Then you must come back to your first hours of communion. Where you
   lost your joy you will find it, for it remains where you left it! If
   you have neglected your prayer closet. If you have ceased from the
   searching of the Word of God. If you have departed from a close walking
   with Christ and if you and your families have fallen into a very low
   state, so that strangers who look in would hardly know whether yours is
   a godly house or not--if it is so, then go back mourning and sighing to
   Bethel and pray that the old feelings may be revived in you. God grant
   they may!

   And may you, in addition, be led to cry, "How could I have departed so
   much from the living God? How could I have played the fool and gadded
   about so much when I might have rested still, in peace, if I had lived
   near to God?" This, then, was the work which was to be done by Jacob.
   He had to, first, make a decided move and, secondly, to revive old
   memories! Have you any call to the same course of action? If so, see
   you do it. But now, again, Jacob must keep an old vow. I do not quite
   remember how many years old that vow was, but I suppose some 30 or so.
   Yet he had not kept it. He was much younger when he knelt and said, "If
   You will be with me," and so on, "then this place shall be God's
   house."

   He has forgotten that vow, or at least he has not fulfilled it all
   these years. Be very slow to make vows, Brothers and Sisters--very
   slow. They should be but very seldom made because all that you can do
   for God you are bound to do as it is--and a vow is often a superfluity
   of superstition. But if the vow is made, let it not wait beyond its
   time and complain to your God. An old and forgotten vow will rot and
   breed most solemn discomfort to your heart. At first it will gnaw at
   your conscience. And if your conscience, at last, grows hardened to it,
   others of your powers will suffer the same petrifying process.
   Moreover, a forgotten vow will bring chastisement on you and perhaps
   the rod will fall upon your family.

   The connection between Jacob's not going to Bethel and the mischief
   that happened to his daughter, Dinah, and the sinning of his sons, Levi
   and Simeon, may not be distinctly traceable, but I feel persuaded that
   there was a connection-- the sin of omission in the father led on to
   sins of commission in the sons. With the sins of his children, the Lord
   chastened Jacob for his breach of promise. Note that the Lord does not
   remind Jacob of his wrong, nor chide him for it, but He

   puts him in a position in which he will remind himself of it. It is so
   gentle--I was going to say so courteous of our God-- He is so gentle,
   so tender, that He would rather His servant should remember the vow
   than be distinctly told of it in so many words. See, then, Jacob is
   bound to go and do according to his solemn pledge.

   Now, dear Friend, it may be that part of the business you and I have to
   do in order to set our families right is to remember something we said
   we would do years ago but which we have not done. We have had the
   ability for a long while, but the willingness has not been with us. Let
   us now bestir ourselves and clear our consciences in the matter. God
   alone knows of it--let not this secret thing lie festering in our
   hearts and grieving the Holy Spirit! I speak, I believe, very closely
   home to some of my hearers. Perhaps the message is sufficiently
   distinct and I had better say no more. Let your own hearts remember
   your neglected promises.

   It appeared to Jacob, next, that if he was to fulfill his vow, it was
   necessary to reform his whole house, for he could not serve the Lord
   and worship other gods. He said to all that were with him--to his sons
   first and then to his hired servants and the rest--"Put away the
   strange gods that are among you." Yes, it must come to that! If I am to
   get back to my old position with God I must break my idols--

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

   The idols of the family--the acts and deeds of the young folk which
   would grieve God, the doings of the elder ones which are inconsistent
   with a profession of faith in Jesus, the ill tempers that have been
   indulged, the divisions of heart which have come up in the family--all
   that is sinful and unlovely must go, if we are to get right again.
   There must be a general breaking and burying of idols, or we cannot
   worship the God of Bethel!

   And next Jacob said, "Be clean." There was to be, I suppose, a general
   washing indicative of purgation of character by going to God with
   repentance and seeking forgiveness. Jacob also said, "Change your
   garments." This was symbolic of an entire renewal of life, though I
   fear they were not all renewed. At any rate, this is what was
   symbolized by, "Change your garments." Alas, it is easier to say this
   to our families than it is to get them to do it! And do we wonder since
   it is so much easier for ourselves to say than it is for ourselves to
   do! Yet, Beloved, if your walk is to be close with God. If you are to
   commune with the God of Bethel, you must be cleansed. The Lord cannot
   commune with us while we wallow in sin. "What accord has Christ with
   Belial?"

   Sin must be put away! The best Believer that lives must wash his feet
   if he is to draw near to God as he has done before. All this Jacob was
   to undertake and to him, who had become so lax with his family, it was
   no small work to screw up his courage and say to Rachel and all of
   them--"Put away the strange gods that are among you and be clean. And
   change your garments." Well, then, the next and last thing which they
   were to do was to celebrate special worship. "Let us arise and go up to
   Bethel, and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the
   day of my distress and was with me in the way which I went."

   When we get wrong and feel that there must be a decided change, we must
   set apart special times of devotion. We must say to our soul, "Soul,
   Soul you have fed so little lately. This leanness of yours comes of
   neglecting spiritual feasting. Come, you must humble yourself! You must
   lay yourself low before God. You must approach the Lord with lowly
   reverence and beg to be refreshed with His Presence. You must set apart
   more time for feeding upon Christ and upon His Word. You must never be
   quiet till you become, again, full of Divine Grace and of the Holy
   Spirit." In families it is often well, when you see that things are
   wrong, just to call the household together and say, "We must draw near
   unto God with peculiar earnestness, for we are going astray. We have
   not given up family prayer, but we must now make it special and with
   double zeal draw near unto God."

   I am afraid that some of you neglect family prayer. If you do I am sure
   it will work evil in your households. The practice of family prayer is
   the castle of Protestantism. It is the grand defense against all
   attacks by a priestly caste who set up their temples and tell us to
   pray there and pray by their mediation. No, but our homes are temples
   and every man is a priest in his own house! This is a brazen wall of
   defense against superstition and priestcraft! Family prayer is the
   nutriment of family piety and woe to those who allow it to cease!

   I read the other day of parents who said they could not have family
   prayer. Someone asked this question, "If you knew that your children
   would be sick through the neglect of family prayer, would you not have
   it? If one child was

   smitten down with fever each morning that you neglected prayer, what
   then?" Oh, then they would have it. "And if there were a law that you
   should be fined five shillings if you did not meet for prayer, would
   you find time for it?" Yes. "And if there were five pounds given to all
   who had family prayer, would you not by some means arrange to have it?"
   Yes. And so the enquirer went on with many questions and wound up with
   this last one--"Then is it not just an idle excuse when you, who
   profess to be servants of God, say that you have no time or opportunity
   for family prayer?"

   Should idle excuses rob God of His worship and our families of a
   blessing? Begin to pray in your families and especially if things have
   gone wrong, get them right by drawing near to God more distinctly. Did
   I hear you say, "We do not want to be formalists." No, I am not afraid
   you would be! I am afraid of your neglecting anything that tends
   towards the good of your household and your own spiritual growth and,
   therefore, I pray you labor at once to acquaint yourselves with God and
   be at peace. Draw near the Lord, again, more thoroughly than you have
   done before, for it is the only way by which the backslidings of
   persons and families are at all likely to be corrected! God grant a
   blessing with these words by the power of His Holy Spirit.

   II. And now I come to my second point--WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DOING OF
   IT? Well, several things

   happened and one or two of those were rather surprising. The first was
   that all heartily entered into the reforming work. I am sure they did,
   because the 4th verse says, "They gave unto Jacob all the strange gods
   which were in their hands"--all of them--"and all their earrings which
   were in their ears." He had not said anything about their earrings. Was
   there any harm in their earrings? For a woman to wear an earring is not
   such a dreadful thing, is it? Perhaps not, but I suppose that these
   earrings were charms and that they were used in certain incantations
   and heathenish customs. It must have been a very sad discovery to
   Jacob, who himself could not have endured it, to find that wicked
   superstitions had come into his tents through his winking at the
   teraphs.

   The evil had gone on in secret and though suspected, was not actually
   under Jacob's eye. I dare say he was not quite sure that the teraphs
   were in the tent and did not want to be quite sure, because it was
   Rachel, you know, who had them, and she--well, she was Rachel--and she
   had been brought up so differently from Jacob that perhaps Jacob
   thought he must not press her too severely upon the point. Perhaps he
   said to himself, "When I talk with her she does not seem at all
   idolatrous. I believe she is a good woman and I must remember how she
   was brought up. And as she comes from a high-church family I must let
   her have her little symbols--I do not know for sure that she has a
   teraph--I have never absolutely seen it." But there it was and it was
   the nucleus of superstition! She and those around her had become
   corrupted with the superstitions of the heathen--and these earrings
   were the indication of their superstitious feeling, if not the
   instruments of divination!

   Now, as soon as Jacob speaks, they all give up their idols and their
   earrings. I like this. It is a blessed thing when a man of God takes a
   stand and speaks, and finds that his family are all ready to follow.
   Perhaps it was the fear that was upon them just then--the fear of the
   nations round about which made them so obedient. I am not sure it was a
   work of Divine Grace, but still, as far as outward appearances went,
   there was a willing giving up of all that could have grieved the Lord.
   And you will sometimes be pleased, Christian Friends, when things get
   wrong and you determine to set them right, to see how others will yield
   to your determination. You ought to take courage from this. Perhaps the
   very person of whom you are most afraid will be the most ready to yield
   and the most eager to help!

   You have been afraid of Rachel, but she has such love for you that she
   will do anything for you and give up her teraphs at once. The sons who
   were so rough in speaking to you when you spoke in your own name and
   spoke about yourself and said, "You have made me to stink," and so on,
   will answer very differently when you speak in God's name! There will
   be such a power going with God's Word that they will yield freely and
   heartily. They did so in Jacob's case. All of them gave up their idols
   and they buried them in the earth beneath the oak. Would God a day
   would come to old England when all the crucifixes and priestly
   vestments--and the whole ruck of the symbols and emblems of
   superstition--could be buried under some grand old Gospel oak, never to
   be disinterred again! If we do not see this in the nation we will at
   least secure it in our own houses.

   Another circumstance happened, namely, that protection was afforded
   him--immediate and complete. "They journeyed and the terror of God was
   upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue
   after the sons of Jacob." In their way were many cities and, as it
   were, hemmed them in and the people might have turned out and cut the
   little tribe of Israel to pieces. But a message had gone forth from the
   Lord of Hosts, saying, "Touch not My anointed,

   and do my Prophets no harm." And so they journeyed in safety. "When a
   man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace
   with him," and now that Jacob has determined to set things right, he
   walks unharmed!

   You do not know how much of personal trouble which you are now bearing
   will vanish as soon as you determine to stand up for God! You do not
   know how much of family difficulty that now covers you with dread will
   vanish when you, yourself, have feared the Lord and have come forth
   decidedly and determinedly to do the right thing. No danger shall
   befall the man who walks with God, for with such a Companion malaria
   breathes health and curses become blessings! But you know not where you
   are going and into what thick woods you plunge when you once forsake
   the Lord and walk contrary to His mind. The Lord your God is a jealous
   God and if you do not respect His jealousy and walk before Him with
   holy fear, you shall be made to feel His wrath! Since He has known you,
   only, of all the people of the earth, for that very reason He will
   chasten you for your iniquities. This plague of evils shall be stopped
   when you purge out your idols, but not till then!

   In the next place the vow was performed. They came to Bethel and I can
   almost picture the grateful delight of Jacob as he looked upon those
   great stones among which he had lain down to sleep, a lonely man.
   Perhaps he searched for the stone that had been his pillow. Probably it
   still stood erect as part of the pillar which he had reared in memory
   of the goodness of God and the vision he had seen. There were many
   regrets, many confessions, many thanksgivings at Bethel! "With my staff
   I came to this place, but now I am become two bands. Look, my sons!
   Look, Rachel! Look, all of you-- this is the spot where, when I fled
   from Esau with nothing but my staff and wallet, I laid down and the
   Lord appeared to me! And He has kept me all my life long! Come, help me
   as I put together the unhewn stones to make an altar. And this great
   stone, behold we will pour oil on the top of it and we will together
   sing the praises of El-Beth-el--the God of the House of God, the God
   who is a House for His people, the God who has a household of which we
   form a part--the God under whose wings we seek refuge."

   I have no doubt that Jacob and his house spent a very happy time at
   Bethel, where mourning softened thankfulness and joy sweetened
   penitence--where every sacred passion in the Patriarch's soul found
   vent and poured itself out before the Lord. He thought of the past,
   rejoiced in the present and hoped for the future, for now he had come
   to be with God and to draw near to Him. But what else happened? Why,
   now there came a death and a funeral. Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died.
   Her name means a bee. And we have had old nurses, ourselves, have we
   not, who have been like busy bees in our household? Dear old Deborah
   nursed our mother and nursed us and is still willing to nurse our
   children! We do not grow that sort of people, now, they tell me. I am
   afraid we do not grow the same kind of masters and mistresses that they
   used to have in years gone by, either!

   I am not sure about it, but I believe that if there were more Rebekahs
   there would be more Deborahs. Somehow I think we are generally about as
   well treated as we treat others and we get measured into our bosoms
   very much that which we ourselves measure out. There may be exceptions
   and there are, but that is the general rule. Well, dear old Deborah had
   left Laban's house and gone with Miss Rebekah when she went into the
   far country to be married. She had taken care of her mistress' two
   boys, Jacob and Esau, and had set her heart on the same boy that the
   mother loved so well and she had sorrowed with Rebekah when he, having
   grown up, had been compelled to save his life by fleeing from his
   father's household.

   I cannot tell when she came to live with Jacob. Perhaps Rebekah sent
   her to live with her favorite son because she thought there were so
   many in the family that somebody was needed to look after them all--a
   person old and discreet to come between Jacob and the perpetual jars of
   the household. No doubt Jacob often found it pleasant to make the good
   old soul a confidante in his troubles. And now she dies and they bury
   her under the oak which they call the oak of weeping--Allonbachuth. Is
   it not strange that when you are trying to get right, there comes a
   great sorrow? No, it is not strange, for you are trying to purge out
   the old leaven--and the Lord is going to help you. You are trying to
   set everything right with Him and He comes and takes away one of the
   best people in the house who helped you most of all--one of the
   staunchest old Christian people that you ever knew--whom you wanted to
   live forever!

   And He does it not to hinder but to help you in your labor. He knows
   best--a touch of the pruning knife was needed by the vine of Israel
   that it might bring forth more fruit. The good nurse died when they
   seemed to need her most, but it was better for her to die then, than
   that she should have departed when Dinah's shame and Simeon's crime had
   made the household dark. It was better that she should live to see them
   purged from idols and on the road to her old master Isaac,

   for then she would feel as if she could say, "Now let Your servant
   depart in peace, according to Your Word, for my eyes have seen Your
   salvation."

   The moral of the incident is that the Lord may heat the fire all the
   more when He sees the refining process going on and we must receive the
   further trial as a token of love and not of anger if He smites us
   heavily when we are honestly endeavoring to seek His face.

   III. This is what happened while they were doing it. Now we close with
   the third head, namely, WHAT FOLLOWED. All this putting away of idols
   and going to Bethel--did anything come of it? Yes. First, there was a
   new appearance of God. Read the 9th verse. "And God appeared unto Jacob
   again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed Him." This was a new
   appearance of God. Some of you will not understand what I say, but I
   leave it to those who know the Lord--there are times when God is very
   near to us. I wish it were always so, but some of us can mark out
   epochs in our spiritual history in which we were wonderfully conscious
   that God drew near to us. We felt His Presence and were glad. The Lord
   seemed to put us in the cleft of the rock and make His Glory pass
   before us.

   I have known such times. Would God I knew them more often! It is worth
   while to have been purged and cleansed and to have done anything to be
   favored with one of those Divine visits in which we almost cry with
   Paul, "Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell: God
   knows." A clear view of God in Christ Jesus and a vivid sense of Jesus'
   love is a sweet reward for broken idols and Bethel reformations!

   The next thing that came of it was a confirmation to Jacob of his title
   of Prince which conferred a dignity on the whole family. For a father
   to be a prince ennobles all the clan. God now puts upon them another
   dignity and nobility which they had not known before, for a holy people
   are a noble people. You that live in God's Presence are in the peerage
   of the skies. "He raises up the poor out of the dust and lifts the
   needy out of the dunghill that He may set him with princes, even with
   the princes of His people." He first makes them princes and then, to
   crown it, He makes them princes of princes, because if all His people
   are princes, it follows that those who are princes among His people are
   princes among princes! The Lord has a way of conferring high spiritual
   dignities upon those who seek to order their households aright and to
   keep their hearts clean and chaste before Him. Such honor have all the
   saints who fully follow the Lord. God help us to keep close to Jesus
   and enjoy daily communion with Him.

   And then, next, there was given to Jacob and his family a vast promise
   which was, in some degree, an enlargement of a promise made to Isaac
   and to Abraham before. "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A
   nation and a company of nations shall be of you and kings shall come
   out of your loins." I do not remember anything said to Abraham about a
   company of nations, or about kings coming out of his loins, but out of
   the loins of Israel, a prince, princes may come. God puts upon His
   promise a certain freshness of vastness and infinity now that Jacob has
   drawn near to Him. Brothers and Sisters, God will give us no new
   promise, but He will make the old promises look wondrously new! He will
   enlarge our vision so that we shall see what we never saw before!

   Have you ever had a painting which hung neglected in some back room?
   Did it, one day, strike you that you would have it framed and brought
   into a good light? When you saw it properly hung on the wall, did you
   not exclaim, "Dear me! I never noticed that picture before. How
   wonderfully it has come out"? And many and many a promise in God's Word
   will never be noticed by you till it is set in a new frame of
   experience. Then, when it is hung up before you, you will be lost in
   admiration of it! Sin makes the promises to be like old pictures coated
   over with dirt. There must be a cleansing of ourselves and then it will
   be like a careful cleaning of the picture, from which no tint suffers,
   but all receive a new bloom.

   God will make His Bible seem a new book to you. You will find joy in
   every page and your soul shall dance for joy as you see the great
   things which God has prepared for you, yes, and for your children,
   also, if they are walking in the truth, for, "the promise is unto us
   and to our children, even to as many as the Lord our God shall call."
   With Jacob, by the new appearing of the Lord, the inheritance was
   confirmed, for thus runs the Scripture--"The land which I gave Abraham
   and Isaac, to you I will give it and to your seed after you will I give
   the land." So, dear Friends, all the blessed Covenant of Grace with all
   the promises shall be made distinctly and clearly yours when you have
   gone to Bethel and, with holy decision, drawn near to the Lord your
   God!

   I will not detain you except to say that you may also expect very
   familiar communion. Notice the 13th verse, "God went up from him in the
   place where He talked with him." Talked with him! Talked with him! It
   is such a familiar word.

   God talking with man. We say "conversing" when we are speaking in a
   dignified manner, but, "talking!" Oh that blessed condescension of God
   when He speaks to us in the familiar tones of His great love in Christ
   Jesus! There is a way of conversation with God which no tongue can
   explain--they only know it who have enjoyed it! Brethren, there are
   fellowships with God to be enjoyed of which a large number of
   Christians have no idea. He who humbles Himself to behold the things
   that are in Heaven and earth dwells with lowly ones! Idols broken,
   garments changed, altars built and the soul kept near to God--and then
   "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He will show
   them His Covenant." This is so inestimably precious a gift that I urge
   you to seek after it, urging myself most of all.

   The chapter closes with the death of Rachel and so, perhaps, when we
   get nearest to God there may come another trial. The old tradition was
   that no man could see God's face and live. It was not true, but it
   contained a truth, for scarcely can a man enter the secret place of
   thunder and have communion with God without special trial. Yes, it is
   even so, for "even our God is a consuming fire." He asks the question,
   "Who shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?" And the answer is, "He
   that has clean hands and a pure heart, that shuts his ears from hearing
   of blood" and so on. "He shall dwell on high."

   When we come to dwell with Him who is fire, the fire must burn and we
   must feel it. That hallowed flame will consume much that our unhallowed
   flesh would like to keep and there will not be a burning without our
   enduring sharp smarts and pain. God's furnace is in Zion and His fire
   is in Jerusalem. He will purify the sons of Levi as silver is purified.
   "Who shall abide the day of His coming? For He will be as a refiner's
   fire and like fuller's soap." Yet if we are in a right state, that is
   exactly what we need! O that our sinfulness were wholly burned up!
   Trial is welcomed if sin may but be conquered! Even Rachel may die if
   Jesus lives in us but the more!

   Lord, give us Grace and Your Presence--even if we pass through the
   furnace a thousand times in consequence thereof. Hear us, for Jesus'
   sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Reasons for Turning to the Lord

   (No. 1396)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JANUARY 13, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Come, and let us return unto the Lord. For He has torn, but He will
   heal us. He has struck us, but He will bind us up. After two days will
   He revive us. On the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live
   in His sight." Hosea 6:1,2.

   [Mr. Spurgeon was exceedingly unwell and his voice painfully weak,
   hence the pause in the middle of the sermon, during which the
   congregation sang part of a hymn to enable the preacher to gain
   strength enough to resume his discourse. This was the last sermon
   before Mr. Spurgeon's departure from home to obtain needed rest. It has
   been revised by Mr. Spurgeon at Mentone. The sermons are continued
   regularly every week.]

   IF man had never sinned, what delightful communion there would have
   been between him and God! A fairy vision rises before us of loving
   obedience and condescending fellowship, holy delight and boundless
   favor, lowly adoration and fatherly smile, perfect bliss and infinite
   complacency. Alas! Alas! It is no more than a vision! God would have
   treated man with familiarity and indulgence, lavishing favor and honor
   upon him. The Garden of Eden, fair as were its glades and lovely as
   were its flowers, was but a faint image of the things prepared for man
   had he continued in loyalty to God-- inconceivable delights would have
   filled up the days of our life on earth had not the serpent's trail
   come across our nature and slimed it over with sin.

   I shall not attempt any picture of man dwelling with God and God
   revealing Himself to man in new forms--always increasing man's
   knowledge and, at the same time, causing His bliss to overflow. Alas!
   That dream has never been realized. That dangerous fruit which hung
   upon the tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil has been plucked and
   eaten and we will not pause to rehearse the sad story of the foul
   iniquities and the countless ills which have come upon mankind and
   severed man from his God. Because of the Fall and man's depravity,
   Justice now comes in with his rod and sword and changes the complexion
   of our life.

   God deals very graciously with man, but not at all after the fashion in
   which He might have dealt with him--He cannot, now, perpetually smile,
   but is led, by His holiness, to look on him with wrathful countenance.
   The loving God, compelled by love, itself, frowns at sin. He threatens,
   He denounces. His justice and holiness lead Him to use rough words
   towards His erring creatures. He does more--in infinite love He
   chastens as well as rebukes. Instead of fatherly caresses, the great
   Lord wisely takes down the rod and lays it on the backs of those whom
   He most truly loves. "He scourges every son whom He receives."

   Those nearest to His heart and most approved of His soul among the sons
   of Adam have, nevertheless, to feel that "our God is a consuming fire."
   Placed in the crucible, they are thrust into the white heat of the
   furnace and there are they called to suffer that their dross may be
   removed. If thus the Lord is severe to His own people, what are His
   dealings with the ungodly? "God is angry with the wicked every day."
   The wise men of modern thought have made a new god of late--one of
   those gods newly come up that our fathers knew not and who is quite
   unknown to the Bible--as false a god as Apollo or Baal! The God of
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob these deep thinkers cannot endure, but if you
   say that God is angry with the wicked every day, these modern
   god-makers tell you that He is too loving for that--that He cannot
   possibly be angry, but loves all, has redeemed all, and will, in the
   long run, save all--including Satan, himself!

   They adore a god made of putty or of wax--plastic, effeminate,
   molluscous--with no masculine faculty about him and no quality that
   entitles him to the respect of just and honest men. For a being who
   cannot be angry at wrong-doing is destitute of one of the essential
   virtues and a moral ruler who is not angry with the wicked--who refuses
   to punish

   crime--is not Divine. We find no such God as this modern saccharine
   idol when we come to search the Scriptures, for there the true God
   says, "If you walk contrary to Me, I will walk contrary to you." "To
   the froward He will show Himself froward." "Cursed is everyone that
   continues not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law to
   do them."

   He is revealed as a God who "will by no means spare the guilty," but
   declares that every transgression and iniquity shall have its just
   punishment of reward. Since evil obtained sway over the human race, God
   walks towards men, therefore, not at all as He might have done if men
   had never fallen. He speaks to them in the stern voice of a judge and
   handles them as one who sees the need of a rod. He treats men not so
   roughly as they deserve, for He is infinitely tender and gentle, but
   still with such severity as becomes necessary to show that He cannot
   smile on transgression. The conduct of God towards man is not like His
   dealing with the angels--not like His dealing with cherubim and
   seraphim but, according to our text--He tears, He strikes, He kills.

   It is of such a God as this that I have to speak, tonight, and of such
   acts as these I have to talk with you. My design is not that any may
   flee from the Lord, but that as the result of what we have to say, many
   may return to the Lord, who He has struck, but who He will heal. Who He
   has slain, but who He will restore. There are three things in my text
   which are, to my mind, very clear. The first is a smiting God. The
   second is a believing heart, for he who used such words as my text was
   no unbeliever. And, thirdly, a persuasive voice--the voice which so
   pleadingly cries, "Come, and let us return unto the Lord."

   May God the Holy Spirit teach me how to proclaim the name of the Lord
   and render the Word quick and powerful to the salvation of the
   blood-bought. How much I need His strength in my extreme weakness! Pray
   for me, you saints of God, that once again I may faithfully and
   effectively do duty as one of the Lord's ambassadors.

   I. First, then, I see plainly enough in the text A SMITING God--"He has
   torn, but He will heal us. He has struck us, but He will bind us up."
   Notice, first, that the person who wrote these words discerns the
   Presence of the Lord, for he is convinced that his trials come from
   God. Ungodly men set down their troubles to chance and sometimes they
   even trace them to the devil--as if they expected their father to have
   dealings with them! Frequently they lay their ills at the door of their
   fellow men and grow quarrelsome, malicious and revengeful. It is a
   happy day for a man when he knows in whose hand is the rod and learns
   to trace his troubles to God!

   Alas, there are even some children of God who greatly err in this
   matter when under affliction--they spend their time in bewailing second
   causes--and do not look at the First Cause! This is very brutish. If
   you strike a dog with a stick he will bite at the stick. Had he a
   little intelligence he would bite at you, knowing that the blow came
   not from the stick or stone, but from the hand that used these
   implements! So is it usually with unbelievers in trouble--they look at
   the secondary agent and they spend their anger or their thoughts
   entirely there. If, in the day of adversity they would consider, they
   would perceive that affliction springs not out of the ground, neither
   do distresses come by chance, but the hand of the Lord is in all these
   things.

   "Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord has not done it?" Whichever
   way the trial comes, it comes from Him. If the trouble was caused by a
   triumphant enemy or by a deceitful friend. If it comes as a loss in
   business or as a sickness of body--or if it wounded us through the
   arrows of death piercing the heart of our beloved--in either case it
   was the Lord. Learn that lesson! He has smitten or struck you! He has
   torn you! He has done it all! He has ordained our trials for judgment
   and established them for correction--let us not despise them by
   refusing to see His hand or by angrily rebelling against Him. We read
   that, "Aaron held his peace," when his two sons were slain with fire
   because it was the fire of the Lord that struck them--what could he
   say?

   If even Christian men too often forget the Lord's hand, we need not be
   at all surprised that unconverted men do so. Perhaps I am speaking to
   one who has been followed by a succession of disasters till he is now
   surrounded by a sea of affliction. You have scarcely escaped from one
   trouble before you have plunged into another! It seems to you as if
   your "bad luck," as you call it, were no more absent from you at any
   time than your shadow. You cannot get on at anything! Whatever you
   touch withers beneath your hands. You have been ill again and again.
   You have lost your best friend when you most needed him. You have lost
   your job and wherever you apply you get no favorable reply. It is true
   that you are not wise enough to trace some of these misfortunes to your
   own bad habits--your indolence or your drunkenness.

   I wish, however, you were even as wise as that, for then you might
   amend your ways. If you grow wiser, still, you would say, "It cannot be
   that I am to have stroke upon stroke and loss upon loss without there
   being some reason for it, for God does not afflict willingly nor grieve
   the children of men." I should not wonder, my Friend, that you are so
   sorely smitten because the Lord has some great design of love to your
   soul! Look at the prodigal son in the distant country. He had plenty of
   money and he spent it in riotous living. He was in fine health and
   lived in the fastest style. Wine and women soon took away his money and
   then he said that bad luck had befallen him.

   Of course it had and the young squire was obliged to swallow his
   dignity and independence and seek for a job! He looked in the daily
   paper and searched up and down among his dear friends who had drunk to
   his health with gallons of his rare old wines. But they knew of nothing
   for him and gave him the cold shoulder. No money-lender would grant him
   a loan and no man gave him any. He walked his shoes off his feet, but
   could find nothing to do. He had rags upon him and hunger within him.
   He was a broken down gentleman without a trade and without the physical
   strength to dig or plow. What could he do? He was "down on his luck,"
   as men of his kind are known to say--and nobody wanted his company.

   One person who had some sort of pity for the poor wretch found him
   employment and he commenced active life in the noble capacity of a pig
   feeder--"He joined himself to a citizen of that country and he sent him
   into his fields to feed swine." He was now at his lowest, for his
   occupation was filthy and degrading--and the wages were not enough to
   keep body and soul together--so that he often envied the hogs that
   could so readily fill themselves with husks. Yet in this deep distress
   there was mercy and hope--his way home was round by the swine trough!
   He might never have come to his father if he had not come, first, to
   those pigs and husks!

   Perhaps, O tried Sinner, the way to God for you is through your
   troubles. If the Lord had prospered you in that piece of betting, for
   instance, or if you had got on in that infamous business which you
   ought never to have touched, you might have been a rich man and have
   been damned! But you are not to be rich--God does not mean that you
   should be. He means to follow with stroke upon stroke and tearing upon
   tearing till at last you shall realize that He is saying to you,
   "Return to Me, for you will never rest until you do." You shall never
   know prosperity until you have come clean out and made your peace with
   God! Then shall your peace be as a river and your righteousness as the
   waves of the sea.

   I am certain that I speak as though I were a prophet to the soul of
   some who are in this house tonight and I pray God that if it is so,
   they may look on the series of trials through which they have passed as
   being really sent to them, not by chance or haphazard, nor by the
   conjunction of the stars, nor by anything of that atheistic foolery
   which men are so fond of inventing--but sent from God Himself with
   benign intent! He smites, He tears, He slays--but this is all the
   surgery of love! The person who uttered these words, then, had learned
   to trace his troubles to God.

   Now, notice that it is customary with God to smite His own according to
   His own Words, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." I remember
   being severely called to account by a fastidious critic for using the
   following vulgar metaphor, which I will therefore use again. It may
   serve for another paragraph for some other superfine reviewer. I think
   I said that if you were going home and you saw a number of boys round a
   house breaking windows, it is 10 to one that you would not care much
   about what they did. BUT, if you saw your own boy doing it, he would be
   sure to get as sweet a box on the ears as you could manage to convey to
   him!

   Would that be because you loved him less than the rest of the boys? Not
   so, but because you loved him more! You had something to do with him
   and nothing to do with the rest--therefore he obtained the privilege of
   correction which the others missed. Now, oftentimes the sinner who
   falls into trouble, or the Christian who endures heavy trials, does not
   receive such severe treatment because the Lord is about to destroy him,
   but because He has a secret love to his soul. Thus says the Lord, "You
   only have I known of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will
   punish you for your iniquities." These chastisements and heavy blows
   which are compared in the text to tearing and to striking, often fall
   upon God's own beloved because they are His beloved and He cannot, in
   any better way, display His love to them.

   "I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a
   green bay tree"--no axe has come to his root and no blight to his
   leaf--God has left him alone to fill the earth with his branches. But
   why? Was it not that he might become fit for the fire when the axe of
   the woodsman would lay him low? But look at the vine which bears fruit
   and you shall see, every year at the proper season, the ruthless knife
   of the pruner cutting away what seems to be the liveliest

   shoots, removing the hopeful branches and leaving the poor vine to
   bleed, or to appear to be a mere dry stick! Yes, the vine is worth
   pruning--it belongs to the vinedresser's choice plants and he looks to
   it for rich clusters.

   As for the green bay tree--who cares to prune it? What profit would
   come of blunting the knife on a fruitless tree? Woe to you who are
   increasing your stores--you who never have aches or pains! Woe to you
   who say that no thought of sin will ever depress you! Woe to you who
   can drink your fill and eat abundantly without being sick or sorry. Lo,
   you are fattened like bullocks for the slaughter and there shall
   nothing happen to you till death's poleax lays you low! Count it to be
   one of the most fearful curses that can happen to you to be happy in
   your sins! "Moab has been at ease from his youth and he has settled on
   his lees and has not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither has he
   gone into captivity. Therefore his taste remained in him and his scent
   is not changed. Therefore, behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I
   will send unto him wanderers that shall cause him to wander and shall
   empty his vessels and break their bottles."

   You who are tossed to and fro and are broken by sorrow need not start
   with dread because you are made to suffer, for the Lord lays heavy
   hands upon His own and reserves the ungodly for His wrath. The dealings
   of God with men will often appear to be very severe. Kindly read the
   14th verse of the 5th chapter--"I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and
   as a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go
   away." From this it is clear that our text, when it says, "He has
   torn," alludes to a lion rending his prey. The Lord seems, sometimes,
   to spring upon a man and suddenly to bring him down. And then by
   terrible trials He appears to lacerate him from head to foot. Fears,
   pains of body, awful suggestions within his mind, loss upon loss in
   business, grief upon grief, his home desolate, his heart broken, his
   hope gone--such things does the Lord lay upon men until they know what
   the Lord meant when He said by His Prophet, "I will be unto them as a
   lion; as a leopard by the way will I observe them."

   God does this with men and yet He means them no ill. The case of
   Hezekiah explains it all. Hear him cry in the bitterness of his soul,
   "I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will He break all my
   bones: from day even to night will You make an end of me. Like a crane
   or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: my eyes fail
   with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me. What
   shall I say?" But his own answer to his own question is, "O Lord, by
   these things men live and in all these things is the life of my spirit:
   so will You recover me, and make me to live?" The text says that the
   Lord smiles. He uses such force that He leaves bruises and welts, for,
   "by the blueness of the wound the heart is made better."

   He smites and He knows how to do it, for He is a wise corrector. "He
   that chastises the heathen, shall not He correct?" He can touch a man
   in His most tender place and make the stoutest heart to quail. He knows
   our frame and when He comes to deal with us in wrath, even though there
   is love behind it all, yet still He smites very sternly. David says,
   "All the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning." And
   in another place he shows that this chastening is no child's play, for
   he says, "When You with rebukes do correct man for iniquity, You make
   his beauty to consume away like a moth." Yes, and according to the
   text, God may lay a man's soul so low that he may count himself to be
   as dead and he may continue like one in the grave by the space of two
   days--and yet on the third day He will raise him up!

   This, of course, is not to be taken literally, but represents a
   considerable period, though a period that has an end, during which
   heart and flesh utterly fail. God knows how long to make a man lie
   under the sentence of death. It will not be four days--that would be
   too long, for one said of old, "By this time he stinks, for he has been
   dead four days." There shall be three days wherein deadly despair shall
   rule--but destruction shall not actually take place--as Jesus came up
   out of the earth on the third day, so those who have felt the sentence
   of death in themselves shall come out into the joy of resurrection-life
   to praise and bless His name.

   I perceive that I almost startle you while I show you what God does
   with the sons of men. But there is one thing I ought to add. "He has
   not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our
   iniquities." A man who lies in the hospital half his time has still
   more mercy than he could have claimed. And he who shivers in this
   winter's cold and knows bitter penury, yet still has more mercy than he
   deserves. And he among us who sinks lowest in sorrow of soul--he who
   seems to go down into the dread abyss till all God's waves and billows
   go over him--he may still thank God that he is not in the torments of
   Hell! He who suffers most may be grateful that justice has not yet
   taken the plummet and the line and meted out righteous wrath!

   At our worst we are indulged with a fullness of mercy compared with
   what our transgressions deserve! And, oh, I want to show you that there
   is love in it all. I do not call him a loving father who sees his boy
   indulge bad habits and never chastens him. I do not call her a loving
   mother who, when she has seen her child showing ill-tempers and
   displaying self-will, has never chastened her. It is often a wicked
   self-indulgence which prevents parents from doing what should be done
   to drive out wickedness and train for a noble life. When a father, with
   tears in his eyes, has taken his boy alone and said, "I cannot be like
   Eli, upon whose house there came the curse because his sons made
   themselves vile and he restrained them not. I must chasten you at
   times. If you will thus break my commandments and grieve God and
   dishonor my family, I must make you smart for it, though every stroke
   is a pain to me."

   I say when a father acts in this way, he is both wise and kind. Many a
   young scoundrel, now in the streets of London, might have been a moral
   young man if his father had done his duty by him. And, mark you, God
   will never have this to be laid at His door--that He permits sin in His
   family and leaves His chosen unchastened! His own children must feel
   the rod and be brought under the bond of the Covenant. "Whom the Lord
   loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives."

   Here let me wait a minute to recover my voice and gather a little
   strength, for I am very feeble. Could you, do you think, ease me for a
   moment by singing a verse or two of the 605th hymn in "Our Own Hymn
   Book," to the tune

   "Farrant"?--

   "Come let us to the Lord our God

   With contrite hearts 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.

   Long has the night of sorrow reigned;

   The dawn shall bring us light:

   God shall appear, and we shall rise

   With gladness in His sight."

   Tremblingly I will now endeavor to go on to the next point. May the
   Holy Spirit guide my mind, and heart and tongue.

   II. Secondly, I see in the text A BELIEVING HEART--to my mind a
   remarkably believing heart because the man believes in the goodness of
   God even when he is smarting and suffering. Do notice it. He says,
   "Come, let us return to the Lord, for He has torn, but He will heal us.
   He has struck, but He will bind us up." It is wonderfully easy to
   believe in God when you have all you need and are free from trial. But
   such fair-weather faith as that is very often a mere sham. True faith
   believes in God when He is angry and trusts Him when the rod is in His
   hand--and to my mind, as I have said before--it is a very beautiful
   instance of faith which we have in this text.

   The man has been torn, yes, torn as a lion tears his victim--there are
   the gashes, bleeding and smarting--yet he cries, "Come, and let us
   return to the Lord." What, to the God who has torn us? Yes, yes! Let us
   go to Him, for He will receive us and will not cast us away, but, on
   the contrary, He will heal the wounds He made! You cannot think too
   well of God, nor expect too much mercy from Him! Beloved, if you
   believe that He will pardon your greatest sin for Jesus' sake. If you
   believe, tonight, that He will cheerfully receive you to His bosom
   because of His dear Son. If you believe that He can make you an heir of
   Heaven by faith in Christ--you will not believe too well of God! I
   shall challenge you to try and make your thoughts of the Lord too high
   and honorable! If you attempt the task, you will certainly be foiled in
   it.

   This believing heart in my text actually finds an argument in the blows
   of God why we should trust Him. Does He not say, "He has torn, but He
   will heal us. He has struck us, but He will bind us up"? Yes, and there
   is argument here. When a physician finds a man's bone badly set and
   breaks it again, what am I sure that he is going to do? Why, to set it,
   and set it right! When I see a physician using a very severe remedy in
   a very difficult case, say a blister, or some form of bleeding, or the
   like--I feel certain that he does not mean to leave his patient to
   bleed to death and that he does not wound without a purpose. If a
   spreader should be inserted in order that the wound may be kept open
   till the proud flesh is cut away, I know that the physician does not do
   that out of unkindness, but that he intends the good of his patient. He

   means to do something which, for the time, the patient cannot
   appreciate, but about which he must exercise faith. If I were at any
   time to be subject to the surgeon's knife, I should have no hesitation
   in feeling that if he wounded me he would see me through the operation
   and do his utmost for my restoration.

   Now, God is the great Surgeon of men's souls and sometimes He has to
   put man upon the table and cut--and cut to the very bone! But He never
   means to kill. He never takes the knife of discipline except with the
   intent to bind up every wound He makes and set the man upon his feet
   again, saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. "Though He
   causes grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of
   His mercies." So, you see that he who wrote the text did well to argue
   from the tearing and the smiting that God must mean well to the
   afflicted soul. And, notice such is the faith of this text that the
   writer expects to be restored though he writes himself down among the
   dead. "After two days," he says, "will He revive us."

   I know--I wonder whether you know--what it is to feel as though utterly
   dead to all spiritual power, all natural hope, all claim on mercy and,
   sometimes, even to all possibility of salvation. I may be addressing
   one tonight who feels as though his death warrant had been signed and
   sealed. He has the sentence of death in himself. But, dear Brother or
   Sister, still have faith, for so the text has it--"We shall live in His
   sight." You know what Job said--to my mind it is the grandest thing a
   man ever said--he was not reigning on a throne, but sitting on a
   dunghill! He was covered with boils and scraping himself with a
   potsherd, yet he was more than royal.

   Glorious old Job bravely said, "Though He slay me yet will I trust in
   Him." This was grand! Can you imitate it? Though you feel as if you
   were slain. Though you sit in your pew tonight and say, "Well, it is of
   no use. I know I am undone," yet I charge you to trust the Lord, your
   Redeemer, over the head of it all! Trust the Covenant God in the teeth
   of everything! Believe God to be true and every fact and circumstance
   and thought and feeling to be a liar! Cling to the eternal mercy of God
   who casts out none that come to Him by Jesus Christ! Oh, it is a
   blessed thing to be empty and to believe that God can fill you--to be
   nothing and to believe that He can make you His child! It is a blessed
   thing to be lost and to believe that the Lord can save you--to feel
   condemned and yet to believe that Christ can justify you! Oh, to sink
   and sink and sink, even into the grave of all natural hope and yet to
   feel that you shall rise again when the third day has come! This is the
   faith of God's elect!

   Notice that the faith of my text looks for brighter things, for it
   says, "In the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His
   sight." You are afraid of God now, perhaps, but when He comes and lifts
   you up out of your state of spiritual death-gloom you will delight to
   see Him, to feel Him near, to know that He has quickened you and to
   spend your new life in delightful communion with Him! You shall live in
   His sight! What heavenly living that must be! Life under the eyes of
   the Lord! Life such as He calls life! Life which He can look upon with
   pleasure! In His Presence is fullness of joy and this, His wounded ones
   shall know when He has healed them! I wish I could say what I want to
   say, but I am very feeble and, therefore, not much at ease in speaking.
   Yet I do not know but what my broken words may, after all, be
   best--when voice will not answer to mind and we have to bring out our
   discourses piecemeal--the morsels may be all the sweeter to the
   afflicted.

   But this is what I want to say--I pray you never, never, never yield to
   that temptation of the devil which would lead you to cry, "God is
   dealing roughly with me! He will never save me!" No, expect quite the
   contrary! Because of these blows and strokes, because of your misery of
   heart, because of your troubled conscience, because of your inward
   distress you may all the more have hope! Nothing is more dreadful than
   to be without sensation--that is a token of death! But to be broken in
   pieces all asunder! To feel your thoughts to be like a case of knives
   cutting to the very center of your heart--this, at the very least,
   proves that life is still in you! Besides, remember that the path to
   joy is sorrow, the door to life is by death, the road to salvation is
   by condemnation in the conscience. The way to enjoy God's love is,
   first of all, to be troubled under God's wrath.

   That brings me to my third point, upon which I must be brief, but I
   would be earnest. Oh, Spirit of God, enable me!

   III. The text has in it A PERSUASIVE VOICE. Oh that I could say it in
   wooing tones! But though the music of love is in my heart, my voice is
   hoarse. Bear with me, however, while I cry, "Come! Come! Come, let us
   return unto the Lord." This persuasive voice is to be attentively
   regarded, in the first place, because it pleads for a right thing. Dear
   Friends, if we have wandered away from God and if God is angry with us,
   what ought to be our first step? Why, to get back to God!

   If I had offended any man or felt that I had done him an injustice, I
   hope I should not need much persuasion to go to him and confess my
   wrong and ask him to give me his hand. I trust it is the same with you.

   Now, since you have grieved the Lord, you ought to be the first to seek
   reconciliation. And if instead of it, He is first and comes to you with
   overtures of peace, surely you should not need much persuasion to end
   the quarrel! Come, poor erring child, you have acted sinfully towards
   your loving Father--does not your heart, itself, suggest to you the
   resolve--"I will arise and go unto my Father"? You have grieved Him and
   because you have grieved Him, He has struck you that you may know for
   yourself the evil of your actions! Let the first smiting suffice and
   yield at once to His reproofs. "Come, and let us return unto the Lord."

   A great part of the persuasiveness of the text lies not merely in the
   rightness of it, but in the speaker putting himself with the people
   whom he entreats to return. He says, "Come, and let us return unto the
   Lord." My dear Hearers, willingly enough, without any sort of mock
   humility, do I feel compelled to put myself among you. If you have
   never returned to the Lord, come, let us go together, for I know the
   way and have good cause to tread it over again. I went to Him, I almost
   forget how many years ago, but I was only a stripling of 15 years of
   age. Deeply conscious of my guilt, I sought the Lord God of my fathers
   in much brokenness of spirit.

   He had struck me. He had torn me. He had slain me by the Law of His
   mouth. Where could I go? I tried every helper, but I found all carnal
   hopes to be mockeries. I went trembling to my God and pleaded the
   precious blood of Jesus--and He healed me! He bound me up and He gave
   me to live in His sight! To this I bear my solemn and sure witness. But
   though I went to Him so many years ago, I have been many times since. I
   have felt sin upon the conscience. I have had my own inward depravity
   to mourn over. I have had to feel myself to be nothing, yes, and to be
   less than nothing! And I have been very heavy in soul and, therefore,
   driven by distress to my Lord.

   Yes, I have gone to Him a thousand times! And therefore I did not boast
   when I said I knew the way. Ah, poor helpless Soul, I know your
   downcastings and distractions, for I know the heart of a stranger by
   having felt, myself, to be an alien to my mother's children, unworthy
   to be numbered with the family of God. I have comforted God's people,
   but sometimes could not comfort myself! I have tried to fill others
   while mourning my own emptiness! But I bear witness that I never went
   to my Lord in vain. Come, give me your hand--one on this side, one on
   that--and let us return to the Lord! Come, let us make a ring all round
   the place and hand in hand let us return to the Lord!

   You who do not know the way will, perhaps, be helped by brotherly
   sympathy as we tell you how we resolved to return. You that think
   yourselves the biggest, blackest sinners--you do not think so badly of
   yourselves as I often think, and rightly think, of myself--but though
   of sinners the chief, and of saints, the least. "I know whom I have
   believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
   committed unto Him until that day." And you, dear Friend, though up
   till now you have never sought Jesus, I hope that you will seek Him now
   and find abundant satisfaction in laying hold upon Him.

   Notice that this exhortation is put in the present tense. "Come, and
   let us return unto the Lord." It is not tomorrow. It is not next year.
   It is so written that it means--"Let us return to the Lord now." If at
   all, why not at once? The sooner a good thing is done, the better. As
   far as I am concerned, there is a very personal reason for pressing
   upon any unconverted person here that he should return to the Lord now.
   I reckon it to be a great privilege to be able to stand here and bid
   you come to the Lord, though the exercise of that privilege has worn me
   out and made me brain-weary and full of pain. That privilege I shall
   not enjoy for some little time and it would charm me if I might win you
   now.

   Oh that my Lord would make this last sermon of mine for a
   while--perhaps forever--to be a weight cast into the scale to decide a
   hesitating will for Christ! I see the balances--how evenly they are
   poised! I see them trembling--a decision is to be arrived at one way or
   the other. This side for God--shall it go down? Is there weight enough?
   Satan clings to the chains of that evil scale! He seeks to drag it
   down! He casts in new temptations. Who will win? With all my heart
   would I throw earnest entreaties into the scale of right that salvation
   may win the day! But which shall it be? Which shall it be? Perhaps the
   turn it takes tonight will be the turn it takes for eternity! God grant
   that it may be for God, for His Truth, for Christ, for Heaven--and not
   for the world, for sin, for self and eternal perdition! O Holy Spirit,
   work mightily to decide men aright!

   The pleading of my text--and with this I close--is rendered all the
   more powerful because it is full of pleasing expectancy. Imagine that
   you had to try to make up a quarrel and the offending person were to
   say to you, "Well,

   suppose I agree to end this dispute. Will the other party be
   satisfied?" Upon the answer to that question your hope of success would
   very greatly depend. It has sometimes been my lot to have some such
   work as that to do and I have not felt quite sure that I would succeed
   till I had crossed that bridge. The aggrieved individual has been in a
   very hot temper and I could not altogether wonder, for he had been
   shamefully treated. "Well," I have said to the offender, "I will try my
   best, you know, and it will greatly strengthen me if I can say that you
   bitterly feel that you were in the wrong and desire to offer an ample
   apology."

   My client has said, "I should not mind going a good way in apologizing,
   but it can only be on the condition that I shall be kindly met. If I am
   to be repulsed--well, I shall not say anything until I have some idea
   of the temper and spirit of my opponent." When I have been able to say,
   "The person whom you have offended is grieved for you as much as for
   himself. He is quite willing to receive you at any time and will give
   you every token of forgiveness. He hardly needs you to make any
   confession at all, he is so ready to forgive you--and nothing will give
   him greater pleasure than to have your friendship"--why then the other
   party has said, "What? Does he really say that? Does he speak kindly of
   me after what I did? Did he really say that he would be glad to see me
   at his house? Did he speak of me as still being his friend? Then be so
   good as to tell him that I am very sorry and I will be round to say it
   myself, directly."

   Now, my God, my gracious God, bids me say that He is a God ready to
   pardon! You have not to go and propitiate Him, make Him tender and
   plead with Him in prayer till you melt His heart. No! He waits to be
   gracious to you! He has come tonight, by His poor feeble servant, to
   entreat you to accept His love and Grace. Let my broken accents reach
   the ears of your hearts. Repent of sin! Believe in Jesus Christ and
   look to Him for mercy! May God help you to do so and to do it now! Do
   not let returning to the Lord be left to be talked of when you get
   outside--return before you rise from your seat! I dread that vain
   companion who waits for you at the door. I am afraid of that idle chat
   on the road home. Do not even allow the exhortation of the text to wait
   to be thought of when you get home, for perhaps it may then be
   forgotten--but NOW--upon that seat or standing where you are, may God
   help you to respond to the gracious invitation, "Come, and let us
   return unto the Lord. For He has torn, but He will heal us. On the
   third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight."

   God bless you, dear Friends. May His richest blessing rest upon every
   one of you. Other voices will be heard, here, for a few weeks, but none
   will speak more lovingly than mine all broken, cracked, hoarse and
   unmusical though it is. May those Brothers who speak to you have more
   strength than I have--and more Grace! If they shall be the means of
   bringing some to Jesus whom I have never reached, I shall be glad,
   indeed! I want you all, members of the Church, to be very, very
   diligent in helping in the February meetings by your efforts and your
   prayers. My dear Brothers Clarke and Smith are well fitted for their
   work. You ought to have this Tabernacle crowded every night of the
   week--that is what I want to hear!

   Each one of you must get to work to get the outside people into the
   house that they may hear and live! The evangelists will be here for the
   best part of the month and if you all work hard and earnestly to gather
   the crowds together when those two Brothers speak and sing, I do not
   doubt that a blessing will rest upon them like that which came upon our
   Brothers Moody and Sankey in years gone by.

   Pray for me, I beseech of you, and having done so, prove the sincerity
   of your prayers by helping in the Lord's work--this will be as medicine
   to your sick pastor's soul and body! I rely upon you, each one, to see
   these services made a success, God the Holy Spirit helping you.

   [A fortnight elapsed between the preaching of the above sermon and its
   being revised. Mr. Spurgeon is mending and begs for the prayers of his
   friends that he may, before long, be quite restored and may return to
   his work in full vigor.]
     __________________________________________________________________

The Peace of God

   (No. 1397)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JANUARY 6, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your
   hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7.

   "PEACE" is a heavenly word. When at the advent of our Lord angels came
   to sing among men a midnight sonnet, their second note was "Peace on
   earth." Would God the shining ones would chant that song again till
   yonder Balkans heard the strain and shook off the sulfurous cloud which
   now hangs around them. Those who have ever seen war, or even come near
   the trail of its bloody march, will be thankful to God for peace. I am
   almost of his mind who said that the worst peace is preferable to the
   very best war that was ever waged--if best there can be where all is
   bad as bad can be. Peace is most pleasant when religion sits beneath
   its shade and offers her joyful vows to Heaven.

   How grateful we ought to be that we can meet together to worship God
   after that form which best satisfies our consciences without any fear
   of being hunted down by the authorities of the land. We have no
   watchman on the hilltops looking out for Claverhouse's dragoons. We put
   none at the front door of our conventicle to watch lest the constable
   should come to take off worshipper and minister, that they may suffer
   imprisonment or fine. We worship God in unlimited liberty and we ought
   to be exceedingly glad of the privilege and infinitely more grateful
   for it than we are. Do we not sit, every man under his own vine and fig
   tree, none making us afraid? Blessed is the land in which we dwell and
   blessed are the days in which we live, when in all peace and quietness
   we worship God in public and sing His high praises as loudly as we
   please. Great God of Peace, You have given us this peace, and in
   remembrance of our hunted forefathers we bless You with our whole
   hearts!

   We have met tonight for the purpose of hearing the Gospel of peace and
   many of us are afterwards coming to that sacred festival which
   celebrates peace and is to all time the memorial of the great
   peace-making between God and man. And yet it may be that even all
   Believers here are not quite at peace. Possibly you did not leave your
   family in peace this afternoon. Wars occur even among loving hearts.
   Alas, even Sabbaths are sometimes disturbed, for evil tempers cannot be
   bound over to keep the peace, but are riotous even on this sweet
   restful day! Do Christian men ever permit angry feelings to rise within
   them? If they do, I am sure that even in coming away from home to the
   House of God, they come with a disturbed mind.

   Ah, how insignificant a matter will mar our peace of mind--some little
   thing that happened in getting to your pew--some trifling incident even
   while you are in it waiting for worship to begin, may, like dust in
   your eye, cause you the greatest distress. Such poor creatures are we
   that we may lose our peace of mind even by a word or a look! Peace, in
   the form of perfect calm and serenity, is a very delicate and sensitive
   thing and needs more careful handling than a Venice glass. It is hard
   for the sea of our heart to remain long in a smooth and glassy
   state--it may be rippled and ruffled by an infant's breath. Perhaps,
   too, some of my Brothers and Sisters here have not been walking near to
   God--and if so, their peace will not be perfect.

   It may be, my Brother, that during the week you have backslidden
   somewhat from your true standing and, if so, your peace has fled. Your
   heart is troubled and though you are believing in Christ for salvation
   and are, therefore, safe, yet for all that your inward rest may be
   broken. Therefore would I turn the text into a prayer and pray for
   myself and for every Believer in Jesus Christ--that the peace of God
   which passes all understanding may now keep our hearts and minds
   through Christ Jesus. May you all know the text by experience. He who
   wrote it had felt it--may we who read it feel it, too. Paul had
   oftentimes enjoyed the brightness of peace in the darkness of a dungeon
   and he had felt living peace in prospect of a sudden and cruel death.
   He loved peace, preached peace, lived in peace, died in peace and,
   behold, he has entered into the fruition of peace and dwells in peace
   before the Throne of God!

   Looking at the text and thinking how we might handle it best to our
   profit, I thought we would notice, first of all, the unspeakable
   privilege--"the peace of God, which passes all understanding." Then,
   secondly, I thought that we might gather, from its connection, the
   method of coming at it, for the preceding sentences are linked to our
   text by the word, "and," which is not an incidental conjunction, but is
   placed there with a purpose. Paul means to say that if we do what he
   bids us do in the 4th, 5th and 6th verses, then the peace of God shall
   keep our hearts and minds. When we have looked at that matter for a few
   minutes, I shall need your careful attention, in the third place, to
   the power of its operation--for the peace of God "shall keep your
   hearts and minds."

   And then we shall close, in the fourth place, by noticing the sphere of
   its action, namely, "in Christ Jesus." The word should have been, "in,"
   rather than, "through"--"shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ
   Jesus." May the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Peace, now lead us
   into the center and secrets of our text.

   I. First, then, here is AN UNSPEAKABLE PRIVILEGE--one which is very
   hard to speak of because it passes all understanding and, therefore,
   you may be sure it must pass all description! It is one of those things
   which can be more readily experienced than explained. Good Joseph
   Stennett was right when he spoke of those who--

   "Draw from Heaven that sweet repose Which none but he that feels it
   knows." We may talk about inward rest and dilate upon the peace of God.
   We may select the most choice expressions to declare the delicacy of
   its enjoyment, but we cannot convey to others the knowledge second
   hand--they must feel it or they cannot understand it. If I were
   speaking to little children, I would illustrate my point by the story
   of the boy at one of our mission stations who had a piece of sugar cube
   given him one day at school.

   He had never tasted such essence of sweetness and when he went home to
   his father, he told him that he had eaten something which was
   wonderfully sweet. His father said, "Was it as sweet as such-and-such a
   fruit?" "It was far sweeter than that." "Was it as sweet as
   such-and-such a food?" which he mentioned. "It was much sweeter than
   that. But Father," he said, "I cannot explain it." He rushed out of the
   house back to the mission house, begged a piece of sugar out of it and
   brought it back. He then said, "Father, taste and see, and then you
   will know how sweet it is." So I venture to use that simple
   illustration and say, "O taste and see that the peace of God is good,"
   for in very deed it surpasses all the tongues of men and of angels to
   set it forth!

   What is the peace of God? I would describe it, first, by saying it is,
   of course, peace with God. It is peace of conscience, actual peace with
   the Most High through the atoning Sacrifice. Reconciliation,
   forgiveness, restoration to favor there must be--and the soul must be
   aware of it--there can be no peace of God apart from justification
   through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ received by faith.
   A man conscious of being guilty can never know the peace of God till he
   becomes equally conscious of being forgiven. When his consciousness of
   pardon shall become as strong and vivid as his consciousness of guilt
   had been, then will he enter into the enjoyment of the peace of God
   which passes all understanding!

   Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ--you that have believed in
   Jesus--there is perfect peace between you and God now--"Therefore being
   justified by faith, we have peace with God." Your sin was the ground of
   the quarrel, but it has gone. It has ceased to be! It is blotted out!
   It is cast into the depth of the sea! As far as the east is from the
   west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us! Our Divine
   Scapegoat has carried our iniquities into the wilderness. Our Lord and
   Master has finished transgression, made an end of sin. He has brought
   in everlasting righteousness. The cause of offense is gone and gone
   forever--Jesus has taken our guilt, has suffered in our place, has made
   full compensation to the injured Law and vindicated Justice to the very
   highest--and now there is nothing which can excite the anger of God
   towards us, for our sin is removed and our unrighteousness is covered.

   We are reconciled to God by Christ Jesus and accepted in the Beloved.
   Now this actual reconciliation brings to the heart a profound sense of
   peace. O that all of you possessed it! O that those who know it knew it
   more fully! Remember, O Soul, if Christ did, indeed, suffer in your
   place and was made a curse for you, Justice can never require at your
   hands the penalty which your Surety has discharged, for this would be
   to dishonor His Sacrifice by making it of no effect! If Jesus stood as
   your Substitute and bore what God required as the vindication of His
   Law, then you are clear, beyond all doubt clear forever, saved in the
   Lord with an everlasting salvation!

   If it were not so, why was there a Substitute permitted? Did God design
   to tantalize mankind by permitting an ineffectual substitution? What
   did He accomplish if He did not save those for whom He died? What
   meaning is there in the Gospel if it does not reveal an effectual
   Atonement? But truly the Lord Jesus was made sin for us and the
   chastisement of our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we are saved!
   Here the soul rests! At the foot of the Cross it finds a peace it never
   could have found elsewhere. I hope that many of you are now able to
   sing--

   "Jesus was punished in my stead,

   Outside the gate my Surety bled

   To expiate my stain.

   On earth the Godhead deigned to dwell,

   And made of Infinite avail

   The sufferings of the man.

   And was He for such rebels given?

   He was! The Incarnate King of Heaven

   Did for His foes expire!

   Amazed, O earth, the tidings hear

   He bore, that we might never bear

   His Father's righteous ire."

   There take your full of peace, for by this Sacrifice a Covenant of
   Peace is now established between you and your God-- and it is sealed by
   atoning blood.

   "The peace of God, which passes all understanding" also takes a second
   form, namely, that of a consequent peace in the little kingdom within.
   When we know that we are forgiven and that we are at peace with God,
   things within us come to a sudden and delightful change. By nature
   everything in our inner nature is at war with itself--it is a cage of
   evil beasts all tearing and devouring each other. Man is out of
   order--out of order with God, with the universe and with himself. The
   machinery of manhood has fallen into serious disorder--its cogs and
   wheels do not work in due harmony, but miss their touch and stroke. The
   passions, instead of being ruled by reason, often demand to hold the
   reins. Reason, instead of being guided by the knowledge which God
   communicates by His Word, chooses to obey a depraved imagination and
   demands to become a separate power and to judge God Himself!

   There is not a faculty of our nature which is not in rebellion against
   God and, consequently, in a state of confusion with regard to the rest
   of our system. A cruel internal war often rages among our mental
   powers, animal instincts and moral faculties causing distress, fear and
   unhappiness. There is no cure for this but restoring Grace. O Man, you
   cannot get your heart right! You cannot get your conscience right! You
   cannot get your understanding right! You cannot bring your various
   powers to their bearings and make them act in true harmony till first
   you are right with God! The King must occupy the throne and then the
   estate of Mansoul will be duly settled--but till the chief authority
   has due eminence--rebellion and riot will continue.

   When the Lord breathes peace into a man and the Holy Spirit descends
   like a dove to dwell within the soul, then is there quiet--where all
   was chaos, order appears, the man is created anew and becomes a new
   creature in Christ Jesus. And though rebellious lusts still try to get
   the mastery, yet there is now a ruling power which keeps the man in
   order so that within him there is "the peace of God, which passes all
   understanding." This leads on to peace in reference to all outward
   circumstances by reason of our confidence that God orders them all
   rightly and arranges them all for our good. The man who believes in
   Jesus and is reconciled to God has nothing outside of him that he needs
   to fear. Is he poor? He rejoices that Christ makes poor men rich! Does
   he prosper? He rejoices that there is Divine Grace to sanctify his
   prosperity lest it become intoxicating to him!

   Does there lie before him a great trouble? He thanks God for His
   promise that as his day his strength shall be. Does he apprehend the
   loss of friends? He prays that the trial may be averted, for he is
   permitted so to pray, even as David begged for the life of his child.
   But, having so done, he feels sure that God will not take away an
   earthly friend unless it is with kind intent to gather up our trust and
   confidence more fully to Himself. Does there lie before him the
   prospect of speedy death? The hope of resurrection gives peace to his
   dying pillow! He knows that his Redeemer lives and he is content to let
   his body sleep in the dust awhile. Is he reminded by Scripture of a Day
   of Judgment when all hearts shall be

   revealed? He has peace with regard to that dread mystery and all that
   surrounds it, for he knows whom he has believed and he knows that He
   will protect him in that day.

   Whatever may be suggested that might alarm or distress the Believer,
   deep down in his soul he cannot be disturbed because he sees his God at
   the helm of the vessel holding the rudder with a hand which defies the
   storm. This is peculiarly advantageous in days like these when all
   things wear a dreary aspect. The storm signals are flying, the clouds
   are gathering, flashes of lightning and sounds of distant thunder are
   all around us. If you read the papers, wars and rumors of wars are
   incessant! Your eyes light upon narratives of famine and drought. You
   see distress here, slackness of business there and poverty and
   starvation in many places--and the fear creeps over you that there are
   dark days yet to come and seasons in which faces will grow pale and
   hands hang heavy.

   Brothers and Sisters, it is for the Believer, in such a case, to feel
   no dismay, for our God is in the heavens and He does not forsake the
   Throne. His purposes will be fulfilled and good will come out of evil,
   for at this very moment God sits in the council chambers of kings and
   orders all things according to the counsel of His will. We are not
   children whose father has gone to sea and left us at home without a
   guardian. We read just now the words, "I will not leave you
   comfortless: I will come to you," and we believe that gracious Word of
   God! God is most near us and we are most safe. Though we cannot see the
   future and do not wish to pry between the folded leaves of the book of
   destiny, we are absolutely certain that nothing is written upon the
   unopened page of the future which can contradict the Divine
   faithfulness so conspicuous in the past. We are sure that all things
   work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the
   called according to His purpose--and therefore our soul, as to all
   external circumstances, casts anchor and enjoys the peace of God which
   passes all understanding.

   Nor is this all. God is pleased to give to His people peace in
   reference to all His commands. While the soul is unregenerate, it
   rebels against the mind and will of God. If God forbids, the unrenewed
   heart longs for the forbidden thing. If God commands, the natural mind,
   for that very reason, refuses to do it! But when the change takes place
   and we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, then, Beloved, we
   drop into the same line with God and our deepest desire is to abide in
   full harmony with Him. His will becomes our delight and our only sorrow
   is that we cannot be perfectly conformed to it. There is no precept of
   God which is grievous to a gracious heart. His statutes are our songs
   in the house of our pilgrimage. We also feel perfect peace with regard
   to God's providential doings because we believe that they are helping
   us to arrive at conformity with Him--and that is just what we want.

   Oh that we could never have a thought or wish, from now on, that would
   be disagreeable to the Lord! We love Him, we love His ways, we love His
   people, we love His Word, we love His Day, we love His promises, we
   love His Laws--we are altogether agreed with Him through His rich
   Grace--and in this sense we have a peace towards God which passes all
   understanding. What a wonderful description that is of this peace--it
   "passes all understanding." It is not only beyond a common
   understanding, but it passes all understanding. Some have said it means
   that the ungodly man cannot understand it. That statement is true, but
   it is not a tenth of the whole meaning, for even he who enjoys it
   cannot understand it! It is deeper, it is broader, it is sweeter, it is
   more heavenly than the joyful saint, himself, can tell. He enjoys what
   he cannot understand! What a mercy that such a thing is possible, for
   otherwise our joys would be narrow, indeed! Reason has limits far more
   narrow than joy. Truly this peace is hid from the eyes of the ungodly
   and the unbelieving--it is far above, out of their sight.

   Now, there are kinds of peace in the world which the ungodly man can
   understand. There were the Stoics who schooled themselves to
   apathy--they would not feel and so they attained a senseless
   peace--their secret is easily discovered, it does not pass
   understanding. Many a Red Indian has been as stolid as the greatest
   Stoic and has, perhaps, surpassed him in hardening himself so that he
   would not groan if pierced with arrows or burned with fire. Some men
   have had such mastery over themselves that it has seemed a matter of
   perfect indifference whether they suffered pain or not.

   But Christianity does not teach us stoicism, nor does it point in that
   direction. It cultivates tenderness, not insensibility. Its influence
   tends to make us sensitive rather than callous and gives us a peace
   consistent with the utmost delicacy of feeling, yes, with a
   sensitiveness more intense than other men know since it makes our
   conscience more tender and causes the mind to be deeply distressed by
   the slightest frown of Heaven. Our peace is not the peace of apathy,
   but one of a far nobler sort. Others have aimed at the peace of levity,
   which the world can readily understand. They count it

   one of the wisest things to drive dull care away and whatever happens
   of ill they drown reflection of it in the flowing bowl and laugh over
   it--making mirth when misery devours their souls.

   Christians do not attempt to get rid of the trials of life in that
   fashion. The world, therefore, cannot understand the Believer's peace
   since he is neither apathetic nor frivolous. From where does this peace
   come? The jaunty answer of many a worldling is, "Oh, it comes from some
   fanatical delusion." But, indeed, we are not deluded. The grounds of a
   Christian's peace are rational, logical and well grounded. They are to
   be justified by common sense. A person who has been in debt and who is
   still in debt, ought not to be at peace. But suppose a man is found to
   be perfectly at his ease-- who can blame him if he can say, "I have a
   right to be so, for my debt is paid"? No one can challenge such an
   argument!

   He who believes that Christ Jesus suffered in his place that which was
   due to God's justice has a rational argument for being at peace which
   he may plead anywhere he pleases. God has forgiven, for Christ's sake,
   all his iniquity--why should he not be at peace? And if it is, indeed,
   so--that the Christian has become the child of God--ought he not to be
   at peace? If God his Father rules all things for his good, ought he not
   to be at peace? If for him there remains no danger of eternal death--if
   for him there is prepared a glorious resurrection--and if he is
   ultimately to shine with Christ in eternal Glory, why should not the
   man have peace? It is far more difficult, I should think, to rationally
   blame him for his happiness than it would be to justify him if he were
   in alarm. We are not victims of delusion but speak the words of the
   Truth of God and soberness when we claim to be the most favored of
   mankind! The folly and the fanaticism lie with those who neglect God,
   eternity and make a mockery of sin. And so the worldling does not
   understand our peace and frequently sneers at it because he is puzzled
   by it.

   Even the Christian is sometimes surprised at his own peacefulness. I
   know what it is to suffer from terrible depression of spirit at times,
   yet at the very moment when it has seemed to me that life was not worth
   one single bronze coin, I have been perfectly peaceful with regard to
   all the greater things. There is a possibility of having the surface of
   the mind lashed into storm while yet down deep in the caverns of one's
   inmost consciousness all is still--I know this by experience. There are
   earthquakes upon this earth and yet our globe pursues the even tenor of
   its way and the same is true in the little world of a Believer's
   nature. Why, sometimes a Christian will feel himself to be so flooded
   with a delicious peace that he could not express his rapture! He is
   almost afraid to sing, lest even the sound of his voice should break
   the spell. But he says to himself--

   "Come, then, expressive silence, muse His praise." Satan has breathed a
   whisper into the mind--"It is too good to be true," but the spirit,
   firmly believing in the truthfulness of God, has repelled the
   insinuation and rested in the faithfulness of God, in the Eternal
   Covenant, in the finished work of Christ, in the love of God manifested
   towards His people in Christ Jesus. This is the peace of God. "So He
   gives His beloved sleep." It is a rest with an emphasis--rest in Jesus'
   sense when He said--"Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy
   laden, and I will give you rest." His rest in the most golden sense
   that we can ever give to the word and much more! It passes
   understanding, but it does not surpass experience! Do you know it? I
   pray you will answer the question, each one for himself, for I must
   come back to where I started from. It is not to be described--it must
   be tested to be known.

   II. Now, I must, in the second place, with very much brevity, indicate,
   beloved Friends, HOW THIS PEACE IS TO BE OBTAINED. Now, mark you, the
   Apostle was addressing himself only to Believers in the Lord Jesus and
   I must beg you to take heed to the limitation. I am not addressing
   myself to the ungodly--I speak only to Christians. You are always at
   peace with God though you do not always enjoy the sense of it. If you
   wish to realize it, how are you to do so? The connection tells you. In
   the 4th verse Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say,
   Rejoice." If you want to have peace of mind, make God your Joy and
   place all your joy in God!

   You cannot rejoice in yourself, but you ought to rejoice in God. You
   cannot always rejoice in your circumstances, for they greatly vary, but
   the Lord never changes. "Rejoice in the Lord always." If you have
   rejoicing in earthly things you must indulge it moderately. But
   rejoicing in the Lord may be used without the possibility of excess,
   for the Apostle adds, "Again I say, Rejoice"--rejoice and rejoice
   again! Delight yourselves in the Lord. Who has such a God as you have?
   "Their rock is not as our Rock, our enemies themselves being judges."
   Who has such a Friend, such a Father, such a Savior, such a Comforter
   as you have in the Lord your God? To think of God as our exceeding Joy
   is to find "the peace of God which passes all understanding."

   Go on to the 5th Verse, where the Apostle says, "Let your moderation be
   known unto all men." That is to say, While all your joy is in God, deal
   with all earthly things on the principle of caution. If any man praises
   you, do not exult. If, on the contrary, you are censured, do not let
   your spirit sink. If you have prosperity, thank God for it, but do not
   be assured that it will continue. If property is yours, use it, but do
   not let it become your treasure or the chief consideration of your
   mind. Do you suffer adversity? Pray God to help you, but do not be so
   cast down as to despair. Drink of earthly cups by sips--do not be
   foolish like the fly which drowns itself in sweets. Use the things of
   time as not abusing them. Do not wade far out into the dangerous sea of
   this world's comfort. Take the good that God provides you, but say of
   it, "It passes away," for, indeed, it is but a temporary supply for a
   temporary need. Never suffer your goods to become your god. Rejoice
   only in God and as for all else, come or go, rise or fall, let it
   neither distress you nor make you exult. Take matters quietly and
   calmly and if you do that you will have peace. If you idolize any
   earthly good, your peace will depart. Keep the world under your feet
   and the peace of God shall keep your heart and mind.

   Three rules are then added by the Apostle which you will be sure to
   remember. He tells us to be careful for nothing, to be prayerful for
   everything and to be thankful for anything. Anyone who can keep these
   three rules, with the other two, will be quite sure to have a peaceful
   mind. "Be careful for nothing." That is, leave your care with God.
   Having done your best to provide things honest in the sight of all men,
   take no distressing, disturbing, anxious thought about anything, but
   cast your burden on the Lord. Then pray about everything, little, as
   well as great--joyous, as well as sad. "In everything by prayer and
   supplication let your requests be made known unto God." That which you
   pray over will have the sting taken out of it if it is evil and the
   sweetness of it will be sanctified if it is good. The tribulation which
   you pray over will become bearable even if it is not changed into a
   subject for rejoicing. A trouble prayed over is a dead lion with honey
   in the carcass!

   And then we are bid to be thankful for anything, for the Apostle says,
   "In everything, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto
   God." Thankfulness is the great promoter of peace--it is the mother and
   nurse of restfulness. Doubtless our peace is often broken because we
   receive mercies from God without acknowledging them-- neglected praises
   sour into unquiet forebodings. If we render to the Lord the fragrant
   incense of holy gratitude we shall find our soul perfumed with the
   sweet peace of God. Take those five things, then, as the connection
   sets them before you. Pile up all your joy into the sacred storehouse
   of your God and be glad in the Lord.

   Next, leave, as much as you can, the things of this world alone--touch
   them with a light finger--"Let your moderation be known unto all men."
   And then pray much, care for nothing and bless God from morning to
   night! In such an atmosphere shall peace grow as rare flowers and
   fruits bloom beneath sunny skies in well-watered gardens. May the Holy
   Spirit work these things in us and cause us to rest.

   III. This brings me to the third point of our subject tonight, which is
   THE OPERATION OF THIS BLESSED PRIVILEGE UPON OUR HEARTS. It is said
   that the peace of God will keep our hearts and minds. The Greek word is
   phroureo, which signifies keeping guard, keeping as with a garrison so
   completely and so effectually does the peace of God keep our hearts and
   minds. Look, then--our hearts need keeping, keeping from sinking, for
   our poor spirits are very apt to faint, even under small trials. They
   also need keeping from wandering, for how soon are they beguiled! What
   feeble charms are able to attract us away from the altogether lovely
   One! Our hearts need keeping up and keeping right.

   The way to keep the heart, according to the text, is to let it be
   filled with the peace of God which passes all understanding. A quiet
   spirit--calm, restful, happy--is one that will neither sink nor
   wander--how can it? If the peace of God is in you, what can cause you
   distress? You will be like those great buoys moored out at sea which
   cannot sink. It matters not what storms may be raging, they always rise
   above all. Our souls, moored fast and rendered buoyant with peace, will
   be as fixed marks whereby others may know their way. Moreover, a man
   who has his heart full of peace is not likely to wander, for he says to
   himself, "Why should I wander? Where can such sweetness be found as I
   have tasted in my Lord? Why should I seek elsewhere?" The best way to
   keep a person in your service is to make it worth his while to stay and
   if he is so happy and so content that he feels he could not better
   himself, you are likely to retain him for many a long day.

   Now, our Lord and Master has made His service such that we could not
   better ourselves. When He said to some of His servants, "Will you,
   also, go away?" They said, "To whom shall we go?" Ah, indeed! To whom
   could we go? Eyes, will you leave the light for the thick darkness?
   Ears, will you turn away from the music of Jesus' voice? Heart, will
   you

   leave a faithful lover for a deceiver? Understanding, will you go
   abroad after novelties when you have found the old, sure, satisfactory
   Truth of God? Conscience, will you burden yourself, again, with your
   former load? When you are so perfectly satisfied with the work and
   Person of Christ, will you not stay where you are? Oh yes, the heart is
   held with bands as strong as they are tender when it is full of the
   peace of God which passes understanding!

   You young people get tempted, I know, and who among us does not? And
   the world has many charms for you. I recommend you, therefore, pray to
   the Lord to maintain your happiness in Christ, your joy in the Lord. If
   you get out of heart with regard to your Lord and Master, it may be the
   devil may catch you when you are bad tempered and cross-grained towards
   your great Lord--and entice you away from your allegiance. But if your
   heart is always peaceful, you will have a strength about you with which
   to resist the suggestions of the Evil One. Rivets of peace are good
   fasteners for Christian loyalty. It is a very serious thing for a
   Christian to be in an uncomfortable state, for he is then weak in an
   important point. "Comfort you, comfort you, My people," are God's words
   to His Prophets, because He knows that when we lose comfort, or lose
   peace, we lose one of the most valuable pieces of armor of which our
   panoply is composed. But the text also adds that this will keep our
   mind as well as our heart.

   Now in all ages we find that the minds of Christians have been apt to
   be disturbed and vexed upon vital Truths of God. I think, sometimes,
   that this is the worst age for error which has ever darkened the world.
   I get distressed and bowed to the earth as I see the treachery of
   ministers, professed ministers of Christ, who deny the Inspiration of
   Scripture and lay the axe at the very root of all the doctrines which
   we hold dear while they continue to occupy Christian pulpits. But when
   I look back all through history I find it was always so. From the days
   of Judas Iscariot until now there have been traitors and there have
   been men of ready speech and of quick thought who have used both fair
   speech and subtle thought to turn away simple minds from the Gospel, in
   that they would deceive, if it were possible, the very elect!

   But why are not the elect deceived? As a rule it is because they find
   such peace--such perfect peace--in the Truths of God which they have
   received, that deceivers vainly attempt to entice them away from it.
   "Ah," cries the restful Believer, "I cannot give up the Gospel. It is
   my life, my strength, my solace, my all! It was the comfort of my dying
   mother and it remains the mainstay of my aged father. It was that which
   brought me to a Savior's feet and gives me Grace to remain there. It
   has helped me in the hour of trial again and again. I feel I need its
   consolations and, therefore, I can never part with it." And so he grows
   indignant with the man who casts a doubt, especially if he is of the
   clerical order and a pretender to the Christian ministry. Brothers and
   Sisters, we cannot move one single inch from the Truth which we have
   been taught by the Holy Spirit in our soul--and it is only such Truth
   as that which can bring into the heart the peace of God which passes
   understanding!

   When the Lord has brought His own Truth into our minds by His own power
   and made the sweet savor of it to pervade our frame--and when He has
   given us to drink thereof till we have been filled with joy and peace
   unutterable-- we cannot, then, depart from it! Truth taught us by man
   we may forget, but that which the Holy Spirit engraves upon the inmost
   heart we cannot depart from. So help us God, we must stand to it even
   if we die for it! And what are the inventions they offer us instead of
   the choice things of the Covenant of Peace? They are trifles light as
   air! If they were true they would not be worth propagating--they might
   be left among the minor matters which are of no practical value to the
   sons of men.

   They bring us no new grounds of solid peace or fresh discovered
   arguments for holy joy. The negative theology promises no blessings to
   mankind. It is an empty-handed plunderer, robbing us of every solace
   and offering nothing in return. If modern thought could be proved to be
   true, the next thing that ought to be done would be to hang the world
   in sackcloth because such vanity of vanities has taken the place of the
   delightful Truth of God which once gladdened the hearts of men! It
   would be the saddest of all facts if we were assured that the Doctrines
   of Grace are, after all, a fiction. But they are not so. They cannot
   be! They bear their own witness within themselves. Some of us can speak
   about them as Christian replied to Atheist, when Atheist said, "Go
   back! Go back!" Christian's reply was, "We are seeking the Celestial
   City." "Oh," said Atheist, "but I have gone farther than any of you and
   I tell you that there is no such place. I have met with many learned
   men who have studied the whole matter and it is all a delusion. Go
   back! Bo back!"

   Then Christian said, "What? No Celestial City? Did we not see it from
   the top of Mount Clear, when we were with the shepherds and looked
   through the telescopic glass?" So we say--No Atonement? Have we not
   felt the peace with which it soothes the conscience? No regeneration?
   Are we not, ourselves, the living evidence that men are made new

   creatures in Christ Jesus? No answers to prayer? Surely, then, we are
   not sane men at all and our senses have failed us! No final
   perseverance? What, then, has kept us to this day? No work of the Holy
   Spirit? What? Are we asleep? Is even our existence a delusion? No, as
   we rub our eyes, we feel that we have not been dreaming! We feel sure
   that some other people are dozing and doting--and we pray that God, in
   mercy, may end their dream and bring them to know those glorious and
   substantial Truths which fill us with the peace of God which passes all
   understanding!

   We are bound to the Cross forever! We are nailed to the wood with
   Christ forever! The blood-red colors of the Atonement are fastened to
   our masthead, to fly there till our vessel sinks, if sink it must, but
   never to be struck by man or devil, priest or philosopher! We dare not
   change, but stand faithful to that which Jesus has taught us, at whose
   feet we sat in our youth and who still continues to teach us! His peace
   keeps our heart and mind and, therefore, we will, with heart and mind,
   keep His Truth, come what may.

   IV. Lastly, let us observe THE SPHERE OF ITS ACTION. The text says, "In
   Christ Jesus." Now, Beloved, I beg you to note this with interest. The
   Apostle never mentions the name of Jesus too often. You cannot say that
   he drags it in, but he mentions it as often as he can, for he delights
   in the sound of it. "In Christ Jesus." These words touch every point of
   our text all the way through. Are we speaking of ourselves? We are in
   Christ Jesus! Our faith has realized our union with His sacred Person.
   He is our Head and we are His members. He is the Cornerstone and we are
   built upon Him. There is nothing about ourselves worth thinking of
   apart from Him--and it will be well if we dismiss the thought.

   Then if we dwell upon the peace of God, we still think of our Lord
   Jesus, for it is all in Him. No peace is to be found out of Christ! No
   peace can warm our heart while we forget Christ! "He is our peace."
   Never go, dear Brothers and Sisters, for your peace to the Law or to
   your own experience--to your own past achievements, or even to your own
   faith! All your peace is in Jesus. And then our hearts and our minds,
   mentioned in the text, must all be in Jesus--the heart loving Him and
   loved of Him. The mind believing Him, resting in Him, using its
   faculties for Him--all in Him! If I leave that last thought with you it
   will be the best ending for my sermon, namely, that to get peace and to
   get your hearts and minds kept, the grand necessity is to be in
   Christ--in your dying, risen, reigning Lord! Let Him be upon your
   thoughts now and always! His table is now spread, come here to commune
   with Him. Come here with your Master, to see your Master and to eat His
   flesh and drink His blood, after a spiritual fashion, at His own table!

   A word to you who do not know our Lord. How I wish you did know Him!
   You can never possess peace till you possess Christ! What a blessed
   beginning of Sabbaths it would be to your souls if you were to seek
   Christ tonight. You have not far to go to find Him. He is not far from
   any of us. Cover your eyes and breathe a prayer to Him. Stand behind
   one of the columns outside or get into the street and let your heart
   say, "Savior, I need peace, and peace I can never have till I have
   found You. Behold, I trust You. Manifest Yourself to me at this moment
   and say unto my soul, 'I am your salvation.'" God grant you may so
   pray!

   It seems to me very amazing that we should need to persuade men to
   think of their own interests and to care for their own selves! In other
   things they are always sharp enough to look after what they call,
   "Number One," but when it comes to the most solemn concern--the
   greatest blessing and the purest happiness that can be had--they are so
   foolish as to let all other things attract them more than the Lord
   Jesus! The Lord save you all for His infinite mercy's sake! Amen.

   [EARNEST prayer is desired for the special services now being held at
   the Tabernacle and also for Mr. SPURGEON, that he may be fully restored
   and may return to his people in the fullness of the blessing of the
   Gospel of peace. He is, by God's Grace, already greatly improved in
   health.]
     __________________________________________________________________

Offended Because of Christ?

   (No. 1398)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." Matthew 11:6.

   THE connection of the passage assists us in feeling its force. John had
   sent his disciples to ask the Master whether He was, indeed, the
   Messiah. The Savior, after giving abundant proof that He was the Sent
   One who had long been promised, then adds, "And blessed is he who is
   not offended because of Me." Had John begun to suspect a stumbling
   block in reference to the Nazarene? Did he question if so lowly a
   Person could, indeed, be the promised Christ? Had he expected Messiah
   to be a glorious prince with an earthly kingdom? Was he staggered to
   find himself in prison under Herod's power? Was John, himself in doubt
   and did the Savior, therefore, say, "Blessed is he who is not made to
   stumble concerning anything about Me"?

   There have been many suggestions as to why John sent his disciples and,
   perhaps, we shall never know why. And we need not wish to know, seeing
   it did not please God to leave it on record. Some have said he sent the
   messengers for his own sake, for he was then under a fainting fit of
   unbelief. I hardly think so and yet, it is possible, for John was an
   Elijahlike man--a man of stern iron mold--and such men are apt to have
   occasional sinking of a terrible sort. With most of the children of
   God, their weakness is most seen where their strength lies. Elijah
   failed in courage though he was one of the most courageous of men!
   After he had slain the priests of Baal, he was afraid of a
   woman--afraid of Jezebel--and fled to hide himself. He said, "Let me
   die! I am no better than my fathers."

   It seems to be a law of Nature that the strongest men should have the
   worst fits of weakness. Martin Luther's life is remarkable as
   illustrating this. He fainted as few men ever fainted--his despair, on
   some occasions, was almost equal to his confidence at other times! So
   it is possible that John, being of that class of men, after having
   boldly confronted Herod and declaring, "It is not lawful for you to
   have your brother's wife," may have fainted in spirit when he found
   himself shut up in prison with no known and manifest token of Messiah's
   kingdom coming. Prison may have been a severe trial to the Baptist--we
   are all affected by the atmosphere in which we dwell.

   Today has been a very heavy day to many a spirit because the atmosphere
   has been loaded with damp and smoke. I believe that there is more than
   a little truth in the rhyme--

   "Hea viest the heart is In a heavy air, Every wind that rises Blows
   away despair."

   Now John the Baptist, after living in the wilderness in the open air by
   the riverside, must have felt a strange difference when he was shut up
   in the close, oppressive dungeon of Herod--and the body may have helped
   to act upon the soul. And so the mind, after its extraordinary tension
   in the great service to which John was called, may have been dragged
   down by the half-stifled body till faith began to tremble. And so it
   may be that John, for his own satisfaction, found it necessary to ask,
   "Are You He that should come, or do we look for another?" If so, the
   Savior well said, "Blessed is he that is not offended because of Me,"
   for, after all, notwithstanding his severe trial and deep depression,
   John was not really offended because of Christ. He was not actually
   scandalized because of the Lord whose forerunner he had been, but he
   held on to his testimony and sealed it with his death. Blessed is his
   memory as that of one who was not offended because of Christ!

   Others, however, think that John sent these disciples not at all for
   his own sake, but for theirs. That strikes me as being the more
   probable. He wished to transfer them from himself to his Lord and he,
   therefore, bade them go and enquire for themselves. He felt that the
   answer which Jesus would be sure to give would be the best means of
   convincing them that they ought to follow the servant no longer, but
   cast in their lot with his Master. Our Lord, after showing that

   He was, indeed, the Messiah, by working miracles in their presence and
   preaching the Gospel, then said to them, "And blessed is he who is not
   offended because of Me. You see Me here despised and rejected of men,
   notwithstanding that I work miracles. You see that I am called
   Beelzebub and treated with the utmost scorn. You shall be blessed if,
   believing Me to be the Christ of God, you follow Me without being
   staggered at anything you see, or annoyed at anything you are called to
   bear for My sake."

   Whatever may have been John's motive, the text will, I trust, serve us
   for a useful purpose. May we be among the number of those who are
   blessed because we are not offended because of Christ. And let us now
   look at various characters that we may know to which class we belong.
   First, there are some who are so offended because of Christ that they
   never accept Him as their Savior at all. Secondly, there is another
   class of persons who, after professing to accept Him and apparently
   casting in their lot with Him, are, after all, scandalized. They find
   stumbling blocks and go back and forsake the way which they professed
   to tread. But then, thirdly, there are others who, by the Grace of God,
   take Christ as He is with all their hearts and are not offended because
   of Him. These are they that are blessed in very deed and shall enter
   into eternal blessedness in Heaven!

   I. First, then, I shall try to speak and God help me to speak
   effectually, TO SOME WHO ARE SO OFFENDED BECAUSE OF CHRIST THAT THEY
   NEVER TRUST HIM AT ALL, OR ACCEPT HIM AS THEIR SAVIOR. Let us tell the
   reasons why some men do not receive Christ and are offended because of
   Him. O that the Spirit of God may drive these unreasonable reasons from
   their souls and lead them to Jesus! Some in His own day were offended
   with Him because of the humbleness of His appearance. They said, "He is
   the son of a carpenter. His father and His mother we know and His
   brothers, are they not all with us? When Messiah comes, we know not
   from where He is, but as for this Man, we know from where He is."

   He came among them as a mere peasant. He wore the ordinary raiment of
   the people. A garment without seam, woven from the top throughout,
   served His purpose. No soft raiment and gorgeous apparel decorated and
   distinguished Him. He did not affect any dignity. He came with no
   chariot and horses and pomp of a prince. He was meek and lowly. Even in
   the grandest day of His triumph, He rode upon a colt, the foal of an
   ass and, therefore, they said, "Is this the Son of David? Is this the
   King, the glorious One of whom Prophets spoke in ages long gone by?"
   And so they were scandalized and offended because of Him because there
   was a lack of that earthly glory and splendor for which they had
   looked.

   Men feel the same today. There are some who would be Christians, but
   then Christianity must be a very respectable thing--and if the Truth of
   God is to be found among poor people, well, then, the Truth of God may
   be for them, but they will not go with them to hear a plain preacher
   and mix with common people! If the Truth of God walks the streets in
   silver slippers, then they do not mind acknowledging it and walking
   with it--but if it toils in rags through the back streets and by miry
   pathways--then they say, "I pray you have me excused." The religion of
   Jesus Christ never was, nor ever can be, the religion of this present
   evil world. He has chosen a people out of the world who believe it, but
   the world itself has always hated it. Did not our Lord tell us (John
   14:17), concerning the Spirit of Truth, that the world cannot receive
   Him because it sees Him not, neither knows Him? Whenever you find a
   religion which unites itself with pomp, show and worldly power, if
   there is any truth in it at all, it has, at any rate, deteriorated from
   the standard of its purity and is not according to the mind of Christ.

   But there are some who are so fond of everything that is
   fashionable--everything that is great and famous--that, if the Lord
   Jesus Christ is despised and rejected of men, they despise and reject
   Him, too. Ah, but I hope that I address some to whom the Lord has given
   a nobler spirit! I hope some men and women are here, tonight, who will
   never reject the Truth because it is unfashionable, or refuse to follow
   Christ because He is despised. No, but the noble spirit says, "Is it
   right? Then I will espouse it. Is it true? Then I will believe it in
   the name of God. Though it may mean poverty and shame, yet that is the
   side on which I will enlist." There is a nobler chivalry than all the
   chivalry of war--it is the chivalry of the heart that dares be nailed
   to the Cross with Christ sooner than turn aside to seek flowery
   pathways and follow the trail of the serpent. Many reject Christ
   because of the humbleness of His exterior. Who is on the Lord's side
   and will dare declare it before a scoffing world?

   Again, there are others who reject Him because of the fewness of His
   followers. They like to go where many go and they say, "Well, but there
   are so few that go that way, I do not wish to be singular." Yet every
   honest heart must admit

   that truth could never yet be decided by votes, for, as a rule, it has
   been in the minority. If we are to count heads we must go to the Pope,
   or the Sultan, or the Brahmin. For my part I think that a minority of
   one with Christ is stronger than a majority of fifty millions against
   Him, for Christ, the Son of God, in His own Person, sums up a total
   greater than all the multitudes that ever can be against Him! There are
   some who quite forget that our Lord has said, "Broad is the way that
   leads to destruction and many there are which go in that way." And
   again, "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leads unto life,
   and few there are that find it."

   The way that leads to eternal life, though it is the King's highway, is
   often as little frequented as a country lane. If you must be on the
   side of the majority, then you will certainly be on the side of deadly
   error unless there should come some happier times when the Lord has
   more greatly increased the number of His people than at the present!
   May you be spared to see such days, but those days have not come as
   yet--and if you will not go with the Lord until the multitudes are with
   Him--you will perish in your sin! Do not, I pray, stumble at Him
   because of this. Some are offended with Christ for quite another
   reason, namely, because of the grandeur of His claims. He claims to be
   God over all, blessed forever. He counted it not robbery to be equal
   with God, though He made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the
   form of a Servant.

   Now some spirits quibble greatly at this. They did so in His own day.
   They took up stones to stone Him because He made Himself equal with
   God. Proud, carnally wise minds cannot endure the doctrine that the
   Redeemer is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, very God of very
   God! To my mind it is a reason why I accept Him! If He were not God,
   how could He save me? The weight of my sins would stagger all the
   angels and cherubim and seraphim if they should try to lift it! I must
   have a God to save me, or saved I can never be! And to me it is the
   greatest consolation possible that He who was the son of Mary is also
   the Son of God--that though human, even as we are human, sin
   excepted--He was altogether Divine. Oh do not--do not be offended with
   Him because of this, but rather rejoice in Immanuel, God With Us--and
   trust your soul into His hands!

   A certain number of unconverted men are grievously offended with our
   Lord because of His Atonement. This which to us is the very center of
   all His excellence--that He saves us by standing in our place and
   bearing the wrath of God on our behalf--this is dreadfully kicked at by
   some. And I have heard these fastidious people finding fault with
   ministers for talking too much of the blood. They cannot endure the
   term, "the precious blood of Christ." We shall never listen to their
   fastidiousness, not for a single moment! And if we knew such to be
   present, we would go out of our way, on purpose, to shock them because
   we think that no respect should be shown to such a wicked taste! If the
   doctrine of the Atonement is kicked at, the answer of Christ's minister
   should be to preach the Atonement again and again and again in the
   plainest possible terms--and declare with even greater vigor and
   frequency the glorious substitutionary Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus
   Christ in the place of His people!

   This is the very heart of the Gospel and should be preached in your
   hearing at least every Lord's Day! Leave that out? You have left out
   the life of the Gospel, for "the blood is the life thereof." Without
   shedding of blood there is no remission and, therefore, as remission is
   the great privilege of the Gospel, we have no salvation to declare and
   we have no remission to preach unless the blood--

   "From His riven side which flowed" is continually set forth before you
   Oh, why should men quibble at that which is their salvation? If they
   ever are redeemed, it must be, "not with corruptible things as silver
   and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ." If they ever are
   cleansed from all sin, it must be because of that Divine declaration,
   "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." May we
   never stumble at Christ because of His Cross, for that were to reject
   our only hope! That were to quarrel with our life! That were to insist
   upon shutting the gates of mercy upon our own souls! That were to
   become enemies to our best Friend and to ourselves! God save us from
   such an infatuation as that!

   We have found a good many, also, who are offended because of Christ for
   a different reason altogether, namely, because of the graciousness of
   the Gospel. It has too much free Grace in it for them. They would like
   a mingle-mangle of Grace and works. You will constantly hear it said
   that the doctrine of Justification by Faith is very dangerous and ought
   to be preached with great caution. Occasionally our secular papers,
   which, as you know, understand a great deal about religion, will
   instruct us as to what we should preach. The moral virtues ought to be
   our main theme and Justification by Faith should be so qualified as to
   be virtually denied. It is very wrong, they say, to sing that hymn--

   "Nothing, either great or small, Nothing, Sinner, no! Jesus did it, did
   it all, Long, long ago."

   And to tell the sinner that until he believes in Jesus Christ--

   "Doing is a deadly thing: Doing ends in death,"

   is regarded as a crime so manifest that it needs only to be mentioned
   and every reader of the paper will be dreadfully shocked! And yet the
   editor of the paper, or the writer, probably calls himself a
   Protestant, and Justification by Faith is the one doctrine upon which
   all Protestantism turns! Very likely the writer of the stinging article
   calls himself a churchman and yet even the doctrine of the Church of
   England about that matter is as plain as words could possibly make it.

   Yes, and then they suppose us to be some modern sect of revivalists
   that have newly sprung up, although we are preaching that which is and
   always was the Gospel--the doctrine by which you may test whether a
   Church stands or falls--salvation, not by the works of the Law--but
   according to the Grace of God! Crowds of people cannot endure Grace!
   And as to the term, "free Grace," they say that it is a tautological
   expression! It may be so, but it is a very expressive term and because
   they do not like it, I always intend to use it! It will do them good to
   be made to know that we mean it and, therefore, use doubly strong
   language. It shall not only be, "gratis," which is free, but, "free
   gratis!" And we will, one of these days, put something else on to make
   it plainer still, if possible, and say, "free, gratis, for nothing!"

   Salvation through eternal love, salvation through mercy
   alone--salvation, not of merit, salvation, not of the will of man, nor
   of blood, nor of the flesh--but salvation by the eternal purpose of
   Divine Sovereignty! Salvation by the will of God, who has said, "I will
   have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on
   whom I will have compassion"--this we will, by the Grace of God, always
   preach! Grace free as the air, spontaneous, undeserved, but given of
   God because He delights in mercy! Yes, they kick against this but, if
   they knew themselves, they would know that nothing else will ever suit
   the sinner but this!

   He who has broken the Divine Law is never in a right state of heart
   till he feels salvation by himself to be hopeless! When he is shut up
   in the condemned cell and hears the sentence read against him
   condemning him to die and knows that nothing he can do, can, by any
   possible means, reverse that sentence--and then sees Jesus interposing
   in all the freeness of His love and saying, "Now you have nothing to
   pay. I frankly forgive you all"--then, I say, he realizes that Free
   Grace is the glory of the Gospel! Do not be offended with it, I pray
   you, or you will be offended with your own life!

   Then, on the other hand, there is another class of persons who are
   offended with our blessed Lord and Master because of the holiness of
   His precepts. Alas that there should be traitors in the camp who can
   get on very well with Grace and Free Grace, but then, alas, they turn
   it into licentiousness and take liberty to sin because of the freeness
   of Divine Mercy. If you begin to declare that, "Without holiness no man
   shall see the Lord." If you preach, as Jesus did, that he who forgives
   not his brother abides in death. If you tell them that the omission of
   these outward virtues will prove that the inward life is absent. If you
   declare that the axe is laid to the root of the trees and every tree
   that brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. If
   you go on to insist upon it that there must be the outward marks and
   evidences of saintship or else the pretense of experience is a mere
   lie--then, by-and-by, they are offended and exhibit a bitter spirit!

   Oh that none of us may act so. The highest holiness is the delight of
   the true Believer. If he could be absolutely perfect, he would rejoice
   above measure! It will be his Heaven to be perfect--and the one thing
   he strives after here below is to get the mastery over all sin--not
   that he hopes to be saved by that, but because he is saved and, being
   saved, out of love to Jesus Christ he desires to adorn the doctrine of
   God His Savior in all things! May we never be offended by the purity
   and perfection of our Lord and His teaching! I might continue this long
   list of things by which men have been offended with Christ--some
   because the Gospel is so mysterious, they say, and others because it is
   so very simple that it is not deep enough for such great intellects as
   theirs. Men, if they want to be offended because of Christ, will be
   sure to find something or other to quarrel with. They stumble at this
   stumbling stone, "Whereunto also," says the Lord very solemnly, "they
   were appointed." They put this stumbling block in their own way and God
   appoints that they shall fall. They fall upon it now and are
   broken--and one of these days that stone will fall on them and grind
   them to powder!

   My dear Hearers, I cannot stay longer on this subject, but if there are
   any of you that are offended because of Christ, I pray the Lord will
   make you feel your extreme folly and wickedness. Offended with the
   Redeemer? What madness! May you go and confess this insult to your
   Savior and accept Him at this very moment as your All in All!

   II. Now I want to speak to professing Christians. THERE ARE SOME WHO
   JOIN THE CHURCH OF JESUS

   CHRIST WHO, AFTER A TIME, ARE OFFENDED. Now, why is it that some who
   profess to know Him are offended because of Christ? Well, with some it
   is because the novelty wears off. Very earnest services were held and
   they were greatly affected. They thought that they repented and
   believed, so they joined the Church. Now the good men who held the
   services are gone and everything seems rather flat after such
   excitement. And so they have gone back again. They jumped into religion
   like a man into a bath--and they have jumped out again, put on their
   clothes--and gone back to the world and to what they were before!

   Persons of this sort are very plentiful just now. If they were ever
   born again they were born with a fever upon them. And if you do not
   keep up the heat and let them live in an oven, they will die. We know
   that such hothouse plants will never pay for the fuel used in forcing
   them--we are grieved that it is so, but we have seen it so often that
   we do not wonder at it so much as we used to do! Hot weather breeds
   flies and warm showers bring out reptiles. There are not a few who
   professed to become Christians and who thought that they were always
   going to be happy. The evidence that they gave of being Christians was
   "that they felt so happy." I do not know that mere happiness is any
   evidence of being a Christian at all, for many are living far from God
   and yet account themselves very happy--while some of those who live
   near to God are groaning because they cannot get nearer still!

   Yet a joyful feeling is regarded by many as conclusive evidence of
   salvation! And they add to this the notion that as soon as ever they
   believed in Jesus Christ the conflict was all over and there remained
   nothing more to be done in the way of resisting sin and denying the
   lusts of the flesh. They dreamed that they had only to start on
   pilgrimage and get to the Celestial City in a very short period of
   time--they thought they only had to draw the sword from the scabbard
   and all Canaan was conquered in an hour! Very soon they find that it is
   not so. Their old corruptions are alive. The flesh begins to pull a
   different way from that which they profess to have chosen. The devil
   tempts them and they are so disappointed by their new discovery that
   they become offended with Christ altogether! A sudden victory would
   suit them--but to carry a cross before winning a crown is not to their
   mind.

   Others of them have met an opposition they did not expect from their
   adversaries, while from their friends they have not met with all the
   respect that they think they ought to have. Their friends and
   acquaintances have laughed at them! Their workmates in the shop have
   jeered at them! They did not count on this--they never counted the
   cost--and so they are offended because of Christ. Is it not a strange
   thing that we who begin our religion at the Cross, if we begin aright,
   should ever be astonished that the Cross keeps close to us, or should
   be surprised that the world treats us with disdain? But so it is.
   Persecution arises and many are offended.

   It is not that the world burns them to death or puts them in prison.
   No, no--they only make a joke or two--or they give them the cold
   shoulder and shut them out of society. But the poor creatures are so
   thin-skinned that they cannot endure even these light afflictions and
   so they are offended and miss the blessing. When they joined the
   Christian Church everybody was so glad to see them at first, as we
   always are when there is a new-born child. But many more new converts
   have come since then--and the former ones feel that they are not
   pampered so much as they were--and so they become annoyed and under one
   pretense or another slink away. Because Christ's people do not carry
   them about as wonders and cry, "Hosanna," over them all their days,
   they are ready to go back to the world and complain that they have been
   disappointed with religion and with Christians!

   Oh, but this is evil! This is a wrong spirit which must by no means be
   displayed! Yet I fear it is to be seen in many places. This is an
   offense which ought never to arise. We have known some who have become
   offended because of Christ, or were in great danger of it because they
   began to find that religion entailed more self-denial than they had
   reckoned upon. The precepts of our blessed Master come very close home
   to their consciences and gall them somewhat. He told them that the yoke
   was easy and that the burden was light--and so it is to the meek and
   lowly in heart--but they are not changed in heart and, therefore, they
   find the burden heavy and the yoke galling. I do not wonder that it is
   so, for that which is the delight of the renewed heart is bondage to
   the unregenerate spirit, and self-denials, which really are no

   denials at all to the man who is born again, are an iron bondage to
   those who still remain in their unregenerate state-- they get offended
   and they go away from the Master whom they professed to serve.

   I have known some good souls almost offended at the Master through the
   hard speeches of those who ought to have encouraged them. I was
   speaking not long ago with a young lady who had, for some, time been
   devoting herself very earnestly to the cause of Christ. I do not know
   one who had done more than she had done in her own sphere, but she was
   in great distress because the person with whom she had worked for many
   months had spoken very bitterly of her. Though she had been his best
   helper, he seemed to regard her as his worst enemy! And as she told me
   what he had said, I was very sorry, but the worst part about it was the
   temptation which the devil put in her way. The Evil One whispered,
   "Never take a prominent place again! Give up your work. You are said to
   be eager to help--now be quiet and do nothing."

   Now, it will happen to all of us, more or less, that if we try to be
   zealous in the Master's cause we shall be misunderstood. Wet blanket
   factories are pretty numerous and some benevolent Brother is sure to
   bring one of these articles for our use. He thinks that it will do us
   good, but it is mischievous to our spirits. Blessed is he who cannot be
   offended in that way. It may encourage you to know that, generally,
   those whom God largely blesses have to go through a great fight at
   first, from their own brothers and sisters. Look at David. He was to
   bring home giant Goliath's head, but those elder brothers of his all
   said, "Because of the pride and the naughtiness of your heart, you are
   come to see the

   battle."

   They recommended him to stay at home with his sheep, even as they told
   us to keep clear of a pulpit--but God did not mean that he should
   remain hidden. If the Lord means to bless you, some of His very dear
   people will be for putting you back among the sheep--but do not be
   scandalized at Christ on that account! Stand firm as you have done.
   Press forward! Be not disgusted or discouraged, but, on the contrary,
   remember that opposition is very often the sign of coming success.
   Press forward, for, "Blessed is he that is not offended because of Me."
   Moreover, many young Christians are greatly staggered by the ill
   conduct of professors. I think that there is no worse trial to a babe
   in Christ than to see elderly Christians walking inconsistently and
   living in a lukewarm state--and even speaking as if they were
   antagonistic to all earnest attempts to spread the kingdom of Christ.
   If you are one of God's children you will not die at their hands any
   more than Joseph at the hands of his brothers! If the Lord has, indeed,
   quickened you with spiritual life, you will press on and work for the
   Master and not be ashamed.

   It has frequently occurred to me to deplore that some professors fall
   back through trials of Providence. We occasionally miss members of the
   Church because they were pretty well-to-do when they joined with us,
   but things have gone badly with them and they feel as if they could not
   show themselves. They will even say that they have not any clothes fit
   to worship in. I have often told you that any clothes are fit to
   worship in as long as you have paid for them! Clothing, be it fine or
   threadbare, is nothing to me! As far as I am concerned, I really do not
   know what people wear. It never strikes my eye--I am too busy looking
   at your faces, when I can see you--to even notice what you may happen
   to wear. Come, oh come, to the House of God, my suffering Brothers and
   Sisters! Never let the devil prevail upon you to stay away!

   If your shoe leaks. If there is a hole in the elbow of your coat. So
   what? The Lord does not look at that, nor do we! You come along. We
   shall be glad to see you, the most of us, and if there are some who
   will not be glad, they are nobodies--do not take any notice of them!
   But never stay away from the House of God because of your shabbiness.
   What can it matter? When you begin to get low in circumstances do not
   be proud and say, "I can't dress as I once did, or make such a dash as
   I did and so I shall not go." Why, you are still the same person--a man
   is a man notwithstanding the little or the much which he possesses--and
   when earthly comforts are going, you ought to seek heavenly comforts
   all the more! And the poorer you get in substance, the richer you ought
   to seek to be in Divine Grace! "The poor have the Gospel preached unto
   them."

   But I know that this is a temptation. I have heard it said that in
   Jamaica in the Negro churches, when wages are low, attendance at the
   means of Grace begins to decline. I know that it is so, but so it ought
   not to be. Do not be offended with Christ! If He chooses to let you be
   poor, be satisfied to be poor! Yes, if you get to be as low as Job who
   sat on a dunghill, scraping himself with a piece of an old pot, yet
   learn to say with the heroic Patriarch, "Though He slay me, yet will I
   trust in Him." If He is not ashamed of me, I will not be ashamed of
   Him, or ashamed to follow, even in rags, the

   standard of Him who hung upon the cross and triumphed there for me!
   "They parted His garments among them, and for His vesture did they cast
   lots." I cannot be worse clad than He! Be not ashamed of Him, then.

   III. The last head is that THERE ARE SOME WHO ARE NOT OFFENDED BECAUSE
   OF CHRIST AND THEY

   ARE DECLARED TO BE BLESSED. They are so because if God had not blessed
   them they would not be found clinging to their Lord, but would have
   gone back like others. Apart from anything else, it is a blessed thing
   to have Grace enough given you to hold fast to Christ under all
   circumstances. If you were not one of those whom He has chosen from
   before the foundations of the world. If you were not one of those whom
   Christ specially redeemed with His blood. If you were not one of those
   in whom the Holy Spirit has placed a new heart and a right spirit you
   would go back. But if you hold out to the end, you have in that the
   evidence that the Lord has loved you with an everlasting love!

   Oh, you that are on and off with Jesus, what a poor hope yours must be!
   You that can run with the hare and hold with the hounds. You that try
   to serve God and Mammon--you have no marks of being God's children! But
   those of you who put your foot down for Christ and cannot be moved--you
   who have said unto your souls, "By His Grace I will not depart from
   following the Lord"--you have, in that very fact, the evidence of being
   blessed! And then you shall find a blessedness growing out of your
   fidelity. I believe that persecuted ones have more blessedness than any
   other saints. There were never such sweet revelations of the love of
   Christ in Scotland as when the Covenanters met in the mosses and on the
   hillside.

   No sermons ever seemed to be so sweet as those which were preached when
   Claverhouse's dragoons were out and the minister read his text by the
   lightning's flash! The saints never sang so sweetly as when they let
   loose those wild bird notes among the heather. The flock of
   slaughter--the people of God that were hunted down by the foe--these
   were they who saw the Lord! I guarantee you that in Lambeth Palace
   there were happier hearts in the Lollards' dungeon than there were in
   the Archbishop's Hall! Down there where men have lain to rot, as did
   Bunyan in Bedford Jail, there have been more dreams of Heaven and more
   visions of celestial things than in the courts of princes! The Lord
   Jesus loves to reveal Himself to those of His saints who dare take the
   bleak side of the hill with Him. If you are willing to follow Him when
   the wind blows in your teeth and the snow flakes come thickly till you
   are almost blinded, and if you can say--

   "Through floods and flames, if Jesus lead, I'll follow where He goes,"

   you shall have such unveilings of His love to your soul as shall make
   you forget the sneers of men and the sufferings of the flesh! God shall
   make you triumphant in all places!

   You know this already by experience, do you not? You that are His
   people must know that whenever you have had to suffer for Christ it has
   been a blessed thing for you. Whenever anybody jeered at you and you
   have felt it for the time, yet, if you have been able to bear it well,
   it has brought many a sweet reflection afterwards. Somebody pushed good
   Mr. Kilpin into the gutter and slapped him at the same time and said,
   "Take that, John Bunyan!" Whereupon the good man took off his hat and
   said, "I would take 50 times as much as that to have the honor to be
   called John Bunyan." Learn to look upon insults for Christ in the same
   light and when they call you by an ill name reply, "I could bear a
   thousand times as much as that for the pleasure of being associated
   with Christ in the world's derision."

   But what blessedness awaits you if you are not offended because of
   Jesus! You are blessed while you are waiting for Him, but your best
   reward is to come! In that hereafter, when the morning breaks on the
   everlasting shore, how will they be ashamed and disgusted with
   themselves who sought their own honor and esteem and denied their Lord
   and Master! Where will Demas be then, who chose the present world and
   forsook his Lord? Where will that son of perdition be who chose the 30
   pieces of silver and sold the Prince of Life? What shame will seize
   upon the coward, the fearful, the unbelieving, the people who checked
   conscience and stifled conviction because a fool's laugh was too much
   for them! Then they will have to bear the Savior's scorn and the
   everlasting contempt of all holy beings.

   But the men who stood meekly forward to confess their Lord--who were
   willing to be set in the pillory of scorn for Christ, ready to be spit
   upon for Him, ready to be called ill names for His sake, ready to lose
   their character, their substance, their liberty and their lives for
   Him--oh how calmly will they await the Great Assize when loyalty shall
   receive honor from the great King! How bright will be their faces when
   He that sits on the Throne will say, "They confessed Me before men, and
   now will I confess them before My Father which is in Heaven. These are
   Mine, My Father," He will say, "they are Mine. They clung unto Me and
   now I acknowledge them as My jewels."

   These are they that followed the Lamb where ever He went. They read the
   Word and what they found there they believed! They saw their Lord's
   will in the Scriptures and they labored to do it. They were faithful to
   conscience and to conviction--and the Spirit dwelt in them and guided
   their lives. They shall be the Redeemer's crown and the beloved of His
   Father. They were the poor of this world--they were considered to be
   mere idiots by some--and were thought to have gone mad by others. But
   they are the Lord's own elect! Jesus will say, "They were with Me in My
   tribulation. They were with Me in the midst of a crooked and perverse
   generation and now they are Mine, and they shall be with Me on My
   Throne. Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
   for you from before the foundations of the

   world."

   Oh, you are happy, you people of God who lose good situations because
   you cannot do dishonest things! You who cannot break the Sabbath and
   therefore shut the shop and lose a large part of your incomes! You who,
   for Christ's sake, dare to be singular and are not ashamed to be called
   "puritanical" and to be pointed out as hypocrites! You who bravely
   refuse to indulge in the intoxicating cup and utterly turn aside from
   evil companions! You who will not be found in the haunts of vice which
   men call pleasure! You, who, though you may think a thing to be lawful
   will, nevertheless, deny yourselves because it is not expedient and
   will avoid the appearance of evil! You who try to put your feet down in
   the footprints of Christ and follow Him in all things--you are and
   shall be truly blessed!! With all your faults and imperfections which
   you mourn over, your Lord is not ashamed of you and He will confess you
   at the last!

   Oh, may you all be true adherents of Jesus! I set up a standard tonight
   and will try to act as recruiting officer. Who will be enlisted into
   the army of Christ tonight? Is any young man ready to say, "I will"?
   Yes, but count the cost! Are you prepared to be ridiculed? Are you
   prepared to suffer? Are you willing to put up with the hatred of your
   own family sooner than forsake God and His Christ and the Truth? We
   will not have you if you won't! Christ will not acknowledge you if you
   won't! It must be a thorough coming to Him. "Come you out from among
   them and be you separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean
   thing. And I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and you
   shall be My sons and daughters."

   Who is on the Lord's side?--Who? Let your hearts answer, for there
   shall come a day when that same word shall thunder over all the earth,
   "Who is on the Lord's side? Who?" Many then will rue the day in which
   they were ashamed to confess a persecuted Christ! May we be on His side
   tonight--first trusting Him, relying upon Him, alone, for
   salvation--and then surrendering ourselves to Him to be His forever.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

   (No. 1399)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9.

   To what a shameful pitch of presumptuous impudence had Cain arrived
   when he could thus insult the Lord God! If it had not been on record in
   the pages of Inspiration, we might almost have doubted whether a man
   could speak so impudently when actually conscious that God Himself was
   addressing Him. Men blaspheme frightfully, but it is usually because
   they forget God and ignore His Presence. But Cain was conscious that
   God was speaking to him. He heard Him say, "Where is Abel your
   brother?" and yet he dared, with the coolest impertinence, to reply to
   God, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" As much as to say--"Do You
   think that I have to keep him as he keeps his sheep? Am I also a
   shepherd as he was and am I to take as much care of him as he did of a
   lame lamb?"

   The cool impudence of Cain is an indication of the state of heart which
   led up to his murdering his brother and it was also a part of the
   result of his having committed that terrible crime. He would not have
   proceeded to the cruel deed of bloodshed if he had not, first, cast off
   the fear of God and been ready to defy his Maker. Having committed
   murder, the hardening influence of sin upon Cain's mind must have been
   intense and so, at last, he was able to speak out to God's face what he
   felt within his heart and ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

   This goes a long way to explain what has puzzled some persons, namely,
   the amazing calmness with which great criminals will appear in the
   dock. I remember to have heard it said of one who had undoubtedly
   committed a very foul murder, that he looked like an innocent man. He
   stood up before his accusers as calmly and quietly, they said, as an
   innocent man would do. I remember feeling, at the time, that an
   innocent man would probably not have been calm! The distress of mind
   occasioned to an innocent man by being under such a charge would have
   prevented his having the coolness which was displayed by the guilty
   individual. Instead of its being any evidence of innocence that a man
   wears a brazen front when charged with a great crime, it should, by
   wise men, be considered to be evidence against him.

   Well may he seem dispassionate and unmoved who has already been so
   unfeeling as to dip his hand in blood. If he were so hardened as to do
   the deed, it is not likely he will display much softness when the deed
   is brought home to him. Oh, dear Friends, let us shun sin, if it is
   only for the evil effect which it has upon our minds! It is poison to
   the heart! It stupefies the conscience, drugs it, sends it to sleep! It
   intoxicates the judgment and puts all the faculties, as it were, into a
   state of drunkenness, so that we become capable of monstrous bravery
   and blind impertinence which makes us mad enough to dare insult God to
   His face! Save us, O God, from having our hearts hammered to the
   hardness of steel by sin! Daily keep us, by Your Grace, sensible and
   tender before You, trembling at Your Word.

   Now, let us note, here, that while we are thus heavily censuring Cain,
   we must mind that we are not guilty ourselves! If we look at it without
   prejudice, every kind of excuse that we make to God is a very high
   piece of presumption. When we are charged with any form of guilt, if we
   begin denying or extenuating, we are guilty of the sin of Cain as to
   impudence before God. And when there is any duty to be performed and we
   begin to shirk it, or try to make an apology for disobedience, are we
   not forgetting in whose Presence we stand? Does He charge me with what
   I have committed and shall I be so wicked as to attempt a denial? Does
   He bid me perform a duty and do I begin to hesitate, question and ask
   myself, "Shall I, or shall I not?" Oh, bold rebellion! The essence of
   treason lurks in every hesitancy to obey and dwells in every attempt to
   extenuate our fault when we have already disobeyed.

   You think Cain a monster that he should dare to face it out with God?
   Yet God is everywhere present and every sin is perpetrated while He is
   watching! Against Him do we sin and in His Presence we do evil! And
   when we begin to make excuses for wrong done or hesitate concerning
   duty commanded, we are disobeying in the immediate Presence of the Lord
   our God. Since we have, doubtless, been guilty of this, let us humbly
   confess it and ask the Lord to give us great tenderness of conscience
   that from now on we may fear the Lord and never dare to stand up to
   question what He has to

   say. The very same thing, no doubt, lies at the bottom of objections to
   Bible Truths. There are some who do not go to Scripture to take out of
   it what is there, but seeing what is clearly revealed they then begin
   to question and judge and come to conclusions according to their
   notions of what ought to have been there.

   No, but O Man, who are you that replies against God? If He says it, it
   is so! Believe it! Can you not understand it? Who are you that you
   should understand? Can you hold the sea in the hollow of your hand, or
   grasp the winds in your fist? Worm of the dust, the Infinite must
   always be beyond you! There must always be about the glorious Lord
   something that is incomprehensible and it is not for you to doubt
   because you cannot understand, but rather humbly to bow before His
   Presence who has made you and in whose hand your breath is. God save us
   from the presumption which dares to say with Pharaoh, "Who is the Lord
   that I should obey His voice?" and from the profane arrogance which
   replies to the Lord in the spirit of Cain!

   Now, let us look quietly at what Cain said. He said to the Lord, "Am I
   my brother's keeper?" May the Holy Spirit guide us in considering this
   question.

   I. First it is to be noted that MAN IS NOT HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER IN SOME
   SENSES. There is some little weight in what Cain says. Generally some
   amount of truth clings to every lie and even in the greatest possible
   profanity there is, usually, something or other of truth, though it is
   grievously twisted and distorted. In this atrocious question of Cain
   there is some little measure of reason. In some sense no man is his
   brother's keeper. For instance, every man must bear his own
   responsibility for his own acts before Almighty God. It is not possible
   for a man to shift from his own shoulders to those of another his
   obligations to the Most High.

   Obedience to the Law of God must be personally rendered or a man
   becomes guilty. No matter how holy his father, or how righteous his
   mother, he, himself will have to stand upon his own feet and answer for
   himself before the judgment seat of God. Each man who hears the Gospel
   is responsible for the hearing of it. No one else can believe the
   Gospel for him, or repent for him, or be born again for him, or become
   a Christian for him. He must, himself, personally, repent of sin,
   personally believe in Jesus Christ, personally be converted and
   personally live to the service and Glory of God. Every tub must stand
   on its own bottom. There have been idle attempts to shift the
   responsibility to a certain order of men called priests, or clergymen,
   or ministers--according as the case may be--but it cannot be done.

   Each man must seek the Lord himself--he must, himself, lay his load of
   sin at the foot of the Cross and he, himself, accept a personal Savior
   for himself. You cannot do with the matters of your soul as you do with
   the business of your estate and employ a priest in the same way as you
   engage a solicitor to represent you. There is one Substitute and
   Advocate who can plead for us, but no earthly sponsor can help you with
   Heaven. God demands the heart and with the heart man must believe unto
   righteousness--his own heart--for none can take his place. Personal
   service is required by the great King and must be rendered on pain of
   eternal destruction! No man can be his brother's keeper in the sense of
   taking upon himself another man's responsibilities.

   And again, no one can positively secure the salvation of another, no,
   he cannot even have a hope of the salvation of his friend, so long as
   the other remains unbelieving. O unconverted people, we can pray for
   you, we can ask the Lord to renew you by His Spirit, but we can do
   nothing with you, ourselves! And neither will our prayers be answered
   until you, yourselves, make a confession of your sin and fly to Christ
   for salvation! It is, no doubt, a very great blessing to have friends
   who bear your names upon their hearts before God, but, oh, do not have
   any confidence in other people's prayers while you are prayerless! We
   ought to be very thankful that other people can pray believingly for
   us, but we shall never be saved if we remain unbelieving! Now, since we
   cannot convert other people, we are not responsible to do what we
   cannot do and, therefore, we are not our brother's keeper so fully as
   to be responsible for his acceptance or reception of Jesus.

   And here let me say, in the next place, that those do very wrongly who
   enter into any vows or promises for others in this matter when they are
   quite powerless. To me it always remains a riddle, which I cannot
   explain except by the utter heartlessness and godlessness of this age,
   that men and women are to be found to come forward to solemnly promise
   concerning a little child, as yet unconscious, that it shall keep all
   God's holy commandments and walk in the same all the days of its life
   and shall renounce all the pomps and vanities of this present evil
   world! I dare not stop short of saying that you lie most frightfully if
   you make any such promise! You go farther than that--you are guilty of
   perjury before almighty God!

   With what wrath He must look down upon persons, who, in an edifice
   which they think to be sacred to His honor and in the presence of those
   who wear vestments which are supposed to mark them out as peculiarly
   the messengers of God, dare to say that they will do that which is
   quite out of their power! You cannot do it and you know it! You have,
   perhaps, not renounced the pomps and vanities of the world for
   yourselves! Certainly YOU have not kept all God's holy commandments!
   How, then, can you do it for another? If you stood up there and
   promised before God that the child should grow eight feet high, that
   its hair should be of a yellow color and that its eyes should be green,
   you would be quite as much justified in making such a vow as in
   promising that which is prescribed in the Prayer Book--only there would
   be a touch of the ludicrous about that--but in this there is nothing
   that I can see to smile about, but everything to mourn over!

   It is sad that the human mind should be capable of such a use of words
   that it should dare to pronounce a lie as an act of worship and then go
   calmly and quietly home as though everything had been done to please
   God! No, you cannot be other people's keepers. Do not, therefore, put
   yourselves into the awful position of promising that you will be. It is
   proper, here, to say that the most earnest minister of Christ must not
   so push the idea of his own personal responsibility to such an extreme
   as to make himself unfit for his work through a morbid view of his
   position. If he has faithfully preached the Gospel and his message is
   rejected, let him persevere in hope and not condemn himself.

   I remember years ago, when I labored to feel the responsibility of
   men's souls upon me, I became very depressed in spirit and the
   temptation arose out of it to give up the work in despair. I believe
   that responsibility should be duly felt, neither do I wish to say a
   word to excuse any who are unfaithful, but in my own case I saw that I
   could harp on one chord of my nature till I destroyed my power to do
   good, for I became so unhappy that the elasticity of my spirit departed
   from me. Then I remembered that if I had put the Gospel faithfully
   before you and pressed it upon you--if you refused it I had nothing
   more to do with the matter except to pray over it--if I earnestly
   entreated the Lord to send a blessing and tried again and again to
   plead and urge with your consciences that you should be reconciled to
   God, and if I failed, I remembered that I should not be held
   responsible for not doing what I could not do, namely, turn hearts of
   stone to flesh and quicken dead sinners into life!

   Our responsibility is heavy enough without our exaggerating it! We are
   not men's sponsors and if they reject our Savior whom we faithfully
   preach, their blood must be upon their own heads. Our Lord did not
   always weep over Jerusalem--He sometimes rejoiced in spirit! No one
   thought must exclusively occupy our minds or we shall be good for
   nothing in practical life. We are not the keepers of other men's souls
   in a boundless sense--there is a limit to our responsibility and it is
   foolish to allow an excessive sensitiveness to burden us into
   semi-lunacy. There is, however, a sense in which we are our brother's
   keeper and of that I am now going to speak. You will bear my warning in
   mind and it will not weaken the force of what I say, but it will
   increase its weight, because you will feel that I have looked at the
   subject all round.

   II. So now, secondly, IN A HIGH DEGREE WE ARE, EACH ONE OF US, OUR
   BROTHER'S KEEPER. We

   ought to regard ourselves in that light and it is a Cainish spirit
   which prompts us to think otherwise and to wrap ourselves up in
   hardheartedness and say, "It is no concern of mine how others fare. Am
   I my brother's keeper?" Let us be far from that spirit! For, first,
   common feelings of humanity should lead every Christian man to feel an
   interest in the soul of every unsaved man. I say, "common humanity,"
   for we use the word, "humanity," to signify kindness.

   Such-and-such a man, we say, has no human feeling. I am not quite
   certain whether human feeling is always so humane as the words would
   seem to imply. Humanity over yonder, at any rate, in Russia and Turkey,
   does not seem to be a flower worth cultivating--but we might pray to be
   delivered from such humanity! The most horrible beast in those regions
   appears to be a man. Humanity in Bulgaria? God save us from such
   humanity!

   Yet I trust among us the expression may be used that common humanity
   leads us to desire the salvation of others. I am sure, my dear Friends,
   if you saw a man perishing for lack of bread, you would wish to share
   your crust with him. Will you let souls perish for lack of the Bread of
   Life without pitying and helping them? If we saw a poor wretch
   shivering in the winter's cold, we should be ready to divide our
   raiment that we might clothe him. Shall we see sinners without the Robe
   of Righteousness and not be anxious to speak to them of Him who can
   clothe them in fair white linen?

   When a person is in jeopardy through accident, we rush anywhere and use
   every exertion if by any means we may rescue him and yet this life is
   trivial compared with eternal life and for us to be indifferent when
   men are perishing--

   indifferent to the dreadful woes which come upon impenitent sinners
   throughout eternity--is to act as if all brotherly compassion had fled
   our bosoms! Christians, I charge you, even upon so base a motive as
   this--because you are men and men are all your brothers, born of the
   same stock and dwelling beneath the arched roof of the one eternal
   Father-- therefore care for the souls of others and be, each one of
   you, his brother's keeper!

   A second argument is drawn from the fact that we have, all of us,
   especially those of us who are Christians, the power to do good to
   others. We have not all the same ability, for we have not all the same
   gifts, or the same position, but as the little maid that waited on
   Naaman's wife had opportunity to tell of the Prophet who could heal her
   master, so there is not a young Christian here but what has some power
   to do good to others. Converted children can lisp the name of Jesus to
   their sires and bless them! We have all some capacity for doing good.
   Now, take it as an axiom that power to do good involves the duty of
   doing good. Wherever you are placed, if you can bless a man, you are
   bound to do it. To have the power and not to use it is a sin!

   In withholding your hand from that which you are able to do for the
   good of your fellow man you have broken the law of love. You do not
   need a special call to tell a sinner about Jesus. You need no special
   call to take a little child and tell it of the Savior's love. You need
   no revelation by angels from Heaven to tell you that what has benefited
   yourself will benefit your fellow men. All your knowledge, all your
   experience, all that you possess that Divine Grace has given you
   demands a return in the form of service rendered to others! The Jews
   were God's elect nation--elect to keep the oracles of God for all the
   nations--but they failed because they never cared for the bearing of
   those great Truths of God upon the Gentiles. They fancied that they had
   received them for their own special benefit. The selfish spirit so grew
   upon them that when God's Grace to the heathen was mentioned it made
   them mad with rage!

   And, you saved ones, you owe much to God--but do not think that you are
   saved only for your own special benefit. It is a great benefit to you,
   but Grace is bestowed upon you like light that you may give it to
   others who are in darkness! It is bestowed upon you as the bread that
   was given by our Lord to His disciples in the desert that they might
   break it among the multitude--that all might eat and be filled! Think
   about this--that the power to do good involves the responsibility to do
   it wherever that power exists--and so, as far as you have any ability,
   you are by that very fact constituted your brother's keeper.

   Another argument is very plainly drawn from our Lord's version of the
   Moral Law. What is the Second and great Commandment according to Him?
   "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Now, since we have loved
   ourselves so well that through God's Grace we have sought and found
   forgiveness of our sin, should we not love our neighbor so well as to
   desire him to know his sin and to seek forgiveness? It was right of us
   to secure our highest interests by laying hold upon eternal life--but
   if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, should we give ourselves
   any rest while multitudes are despising Christ and refusing salvation?
   No, Brothers and Sisters, we have never yet come up to the
   standard--but in proportion as we begin to love our neighbor as
   ourselves we shall certainly feel that God has made us in a measure to
   be our brother's keeper.

   And again, without looking to other men's souls we cannot keep the
   First of the two great Commandments in which our Lord has summarized
   the Moral Law. It runs thus--"You shall love the Lord your God with all
   your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with
   all your strength." But this we cannot possibly do unless we have a
   love towards our brother's soul, for well does the Apostle ask--"If a
   man loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he
   has not seen?" It is all very fine to stand up and sing about your love
   to God and let the missionary box go by while your eyes are gazing into
   Heaven--but if you do not care for the heathens' souls, how can you
   care for God? It is all very pretty to be enamored of Christ and to
   have a sweet experience, or to think you have, and yet poor wretches in
   London are dying without the knowledge of the Savior and you can let
   them die and let them sink into Hell without emotion.

   May God save us from such piety! It is very pretty to look at, like the
   gilt on the gingerbread in the old fairs, but there is no gold about it
   at all. A loveless religion is good for nothing! He who does not love
   his fellow man enough to desire his salvation and aim at it with all
   his might, gives no proof that he loves God at all! Think of these
   things and weigh my arguments with candor.

   Once more. To the Christian man, perhaps the most forcible reason will
   be that the whole example of Jesus Christ, whom we call Master and
   Lord, lies in the direction of our being the keeper of our brother, for
   what was Jesus' life but

   entire unselfishness? What was said of Him at His death but that, "He
   saved others: Himself He could not save"? The very fact that there is a
   Christ at all means that there was One who cared for others! That our
   Lord became a Man means that He loved His enemies and came here to
   rescue those who rebelled against His authority!

   If we are selfish--if we make our own going to Heaven to be the one end
   of life--we are not Christians! We may call whom we please, Master, but
   we are not following Jesus Christ! Do you shed tears? But do you weep
   over Jerusalem? Tears for yourselves are poor things if there are never
   any for others. You pray and agonize--but is your grief ever caused by
   bearing the burden of other men's souls? Are you like He with whose
   name Gethsemane must ever be connected in our memories? Oh, though we
   gave our bodies to be burned, yet if we have not love for mankind it
   profits us nothing! We may go a long way and apparently all the way in
   the externals of the Christian religion, but if the heart is never warm
   with a desire to benefit mankind, we are still aliens to the
   commonwealth of which Jesus is the great Head. I am sure it is so! I
   speak not my own mind, but the mind of Christ. If He were here, what
   would He say to anyone who called himself His disciple and yet never
   lifted his hand or moved his tongue to snatch the firebrand from the
   flame or save the sinner from the error of his ways? It must be so,
   then--we must be our brothers' keepers.

   Let the next thought rise in our minds that we are certainly ordained
   to the office of brother-keeper because we shall be called to account
   about it. Cain was called to account. "Where is Abel your brother?" I
   would to God, dear Friends, and especially you, the young men of the
   College, who asked me to speak about missions, tonight, that you could
   now hear the Lord speaking to you and saying, "Where is Abel your
   brother?" Take first those who are united to us by the ties of the
   flesh, who come under the term, "brothers," because they are born of
   the same parents, or are near of kin. Where is John? Where is Thomas?
   Where is Henry, your brother? Unsaved? Without God? What have you ever
   done for him? How much have you prayed for him? How often have you
   spoken to him seriously about his state? What means have you used for
   his instruction, persuasion, conviction?

   Dear Sisters, I must not let you off. Where is your brother? You
   sisters have very great power over brothers--more power than brothers
   have. Where, dear Mother--let me put the question very tenderly to
   you--where is your child, your son, your daughter? Not all that you
   could wish, you say? But can you say, if your dear child were to
   perish, that you are clear of his blood? Father, the boy grieves
   you--are you quite clear that you did not help to sow in him the sins
   which are now your trial? Come, have you done all that could be done?
   If, in a week's time, you had to follow in mournful procession, your
   son's body to the grave, are you quite clear? Quite clear? Relatives, I
   put you all together-- are you quite clear of the blood of relatives?
   The day will come when the question will have to be put very plainly,
   "Where is Abel your brother?"

   You cannot help it, I know, that such a one lives in sin and has become
   an unbeliever or a scoundrel. You cannot absolutely help it, but still,
   have you done all that you could have done towards the preventing of
   the sin by leading that soul into the way of life and peace? I pause
   for a moment to let that solemn enquiry go home to everyone. The
   proverb says, "Charity must begin at home," and certainly Christian
   love ought to begin there. Are our own houses swept? Our own children,
   servants, brothers and sisters--have we as much as lies in us sought to
   win them to Christ? For my part, I abhor the spirit which takes a
   Christian mother from her children to be doing good everywhere except
   at home! I dread the zeal of those who can run to many services but
   whose households are not cared for--yet sometimes such is the case.

   I have known people very interested in the seven trumpets and the seven
   seals who have not been quite so particular about the seven dear
   children that God has entrusted to them! Leave somebody else to open up
   the Revelation and look to your own boys! Mind where they are in the
   evenings! And see to your girls, that they know, at least, the Gospel,
   for, indeed, there are some households where there is ignorance of the
   plan of salvation, albeit that the parents are professedly Christians!
   Such things ought not to be! Where is Abel your brother? Your son?
   Where is your daughter, your sister, your father, your cousin? See to
   this, that you begin at once, earnestly seeking the salvation of
   relatives!

   But, Beloved, we must never end there, because brotherhood extends to
   all ranks, races and conditions. And according to each man's ability,
   he will be held responsible about the souls of others whom he never
   saw. Where is Abel your brother? Down in a back street in London? He is
   just going into the public house. He is half drunk already! Have you
   done anything, Friend, towards the reclaiming of the drunk? Where is
   your sister? Your sister who frequents the midnight streets? You shrink
   back and say, "She is no sister of mine!" Yes, but God may require her
   blood at your hands if you leave her to perish! Have you ever done
   anything towards reclaiming her? She has a tender heart despite her
   sin.

   Alas, many a Christian woman, many a Christian man who comes across the
   path of such will draw themselves up with a kind of Phariseeism, shake
   the dust off their feet and feel as if they were contaminated by their
   very presence!

   Yet Christians ought to love the erring and the sinful--and if we do
   not, we shall be called to account for it. If we have an opportunity of
   doing good, even to the vilest, and do not use it, we shall not be
   guiltless! Some of you who get rich in London go and live out in the
   suburbs and I cannot blame you. Why should you not? But if you leave
   the heart of London, where the working people are without any means of
   Divine Grace--if you are content to hear the Gospel yourselves and
   withdraw your wealth from struggling Churches among the poor, God will
   one day say to you, "Where is Abel your brother?"

   City merchant, where are the poor men that earned your wealth? Where
   are they who, after all, were the bone and sinew that made you
   rich--from whom you fled as though they were struck with the plague and
   whom you left to die in utter ignorance? Oh, see to this, you rich men,
   you persons in responsible positions--lest the blood of the poor of
   London be demanded of your souls at the great Day of Account! Yes, but
   London is not everywhere, nor is this little isle of England
   everything. Look, if you can, across sea and land to India where your
   fellow subjects live and, alas, die at this hour of famine. The day
   will come when God will say to English Christians, "Where is the Hindu,
   your brother? Where is the Brahmin your brother? Where is the Soodra
   your brother?"

   And what answer will be given by the men who ought to be there and have
   the ability to be there? What answer will be given by rich men who
   ought to help to send missionaries there, but suffer the millions to
   perish without a knowledge of Christ, not lifting their hand to help?
   And further still lies China! That does not bear thinking of, with its
   teeming millions--millions who have never even heard the sound of
   Jesus' name! Their destiny we leave with God, but still, we know that
   to be ignorant of God and of His Christ is a frightful thing--and every
   man who has light, unless his duty lies at home, should gird up his
   loins and say in God's name--"I will not have the blood of India
   streaming down my gory clothes, nor the blood of China pouring a curse
   upon my head." The Lord grant to all Christians to see their relation
   to mankind and to act a brother's part to all races!

   One thing more upon this calling to account. The more needy, the more
   destitute people are, the greater is their claim upon us, for,
   according to the Account Book--need I turn to the chapter? I think you
   remember it--they are the persons for whom we shall have mainly to give
   an account--"I was hungry and you gave Me no meat. I was thirsty and
   you gave Me no drink. I was sick and in prison and you visited Me not;
   naked and you clothed Me not." These objects of charity were the most
   destitute and poor of all--and the great question at the Last Day is
   about what was done for them! So if there is a nation more ignorant
   than another, our call is there first. And if there is a people more
   sunken and degraded than others, it is concerning them that we shall
   have to give a special account!

   Now, I close this second head about our really being our brother's
   keeper by saying this--there are some of us who are our brother's
   keeper voluntarily, but yet most solemnly, by the office that we hold.
   We are ministers. O brother ministers, we are our brother's keepers!
   "If the watchman warns them not, they shall perish." That is an awful
   sentence to me--"They shall perish." The next is not so awful,
   sometimes, to my heart, but it is very dreadful--"But their blood will
   I require at the watchman's hands." You cannot enter the Christian
   ministry without standing where you will need almighty Grace to keep
   you clear of the blood of souls! Yes, and you Sunday school teachers,
   when you undertake to teach that class of children, you enter under the
   most solemn responsibilities!

   I may add that all of you who name the name of Jesus, by that very
   fact, come into your measure of responsibility, for Christ has said,
   not of ministers, nor of Sunday school teachers only, but of all, "You
   are the light of the world." If you give no light what shall be said of
   you? "You are the salt of the earth." If there is no savor in you what
   will become of you but to be cast out and trod under foot of men?

   III. My time quite fails me. I need much more, but if I leave those
   thoughts with you I shall be well content. However, I must occupy a
   little longer space while I speak on the third head, namely, that IT
   WILL BE HIGH PRESUMPTION

   ON OUR PART IF, FROM THIS NIGHT FORWARD, WE SHIRK THE DUTY OF BEING OUR
   BROTHER'S

   KEEPER. I will set it very briefly in a strong light. It will be
   denying the right of God to make a Law and to call upon us to obey it
   if we refuse to do as we are told. God has so organized society that
   every man receiving light is bound to spread it--and if you decline the
   blessed service you will practically deny the right of God to require
   such service of you! You will be judging your Judge and lording it over
   your God. High treason lies in that!

   Notice, next, that you will be denying all claims on your part to
   Divine Mercy because if you will not render mercy to others, and if you
   altogether deny your responsibility to others, you put yourself into
   the position of saying, "I need nothing from another"--consequently,
   nothing from God! Such mercy as you show, such mercy shall you have.
   The question is not what will become of the heathen if you do not teach
   them--the great question is what will become of you if you do not do
   it? If you let sinners die, what will become of you? That is the point.
   You put yourself out of the reach of mercy because you refuse to render
   it. When you bow your knee in prayer you curse yourself, for you ask
   God to forgive your debts as you forgive your debtors and, in effect,
   you ask Him to deal with you as you are dealing with others. What
   mercy, then, can you expect?

   Indeed, there is this about it, too--that your act is something like
   throwing the blame of your own sin upon God if you leave men to perish.
   When Cain said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He meant, probably, "You
   are the Preserver of men. Why did You not preserve Abel? I am not his
   keeper." Some throw on the Sovereignty of God the weight which lies on
   their own indolence! If one soul perishes without being taught the
   Gospel, you cannot fling the weight of that fact upon Divine
   Sovereignty until the Christian Church has done her utmost to make the
   Gospel known! If we had all done all that could be done--I mean all of
   us who are Believers--and yet souls perished, the blame would lie with
   men themselves. But where we fall short--to that degree we are our
   brother's keeper--and we must not accuse the Lord.

   And again, there is, to my mind, an utter ignoring of the whole plan of
   salvation in that man who says, "I am not going to have any
   responsibility about others," because the whole plan of salvation is
   based on substitution--on the care of Another for us--on the Sacrifice
   of Another for us. And the whole spirit of it is self-sacrifice and
   love to others. If you say, "I will not love"--well, the whole system
   goes together and you renounce it all if you will not love--you cannot
   have love's benediction. If you will not love, you cannot be saved by
   love. And if you fancy that the Christian faith leaves you unloving and
   selfish and yet takes you to Heaven, you have made a grievous mistake!
   There is no such religion propagated by the Word of God, for the
   religion of Jesus teaches that since Christ has so loved us we are,
   therefore, to love one another and to love the ungodly so as to
   endeavor to bring them to the feet of the Savior. God grant that these
   words may have a salutary effect by the Spirit of God applying them to
   your souls!

   Last of all, it may turn out--it may turn out--that if we are not our
   brother's keeper we may be our brother's murderer! Have any of us been
   so already? When were you converted? Will you kindly look back to your
   sins before conversion? He must be a very happy man who did not, before
   conversion, commit sins which injured others! But there are some
   persons whose lives, before they turned to Christ, were frightfully
   blended with the careers of others whom they have left to perish in the
   gall of bitterness! I have seen bitter tears shed by men who lived evil
   lives, when they have remembered others with whom they sinned. "I am
   forgiven. I am saved," one has said to me. "But what about that poor
   girl? Ah me! Ah me!"

   One man had been an infidel and he led others into infidelity. He has
   been saved, himself, but he cannot bring those back, again, whom he
   tutored in atheism. Before conversion you may have committed many a
   soul-murder. Ought not this to stir you up to seek now, if possible, as
   much as lies in you, to bring those to Christ whom once you led away
   and to teach the Living Word since once you taught the deadly word
   which ruined souls? Much solemn thought ought to arise out of this.
   Pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to work by you to the salvation
   of those whom your evil influence drew towards the Pit.

   But what shall be said of our conduct since we have been converted? May
   we not have helped to murder souls since then? I tell you a
   cold-hearted Christian makes worldlings think that Christianity is a
   lie. Inconsistent Christians--and there are such--woe, woe that it
   should be so! Bad-tempered, covetous, cross-grained, sardonic, snarling
   persons who we hope may be the Lord's people--what shall we say of
   these? How little they are like their Master! They are the propagators
   of death! I believe that nobody is more mischievous than a professor
   who is barely a Christian, or almost a Christian and continually shows
   his bad side to the world while yet he boasts of his piety! He disgusts
   the world with the name of Jesus!

   Perhaps some of you have backslidden since your conversion and you have
   committed acts which have made the enemy to blaspheme the name of
   Christ. I charge you, by the love of God, repent of this iniquity! Look
   at what you have done! Look at how you have led others astray! Oh see
   to it at once! You know that when David had sinned with Bathsheba he
   repented and was forgiven, but he could never make poor murdered Uriah
   live again. He was dead. You

   may have gone astray and damaged a soul eternally--you cannot undo the
   deed. Still, if you cannot revive the slain, you can mourn over the
   crime! Awake, arise, you sluggish Christians, and ask the Holy Spirit
   to help you to be, from now on, your brother's keepers to the utmost of
   your power!

   And do you not think that we may have been seriously injurious to
   others by denying them the Gospel? If you want to murder a man, you
   need not stab him--starve him! If you want to destroy a man, you need
   not teach him to drink or swear--keep back the Gospel from him! Be in
   his company and never say a word for Christ! Be where you ought to
   speak and be sinfully silent and who knows how much blood will be laid
   to your door? Do you not think that to deny a cup of cold water to a
   man and let him die of thirst is murder? To deny the Gospel--to have no
   word to say for Jesus--is not this soul-murder? God accounts it so.
   "Well," some say, "I could not speak or preach." No, but do you pray
   for the conversion of others? Some people also have money entrusted to
   them--they cannot go to India or China, which I have been speaking of,
   but many other men are ready to go--and they ought to assist in sending
   them!

   I have men in the College ready to go, but I have no power to send
   them! The Missionary Society is in debt. They cannot send out all they
   would like to and yet here are people in England with thousands of
   pounds that they will never need! And yet the heathen may die and be
   lost before they will part with their gold! Is there no crime in all
   this? Does not the voice of your brother's blood cry unto God from the
   ground? I believe it does. You are not to do what you cannot do, but
   what you can do. And surely there cannot be any question about such a
   matter as this! If you were once to see persons in peril--if you stood
   on the beach and saw a good ship breaking up--if you were able to hold
   an oar you would want to be in the lifeboat.

   There is not a woman among you but would be willing to spare her
   husband for such a task, or lend her own hand to push the boat down
   over the shingle till it was launched upon the wave. For life--for the
   precious life of our fellow men--we would do anything! But if we
   believe, as we do, that there is a world to come and a terrible
   Hell--and that there is no way of salvation except by Jesus Christ--we
   ought to feel tenfold more for the rescue of the souls of men from the
   wrath to come!

   If some shall be stirred by these words, my heart will greatly rejoice.
   But if you are awakened, do not promise to make an effort in your own
   strength--pray to God about it. Commit yourself to God and ask the
   Divine Spirit to lead you into ways of usefulness, that before you go
   from here you may have brought some souls to Jesus. And to His name
   shall be the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

With the King for His Work!

   (No. 1400)

   DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 1, 1877,

   BY C.H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges:
   there they dwelt with the king for his work." 1 Chronicles 4:23.

   (A slogan for Sunday school teachers).

   ALL labor is honorable. No man ever needs to be ashamed of an honest
   calling. Whether a potter or a gardener, or whatever else his
   occupation may be, the workman need never blush at the craft or toil by
   which he earns his honest wage. "In the sweat of your face shall you
   eat bread," belongs to us all. The sluggard may well be ashamed of his
   sloth, but not the diligent man of his industry. It is quite certain
   that the Word of God does not disparage the most humble calling. I
   suppose that there is scarcely a trade or occupation which is not
   mentioned in sacred Scripture. The rough hand and the rugged face of
   the peasant are to be preferred before the dainty finger and the sleek
   form of the Pharisee.

   And the election of Divine Grace has comprised men of all
   sorts--herdsman and fisherman, brick maker and tent maker--those who
   plowed the soil and those who plowed the sea. From all ranks and
   classes and conditions of men God has been pleased to call forth His
   own and He has loved them, none the less, because they have had to soil
   their hands with potter's clay, or bend their backs to till the field.
   Wretched is the clown who sits in the shade while his comrades work in
   the sun! There is an honor, then, and a dignity, too, in humble honest
   toil. The Bible itself does not disdain to record the humble
   craftsman's name.

   To serve a king always was and still is deemed a thing to be desired.
   Those who do such duties claim some deference from their fellows. Work
   done well, however common, is accounted worthy of its wage, but work
   done for royalty generally has some special attraction to commend it.
   Such a man is privileged by appointment to be purveyor of this or that
   to Her Majesty, the Queen, and he takes good care to let us know it. It
   is published in his shop window. It is painted over his door. It is
   printed on his cards. It is pointed out on his invoices--he is, "By
   appointment to the Queen." Royalty seems to dignify him.

   But, Beloved, there is a King whom it is a real honor to serve--an
   honor which angels appreciate--which archangels delight in! That King
   is the King of kings and of Him we shall speak tonight--and of His
   service. Earthly kings have many servants and so has the King Eternal.
   I trust that many of us count it to be the very joy of our life that we
   call Jesus Christ our Lord and Master and that, to us, it is the
   highest pleasure to serve Him--to render to Him all that our strength
   can possibly yield because we feel that we are debtors to Him and are
   bound, from here on, in bonds of love to His Divine service forever and
   for evermore!

   Looking at my text, I see three or four observations springing from it.

   I. The first is this. Since we have mention, here, of potters and those
   that dwelt among the plants and hedges with the king for his work, we
   infer that OUR KING HAS MANY KINDS OF SERVANTS. Other kings have
   servants of different sorts and it would be the extreme of folly if one
   royal servant should say to another, "You are a nobody. You are of no
   use because you cannot perform the offices which I am called to
   discharge." No brother must exult over his neighbor. He that is
   appointed to one office must fill it and he ought to sympathize with
   the friend who fulfils any other office, but he should never exalt
   himself above him. The king has many kinds of servants.

   Look at any one of our kings and you find that they have soldiers.
   Until the halcyon days of peace shall arrive--may God speedily send
   them--I suppose there will always be standing armies and regiments of
   soldiers. Certainly, our great King, the King of kings, has many
   soldiers! It is their duty to contend earnestly for the faith once
   delivered to the saints. They have to put on the panoply of God and to
   contend, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
   against

   powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world--and against
   spiritual wickedness in high places! Full often they have to draw the
   sharp sword of controversy against doctrinal errors which might come in
   to destroy the city of our

   God.

   Do not find fault with the Christian because he has soldierly
   qualities. There has been no time since Christ went to Heaven in which
   soldiers of Christ were not needed. Until the last enemy shall have
   laid down his weapons and infidelity and superstition shall be chased
   out of the world, we shall need these fighting men, who, with sword and
   shield, go forth to the conflict. They are your Master's servants. Pray
   for them. But a king has his watchmen, too, who do not go forth to
   fight, but stay at home and move about the city, especially by night.
   And do you know, I think the Lord's watchmen are mostly found among the
   sick. During the day, I suppose, there is little fear lest the incense
   of prayer should cease to rise up to the Throne of Heaven. But were we
   all in good health we might be all asleep and no prayer might be
   ascending.

   From this island, at a certain hour of the night, if all were locked in
   slumber, there would be no petitions going up! And so it seems to me
   that as a part of heavenly ordinance, that every hour shall be
   sanctified by prayer--as well the dead of night as the blaze of
   noon--so He keeps some of His watchmen awake. They must pray. Their
   pains, their sleeplessness, keep them devout. They lift up their hearts
   to the Most High. And so with a blessed cordon of prayer the night
   watches are surrounded and the Lord keeps His flock safe from the wolf.
   I like to think of those who cannot come out to the assembly and cannot
   take part in any of the active exercises of evangelism, can, on their
   beds, keep watch for the Lord. "You that make mention of the Lord keep
   not silence and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes
   Jerusalem a praise in the earth." These are His remembrancers--these
   consumptives, these sick folk--who in the gloomy hours of night keep
   awake and pour out their heart like water before the Lord!

   Now, let not the soldier despise her that tarries at home, for she
   divides the spoil. Let not Barak exult over feeble Jael who keeps the
   tent, for it may be that her prayer shall drive the nail through the
   adversary's brow and it shall not fall to Barak to be honored, but unto
   the humble stay-at-home. Oh, watch, you watchers! Plead much, you
   intercessors! You are the Lord's servants! Active and passive duties
   are, alike, valuable, and God accepts them! Let no one, therefore,
   exalt over another.

   There are some of my Master's servants that are His heralds. You know
   that great kings have their trumpeters to go and proclaim for them.
   This is an honorable office and one to which I trust many a young man
   here will aspire--to be a herald of the Cross to publish salvation. Get
   up to the high mountains and lift up your voice! Lift them up. Lift
   them up with strength. Say unto the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"
   And in every court there are scribes as well as heralds-- the king's
   registrars that have to keep the chronicles and the records. So our
   great King has His scribes--the men of Isachar that can handle the
   pen--they whose hearts indite the good matter, for they speak of the
   things which they have made touching the king as the pen moves across
   the page.

   Well, whether it is by the spoken utterance of the tongue, or by the
   silent but vigorous expression of facts, thoughts and feelings--we must
   be equally grateful for every opportunity to do anything for Jesus! And
   instead of beginning to question, "Which is the more valuable?" let
   each one seek to make his own department of the Master's service as
   complete and efficient as he can. Our King, too, has His musicians, as
   other monarchs have, who play before them to make a goodly sound upon
   an instrument. And I delight in those of my Master's servants who can
   dedicate musical talents to Him and give us, first of all, the sweet
   poetry with which we adore Him in Psalm and song. And after that the
   sweet tunes which help us with united voice to magnify the Lord.

   Then there are sweet voices which help us of gruffer note in some way
   to keep harmony and so together to praise God. God be thanked for the
   Brothers and Sisters who have voices of melody! Let them consecrate it
   to their Lord and train it and use it always with discretion, not
   perhaps too loudly, and yet sometimes not too softly, either. Still, in
   a king's house they do not all sing. They cannot. There are some that
   make no melody. Servants are there in the royal palace that make no
   music unless it is with the brush and the broom, or whose music
   consists of the motion of their willing feet as they wait at the table,
   or as they go from chamber to chamber upon the royal errand.

   Now, let not those who can sing His praises exalt themselves above
   those who can only perform the lowest service for the Lord. And let not
   those who are performing the real service of life think that there is
   something about their labor that is more acceptable than the singing of
   Jehovah's praise, for it is not so. Each one in his own order, all
   acting with

   the right motive, all helping to take their part in the right
   spirit--all shall be equally acceptable with God through Jesus Christ
   our Lord.

   Here is a great variety of servants. I cannot stop to go through them
   all, but you see the text mentions some of them called potters. I do
   not know but they may supply a very good example for Sunday school
   teachers. Let them not be ashamed of the metaphor, for I cheerfully put
   myself with them, as I hope the minister may have some claim to be
   classed among the King's potters. What do the potters do but take the
   clay while it is yet pliable and soft--and put it on the wheel and make
   the wheel revolve--and then with thumb and finger fashion the clay as
   it revolves before them, to make a vessel fit for royal use? Well, dear
   Sunday school teachers, if ever at any time the human mind is pliable,
   it is while a child is young! We would, all of us, find it hard to
   learn who never had studious habits till we reached the age of 30 years
   or upward!

   Many a man is willing enough to be a student, but he has not the
   faculty for it. His skull has become set and hard and tight--and he
   cannot make his brain work as he could have done if he had begun
   earlier! But with the younger folk--oh what an opportunity there is to
   do a world with them! We cannot fashion them unless the hand of the
   Lord is with our hands--unless God makes their hearts soft--unless He
   puts them on the wheel for us! But if He does that, oh how a mother's
   hands can mold her boy! How a teacher's heart can mold the boy or girl
   committed to him or her and how throughout life the men and women of
   the future will bear about them the marks of the teachers of today! You
   are the King's potters! May He help you to do the work aright.

   And then there is another class of workers mentioned, and those, I
   think, are like Sunday school teachers, too-- those that dwell among
   plants and hedges. These were the king's gardeners. They dwelt in
   sheltered places--in enclosures that were protected by hedges to keep
   off the wind and so retain the heat. They lived in pleasant retreats
   where rare plants could grow. Now this is just what the Sunday school
   teacher should be. He tries to get the plants out from the wild waste
   and bring them into the--

   "Garden walled around, Chosen and made peculiar ground. The little spot
   enclosed by Grace, Out of the world's wide wilderness." He knows the
   Church is the garden of the Lord and he longs to plant many little
   slips in it. And I bless God that there are some teachers that my eyes
   rest upon who have planted many little slips that have been growing
   well. I thanked God when I saw them first take root! I bless the Lord
   when it is my business to water them as it is mine, now, and still that
   of their teachers. And I hope it will be the business of the teacher
   and the pastor, too, to gather much fruit from these little plants that
   we dwell among, that we plant, that we water and we tend.

   Dear Friends, if you are engaged in this service, it is a right
   honorable one. The first man was a gardener and the Second Man--the
   Lord from Heaven--was supposed to be a gardener and the supposition was
   not untrue, for never was there such a garden as He planted! It is He
   who makes the wilderness to rejoice and blossom as the rose. Because of
   His own excellency and because of the plants that He has nurtured, the
   Church is a garden of unparalleled renown! Thus there are many servants
   of our great Master and I will only say this much more concerning
   them--how blessed it is to be included in the number! Oh, one does not
   mind what department he takes so long as he may but serve Christ! I
   have often prayed by myself a prayer like this--"Lord make me the
   doormat of the Church. Let everybody wipe his boots upon me. Let me
   bear the mud and the mire so long as my Master's temple may be kept
   clean by me."

   And I think any Christian man will wish to take the lowest and most
   menial place so that he may be accounted of by our Lord as among "His
   servants who serve Him." The dishwashers in Christ's kitchen are more
   honorable than the counselors of an imperial court! They that have to
   do the worst and blackest work, if such there is to be done for the
   great Master, have a higher esteem in the judgment of perfect spirits
   than those that rule empires, conduct armies, but know not the fear of
   God!

   II. I proceed to our second observation--ALL WHO LIVE WITH OUR KING
   MUST WORK. Read the text.

   "There were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges:
   there they dwelt with the king for his work." They did not live on the
   king's bounty and dwell on the king's country estates to do
   nothing--they dwelt there for his work. I do not know whether all that
   call my Master, "Lord," have caught this idea. I have thought that some
   of our

   Church members imagine that the cause of Christ was a coach and that
   they were to ride in it--and that they would prefer the box seat--or
   else a very comfortable seat in the center.

   Nor do they wish to be crowded by too many fellow travelers--they do
   not like to be pressed for room even in the pews--they would rather sit
   at ease, solace themselves with their own dignity and ride to Heaven in
   a quiet, respectable, comfortable sort of way. In fact, it would appear
   to me as if some of our friends imagined that when a man becomes a
   Believer he may repose on a silken couch and be carried to Glory in a
   palanquin, never needing to do anything afterwards, but simply to dream
   himself into everlasting happiness! They get a nice creed that drugs
   their conscience. They settle down in some snug corner where they defy
   anybody to disturb their security. They select a sound minister who
   runs on one line that he never leaves. They listen sometimes, not often
   too earnestly, to the plan and promises of the Gospel and when they
   have listened they say they are fed.

   And if they ask about a minister, the question is, "Are you fed?" When
   it has got as far as the feeding their interest is exhausted. With the
   work of faith and the labor of love they never meddle. But let me
   assure you, as a matter of fact, that they that live with our King must
   work! They do not work that they may live with Him, but they work
   because they live with Him. Because His Grace has admitted them into
   His courts, therefore from that time they begin to work with all
   diligence. And why is this? What motive prompts them? Well, first,
   because He works. Jesus said, "My Father works to this day and I work."
   The most wonderful Worker in the universe is God Himself--and His dear
   Son, when He was here--never had an idle hour. "He went about doing
   good."

   He began life as a carpenter and, I do not doubt, worked hard at it.
   Then as a Savior He surveyed on the outset His great charge, "to
   fulfill all righteousness." With untiring zeal He pursued His arduous
   mission to the end and He finished His work. Until He said, "It is
   finished," He did not relax His ardor or lay down His toil. Brothers
   and Sisters, we cannot dwell with the great working God and yet be
   sluggards! He will not put up with it! He will not have communion with
   us unless we are agreed with Him. "How can two walk together unless
   they are agreed?" Are you an active-minded person and have you had a
   servant that you could not stir or hasten or make her move with
   agility? Or have you had a workman who took one step today and another
   tomorrow?

   Why, it gives you the fidgets! It makes your flesh creep! You do not
   know what to do. You cannot bear it. You take hold of the broom, or
   whatever else he is pretending to handle, and start using it--for you
   would sooner do the work yourself! Your patience is exhausted. Now, a
   glorious and active-minded God will not walk with sluggards! He cannot
   endure them. If you are to dwell with God you must be His servant. You
   must have something to do in His name. In whatever occupation it may
   be, you must lay yourself out, for His Glory is essential and
   imperative.

   The next reason why those that dwell with Him must work is that His
   company always inspires us with the desire to do something for Him. You
   never spent a happy hour alone in private prayer holding privileged
   communion with God when you did not feel constrained to say, "Lord,
   show me what You would have me do." You never enjoyed full assurance of
   faith without the question coming to you, "What shall I render to the
   Lord for all His benefits to me?" You cannot look at Him, bleeding on
   the Cross, pouring out His soul unto death for us, without feeling that
   the couch of inglorious ease would ill befit a faithful disciple's
   favored fellowship with Him. You crave that your hands should find
   something to do and that your tongue should have something to say. You
   yearn for some opportunity of sounding forth His dear praises!

   You may go where you will if you want to be idle, but you cannot go to
   the Cross and come away a sluggard. The nails of it prick us into
   sacred industry. They are the spurs of Christian duty. The agonies of
   our self-sacrificing Lord inspire us with such ardor that we feel we
   must serve Him and take it as a favor, not as a tax. It is a delight
   rather than a duty to lay ourselves out for Him! When you get into
   Christ's courts, there is so much to do that you cannot help doing
   something! If you are a member of an active Church, you find yourself
   called upon this way and that way to spend and to be spent for Christ.
   In such a hive, drones are despicable! If you live where there are
   young converts, where there are tried Believers, where there are
   backsliders, where there are hopeful penitents--as these come under
   your notice you perceive that your Master's house is full of
   service--you cannot refrain from taking some share in it and taking it
   eagerly, anxiously and cheerfully.

   No, a true Christian cannot stroll outside his Master's house without
   feeling calls to service! Can you walk these streets and have your ears
   assailed, as I grieve to say you must, with the filthiest language from
   working men--who

   seem, to my mind, to have become more coarse in their talk the last 10
   years than they used to be--can you, I ask, go down a street and have
   your blood curdle at the frequent oaths without feeling that you must
   be up and doing? Can you see these streets swarming with children and
   not come forward to help the Sunday school? Can you watch the
   multitudes of boys and girls streaming out of the Board School and not
   say to yourself "What is done with these on the Lord's Day? Others must
   be hard at work with them, why am I not doing something?"

   Everywhere, on all hands, work is suggested and especially by the
   activity of our adversaries. See how they compass sea and land to make
   one proselyte! See how the devil incessantly goes about seeking whom he
   may devour! He appears to have lost his eyelids! He never sleeps! He is
   intent upon devouring the souls of men and all the incidents and
   accidents we meet with say to us, "Are you Christians? Then bestir
   yourselves! Are you the King's servants? Then be up and doing, for
   there are thousands of things that must be done at once, if done at
   all, without waiting to discuss the best way of doing them." At any
   rate, of this thing you may be quite certain--the professor of true
   religion who is negligent in his Lord's service must and will lose the
   comforts of his Lord's Presence.

   I speak not, of course, of those who are sick, infirm, or helpless--for
   as I have already explained--by their patience and resignation and
   intercession they are exercising a very important part of the work of
   the Lord's Kingdom. But I speak of those of you who might be actively
   engaged and I regard it as a rule without exception that sluggish
   Christians become uncomfortable. When you meet with a Brother or Sister
   in Christ who is always grievous, complaining of doubts and fears,
   sighing and groaning, crying and moaning over an experience that
   puzzles, rather than profits, you need not ask many questions, for you
   may safely interpret all the symptoms. That person does not teach in
   the Sunday school. That person does not go out preaching in the
   villages. That person is very likely doing nothing!

   An earnest worker may be occasionally beset with temptations, but he
   will not be perpetually bewildered with these throes of anxiety. If
   that is the regular, habitual condition of the man, it looks as if he
   had a need of something to do. There are many flies, moths, spiders and
   cobwebs in the chambers of the lazy! Surely they would be brushed away
   if there were more activity for Christ. I think any minister will tell
   you it is the people who do nothing, themselves, in a Church that find
   fault with those who do the work. With great discernment they can
   always discover flaws in the policy and practice of the earnest
   Brothers and Sisters who take the pains and do the drudge of office.
   Bless their hearts, why do they not do it better themselves? No, not
   they! They seem to think that their department in the sacred household
   is to find fault with their Master's servants.

   Now 1 have looked all over His house, for I have been in it for years,
   occupying an official position. I have pried over my Master's books and
   I have been into His record office, but do you know I have not found
   anywhere that He has ever issued appointments to any ladies or
   gentlemen to be the supervisors and censurers of His servants? I
   believe they act without commission and that they will probably go
   without any wages. Or if all service rendered meets with an equitable
   retribution and the wages of sin is death--their carping will bring
   them no comfort and their reviling will be requited with bitter
   remorse. O Brothers and Sisters, there is no excuse for your culpable
   inactivity! Christ walks at a quick pace. If you want to walk with Him
   you must not loiter! He is no friend to the sluggard!

   I cannot always tell you where fellowship with Him may be found, but I
   can tell you where it can never be enjoyed. He is not where idlers
   lounge and congregate to gossip with gibe and jeer, with slur and
   sneer, railing at the very men whose conduct proves their conscience so
   pure that they would blight their own interests to bless the Lord's
   cause. He is with His people who are diligently devoted to His service
   and seek Him for strength to do that service well. Those that live with
   our King must work.

   III. Now, thirdly, THOSE THAT WORK FOR OUR KING OUGHT TO LIVE WITH HIM.
   That is the other side of the coin, for these potters and these
   gardeners dwelt with the king for his work. I offer to the Sunday
   school teachers of the south side of London a slogan which may last
   them for life--"With the King for His work!" Put that up, now, over
   your mantelpieces. "With the King for His work!" Work, by all means,
   because you are with the King! But get with the King, by all means,
   because you want to do His work!

   Oh, how important it is that every good servant of our heavenly Master
   should be with Him! Why? Do you ask me, why? Because you cannot know
   His will if you do not live with Him! He that lives with Christ gets
   his orders every day and oftentimes from moment to moment! He gets
   guidance from his great Lord's eyes. He says, "You shall guide me with
   Your eyes." You know how a servant in the house watches her mistress.
   The mistress does not always need to speak.

   Perhaps it is at a dinner. There is a number of guests. She does not
   keep calling, "Mary," and instructing her in measured sentences to
   attend to the various requirements, but by a simple movement of her
   head, or a quiet glance of her eyes, Mary can understand all her
   mistress wishes.

   Now, those who live with Jesus Christ have a sort of secret alphabet
   between themselves and Him. Oftentimes when a Christian man does the
   right thing, you read as a story, or as an anecdote that enlivens a
   book, how strangely wise he was--how he dropped the right word at the
   fitting moment--how he had a knack of giving the right answer to one
   who wrongly assailed him. Do you know why he had that knack? He lived
   with his Master, so he knew what you knew not! He knew the meaning of
   his Master's eyes and it guided him! Oh, I believe if Sunday school
   teachers and ministers live with their Lord they will be made wise to
   win souls! Oftentimes things they never thought of saying, they will
   say exactly at the right time to the right persons--and so surprising
   will it be to the persons addressed that they will almost think that
   you must have been told about them! Keep close to your Master and then
   you will know your Master's will.

   Why should workers live with the Lord but that they may gather
   strength? Every hour of communion with Christ is an hour of increased
   vigor. In the old fable, when Hercules fought with the giant, he could
   not kill him. He flung him down with all his might and Hercules could
   fling a fellow about. He thought he had dashed him to pieces, but every
   time he got up, he was stronger than before! So down he flung him
   again. "Surely," he thought, "if I have destroyed the hydra and the
   lion, I can kill this man--this giant." But up the giant sprang again
   because the old fable said that the earth was his mother--and every
   time that he fell, he touched his mother and got new life from her.

   So every time a Christian falls on his knees and draws near to his God,
   he gets a touch of his great Father and he gets new strength! When the
   devil throws a Christian to his knees--throws him down with such force,
   too, that he thinks, "I will crush him," he gets up again and is
   stronger than the devil! Over he goes again. He trips him up, flings
   him down, but every time the Christian falls to praying, he rises from
   before the Mercy Seat like a giant against the foe! Oh, then, dwell
   near the Lord, for that is the source of your strength as well as your
   knowledge! Why should workers dwell with the King? Surely it is to keep
   up their enthusiasm! Humanly speaking, the very soul of Christianity is
   enthusiasm. Cold religion--well, there are some cold things that give
   one a chill to think of. Cold religion? It is the most ghastly
   spectacle on which a pure and fervent heart can look! Cold religion?
   Ugh! It is nauseous!

   There is only one thing worse and that is a cool, listless profession,
   for Jesus Christ tells us that the lukewarm made Him outright sick. To
   the Laodicean said the faithful and true Witness, "I would you were
   cold or hot." "So then because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor
   hot, I will spit you out of My mouth." Let your faith be at furnace
   heat! Religion cannot long be lukewarm--it will either die out or it
   will kindle and set you all on fire. If it consume a man, then it only
   reaches the heat at which Jesus Christ lived. Somebody has very
   properly said, "Blood heat is the healthy heat for a Christian's soul."
   So it is. But what is the blood heat? The heat of our great atoning
   Sacrifice--the blood heat of our blessed Redeemer when He sweat great
   drops of blood and gave Himself for us! Would God we were filled with
   such flaming zeal. But ah, you never can attain unto it unless you live
   with Him! The world is cold and ice-bound and the Church is chill and
   pierced with the east wind. Would you get into the tropics where
   luxuriant fruits grow? Live near Christ! Then you will become
   enthusiastic and pursue your work with a fervor all Divine!

   We must live with our King, too, that we may be inspired with courage.
   I suppose some teachers are timid. I know some preachers are haunted
   with strange fears. The way to quicken courage is to look the King in
   the face. When you see how patiently He endured reproach and how
   resolutely He proceeded with His ministry of love, even to die for us,
   you will not be afraid of the faces of men, nor will you shrink from
   duty because nervous friends warn you of danger. And you need to live
   with the King if you would cultivate the soft Grace of patience. Sunday
   school work is very trying. It often vexes the soul and you get weary.
   But when you go and look at Him and see how He failed not, neither was
   discouraged, but went through with the work which He undertook till He
   could say, "It is finished," you will chide your soul for all its
   futile excitement and feverish unrest. By your patience and
   perseverance you will approve yourselves as children of God and
   followers of Christ.

   In short, dear Friends, I do not know that a person can do anything for
   our Lord Jesus Christ aright without living in communion with Him. I am
   persuaded that Martha got into trouble about that dinner of hers
   because she did not mix with her serving, the sitting at the Savior's
   feet with Mary. I am sure that we can attempt too much and accomplish
   too little, for we can apparently do a great deal, but because we have
   not had power with God, very little may come of it.

   Steeped seed is the best for Sunday school teachers. It is always well
   to take care that the good seed you bring to the little plots--your
   children's little minds--has been soaked the night before in earnest
   prayer. It is wonderful how quickly it sprouts and what a deal of
   vitality it manifests if you soak it! The dry seed--dry teaching
   without any praying-- without any communion with God may be productive,
   but it is a long time in coming up and yielding a reward for your
   labor.

   Believe me, my dear Brothers and Sisters, that to abide near to Jesus
   is the very life of Christian service! I would have you feel and speak
   like this, "I am engaged in the service of the King. Fifty little
   children I have under my charge--all infants--and I am trying to teach
   them something, but they are all full of fun and I cannot get anything
   into their little heads! But it would never do to think of giving it up
   because I am doing it for Jesus! I would not do it for anybody else."
   Or, "I have got half-a-dozen unruly boys in the ragged school. I would
   not undertake the work of this school for the biggest salary that could
   be offered me, but I can do it for Jesus Christ and I will do it for
   the love and gratitude I feel to Him. In fact, I am happy in doing it
   because I know that He is looking on--that He sees all that I do--if
   nobody else appreciates my service, He does. And He will accept me and
   I know with His help some blessed result will come of it, so I will tax
   all my energies to the task as the workman wakes up when there is a
   king watching.

   With what care and diligence he will exercise his highest skill! So let
   your task be performed with all your might, for if done for Him it
   ought to be done well. Nothing should be slurred over in a slovenly
   fashion that is done for Jesus! This thought, that I am with the King,
   is animating and helpful to me. I can assure you beyond any description
   of its influence that I can convey to you.

   IV. Now to our last point, upon which only a few words. That which
   should encourage us to live in any place is that we may work for the
   King in it. And that which should encourage us to any work is that WE
   ARE WORKING FOR THE KING. "These were the potters that dwelt among
   plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work." In any
   place where you dwell you can dwell with the King! These pottery men
   and gardeners were on the king's estate. You need not live next door to
   a church. You need not live with a pious family to have God with you.
   Oh, bless the Lord, I have met with my Lord and Master by the bedsides
   of the sick in Kent street many a time! My friend Mr. McCree has met
   the Lord many a time in a cellar in St. Giles's--and He is often to be
   found in Bethnalgreen and Shoreditch--in the very worst habitations
   that ever human beings dwelt in!

   Dwell wherever you may--on the land or on the sea, in the hospital or
   in the workhouse--you may still dwell there with the King! He does not
   need any carpets. He does not care about rich furniture. In fact, He
   does not often come where the floors are covered with Oriental carpets.
   I think the scarcest place for Christ is with the rich--they seldom
   have much to say about Him. I speak not of them all, but of very many.
   If for my part I need half an hour's real talk about Jesus Christ, I
   must visit the poor man. I do not know how others find it, but it is
   so, it is sadly so in my experience. Well, wherever you dwell and
   whatever your rank, you may have the Lord dwelling with you and this
   ought to encourage you to dwell anywhere if you can serve the Lord.

   I always find that when men are converted, if they live in a very bad
   neighborhood, they try and get out of it. That is right enough. I think
   if I were living in some neighborhoods, the sooner I could change my
   residence the better pleased I should be. At the same time, in a bad
   locality a good man is a great gift. Where is a bright lamp more needed
   than down in a dark alley? Where is the pure light most needed? Is it
   not among the depraved and profligate? Sometimes I almost fear that the
   repugnance with which Christian people fly away from a bad district is
   a misfortune for the population, especially for the young who are left
   behind. Of the sympathy that might be felt and the good that might be
   done by their being there, the inhabitants are henceforth bereft.

   My dear Brother, if you are placed in the very midst of ribald
   wickedness, an opportunity to serve the Lord where Satan's seat is
   might induce you to stop there awhile with the self-denial of a
   missionary among the heathen. It may be that it is cowardly to run
   away. Rather should it become you to say, "I am put into this fort in
   the midst of the enemy and I mean to stay--my fixed purpose is to hoist
   the flag of Christ on the top of it! Instead of deserting the post, I
   will strive incessantly to win souls for Him." At any rate, if you are
   compelled to live in neighborhoods that you do not like, it ought to be
   some comfort to you that the King will live there with you and that
   perhaps He has placed you there to try your faith, to honor His name
   and to bless the outcasts.

   Go, Beloved, wherever you reside and realize that your abode is a
   station you are appointed to occupy for His work. Let the nurse girl in
   the family, with the little ones about her, live for Christ and lose no
   opportunity of letting her light shine. Let the artisan, thrown into
   the large workshop where there are none like himself, be encouraged
   that he is put there for the King's work. The tradesman, dealing with
   many who like to have a word across the counter, should order his
   conversation for the glory of Christ. The merchant who will be sure to
   make many friends in business, should not forget his Lord, but bear a
   faithful testimony as often as he can. The employer of many hands
   should take care that he seeks the welfare of their souls and consider
   by what manifold agencies he can promote the King's work. You that have
   leisure, dear Friends, should feel that your spare time is a sacred
   trust never to be squandered, but to be consecrated always to the
   King's work.

   You that have talents should feel the same imperative obligation--yes,
   and especially you that have only one talent! It was the man of one
   talent that buried it. So it commonly is. You have not much talent, you
   think--nothing brilliant. Then the temptation is to go and bury your
   bit of bronze because you cannot display any glittering gold. Your
   conscious weakness produces a wicked conceit. Do not withhold your mite
   from the treasury because you have not a million to contribute. Still
   live with the King for His work.

   Doubtless I have been addressing some who have never served the King,
   who do not know Him, who do not love Him. I am not going to ask you to
   work for Him. No, no. My Lord needs none to work for Him who do not
   believe in Him. "Come and trust Him." Our soldier friends over there, a
   sprinkling of whom I am pleased to see and proud to salute, know how to
   enlist in the service. How does a man first become a soldier? Well, he
   receives a shilling. He receives and then he is a soldier. He that will
   receive Christ is made a soldier of Christ! It is receiving you have to
   begin with. And after you have received Christ, then you shall go forth
   and serve Him! Put out an empty hand and receive Christ into it by a
   little faith and then go and serve Him--and may the Lord bless you from
   that time and forever. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Jacob Worshipping on His Staff

   (No. 1401)

   DELIVERED BY

   C.H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph,
   and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff." Hebrews 11:21.

   "When he was dying." Death is a thorough test of faith. Beneath the
   touch of the skeleton finger shams dissolve into thin air and only
   truth remains unless, indeed, a strong delusion has been given--and
   then the spectacle of a presumptuous sinner passing away in his
   iniquities is one which might make angels weep. It is hard, very hard,
   to maintain a lie in the presence of the last solemnities. The end of
   life is usually the close of self-deception. There is a mimic faith, a
   false assurance, which lasts under all ordinary heats of trial, but
   this evaporates when the fires of death surround it.

   Certain men are at peace and quiet in their conscience. They stifle
   convictions, refuse to allow such a thing as self-examination--they
   count an honest self-suspicion to be a temptation of the devil and
   boast of their unbroken tranquility of mind. They go on from day to day
   with perfect confidence, but we would not be of their order. Their eyes
   are closed, their ears are dull of hearing and their heart has grossly
   waxen. A siren song forever enchants them with delight, but also
   entices them to destruction! Terrible will be their awakening when they
   lie dying--as a dream, their false peace will vanish and real terrors
   will come upon them.

   That expression, "When he was dying," reminds me of many deathbeds, but
   I shall not speak of them now, for I desire each one of you to rehearse
   the scene of your own departure, for soon a tale will be told of
   everyone commencing with, "When he was dying." I want each one to
   project his mind a little forward to the time when he must gather up
   his feet in the bed, pronounce his last farewell and yield up the
   ghost. Before your actual departure, probably, there may be allotted to
   you, unless you are carried away with a sudden stroke, a little time in
   which it shall be said, "He was dying." Perhaps it is a desirable thing
   to occupy some weeks in departure, till the mind seems to have passed
   through the gate and to be already in Glory, while yet the body lingers
   here. But as we have had no experience, we are scarcely able to form a
   judgment.

   The text tells us that the Patriarch's faith was firm while he was
   dying, so that he poured forth no complaints, but plentiful
   benedictions as he blessed both the sons of Joseph. May your faith and
   mine, also, be such that whenever we shall be dying it will perform
   some illustrious exploit that the Grace of God may be admired in us.
   Paul does not say anything about Jacob's life, but selects the death
   scene. There were many instances of faith in Jacob's life story, but
   you remember that in the Epistle to the Hebrews Paul is walking through
   the histories and plucking a flower here and a flower there. He even
   complains that time fails him in doing that, so fertile is the garden
   of faith!

   I do not doubt, however, that he gathered the best out of each
   biography and, perhaps, the finest thing in Jacob's life was the close
   of it. He was more royal between the curtains of his bed than at the
   door of his tent--greater in the hour of his weakness than in the day
   of his power. The old man of 147 might have been willing to depart
   through infirmities of age, but yet he had much to keep him below and
   make him wish to live as long as possible. After a very troublous life
   he had enjoyed 17 years of remarkable comfort, so much so, that had it
   been ourselves, we should probably have begun to strike our roots into
   the soil of Goshen and dread the bare thought of removal.

   Yet there sits the venerable Patriarch with his hands on his staff,
   ready to go, seeking no delay, but rather waiting for the salvation of
   God. After all his tossing to and fro, when he had been so long a
   pilgrim, it must have been a pleasant thing for him to have settled
   down in a fat land with his sons and grandsons--and
   great-grandsons--all around him! They were all comfortably provided for
   with Joseph at the head of the whole country--prime minister of Egypt--
   reflecting honor upon his old father and taking care that none of the
   family needed anything. The last course of Jacob's feast of life was by
   far the sweetest and the old man might have been loathe to retire from
   so dainty a table!

   The children of Israel were a sort of foreign aristocracy in the land
   and against them a dog would not dare to move its tongue lest the
   renowned Joseph should put forth his hand. That 17 years must have been
   bright and full of rest for the old man. But sense has not killed his
   faith! Luxury has not destroyed his spirituality! His heart is still in
   the tents where he had dwelt as a sojourner with God. You can see that
   not even one single rootlet of his soul has taken hold upon Egypt--his
   first anxiety is to take care that not even his bones shall lie in
   Goshen--but that his body shall be taken out of the country as a
   reminder to his family that they are not Egyptians and cannot be made
   into subjects of Pharaoh--and that Canaan is their possession to which
   they must go.

   By his dying charge to bury him in Machpelah, he practically teaches
   his descendants that they must set loose of all the good land which
   they possessed in Goshen, for their inheritance did not lie on the
   banks of the Nile, but on the other side of the desert in Canaan--and
   they must be on tiptoe to journey there. The blessing which he gave to
   the sons of Joseph was but an utterance of his firm faith in the
   Covenant which gave the land to him and to his seed. It was confirmed
   by that faith of his which let go the present and grasped the future,
   renounced the temporal and seized the eternal, refusing the treasures
   of Egypt and clinging to the Covenant of God.

   First, then, his blessing. He blessed the two sons of Joseph. Will you
   have patience with me while I try to show that his blessing the sons of
   Joseph was an act of faith? First, only by faith could the old man
   really give a blessing to anyone. Look at him. He is too feeble to
   leave his bed. When he sits up, supported by pillows, at what is called
   the bed-head, he calls for his trusty staff that he may lean upon it
   while he raises himself up a little to be in a position to stretch out
   his hands and to use his voice. He has no strength and his eyes are dim
   so that he cannot see which is Ephraim and which is Manasseh.

   He is failing in most of his faculties--in every way you can see that
   he is a worn-out old man who can do nothing for the children whom he
   loves. If he is able to bestow a blessing, it cannot be by the power of
   nature--and yet he can and does bless them--and therefore we feel sure
   that there must be an inner man within that feeble old Jacob! There
   must be a spiritual Israel hidden away in him, an Israel who, by
   prevailing with God as a prince, has obtained a blessing and is able to
   dispense it to others. And so there is--and at half a glance we see it!
   He rises to the dignity of a king, a Prophet and a priest when he
   begins to pronounce a blessing upon his two grandchildren!

   He believed that God spoke by him and he believed that God would
   justify every word that he was uttering. He believed in the God that
   hears prayer. His benediction was a prayer and as he pronounced
   blessings upon his grandsons he felt that every word he was speaking
   was a petition which the Lord was answering. They were blessed and they
   should be blessed--and he discerned it by faith. Thus we see he was
   manifesting his faith in offering believing prayer and in uttering a
   confident benediction. Whether we live, or whether we die, let us have
   faith in God! Whenever we preach or teach the Gospel, let us have
   faith, for without faith we shall labor in vain. Whenever you
   distribute religious books or visit the sick, do so in faith, for faith
   is the lifeblood of all our service!

   If only by faith can a dying Jacob bless his descendants, so only by
   faith can we bless the sons of men. Have faith in God and the
   instruction which you give shall really edify--the prayers you offer
   shall bring down showers of mercy-- and your endeavors for your sons
   and daughters shall be prospered. God will bless what is done in faith!
   But if we believe not, our work will not be established. Faith is the
   backbone and marrow of the Christian's power to do good. We are weak as
   water till we enter into union with God by faith--and then we are
   omnipotent! We can do nothing for our fellow men by way of promoting
   their spiritual and eternal interests if we walk according to the sight
   of our eyes. But when we get into the power of God and grasp His
   promise by a daring confidence, then it is that we obtain the power to
   bless!

   You will notice, also, that not only the power to bless came to him by
   faith, but the blessings which he allotted to his grandsons were his
   upon the same tenure. His legacies were all blessings which he
   possessed only by faith. He gave to Ephraim and Manasseh a portion
   each--but where and what? Did he fetch out a bag from an iron safe and
   say, "Here, young men, I give you the same portion of ready money as I
   give my sons"? No, there does not seem to have been a solitary shekel
   in the case. Did he call for the map of the family estates and say, "I
   give over to you, my boys, my freehold lands in such-and-such parish
   and my farms in such-and-such a manor"? No, no, he gave them no portion
   in Goshen, but each had a lot in Canaan.

   Did that belong to him? Yes, in one sense, but not in another. God had
   promised it to him, but he had not yet a foot of land in it. The
   Canaanites were swarming in the land. They were dwelling in cities
   walled up to Heaven and held the country by the right of possession
   which is nine points of the law. But the good old man talks about
   Canaan as if it were all his own and he foresees the tribes growing
   into nations as much as if they were already in actual possession of
   the country! He had, as a matter of fact, neither house nor ground in
   Palestine and yet he counts it all his own since a faithful God had
   promised it to his fathers! God had said to Abraham, "Lift up, now,
   your eyes and behold to the east and to the west, to the north and to
   the south. All this will I give you."

   And Jacob realizes that gift of God as being a charter and title-deed
   of possession! And he acts upon it while he says, "This is for Ephraim.
   This is for Manasseh." The sneering infidel standing by would have
   said, "Hear how the old man dotes and maunders, giving away what he has
   not!" Faith is the substance of things hoped for and she deals
   seriously and in a business manner with that which she makes real to
   herself! Blind Reason may ridicule, but Faith is justified of all her
   children. Beloved, in this manner Believers bless the sons of men,
   namely, by faith. We pray for them and we tell them of good things yet
   to come, not to be seen of the eyes, or to be perceived by the senses,
   but inconceivably good things laid up by God for them that love
   Him--which shall be the portion of our children and our friends if they
   believe in the living

   God.

   By faith we believe in things not as yet seen. We confess that, like
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we are strangers here and we are journeying
   towards a place of which God has spoken of to us--"A city which has
   foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God." We have learned to talk
   about the crown which the Lord has laid up for us and not for us, only,
   but for all them that love His appearing! And we delight to tell others
   how to win this crown. We point them to the narrow gate and to the
   narrow way--neither of which they can see--and to the end of that
   narrow road, even to the hilltops crowned with the Celestial City where
   the pilgrims of the Lord shall dwell forever and enjoy an eternal
   reward!

   Faith is needed to enable us to point men to the invisible and eternal!
   And if we cannot do this, how can we bless them? We must believe for
   those we love and have hope for them--and thus shall we have power with
   God for them-- and shall bless them. Oh, you worldly fathers, you may
   give your sons what heritage you can and divide among your daughters
   what wealth you please, but as for us, our longing is to see our
   children and our children's children blessed with the riches which come
   from above! If they win a share in the land on the other side of
   Jordan, as yet unseen, and have a portion now in Christ Jesus, we shall
   be glad--infinitely more glad than if they were the richest among
   mankind! Our legacies to our sons are the blessings of Divine Grace and
   our dowries to our daughters are the promises of the Lord.

   It is well worthy of our notice that the venerable Patriarch Jacob, in
   his benediction, particularly mentioned the Covenant. His faith, like
   the faith of most of God's people, made the Covenant its pavilion of
   delightful abode, its tower of defense and its armory for war! No
   sweeter word was on his tongue than the Covenant and no richer
   consolation sustained his heart. He said to Joseph, "God Almighty
   appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to
   me, Behold I will make you fruitful and multiply you." His confidence
   rested in the promise of the Lord and in the Divine fidelity--that was
   the fountain Truth of God from which he drew the inspiration which led
   him to bless his grandchildren.

   And, also, notice how he dwells upon the name of his father Abraham and
   of his father Isaac with whom the Covenant had been established--the
   memories of covenant love are precious and every confirmatory token is
   treasured up and dwelt upon. Dying men do not talk nonsense. They get
   to something solid and the Everlasting Covenant made with their fathers
   and confirmed in their own persons has been one of the grand things
   about which dying saints have been known to deliver their souls.
   Remember how David said, "Although my house is not so with God, yet has
   He made with me an Everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and
   sure." While we are sitting here we can talk about the matter coolly.
   But when death dew lies cold upon our brow, the pulse is failing and
   the throat is gradually choking up, it will be blessed to fix our eyes
   upon the faithful Promiser and to feel a calm within our soul which
   even death pangs cannot disturb! We can then exclaim, "I know whom I
   have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I
   have committed to Him until that day."

   I want to call your attention to one point which I think
   extraordinarily illustrates the faith of Jacob. In distributing to
   these two grandchildren his blessings as to the future, he takes them
   right away from Joseph and says, "As Simeon and Reuben, shall they be
   mine." Do you know who those two young gentlemen were? Think awhile and
   you will see that

   they were very different in rank, station, parentage and prospects from
   any of the sons of Jacob! Jacob's sons had been brought up as laboring
   men without knowledge of polite society or learned arts. They were
   country men, mere Bedouins--wandering shepherds and nothing else!

   But these two young gentlemen were descended from a princess and had,
   no doubt, been liberally educated. Pharaoh had given to Joseph a
   daughter of Potipherah, priest of On, and the priests of Egypt were the
   highest class of all--the nobility of the land! Joseph himself was
   Prime Minister and these were partakers of his lofty rank. The sons of
   Reuben and Simeon were nobodies in the polite circles of Egypt--very
   good, decent people--farmers and grazers, but not at all of the high
   class of the Right Honorable Lord Manasseh and the Honorable Ephraim!
   Indeed, every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians and,
   therefore, inadmissible to Egypt's nobility! Manasseh and Ephraim were
   of a superior caste and gentlemen of position and fortune.

   But Jacob showed his faith by ignoring worldly advantages for his
   grandsons. He says to Joseph, "They are not to be yours. I do not know
   them as Egyptians--I forget all about their mother's rank and family.
   The boys have attractive prospects before them. They can be made
   priests of the idol temple and rise to high dignity among the
   Egyptians. But all that glitter we reject for them and, in token
   thereof, I adopt them as my own sons. They are mine--as Simeon and
   Reuben they shall be mine. For all the gold of Egypt you would not have
   one of them serve an idol, for I know that you are true to your
   father's God and your father's faith." And so He takes the boys right
   away, you see, from all their brilliant opportunities, and bestows upon
   them that which, to the carnal mind, appears to be an estate in
   dreamland, a chateau in Spain--something intangible and unmarketable!

   This was a deed of faith and blessed are they who can imitate it,
   choosing rather the reproach of Christ for their sons than all the
   treasures of Egypt! The joy of it is that these lads accepted the
   exchange and let the golden possessions of Egypt go, like Moses after
   them. May our heirs and successors be of the same mind and may the Lord
   say of them, "Out of Egypt have I called My Son." And again, "When
   Ephraim was a child then I loved him and called My Son out of Egypt."
   This is how faith leads Believers to bless their children. We are of
   the same mind as Jacob in this matter. We would sooner bury our little
   ones than that they should live to become among the richest and most
   famous of men--and yet not know or serve their father's God! Better
   that we laid them quietly in such ground as our Christian Brethren
   permit us to use as a sepulcher for our unbaptized babes. Better that
   they were safely housed at God's right hand than that they should grow
   up to plunge into dissipation or to follow false doctrine and perish
   out of Christ!

   We have not done yet, for we notice that Jacob showed his faith by
   blessing Joseph's sons in God's order. He placed Ephraim before
   Manasseh. It was not according to the rule of nature, but he felt the
   impulse upon him and his faith would not resist the Divine guidance.
   Blind as he was, he would not yield to the dictation of his son, but
   crossed his hands to obey the Divine monition. Faith resolves to do the
   right thing in the right way. Some persons' faith leads them to do the
   right thing the wrong way, but mature faith follows the order which God
   prescribes. If God will have Ephraim first, faith does not quarrel with
   His decree. We may wish to see a favorite child blessed more than
   another, but Nature must forego her choice, for the Lord must do what
   seems good to Him. Faith prefers Divine Grace to talent and piety to
   cleverness. She lays her right hand where God lays it and not where
   beauty of person or quickness of intellect would suggest. Our best
   child is that which God calls best--Faith corrects Reason and accepts
   the Divine verdict.

   Notice that he manifested his faith by his distinct reference to
   redemption. He alone who has faith will pray for the redemption of his
   children, especially when they exhibit no signs of being in bondage but
   are hopeful and amiable. The good old man prayed, "The Angel which
   redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Let your faith bring down
   upon your children a share in redemption's blessings, for they need to
   be redeemed even as others. If they are washed in the blood of Jesus.
   If they are reconciled to God by the blood of His Son. If they have
   access to God by the blood of Atonement, you may die well satisfied--
   for what is to harm them when once the Angel that redeemed you has also
   redeemed them? From sin, from Satan, from death, from Hell, from
   self--"from all evil"--does our Redeemer set us free! And this is the
   greatest of all benedictions which we can pronounce upon our dearest
   children.

   Jacob showed his faith by his assurance that God would be present with
   his seed. How cheering is the old man's dying expression, made not only
   to his boys, but concerning all his family! He said, "Now I die, but
   God will be with you." It is very different from the complaints of
   certain good old ministers when they are dying. They seem to say, "When
   I die, the light of Israel will be quenched! I shall die and the people
   will desert the Truth of God. When I am gone, the standard-bearer will
   have fallen and the watchman on the walls will be dead." Many, in
   dying, are afraid for the chariot of Israel and the horsemen

   thereof and, sometimes, we who are in good health talk very much in the
   same fashion as though we were wonderfully essential to the progress of
   God's cause!

   I have known some of our Church members speak in that manner and
   inquire--"What should we do if Mr. So-and-So were dead? If our pastor
   were gone, what would the Church do?" I will tell you what you will do
   without us--I will put the case as though I were myself to die--"Now I
   die, but God will be with you." Whoever passes away, the Lord will
   abide with His people and the Church will be secure. The grand old
   cause does not depend on one or two of us! God forbid! The Truth of God
   was mighty in the land before the best man living was born--and the
   Truth of God will not be buried with him, but in its own immortal youth
   will still be powerful! Yes, and fresh advocates will arise more full
   of life and vigor than we are! And greater victories will be won! It is
   grand to say with Jacob, "Now I die, but God will be with you." Such
   language honors God and bespeaks a mind greatly trustful and completely
   delivered from the self-conceit which dreams itself important, if not
   necessary, to the cause of God.

   We are told, next, that the old man "worshiped"--worshiped by faith.
   Very briefly let me tell you what worship I think he rendered. First,
   while he was dying he offered the worship of gratitude. How pleasing is
   the incident recorded in the 10th and 11th verses--"Now the eyes of
   Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And Joseph brought
   his two sons near unto him and he kissed them and embraced them. And
   Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see your face and, lo,
   God has showed me, also, your seed." Ah, yes, we shall often have to
   say, "O Lord, I had not thought that You would do as much as this, but
   you have gone far beyond what I asked or even thought."

   I hope that this will be among our dying speeches and confessions--that
   the half was never told us, that our good Lord kept the best wine till
   the last and that the end of the feast on earth--being but the
   beginning of the eternal feast in Heaven was the crown of all! Let us
   declare concerning our Lord that we found Him better and better and
   better and better, even till we entered into His rest! He has been, at
   first, better than our fears, then better than our hopes and finally
   better than our desires! Did Jacob not also offer the worship of
   testimony when he acknowledged God's goodness to him all his life? He
   says, "The God that fed me all my life long," thus acknowledging that
   he had been always dependent but always supplied.

   He had been a shepherd and he uses a word, here, which means, "the God
   that shepherded me--who was a Shepherd to me all my life long." It was
   a testimony to the care and tenderness of Jehovah. Yes, and I hope we,
   also, shall finish life by magnifying the goodness of the Lord. Be this
   our witness, "He fed me all my life long. I was in straits, sometimes,
   and I wondered from where the next bit of bread would come--but if He
   did not send a raven, or if He did not find a widow woman to provide
   for me--yet somehow or other He did feed me all my life long. He worked
   in His own wise ways so that I never lacked, for the Lord was my
   Shepherd all my life long."

   Notice, too, how reverently He worships the Covenant Messenger with the
   adoration of reverent love. He speaks of "the Angel who redeemed me
   from all evil." He thinks of the Angel that wrestled with him and the
   Angel that appeared to him when he fell asleep at Bethel. This is the
   Angel, not an ordinary angel, but the true Archangel--Jesus Christ--the
   Messenger of the Covenant whom we delight in. It is He that has
   delivered us from all evil by His redeeming blood, for no other being
   could have accomplished a redemption so complete. Do you remember when
   He came to you, personally, and wrestled with you and tore away your
   self-righteousness and made you limp on your thigh? This, it may be,
   was your first introduction to Him. You saw Him by night and thought
   Him, at the first, to be your enemy rather than your friend.

   Do you remember when He took your strength away from you and then at
   last saved you, because in utter weakness you were about to fall to the
   ground? You laid hold of Him and said, "I will not let You go unless
   You bless me," and so you won a blessing from Him. You had thought,
   before that time, that you had strength in yourself. But now you
   realize that you were weakness, itself, and that only as you became
   consciously weak would you become actually strong. You learned to look
   out of self to Him and do you not bless Him for having taught you such
   a lesson? Will you not, when you come to die, bless Him for what He did
   for you, then, and all your life? O my Brothers and Sisters, we owe all
   things to the redeeming Angel of the Covenant! The evils which He has
   warded off from us were terrible beyond conception! And the blessings
   He has brought us are rich beyond imagination! Thus you have had a
   picture of the old man blessing, by faith, and worshiping by
   faith--faith was the mainspring of the two actions--their essence,
   their spirit and their crown.

   The last matter for us to speak upon is his attitude. He "worshiped
   leaning upon the top of his staff." The Romanists have made fine
   mischief out of this text, for they have read it, "He worshiped the top
   ofhis staff." Their notion has been, I suppose, that there was a pretty
   little god carved on the top--an image of a saint or a cross, or some
   other symbol--and that he held up that symbol and so worshiped the top
   of his staff! We know that he did no such thing, for there is no trace
   in Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob of anything like the worship of images!
   Though teraph worship lingered in their families, it was not with their

   consent. They were not perfect men, but they were perfectly clear from
   idolatry and never worshiped an image. No, no, no-- they worshiped only
   God! Jacob worshiped on the top of his staff--leaning on it--supporting
   himself upon it.

   In Genesis you read that he "bowed himself upon the bed's head." It is
   a very curious thing that the word for bed and the word for staff in
   the Hebrew are so exceedingly like each other that unless the little
   points had been used, which I suppose were not used at all in the olden
   times, it would be difficult to tell whether the word is, "bed," or
   "staff." I do not, however, think either Moses or Paul can be wrong!
   Jacob strengthened himself and sat upon the bed and he leaned upon his
   staff, too. It is very easy to realize a position in which both
   descriptions would be equally true. He could sit upon the bed and lean
   on the top of his staff at the same time. But why did he lean on his
   staff? I think besides the natural need which he had of it, because of
   his being old, he did it emblematically. Do you not remember his
   saying, "With my staff I crossed this Jordan"?

   I believe he kept that staff throughout life as a memorial. It was a
   favorite staff of his which he took with him on his first journey and
   he leaned upon it as he took his last. "With my staff I crossed this
   Jordan," he had said before, and now with that same staff in hand he
   crosses the spiritual Jordan! That staff was his life companion, the
   witness with himself of the goodness of the Lord, even as some of us
   may have an old Bible, or a knife, or a chair which are connected with
   memorable events of our lives. But what did that staff indicate? Let us
   hear what Jacob said at another time. When he stood before Pharaoh he
   exclaimed, "Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage." What
   made him use that word "pilgrimage"? Why, because upon his mind there
   was always the idea of his being a pilgrim! He had been literally so
   during the early part of his life, wandering here and there.

   And now, though he has been 17 years in Goshen, he keeps the old staff
   and he leans on it to show that he had always been a pilgrim and a
   sojourner like his fathers and that he still was! While he leans on
   that staff, he talks to Joseph and he says, "Do not let my bones lie
   here. I have come here in the Providence of God, but I do not belong
   here. This staff indicates that I am only a sojourner and need to be
   gone. I am in Egypt, but I am not of it. Take my bones away. Do not let
   them lie here, for if they do, my sons and daughters will mingle with
   the Egyptians and that must not be, for we are a distinct nation. God
   has chosen us for Himself and we must keep separate. To make my
   children see this, lo, here I die with my pilgrim staff in my

   hand."

   Now, Christian Brothers and Sisters, I want you to live in the same
   spirit, feeling that this is not your rest nor your native country.
   There is nothing here that is worthy of you. Your home is yonder, on
   the other side the desert, where God has mapped out your portion.
   Christ has gone to prepare your place and it would ill become you to
   have no desires for it. The longer you live, the more let this thought
   grow upon you--"Give me my staff. I must be gone. Poor world, you are
   no rest for me. I am not of your children. I am an alien and a
   stranger. My citizenship is in Heaven. I take my share in Egypt's
   politics and Egypt's labor, yes, and in Egypt's griefs, but I am no
   Egyptian, I am a stranger bound for another land." Worship on the top
   of your staff and sing--

   "A scrip on my back, and a staff in my hand, I march on in haste
   through an enemy's land. There is nothing on earth which can tempt me
   to stay, My staff is the emblem of 'up and away.'" Singular enough is
   it that each descendant of Jacob came to worship on the top of his
   staff at last, for on the paschal supper night, when the blood was
   sprinkled on the lintel and the side posts, they each one ate the lamb
   with their loins girt and with a staff in his hand! The supper was a
   festival of worship and they ate it, each one leaning on his staff, as
   those that were in haste to leave home for a pilgrimage through the
   wilderness! My dear Hearers, this advice does not apply to all of you,
   for you are not all Jacobs, nor do you belong to the believing seed. I
   cannot bid you take your staff, for if you were to take your staff and
   start off, where would you go? You have no portion in the next world,
   no promised land, no Canaan flowing with milk and honey.

   Where will you go? You must be banished from the Presence of the Lord
   and from the glory of His power! Alas for you! You cannot worship, for
   you know not God! You cannot bless others, for you have not been
   blessed yourselves! May the Lord bring you to His dear Son, Jesus
   Christ, and lead you to put your trust in Him--and then I shall hope
   that being saved you will by faith imitate Jacob and both bless men,
   worship God and wait with your staff in your hand, ready to journey to
   the eternal rest!
     __________________________________________________________________

"Lead Us Not Into Temptation"

   (No. 1402)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Lead us not into temptation." Matthew 6:13.

   LOOKING over a book of addresses to young people the other day, I met
   with the outline of a discourse which struck me as being a perfect gem.
   I will give it to you. The text is the Lord's prayer and the exposition
   is divided into most instructive heads. "Our Father which are in
   Heaven"--a child away from home. "Hallowed be Your name"--a worshipper.
   "Your kingdom come"--a subject. "Your will be done in earth, as it is
   in Heaven"--a servant. "Give us this day our daily bread"--a beggar.
   "And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors"--a sinner. "And
   lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil"-- a sinner in
   danger of being a still greater sinner.

   The titles are, in every case, most appropriate and truthfully condense
   the petition. Now if you will remember the outline you will notice that
   the prayer is like a ladder. The petitions begin at the top and go
   downward. "Our Father which are in Heaven"--a child, a child of the
   heavenly Father. Now to be a child of God is the highest possible
   position of man. "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed
   upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." This is what Christ
   is--the Son of God--and "Our Father" is but a plural form of the very
   term which He uses in addressing God, for Jesus says, "Father." It is a
   very high, gracious, exalted position which, by faith, we dare to
   occupy when we intelligently say, "Our Father which are in Heaven."

   It is a step down to the next--"Hallowed be Your name." Here we have a
   worshipper adoring with lowly reverence the thrice holy God. A
   worshipper's place is a high one, but it attains not to the excellence
   of the child's position. Angels come as high as being worshippers,
   their incessant song hallows the name of God--but they cannot say, "Our
   Father," "for unto which of the angels has He said, 'you are My son'?"
   They must be content to be within one step of the highest, but they
   cannot reach the summit, for neither by adoption, regeneration, nor by
   union to Christ are they the children of God. "Abba, Father," is for
   men, not for angels and, therefore, the worshipping sentence of the
   prayer is one step lower than the opening, "Our Father."

   The next petition is for us as subjects, "Your kingdom come." The
   subject comes lower than the worshipper, for worship is an elevated
   engagement wherein man exercises a priesthood and is seen in lowly but
   honorable estate. The child worships and then confesses the Great
   Father's royalty. Descending still, the next position is that of a
   servant, "Your will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven." That is
   another step lower than a subject, for Her Majesty the Queen has many
   subjects who are not her servants. They are not bound to wait upon her
   in the palace with personal service though they acknowledge her as
   their honored sovereign. Dukes and such like are her subjects, but not
   her servants. The servant is a grade below the subject.

   Everyone will admit that the next petition is lower by far, for it is
   that of a beggar--"Give us this day our daily bread." A beggar for
   bread--an everyday beggar--one who has continually to appeal to
   charity, even for his livelihood. This is a fit place for us to occupy
   who owe our all to the charity of Heaven. But there is a step lower
   than the beggar's and that is the sinner's place. "Forgive" is lower
   than, "give." "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Here,
   too, we may, each one, take up his position, for no word better befits
   our unworthy lips than the prayer, "Forgive." As long as we live and
   sin we ought to weep and cry, "Have mercy on us, O Lord."

   And now, at the very bottom of the ladder stands a sinner afraid of yet
   greater sin. He is in extreme danger and in conscious weakness,
   sensible of past sin and fearful of it for the future. Hear him, as
   with trembling lip he cries in the words of our text, "Lead us not into
   temptation, but deliver us from evil." And yet, dear Friends, though I
   have thus described the prayer as a going downward--downward is, in
   matters of Divine Grace, much the same as upward--as we could readily
   show if time permitted. At any rate the going down process of the
   prayer might equally well illustrate the advance of the Divine life in
   the soul.

   The last clause of the prayer contains in it a deeper inward experience
   than the earlier part of it. Every Believer is a child of God, a
   worshipper, a subject, a servant, a beggar and a sinner. But it is not
   every man who perceives the allurements which beset him, or his own
   tendency to yield to them. It is not every child of God, even when
   advanced in years, who knows the full meaning of being led into
   temptation--for some follow an easy path and are seldom buffeted--while
   others are such tender babes that they hardly know their own
   corruptions. To fully understand our text a man should have had sharp
   brushes in the wars and have done battle against the enemy within his
   soul for many a day.

   He who has escaped as by the skin of his teeth offers this prayer with
   an emphasis of meaning. The man who has felt the fowler's net about
   him--the man who has been seized by the adversary and almost
   destroyed--he prays with hot eagerness, "Lead us not into temptation."
   I purpose at this time, in trying to commend this prayer to you, to
   notice, first of all, the spirit which suggests such a petition.
   Secondly, the trials which such a prayer deprecates. And then, thirdly,
   the lessons which it teaches.

   I. WHAT SUGGESTS SUCH A PRAYER AS THIS?--"Lead us not into temptation."
   First, from the position of the clause, I gather, by a slight reasoning
   process, that it is suggested by watchfulness. This petition follows
   after the sentence, "Forgive us our debts." I will suppose the petition
   to have been answered and the man's sin is forgiven. What then? If you
   will look back upon your own lives, you will soon perceive what
   generally happens to a pardoned man, for "As in water face answers to
   face, so the heart of man to man." One believing man's inner experience
   is like another's and your own feelings are the same as his.

   Very speedily after the penitent has received forgiveness and has the
   sense of it in his soul, he is tempted of the devil, for Satan cannot
   bear to lose his subjects--and when he sees them cross the border and
   escape out of his hand, he gathers up all his forces and exercises all
   his cunning if, perhaps, he may slay them at once. To meet this special
   assault the Lord makes the heart watchful. Perceiving the ferocity and
   subtlety of Satan's temptations, the new-born Believer, rejoicing in
   the perfect pardon he has received, cries to God, "Lead us not into
   temptation." It is the fear of losing the joy of pardoned sin which
   thus cries out to the good Lord--"Our Father, do not suffer us to lose
   the salvation we have so lately obtained. Do not even subject it to
   jeopardy! Do not permit Satan to break our newfound peace. We have but
   newly escaped--do not plunge us in the deeps again!

   "Swimming to shore, some on boards and some on broken pieces of the
   ship, we have come safely to land--do not let us tempt the boisterous
   main again. Cast us not upon the rough billows any more. O God we see
   the enemy advancing-- he is ready, if he can, to sift us as wheat! Do
   not allow us to be put into his sieve, but deliver us, we pray You." It
   is a prayer of watchfulness and mark you, though we have spoken of
   watchfulness as necessary at the commencement of the Christian life, it
   is equally needful even to the close! There is no hour in which a
   Believer can afford to slumber. Watch, I pray you, when you are alone,
   for temptation, like a creeping assassin, has its dagger for solitary
   hearts! You must bolt and bar the door well if you would keep out the
   devil.

   Watch yourself in public, for temptations in troops cause their arrows
   to fly by day. The choicest companions you can select will not be
   without some evil influence upon you unless you are on your guard.
   Remember our blessed Master's words, "What I say unto you I say unto
   all, Watch," and as you watch, this prayer will often rise from your
   inmost heart--

   "From dark temptation's power, From Satan's wiles defend. Deliver in
   the evil hour, And guide me to the end."

   It is the prayer of watchfulness.

   Next, it seems to me to be the natural prayer of holy horror at the
   very thought of falling into sin again. I remember the story of a
   pitman who, having been a gross blasphemer--a man of licentious life
   and everything that was bad--when converted by Divine Grace, was
   terribly afraid lest his old companions should lead him back again. He
   knew himself to be a man of strong passions and very apt to be led
   astray by others and, therefore, in his dread of being drawn into his
   old sins, he prayed most vehemently that sooner than ever he should go
   back to his old ways, he might die. He did die then and there. Perhaps
   it was the best answer to the best prayer that the poor man could have
   offered.

   I am sure any man who has once lived an evil life, if the wondrous
   Grace of God has snatched him from it, will agree that the pitman's
   prayer was not one whit too enthusiastic. It were better for us to die
   at once than to live on and return

   to our first estate and bring dishonor upon the name of Jesus Christ
   our Lord! The prayer before us springs from the shrinking of the soul
   at the first approach of the tempter. The footstep of the fiend falls
   on the startled ear of the timid penitent--he quivers like an aspen
   leaf and cries out--"What? Is he coming again? And is it possible that
   I may fall again? And may I once more defile these garments with that
   loathsome murderous sin which slew my Lord? O my God," the prayer seems
   to say, "keep me from so dire an evil. Lead me, I pray You, where You
   will--yes, even through Death's dark valley, but do not lead me into
   temptation, lest I fall and dishonor You." The burnt child dreads the
   fire. He who has once been caught in the steel trap carries the scars
   in his flesh and is horribly afraid of being held, again, by its cruel
   teeth.

   The third feeling, also, is very apparent, namely, overconfident
   personal strength. The man who feels himself strong enough for anything
   is daring and even invites the battle which will prove his power. "Oh,"
   he says, "I don't care. They may gather about me who will--I am quite
   able to take care of myself and hold my own against any number." He is
   ready to be led into conflict. He courts the fray! Not so the man who
   has been taught of God and has learned his own weakness! He does not
   want to be tried, but seeks quiet places where he may be out of harm's
   way. Put him into the battle and he will play the man. Let him be
   tempted and you will see how steadfast he will be--but he does not ask
   for conflict, as, I think, few soldiers will, who know what fighting
   means. Surely it is only those who have never smelt gunpowder, or seen
   corpses heaped in bloody masses on each other, that are so eager for
   the shot and shell--but your veteran would rather enjoy the piping
   times of peace.

   No experienced Believer ever desires spiritual conflict, though,
   perhaps, some raw recruits may challenge it. In the Christian a
   recollection of his previous weakness--his broken resolutions, his
   unkept promises--makes him pray that he may not be severely tested in
   the future. He does not dare to trust himself. He wants no fight with
   Satan or with the world--he asks that, if possible, he may be kept from
   those severe encounters. His prayer is, "Lead us not into temptation."
   The wise Believer shows a sacred fear--no, I think I may say an utter
   despair of himself--and even though he knows that the power of God is
   strong enough for anything, yet is the sense of his weakness so heavy
   upon him that he begs to be spared too much trial. Hence the cry, "Lead
   us not into temptation."

   Nor have I quite exhausted, I think, the phases of the spirit which
   suggests this prayer, for it seems to me to arise somewhat out of
   charity. "Charity?" you say. "How so?" Well, the connection is always
   to be observed, and by reading the preceding sentence in connection
   with it, we get the words, "as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not
   into temptation." We should not be too severe with those persons who
   have done wrong and have offended us, but pray, "Lord, lead us not into
   temptation." Your maid servant, poor girl, did take a trifle from your
   property. I make no excuse for her theft, but I beseech you, pause
   awhile before you quite ruin her character for life. Ask yourself,
   "Might not I have done the same had I been in her position? Lord, lead
   me not into temptation."

   It is true, it was very wrong of that young man to deal so dishonestly
   with your goods. Still, you know, he was under great pressure from a
   strong hand and only yielded from compulsion. Do not be too severe. Do
   not say, "I will push the matter through--I will call the law on him."
   No, but wait awhile. Let Pity speak! Let Mercy's silver voice plead
   with you. Remember yourself, lest you, also, be tempted, and pray,
   "Lead us not into temptation." I am afraid that badly as some behave
   under temptation, others of us might have done worse if we had been
   there. I like, if I can, to form a kind judgment of the erring--and it
   helps me to do so when I imagine myself to have been subject to their
   trials and to have looked at things from their point of view--and to
   have been in their circumstances and to have nothing of the Grace of
   God to help me.

   Would not I have fallen as badly as they have done, or even gone beyond
   them in evil? May not the day come, to you who show no mercy, in which
   you may have to ask mercy for yourselves? Did I say, may it not come to
   you? No, it must come to you. When leaving all below you will have to
   take a retrospective view of your life and see much to mourn over. To
   what can you appeal, then, but to the mercy of God? And what if He
   should answer you, "An appeal was made to your mercy and you had none.
   As you rendered unto others, so will I render unto you." What answer
   would you have if God were to treat you so? Would not such an answer be
   just and right? Should not every man be paid in his own coin when he
   stands at the Judgment Seat? So I think that this prayer, "Lead us not
   into temptation," should often spring up from the heart through a
   charitable feeling towards others who have erred--who are of the same
   flesh and blood as ourselves.

   Now, whenever you see the drunkard reel through the streets, do not
   glory over him, but say, "Lead us not into temptation." When you take
   down the papers and read that men of position have betrayed their trust
   for gold-- condemn their conduct if you will, but do not exult in your
   own steadfastness--rather cry in all humility, "Lead us not into
   temptation." When the poor girl seduced from the paths of virtue comes
   across your way, look not on her with the scorn that would give her up
   to destruction, but say, "Lead us not into temptation." It would teach
   us milder and gentler ways with sinful men and women if this prayer
   were as often in our hearts as it is upon our lips.

   Once more, do you not think that this prayer breathes the spirit of
   confidence--confidence in God? "Why," says one, "I do not see that." To
   me--I know not whether I shall be able to convey my thought--to me
   there is a degree of very tender familiarity and sacred boldness in
   this expression. Of course God will lead me, now that I am His child.
   Moreover, now that He has forgiven me, I know that He will not lead me
   where I can come to any harm. This my faith ought to know and
   believe--and yet for several reasons there rises to my mind a fear lest
   His Providence should conduct me where I shall be tempted.

   Is that fear right or wrong? It burdens my mind. May I go with it to my
   God? May I express in prayer this misgiving of my soul? May I pour out
   this anxiety before the great, wise, loving God? Will it not be
   impertinent? No, it will not, for Jesus puts the words into my mouth
   and says, "After this manner pray." You are afraid that He may lead you
   into temptation, but He will not do so. Or should He see fit to try
   you, He will also afford you strength to hold out to the end. He will
   be pleased in His infinite mercy, to preserve you. Where He leads it
   will be perfectly safe for you to follow, for His Presence will make
   the deadliest air to become healthful! But since instinctively you have
   a dread lest you should be conducted where the fight will be too stern
   and the way too rough, tell it to your heavenly Father without reserve.

   You know at home, if a child has any little complaint against his
   father, it is always better for him to tell it. If he thinks that his
   father overlooked him the other day, or half thinks that the task his
   father has given him is too severe, or fancies that his father is
   expecting too much of him--if he does not say anything at all about it,
   he may sulk and lose much of the loving tenderness which a child's
   heart should always feel. But when the child frankly says, "Father, I
   do not want you to think that I do not love you or that I cannot trust
   you, but I have a troublous thought in my mind and I will tell it right
   straight out"--that is the wisest course to follow and shows a filial
   trust.

   That is the way to keep up love and confidence. So if you have a
   suspicion in your soul that perhaps your Father might put you into
   temptation too strong for you, tell Him! Tell Him though it seems
   taking a great liberty. Though the fear may be the fruit of unbelief,
   yet make it known to your Lord and do not harbor it sullenly. Remember,
   the Lord's prayer was not made for Him, but for you and, therefore, it
   reads matters from your standpoint and not from His. Our Lord's prayer
   is not for our Lord--it is for us, His children--and children say to
   their fathers ever so many things which it is quite proper for them to
   say, but which are not wise and accurate after the measure of their
   parents' knowledge. Their father knows what their hearts mean and yet
   there may be a good deal in what they say which is foolish or mistaken.
   So I look upon this prayer as exhibiting that blessed childlike
   confidence which tells its father a fear which grieves it whether that
   fear is altogether correct or not.

   Beloved, we need not debate here the question whether God does lead
   into temptation or not, or whether we can fall from Grace or not. It is
   enough that we have a fear and are permitted to tell our Father in
   Heaven about it. Whenever you have a fear of any kind, hurry off with
   it to Him who loves His little ones and, like a father, pities them and
   soothes even their needless alarms. Thus have I shown that the spirit
   which suggests this prayer is that of watchfulness, of holy horror at
   the very thought of sin, of overconfidence of our own strength, of
   charity towards others and of confidence in

   God.

   II. Secondly, let us ask, WHAT ARE THESE TEMPTATIONS WHICH THE PRAYER
   DEPRECATES? Or rather,

   what are these trials which are so much feared? I do not think the
   prayer is intended at all to ask God to spare us from being afflicted
   for our good, or to save us from being made to suffer as a
   chastisement. Of course we should be glad to escape those things, but
   the prayer aims at another form of trial and may be paraphrased
   thus--"Save me, O Lord, from such trials and sufferings as may lead me
   into sin. Spare me from too great trials, lest I fall by their
   overcoming my patience, my faith, or my steadfastness."

   Now, as briefly as I can, I will show you how men may be led into
   temptation by the hand of God. And the first is by the withdrawal of
   Divine Grace. Suppose for a moment--it is only a supposition--suppose
   the Lord were to leave us

   altogether? We would perish speedily. But suppose--and this is not a
   barren supposition--that He were in some measure to take away His
   strength from us--should we not be in an evil case? Suppose He did not
   support our faith-- what unbelief we would exhibit! Suppose He refused
   to support us in the time of trial so that we no longer maintained our
   integrity, what would become of us? Ah, the most upright man would not
   be upright long, nor the most holy, holy any more. Suppose, dear
   Friends--you who walk in the light of God's Countenance and bear life's
   yoke so easily because He sustains you--suppose His Presence were
   withdrawn from you--what would your portion be?

   We are all so like Samson in this matter that I must bring him in as
   the illustration, though he has often been used for that purpose by
   others. So long as the locks of our head are unshorn we can do anything
   and everything--we can tear lions apart, carry gates of Gaza and smite
   the armies of the alien. It is by the Divine consecrating mark that we
   are strong in the power of His might. But if the Lord is once withdrawn
   and we attempt the work alone, then are we weak as the tiniest insect!
   When the Lord has departed from you, O Samson, what are you more than
   another man? Then the cry, "the Philistines are upon you, Samson," is
   the end of all your glory. You do vainly shake those lusty limbs of
   yours! Now you will have your eyes put out and the Philistines will
   make sport of you.

   In view of a like catastrophe we may well be in an agony of
   supplication. Pray then, "Lord, leave me not and lead me not into
   temptation by taking your Spirit from me."--

   "Keep us, Lord, oh keep us ever, Vain our hope if left by Thee!

   We are yours, oh leave us never,

   Tillyour face in Heaven we see.

   There to praise you

   Through a bright eternity.

   All our strength at once would fail us,

   If deserted, Lord, by Thee.

   Nothing then could anything avail us,

   Certain our defeat would be.

   Those who hate us

   From then on their desire would see." Another set of temptations will
   be found in providential conditions. The words of Agur, the son of
   Jakeh, shall be my illustration here. "Remove far from me vanity and
   lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient
   for me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest
   I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain."

   Some of us have never known what actual need means, but have, from our
   youth up, lived in social comfort. Ah, dear Friends, when we see what
   extreme poverty has made some men do, how do we know that we would not
   have behaved even worse if we had been as sorely pressed as they? We
   may well shudder and say, "Lord, when I see poor families crowded
   together in one little room where there is scarcely space to observe
   common decency. When I see hardly bread enough to keep the children
   from crying for hunger. When I see the man's garments wearing out upon
   his back and by far too thin to keep out the cold, I pray You subject
   me not to such trial, lest if I were in such a case I might put forth
   my hand and steal. Lead me not into the temptation of pining need."

   And, on the other hand, look at the temptations of money when men have
   more to spend than they can possibly need and there is, around them, a
   society which tempts them into racing, gambling, whoredom and all
   manner of iniquities. The young man who has a fortune before he reaches
   years of discretion and is surrounded by flatterers and tempters all
   eager to plunder him--do you wonder that he is led into vice and
   becomes a ruined man morally? Like a rich galleon waylaid by pirates,
   he is never out of danger! Is it a marvel that he never reaches the
   port of safety? Women tempt him, men flatter him, vile messengers of
   the devil fawn upon him and the young simpleton goes after them like an
   ox to the slaughter, or as a bird hastens to the snare and knows not
   that it is for his life!

   You may very well thank Heaven you never knew the temptation, for if it
   were put in your way you would also be in sore peril. If riches and
   honor allure you, follow not eagerly after them, but pray, "Lead us not
   into temptation." Providential positions often try men. There is a man
   very much pushed for ready money in business--how shall he meet that
   heavy bill? If he does not meet it, there will be desolation in his
   family--the mercantile concern from which he now

   draws his living will be broken up--everybody will be ashamed of him.
   His children will be outcasts and he will be ruined. He has only to use
   a sum of trust money--he has no right to risk a penny of it, for it is
   not his--but still, by its temporary use he may, perhaps, tide over the
   difficulty. The devil tells him he can put it back in a week! If he
   touches that money it will be a roguish action, but then he says,
   "Nobody will be hurt by it and it will be a wonderful accommodation,"
   and so on. If he yields to the suggestion and the thing goes right,
   there are some who would say, "Well, after all, there was not much harm
   in it and it was a prudent step, for it saved him from ruin."

   But if it goes wrong and he is found out, then everybody says, "It was
   a shameful robbery. The man ought to be put in prison!" But, Brothers
   and Sisters, the action was wrong in itself and the consequences
   neither make it better nor worse! Do not bitterly condemn, but pray
   again and again, "Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into
   temptation." You see, God does put men into such positions in
   Providence at times that they are severely tried. It is for their good
   that they are tried--and when they can stand the trial they magnify His
   Grace--and they become stronger men. The test has beneficial uses when
   it can be borne and God, therefore, does not always screen His children
   from it. Our heavenly Father has never meant to cuddle us up and keep
   us out of temptation, for that is no part of the system which He has
   wisely arranged for our education.

   He does not mean us to be babies in carriages all our lives. He made
   Adam and Eve in the garden and He did not put an iron fence round the
   Tree of Knowledge and say, "You cannot get at it." No, He warned them
   not to touch the fruit, but they could reach the tree if they would. He
   meant that they should have the possibility of attaining the dignity of
   voluntary fidelity if they remained steadfast. But they lost it by
   their sin and God means, in His new creation, not to shield His people
   from every kind of test and trial, for that were to breed hypocrites
   and to keep even the faithful weak and dwarfish! The Lord does,
   sometimes, put the chosen where they are tried, and we do right to
   pray, "Lead us not into temptation."

   And there are temptations arising out of physical conditions. There are
   some men who are very moral in character because they are in good
   health. And there are other men who are very bad, who, I do not doubt,
   if we knew all about them, should have some little leniency shown them
   because of the unhappy conformation of their constitution. Why, there
   are many people to whom to be cheerful and to be generous is no effort
   whatever, while there are others who need to labor hard to keep
   themselves from despair and misanthropy. Diseased livers, palpitating
   hearts and injured brains are hard things to struggle against! Does
   that poor old lady complain? She has only had rheumatism 30 years and
   yet she now and then murmurs! How would you be if you felt her pains
   for 30 minutes?

   I have heard of a man who complained of everybody. When He came to die
   and the doctors opened his skull they found a close fitting brain-box
   and that the man suffered from an irritable brain. Did not that account
   for a great many of his hard speeches? I do not mention these matters
   to excuse sin, but to make you and myself treat such people as gently
   as we can, and pray, "Lord, do not give me such a brain-box and do not
   let me have such rheumatisms or such pains, because upon such a rack I
   may be much worse than they. Lead us not into temptation."

   So, again, mental conditions often furnish great temptations. When a
   man becomes depressed he becomes tempted. Those among us who rejoice
   much, often sink about as much as we rise. And when everything looks
   dark around us, Satan is sure to seize the occasion to suggest
   despondency. God forbid that we should excuse ourselves, but, dear
   Brother, pray that you are not led into this temptation. Perhaps if you
   were as much a subject of nervousness and sinking of spirit as the
   friend you blame for melancholy, you might be more blameworthy than he.
   Therefore pity rather than condemn. And, on the other hand, when the
   spirits are exhilarated and the heart is ready to dance for joy, it is
   very easy for levity to step in and for words to be spoken amiss. Pray
   the Lord not to let you rise so high nor sink so low as to be led into
   evil. "Lead us not into temptation," must be our hourly prayer.

   Further than this, there are temptations arising out of personal
   associations which are formed for us in the order of Providence. We are
   bound to shun evil company, but there are cases in which, without fault
   on their part, persons are made to associate with bad characters. I may
   bring up the pious child whose father is a swearer. And the godly
   woman, lately converted, whose husband remains a swearer and blasphemes
   the name of Christ. It is the same with workmen who have to labor in
   workshops where lewd fellows at every half-dozen words let fall an oath
   and pour forth that filthy language which shocks us each day more and
   more.

   I think that in London our working people talk more filthily than they
   ever did--at least, I hear more of it as I pass along or pause in the
   street. Well, if persons are obliged to work in such shops, or to live
   in such families, there may come times when under the lash of jest and
   sneer and sarcasm the heart may be a little dismayed and the tongue may
   refuse to speak for Christ. Such a silence and cowardice are not to be
   excused, yet do not censure your Brother, but say, "Lord, lead me not
   into temptation." How do you know that you would be more bold? Peter
   quailed before a talkative maid, and you may be cowed by a woman's
   tongue! The worst temptation that I know of, for a young Christian, is
   to live with a hypocrite--a man so sanctified and demure that the young
   heart, deceived by appearances, fully trusts him while the wretch is
   false at heart and rotten in life.

   And such wretches there are who, with the pretense and affectation of
   sanctimoniousness, will do deeds at which we might weep tears of blood!
   Young people are frightfully staggered and many of them become deformed
   for life in their spiritual characteristics through associating with
   such beings as these. When you see faults caused by such common but
   horrible causes, say to yourself, "Lord, lead me not into temptation. I
   thank You for godly parents and for Christian associations and for
   godly examples. But what might I have been if I had been subjected to
   the very reverse? If evil influences had touched me when, like a vessel
   I was upon the wheel, I might have exhibited even grosser failings than
   those which I now see in others."

   Thus I might continue to urge you to pray, dear Friends, against
   various temptations. But let me say the Lord has, for some men, very
   special tests such as may be seen in the case of Abraham. He gives him
   a son in his old age and then says to him, "Take now your son, your
   only son, Isaac, whom you love, and offer him for a burnt-offering."
   You will do right to pray, "Lord, lead me not into such a temptation as
   that. I am not worthy to be so tried. Oh do not so test me." I have
   known some Christians sit down and calculate whether they could have
   acted as the Patriarch did. It is very foolish, dear Brothers and
   Sisters. When you are called upon to do it, you will be enabled to make
   the same sacrifice, by the Grace of God! But if you are not called upon
   to do it, why should the power be given? Shall God's Grace be left
   unused? Your strength shall be equal to your day, but it shall not
   exceed it. I would have you ask to be spared the sterner tests.

   Another instance is to be seen in Job. God gave Job over to Satan
   within limits and you know how Satan tormented him and tried to
   overwhelm him. If any man were to pray, "Lord, try me like Job," it
   would be a very unwise prayer. "Oh, but I could be as patient as he,"
   you say. You are the very man who would yield to bitterness and curse
   your God! The man who could best exhibit the patience of Job will be
   the first, according to his Lord's bidding, fervently to pray, "Lead us
   not into temptation." Dear Friends, we are to be prepared for trial if
   God wills it, but we are not to court it, but are rather to pray
   against it even as our Lord Jesus, though ready to drink the bitter
   cup, yet in agony, exclaimed, "If it is possible, let this cup pass
   from Me."

   Trials sought after are not such as the Lord has promised to bless. No
   true child asks for the rod. To put my meaning in a way in which it
   will be clearly seen, let me tell an old story. I have read in history
   that two men were condemned to die as martyrs in the burning days of
   Queen Mary. One of them boasted very loudly to his companion of his
   confidence that he should play the man at the stake. He did not mind
   the suffering! He was so grounded in the Gospel that he knew he should
   never deny it. He said that he longed for the fatal morning even as a
   bride for the wedding. His companion in prison in the same chamber was
   a poor trembling soul who could not and would not deny his Master, but,
   he told his companion, he was very much afraid of the fire.

   He said he had always been very sensitive of suffering and he was in
   great dread that when he began to burn, the pain might cause him to
   deny his Master. He begged his friend to pray for him and he spent his
   time very much in weeping over his weakness and crying to God for
   strength. The other continually rebuked him and chided him for being so
   unbelieving and weak. When they both came to the stake, he who had been
   so bold recanted at the sight of the fire and went back, ignominiously,
   to an apostate's life--while the poor trembling man whose prayer had
   been, "Lead me not into temptation," stood firm as a rock, praising and
   magnifying God as he was burnt to a cinder!

   Weakness is our strength and our strength is weakness! Cry unto God
   that He try you not beyond your strength and in the shrinking
   tenderness of your conscious weakness, breathe out the prayer, "Lead us
   not into temptation." Then if He does lead you into the conflict, His
   Holy Spirit will strengthen you and you will be brave as a lion before
   the adversary! Though trembling and shrinking within yourself before
   the Throne of God, you could confront the very devil and all the hosts
   of Hell without one ounce of fear! It may seem strange, but so is the
   case.

   III. And now I conclude with the last head--THE LESSONS WHICH THIS
   PRAYER TEACHES. I have not time to enlarge. I will just throw them out
   in the rough. The first lesson from the prayer, "Lead us not into
   temptation," is this--never boast of your own strength. Never say, "Oh,
   I shall never fall into such follies and sins. They may try me, but
   they will find more than a match in me." Let not him that puts on his
   harness boast as though he were taking it off! Never indulge one
   thought of congratulation as to your strength. You have no power of
   your own. You are as weak as water. The devil has only to touch you in
   the right place and you will run according to his will. Only let a
   loose stone or two be moved and you will soon see that the feeble
   building of your own natural virtue will come down at a run. Never
   court temptation by boasting your own capacity.

   The next thing is, never desire trial. Does anybody ever do that? Yes.
   I heard one say, the other day, that God had so prospered him for years
   that he was afraid he was not a child of God, for he found that God's
   children were chastised and, therefore, he almost wished to be
   afflicted. Dear Brothers and Sisters, do not wish for that! You will
   meet with trouble soon enough. If I were a little boy at home, I do not
   think I should say to my brother, because he had been whipped, "I am
   afraid I am not my father's child, and fear that he does not love me
   because I am not smarting under the rod. I wish he would whip me just
   to let me know his love." No, no child would ever be so stupid! We must
   not for any reason desire to be afflicted or tried, but must pray,
   "Lead us not into temptation."

   The next thought is, never go into temptation. The man who prays "Lead
   us not into temptation," and then goes into it, is a liar before God!
   What a hypocrite a man must be who utters this prayer and then goes off
   to the theater! How false is he who offers this prayer and then stands
   at the bar and drinks and talks with depraved men and bedizened women!
   "Lead us not into temptation," is shameful profanity when it comes from
   the lips of men who resort to places of amusement whose moral tone is
   bad. "Oh," you say, "you should not tell us of such things." Why not?
   Some of you do them and I am bold to rebuke evil wherever it is found
   and shall do so while this tongue can move! There is a world of cant
   about.

   People go to Church and say, "Lead us not into temptation," and then
   they know where temptation is to be found and they go straight to it!
   You need not ask the Lord not to lead you there--He has nothing to do
   with you! The devil and you, between you, will go far enough without
   mocking God with your hypocritical prayers! The man who goes into sin
   willfully with his eyes open and then bends his knees and says
   half-a-dozen times over in his Church on Sunday morning "Lead us not
   into temptation," is a hypocrite without a mask! Let him take that home
   to himself and believe that I mean to be personal with him and to such
   barefaced hypocrites as he!

   The last word is, if you pray God not to lead you into temptation, do
   not lead others there. Some seem to be singularly forgetful of the
   effect of their example, for they will do evil things in the presence
   of their children and those who look up to them. Now I pray you
   consider that by ill example you destroy others as well as yourself. Do
   nothing, my dear Brothers and Sisters, of which you have need to be
   ashamed, or which you would not wish others to imitate. Do the right
   thing at all times and do not let Satan make a "cat's paw" of you to
   destroy the souls of others!

   Do you pray, "Lead us not into temptation"? Then do not lead your
   children there. They are invited, during the festive season, to
   such-and-such a family party where there will be everything but what
   will benefit their spiritual growth or even their good morals--do not
   allow them to go. Put your foot down. Be steadfast about it. Having
   once prayed, "Lead us not into temptation," be not the hypocrite by
   allowing your children to go into it.

   God bless these words to us. May they sink into our souls and if any
   feel that they have sinned, oh that they may now ask forgiveness
   through the precious blood of Christ and find it by faith in Him! When
   they have obtained mercy, let their next desire be that they may be
   kept in the future from sinning as they did before and, therefore, let
   them pray, "Lead us not into temptation." God bless you.
     __________________________________________________________________

God's Advocates Breaking Silence

   (No. 1403)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 17, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Suffer me a little and I will show you that I have yet to speak on
   God's behalf." Job 36:2.

   ELIHU was sufficiently severe with Job, but as this arose from his
   honest conviction that Job had spoken amiss, we cannot blame him. The
   style of his address is, in some points, highly commendable. We admire
   the courtesy which moved him to say, "Suffer me a little." It shows
   some little consideration for his audience. It is to be feared that
   under our preaching our people suffer greatly and we do not sympathize
   with their sense of weariness--otherwise we might often apologize in
   the terms of Elihu, saying, "Suffer me a little." I admire Elihu's
   attempt at brevity. I call it an attempt, for I am not quite sure that
   he succeeded, for he filled two more chapters! Yet he said, "Suffer me
   a little" and thereby promised to make his oration as short as he
   could.

   Some lengthy Divines, with their many divisions, their, "Finallies,"
   and "Lastlies," and concluding observations, spin and spin and cause
   their congregations to suffer--and that not a little, but exceedingly
   much. It is well, when we have anything good to say, to use as few
   words as possible, for if brevity is not the garment of Divine Grace,
   it is the soul of wit, and all our wits should be set to work to put
   Gospel teaching into such a form that it will be the better received.
   Assuredly, short and pointed addresses are more likely to reach the
   heart than long and dreary sermons. If our preaching is so poor that
   the people suffer, it is better that they suffer little rather than
   much! And if our ministry is very rich and satisfying, it is better to
   send the people home longing than loathing.

   We may also admire the prudence of Elihu in dividing his discourse into
   four or five portions. If you turn to the book of Job you will see that
   he has been speaking ever since the 32nd chapter and he has made at
   least three pauses. It may be that these filled up considerable
   intervals. His talk would have reached an unbearable length had he
   continued to speak on and on without a parenthesis of silence. But he
   stopped and gave his hearers space to breathe. Doubtless four
   sermonettes were better than one long discourse. Teachers and all those
   who seek to win the hearts of others, should imitate Elihu in this and
   not say too much at one time, for the spirit of the hearer may be
   willing, but his flesh is weak. Be wise and do not attempt to say
   everything at once!

   Remember that there is such a thing as undoing by overdoing. Many of
   those whom we try to teach are like bottles with narrow necks--we must
   pour gently with a slender stream or we shall spill the Truth of God
   rather than convey it. Hungry children cannot eat a whole field of
   wheat! We must prepare the food and give them a loaf and even that will
   often be better if it is cut into slices and handed out a little at a
   time. Little and often in spiritual feeding is far better than much at
   long intervals. "Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little
   and there a little" is the way in which Wisdom teaches her disciples.
   Often let the preacher or teacher pause, as Elihu did, and say to
   himself, if not to his hearers, "I have many things to say to you, but
   you cannot bear them now."

   It is admirable in Elihu, also, that he knew what he was doing when he
   spoke. He says, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf." He has a
   definite objective before him! His subject has been considered and his
   drift has been determined. "I have yet to speak on God's behalf." Elihu
   felt the necessity of doing so. He had kept silent for a while, but
   after what he had heard spoken by the Patriarch's three friends, he
   came to the conclusion that, "Great men are not always wise: neither do
   the aged understand judgment." The speeches of Job also had stirred his
   soul, for in his judgment, Job drank up scorning like water (Job 34:7).
   He felt that he must speak.

   His swelling heart impelled him--woe was upon him if he kept silent
   and, therefore, he burst forth with the exclamation, "I am full of
   matter, the spirit within me compels me. Behold, my belly is as wine
   which has no vent! It is ready to burst like new bottles." He was
   forced to speak. Duty called him and impulse compelled him. There is
   nothing like emptying out your heart when it is full. It is wretched
   work to hear the noise of an empty barrel. It is good speaking

   when you say what must be said and give forth utterances which you
   cannot restrain. He who speaks from conscious necessity will speak with
   earnestness, readiness and power.

   I suppose, too, that Elihu felt that he must continue to speak because
   he had once begun. "I have yet to speak," says he, "on God's behalf."
   He had started and could not come to a standstill all of a sudden. The
   theme which he had chosen, when once adopted, keeps its grip upon the
   soul--it holds the speaker spell-bound. Forgive us if we sometimes
   transgress the usual limits of time, for when we reach the height of
   our great argument we long to linger and are drawn on and drawn out
   beyond our first intentions, feeling that we have yet to speak on God's
   behalf. He who once begins to speak concerning his God feels that his
   heart intends a good matter and his tongue is as the pen of a ready
   writer. On such a theme, "Naphtali is a hind let loose--he gives goodly
   words."

   Thus you see that Elihu spoke because he felt laid under a necessity to
   do so and I believe that the same necessity is laid upon many of us.
   While we muse, the fire burns--and we must speak with our tongue. It is
   evident that Elihu felt great responsibility in speaking on behalf of
   God, as who would not? It is no light thing to be called to advocate
   the cause of the King of kings! Therefore he was very thoughtful as to
   his speech and he says, "I will fetch my knowledge from afar and will
   ascribe righteousness to my Maker." It is not every sort of talk that
   is good enough to be used in pleading for the Lord our God--the best of
   the best is not so good as such a cause demands! Words should be fitly
   chosen and statements should be carefully weighed when we are pleading
   on behalf of God.

   It may well be a matter of prayer with us that all who speak for Jesus
   may feel the weight of their engagement and go about it in the deepest
   solemnity of spirit. Feeling how awesome is their work and calling, let
   us not fail to pray for them that they may be divinely helped and
   prospered! Let us speak unto the Lord on their behalf and say to our
   great Father--

   "We plead for those who plead for Thee, Successful pleaders may they
   be." Elihu surely felt it to be a high honor to be an advocate for God.
   What greater dignity can be bestowed upon us? He must have felt it an
   honor, for he spoke in tones of courage and confidence. He cried,
   "Behold, I am according to your wish in God's stead." No flattering
   speeches were on his tongue. How can any man flatter his fellows when
   he is called to speak in the name of God? He might fear that in so
   doing his Maker would take him away. Ill would it become an ambassador
   for Christ to demean his office by stooping to flatter the king's
   enemies! His business is to reflect honor upon the Prince who has
   bestowed honor upon him.

   We know, also, that Elihu felt it to be a great privilege to speak on
   the behalf of God, for he declares, "I will speak, that I may be
   refreshed." O Beloved, when the Lord teaches you much of His love, you
   feel compelled to tell of it! That is a secret which is hard to keep
   and, blessed be the name of the Lord, we are both permitted and
   commanded to divulge it! Has He not said, whom we call Master and Lord,
   "That which you have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed
   upon the housetops"? It is a delight to the renewed soul to speak
   concerning Christ as much as it is to a bird to sing! The faculty is
   given, the impulse is bestowed and we must exercise and indulge them
   both!

   That I have yet to speak personally on God's behalf is to me a great
   joy. It is a delight in which few of you can fully sympathize because
   you may not have spoken so much as I have done, nor have been so long
   and dolorously silent. Glory be unto the Lord my God, once more my
   tongue is loosed and the opportunity to speak is given! I say it with
   unfeigned joy and perhaps with more joy than Elihu ever knew, "I have
   yet to speak on God's behalf." [Brother Spurgeon had been ill and away
   from the Tabernacle, recuperating, for some time. See sermon #1396 in
   this volume, Reasons for Turning to the Lord.]

   I hope, however, that all of you whose lives are spared, whose spheres
   of usefulness are enlarged, or who see new doors of utterance open to
   you, will, with joy, say, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf," and
   that you will not hesitate to avail yourselves of the privilege to the
   fullest possible extent. What a host will go forth to publish the
   Gospel if you all feel that you must speak on God's behalf! How will
   Satan's kingdom be moved if you all do it with power from on high, the
   power of the Holy Spirit! In our text we have a duty set before us.
   First, let us think of it. Secondly, let us consider how to perform it.
   And thirdly, let us do it at once.

   I. We have before us a privilege and a duty--"I have yet to speak on
   God's behalf." LET US THINK OF IT. Speech is the high prerogative of
   man. It is given to him, alone, of all earthly creatures. He is the one
   sole articulate voice for this

   lower world. Birds and beasts, fishes and creeping things, mountains
   and seas exhibit the praises of God, but they cannot express them. Man
   is the world's tongue--it were well if that tongue were always
   sanctified to the Divine service, for otherwise it misrepresents the
   universe for which it should be the interpreter. Of our text we note
   that the subject is sublime. "I have yet to speak on God's behalf."

   Is it not a high calling and an exalted theme? The cause of God and
   Truth deserves seraphic eloquence. At first sight it seems as if it
   were needless to speak on behalf of God. He is so great that human
   opinion can be of no consequence to Him! He is so good that He doe not
   need defense. His claims are so clear--does He need that they should be
   pleaded? Alas, my Brothers and Sisters, pleaders for God and advocates
   of His cause have always been needed since that evil day when He was
   slandered in Paradise and our first parents lifted disobedient hands to
   pluck the forbidden fruit. Though no voice is so sweet as the Divine,
   man is hardened against his God and it is the office of the whole
   Church with a thousand voices to be continually crying in the world's
   dull ears and speaking on the behalf of God. There is need, and growing
   need, that we should lift up our voices for our God and His Gospel!

   Yet may we tremble as we enter upon the enterprise! Who shall fitly
   commend perfection? Who shall vindicate spotless purity? Who shall
   rightly tell of insulted justice, or who shall declare boundless love?
   The theme will exhaust every faculty when elevated to the highest
   degree and strengthened to its utmost possibility. To speak on God's
   behalf-- this is a lofty argument, indeed, and yet we will not flinch
   from it, for it is natural that we should speak for Him to whom we owe
   everything! If we have a tongue at all, we ought to speak here--if
   silent upon all other themes, yet never should we be unwilling to speak
   for our God! The stones themselves might speak if we should hold our
   speech in such a cause. The theme might make slow speaking Moses wax as
   eloquent as his brother Aaron!

   A God so good, so good to us, so good beyond all imagination deserves
   that we shake off our cowardice and speak out for Him manfully!
   Reflect, my Brothers who are called to speak on the behalf of God, that
   since He has provided an Advocate for you, you are bound to become
   advocates for Him! What a pleader has He set apart for you! It is
   Christ of whom we read, "Never man spoke like this Man." Our glorious
   Mediator stands forever pleading the causes of our souls and it is but
   natural and right, therefore, that His redeemed should, with all their
   hearts, plead His cause before the sons of men!

   And yet there are few who speak on behalf of God. I mean more than
   perhaps you think. There are few who vindicate the honor of Jehovah and
   view matters from His Throne. Their eyes look elsewhere and not to the
   sacred Majesty of the Supreme Being. Many are the preachers of the
   Gospel, but still, I note but few who preach the Gospel on behalf of
   God. There are two aspects of the Gospel--the one which looks towards
   man and the other which looks towards God--he who preaches the Gospel
   only from its manward side is apt to forget its major part. He regards
   man with a pity and sympathy most fitting and proper, but, alas, too
   often he fails in sympathy with God and in distinct recognition of the
   claims and rights of the great Sovereign.

   How seldom is Divine sovereignty spoken of! Man is looked upon as
   though he were a deserving creature and had a right to salvation. One
   would think, to hear some preachers, that God was under obligation to
   man, or, at least, that He had no will of His own, but had left man's
   will to be supreme! The Truth of God is that if all the race had been
   condemned, God would have been infinitely just! And if He spares one
   and not another, none can say to Him, "What are You doing?" His
   declaration is, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will
   have compassion on whom I will have compassion." I sympathize with man,
   but I have in my very soul an infinitely deeper sympathy with God. I am
   bound to love my neighbor as myself, but the still higher Law calls on
   me to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength!

   Speaking on behalf of man may be carried so far that you come, at
   length, to look upon man's sin as his misfortune rather than his fault
   and to view the fact that sin is punished at all as a matter to be
   deplored. In some professed Christians their pity for the criminal has
   overcome their horror at the crime! Eternal punishment is denied, not
   because the Scriptures are not plain enough on that point, but because
   man has become the god of man and everything must be toned down to suit
   the tender feelings of an age which excuses sin but denounces its
   penalties--which has no condemnation for the offense and spends its
   denunciations upon the Judge and His righteous sentence. By all means,
   have sympathies manward, but at the same time show some tenderness
   towards the dishonored Law and the insulted Lord!

   Is justice a figment? Is there no necessity for Divine anger? Has
   mercy, itself, become a debt due to mankind? Do you see nothing
   horrible in sin? Is there no guilt in rejecting Christ and trampling on
   His blood? And is there none in closing the eyes even to the feebler
   light which streams from the visible works of God and reveals His power
   and Godhead? Few, I say, look at the matter in this light, and yet it
   should be the main business of every Believer "to speak on God's
   behalf." It becomes, therefore, all the more necessary that those who
   have been led to side with God and who feel their hearts drawn to adore
   and magnify and vindicate their glorious Lord, that they should count
   it a privilege to be spared to speak on the behalf of God.

   I would silence no voice that speaks for man so far as it speaks
   truthfully, but oh for more voices to speak for God and maintain His
   crown rights! It seems that we vindicate His Law and the terrors of it,
   His Gospel and the sovereignty of it, His Nature and the completeness
   of it, His Providence and the wisdom of it, His redemption and the
   efficacy of it, His eternal purpose and the accomplishment of it. May
   this theme, though long silent, be sounded forth till its voice is
   heard in every street of Zion! Not the exaggeration of Divine Truth,
   but that Truth, itself, we desire to hear, and God grant we may live to
   hear it! May many a man of God be compelled to say, "I have yet to
   speak on God's behalf." Let others plead what cause they will, it is
   ours with the greatest of poets, "To justify the ways of God to men."

   While thinking over the work described in the text we would further
   remark that the call is personal--"I have yet to speak on God's
   behalf." Do we not, as Believers in Jesus, recognize ourselves in that
   little word, I? "I have yet to speak," though to now, a listener, as
   Elihu was while the elders gave, each one, his opinion. I, though
   silenced for a while, blessed be His name, have yet to speak on God's
   behalf! The harp has hung awhile upon the wall and pined in
   silence--but now the Chief Musician takes it down again and almost
   before He sweeps the chords, every string begins to thrill with delight
   at the thought that He will make them resound again! The cobweb and the
   dust suit not the lyre which for so many years has welcomed the sacred
   touch!

   Have you been laid aside awhile, Brother or Sister? Then rejoice in the
   day of your restoration and say, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf."
   I, again, though not the wisest nor the best, have my testimony to bear
   even as Elihu did, who had, to then, given place to those whom he
   thought to be wiser than he. His words were, "I am young and you are
   very old. Therefore I was afraid and dared not show you my opinion. I
   said, Days should speak and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But
   there is a spirit in man and the Inspiration of the Almighty gives them
   understanding." And so, though esteeming himself to be least and,
   therefore, fitly coming last, he rose in his place and faithfully
   delivered his soul.

   you that are not eloquent, whose tongues will scarcely respond to your
   thoughts--nevertheless you have to speak in the name of the Lord in
   ways as forcible as uttered language! Take care that you do so and make
   no long delays, but look forward eagerly for times when you shall speak
   on God's behalf after your own manner. The smallest bell in the steeple
   is needed to complete the chime and the tiniest bird in the forest
   would be missed if its notes were hushed! Therefore come forth, O least
   of all the brotherhood, for without your presence the Father's family
   is not complete! All voices are needed! No child of God may be silent!

   You, too, who are conscious of great weakness and unworthiness, I
   invite you to say, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf," for this man,
   Elihu, was a trembler like yourselves. In the 37th chapter he says, "At
   this, also, my heart trembles, and is moved out of his place." Nor did
   he feel that his abilities were equal to his subject, for in the 19th
   verse of the same chapter he breathed this prayer, "Teach us what we
   shall say unto Him; for we cannot order our speech by reason of
   darkness." And yet, though conscious of his inability to handle the
   theme, and trembling under its power, he nevertheless rejoiced to feel
   that he must speak something--and he opened his mouth boldly in the
   name of the Lord!

   Brother, work for God, whether you can or not! Power will increase as
   you use the little you possess. You will learn to speak more graciously
   as you proceed, if not more fluently and accurately. Therefore plunge
   into the middle of the matter, saying, "I have yet to speak on God's
   behalf." Glory be to God, the devil himself cannot silence the man
   whose mouth the Lord has opened and whose heart He has quickened by His
   Truth! He may be laid aside for many a day and it may seem to his
   fellow men that he is useless and worthless, but the hour will need the
   man and the man will seize the hour and speak so as to be heard! Only
   let your heart be ready and your spirit watchful and waiting--the time
   shall surely come when, though you are now a poor prattling babe, you
   shall speak like a man on God's behalf!

   1 think, dear Friends, I may now make a third remark, namely, that in
   the text the reminder is seasonable and may be addressed most rightly
   to many of us, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf." Does not this
   awaken you, O silent and

   sluggish soul? Have you been hidden among stuff all these days? Are you
   on the Lord's side but of a faint heart? Have you never found a tongue?
   Wake up, my Brother, and say, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf." Is
   it not written, "Then shall the lame man leap as an hart and the tongue
   of the dumb sing"? How can you bear a life-long silence when, to me,
   even a few weeks become irksome? Our children need no encouragement to
   talk! Should the children of God be tongue-

   tied?

   I have thought, lately, a great deal about Zacharias who was struck
   dumb, on account of his unbelief, while sacrificing in the temple, but
   was assured that in a few months he should speak again. How I watched,
   those weary weeks, until the day should come when my tongue should once
   more express my thoughts! How glad I was as the day drew near! Have you
   been shut up, Brother, so that you could not come forth? Then cheer
   yourself and look for the day when you will say, "I have yet to speak
   on God's behalf." This thought may justly occur to us after times of
   great deliverance. David had been seized by the Philistines and taken
   before king Abimelech--and had only escaped by feigning madness. No
   sooner was he safe than he said, "I will bless the Lord at all times.
   His praise shall continually be in my mouth"

   (Psa.34:1).

   Among the verses of that grateful song you read the following, "Come,
   you children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord."
   He felt bound to tell the Lord's goodness both to old and young! When
   we are raised from deep distress we should never fail to say, "I have
   yet to speak on God's behalf." The same is true if you have been
   conscious of a grave fault and have received forgiveness. Then, too,
   you have yet to speak on God's behalf and you may be very glad of it,
   for it will serve as a pledge of your forgiveness! Poor Peter might
   very naturally have remained quiet throughout the rest of his life
   after having denied his Master, but it must have cheered him to
   remember that the Lord had said beforehand, "When you are converted,
   strengthen your brethren." Moreover, he felt the certainty of his
   Lord's forgiving love when, by the sea of Galilee, in loving tones He
   said, "Feed My sheep." Do you wonder that on the day of Pentecost Peter
   felt a joy not to be expressed as he said to himself, "I have yet to
   speak on God's behalf. Even I, who once denied Him, am yet allowed to
   be His advocate and to proclaim His Grace"?

   Beloved Friends, if any of you have been disappointed in your Christian
   work and are therefore cast down, I want you to take my text as a
   slogan. Have you fallen into the condition of the Prophet Jeremiah, of
   whom we read, "Then I said I will not make mention of Him, nor speak
   any more in His name"? Have you been despised and defamed, laughed at
   and rejected? And do you fear that you have done no good and that you
   are altogether unfit for the service? Do you therefore cry, "I will
   speak no more in the name of the Lord"? Mark, my Brother, you will not
   easily abide in silence, for your experience will soon be like that of
   the Prophet--"But His Word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in
   my bones and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." You
   will be obliged to speak! Yes, again and again you will be compelled to
   say, "I have yet to speak in the name of the Lord."

   Perhaps you have been foolish like Jonah and have run away from the
   Lord's service--and now you have just escaped from the deeps with the
   sea slime upon you--and the tokens of the whale's belly about you. What
   then? Why, the first thing you have to do, almost before you brush your
   clothes, is to hasten to Nineveh and deliver your Lord's message, for
   you have yet to speak on God's behalf! Though you have once refused,
   you will be brought to do it and it will be well to yield at once and
   go boldly with this doctrine in your heart, "Salvation is of the Lord!"
   And with this message upon your tongue, "Repent and seek the Lord." If
   you go at once, your voice shall ring through the streets of Nineveh
   and the man with the salt-sea smell upon him shall be more revered in
   the streets of Nineveh than if he had come there perfumed from the
   courts of kings!

   Take the text home as coming seasonably to many characters here. I
   cannot tell the exact condition of each Brother's and Sister's heart,
   and yet I think if I could read your inmost souls I should see the
   strongest reasons why this should be the soliloquy of each one, "I have
   yet to speak on God's behalf." Furthermore, while thinking this matter
   over, let us remark that this duty is a very solemn and difficult one.
   And, consequently, it deserves our best possible preparations. When a
   young barrister was chosen years ago, almost within the recollection of
   our older folks, to advocate the cause of a queen whose character had
   been questioned, I can imagine him sitting up late and rising early
   that he might study his brief and get the whole matter well into his
   mind and choose out good words with which to urge her suit.

   I can conceive the trepidation with which he stood up in the Hall at
   Westminster to plead for one whom many in the nation regarded as an
   injured queen. But all that feeling of responsibility should be far
   outdone by everyone who has to

   speak for God! To rush from your bed to the pulpit to speak what first
   comes to hand seems to me to be next door to profanity! Even to talk to
   little children about Jesus without the slightest anxiety beforehand
   cannot be excused. We should not offer unto God that which costs us
   nothing! And if we stand up to plead for Him, surely it should not be
   said that the first time we saw our brief was when we appeared in
   court!

   No, fetch your words from far. Let them be gained by diving into the
   deeps of your own soul and into the depths of the Divine Word. Say to
   yourself, "I have yet to speak on God's behalf and I would do it with
   my utmost ability. O you powers of mind, be ready! But, above all, O
   power Divine, rest on me, for he that speaks for God should speak by
   God, or else he speaks in vain." If we have to speak for God we should
   certainly do it with all zeal and earnestness. A cold advocacy of the
   cause of God is next door to an attack upon it! To speak for God with
   careless air, with bated breath, or with affected tone is gravely
   unbecoming in a case where faith and fire should be the main attributes
   of the speaker. Let us throw ourselves into every word we utter for God
   even though we speak only to one poor ragged child.

   At the same time, let us cultivate a constant promptness in this work.
   We should be ready to give an answer to him that asks us. We should be
   eager to seize opportunities! We should be on the watch for openings
   for advancing the great suit. Be always in trim for this great
   business! When you leave home, say to yourself, "I may have to speak
   for God in the omnibus, or in the workshop, in the parlor, or in the
   kitchen. I may have to speak on the behalf of God when least I expect
   it--let me have my heart in order for it." May the Holy Spirit enable
   you to do so. The mercy of the Lord to us never fails--so let our zeal
   to honor Him never cease!

   Thus we have thought upon the subject and I trust are prepared to
   enquire into the way in which we can show our practical interest in it.
   I can only give brief hints and there is no need of more, for the work
   itself will open before you when you once get at it.

   II. "I have yet to speak on God's behalf." Let us now consider HOW IT
   IS TO BE DONE. A great number of Christians will do it best by
   manifesting holiness in their daily lives, by their common conversation
   being seasoned with salt and by taking such opportunities as the
   Providence of God puts in their way of speaking to their Redeemer's
   praise. "I have yet to speak on God's behalf as the master of a family
   to my children and to my servants, as a mistress to my domestics, as a
   servant by my life, as a merchant in my trade. I have so to speak on
   God's behalf that those about me may see what religion is by watching
   my life.

   Whatever my lot, condition, or occupation, I have a witness to bear,
   for those who never read the Bible may read me and those who never
   think of Christ may at least think of one of His disciples and see, in
   some degree, what the Master is by what the servant is. Let this
   objective tone and tune your lives, my Brothers and Sisters, and let
   the members of this Church, especially, bear in mind that they are
   bound, from morning to night, in all that they are and all that they do
   to be speaking on the behalf of God!

   But, further, we are bound to do this by giving instruction. All of you
   who have been taught should also teach and I am sure there is a great
   need of instruction in this age--instruction, I mean, upon the things
   of God. We have probably more present need of instruction than of
   exhortation. We have many who exhort, but few who edify. Do, dear
   Friends, whether you teach in the Sunday school, or stand up at the
   corner of the street, or talk with friends and comrades, try to make
   known the name and Nature and attributes of God! Tell of His claims,
   the perfect righteousness demanded by His Law and the penalties due to
   disobedience. Speak on God's behalf of His Gospel's freeness, fullness
   and sureness. Speak on God's behalf concerning the doctrine of His
   Providence and the great Truths of His Grace and Sovereignty.

   Do not let those around you die for lack of knowledge! Make the name of
   the Lord to be known as much as lies in you. All themes, if rightly
   regarded, point to God and are best seen when He is our Standard. There
   is a great need that we should be continually putting Gospel Truths in
   the sunlight of God, giving clear instruction to the sons of men in
   reference to the Character, the work, the purposes, the will, the
   supremacy of God in Christ Jesus--for the Lord, He is God, even He is
   God, alone, and the whole earth shall yet know this. For this end we
   have yet to speak on God's behalf.

   Thirdly, there is another way of doing this, namely, by bearing
   personal testimony to what you have known and felt and experienced of
   the good things of God. This is a very powerful way of speaking on
   God's behalf. Tell of your own sense of sin worked in you by the Holy
   Spirit. Tell of your own delight in the pardoning blood. Tell of the
   power of prayer as proved by yourself. Tell of the reality of faith and
   the fidelity of God to His promises and illustrate these by your own
   history. Perhaps you are not doing this from alarm lest you should be
   thought egotistical. If Paul had never

   spoken of himself in his Epistles, we should have been great losers and
   I do not suppose that Paul would have been any the humbler for his
   silence.

   It is a mock humility, it is a detestable humility, which robs God of
   His Glory because we are afraid somebody will criticize us if we spoke
   to His praise! Such a motive is sheer selfishness--it is base pride
   when a man, to make himself the better thought of, dares not say, "My
   God did this and that for me, this and that by me and unto Him be
   praise." Bear your testimony in your homes and tell your friends what
   great things God has done for you. Say among the heathen, "The Lord has
   done great things for us whereof we are glad." Be witnesses for the
   Lord in all companies!

   Sometimes, too, we may have to bear our testimony by way of
   controversy. We are to contend earnestly for the faith. Have you not
   heard it said, "Why cannot a man preach his own views and let other
   people alone?" Yes, why didn't Luther do so? Why didn't he take the
   advice of Staupnitz when he said, "Go to your cell and pray and leave
   these matters to God and hold your tongue"? Where had been the
   Reformation if he had followed that sage advice? Could not Calvin have
   done so and studied the decrees of God by himself and have made no war
   on Rome? Where would have been the Church of the present day?

   It is an easy way to save your skin, to believe what you believe and
   let other people alone. Martyrs at the stake and confessors in prison
   were fools on the hypothesis that controversy is wrong! No, it is a
   part of our religion to let no error alone, to draw the sword and fight
   the good fight, warring against the many false spirits which have come
   into the world! If you ever hear severe criticisms upon bold and strong
   speeches which assail error, do not join in those criticisms. If you
   do, I do not know that those who are the victims of your remarks will
   care much about it, but you will be fighting on the wrong side--and
   that is an important point for you to think of. If you are wise, you
   will let the Christian soldier war his warfare and, at the very least,
   not oppose.

   Surely, if error is to have liberty, the Truth of God ought not to be
   bound! Our "modern thought" men are the least liberal of all
   professors. Their bigotry outbigots all that has gone before! They have
   a warm side for every error, but the old-fashioned orthodox Gospel is
   sneered at, run down and caricatured. Well, here is the end of the
   matter--by God's Grace we have believed and what we have believed we
   hold fast--and this day, again, we lift up a banner because of the
   Truth of God and rejoice that we have yet to speak on God's behalf!

   There is another way of speaking on God's behalf and that is by
   pleading with sinners, setting forth God's claims, urging them to
   accept God's gracious way of mercy, reminding them of God's right to
   our obedience and of the demand of His justice that sin should be
   punished. It is setting before them the Sovereignty of God so that they
   shall admit that they have no claims upon His goodness and urging them
   to yield to Him and accept the Grace which He so spontaneously gives.

   You can all do something of this--I pray you do a great deal more.
   During the late special services many of you have been diligent in
   speaking to strangers in the pews--keep up the custom, Brothers and
   Sisters! You used to do it years ago--renew the habit. Your hearts are
   warm and your tongues have come into practice! Go on, I pray you, as
   you have begun. Say, each one, "I have permitted many to go in and out
   of the pew without a word for Christ, but it shall not be so again, for
   I have yet to speak on God's behalf."

   III. My third head is, LET US DO IT, but I have no time to attempt it
   except in the briefest fashion. I have to speak on behalf of God to
   those among you who are utterly careless about Divine claims. How long
   will you provoke the Majesty of Heaven? Hear, O heavens, and give ear O
   earth! The Lord has nourished and brought up children and they have
   rebelled against Him! "The ox knows his owner and the ass his master's
   crib, but you do not know Him and do not consider." Are you honest
   towards everybody but God? Will you consider everyone but your Maker?
   Do you cast an eye of love on all except the great Being who is Love
   itself?

   Some of you have lived half a century and yet have neglected all the
   claims of your God. I beseech you remember that the time will come when
   He will reckon with you and call you to account. The talents committed
   to you have all been buried as yet--what will you say in that day when
   He shall call you to His bar? Oh, for God's sake, even if you leave out
   all considerations of your own eternal condition, by the common honesty
   which suggests that each one should have his own, I pray you turn your
   eyes to God and think upon His Christ!

   I speak, again, on God's behalf to many who are undecided and this is
   my message--How long will you linger between two opinions? If God is
   God, serve Him! If Baal is God, serve him! It is time that you should
   put an end to these

   hesitations--that the equivocal life which you are now leading should
   close in one way or the other! You said years ago that you were almost
   persuaded! You are no better today--you are worse and will grow worse,
   still--and in the end you will perish in your sins unless you come to a
   dead halt, consider your ways, acquaint yourself with God and be at
   peace. Oh, I pray you hear the voice which cries to you to cease your
   wandering and return to your God!

   I would speak to you new converts on the behalf of God just these few
   sentences. See to it that your conversion is true. Have no superficial
   religion. Pray God to plow you deep that there may be a sure harvest.
   Remember, if you get healed before you are wounded, it will serve no
   useful purpose. Many a surgeon has filmed a wound and found that he has
   done more hurt than good. You must be killed before you can be made
   alive! You must be stripped before you can be clothed. See to it that
   you repent as well as believe the Gospel, for a dry-eyed faith is not
   the faith of God's elect and will not save you. Repent and be
   converted! Let sin be abhorred, lamented and forsaken! Then, with the
   precious blood of Christ to make you clean, go on your way rejoicing!

   O you new converts who are to be brought into the Church, I speak on
   God's behalf to you! I hope you will be better than your fathers,
   better far than some of us who have been a stiff-necked generation! I
   hope you will come in among us as plastic material which the Lord Jesus
   will mold according to His will. I trust you will come into the Church
   like firebrands, like coals of juniper which have a most vehement
   flame--that all of us may anew be set on fire! There are some of us--I
   will not say who--but each one may judge for himself, who are quite
   cold. O that their arctic hearts may become a torrid region! May the
   Lord warm the mass right through that we may praise and bless His name.

   And now, to you Christians, I have yet to speak on the behalf of God.
   Is it necessary I should? Do you love the Lord? Do you really love Him?
   "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me?" Mary, Hannah, do you, indeed,
   love your Lord? Then what manner of persons ought we to be? What lives
   should love prompt us to lead? Come, let us gird our garments about us
   and give ourselves up, once again, to His service, by whom we are
   brought near unto God. May the Holy Spirit come upon us in a sevenfold
   measure from this day forward, to the praise of the Glory of His name
   who gives us the great privilege of saying, "I have yet to speak on
   God's behalf."
     __________________________________________________________________

Over Against the Sepulcher

   (No. 1404)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 24, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Sitting over against the sepulcher." Matthew 27:61.

   MARY MAGDALENE and the other Mary were last at the Savior's grave. They
   had associated themselves with Joseph and Nicodemus in the sad but
   loving task of placing the body of their Lord in the silent tomb. After
   the holy men had gone home they lingered near the grave. Sitting down,
   perhaps upon some seat in the garden, or on some projection of the
   rock, they waited in mournful solitude. They had seen where and how the
   body was laid and so had done their utmost, but yet they still sat
   watching--love has never done enough, it is hungry to render service.
   They could scarcely take their eyes away from the spot which held their
   most precious Treasure, nor leave, till they were compelled to do so,
   the sacred relics of their Best Beloved.

   The Virgin Mary had been taken by John to his home. She had sustained
   too great a shock to remain at the tomb, for in her were fulfilled the
   words, "Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own heart also." She was
   wise to leave to others those sorrowful offices which were beyond her
   own power--exceedingly wise, also, from that hour to her life's end, to
   remain in the shade, modestly bearing the honor which made her blessed
   among women. The mother of Zebedee's children, who also lingered late
   at the tomb, was gone home, too, for as she was the mother of John it
   is exceedingly probable that John resided with her and had taken the
   Virgin to her home. She was needed at home to act as hostess and assist
   her son and thus she would be obeying the last wish of her dying Lord
   when He said, "Son, behold your mother," and explained His meaning by a
   look.

   All having thus departed, the two Marys were the sole watchers at the
   tomb of Christ at the time of the going down of the sun. They had work
   yet to do for His burial and this called them away. But they stayed as
   long as they could--last to go and first to return. This morning we
   shall, with the women, take up the somewhat unusual post of "sitting
   over against the sepulcher." I call it unusual, for as none remained
   except these two women, few have preached upon our Redeemer's burial.
   Thousands of sermons have been delivered upon His death and
   Resurrection and in this I greatly rejoice, only wishing that there
   were thousands more. But still, the burial of our Lord deserves a
   larger share of consideration than it generally obtains.

   "He was crucified, dead, and buried," says the creed and, therefore
   those who wrote that summary must have thought His burial an important
   Truth of God and so, indeed, it is. It was the natural sequence and
   seal of His death and so was related to that which went before. It was
   the fit and suitable preparation for His rising again and so stood in
   connection with that which followed after. Come, then, let us take our
   seat with the holy women "over against the sepulcher" and sing--

   "Rest, glorious Son of God:

   Your work is done,

   And all your burdens borne.

   Rest on that stone

   Till the third sun has brought

   Your everlasting morn.

   How calmly in that tomb You lie now,

   Your rest how still and deep!

   O'er You in love the Father rests:

   He gives to His Beloved sleep.

   On Bethel pillow now Your head is laid,

   In Joseph's rock-hewn cell;

   Your watchers are the angels of Your God They guard Your slumbers
   well."

   I. Supposing ourselves to be sitting in the garden with our eyes fixed
   upon the great stone which formed the door of the tomb, we first of all
   ADMIRE THAT HE HAD A GRAVE AT ALL. We wonder how that stone could hide
   Him who is the brightness of His Father's Glory--how the Life of all
   could lie among the dead--how He who holds creation in His strong right
   hand could even, for an hour, be entombed! Admiring this, we would
   calmly reflect, first, upon the testimony of His grave that He was
   really dead. Those tender women could not have been mistaken, their
   eyes were too quick to suffer Him to be buried alive, even if anyone
   had wished to do so.

   Of our Lord's actual death we have many proofs connected with His
   burial. When Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and begged for the
   body, the Roman ruler would not give it up till he was certain of His
   death. The centurion, a man under authority, careful in all that he
   did, certified that Jesus was dead. The soldier who served under the
   centurion had by a very conclusive test established the fact of His
   death beyond all doubt, for with a spear he pierced His side and there
   came out forthwith blood and water. Pilate, who would not have given up
   the body of a condemned person unless he was sure that execution had
   taken place, registered the death and commanded the body to be
   delivered to Joseph.

   Both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and all the friends who aided in
   the interment were beyond all question convinced that He was dead. They
   handled the lifeless frame. They wrapped it in the bands of fine linen.
   They placed the spices about the sacred flesh which they loved so
   well--they were sadly assured that their Lord was dead. Even His
   enemies were quite certain that they had slain Him. They never had a
   suspicion that possibly a little life remained in Him and that it could
   be revived, for their stern hate allowed no doubt to remain upon that
   point--they knew even to the satisfaction of their mistrustful malice
   that Jesus of Nazareth had died.

   Even when in their anxiety they went to Pilate, it was not that they
   might obtain stronger proofs of death, but to prevent the disciples
   from stealing His dead body and saying that He had risen from the dead!
   Yes, Jesus died, literally and actually died, and His body of flesh and
   bones was really laid in Joseph's grave. It was no phantom that was
   crucified, as certain heretics dreamed of old. We have not to look to a
   spectral atonement or to a visionary sacrifice, though some in our own
   times would reduce redemption to something shadowy and unsubstantial.
   Jesus was a real Man and truly tasted the bitter pangs of death. And,
   therefore, He in very deed lay in the sepulcher, motionless as the rock
   out of which it was hewn, shrouded in His winding-sheet.

   Remember, as you think of your Lord's death, that the day will come,
   unless the Second Advent should intervene, in which you and I shall lie
   low among the dead as once our Master did. Soon, to this heart there
   will be left no pulsing life. To these eyes no glance of observation,
   to this tongue no voice, to these ears no sensibility of sound. We
   naturally start from this, yet must it be. We shall certainly mingle
   with the dust we tread upon and feed the worms. But as we gaze on
   Jesus' tomb and assure ourselves that our great Lord and Master died,
   each thought of dread is gone and we no longer shudder--we feel that we
   can safely go where Christ has gone before!

   Sitting down over against the sepulcher, after one has pondered upon
   the wondrous fact that He who is only immortality was numbered with the
   dead, the next subject which suggests itself is the testimony of the
   grave to His union with us. He had His grave hard by the city and not
   on some lone mountain peak where foot of man could never tread. His
   grave was where it could be seen! It was a family grave which Joseph
   had, no doubt, prepared for himself and his household. Jesus was laid
   in a family vault where another had expected to lie. Where was Moses
   buried? No man knows of his sepulcher to this day. But where Jesus was
   buried was well known to His friends. He was not caught away in a
   chariot of fire, nor was it said of Him that God took Him, but He was
   laid in the grave, "as the manner of the Jews is to bury."

   Jesus found His grave among the men He had redeemed! Hard by the common
   place of execution there was a garden and in that garden they laid Him
   in a tomb which was meant for others. So that our Lord's sepulcher
   stands, as it were, among our homes and gardens and is one tomb among
   many. Before me rises a picture. I see the cemetery, or sleeping place,
   of the saints, where each one rests on his lowly bed. They lie not
   alone, but like soldiers sleeping around their captain's pavilion where
   he, also, spent the night, though he is up before them. The sepulcher
   of Jesus is the central grave of God's acre. It is empty now, but His
   saints lie buried all around that cave in the rock, gathered in ranks
   around their dear Redeemer's resting place. Surely it robs the grave of
   its ancient terror when we think that Jesus slept in one of the
   chambers of the great dormitory of the sons of men!

   Very much might be said about the tomb in which Jesus lay. It was a new
   tomb wherein no remains had been previously laid. And thus if He came
   forth from it there would be no suspicion that another had arisen, nor
   could it be imagined that He rose through touching some old Prophet's
   bones, as he did who was laid in Elisha's grave. As He was born of a
   virgin mother, so was He buried in a virgin tomb wherein never man had
   lain. It was a rocky tomb and, therefore, nobody could dig into it by
   night, or tunnel through the earth. It was a borrowed tomb--so poor was
   Jesus that He owed a grave to charity. But that tomb was spontaneously
   offered, so rich was He in the love of hearts which He had won.

   That tomb He returned to Joseph, honored unspeakably by His temporary
   sojourn therein. I know not whether Joseph ever used it for any of his
   house, but I see no reason why he should not have done so. Certainly,
   our Lord, when He borrows, always makes prompt repayment and gives a
   bonus! He filled Simon's boat with fish when He used it for a pulpit!
   And He sanctified the rocky cell wherein He had lodged and left it
   perfumed for the next who should sleep there. We, too, expect, unless
   special circumstances should intervene, that these bodies of ours will
   lie in their narrow beds beneath the greensward and slumber till the
   resurrection. Nor need we be afraid of the tomb, for Jesus has been
   there. Sitting over against His sepulcher we grow brave and are ready,
   like knights of the holy sepulcher, to hurl defiance at death! At times
   we almost long for evening to undress that we may rest with God in the
   chamber where He gives sleep to His Beloved.

   Now, note that our Lord's tomb was in a garden, for this is typically
   the testimony of His grave to the hope of better things. Just a little
   beyond the garden wall you would see a little knoll of grim name and
   character--the Tyburn of Jerusalem. Golgotha, the place of a skull. And
   there stood the Cross. That rising ground was given up to horror and
   barrenness--but around the actual tomb of our Savior there grew herbs
   and plants and flowers. A spiritual garden still blooms around His
   tomb. The wilderness and the solitary place are glad for Him and the
   desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. He has made another Paradise
   for us and He Himself is the sweetest flower there! The first Adam
   sinned in a garden and spoiled our nature--the Second Adam slept in a
   garden and restored our loss!

   The Savior buried in the earth has removed the curse from the
   soil--from now on blessed is the ground for His sake. He died for us
   that we, ourselves, might become in heart and life fruitful gardens of
   the Lord! Let but His tomb and all the facts which surround it have due
   influence upon the minds of men and this poor blighted earth shall
   again yield her increase! Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir
   tree and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree--and it
   shall be to the Lord for a name.

   Sitting over against the sepulcher, perhaps the best thought of all is
   that now it is empty and so bears testimony to our resurrection! It
   must have made the two Marys weep, when before they left the grave they
   saw it filled with so beloved a Treasure, so surely dead. They ought to
   have rejoiced to find it empty when they returned, but they knew not,
   as yet, the angel's message--"He is not here, for He is risen." Our
   Christ is not dead! He lives forever to make intercession for us! He
   could not be held by the bands of death! There was nothing corruptible
   about Him and, therefore, His body has left the abode of decay to live
   in newness of life! The sepulcher is spoiled and the Spoiler has gone
   up to Glory, leading captivity captive!

   As you sit over against the sepulcher let your hearts be comforted
   concerning death, whose sting is gone forever. There shall be a
   resurrection! You can be sure of this, for if the dead rise not, then
   is Christ not risen! But the Lord is risen, indeed, and His rising
   necessitates that all who are in Him should rise as He has done! Yet
   another thought comes to me--Can I follow Christ as fully as these two
   women did? That is to say, can I still cling to Him though to sense and
   reason His cause should seem dead and laid in a rocky sepulcher? Can I,
   like Joseph and Magdalene, be a disciple of a dead Christ? Could I
   follow Him even at His lowest point?

   I want to apply this practically. Times have come upon the Christian
   Church when the Truth of God seems to be fallen in the streets and the
   kingdom of Christ is in apparent peril. Just now the Lord Jesus is
   betrayed by not a few of His professed ministers. He is being crucified
   afresh in the perpetual attacks of skepticism against His blessed
   Gospel--and it may be that things may wax worse and worse. This is not
   the first occasion when it has been so, for at various times in the
   history of the Church of God His enemies have exulted and cried out
   that the Gospel of past ages was exploded and might be reckoned as dead
   and buried.

   For one, I mean to sit over against the very sepulcher of Truth. I am a
   disciple of the old-fashioned doctrine as much when it is covered with
   disgrace and rebuke as when it shall again display its power, as it
   surely shall. Skeptics may seem to take the Truth of God and bind it,
   scourge it, crucify it and say that it is dead. And they may endeavor
   to bury it in scorn, but the Lord has many a Joseph and a Nicodemus who
   will see honor done even to the body of Truth and will wrap the
   despised creed in sweet spices and hide it away in their hearts. They
   may, perhaps, be half afraid that it is really dead, as the wise men
   assert, yet it is precious to their souls and they will come forth
   right gladly to espouse its cause and to confess that they are its
   disciples.

   We will sit down in sorrow but not in despair and watch until the stone
   is rolled away and Christ in His Truth shall live again and be openly
   triumphant! We shall see a Divine interposition and shall cease to
   fear--while they who stand armed to prevent the resurrection of the
   grand old doctrines shall quake and become as dead men--because the
   Gospel's everlasting life has been vindicated! And they will be made to
   quail before the brightness of its glory! This, then, is our first
   meditation--we admire that Jesus ever had a grave and we sit in wonder
   over against the sepulcher.

   II. Secondly, sitting here, WE REJOICE IN THE HONORS OF HIS BURIAL. The
   burial of Christ was, under some aspects of it, the lowest step of His
   humiliation--He must not merely, for a moment die, but He must be
   buried awhile in the heart of the earth. On the other hand, under other
   aspects our Lord's burial was the first step of His Glory--it was a
   turning point in His great career as we shall hope to show you. Our
   Lord's body was given up by Pilate to Joseph who went with authority to
   receive it from those who were appointed to see him take it down.

   Yesterday I had a glimpse at a work of art by one of our own Lembeth
   neighbors, exhibited by Mr. Doulton. It is a fine piece of work in
   terra-cotta, representing the taking down of Christ from the Cross. I
   could have wished to have studied it more at leisure, but a mere
   glimpse has charmed me. The artist represents a Roman soldier at the
   top of the Cross taking down the parchment upon which the accusation
   was written. He is rolling it up to put it away forever. I thought of
   the taking away of the handwriting which was against Him, even as He
   had taken away that which was against us. The Roman soldier, by
   authority, is thus represented as removing the charge which was once
   nailed over the ever blessed head. There is no accusation against Him
   now--He died and the Law is satisfied--it can no longer accuse the man
   who has endured its penalty.

   Another soldier is represented with a pair of pincers drawing out one
   of the big nails from the hands. The sacred body is now free. Law has
   no further claims upon it and withdraws its nails. A disciple, not a
   soldier, has mounted a ladder on the other side and, with a pair of
   scissors, is cutting away the crown of thorns. I think the artist did
   well to represent his doing so, for from now on it is our delight to
   remove all shame from the name of Jesus and to crown Him in another
   fashion. Then the artist has represented certain of His disciples as
   gently taking hold of the body as it is gradually being unloosed by the
   soldiers. And Joseph of Arimathea stands there with his long linen
   sheet ready to receive

   Him.

   Jars of precious myrrh and spices are standing there and the women
   ready to open the lids and to place the spices around the holy flesh.
   Every part of the design is significant and instructive--and the artist
   deserves great praise for it. It brought before my mind the descent
   from the Cross with greater vividness than any painting I have ever
   seen. The nails are all extracted. He is held no longer to the Cross.
   The body is taken down, no longer to be spit upon, despised and
   rejected, but tenderly handled by His friends. All and everything that
   has to do with shame, suffering and paying of penalty is ended once and
   for all.

   What became of the Cross? You find in Scripture no further mention of
   it. The legends concerning it are all false upon the face of them. The
   Cross is gone forever--neither it, nor nail, nor spear, nor crown of
   thorns can be found-- there is no further use for them. Jesus our Lord
   has gone to His Glory! By His one Sacrifice He has secured the
   salvation of His own.

   But now as to His burial. Beloved, there were many honorable
   circumstances about it. Its first effect was the development of timid
   minds. Joseph of Arimathea occupied a high post as an honorable
   counselor, but he was a secret disciple. Nicodemus, too, was a ruler of
   the Jews, and though he had spoken a word for the Master now and then,
   as probably Joseph had done (for we are told that he had not consented
   to their counsel and deed), yet he had never come out boldly till now.
   He came to Jesus by night, before, but he now came by daylight! At the
   worst estate of the Savior's cause we should have thought that these
   two men would remain concealed, but they did not. Now that the case
   seemed

   desperate, they show their faith in Jesus and pluck up courage to honor
   their Lord. Lambs become lions when the Lamb is slain.

   Joseph went boldly to Pilate and begged for the body of Jesus. For a
   dead Christ he risks his position and even his life, for he is asking
   for the body of a reputed traitor and may, himself, be put to death by
   Pilate. Or the members of the Sanhedrin may be enraged at him and bind
   themselves with an oath that they will slay him for paying honor to the
   Nazarene, whom they called, "that deceiver." Joseph ventures everything
   for Jesus, even though he knows Him to be dead. Equally brave is
   Nicodemus, for publicly, at the foot of the Cross, he stands with his
   hundred pounds of spices, caring nothing for any who may report the
   deed.

   I cheerfully hope, dear Brothers and Sisters, that one result of the
   ferocious attacks made upon the Gospel at this time will be that a
   great number of quiet and retiring spirits will be awakened to energy
   and courage. Such works of evil might move the very stones to cry out.
   I pray while, perhaps, some who have spoken well in other days and have
   usually done the battling may be downcast and quiet, those who have
   kept in the rear rank and have, only in secret, followed Jesus, will be
   brought to the front and we shall see men of substance and of position
   acknowledging their Lord.

   Joseph and Nicodemus both illustrate the dreadful Truth of God that it
   is hard for them that have riches to enter into the kingdom of God. But
   they also show us that when they do enter they frequently excel. If
   they come last, they remain to the last. If cowards when others are
   heroes, they can also be heroes when even Apostles are cowards. Each
   man has his turn and, so, while the fishermen-Apostles were hiding, the
   wealthy non-committal Brethren came to the front! Though bred in
   luxury, they bore the brunt of the storm and avowed the cause whose
   Leader lay dead. Brave are the hearts which stand up for Jesus in His
   burial.

   "Sitting over against the sepulcher," we draw comfort from the sight of
   the friends who honored the Lord in His death. I like to remember that
   the burial of the Lord displayed the union of loving hearts. The tomb
   became the meeting place of the old disciples and the new--of those who
   had long followed the Master and those who had but newly acknowledged
   Him. Magdalene and Mary had been with the Lord for years and had
   ministered to Him of their substance. But Joseph of Arimathea, as far
   as his public avowal of Christ is concerned, was, like Nicodemus, a new
   disciple. Old and new followers united in the deed of love and laid
   their Master in the tomb.

   A common sorrow and a common love unite us wondrously. When our great
   Master's cause is under a cloud and His name blasphemed it is pleasant
   to see the young men battling with the foe and aiding their fathers in
   the stern struggle. Magdalene, with her penitent love and Mary, with
   her deep attachment to her Lord, join with the rabbi and the counselor
   who now begin to prove that they intensely love the Man of Nazareth.
   That small society, that little working meeting which gathered around
   our Master's body, was a type of the whole Christian Church. When once
   awakened, Believers forget all differences and degrees of spiritual
   condition and each one is eager to do his part to honor his Lord.

   Mark, too, that the Savior's death brought out abundant liberality. The
   spices, one hundred pounds in weight, and the fine linen were furnished
   by the men. And then the holy women prepared the liquid spices with
   which to carry out what they might have called His great funeral when
   they would more completely wrap the body in odoriferous spices as was
   the manner of the Jews to bury. There was much of honor intended by all
   that they brought. A very thoughtful writer observes that the clothes
   in which our Lord was wrapped are not called grave clothes, but linen
   clothes and that the emphasis would seem to be put upon their being
   linen. And he reminds us that when we read of the garments of the
   priests in the Book of the Law we find that every garment must be of
   linen.

   Our Lord's Priesthood is, therefore, suggested by the use of linen for
   His death robes. The Apostle and High Priest of our profession in His
   tomb slept in pure white linen, even as today He represents Himself to
   His servants as clothed with a garment down to His feet. Even after
   death He acted as a priest and poured out a libation of blood and
   water-- and it was, therefore, right that in the grave He should still
   wear priestly garments. "He made His grave with the wicked"--there was
   His shame. "But with the rich in His death"--there was His honor. He
   was put to death by rough soldiers, but He was laid in His grave by
   tender women.

   Persons of honorable estate helped gently to receive and reverentially
   to place in its position His dear and sacred frame. And then, as if to
   do Him honor, though they meant it not, His tomb must not be left
   unguarded--and Caesar lends his guards to watch the couch of the Prince
   of Peace! Like a king He slumbers until, as the King of kings, He wakes

   at daybreak. To my mind it is very pleasant to see all this honor come
   to our Lord when He is in His worst estate--dead and buried. Will we
   not, also, honor our Lord when others despise Him? Will we not cleave
   to Him come what may?

   If the Church were all but destroyed. If every voice should go over to
   the enemy. If a great stone of philosophic reasoning were rolled at the
   door of Truth and it should seem no longer possible for argument to
   remove it--yet would we wait till the Gospel should rise again to
   confuse its foes! We will not be afraid, but keep our position! We will
   stand still and see the salvation of God, or "sitting over against the
   sepulcher," we will watch for the Lord's coming! Let the worst come to
   the worst we would sooner serve Christ while He is conceived to be dead
   than all the philosophers that ever lived when in their prime! Even if
   fools should dance over the grave of Christianity, there shall remain
   at least a few who will weep over it--and brushing away their tears
   from their eyes expect to see it revive and put forth all its ancient
   strength!

   III. I must now pass to a third point. While sitting over against the
   sepulcher WE OBSERVE THAT HIS ENEMIES WERE NOT AT REST. They had their
   way, but they were not content. They had taken the Savior and with
   wicked hands they had crucified and slain Him, but they were not
   satisfied. They were the most uneasy people in the world, though they
   had gained their point. It was their Sabbath and it was a high day,
   that Sabbath of Sabbaths, the Sabbath of the Passover. They kept a
   preparation for it and had been very careful not to go into the place
   called The Pavement, lest they should defile themselves--sweet
   creatures!

   And now have they not gained all they wanted? They have killed Jesus
   and buried Him--are they not happy? No. And what is more, their
   humiliation had begun--they were doomed to belie their own favorite
   profession. What was that profession? Their boast of rigid
   Sabbath-keeping was its chief point and they were perpetually charging
   our blessed Lord with Sabbath-breaking for healing the sick and even
   because His disciples rubbed a few ears of wheat between their hands
   when they were hungry on the Sabbath.

   Brothers and Sisters, look at these men and laugh at their hypocrisy!
   It is the Sabbath and they come to Pilate--they are holding counsel on
   the Sabbath with a heathen! They tell him that they are afraid that
   Jesus' body will be spirited away and he says, "You have a watch. Go
   your way, make it as secure as you can." And they go and seal the stone
   on the Sabbath! O you hypocritical Pharisees, here was an awful
   breaking of your Sabbath! According to their superstitious tradition,
   the rubbing ears of wheat between the hands was a kind of threshing
   and, therefore, it was a breach of the Law!

   Surely, by the same reasoning, the burning of a candle to melt the wax
   must have been similar to the lighting of a furnace! And the melting of
   wax must have been a kind of foundry work, like that of the blacksmith
   who pours metal into a mold, for in such a ridiculous fashion their
   rabbis interpreted the smallest acts. But they had to seal the stone
   and break their own absurd laws to satisfy their restless malice! One
   is pleased to see either Pharisees or Sadducees made to overturn their
   own professions and lay bare their hypocrisy! Modern-thought gentlemen
   will, before long, be forced to the same humiliation.

   Next, they had to retract their own accusation against our Lord. They
   charged Jesus with having said, "Destroy this temple and I will build
   it in three days," pretending that He referred to the temple upon Zion.
   Now they come to Pilate and tell him, "This deceiver said after three
   days I will rise again." Oh, you knaves, that is your new version, is
   it? You put the man to death for quite another rendering! Now you
   understand the dark saying? Yes, you deceivers, and you understood it
   before! But now you must eat your leek and swallow your own words!
   Truly, He scorns the scorners and pours contempt upon His enemies!

   And now see how these killers of Christ betray their own fears! He is
   dead, but they are afraid of Him! He is dead, but they cannot shake off
   the dread that He will yet vanquish them! They are full of agitation
   and alarm. Nor was this all, they were to be made witnesses for God--to
   sign certificates of the death and Resurrection of His Anointed. In
   order that there might be no doubt about the Resurrection at all, there
   must be a seal--and they must go and set it. There must be a guard--and
   they must see it mustered. The disciples need not trouble about
   certifying that Jesus is in the grave--these Jews will do it and set
   their own great seal to the evidence! These proud ones are sent to do
   the work of drudges in Christ's kitchen--to wait upon a dead Christ and
   to protect the body which they had slain!

   The lie which they told afterwards crowned their shame--they bribed the
   soldiers to say that His disciples stole Him away while they slept!
   This was a transparent lie, for if the soldiers were asleep, how could
   they know what was done? We

   cannot conceive of an instance in which men were more completely made
   to contradict and convict themselves! That Sabbath was a high day, but
   it was no Sabbath to them, nor would the overthrow of the Gospel be any
   rest of soul to its opponents. If ever we should live to see the Truth
   of God pushed into a corner and the blessed cause of Christ fastened up
   as with rationalistic nails. If we should live to see its very heart
   pierced by a critic's spear, yet, mark you, even in the darkest night
   that can ever try our faith, the adversaries of the Gospel will still
   be in alarm lest it should rise again! The old Truth has a wonderful
   habit of leaping up from every fall as strong as ever!

   In Dr. Doddridge's days men had pretty nearly buried the Gospel.
   Socinianism was taught in many, if not most dissenting pulpits, and the
   same was true of the Church of England. The liberal thinkers dreamed
   that they had won the victory and extinguished evangelical teaching.
   But their shouts came a little too soon. They said, "We shall hear no
   more of this miserable justification by faith and regeneration by the
   Holy Spirit." They laid the Gospel in a tomb cut out in the cold rock
   of Unitarianism and they set the seal of their learning upon the great
   stone of doubt which shut in the Gospel. There it was to lie
   forever--but God meant otherwise.

   But there was a pot-boy over in Gloucester called George Whitefield,
   And there was a young student who had lately gone to Oxford called John
   Wesley. And these two passed by the grave of the Gospel and beheld a
   strange sight, which they began to tell. And as they told it, the sods
   of unbelief and the stones of learned criticism began to move--and the
   Truth of God, which had been buried, started up with Pentecostal power!
   Aha, you adversaries, how greatly had you deceived yourselves! Within a
   few months, all over England the work of the devil and his ministers
   was broken to pieces, as when a tower is split by lightning, or the
   thick darkness scattered by the rising sun! The weight of ignorance and
   unbelief fled before the bright day of the Gospel, though that Gospel
   was, for the most part, proclaimed by unlettered men!

   The thing which has been is the thing which shall be. History repeats
   itself. O generation of modern thinkers, you will have to eat your own
   words and disprove your own assertions! You will have to confute each
   other and yourselves, even as the Moabites and Elamites slew each
   other. It may even happen that your infidelities will work themselves
   out into practical evil of which you will be the victims. You may bring
   about a repetition of the French Revolution of 1789, with more than all
   its bloodshed--and who will wonder?

   You, some of you, calling yourselves ministers of God with your
   insinuations of doubt, your denials of future punishment, your insults
   of the Gospel, your ingenious speeches against the Bible--are shaking
   the very foundation of society! I impeach you as the worst enemies of
   mankind! In effect, you proclaim to men that they may sin as they like,
   for there is no Hell, or if there is, it is but a little one. Thus you
   publish a Gospel of licentiousness and you may, one day, rue the
   result. You may live to see a reign of terror of your own creating, but
   even if you do, the Gospel of Jesus will come forth from all the filth
   you have heaped upon it, for the holy Gospel will live as Christ lives
   and its enemies shall never cease to be in fear!

   Your harsh speeches against those who preach the Gospel, your
   bitterness and your sneers of contempt, all show that you know better
   than you say and are afraid of the very Christ whom you wish to kill!
   We who cleave to the glorious Gospel will abide in peace, come what
   may, but you will not!

   IV. And now our last thought is that while these enemies of Christ were
   in fear and trembling WE NOTE THAT HIS FOLLOWERS WERE RESTING. It was
   the seventh day and, therefore, they ceased from labor. The Marys
   waited and Joseph and Nicodemus refrained from visiting the tomb. They
   obediently observed the Sabbath rest. I am not sure that they had faith
   enough to feel very happy, but they evidently did expect something and
   anxiously awaited the third day. They had enough of the comfort of hope
   to remain quiet on the seventh day.

   Now, Beloved, sitting over against the sepulcher while Christ lies in
   it, my first thought about it is, I will rest, for He rests. What a
   wonderful stillness there was about our Lord in that rocky grave. He
   had been daily thronged by thousands--even when He ate bread they
   disturbed Him. He scarcely could have a moment's stillness in life. But
   now, how quiet is His bed! Not a sound is heard. The great stone shuts
   out all noise and the body is at peace. Well, if He rests, I may! If
   for a while the Lord seems to suspend His energies, His servants may
   cry unto Him but they may not fret. He knows best when to sleep and
   when to wake.

   As I see the Christ resting in the grave, my next thought is, He has
   the power to come forth again. Some few months ago I tried to show you
   that when the disciples were alarmed because Jesus was asleep, they
   were in error, for His sleep

   was the token of their security. When I see a captain on board ship
   pacing anxiously up and down the deck, I may fear that danger is
   suspected--but when the captain turns into his cabin, then I may be
   sure that all is right and there is no reason why I should not turn in,
   too. So if our blessed Lord should ever suffer His cause to droop and
   if He should give no marvelous manifestations of His power, we need not
   doubt His power--let us keep our Sabbath, pray to Him and work for Him,
   for these are duties of the holy day of rest. But do not let us fret
   and worry, for His time to work will come.

   The rest of the Christian lies in believing in Christ under all
   circumstances. Go in for this, Beloved. Believe in Him in the manger,
   when His cause is young and weak. Believe in Him in the streets, when
   the populace applaud Him, for He deserves their loudest acclamations.
   Believe in Him when they take Him to the brow of the hill to cast Him
   headlong-- He is just as worthy as when they cry, "Hosanna." Believe in
   Him when He is in an agony and believe in Him when He is on the Cross.
   And if ever it should seem to you that His cause might die out, still
   believe in Him! Christ's Gospel in any circumstances deserves our
   fullest trust. That Gospel which has saved your souls--that Gospel
   which you have received and which has been sealed upon your hearts by
   the Holy Spirit--stand fast in it, come what may--and through faith
   peace and quiet shall pervade your souls.

   Once more, it will be well if we can obtain peace by having fellowship
   with our Lord in His burial. Die with Him and be buried with Him! There
   is nothing like it. I desire for my soul, while she lives in the Lord,
   that as to the world and all its wisdom, I may be as a dead man. When
   accused of having no power of thought and no originality of teaching, I
   am content to accept the charge, for my soul desires to be dead to all
   but that which is revealed and taught by the Lord Jesus. I would lie in
   the rocky tomb of the everlasting Truth of God, not creating thought,
   but giving myself up to God's thoughts.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, if we are always to lie in that tomb, we
   must be wrapped about with the fine linen of holiness--these are the
   shrouds of a man who is dead to sin. All about us must be the spices,
   the myrrh and aloes of preserving Grace, that being dead with Christ we
   may see no corruption, but may show that death to be only another form
   of the new life which we have received in Him. When the world goes by,
   let it know, concerning our heart's desire and ambition, that they are
   all buried with Christ! And let it be written on the memorial of our
   spiritual grave, "Here he lies." As far as this world's sin, pleasure,
   self-seeking and wisdom are concerned, "Here he lies buried with his
   Master."

   Know, you who are not converted, that the way of salvation is by
   believing in Christ, or trusting in Him! And if you so trust, you shall
   never be confounded, world without end, for he that trusts Christ and
   believes in Him even as a little child, the same shall enter into His
   kingdom. And he that will follow Him, even down to His grave, shall be
   with Him in His Glory--and shall see His triumphs forever and ever.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Distinction with a Difference

   (No. 1405)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And Zacharias said unto the angel, How shall I know this?" Luke 1:18.

   "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be?" Luke 1:34.

   ZACHARIAS and the Virgin Mary were both very dear to God and,
   therefore, highly honored and greatly favored. The points of likeness
   between them are many. They were both persons of eminent character, for
   Zacharias walked blameless in all the ordinances and commandments of
   the Lord and Mary was equally gracious and devout. They were both
   visited by an angel and were both favored with the prediction of a
   marvelous birth. Their answers to the angel are our two texts and, at
   first sight, they seem to be alike. One does not see much less of faith
   or of unbelief in the one than in the other at first reading them and,
   yet, Zacharias was blamed and chastened by being made dumb for a
   season. On the other hand, the Virgin was indulged with an explanation
   and was afterwards praised by the Holy Spirit who spoke through her
   cousin Elizabeth and said, "Blessed is she that believed: for there
   shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the
   Lord."

   It appears very clear, then, that God can see differences where we see
   none. Though two persons may act very much alike and from their lips
   may fall similar expressions, yet their temper and spirit may be widely
   different Where you and I would put them together and say, "They are
   alike," God sees a difference. While we judge sights and sounds, the
   Lord weighs the spirits. You must have noticed this in other parts of
   God's Word. I will give you two instances in the life of Abraham. Lot
   was commanded not to look towards Sodom, but his wife, after looking to
   Sodom, was turned into a pillar of salt. And yet that morning Abraham
   got up early to the place where he was known to meet with the Lord and
   it is recorded that he looked toward Sodom.

   The very thing which Lot must not do, Abraham may do. It is the same
   action but, if you think a moment, you can clearly see that the looking
   back of Lot would mean a lingering desire to return, but the look of
   Abraham had nothing of that kind in it and could have no evil
   significance. He was simply looking to the burning cities and admiring
   with solemn awe the justice of the Most High as he saw the heavens
   ruddy with flame and afterwards dark with dense clouds, while the smoke
   went up like the smoke of a furnace. The action was the same
   externally, but widely different in reality. The Lord God does not so
   much regard our outward acts as the motives which direct them and the
   spirit in which they are performed.

   Perhaps a more remarkable instance is that of Abraham and his wife
   Sarah. When they each received a distinct promise of the birth of
   Isaac, it is said that Abraham fell upon his face and laughed. And then
   we read a little farther on, "Sarah laughed within herself." We never
   find that Abraham was censured for laughing. He laughed rightly. It was
   the natural expression of a wondering and amazed delight. It was holy
   laughter and he was not censured nor called to account for it. But the
   Lord said unto him, "Why did Sarah laugh?" Sarah was censured for doing
   the very thing which in Abraham was quite right and did not need to be
   corrected!

   They both laughed--the one was right, but the other was wrong. Why?
   Because there was a vital difference between them. Sarah's was the
   laugh of unbelief--she thought it could not be that at her age she
   should bear a child, her lord also being old. She laughed at the very
   idea! It seemed altogether too absurd. The mere notion struck her as
   being perfectly ridiculous and, though a devout woman, she somewhat
   forgot the reverence due to Him who gave the promise and she laughed,
   though in a subdued and quiet way, "within herself."

   Abraham believed that the Divine promise would be performed and his was
   the laugh of joy to think that he should see a son born to his beloved
   Sarah who should be his heir and the inheritor of the Covenant. His
   soul danced within him

   with delight because he believed what the Lord had spoken. Yet the two
   actions outwardly are so exactly similar that if you condemn one, you
   think you must condemn the other! But God does not, since He sees not
   as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at
   the heart. We may apply this great Truth of God to ourselves. We all
   sang the same hymn just now to the same tune--and yet from one it may
   have been to God's ear music and from another mockery. We closed our
   eyes just now and bowed our heads in prayer--anyone looking upon us
   might have supposed us to be all equally accepted--but the Lord knows
   in whose case the heart was wandering upon the mountains of vanity and
   in whose case the soul, with all its powers, was crying out unto the
   living God.

   Judge yourselves, Beloved, but never judge yourselves according to the
   sight of the eyes! And never be satisfied with yourselves because
   externally everything is correct--because you have passed through the
   routine of religion and attended to the machinery of the outward form.
   Do not be content with postures, sounds and looks--the soul is the soul
   of the matter! Look at the heart and cry to God, also, that He would
   search you and make you clean in the secret parts-- and in the hidden
   parts make you to know wisdom. Otherwise you may stand as God's people
   do and go in and out of the House of Prayer even as the brightest of
   the saints do and never be separated from them until the trumpet rings
   out the Great Tremendous Day and you are sent to the left with the
   goats to be withered by a curse--while His people on His right hand
   shall receive the blessing forever!

   Let us all remember that there may be an external similarity in
   apparent right or wrong and yet there may be an inward and a real
   dissimilarity. It is the inward that is the real, not the outward--and
   the great Judge will search and try and separate between the precious
   and the vile--though the vile may seem to be more beautiful than the
   precious genuine diamond. But now, leaving the general principle, I
   invite you, dear Friends, to come back to my texts and accompany me in
   looking at these two persons to see whether there is not a difference
   perceptible by ourselves. And I think we shall find a great deal more
   diversity than we had expected. I cannot work out the whole matter in
   one sermon, but some prominent points will, I hope, interest and profit
   you.

   I. First let us take the case of ZACHARIAS who said, "HOW SHALL I KNOW
   THIS?" And notice, to begin with, that supposing the two expressions of
   Zacharias and Mary had been identical, and supposing that they had
   conveyed the same thoughts, yet if they had both been wrong, Zacharias
   would have been the more faulty of the two, for he was a priest--a man
   set apart by office to study the Word of God and to draw peculiarly
   near to God on his own account and for the people. Mary was simply a
   humble village maid. Mary, it is true, was of royal descent, but her
   family had fallen into obscurity. She was a person of superior mind,
   but she held no office that could distinguish her from others.

   Zacharias, being a priest, was bound to act with a higher degree of
   faith than Mary, the lowly maiden. The priest's lips should keep
   knowledge and teach many. Were not the priests set apart to be
   instructors of the people, helpers of those that are weak and guides of
   those who are ignorant and out of the way? They should, therefore, in
   all things set an example. If Mary had been unbelieving and Zacharias
   unbelieving--and both unbelieving to the same extent--yet in Zacharias
   it would have been much worse because his very office called upon him
   to display greater Grace than the humble maiden.

   Brothers and Sisters, may I not apply this to myself and to you?
   Brother ministers, if we are unbelieving, we, in our unbelief, do not
   sin so cheaply as our people! We have more time to study the Word of
   God and, therefore, we have, or ought to have, more acquaintance with
   it. We are more familiar with Divine things and ought to be more richly
   filled with their faith-creating spirit. If the Lord has been pleased
   to make us under-shepherds over His people, we are bound to be examples
   to the flock. Our high position demands of us the exhibition of a
   greater degree of Divine Grace than we can expect from common
   Believers, who are God's dear people, but are not set apart to be
   leaders.

   The same line of argument will apply in due proportion to each servant
   of our Lord Jesus. According to their measure of Grace, more is
   expected of some than of others. You, dear Sisters, who teach young
   people should remember that they watch you and they expect to see in
   you a bright example. And, what is more, God, who has placed you in the
   position of teachers, or of mothers, intends that there should be in
   you, by His Grace, something that others may look up to, that the young
   beginners may learn from you. Take heed that they never learn unbelief
   from your doubting! Let them never see in you that worry, that anxiety,
   that fretfulness which denotes the absence of a calm reliance upon God,
   but let them, whatever they gather from you, learn that which is worth
   knowing.

   And what can be a better lesson than that of faith in God? You who are
   in the Church, dear Friends, preachers, elders, deacons and instructors
   of others, see to it that your lives and words do not breed unbelief!
   Especially do I speak to myself upon this point, for, being much
   exercised in spirit, I tremble lest I should suggest to any of you
   doubts and fears, or encourage you in them. Let those of us who are
   guides of others see to it that we do not dishonor God by mistrust and
   questioning, for unbelief in us is a glaring fault and God will surely
   visit it upon us, even if He winks at it in the weak ones of the flock.

   Again, in Zacharias' case it was not merely his office that
   distinguished him, but he was a man of years. We read that both he and
   his wife were "well stricken in years." Now, a man who has had a long
   experience of the things of God--a man of prayer who has had many
   answers--a man of trouble who has had many deliverances. A man who has
   seen the hand of God with him in a long journey through the wilderness
   of life is expected, by God, to exhibit a far stronger faith than the
   young people who have but lately learned His name. I speak to many here
   who are by far my seniors, of whom I may say that they were in Christ
   before me and they must pardon my saying that they should have more
   faith than I by reason of their years of constant experience of the
   Lord's faithfulness.

   And I, too, who have known the Lord, now, for a considerable number of
   years, must never put myself down with those who were converted during
   the last few months and say that I am to have no more faith than they.
   Shame upon every one of us if every day does not bring us fresh motives
   for believing in our Lord! Every hour, indeed, should be filled with
   arguments for a more complete childlike trust in Him. What? Dear
   Sister, did the Lord help you in such-and-such a strait? And do you not
   remember that you said, "I shall never doubt Him again"? And yet you
   have done so! Ah, how grievous must those doubts be to your gracious
   Lord!

   I know at one time you thought you would never be delivered, but you
   were mercifully lifted up from the depths-- out of six troubles you
   have been rescued and in seven no evil has touched you! And now that a
   fresh trial is come, will you not believe your God? Well, if you do
   not, you will certainly incur very grievous sin and vex the Holy Spirit
   of God much more than your poor little sister, Mary, would do, if,
   having only lately known the Savior, she should distrust Him in her
   first conflicts. Babes in Grace should not doubt, but if they do, their
   unbelief is not so willful as that of fathers in Israel. If standard
   bearers faint, it is a sad calamity, and the faintness of poor wounded
   common soldiers is far less to be deplored.

   When aged Zacharias errs in this matter he is more to be blamed than
   youthful Mary. Those two points are pretty clear, are they not?
   Furthermore, let us observe that Zacharias had made the birth of a
   child a subject of prayer, which, I suppose, had not so much as been
   thought of by Mary. Beyond the fact that it was the usual desire of all
   Hebrew women that they might be the mother of the Messiah, the Virgin
   had probably never cast a single thought in the direction in which the
   angel's salutation conducted her. Assuredly she had never made it a
   subject ofprayer, but Zacharias had rightly done so. Read the 13th
   verse, "The angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, for your prayer
   is heard, and your wife Elizabeth shall bear you a son." And yet,
   though the promise came as a distinct and manifest answer to his
   prayers, Zacharias asked, "How shall I know this?"

   Now, this was wrong! It was very wrong. He had been praying for it and
   when it came, he did not believe it! Ah, Zacharias, you are verily
   guilty here. If it had come as a surprise altogether, as it did to
   Mary, there would be some excuse for your doubt. But when it is a reply
   to your own entreaties--a gracious yielding to intense requests--your
   unbelieving question is a grievous fault! If, when taken by surprise,
   Mary had doubted, it would have appeared natural, but for you,
   Zacharias--for you to whom the angel said, "Your prayer is heard"--how
   do you doubt it? Astonishment at answered prayers is amazement at
   Divine truthfulness! And what is that but a low idea of the Lord
   unintentionally discovering

   itself?

   Yet I have sometimes thought that if the Lord wished to surprise His
   own servants, all He would have to do would be to answer their prayers!
   He does answer them continually and in consequence you hear one and
   another say, "Is it not surprising? You see, we met and had a prayer
   meeting for a certain blessing and the Lord has answered our
   supplications. How marvelous!" And yet if you sit down in a friend's
   house, do his children try to astonish you by mentioning cases in which
   their father kept his word? Do they dwell with amazement upon his
   having spoken the truth? I could wish that the Lord's children would
   even get as far as that! Alas, they even overlook the majority of the
   facts which prove His veracity, and slight His faithfulness!

   When His people are in a better frame than usual they admit His
   faithfulness and mention as a great wonder that He heard prayer and
   fulfilled His Word! Should this be so? Has it come to pass that it is a
   wonder for God to hear prayer? Have we fallen into such a low state of
   heart that we think His truthfulness to be a surprising thing? It were
   far better if we were of the same mind as a good old lady who, when
   someone said, "Is it not wonderful?" replied, "Well, it is in one way,
   but it is not in another, for it is just like Him--just like Him." We
   may well be surprised at the tenderness of His great mercy, but not as
   though it were a novelty for God to do good and to keep His promise by
   regarding His people's cries!

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, we ought to be surprised if the Lord did not
   hear us, seeing that He is the true and faithful, prayer-hearing God.
   When you and I have had a matter heavily laid upon our hearts and have
   been before God with it again and again, as doubtless Zacharias had, we
   should be looking for our Lord's gracious reply. Do we not expect
   answers to letters which we write to our friends? Why do we not, in
   like fashion, expect replies to prayer? If God answers us, are we to be
   so doubtful in mind as even to question the truthfulness of the
   blessing? If so, we shall be manifestly guilty. If the Lord sends us a
   mercy in reply to our requests and we do not believe it, but say, "How
   shall I know this?" then our unbelief has a peculiar degree of
   provocation in it and we may expect to be chastened for it. This was
   the case with Zacharias.

   The next point about Zacharias is that he doubted the fact which was
   announced by the angel in the name of the Lord. He said, "How shall I
   know this?" Mary did not doubt the fact--she wished to know how it
   could be, but she believed it would be. She believed, for it was said
   of her, "Blessed is she that believed." But this good man did not
   believe, for the angel said to Him, "You believe not my words which
   shall be fulfilled in their season." Now, Beloved, when it comes to
   this, that we dare to doubt the promise of God, is it not a very
   grievous crime? If your child--your own child whom you have loved so
   long and treated so tenderly--if he should fall into a state of mind in
   which he did not believe you, his own father--would you not feel it to
   be peculiarly grievous?

   If you were conscious of nothing but love for him. If you were sure
   that throughout his life you had never broken a promise to him, but had
   always been as good as your word. If you had repeated your promise
   again and again and he still said, "Father, I wish I could believe
   you," would you not be cut to the heart by such a declaration? The more
   earnestly he expressed regret at his inability to believe you, the more
   intense would be your pain. What an awful speech for a son to address
   to a father--"I wish I could believe you"!

   You would grieve in spirit and say inwardly, "What does my boy think of
   me? What has come over my child that he cannot believe me? It was not
   an enemy, then I could have borne it--but it is my child whom I love
   who says not only that he does not believe me, but that he would do so
   if he could and finds himself unable to think me true. He speaks in
   deep earnest and thus I see how thoroughly the cruel feeling possesses
   him and how desperate is the evil which leads him to mistrust my love."

   Ah, Beloved, I leave your own thoughts, as I must just now leave mine,
   to peer into the depths of sin which must lie in what we sometimes talk
   of so flippantly, namely, doubts and fears! They are not the trifles
   which some men dream them to be--they are hideous profanities of the
   sacred Truth of God! They are revolting libels upon immaculate
   goodness! They are horrid blasphemies of infinite love! Shall the good
   God be thus assailed? Shall His own children thus abuse Him? Your child
   might doubt you and it might be a trifle to him, but it would be death
   to you, his father or mother. You would feel it keenly and so you may
   think that doubts and fears are trifles, but your heavenly Father does
   not think so--unbelief wounds Him and grieves His Spirit!

   Hear what the Lord says--"How long will it be before they believe Me?"
   Forget not the Apostle's warning in the third chapter of the Hebrews.
   "With whom was He grieved 40 years? And to whom swore He that they
   should not enter into His rest, but to them that believed not?"
   Zacharias did not believe and he had to smart for it, as you and I
   shall if we, when we see a promise written clearly in God's Word and
   evidently quite adapted to our case, nevertheless say, "How shall I
   know this?"

   Yet further. The good man Zacharias--for, remember, I am not doubting
   his Grace, but, on the contrary, I began by saying that he was a very
   gracious and eminently godly man. He was probably much better than any
   of us and possibly, in some respects, even more gracious than Mary
   herself, having a deeper experience, a fuller knowledge, greater
   courage and many other superior gifts and Graces--although in this
   point he failed--he doubted his Lord and showed

   his unbelief by asking for a sign, "How shall I know this?" He needed a
   sign or a token that what the angel spoke was true.

   This was not the case with Mary, who sought an explanation but not a
   token. Is it wrong, then, to ask for a token? Assuredly not in all
   cases, for it may even be sinful not to ask for one, as in the case of
   Ahaz, of whom we read, "Moreover the Lord spoke again unto Ahaz,
   saying, Ask for a sign of the Lord your God; ask it either in the
   depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither
   will I tempt the Lord. And He said, Hear you now, O house of David. Is
   it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary God, also?"
   In the case of Ahaz it was sinful to refuse and in that of Zacharias
   sinful to request.

   Here again I must come back to the remark I started with and remind you
   that the same thing may be right in one man and wrong in another,
   according to the motive. It is very curious that Abraham used almost
   identical words with Zacharias, when he said, "How shall I know that I
   shall inherit this land?" He distinctly asked the Lord for a sign, nor
   was the request at all grievous to the Lord, for He knew that His
   servant Abraham asked that sign in all humility and childlike faith.
   Let me show you at once the difference between Abraham and Zacharias.
   Zacharias will not believe without a sign--Abraham has already believed
   and waited long for the fulfillment of the promise--and feels that a
   sign would be comforting to him.

   It could in no sense have been said to the great father of the
   faithful, "Except you see signs and wonders you will not believe," but
   some such rebuke might have been directed towards Zacharias. There was
   conspicuous faith in Abraham and the desire for a token was natural
   rather than sinful. So was it with Gideon who asked for many signs. You
   see at the very first that Gideon believes and he acts upon his faith.
   But he trembles because his faith is weak and he asks for signs to
   strengthen his confidence. Indeed, he did not distrust the Lord at all,
   but only questioned whether it was the Lord who spoke. Gideon said, "If
   now I have found grace in Your sight, then show me a sign that You talk
   with me."

   The question, you see, was not the truthfulness of God, but whether,
   indeed, if the Lord had spoken! Zacharias, however, asks an altogether
   unbelieving question, "How shall I know this?" He wants a sign as the
   condition of his believing. You may very rightly pray, "Lord, show me a
   token for good," but you must believe before you get the token and you
   must not let your believing depend upon that token. There is a
   difference--a wide difference between believing first and then asking
   for some cheering evidence--and that unbelieving obstinacy which
   demands signs and wonders and declares, "I will not believe unless I
   see a token."

   Thomas is an instance of this error when he says, "Except I see in His
   hand the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the
   nails, I will not believe." His Master bent to his weakness, but He
   said, and very significant are the words, "Thomas, because you have
   seen Me you have believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
   have believed." The chief blessing belongs to you who, whether you have
   evidences or not, are content to believe your God, taking this Word of
   God as quite sufficient ground for your confidence without any delights
   of heart or ecstasies of spiritual visitations! Our God is true even if
   no wonder is worked and no sign is given. Let us settle this in our
   hearts and never allow a doubt to intervene. O Holy Spirit, help us in
   this!

   All this together shows that the error of Zacharias was unbelief and
   his chastisement which he received for it is worthy of our earnest
   attention. He was chastened for his unbelief because the Lord loved
   him. His affliction was sent not so much in anger as in love. He had
   asked for a sign and by a sign was he chastened. God often makes us
   gather the twigs from which He makes the rod with which He scourges us.
   Our own sins are the thorns which cause us to smart. Zacharias asked
   for a sign and he gets this sign--"You shall be dumb, and not able to
   speak until the day that these things shall be performed, because you
   believe not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season."

   For months he shall not be able to speak a single word! But while his
   mouth is closed to others, it shall be open to himself--that dumb mouth
   of his shall be preaching to him and saying, "You did not believe what
   was spoken to you of the Lord, and now you are unable to repeat it to
   others, for the Lord will not employ an unbelieving messenger. If you
   will not believe when God's angel speaks, you shall not speak,
   yourself." Many a dumb Christian, I am afraid, has had his mouth sealed
   through unbelief. The Lord saves him and gives him much enjoyment, but
   He denies him utterance because he has such slender faith.

   I have no doubt Zacharias was very happy in the prospect of the birth
   of his child and looked earnestly onward to the day when John, the
   Prophet of the Highest, should be born, and he should recover speech.
   But still, it must have been

   very painful to remain for so long a time in utter silence. How he must
   have longed to speak or sing! But I have no doubt that many a man is
   put aside from bearing his testimony through unbelief which he calls
   diffidence and delicacy. The Lord says, "I shall never use you as a
   preacher. I shall not make use of you in addressing your fellow men. I
   shall not help you to bring men to Christ in private conversation
   because you have so little faith. You have doubted Me and now you must
   be dumb for a season." I hope that, if this is the case with any, your
   silence will soon end. Lord, open their lips and their mouths shall
   show forth Your praise!

   Dear Friend, I hope the Lord will unloose your tongue by-and-by, for if
   you are in a right state of heart it will be a very painful thing to
   you not to be able to declare what the Lord has done for your soul. But
   it is so with some--they are dumb because they believe not. Moreover,
   Zacharias had the further affliction of being deaf at the same time.
   How do I know that he was deaf? That is pretty clear, because when his
   child was born, it is recorded in the 62nd verse that "they made signs
   to his father how he would have him called." And, of course, if he had
   been able to hear there would have been no need to use signs. But he
   could not hear any more than he could speak--he suffered the double
   affliction of being deaf and dumb--no small cross to one who had such
   gifts of utterance as he showed in his song of praise!

   It is remarkable that he could not hear anything, but it is also
   instructive. I have known Christians who, when they would not believe
   the promise, have become very deaf, spiritually. You say, "What do you
   mean? How are they deaf?" Listen and you will hear them say, "I cannot
   hear Mr. So-and-So." It is the same minister whom they used to hear
   with pleasure--the same man--and God blesses him to others as much as
   before. How is this? Others are drinking in the Word, but these poor
   deaf people say, "We do not know how it is, but we cannot hear our
   pastor." No, you did not believe and, therefore, you cannot hear. You
   did not receive his message. You did not rejoice in it and now you
   cannot hear it.

   That is a dreadful sort of deafness! If you suffer from a physical
   deafness you can buy a horn, or you can go to some skillful aorist who,
   perhaps, may help you. Moreover, you can read if you cannot hear. But
   if you get a spiritual deafness, I do not know a worse chastisement
   that can come upon you, nor one that will make you more mischievous to
   others. O Beloved, believe the good Word of the Lord! With meekness
   receive the engrafted Word and do not question it and provoke the Lord,
   lest, haply, because you did not accept the Word as the Word of God,
   the time shall come when you will not be able to hear it and your
   profiting will utterly depart! And the very voice that once was music
   to you will have no charms at all and the blessed Truth of God which
   once made your heart leap for joy will cease to have the slightest
   influence upon you.

   Mary was not sentenced either to be silent or to be deaf, for she
   believed the Word of the Lord which was spoken to her by the angel. O
   that we, also, by a full obedience of faith may escape the penalties
   which surely attach themselves to unbelief! We must sorrow, but there
   can be no reason for increasing it by our own fault--and we may readily
   do so. While on the other hand, faith brings rest and peace. So much
   concerning Zacharias.

   II. Now let us turn our eyes to MARY. Mary used much the same language
   and yet she spoke not after the same fashion. She asked of the angel,
   "HOW SHALL THIS BE?" In looking at her, first, it is to be noticed that
   she believed what the angel said. It was not "How shall I know this?"
   but, in effect, her language was, "I believe it. How shall it be?"
   There is no unbelief in the question. Of that we are sure, because not
   long after she is praised by her intelligent cousin, Elizabeth, who
   declares that, "blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a
   performance of those things which were told her from the Lord."

   She notably believed. She asked for no sign. She sought no token
   whatever. The angel's voice sufficed her. The still small voice of
   Divine love within her soul was enough. She believed and only asked to
   be instructed in the matter--she needed no sign and seal. She was
   willing, also, to accept all hazards. I would speak with great
   delicacy, but to the Virgin, remember, it was a very serious thing to
   be the mother of our Lord. To this very day the base tongues of
   infidels have dared to insinuate gross criminality against her who was
   blessed among women! And she must have known that it was not likely
   that all would believe what she should and many a hard speech would be
   uttered concerning her.

   Indeed, she might have had fear concerning her espoused husband,
   himself, who would have put her away had not the Lord shielded her.
   Joseph behaved nobly, like a believer of the first order, and he
   deserves to be ranked among the truest of the saints as does the
   Virgin, herself, who well deserves to be exceedingly commended by all
   who can appreciate pure, delicate and yet heroic faith. Whatever there
   might be of hazard, so great was the honor that was put upon the

   Virgin that she does not appear to have felt the slightest hesitation,
   but said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to
   your word."

   I think her question may be attributed, in part, to surprise--to
   inevitable amazement! And what we say to the Lord when we are naturally
   surprised under the greatness of His mercy will not be weighed by Him
   letter by letter, nor shall we be judged for it, though if very closely
   examined it might appear like unbelief. The Lord knows His children's
   frame and remembers that we are dust. I hope that many a word which
   drops from the child of God when he is in pain, when he is distressed
   as Job was on the dunghill, is allowed to blow away with the breath
   which utters it. How very little did the Lord say to Job about the
   naughty words which, in his petulance, he had allowed to escape, for,
   after all, he was grandly patient.

   And so, even if there had been something of unbelief in these words of
   Mary, which there was not, yet they would have been viewed by the Lord
   as the fruit of surprise at the marvelous and unexpected mercy for
   which she had not even prayed. There was no unbelief in her language,
   but there was great wonder, surprise and admiration at so great a gift.
   How should this come to her? How should she be so highly favored? Her
   soul seemed to say, "Why this to me? That I, so humble and obscure--a
   maiden whose rank and race have been altogether forgotten--should be
   the mother of the Savior after the flesh, the mother of His humanity by
   whom humanity is to be redeemed?" She was full of wonder and then she
   began to enquire.

   There is the point. She wanted to know how it would be. There was no
   wrong in that desire. There was no unbelief worthy of rebuke. She
   believed the surpassing promise and only wished to know how it could be
   performed. There might readily enough be unbelief in such an enquiry,
   but not necessarily so. You and I may say, as the Israelites did in the
   wilderness when God had promised to give them flesh to eat, "Shall the
   flocks and herds be slain?" That was unbelievingly asking how it should
   be. But yet you may ask how a promise shall be fulfilled without any
   mistrust at all. No, your very faith may raise the enquiry! I know my
   soul asks again and again many questions of my Lord which He answers to
   my soul. He would not have answered had they been sinful questions.

   We ought to enquire about a great many things--we should be sacredly
   inquisitive. We should say, How is it He has chosen us? For our Lord
   replies, "Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight." But,
   still, why me? Why me? You may ask that question, for holy gratitude
   dictates it. And how is it that He could redeem us with the blood of
   His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord? And how is it that He
   renews us? And how will it be that He will perfect us? And how can it
   be that we shall have a mansion in Heaven and shall become like our
   Lord? And how is it that we shall be raised up? With what body shall we
   come? Many a question we may ask, which if not asked in unbelief, will
   have an answer, or will serve to increase our reverent gratitude.

   But now notice, concerning Mary, that while Zacharias was the doubter
   and was treated as such, Mary was the enquirer and was so dealt with of
   the Lord. See the difference in the treatment of the two. For first,
   Mary did not ask for a sign but she got one--and it was one of the most
   pleasant that could possibly come to her, for it was her cousin
   Elizabeth! She was to be her sign. Behold, she that had been barren
   shall come to meet her and comfort her. Brothers and Sisters, the Lord
   knows how to give you signs if you do not wish for them! And I believe
   that those have the most tokens for good who do not ask for them but
   are content to take their Father's Word without any confirmatory sign.

   And then, there was another thing with regard to her. She was
   graciously instructed. Zacharias asked for a sign and he had it. She
   asked for instruction and she had it. The angel paused awhile and said
   to her, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the
   Highest shall overshadow you. Therefore, also, that holy Thing which
   shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." If you will
   meekly and believingly ask of your Lord to be taught concerning Divine
   things, He will give you His Spirit who shall lead you into all Truth
   and instruct you and make you wise unto salvation.

   Now, the conclusion is this--first of all, let us not do as Zacharias
   did. Dear Friend, are you, at this moment, questioning any promise? Are
   you saying, "How shall I know this?" Cease from doubting the Infallible
   Word and rest in the Lord, His Holy Spirit enabling you to believe! On
   the other hand, are you a seeking sinner and does Christ declare that
   whoever looks to Him shall be saved, and that whoever believes in Him
   is not condemned? Do not ask for any sign, but believe Him! He,
   Himself, is sign enough! He is God and yet Man--the bleeding Lamb, the
   Sacrifice for sin. Believe Him! Believe Him! Believe Him and you shall
   have the blessing!

   And you, dear child of God, if you have a text of Scripture, a promise
   which evidently suits your case--which meets your trouble--do not say,
   "How shall I know this?" When the Spirit says it, it is enough that it
   is in the Word. Whatever the Scripture states, be sure of it, for if
   all the wise men in the world were to prove it, it would not be proven
   one bit more! And if they were all to disprove it, it would be none the
   less sure! If I were to see a thing to be true which God had declared
   in His Word, I would not believe my eyes so well as I would believe His
   Word--at least, I ought not to do so. This is where we ought to
   stand--all the world may deceive, but God cannot! Let God be true and
   every man a liar.

   If you will come and trust Him in this way you shall be like a tree
   planted by the rivers of water. Your leaf shall not wither and you
   shall not know when drought comes. If your walk through life is the
   walk of faith, as Abraham's and Enoch's were, you shall have a grand
   life--grandly full, eternal and Christly--but if you doubt Him you
   shall not be established. The unbeliever shall be as the rolling thing
   before the whirlwind, as the sear leaf that falls from the tree and as
   the heath of the desert that knows not when good comes. May the Holy
   Spirit save us, Brothers and Sisters, from unbelief, and give us rest
   in the promise of God!

   And now, secondly, let us with all our hearts imitate Mary in being
   enquirers--often asking, desiring to know and looking deep and
   searching--for into the promises of God we cannot look too closely,
   since "these things the angels desire to look into." You ought to
   realize the promise as to be sure that it means what it says and then
   you will naturally begin to ask how it will come to pass. Only strive
   to keep out all unbelief from your enquiry and say, "I know in my heart
   how it can be, for nothing is impossible with God."

   There is our answer to all questions--"With God all things are
   possible." If I enquire, "How can He deliver me?" Nothing is impossible
   with God. "How can He keep me to the end?" Nothing is impossible with
   God. "How can He preserve me amid persecution? How can He keep me from
   temptation and preserve me from the world, the flesh and the devil?"
   Nothing is impossible with God! Fling yourself upon Omnipotence and you
   shall be strong! May the Holy Spirit help you to do this for Christ's
   sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Remember!

   (No. 1406)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 31, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "You shall remember that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt, and
   the Lord your God redeemed you." Deuteronomy 15:15.

   IN an autobiography of William Jay we read that on one occasion he
   called to see the famous Mr. John Newton, at Olney, and he observed
   that over the desk at which he was accustomed to compose his sermons,
   he had written up in very large letters the following words--"Remember
   that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God
   redeemed you." To my mind this story invests the text with considerable
   interest--it was most fitting that such a remarkable convert as he
   should dwell upon such a theme and place such a text conspicuously
   before his eyes. Might it not with great propriety be placed in a
   similar position by each one of us?

   Mr. Newton lived and acted under the influence of the memory which the
   text commands, as was seen that very morning in his conversation with
   Mr. Jay. "Sir," said Mr. Newton, "I am glad to see you, for I have a
   letter just come from Bath and you can, perhaps, assist me in the
   answer to it. Do you know anything of So-and-So (mentioning the name)?"
   Mr. Jay replied that the man was an awful character, had once been a
   hearer of the Gospel, but had become a leader in every vice. "But,
   Sir," said Mr. Newton, "He writes very penitently and who can tell?
   Perhaps a change may have come over him." "Well," said Mr. Jay, "I can
   only say that if ever he should be converted, I should despair of no
   one." "And I," said Mr. Newton, "have never despaired of anybody since
   I was, myself, converted."

   So, you see, as he thought of this poor sinner at Bath, he was
   remembering that he, also, was a bondman in the land of Egypt and the
   Lord his God had redeemed him. And why should not the same redemption
   reach even to this notorious transgressor and save him? The memory of
   his own gracious change of heart and life gave him tenderness in
   dealing with the erring and hope with regard to their restoration. May
   some such good effect be produced in our minds--we are not all called
   to be preachers of the Gospel, but in any capacity a holy, beneficial,
   sanctifying effect will be produced upon a right mind by remembering
   that we were bondmen, but the Lord our God redeemed us. May the Holy
   Spirit, at this hour, bring the amazing Grace of God to our remembrance
   with melting power!

   As to the particular fact of the redemption of Israel out of Egypt,
   great care was taken that it should be remembered. The month upon which
   they came out was made the commencement of the year. "This month shall
   be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the
   year to you" (Exo. 12:2). A special injunction was issued, "Observe the
   month of Abib and keep the Passover unto the Lord your God: for in the
   month of Abib the Lord your God brought you forth out of Egypt by
   night." An ordinance was established on purpose that the deliverance
   might be commemorated--and the eating of the Passover lamb was made
   binding upon the whole of the people--so that they should not forget
   the sprinkling of the blood.

   The Word of the Lord ordained, saying, "And this day shall be unto you
   for a memorial; and you shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout
   your generations; you shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever."
   They were enjoined, also, to instruct their children concerning it, so
   that in addition to a ceremonial there was an oral tradition to be
   handed from father to son. "And when your son asks you in time to come,
   saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments,
   which the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say unto your
   son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of
   Egypt with a mighty hand" (Deut. 6:20, 21).

   Their law of the Ten Commandments commenced with a reminder of that
   remarkable fact--"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." All through the book of Deuteronomy you will observe
   that this is the one weighty and oft repeated argument for obedience
   and faithfulness--"Remember that you were a bondman in Egypt and the
   Lord your God redeemed you."

   Now, Beloved, if the Jew was so carefully instructed to remember his
   deliverance out of Egypt, should not we, also, take heed to ourselves
   that we by no means forget, or cast into the background, our yet
   greater redemption through the precious blood of Christ by which we
   were set free from the yoke and bondage of sin? See how Paul, in
   Ephesians 2:11, 12, 13, speaks to us who have been called by Grace from
   the ends of the earth--"Why remember, that you being in time past
   Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is
   called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time
   you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
   and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without
   God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far
   off are made near by the blood of Christ."

   He puts the same thought into other words in Romans 6:17, 18, when he
   says--"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.
   Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of
   righteousness." Paul would have us remember our redemption. And God the
   Holy Spirit who spoke by Paul would have us remember it! Will we not
   give earnest heed to such solemn counsels? The blessed effects that
   will flow from such a memory urge us to remember it and because of this
   our discourse of this morning is intended to be a humble assistance
   towards such a memory.

   O my Brothers and Sisters, forget all else, just now, and give your
   heart to the work before you and, "remember that you were a bondman in
   the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you." First, then,
   let us consider our bondage. Secondly, our redemption. And thirdly, the
   influence of the memory of the two facts. I shall not try to say
   anything fresh or new--it would be out of place to attempt it, for my
   present duty is to awaken your memories as to former days. I have only
   to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. He who is only a
   remembrancer for the past must not look about for novelties. We speak
   what you know and ask you to testify to what you have felt.

   I. First let us consider OUR BONDAGE. It was exceedingly like the
   bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt. There are many points in
   which a parallel might be drawn. We will indicate them in a few words.
   First, when we were unregenerate and sold under sin, we were enslaved
   to a mighty power against which we could not contend. It would have
   been of no use for the Israelites to have commenced an insurrection
   against Pharaoh--he was too firmly established upon the throne and his
   soldiers by far too strong for poor, feeble, shepherd tribes to be able
   to resist. They scarcely dared to think of such a thing and, Brethren,
   if fallen man single-handedly had the heart to contend with sin and
   Satan, he would certainly be unable to achieve a victory.

   The Fall has left us "without strength." The Law, with all its force,
   is "weak through the flesh." Alas, man has no heart for spiritual
   liberty, otherwise the Lord would lend him power. But apart from Divine
   power, what man can break loose from his sin? Shall the Ethiopian
   change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then shall he that is
   accustomed to do evil learn to do well, unassisted by Divine strength!
   No, Brothers and Sisters, the fetters which enchain the mind of the
   carnal man are much too strong for him to snap them. He may resolve to
   do so, as in moments of reflection some men do, but, alas, he is soon
   weary of the struggle for liberty and resigns himself to his prison.

   If man had been capable of his own redemption, there would never have
   descended from Heaven the Divine Redeemer, but because the bondage was
   all too dire for man to set himself free, therefore the eternal Son of
   God came here that He might save His people from their sins. Our
   natural bondage was caused and maintained by a power tremendous in
   energy and craft. The Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that
   now works in the children of disobedience, held us beneath his iron
   sway and sin exercised a tyrannical dominion over us from which we
   could not break.

   Worse still, we were like the Israelites in another respect. Our
   slavery had so degraded us that we had no heart to desire an escape!
   One of the worst points of slavery is that it frequently degrades men
   into contentment with their condition. That would be thought by some to
   be a benefit, but it is a giant evil, for a man has no right to be
   satisfied in slavery. Such contentment is an ensign of debased manhood.
   Freedom is the right of every human being and he is not truly a man if
   he can be happy in bondage.

   The Israelites were so trampled down that they crouched at their
   oppressors' feet and made themselves as content as they could in their
   enslaved condition. As they were turned into beasts of burden, so were
   their minds brutalized until their chief joy lay in the onions and the
   cucumbers with which they refreshed themselves--and the fish of which
   they later spoke so longingly. They declined from a thoughtful family
   into a clan of groveling laborers without heart or hope, so

   that when Moses went to them, the first time, he was not received. And
   when he was sent of God with his brother, Aaron, the people at the
   first hour of conflict shrank into their former cowardice and would
   willingly have remained slaves sooner than excite Pharaoh's wrath.

   They had been ground down so terribly with their hard labor in mortar
   and in brick that they scarcely dared to think of freedom--and that was
   just your case and mine, beloved Friends--we, too, were willing slaves
   of death and sin. If we are free this morning it was not because when
   left to ourselves we fought for liberty and refused to wear a fetter.
   No, our bonds were on our hearts and we chose our own degradation. The
   slave from the south, of old, watched the northern star and followed it
   through brake, swamp and forest to obtain his liberty, but our eyes
   refused to look to Jesus, who is the Star of Freedom. We boasted that
   we were born free and were never in bondage to any man and so we most
   effectually proved our bondage under our own pride.

   We, perhaps, called ourselves freethinkers and, at any rate we meant to
   be free actors, yet, all the while we were in bondage and did not care
   to seek true liberty. Can you not remember when you hugged your chains
   and kissed your bonds--and like a madman who crowns himself with a wisp
   of straw and calls himself a king--embraced the foolish pleasures of
   this world and thought yourselves supremely blessed in such base
   enjoyments? Remember again, dear Brothers and Sisters, that you were in
   a bondage similar to that of Egypt, for while in that condition you
   toiled hard and found that all the service wherein Satan made you to
   serve was with rigor.

   The Israelites built treasure cities for Pharaoh and they are supposed
   to have erected some of the pyramids. But their wage was very small and
   their taskmasters were brutal. Laborers engaged upon royal works
   received no wages, but were simply served with sufficient bread to keep
   them alive. The Israelites were called upon to make an enormous
   quantity of bricks and, at last, the chopped straw, which was necessary
   to make the clay bind together, which had been given out of the royal
   granaries, was refused them and they were bid to go over all the land
   to hunt up what they could of stubble instead of straw--thus their
   labor was increased beyond all bearing.

   Could not many a sinner tell of horrible nights and woeful mornings
   when under the power of his passions? Who has woe? Who has redness of
   the eyes? Who is filled with dread of death? Who flees when no man
   pursues? Of all tyrants sin and Satan are the most cruel! How are men
   worn out in the devil's destructive service! What an expense does sin
   entail! It is a costly thing for many, to obey their own vices! They
   are impoverished by their passions. Those who complain if they are
   pressed for subscriptions to holy causes should consider how much more
   they would have spent in the pleasures of the world. Why, men squander
   fortunes upon their frivolities or upon their lusts--and encumber
   future generations to indulge a vice which ruins their health, destroys
   their reputation and sends them to an early grave!

   If you will have your own way, that way will be the hardest you can
   choose. It does not matter in what position a man may be, whether rich
   or poor, illiterate and fond of the more vulgar pleasures, or tutored
   and educated and prone to more fashionable vices--sin leads on to hard
   service everywhere--and its exactions increase from day to day. If men
   were but in their senses, drunkenness, gambling, gluttony, wantonness
   and many other vices would be punishments rather than pleasures--and
   yet they live in them! There was a time, dear Brethren, when, in
   addition to our hard toil, our bondage brought us misery.

   Do you remember when you dared not think a day's conduct over for the
   life of you? When if you had been compelled to sit down and review your
   own character it would have been an intolerable task? I recollect,
   also, when a sense of sin came over me and then, indeed, my life was
   made bitter with hard bondage. I labored to set up a righteousness of
   my own, for I could not yield to the righteousness of Christ. That was
   laboring as in the very fire! I strove by my own good works to
   accomplish my own salvation and tried by prayers and tears to pay the
   debt I owed to God, but all in vain. I was sinning all the while by
   refusing Christ and endeavoring to rival my Savior.

   So far I speak for myself, but I know that you have done the same. Do
   you remember, Brothers and Sisters, when your pleasures ceased to be
   pleasures? When all the amusements of the world lost their flavor and
   became flat, stale, nauseous and you turned away and asked in vain for
   something that would content you? Do you remember when at last you saw
   yourself in your true condition and bewailed yourself before the living
   God as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn? Ah, then you felt
   like Israel in Egypt when they sighed and cried by reason of the
   bondage!

   And, blessed be God, the parallel runs further, for in your case, also,
   God heard the groaning and remembered His covenant (Exo. 2:24). All
   this while our enemy was aiming at our destruction! This was what
   Pharaoh was driving at

   with Israel--he intended to cut off the nation by severe tasks, or at
   least to reduce its strength. As his first policy did not succeed, he
   set about to destroy the male children. And even so, Satan, when he has
   men under his power, labors by all means to utterly destroy them, for
   nothing short of this will satisfy him! Every hopeful thought he would
   drown in the river of despair, lest by any means the man should shake
   off his yoke. The total overthrow of the soul of man is the aim of the
   great enemy. What a mercy to have been redeemed out of the hand of the
   enemy!

   And like Israel in Egypt, we were in the hands of a power that would
   not let us go. There came a voice by Moses which said to Pharaoh, "Thus
   says the Lord, Let My people go," but Pharaoh's answer was, "I know not
   the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." And such was the language of
   our corruptions! Such the language of the devil who had dominion over
   us. "I will not let you go," said the fierce Prince of Darkness and,
   like a strong armed man, he kept his goods in peace. You remember that
   telling sermon which thrilled you and awoke in you desires for liberty?
   You recollect how there seemed to ring in the halls of your nature the
   resounding voice, "Let my people go"?

   But you did not go, for that slavish will of yours held you in bondage.
   Your sins captivated you! Then came the reading of the Scriptures, or a
   mother's exhortation, or another earnest sermon and again the voice was
   heard, "Thus says the Lord, Let My people go." You began to feel uneasy
   in your condition and to venture somewhat into the border country, but
   you could not escape--the iron had entered into your soul--your heart
   was captive. Blessed was the day when the strong armed man that kept
   you as a man keeps his house was overcome by a stronger than he and
   cast out forever! Then Jesus took possession of your nature, never to
   leave it, but to hold His tenancy world without end! Glory be to God,
   we were bondmen in Egypt, but the Lord our God redeemed us--let His
   name be praised!

   I would assist you still further to remember that bondage. It cannot be
   hard for some of you to do so, for you are "from Egypt lately come."
   Some of you have been set free, now, these 20 years, some perhaps these
   50 years! But it cannot be difficult for you to remember what must be
   so indelibly impressed upon you. I can imagine, 30 years after coming
   out of Egypt, some of the gray fathers who had crossed the Red Sea
   telling their sons the sad story of the bondage in Egypt. "I, your
   father," one of them would say, "was beaten with rods by the taskmaster
   because when I had made up my full tale of bricks I was required to
   make twice as many. I toiled far into the night at brick-making, but I
   could not accomplish the task--and I remember how the blows descended
   upon my back like burning hail. Look here, my son," he would say, as he
   stripped himself to show the scars, "these are the memorials of
   Egyptian bondage."

   Ah, glory be to God, we are free! No more do we carry clanking chains
   upon our souls--but we still bear the old scars about us. Sometimes the
   old temper rises, or the old lusts flame up. When a man has had a bone
   broken, it may have been well set and he has, for the most part,
   forgotten the problem, yet, in bad weather I have heard it said, "The
   old bone talks a bit." And, alas, the bones we broke by our sins will
   talk a bit at times--and their talk is a sad reminder of our former
   state. Snatches of ill songs, recollections of old lusts and I know not
   what besides, are scars which remind us that we were bondmen in Egypt!

   Many a mother that came out of Egypt when she looked at her boy would
   say, "And I might have been the joyful mother of seven sons, but they
   were one after another snatched from my bosom by the remorseless
   servant of the Egyptian tyrant and put to death." With her joy for what
   was left her would be mingled sorrow for what she had lost. Yes, and in
   your families it may be your younger children have been brought under
   religious influences, but your older sons are as irreligious as you
   were when they were lads at home. Many are led to think of their own
   evil example in former years as they see their wayward sons persevering
   in sin.

   As you think of them you may say, "I see my bondage in my son. I see my
   sin repeated in my child." These are mournful memorials of our carnal
   state. But, indeed, I need not thus remind you, for everything may
   refresh your memories as to your former bondage. Is it not so? The task
   set before you in the text is an easy one and I charge you, therefore,
   remember that you were once bondmen in Egypt.

   II. In the second place, we have to think of the blessed fact of OUR
   REDEMPTION--"The Lord your God

   redeemed you." Here again there is a parallel. He redeemed us first by
   price. Israel in Egypt was an unransomed nation. God claimed that
   nation to be His firstborn. As it is written, "Sanctify unto Me all the
   firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both
   of man and of beast: it is Mine." That portion had been His claim from
   the first. And the Law was afterwards carried out by the setting apart
   of the Levitical tribe to take the place of the firstborn--but Israel
   in Egypt had never set apart its firstborn at all--and was, therefore
   an unredeemed people.

   How was all that indebtedness to be made up? The nation must be
   redeemed by a price and that price was set forth by the symbol of a
   lamb which was killed, roasted and eaten, while the blood was smeared
   upon the lintel and the two side posts. Beloved, you and I have been
   redeemed with blood! Blessed Lord Jesus, "You were slain and have
   redeemed us unto God by Your blood." "You were not redeemed with
   corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
   Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." You cannot, you
   must not, you shall not forget this. You were bondmen, but Jesus your
   Lord redeemed you. He took your nature and was thus next of kin to
   you--and it became His right to redeem you, which right He has
   exercised to His own cost but to your eternal gain.

   The price by which you were set free He counted down in a wondrous
   coinage, minted from His own heart. The ransom is paid and the Jubilee
   trumpet proclaims that you and your heavenly possessions are now
   delivered from all mortgage and encumbrance through the blood of Jesus
   Christ. Remember that with a great price you have obtained this
   freedom. The Lord says, "I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and
   Seba for you." But there would not have been a coming out of Egypt
   unless there had been a display of power as well as a payment of
   price--for with a high hand and an outstretched arm the Lord brought
   forth His people.

   There are always two redemptions to every man who is saved--redemption
   by price and redemption by power. You know what power God put forth in
   the land of Egypt when He worked all His plagues in the field of Zoan.
   But that was nothing compared with the power of Christ when He broke
   the head of the old dragon! When He utterly destroyed the kingdom of
   sin and led our captivity captive! Greater than Moses' rod were
   Christ's pierced hands! He has done it! He has done it! Our tyrant has
   no more power to hold us in chains, for Christ has vanquished him
   forever!

   Another form of redemption was also seen by Israel, namely, in the
   power exerted over themselves. I think sufficient stress has never been
   laid upon this. That they should have been willing to come out of Egypt
   was no small thing-- universally willing so that not a single person
   remained behind--so unanimous and so eager were they to come out of
   Egypt, though almost rooted to the soil, that a number of Egyptians
   came up with them. According to the word of Moses, "Not a hoof shall be
   left behind," they all left the land and neither sheep, nor goat, nor
   ox--much less man, woman, or child--remained.

   Israel was glad to come out and even Egypt was glad when they departed.
   It is wonderful that they were all able to come out of Egypt. There was
   never an army, yet, but what had some sick in it--the ambulance and the
   hospital are always needed--but of this grand army we are told, "He
   brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one
   feeble person among their tribes." Marvelous display of power was this!
   And so, Beloved, we will tell it to the praise of God this day that He
   made us willing to come out of the Egypt of our sin to which we were
   rooted! And making us willing He made us able, too! The power of the
   Spirit came upon us and the might of His Grace overshadowed us and we
   did arise and come to our Father. Let Grace have all the glory!

   Shall I need to press upon you, then, to let your minds fly back to the
   time when you realized your redemption and came up out of the land of
   Egypt? It was a Divine interposition. "The Lord your God redeemed you."
   And it was personally experienced, for, "The Lord your God redeemed
   you." It was a matter of clear consciousness to your own soul. You were
   a bondman--you knew it and felt it--the Lord your God redeemed you and
   you know it and feel that, also! You know it as much as a galley slave
   would know it if he no more tugged the oar! As much as the captive who
   has pined away in the dungeon through weary years would know it when
   once more he breathed the air and felt that he was free!

   "You were a bondman, and the Lord your God redeemed you." There can be
   no doubt about it! Satan himself could not make some of us doubt it!
   The chains were so real and the liberty so delightful! It was a mental
   phenomenon for which there can be no accounting except upon this
   belief--that the Lord our God, Himself, came and set us free!

   III. Thus, Brothers and Sisters, I have set before you the subject for
   your memory. I shall now try to show you THE

   INFLUENCE WHICH THIS DOUBLE MEMORY OUGHT TO HAVE UPON YOU. We should
   naturally conclude,

   without any reference to Scripture, that if a Christian man kept always
   in mind his former and his present state, it would render him humble.
   You have been preaching and God has blessed you to the conversion of
   many--do you feel elated? "Remember that you were a bondman in the land
   of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you."

   You are getting on in knowledge and your character is evidently much
   improved. Your inner life is full of peace and comfort. Do you feel as
   if you were some great one? Do not play the fool! You are less than
   nothing! Remember that you were a poor miserable slave--brown,
   sun-dried, smoke-tinged--and that not long ago! You would have been in
   Hell if

   it had not been for Sovereign Grace! Or if not there, perhaps you would
   have been among drunkards and swearers, and lewd men and women, or at
   least among the proud, self-righteous Pharisees. When you are honored
   of the Lord and happy in the full assurance of faith, remember that you
   were a bondman--walk humbly with your God.

   In the next place, be grateful. If you have not all the temporal
   mercies that you would desire, yet you have received the choicest of
   all mercies--liberty through Jesus Christ--therefore be cheerful, happy
   and thankful. Remember that you were a bondman and if you have but
   little of this world's goods, be thankful for the great spiritual
   blessing you have received in being set free from the galling yoke. Do
   not receive such a liberty as this without blessing those dear, pierced
   hands which was nailed to the tree that you might be delivered! Let
   gratitude abound, as you remember the wormwood and the gall.

   Being grateful, be patient, too. If you are suffering or ailing, or if
   sometimes your spirits are cast down, or if you are poor and despised,
   yet say to yourself, "Why should I complain? My lot may seem difficult,
   yet it is nothing in comparison with what it would have been if I had
   been left a prisoner in the land of Egypt! Thank God I am no longer in
   bondage to my sins." The slave of the sad times in America would leap
   on the Canadian shore! And though he came there with all his earthly
   goods wrapped up in his handkerchief and knew not where his next meal
   would come from, yet he would spring upon the shore, dance for joy and
   say, "Thank God, I am free! I am penniless, but free!" How much more,
   then, may you, whatever your suffering or sorrow may be, exclaim,
   "Thank God! I was a bondman, but the Lord my God has redeemed me, and I
   will be patient, whatever I am called to bear."

   Next, be hopeful. What may you not yet become? "It does not yet appear
   what we shall be." You were a bondman, but Divine Grace has set you
   free! Who knows what the Lord may yet make of you? Is there anything
   that He cannot, will not do for one whom He has already redeemed by His
   blood? He has set you free from sin! Oh, then, He will keep you from
   falling and preserve you to the end. "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 by His life." Are you thus hopeful? Then
   be zealous! Here earnestness should find both fire and fuel--we were
   bondmen, but the Lord has redeemed us. What, then, can be too hard for
   us to undertake for His sake? We must give all to Him who has purchased
   us to Himself and we must continue to do so as long as we live.

   John Newton persisted in preaching even when he was really incapable of
   it, for he said "What? Shall the old African blasphemer leave off
   preaching Jesus Christ while there is breath in his body? No, never!"
   He felt that he must continue to bear testimony, for our text was
   always before him, "Remember that you were a bondman in the land of
   Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you."

   But now kindly follow me while I, as briefly as I can, show you the
   Lord's own use of this remembrance. And the first text I shall quote
   will be found in Deuteronomy 5:14. This is what He says--"The seventh
   day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God: in it you shall not do any
   work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor
   your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your ass, nor any of your cattle,
   nor your stranger that is within your gates; that your manservant and
   your maidservant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a
   servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you
   out of there through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm:
   therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day."

   You were a bondman. What would you have given for rest? Now that the
   Lord has given you this hallowed day of rest, guard it sacredly. When
   you were a bondman you knew the heart of a servant and you sighed
   because your toil was heavy. Now that you are set free, if you have
   servants, think of them and so order your household that they may, as
   much as possible, enjoy their Sabbath. Certain household duties must be
   performed, but plot and plan to make these as light as possible, "that
   your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you." If you
   meet with any that are in bondage of soul and cannot rest, obey the
   text in its spiritual teaching.

   Rest in the Lord Jesus yourself, but endeavor to bring all your family
   into the same peace, "that your manservant and your maidservant may
   rest as well as you." Surely if you have been set free from the iron
   bondage you ought not to need urging to keep, with all sacredness, this
   holy day which the mercy of God has hedged about! Nor should you need
   exhorting to rest in the Lord and to endeavor to lead others into His
   rest.

   In Deuteronomy 7 we have another use of this remembrance. Here the
   chosen people are commanded to keep separate from the nations. They
   were not to intermarry with the Canaanites nor make alliances with
   them. Israel was to be

   separated, even as Moses said, "you are a holy people unto the Lord
   your God." And the reason he gives in the 8th verse is this--"The Lord
   redeemed you out of the house of bondmen." Ah, Brothers and Sisters, if
   we are redeemed from among men. If there is a special and particular
   redemption, as we believe, by which Christ loved His Church and gave
   Himself for it, then as the specially blood-bought ones, we are under
   solemn obligations to come out from the world and to be separate from
   it. Did not Jesus say of His redeemed, "They are not of the world, even
   as I am not of the world"? Therefore come you out from among them and
   be you separate.

   In the 8th chapter, redemption is used as an argument for obedience,
   and they are exhorted not to forget the laws and statutes of the Lord.
   And above all they are warned, lest in the midst of prosperity their
   heart should be lifted up so as to forget the Lord their God who
   brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
   The same argument runs through the 11th chapter and it is a very clear
   one. We ought to render glad obedience to Him who has worked us so
   great a deliverance! We find in the 13th chapter that the redemption
   from bondage is used as an argument for loyal attachment to the one and
   only God.

   The tendency of the nation was to idolatry, since all the countries
   round about had many gods and lords--but the Lord commanded His people
   to put to death all prophets and dreamers of dreams who might seek to
   lead them away from the worship of Jehovah. "You shall stone him with
   stones that he dies," says the 10th verse, "because he has sought to
   thrust you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land
   of Egypt, from the house of bondage." You must not have another God,
   for no other God delivered you--worship Him to whom you owe your all.

   Our own text is set in the following connection. If a man entered into
   forced servitude, or came under any bonds to his fellow man among the
   Jews, he could only be held for six years. In the seventh he was to go
   free. "And when you send him out free from you, you shall not let him
   go away empty: you shall furnish him liberally out of your flock and
   out of your flour, and out of your winepress: of that which the Lord
   your God has blessed you, you shall give unto him. And you shall
   remember that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord
   your God redeemed you."

   The Lord's people should be considerate of those who are in their
   employment. The recollection of their own bondage should make them
   tender and kind to those who are in subservience to them and never
   should a Christian man be ungenerous, illiberal, severe, churlish with
   his servants, or with any who are dependent upon him. Be large-hearted!
   Do not be angry at every little fault, nor swift to observe every
   slight mistake. And be not forever standing on your exact rights,
   litigious, sticking out for the last half-farthing as some do.

   I am almost sorry if a mean, stingy man gets converted, for I am afraid
   he will be no credit to Christianity. There should be in a man redeemed
   with the blood of Christ something like nobility of soul and
   benevolence to his fellow men. Even this stern Book of the Law teaches
   us this. I have no time except to remind you that they were bound to
   keep the Passover because of their deliverance from Egypt as we find in
   the 16th chapter at the 1st verse. "Observe the month of Abib and keep
   the Passover unto the Lord your God: for in the month of Abib the Lord
   your God brought you forth out of Egypt by night."

   So let us, also, take heed unto ourselves that we keep all the statutes
   and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly. Let us keep the ordinances as
   they were delivered unto us and neither alter nor misplace them. Hold
   fast the Truth of God and be not moved from it by the cunning
   craftiness of men. Walk according to the teaching of Scripture in all
   things, keeping the good old way, because the Lord our God redeemed us
   and His Truth is unchangeable. Again, in the 16th chapter, verses 10 to
   12, you have the great redemption used as an argument for liberality
   towards the cause of God. They were to give unto the Lord rejoicingly
   of that which the Lord had given to them. "Every man shall give as he
   is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has
   given you."

   And that because of the 12th verse, "You shall remember that you were a
   bondman in Egypt: and you shall observe and do these statutes." In the
   26th chapter the same teaching is reduced to a set form, for they were
   there commanded to bring each one a basket of first fruits and offer it
   unto the Lord, saying--"The Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a
   mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness,
   and with signs, and with wonders. And He has brought us into this
   place, and has given us this land, even a land that flows with milk and
   honey. And now, behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land,
   which You, O Lord, have given me."

   Need I, even for a moment, impress this duty upon you? Last of all, in
   the 24th chapter there remains one more lesson. We are there exhorted
   to be careful concerning the fatherless and the widow (Deut. 24:17). A
   generous spirit was to be

   exhibited towards the poor. They were not to fetch in all their sheaves
   from the field if any were forgotten, nor to scrape up every single ear
   of corn from among the stubble, as some do these days, nor to beat
   their olive trees twice, nor to gather the grapes of their vineyard a
   second time. Rather, they were to leave something for the poor! This
   was the argument--When you were in Egypt, when you had to make bricks
   without straw, how glad you were to turn your children in among the
   stubble to gather a few ears to make a loaf of bread. And now the Lord
   has given you a better land, therefore deal well with the poor.

   Brethren, let the needy never be forgotten by you! Do not be miserly.
   Do not imitate those farmers who would comb their fields with a
   small-toothed comb if they could--sooner than the poor should
   glean--raking it and raking it again and again! No, the ransomed
   Israelites were not even to pick all their fruit, for the argument was,
   "Would not you, when in Egypt, have given anything for a bunch of those
   grapes which grew in the gardens of the rich?" Think, therefore, of the
   poor and deal kindly with them, even as you would wish others to deal
   with you.

   With this I close. Be thoughtful of all your fellow men. You that have
   been redeemed with price, be you tenderhearted, full of compassion,
   merciful. In spiritual things take care that you never rake the corners
   of your fields. Do not rob the Gospel of its sweetness. There is a
   class of preaching out of which the last ear of wheat has been taken.
   Their Gospel is criticized into nothing. The skeptical commentators
   come in and pick nearly every bunch of grapes and then the
   modern-thought gentry devour the rest!

   The preaching of modern times is as an olive tree beaten till not a
   trace of fruit remains. Let it not be so with us, but let the preacher
   say, "I was a bondman and therefore I will drop handfuls on purpose for
   poor souls in trouble." Brothers and Sisters, be very considerate to
   seekers. Look them up. Talk to them after the sermon. Say a word to
   those sitting in your pew which may encourage their poor trembling
   hearts to lay hold on Jesus Christ.

   Remember that you were a bondman--the smell of the brick kiln is upon
   you now, my Brother, my Sister--you have not yet cleansed all the clay
   from your hands with which you did work in mortar and in brick. Then do
   not become selfish, unloving, unkind, but in all things love your
   neighbor as yourself and so prove that you love the Lord your God with
   all your heart. God bless you. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Compassion on the Ignorant

   (No. 1407)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Who can ha ve compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of
   the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity." Hebrews
   5:2.

   THIS is a part of the necessary qualification of a priest. Under the
   old Law there were priests who were taken from among men in order that
   they might speak to God for men and might speak to men for God. They
   were taken from among men, not from among angels, and they were taken
   from men compassed with infirmity--not from absolutely perfect men like
   those in Heaven--in order that they might be familiar with sinful and
   suffering men and on a level with them. When the people of Israel came
   to them they saw that they were speaking to persons who knew and
   understood their weaknesses and sorrows--not to exalted beings who
   would look down upon them with serene indifference.

   They felt that they could approach their priest without the awe which
   creates a freezing distance, as though a deep crevasse opened between
   them. And when they spoke to their friend, the minister of God, they
   felt that they could tell him their trials and troubles, for he had
   felt the same and, therefore, was able to console and comfort them.
   Many a kindly word the good man spoke, before he sent them back to
   their houses, which he never could have spoken unless he had been a
   man, himself, "compassed with infirmity."

   Loving them and being such as they were, he was able to have patience
   with the many strange cases which came before him. He was not soon
   vexed by their stupidity, but listened carefully to what they had to
   say, trying to solve their difficulties and to meet their cases. He
   knew that he, too, was weakness and folly, itself, before his God. And
   his own afflictions and trembling made him feel that he must be gentle
   to others since the Lord had been tender to him. It was, in the
   all-wise Providence of God, ordained that the sons of Aaron should be
   men compassed with infirmity that they might compass others with
   sympathy.

   Men admire an iron duke for war, but who could bear an iron priest in
   the hour of trouble? A bronze wall is good for a defense, but we need a
   breast of flesh and blood for consolation. Give me, for a spiritual
   comforter and guide, not an infallible pontiff, nor a thrice-crowned
   spiritual lord, but a brother of my own condition, a friend possessed
   of a nature like my own! After mentioning this fact, which is stated in
   the text, I would bring forth two remarks which will constitute the
   essence of our discourse.

   The first is that compassion and forbearance are two great
   qualifications for doing good to our fellow men. And, secondly--and
   upon this I shall dwell at length--that both of these are found
   pre-eminently in our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, we may with
   boldness come to Him. May the great Spirit whose teaching is our only
   means of profiting bless our meditation!

   I. First, then, COMPASSION AND FORBEARANCE ARE TWO THINGS WHICH ANY MAN
   WHO WOULD DO GOOD TO HIS FELLOW MEN OUGHT TO POSSESS TO A VERY LARGE
   DEGREE. You will have plenty of use for all the compassion and all the
   tenderness that you can possibly command, for this will help to draw
   around you those who are ignorant and out of the way. Men will not
   gather to some individuals--they are too hard, too cold, too stern.
   They seem cut out of stone--they have no feeling. Or else they are dry
   and leathery and have none of the juice of humanity in them--no warm
   blood--no milk of human kindness and you are not attracted to them.

   Who loves a bag of old nails, or a sack of sawdust? And yet some men
   and women are almost as hard and dry! If you want to draw people around
   you, you must have sympathy with them. Compassion magnetizes a man and
   makes him attract as the loadstone fascinates the needle. A big heart
   is one of the main essentials to great usefulness. Try and cultivate
   it. Do not let another man's sorrow fall upon a deaf ear as far as you
   are concerned, but sorrow with the sorrowful and have compassion upon
   the ignorant and those that are out of the way. They will soon perceive
   it and they will do to you as they did to your Master, of whom we read,
   "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners."

   Men will cluster around you like bees around their queen! They will not
   be able to help it. They will not wish to help it. Love is the queen
   bee and where she is, you will find the center of the hive.

   By this same spell you will hold those whom you gather, for men will
   not long remain with an unloving leader. Even little children in our
   classes will not long listen to an unsympathetic teacher. Great armies
   of soldiers must be led by a great soldier--and children must be held
   in hand by child-like instructors. When human beings surround an
   uncompassionate person, they soon find it out and fly away at a tangent
   as if by instinct. You may collect people for a time by some extraneous
   means, but unless they perceive that you love them and that your heart
   goes out with desires for their good, they will soon weary of you.

   The multitude still clung to the skirts of Jesus, even to the last,
   whenever He preached, because they saw that He really desired their
   good. You, dear Friend, must have compassion if you are to keep up the
   attention of those whom you address. The earth is held together by the
   force of attraction and to the men upon it that same power is exercised
   by love and compassion. Compassion in your heart will also be greatly
   useful in moving sinners to care for themselves. I believe there are
   some people who will never feel about their own souls until they are
   driven to it by seeing that other people feel for them.

   If I remember the story correctly, Mr. Knill at one time was
   distributing tracts at Chester and went out where there was a company
   of soldiers. Many received the tracts, but one man tore a little book
   in pieces before the good man's eyes! And on another occasion the same
   individual said to the soldiers, "Now make a ring round him." The men
   stood round the preacher and then the wicked fellow cursed him in such
   a frightful manner that Mr. Knill burst into tears to hear such awful
   sounds. The sight of Knill's tears broke the heart of the
   blasphemer--nothing else could have touched him--he could not bear to
   see a strong man who was at least his equal, and, probably, his
   superior, weeping over him. Years later he came forward to acknowledge
   that the tender emotion displayed by Mr. Knill had touched his inmost
   soul and led him to repentance.

   Now, if you have compassion on other people, they will wonder why you
   should be so much concerned for them. "Why do you care for me?" said a
   reprobate to an earnest Christian who tried to win him. "Ah," said
   another, who looked at it from the opposite side, "no one cares for my
   soul. I have nobody to pray for me, nobody to care for me, or I might
   have some hope." It is clear, beloved Brothers and Sisters, that if you
   feel moved of God to seek the good of your fellow men, as I trust you
   do, the first things you need are compassion, forbearance, patience,
   sympathy--and without these you will no more touch the hearts of those
   to whom you speak than would a parrot or a talking robot.

   You also need great compassion to insure your own perseverance, for if
   you do not love the children of your class, if you do not love the
   people whom you try to benefit as you go from house to house, if you
   have no compassion for the dying sinners around you, you will soon give
   up your mission or go about it in a merely formal manner. You will not
   find the conquest of the human heart to be an easy thing. Indeed, it is
   the most difficult of all enterprises! Unless you so love men that you
   will bear a thousand rebuffs and disappointments and will still press
   on with the blessed news of mercy--unless, I say, you have a compassion
   as enduring as your own life, you will fail and be discouraged and cast
   away the sacred nets with which you fish for men and the seed basket
   from which you scatter the heavenly Seed.

   You may, perhaps, continue to sow a handful here and there, but you
   will never reap a large harvest unless the heart moves the hand.
   Besides, only compassion of the heart can teach you how to speak to
   others. I have often been pleased to see how young converts manage to
   tell of the love of Christ to people much older than themselves and do
   it very effectively, too. You cannot take a man into college and teach
   him how to preach to sinners rightly by giving him books, or lectures,
   or rules. No, that must be learned by a kind of instinct of the new
   nature which teaches the man who is ordained to do it.

   Nobody, I suppose, teaches the young mother how to manage her first
   child and yet, somehow or other, it is done because she loves it. It is
   wonderful, to me, how a widow with quite a swarm of children somehow
   provides for them. I cannot tell how, but the love she bears them leads
   her to make exertions which would seem impossible to anyone else and
   the little ones are somehow or other housed and fed and clothed! If you
   have love enough, you can, by God's Grace, win any man to Jesus. If his
   heart is as hard as a diamond, why, then, you must have a purpose twice
   as hard as a diamond and you will yet cut him to his heart!

   If you are resolved that you will move Heaven and earth that some soul
   shall feel the power of the Gospel and if you will go with mighty
   prayer and invoke the aid of the Divine Spirit, I do not see that you
   can fail. You must do good if you have but love enough and heart
   enough! These are the main qualifications, I believe, for a minister of
   the Gospel, for the teacher of a Sunday school class, or for any other
   sort of Christian worker--plenteous compassion and unfailing
   forbearance.

   If you possess these two things, dear Friends, you will find that they
   will be very much tried and exercised. It will not be long, young
   worker, if you plunge into the midst of Christian service, before you
   will meet with open opposition. Scoffers will rail at you. Fools will
   laugh at you. It may be profane persons will swear at you. This is no
   uncommon thing. Now, if you can look upon an open opposer with
   compassion, you will not lose your temper, neither will you be at all
   distressed except for his sake. The surest way of putting down your
   opponents is to feel that they cannot make you angry or drive you from
   your purpose.

   You must feel that you love them all the more because you see how
   greatly they need the Gospel--and then the more they sin the more will
   you be certain that theirs is a case of great necessity requiring you
   to be in sevenfold earnest. I do not think, however, that all workers
   are so much put about by open opposition as they are by those persons
   who never oppose, but who, at the same time, never yield. I do not
   know, sometimes, how to get on with certain people with whom I speak
   about Christ. They say, "Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir." You say, "But,
   my dear Friend, there is a necessity for a new heart." They answer,
   "Yes, Sir, yes." "And you know there is no salvation except by faith in
   Christ." "Yes, Sir. Yes,

   Sir."

   I have spoken to one person several times who always thanks me for
   doing so and declares that it is very kind of me to speak to him. He
   says he is very much obliged to me and, "Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir." That is
   all I can get out of him! I do not wish he would swear at me, but if he
   would but say something or other rather outrageous, so that I might go
   at him hammer and tongs, I should really feel a little hopeful about
   him! But he never does this and I cannot, therefore, get at him. He
   will come and hear a sermon and he will not make many remarks about it,
   but he will say, "It was very nice and very clever and quite a treat,"
   and that is all.

   You cannot entice these Pliables any farther--they conquer you by
   yielding--even as the bulrush vanquishes the north wind by bowing
   before it. These people disquiet earnest laborers and make heavy
   demands upon their compassion. We must get much love into our hearts
   and have pity upon these poor India rubber-souled people, or we shall
   become wearied and leave them to their fate. Have pity upon them and
   still go on with your holy endeavors, bearing and forbearing, even
   though they seem to frustrate you!

   You will, also, often meet with very deceitful, hopeful persons, who
   encourage you much but disappoint you more. You say, "I saw a tear in
   that man's eye when I was preaching." Yes, he has a watery eye--perhaps
   he has been drunk and it is easy to weep, then! You lose your man,
   after all. You say, "That woman is so attentive and earnest. I really
   think there is an impression made upon her." But by-and-by you discover
   that there was a motive for the apparent attention and it was all
   pretense. Now is the time to have your compassion in full exercise--the
   more often you are disappointed the more compassion must you feel. And
   the more must you resolve, God helping you, never to give up anyone
   until the funeral knell shall toll and the soul shall have passed
   beyond the region of your influence.

   Alas, there is another and still more wearisome trial of faith and
   patience, for out of those who profess to be converted there are many
   who cause us grief of heart! Even when the wheat is come to the ear we
   may yet lose our harvest, even as the farmer, by smut and mildew, may
   see his fields blasted before his eyes. There are to be found persons
   who come forward and declare themselves to be upon the Lord's side, but
   very soon grow cold, fall into sin and turn aside from the narrow way.
   "They went out from us, but they were not of us," says John, "for if
   they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us."

   These are heart-breakers, thorns in our side and swords in our bones,
   causing us sharp sorrows and doing grievous mischief. Like Judas, they
   sell Christ for money and betray their Master and so prove themselves
   to be the children of Hell, though, for a while, numbered with Christ's
   disciples. Even these we must not cast off utterly, but pity them and
   seek after the straying sheep. Do, my dear Brothers and Sisters, shun
   everything that would make your heart callous towards the most
   provoking and deceitful--it is true their conduct tends to petrify the
   heart--but yield not to the wretched influence or you will suffer loss.

   Living in a city like this, where you get imposed upon very often, it
   is recommended to some people to get a little hard-hearted, but I
   cannot sanction such advice. I fear you will find the process acting
   upon you without your seeking it and I urge you to strive against it.
   Better to be often deceived than to become unfeeling. I would sooner be
   a dupe than a brute, though there is no need to be either the one or
   the other. Try to be tenderhearted, pitying and full of compassion.
   Labor with all your might to be as the text says--"A man who can have
   compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way."

   Now, there are many reasons why we should have a great deal of
   compassion and forbearance. God has a great deal with us. You say that
   such a person grieves you. Alas, he has grieved God much more than you!
   Oh, but you have had patience with him and tried to bring him to
   Christ, now, these 10 years. Remember that the Lord has had patience
   with him, perhaps, these 50 years! Do you reply, "But you do not know
   how badly he treats me"? No, but you forget how badly he treats your
   Lord, Jesus. Has not man always provoked God? Have not the people
   grieved His Holy Spirit these thousands of years? It is a thought that
   ought to lay us in the dust--the innumerable provocations which
   surround the Most High and arise, even, from one man!

   But what must be the provocations caused by the four millions of this
   great city? What must they be from all the millions of the known world?
   Idols are worshipped and blocks of wood and stone set up and called
   gods while the true God is neglected! False doctrine is taught. A man
   claims to be infallible! Christ is forgotten, men trust in their own
   works and glory in their own pretended righteousness--is not the Lord
   angered by all this? What with open blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking and a
   thousand forms of sin, God is terribly provoked! And yet He bears with
   it from day to day and does not suffer His fierce auger to smoke
   against His guilty creatures. Is not the Divine forbearance the miracle
   of miracles?

   When I stood, for a few minutes at the bottom of Pilate's Staircase in
   Rome and saw the poor creatures crawling up and down it on their
   knees--and the priests looking on--I thought that if I had the loan of
   a thunderbolt or two I would have cleared out all the impostors and
   their trumpery in the twinkling of an eye! And then I remembered that
   they were dealing with God and not with man. He looks down on
   Antichrist and all its blasphemies and still stays His hand! He sees in
   this city of London sins which I dare not mention--yet does His thunder
   sleep. He hears man curse Him and even defy Him to His face--and still
   His compassions go forth and He bears with them! Wonderful, wonderful
   is the Omnipotent long-suffering of the Lord! Oh, then, my Brethren, we
   ought surely to have patience with the trifling affronts which we have
   to put up with in the service of God! And we ought never to grow weary
   in well-doing!

   Here is another point which will touch some of you more closely. Think,
   my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, what patience God had with you
   all those years before your conversion and multitudes of times since!
   He has not cast you off nor grown weary of you despite your ill
   manners. And if He has had patience with you, should not you have
   patience with your fellow sinner even to the end? There is one
   reflection which may help you. Remember that these poor souls who sin
   as they do should be looked upon by you as persons who are deranged,
   for sin is madness. That prodigal who spent his money riotously was out
   of his mind, for we read that when he repented, "he came to himself."

   Look at sinful men as mad and you will pity them and bear with them. If
   you have a poor daughter at home whose mind is gradually failing, you
   say, "Do not take much notice of what she says. Her poor mind wanders.
   Her faculties are out of order." These poor souls are out of order,
   too. Their minds have wandered from God. Do not take much notice of
   their ravings--go on and do them all the good you can--in spite of
   their idle talk and petulant complaining. View them as sick and when
   people are ill, you know, they will be very touchy and very soon
   irritated. And, perhaps, they will say naughty things, but you must say
   to yourselves, "It is the fever or the pain which makes them rattle on
   in that bewildered manner. Never mind them."

   You are very tender with the ailing ones, are you not? A man tells you
   that when he spoke a cross word to you the other night he had a
   wretched toothache at the moment, and you reply, "I beg you not to
   mention it. I quite understand you now." Look on sinners in that light
   and say of them, "Poor souls, this malady of sin has so laid hold upon
   them that I must not regard them as in their senses, but must pity
   them." Such a view of human nature will greatly help you to have
   compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way. And do
   remember this--if you do not have compassion you cannot do them good.
   If you become weary of them and speak sharply, you cannot bless them
   and, perhaps, if you are not the means of blessing them, nobody else
   may be.

   Ah, is it your own husband? Wife, win him! Win him! Do not drive him
   from bad to worse by scolding him. Sister, is it your brother? Woo him
   and win him to Christ! Do not vex him by becoming acid and sour. I am
   afraid that sharpness of speech and quickness of temper may have much
   to answer for, since in a moment it may cut the cords with which men
   were being drawn in the right direction. Have compassion! Have
   compassion on obstinate ignorance and willful rebellion! Remember, the
   more trouble it costs you to bring a soul to Christ, the greater will
   be your reward. In your own conscience you will feel a sweet recompense
   when you will, in later days, be able to say, "I travailed in birth for
   that

   soul."

   You will love it all the more because of the anguish of your spirit
   during its birth. I am sure it is so--that which costs us most we value
   most. Jabez was more honorable than his brethren because his mother
   bore him with sorrow. Jacob gave one portion to Joseph above his
   brothers because the archers had sorely shot at him and wounded him.
   And that portion was the more precious because the Patriarch took it
   out of the hand of the Amorite with his sword and with his bow. If
   there is a soul that you have, as it were, brought to Christ by severe
   fighting, taking it out of the hand of the Amorite with your sword and
   with your bow, that soul will be more precious to you than any other!

   So, Beloved, I pray the Holy Spirit to overshadow the company of
   Christian workers here present and all that are throughout the whole
   earth, that they may have "compassion on the ignorant, and on them that
   are out of the way; for that they themselves also are compassed with
   infirmity."

   II. But now for the second part of our subject, which may the eternal
   Spirit greatly bless. COMPASSION AND

   FORBEARANCE PREEMINENTLY DWELL IN JESUS CHRIST. Though He was not
   compassed with any sinful

   infirmity, for in Him is no sin, yet physical infirmity He did take and
   He is, to the highest possible degree, the Lord of tenderness--

   "His heart is made of tenderness, His heart melts with love."

   First--for I will keep to my text, and not be very long--first, He has
   compassion on the ignorant. That is to say, sins of ignorance Jesus
   readily puts away. Some of you did not know better while you lived in
   unregeneracy. You had been trusting in your good works, but though you
   might well have suspected, you did not know that they were a faulty
   foundation for your hope.

   Some of you were very diligent in outward forms and ceremonies. You had
   a zeal for God, but it was not according to knowledge--you did not know
   that salvation is to be found only in Jesus. There are many who, if
   they had known, would not have crucified the Lord of Glory year by year
   as they have done. They may say, as Paul did, "But I did it ignorantly
   in unbelief." Well, dear Hearts, if you have been living in sin, not
   knowing what you were doing. If you have rejected the Savior whom you
   would not have rejected if you had known Him better, the Lord Jesus,
   our great High Priest, readily blots out such sins! Come to Him! Say,
   "What I know not, teach me. Cleanse me from secret faults," and though
   you cannot now, in looking back, discover all the evil of your conduct
   and the sin of your life, yet, nevertheless, let Him see what is in
   your heart--lay it bare before Him and He will have compassion on your
   ignorance and put away your sin forever!

   But the text does not refer only to sins resulting from ignorance, but
   to ignorance itself. Very many persons are willfully ignorant of
   Christ. They might have known about Him if they would. Possibly some
   have come to this place, this evening, who very seldom attend a place
   of worship though there is one on the street in which they live. Any
   man in London who does not know the Gospel has nobody to blame for it
   but himself. It would be well worth while for you to walk a hundred
   miles to hear Jesus Christ preached, but I thank God few of you need to
   walk one mile to hear the Gospel. You may hear it if you will--and if
   you Londoners perish, you perish with the opportunity of life brought
   to your very doors.

   I believe, no doubt, there are many now living in utter ignorance of
   Christ and yet they have the Bible in their houses and have Christian
   neighbors who would be glad enough to explain it to them--and they
   might go and hear the Gospel if they would. It is as if the sun is
   shining and they shut their eyes--the thunder is pealing and they close
   their ears. Is not this enough to move the Lord to anger? And yet His
   patience continues! Still will the Lord Jesus have compassion upon you
   who have been cruel to yourselves as well as contemptuous to Him! Come
   to Him just as you are and confess your willful blindness and He will
   put it away and enable you to understand the things which make for your
   peace.

   Some are ignorant, however, because they have been cast where they
   could not well know. They were born in an ungodly family, or thrown
   among godless people, or, what is much the same, among those who have
   only a mere formal religion. They do not know the Truth of God, but
   they can scarcely be blamed for it. Well, dear Hearts, Christ is able
   to teach you! Come and sit at His feet, for He will have compassion on
   your ignorance! Some are very young and, therefore, do not understand
   much. Dear young people, there are some of you here--Jesus is quite
   ready to have compassion on the ignorance of little children and save
   them! They may know but very little, but if they know Christ Jesus to
   be the Savior of sinners, He will have compassion on their ignorance.

   Alas, others are getting very old, but they are so dull that we cannot
   get much knowledge into their heads and their ears are dull of hearing.
   I sometimes have such an enquirer to talk to and I try to show great
   compassion to such. I have long, long ago given up estimating character
   by the amount of intelligence, for I sometimes find that the most
   intelligent are the best able to deceive me. How often in daily life we
   find that the most knowing are the most cunning--and the greatest
   scholars are the biggest rogues! We see plenty of instances in the
   newspapers.

   On the other hand, many a poor soul who cannot get two ideas into his
   head has got the right idea, the grand Gospel idea, and that fills his
   head and heart! He knows that Christ came into the world to save
   sinners and he hangs on to that. Some of the most simple-hearted people
   are quick of understanding in the fear of the Lord. The Lord will have
   compassion on such ignorance readily enough. There are many, alas, who
   are ignorant, not from lack of capacity or lack of faculty, but because
   sin has made them so brutish that they cannot understand. Like salt
   cast on the soil, it has made the mind barren.

   This is a frightful state of heart! There are, in this city of ours,
   many who have so soaked themselves in the most gross vices that they
   appear to be incapable of knowing purity, delicacy, truth, holiness, or
   any Divine excellence. They have so indulged themselves in drunkenness
   and chambering wantonness that you really cannot get a spiritual idea
   into them! They have developed backward into a mere animal and, like
   the swine, they feed on husks and have no idea above the mire they
   wallow in. Our City Missionaries can tell us the brutal power of sin if
   we have never seen it for ourselves! As Divine Grace makes fools wise,
   so sin makes wise men fools! As Grace turns stone to flesh, so sin
   turns flesh to stone! As Grace lifts man to the angels, so sin sinks
   him to the devils!

   Sin is a murky cloud which buries the human mind in sevenfold night,
   which, it seems impossible to pierce with a beam of day. Yet when a
   flash of light from God the Holy Spirit penetrates the thick Egyptian
   darkness of such a soul, Jesus manifests His compassion on the ignorant
   and proves His saving power! Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, what a mercy
   it is that the Lord Jesus Christ saves people who know very little
   about Him! The poor woman who touched the hem of His garment made a
   mistake, I suppose, in imagining that power must necessarily dwell in
   His clothes, but, nevertheless, the Lord went with her mistake and let
   the virtue go even out of His robe as well as out of Himself.

   He will meet you, dear Friend--meet you where you are and grasp the
   hand of even your blind and lame faith and save you! However deeply
   ignorant you may be, He will have compassion on your ignorance by
   sending forth His light and His salvation--and you shall know Him and
   rejoice in Him! When He was here, you know, He picked up a few
   fishermen and tax gatherers and such--and He set to work to teach
   them--and how beautifully He did it! He taught them with parables and
   little easy words, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little
   and there a little.

   Look at that Gospel of John. Look at any of the sermons of Christ. How
   very different they are from the very magnificent discourses which we
   get from the learned and thoughtful divines of the present period! They
   preach over people's heads, but Christ preached into people's hearts!
   He taught so plainly and simply that anybody could understand Him! But
   these great doctors of today preach so that they do not even understand
   themselves! All this makes us see that our Lord had compassion on the
   ignorant.

   I would repeat the thought that He did not teach those disciples too
   much at once. He gave them one idea at a time and He did not drive that
   out with another. He said, "I have many things to say to you, but you
   cannot bear them now." What He did teach was mainly simple and He left
   it till the Holy Spirit was given for Paul to elaborate the Gospel and
   tell us in plain language some of the more doctrinal Truths. He was
   bent on teaching His disciples as much as they could receive and so He
   did--but He taught them no more lest they should be overfed and become
   unable to digest what they had received.

   And then how very little chiding there was in all our Lord's
   conversation with His pupils. He did say, "Have I been so long a time
   with you and yet have you not known Me, Philip?" He did have, now and
   then, to upbraid because of the hardness of their hearts, but still,
   what gentleness there was about such rebukes and how seldom did they
   occur! And He never turned one of them out of class for being stupid.
   If He had done that, perhaps some friend here might suppose He would
   turn him or her out--but out of all the 12 there was not one to whom He
   said, "Now, I really never shall make much of you! Your intellect is
   too weak." Not at all. He taught each one as much as he could receive
   and then said, "Go and tell it to others!"

   And while they told it to others they were learning it better,
   themselves, for one of the best ways of learning a thing is trying to
   teach it. "What I tell you in secret that tell you upon the housetops."
   He was the wisest of teachers because He was the most compassionate.
   And I may add here that we know this to be the case with some of us,
   because He has been very tender in teaching us. Some of our teachers
   wanted us to learn the big doctrines, first. They did not like it
   because we could not at once see all the sublime truths of election and
   predestination. Certain of the old standards who are very orthodox--16,
   if not 18 ounces to the pound--expect all new-born babes to eat meat at
   once! As soon as ever a person is converted they would have him know
   all about the sublapsarian and supralapsarian schemes. And if he does
   not, they say, "He is a doubtful character. He is not sound."

   Ah, but that is not the manner of our Lord who is tender over us as a
   nurse with a child! He begins by working into our experience a few
   elementary Truths of God and then, when we get farther on, we find out
   something more. And as we are able to bear it, He reveals to us His
   Truths. He does not teach us experimentally all at once any more than
   He taught the Apostles all at once! By degrees He illuminates our
   minds. Our poor blind eyes could not bear sunlight at first and,
   therefore, He gives us just a little starlight, then moonlight, then
   twilight. Then afterwards He brings us into the high unclouded noon of
   the clear revelation of His love which is to be our portion in Heaven!
   Our sight through a glass darkly is purposely made dim to suit our
   feeble vision for He has compassion on the ignorant.

   I speak, then, to everyone here who feels himself to be theologically
   backward and doesn't know much about the things of God's Word. Never
   mind, dear Brother. Never mind, dear Sister. Come to Jesus Christ and
   trust Him--and He will teach you as well as save you! And if you are
   now untaught and unlearned, do not hold back because of that, but come
   forward with all hopefulness. If you do not know one letter in the
   alphabet from another and if you do not know one doctrine of the Word
   of God except that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,
   yet come and welcome to your great High Priest, for He will have
   compassion on the ignorant!

   My time is almost gone and I want to speak a word upon the last point,
   which is that He will have compassion upon those that are out of the
   way. "Out of the way"--out of the right way, the narrow way, the happy
   way, the ONLY way! Who are these people? Some are out of the way
   because they never were in it and never knew it. They have heard of it,
   perhaps, a little, but they have never tried it by setting one foot in
   it. You are not church-goers or chapel-goers, for you are altogether
   out of the way. You are not hearers of the Gospel, not people who even
   practice a form of prayer. You are avowedly out of the way.

   Listen then, while I tell you that Jesus can have compassion on those
   that are out of the way! Many are in a very emphatic sense,
   out-of-the-way sinners! They have gone to such extravagances that they
   are out of the way of common morality and quite startle their careless
   comrades. Even those who have no religion yet say, "Well, now, you go
   beyond me! You are an out-of-the-way fellow." "I drink sometimes," says
   one man, "but as for you, you are an out-of-the-way drinker." "I," says
   another--"well, I make no pretensions to be very precise, but still I
   draw a line somewhere. As for you, you go beyond all bounds and are an
   out-of-the-way fellow altogether."

   Well, I have to say tonight that my Lord Jesus will have compassion on
   you out-of-the-way sinners! However far you have gone, only turn to
   Him--for pardon is freely published. Forsake your sin, tonight, and
   come to Jesus' feet and cast yourself there and say, "I will not go
   till You renew me and deliver me from the guilt and bondage of my sin."
   He can do it, yes He WILL do it, for He has compassion on
   out-of-the-way sinners! Perhaps I am addressing some who were once
   nominally in the way. You were members of a Church years ago. Where are
   you now? The Church may well disown you and you may well disown the
   Church, for you are a disgrace to it.

   What have you been doing this morning? How do you spend your Sabbaths?
   What is your conduct during the week? I would speak personally to those
   of you who were once professors and are now prodigals. You were with
   the Methodists,

   were you not, when you were in the country? You have nothing to do with
   them now. Ah, yes, before you entered the army you had some idea of
   religion and loved, in some respects, the service of your mother's God.
   But you have forgotten it since you have been in the barracks. I know
   how it is with many--they are very willing to go with Christ when He
   wears His golden vest and His starry crown and walks out on sunshiny
   days--but to bear a cross and follow Him through the mocking mob is
   quite another matter! And, therefore, they go out of the way.

   Backslider, do not despair, the great High Priest of our profession
   will have compassion on you--only return to Him! He still has the
   greatest pity for the greatest wanderer. He rejoices more over one lost
   sheep that He has found than over 99 that went not astray. And oh, dear
   child of God, here is a word for you, for it may be you feel, tonight,
   as if you were out of the way. You are not enjoying religion as you
   once did. When the hymn is sung, your heart does not make music, and
   when prayer is offered you feel as if you could not pray. Despair not,
   for He can have compassion on you. You are ignorant, for who among us
   is there that is not ignorant?

   He who knows most of Christ knows very little. We are all ignorant and
   He has compassion on us all. And we are all out of the way in some
   measure--the best child of God on earth is not perfect. I did hear from
   a Brother that he was perfect, but I did not believe him nor think any
   the better of him for his being so conceited. I thought, when he said
   he was perfect, that I could see an imperfection in his eyesight and,
   if I had looked a little closer, I should probably have found another
   in his tongue. Better, far, to pray, "I have gone astray like a lost
   sheep. Seek Your servant, for I do not forget Your commandments." The
   Good Shepherd will have compassion upon us, bind up our wounds and bear
   with our weaknesses and follies--therefore let us come to Him anew and
   trust Him more and more.

   Let us come to Him as He is now, enthroned in the highest heavens, and
   say, "Jesus, we have heard that You have compassion on the ignorant and
   those that are out of the way, and such are we. Behold, we trust
   ourselves with You." Trembling Believer, be not slow to draw near, for
   His loving heart is unable to refuse you! If you will trust yourselves
   with the Savior, He cannot betray or deceive your trust. Only do that
   and your faith will have power over the sacred heart of the Crucified
   One!

   You know if a child trusts you--if it is only to buy a penny toy--you
   do not like to go home without doing it. You City men, if your little
   daughter trusted you to buy her something, you would not like to
   disappoint her. Well, and God, our blessed Savior, cannot, will not
   disappoint His trusting children! If we can trust Him with our souls we
   have a hold upon Him which He will not shake off, but He will bless
   us--yes, He will bless us eternally! God help you to trust Him now, for
   Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Reason Why Many Cannot Find Peace

   (No. 1408)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 7, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee
   fromyou. Drawnear to God, and He will drawnear to you. Cleanse your
   hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be
   afflicted, and mourn, and weep! Let your laughter be turned to
   mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of
   the Lord, and He shall lift you up." James 4:7-10.

   WE frequently meet with persons who tell us that they cannot find peace
   with God. They have been bidden to believe in the Lord Jesus, but they
   misunderstand the command and, while they think they are obeying it,
   they are really unbelievers and, therefore, they miss the way of peace.
   They attempt to pray, but their petitions are not answered and their
   supplications yield them no comfort whatever, for neither their faith
   nor their prayer is accepted of the Lord. Such persons are described by
   James in the 3rd verse of the chapter now open before us--"You ask, and
   receive not, because you ask amiss." We cannot be content to see
   seekers in this wretchedness and, therefore, we endeavor to comfort
   them, instructing them, again and again, in the great Gospel precept,
   "Believe and live."

   Yet as a rule they get no further, but linger in an unsatisfactory
   condition. They assure us that they believe in Jesus, but we see none
   of the fruits of faith in them, neither can they, themselves, say that
   they derive any spiritual benefit from the faith which they profess.
   Now I fear that comfort is misplaced in these cases. When we have
   endeavored to cheer such people, I fear we may have been filming over a
   wound which needs a sharp knife rather than a soft bandage--a keen
   lancet rather than a healing liniment.

   We shall try at this time to show certain uneasy souls why they do not
   obtain peace and what they must be brought to by the Holy Spirit before
   they can rightly claim that they are saved. Though our words may be
   somewhat caustic, they will be uttered in loving faithfulness and may
   the Lord our God make them effectual to the ending of the inner strife
   and the establishment of settled peace. I fear that many who profess to
   be Christians are in a very questionable condition-- they have no joy
   of their faith and no success in their prayers. Whether they are
   Christians or not is a moot point and the practical James does not
   waste time in discussing the doubtful question, but speaks to them from
   both sides of their apparent condition.

   In his previous chapters he calls them, "my brethren," and even, "my
   beloved brethren." He draws no line of demarcation when he, afterwards,
   addresses them as, "sinners," whose hands must be cleansed and, as,
   "double-minded" persons, whose hearts must be purified. They were both
   of these--they were professedly Brothers and Sisters, but they were at
   heart unchaste to Christ--they indulged in grievous sins of contention
   and malice--and their hearts were divided between the love of sin and
   the hope of salvation. We will not, therefore, raise personal
   questions, or try to discriminate where certainty is hard to reach, but
   we will speak to suspicious characters without determining whether they
   are truly Believers or not.

   If such persons claim to be called Brothers and Sisters, we will
   address them as such, but it will be in a sentence like this, "My
   Brothers and Sisters, such things ought not to be." On the other hand,
   we will use no condemnatory title, but leave the question between God
   and each man's own conscience. We will go to the root of the matter and
   set forth the reason for the lack of peace and salvation of which some
   complain. May the sacred Spirit help us to point out the fatal failure
   which keeps the soul from rest. If any man is not sure that he is in
   Christ, he ought not to be easy one moment more until he is so.

   Dear Friend, without the fullest confidence as to your saved condition,
   you have no right to be at ease and I pray you may never be so! This is
   a matter too important to be left undecided. Instantly should every man
   of prudence make

   2 The Reason Why Many Cannot Find Peace Sermon #1408

   assurance doubly sure and bind all things fast that he may find them
   fast for eternity--for eternity I say--for thus says the Lord. Never
   risk your souls, for your souls are yourselves, your real selves and
   nothing can make up for their loss. If you lose your souls, it will be
   no recompense to have gained the whole world! Be careful, then! Leave
   nothing insecure. Carefully measure and weigh every important step.
   Consider and examine, lest being so near to the kingdom, any of you
   should seem to come short of it.

   To help you to a settled peace, let me, first of all, urge upon you to
   obey the comprehensive command of our text-- "Submit yourselves
   therefore to God." And then, secondly, let me further press upon you to
   practice the other precepts which follow, such as, "Resist the devil."
   "Draw near to God." "Cleanse your hands." "Purify your hearts." "Be
   afflicted, and mourn, and weep." And, "Humble yourselves in the sight
   of the Lord."

   First listen to THE COMPREHENSIVE COMMAND--"Submit yourselves therefore
   to God." According to the connection, the lighting spirit within many
   men shows that they have not submitted themselves to God--lusting,
   envy, strife, contention, jealousy, anger--all these things declare
   that the heart is not submissive but remains violently self-willed and
   rebellious. Those who are still wrathful, proud, contentious and
   selfish are evidently unsubdued. There are some men to whom the very
   idea of submission is distasteful--they will be subjective to no one,
   but wish to be their own gods and a law unto themselves. "Submit" is a
   galling word to them. They say in their hearts, "Who is the Lord that I
   should obey His voice?"

   They are willing, enough, to accept His favors, willing enough, after
   their fashion, to say, "Thank God," but as to submission, they will
   have none of it--it suits not their high mightiness! They strive for
   the mastery. They push for the front place, aiming to advance their own
   interests and make the great I to be lord above all. The Apostle
   quietly indicates in the words of our text that many Christian
   professors need to submit, for at present their unhumbled nature leads
   them to lusting and striving--and effectually prevents their asking so
   as to receive at the Lord's hands. A lack of submission is no new or
   rare fault in mankind. Ever since the Fall it has been the root of all
   sin. When the heart submits to God in sincerity, the work of Grace is
   begun. And when it submits perfectly, the work is complete. But for
   this, Divine Grace must display its power, for the heart is obstinate
   and rebellious.

   From the moment when our mother Eve stretched out her hand to pluck the
   forbidden fruit and her husband joined her in setting up the human will
   against the Divine, the sons of men have universally been guilty of a
   lack of conformity to the will of God. They choose their own way and
   will not submit their wills. They think their own thoughts and will not
   submit their understanding. They love earthly things and will not
   submit their affections. Man wants to be his own law and his own
   master. This is abominable, since we are not our own makers, for, "it
   is He that has made us and not we ourselves."

   The Lord should have supremacy over us, for our existence depends on
   His will. I have heard much of the rights of man, but it were well also
   to consider the rights of God, which are the first, highest, surest and
   most solemn rights in the universe and lie at the base of all other
   rights! The Lord has an absolute right to the beings whom He has
   fashioned and it is shameful that the great mass of men seem never even
   to remember that He exists, much less to ask themselves what is due to
   Him. Alas, great God, how are You a stranger even in the world which
   You have, Yourself, made! Your creatures, who could not see if You had
   not given them eyes, look everywhere except to You. Creatures who could
   not think if You had not given them minds, think of all things except
   You! And beings who could not live if You did not keep them in being,
   forget You utterly, or, if they remember Your existence and see Your
   power, are foolhardy enough to become Your foes!

   The hemlock of sin grows in the furrows of opposition to God. When the
   Lord is pleased to turn the hearts of opposers to the obedience of His
   Truth, it is an evident token of salvation. In fact, it is the dawn of
   salvation itself! To submit to God is to find rest! The rule of God is
   so beneficial that He ought readily to be obeyed. He never commands us
   to do that which, in the long run, can be injurious to us, nor does He
   forbid us anything which can be to our real advantage. Our God is so
   kind, so wise, so full of loving forethought, that it is always be to
   our best interest to follow His lead. Even if we could be left to
   choose our own way and were under no bonds of duty, it would be wise
   and prudent to choose the way of the Lord, for it is the path of
   pleasantness and safety.

   Beloved, the Lord is far too great to have any need to deal unjustly,
   or unkindly with His creatures. Indeed, He is so great that He cannot
   desire any personal advantage from His government, but He condescends
   to govern us because

   without His rule and guidance we would be utterly undone. It is for our
   good that like a father in a family He commands us this or forbids us
   the other. It is wanton cruelty to ourselves when we break away from
   the liberty with which Jesus makes us free, to place ourselves under
   the tyranny of selfishness and the baser passions of the mind. It is
   madness to forsake the honorable service of the great King to become
   the slave of Satan. O that men would submit themselves unto God and be
   willing to be blessed!

   All resistance against God is, from the necessity of the case, be
   futile. Common sense teaches that rebellion against Omnipotence is both
   insanity and blasphemy. The Lord's purpose must stand and His pleasure
   must be done! His power will assuredly crush all opposition and it is
   idle to raise it. Why, then, should a man contend against his Master?
   Wisdom as well as righteousness call upon him to submit to God. And
   then let it always be known that submission to God is absolutely
   necessary to salvation. A man is not saved until he bows before the
   supreme majesty of God. He may say, "I believe in Jesus," but if he
   goes on to follow out his own desires and to gratify his own passions,
   he is a mere pretender, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

   Dead faith will save no man! It is not even as good as the faith of
   devils, for they "believe and tremble," and these men believe in a
   fashion which makes them brazen in their iniquity. No, salvation means
   being saved from the domination of self and sin! Salvation means being
   made to long after likeness to God, being helped by Divine Grace to
   reach to that likeness and living after the mind and will of the Most
   High. Submission to God is the salvation which we preach, not a mere
   deliverance from eternal burning, but deliverance from present
   rebellion, deliverance from the sin which is the fuel of those
   unquenchable flames. There must be conformity to the eternal Laws of
   the universe and according to these God must be first and man must bow
   to Him--nothing can be right till this is done. Submit is a command
   which in every case must be obeyed--or no peace or salvation will be
   found.

   Now, it is generally, in this matter of submission, that the stumbling
   block lies in the way of souls when seeking peace with God. It keeps
   them unsaved and, as I have already said, necessarily so, because a man
   who is not submissive to God is not saved. He is not saved from
   rebellion. He is not saved from pride. He is still evidently an unsaved
   man, no matter what he may think of himself. Perhaps by a few personal
   remarks I may hit upon the reason why certain of my hearers cannot get
   the peace which the Gospel so freely sets before them. There is a lack
   of submission in some point or other. In the saved man there is and
   must be a full and unconditional submission to the Law of God. He must
   consent unto the Law that it is good.

   If your mind has up to now quibbled against the Law, you must end the
   fight, for it is impossible that you should be right while you quarrel
   with the Law of Righteousness! If you set yourself up to be a judge of
   the Law, you judge the Lawgiver Himself, and what is this but the
   blackest presumption? Traced to its real meaning, the thought of
   judging the Law is treason and would dethrone God and reign in His
   place! How sad to see a sinful mortal criticizing the perfect Law of
   his Maker! Dare you do this? If you say in your heart, "He is too
   strict in marking sin and too severe in punishing it," what is this but
   condemning your Judge? If you say, "He calls me to account for idle
   words and even for sins of ignorance and this is hard," what is this
   but to call your Lord unjust?

   Should the Law be amended to suit your desires? Should its requirements
   be accommodated to ease your indolence? If you ask for this you are not
   saved, for a saved person delights in the Law of God after the inward
   man. He says of it, "the Law is holy," though he weeps as he adds, "but
   I am carnal, sold under sin." He honors the Law as he bows before it
   and confesses his shortcomings. Yes, and before a man can have peace
   with God he must submit himself to the sentence of the Law. Though that
   Law in its severity searches the thoughts and tries the heart, arraigns
   us before the bar of God and pronounces sentence upon us, we must
   acknowledge it to be just!

   Grace working in the heart brings the penitent to plead guilty to the
   sin and to admit that the penalty is deserved. In my own case I
   unreservedly acknowledge that when the Law in my conscience condemned
   me to Hell, I dared not lift a finger nor even think a thought by way
   of disputing the sentence. The conscience is not Divinely quickened,
   nor the soul renewed, nor the man saved, unless he cries, "I
   acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against
   You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight, that
   You might be justified when You speak and be clear when You judge."

   You must submit yourselves to the righteousness and severity of God or
   He will resist you as He does all the proud. There can be no pardon for
   a man unless he will honor the Law by hearty submission. If your plea
   is, "not guilty," you

   will be committed for trial according to justice--and then you cannot
   be forgiven by mercy! You are in a hopeless position! God Himself
   cannot meet you upon that ground, for He cannot admit that the Law is
   unrighteous and its penalty too severe. The Lord cannot be at peace
   with you while you defy His Law! He declares that you are guilty and
   you dispute this declaration, therefore between you and Himself there
   is a quarrel which never can be ended till you admit your error and beg
   for pardon.

   He can deal with you in mercy when you once stand where mercy can meet
   with you, namely, in the sinner's place. But if you say "I am not
   guilty," and begin to vindicate or excuse yourself, you are on a ground
   which the Lord cannot recognize. If you are professedly righteous, how
   can the Lord deal with you except in justice? And if He deals with you
   in justice He will readily enough summon His witnesses and prove you
   guilty and condemn you to Hell. Submit, then, unto God, and say,
   "Guilty, Lord. I throw down the weapons of my rebellion and acknowledge
   that I stand condemned before You. And if I am saved at all it must be
   by Your free forgiveness, by Your unmerited mercy, by Your boundless
   love."

   A man must next submit himself to the plan of salvation by Grace alone.
   God meets the sinner on the footing of Grace. "I cannot exonerate you,"
   He seems to say, "but I can forgive you. I cannot tolerate your denial
   of guilt, but if you confess your sin, I am faithful and just to
   forgive you your sin and to save you from all unrighteousness." Now,
   are you willing, my dear Hearer--are you sure that you are willing to
   be saved by Grace, alone, and to owe your deliverance from sin and its
   punishment entirely to the free favor of God? Will you yield to that? I
   trust you will.

   But there are some who will not, for they go about to establish their
   own righteousness and do not submit themselves to the righteousness of
   God. They think that so much Chapel-going, Church-going,
   sermon-hearing, Prayer Meeting-attending, Bible reading and so on, will
   certainly work up something like a claim upon God! O, Sirs, have done
   with claims! If you come with anything like a claim, the Lord will not
   touch the case at all, for you have no claim and the pretense of one
   would be an insult to God! If you fancy you have demands upon God, go
   into the court of Justice and plead them, but the sentence is certain
   to be against you, for by the deeds of the Law no flesh can be
   justified.

   Try the other way! Come to God with no claim and appeal to His pity,
   saying, "Lord, I cry for mercy. Gladly will I accept Your free Grace if
   You will but give it to me." You will be accepted on that footing, for
   the Lord is gracious and casts out none who come to Him confessing
   their sins. You must also submit yourselves to God's way of saving you
   through an atoning Sacrifice and by means of your personal faith in
   that Sacrifice. You must receive His Son as Divine and you must believe
   in that atoning blood which was shed for many for the remission of
   sins. Surely there should be no difficulty about surrendering the mind
   to this! Salvation by the great Mediator is such a delightful way of
   salvation, so just to God, so safe to man, that we ought to clap our
   hands for very joy to think that such a royal road to Heaven is opened
   for us!

   What do you say, dear Hearers? Does the Holy Spirit incline you to
   trust in the blood of Jesus? And then there must be a full submission
   to God in the matter of giving up every sin. Numbers of persons pray
   for mercy, but they continue in their sins. Such men cannot be saved
   because salvation is salvation from sin--not in sin. How can we be
   saved from sin if we are its slaves? If you come to God and cry, "Lord,
   deliver me and have mercy upon me," and yet you practice private
   drinking and tipple yourselves into semi-drunkenness, how can you be
   saved? If you keep on cheating in business, or telling lies, or indulge
   a malicious or angry temper in the family, or are proud and unkind,
   selfish and miserly, how can you be saved?

   I warn you, Friends, that faith itself cannot save you while these
   things are so, for if your faith were a saving faith it would rescue
   you from these evils! This, indeed, is salvation, namely, deliverance
   from the power and habit of sin! Many prayers are
   semi-hypocritical--there is a kind of sincerity about them, but there
   is no whole-hearted desire after holiness and, therefore, they will
   never gain a comfortable answer from God. O Seeker, are you willing to
   give up every sin? Come, drunkard, you pray to be forgiven, but are you
   willing to leave the intoxicating cup once and for all? You, my Friend,
   ask to be pardoned--it is well, but are you, at the same time, desirous
   to cease from your transgressions?

   Yes or no? Are you anxious to search out every false way and abandon it
   as soon as it is discovered? Do you wish to have a holy, truthful,
   godly tongue? Do you long to be saved from every lust and secret vice?
   If so, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are already saved! Your
   sigh to be delivered from evil is the commencement of the work of
   sanctification! But if you say, "I would be saved from every wrong way
   except my one indulgence, my one secret iniquity," then you are in the
   gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity! Your prayers will come
   back to your bosom

   unanswered and your pretended faith in Christ will condemn you! Your
   fancied faith cannot save you, seeing you love your sin.

   A certain man has been accustomed to eat of a certain dish which is bad
   for his health and when he calls in a physician, their talk is after
   this fashion--"If you trust me," says the doctor, "I can cure you."
   "Yes," replies the patient, "I do trust you heartily." The doctor
   proceeds, "That dainty of yours must be given up, for it is the cause
   of your disease and so long as you eat it, you must suffer the
   consequence." "Well, doctor," he says, "I trust you, but I cannot give
   up my favorite food." Is it not apparent to everybody that he does not
   trust the physician at all? Even so, when a man declares, "I trust in
   Christ to save me from sin," and then continues in his wickedness, he
   mocks the Good Physician and is in danger of sudden destruction! Either
   you must cast sin out of your heart or it will keep you out of Heaven!

   This point must be insisted on--receiving Christ is impossible without,
   at the same time, renouncing sin! If we would be saved there must be
   submission to the Lord as to all His teachings. A very necessary point
   in this age, for a multitude of persons who appear to be religious,
   judge the Scriptures instead of allowing the Scriptures to judge them.
   Hear, O you wise men, "Except you be converted and become as little
   children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven." Submission
   to the Infallible authority of the Inspired Word is absolutely required
   of every disciple of Jesus, but this age delights in the opposite
   spirit!

   Even some of those who call themselves ministers of the Gospel
   persistently indulge a spirit which is precisely the reverse of the
   childlike faith which saves the soul. They industriously endeavor to
   excite rebellion against the teachings of Christ and cry it up under
   the name of, "honest doubt." They do not wish men to believe, but to
   think--and their Gospel, practically, is--"Doubt, and do not be
   baptized, and you shall be saved." Shame on them! Our Gospel is, "He
   that believes and is baptized, shall be saved!" And we are content to
   teach what Jesus Christ, our Lord, told His disciples to preach to all
   nations!

   If I will never yield my reason. If I will never believe what I cannot
   understand. If I will carry an open knife about with me to cut and hack
   at texts of Scripture. If I will not sit at Jesus' feet with Mary, but
   want Him to sit at my feet that I may tell Him what His religion ought
   to be and what He ought to have said, how can I be saved? If, after
   all, we are personally infallible and are to spend all our days in
   selecting our opinions, how can we know Christ? If instead of yielding
   my judgment to the plain teachings of my Lord, I revise His doctrines,
   how can I be saved? If I have not submitted my intellect to God, what
   peace can there be? Mark this well, you wise young men who know so much
   more than your fathers and are too intellectual to reverence your
   fathers' God!

   And, now, I must ask another question of you who desire peace and
   cannot find it. Have you submitted yourselves to the Providential
   arrangements of God? I know persons who often sit in this House of
   Prayer who have a quarrel with God. He took away a beloved object and
   they not only thought Him unkind and cruel at the time, but they still
   think so! Like a child in a fit of the sulks, they cast an evil eye
   upon the great Father! They are not at peace and never will be till
   they have acknowledged the Lord's supremacy and ceased from their
   rebellious thoughts. If they were in a right state of heart they would
   thank the Lord for their sharp trials and consent to His will as being
   assuredly right.

   I fear that unsubmission on this point affects a great number of
   persons. They cannot succeed in business and, therefore, they are out
   of temper with God. He knows very well that they are not fit to be made
   rich and could not be trusted with a large business and, therefore, He
   does not grant their suicidal desires. Some men would never win the
   race of life if they had an ounce of gold to carry! The only hope for
   their running at all lies in keeping them unencumbered. We know, also,
   thoughtful young men who cannot pursue their studies because of failing
   health. They want to be famous, but they are not strong enough to
   continue their work for the examination and so they are vexed with the
   Lord. Or, it may be they have less talent than ambition and they rebel
   because their Maker has not given them intellects as capacious as that
   of Solomon. Let them be satisfied to use the talent they have and cease
   from contending with their Creator!

   Many men have a sort of private resentment with Providence and sit down
   like Jonah under their withered gourd and mutter, "We do well to be
   angry even unto death." Now, if such is the case with any before me, I
   would say to them--leave off quarrelling with your God! What can be the
   use of it? The very best and wisest thing for you is to make friends
   with Him and let His will be your will. After all, He deals well with
   you, if you would but see it. Depend upon it, there is something to be
   made out of the position you occupy--gain will come to you out of all
   those losses--profit will

   arise even from those sad bereavements if you will stand still and see
   the salvation of God. Acquaint yourselves with God and be at peace, for
   thereby good shall come unto you--for unless you do this you may say,
   "I believe," but you have no

   faith in God!

   How can a man believe in God when he charges God with treating him
   wrongly? Faith begets resignation and submission--where there is strife
   and enmity--unbelief is still supreme. Until you submit yourselves to
   God it cannot be well with your souls, for He resists the proud but
   gives Grace to the humble. This is the long and the short of it--you
   must, as a guilty sinner, cast yourself at God's feet and say, "Have
   mercy upon me, O Lord, and have mercy upon me in Your own way. I
   dictate not to You, but I implore Your Grace! I humbly beg forgiveness.
   Be pleased to pity me. I yield up myself to You, asking You to make me
   holy. I do from my very heart give up the love of sin. I fear I shall
   sin, help me to loathe myself when I do so! Make me what You will have
   me to be and then deal as You will with me. I make no terms nor
   conditions. Mine is an unconditional surrender. Only for Your mercy's
   sake renew me. Make me Your child and save me. As You bid me trust Your
   Son, I trust Him. Lord, I believe! Help you my unbelief."

   You will have peace when your heart is brought to this point. At
   present your wound does not heal because it needs washing, for the grit
   of pride has fallen into it and is causing a wretched irritation. When
   pride is gone and you are fully submissive, then shall the wound heal
   and your broken bones shall rejoice! I am not asking you to submit to a
   priest! I am not asking you to submit to a mere man! But I speak very
   earnestly when I say, "Submit yourselves to God"--it is natural, it is
   right--it is good in itself and filled with the highest good to you.

   Submission is essential to salvation, therefore bow before the Lord at
   once! May the Lord bend that stubborn will and conquer that wayward
   heart. Yield yourselves to God and pray to be delivered from future
   rebellion. If you have submitted, do so yet more completely, for so
   shall you be known to be Christians when you submit yourselves to God.
   If you will not submit, your faith is a lie, your hope is a delusion,
   your prayer is an insult, your peace is presumption and your end will
   be despair! Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is
   as iniquity and idolatry. "But God shall wound the head of His enemies
   and the hairy scalp of such an one as goes on still in his trespasses."

   II. But now, secondly, having thus spoken upon the great duty of
   submission, let us consider the other and FOLLOWING PRECEPTS. I think I
   am not suspicious without reason when I express a fear that the
   preaching which has lately been very common and, in some respects very
   useful, of, "only believe and you shall be saved," has sometimes been
   altogether mistaken by those who have heard it. Cases occur in which
   young persons go on living light, frivolous, giddy, and even wicked
   lives--and yet they claim that they believe in Jesus Christ. When you
   come to examine them a little, you find that their belief in Christ
   means that they believe that He has saved them, although everybody who
   knows their character can clearly see that they are not saved at all!

   Now, what is their faith but the belief of a lie? They are living just
   as they did live and, therefore, it is clear that they are not saved
   from their former foolish conversation, nor from their bad tempers, nor
   from their old sins. And yet they try to persuade themselves that they
   are saved! Now, true faith never believes lies! Presumption lives upon
   lies, but faith will only feed on the Truth of God! My faith does not
   teach me to believe I am saved when straight before my very eyes I have
   the evidence that I am not saved, since I am living in the very sin I
   pretend to be saved from! Though we would not, for a moment, cast a
   doubt upon the doctrine of Justification by Faith and Free Salvation,
   we must also preach more and more that parallel Truth of God--"You must
   be born again."

   We must bring to the front the grand old word which has been thrown
   into the background by some evangelists, namely, "Repent." Repentance
   is as essential to salvation as faith. Indeed, there is no faith
   without repentance except the faith which needs to be repented of. A
   dry-eyed faith will never see the kingdom of God! A holy loathing for
   sin always attends upon a childlike faith in the Sin-Bearer. Where the
   root Grace of faith is found, other Graces will grow from it. Now
   notice how the Spirit of God, after having bidden us submit, goes on to
   show what else is to be done. He calls for a brave resistance of the
   devil. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

   The business of salvation is not all passive--the soul must be awakened
   to active warfare! I am to fall into the arms of Christ, that He may
   save me--I must trust Him completely. And when I depend upon Him I
   receive life--and the very first effort of that life is to strike with
   all its might the adversary of Christ and of my own soul. I am not only
   to contend with sin, but with the spirit which foments and suggests
   sin! I am to resist the secret spirit of evil as well as its outward
   acts.

   "But oh," says one, "I cannot give up an inveterate habit." Sir, you
   must give it up! You must resist the devil or perish. "But I have been
   so long in it," cries the man. Yes, but if you truly trust Christ, your
   first effort will be to fight against the evil habit. And if it is not
   merely a habit, nor an impulse, but if your danger lies in the
   existence of a cunning spirit who is armed at all points and both
   strong and subtle, yet you must not yield, but resolve to resist to the
   death, cheered by the gracious promise that he will flee from you! You
   shall, in the name of Jesus overcome temptation, master evil habits and
   escape from bondage! Only strike for freedom and disdain the chain of
   sin. If you are to have peace with God there must be war with Satan!
   You cannot rest in your spirit and know the peace which faith gives
   unless you wage war to the knife against every evil and against the
   patron and Prince of Evil, even Satan. Are you ready for this? You
   cannot have peace unless you are!

   Next the Apostle writes, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to
   you." He who sincerely believes in Christ will be much in prayer. Yet
   there are some who say, "We want to be saved," but they neglect prayer!
   They cannot make out how it is that they have no enjoyment of religion.
   But why need they be puzzled? Ask your neglected closet! Ask your own
   heart how you can be happy and prosperous and blessed in Divine things
   if you do not pray! Remember that the mere saying of prayers is not
   praying. The essence of prayer lies in the heart drawing near to
   God--and it can do that without words. Prayer is the feeling that God
   is present and the desire of the soul to come near to Him so as to know
   His influence, to know His love, to feel His power and to be conformed
   to His will.

   This kind of praying can be continued by the power of God's Holy Spirit
   all day long. We must know something of this. "Behold he prays" is one
   of the first marks of a saved soul and if you think that by some
   momentary act of faith which you suppose you exercised you are
   therefore saved--while your heart remains at a distance from God,
   prayerless and careless--you are fatally deceived! Such is not the
   teaching of Scripture and there is no guarantee for it in the promises
   of God. If prayer is utterly neglected, the soul is dead!

   The next precept is, "Cleanse your hands, you sinners." What? Does the
   Word of God tell sinners to cleanse their hands and purify their
   hearts? Yes, it does. Some Brother whispers, "Ah, that is Arminianism."
   Who are you that reply against God's Word? If such teaching is in this
   Inspired Book, how dare we question it? It comes with a, "thus says the
   Lord"--"Cleanse your hands, you sinners." When a man comes to God and
   says, "I am willing and anxious to be saved and I trust Christ to save
   me," and yet he keeps his dirty black hands exercised in filthy actions
   doing what he knows is wrong, does he expect God to hear him? Do I need
   spend even so many as a half-dozen words to show that this man does not
   believe and is not really honest before the Most High? "Cleanse your
   hands, you sinners."

   Can you ask God to be at peace with you while your hands grasp your
   sins with loving embrace and are full of bribes, or are foul with
   lusts, or are smiting with the fist of anger and wrath? If you do the
   devil's work with your hands, do not expect the Lord to fill them with
   His blessings! It cannot be! You must break off your sins by
   righteousness and, as Paul shook off the viper from His hand into the
   fire, so must you. By the power of faith, if it is a real faith, you
   will be able to purge your outward life. Why, when men talk about being
   spiritual and are not even decently moral, it makes us sick to hear
   them! How dare they talk about being Christians when they do not live
   as well as Muslims or heathens? Oh you dogs, howling out your shame,
   what portion have you among the children so long as you bite and devour
   and love your filthiness? It is idle to talk about salvation while sin
   is hugged to the heart with both hands. Away with such hypocrisy!

   Then it is added, "Purify your hearts, you double-minded." Can they do
   this? Assuredly not by themselves, but still, in order to have peace
   with God there must be so much purification of the heart that it shall
   no longer be double-minded. He who would have salvation must seek it
   with all his heart--must so seek it that he is resolved to give up
   anything and to endure anything so that he may but be rescued from sin.
   "Purify your hearts, you double-minded." Get rid of that leering eye of
   yours towards uncleanness and that cross eye which squints towards
   worldly gain--for till your whole heart cries after the Most High, He
   will not hear you!

   When you can say with David, "My heart and my flesh cry out for the
   living God," you shall find the Lord! When you cease trying to serve
   two masters and submit yourselves unto God, He will bless you, but not
   till then! I believe that this touches the center of the mischief in
   many of those hearts which fail to reach peace--they have not given up
   sin-- they are not whole-hearted after salvation. Then the Lord bids us
   "be afflicted, and mourn, and weep! Let your laughter be turned to
   mourning, and your joy to heaviness."

   I grieve to say that I have met with persons who say, "I cannot find
   peace, I cannot get salvation," and talk very prettily in that way. But
   yet, outside the door they are giggling one with another, as if it were
   matter of amusement. The Sabbath is spent in vain, idle, frivolous
   conversation--seriousness they do not seem even to have felt. The whole
   matter appears to be a mere sport. Some converts seem to jump into
   religion as people do into a bath--they jump out, again, about as fast.
   They never weigh the matter. They have no thought, no sorrow for sin,
   no humiliation before God. Stop that laughter if you are an unsaved
   soul--for decency's sake, stop that laughter!

   For you to laugh while in danger of being lost sounds to me as ghastly
   and as grim as if the fiends of Hell were to set up a theater and
   perform a comedy in the Pit. What right have you with laughter while
   sin is unforgiven, while God is angry with you? No, go to Him in fitter
   form and fashion or He will refuse your prayers. Be serious! Begin to
   think of death, judgment, the wrath to come. These are not trifles,
   Friends, nor things to make sport about. Neither is true religion a
   thing that is to be attended to as easily as when one snaps his finger
   and says, "Heigh presto! Quick. It's done!" By no means! If you are
   saved, your mind is solemnly impressed by eternal realities and you are
   serious about matters of life and death. The very thought of sin pains
   you--and since you meet with it in your daily life, you have cause for
   daily humbling and are afflicted because of it. Many, I fear, fail to
   get peace because it is not a solemn matter at all for them. They
   trifle with it as if it were a game for boys and girls to play and not
   for the heart and spirit to enter upon with deep concern.

   Then the Lord sums up His precepts by saying, "Humble yourselves in the
   sight of God." With that I close. There must be a deep and lowly
   prostration of the spirit before God. If you happen to have a boy who
   shows a high rebellious spirit against you and you have chastened him
   for it, but yet he continues in his rebellion, you tell him that there
   must be a humbling of himself before you can forgive him. If he is a
   wise child and wishes to escape your anger, he makes a dutiful
   confession, acknowledges that he was wrong and appeals to your
   love--and you freely pardon him. But in many who pretend to come to God
   there is no humbling. They do not admit that they ever did anything
   particularly wrong and they do not care if they did! Still, they hear
   there is such a thing as believing in Jesus and they profess to
   believe, not because there is any need for it, as they think, but for
   fashion's sake.

   Ah, Friends, Jesus Christ did not come to heal the whole, but the sick!
   Neither did He die to bind up those who are not broken, nor to make
   alive those who were never killed. There must be in you--and may God
   give it to you--a brokenness of spirit! A broken and a contrite heart
   He will not despise! If your heart has never been broken, how can He
   bind it up? If it were never wounded, how can He heal it? These are
   weighty matters and I speak them weightily lest anyone among you should
   be deceived. God help you to cry, "Search me, O God, and know my heart:
   try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me
   and lead me in the way everlasting."

   This is the way of salvation--that you believe in Jesus Christ whom God
   has sent! But remember that He saves us FROM our sins, not IN our sins!
   Faith in Jesus Christ saves and will save all who have it--but it is by
   purging out sin. It assures us that we are pardoned and thus it makes
   us love the Christ by whom we are forgiven. This love leads us to abhor
   ourselves for our sins and we endeavor to purify ourselves from them by
   His Spirit. Faith without works is dead, being alone, and though a man
   is justified by faith and not by works--and by faith alone--not even in
   part by his works!

   Yet the faith which saves is a faith which produces good works and
   leads into the way of holiness. He who does not seek after
   righteousness and true holiness, let him pretend what he may, he is
   dead while he lives! The Lord have mercy upon you, for Christ's sake.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                        The Shortest of the Seven Cries

   A Sermon

   (No. 1409)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, April 14th, 1878, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that
   the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst."--John 19:28.

   IT was most fitting that every word of our Lord upon the cross should
   be gathered up and preserved. As not a bone of him shall be broken, so
   not a word shall be lost. The Holy Spirit took special care that each
   of the sacred utterances should be fittingly recorded. There were, as
   you know, seven of those last words, and seven is the number of
   perfection and fulness; the number which blends the three of the
   infinite God with the four of complete creation. Our Lord in his
   death-cries, as in all else, was perfection itself. There is a fulness
   of meaning in each utterance which no man shall be able fully to bring
   forth, and when combined they make up a vast deep of thought, which no
   human line can fathom. Here, as everywhere else, we are constrained to
   say of our Lord, "Never man spake like this man." Amid all the anguish
   of his spirit his last words prove him to have remained fully
   self-possessed, true to his forgiving nature, true to his kingly
   office, true to his filial relationship, true to his God, true to his
   love of the written word, true to his glorious work, and true to his
   faith in his Father.

   As these seven sayings were so faithfully recorded, we do not wonder
   that they have frequently been the subject of devout meditation.
   Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell
   upon every syllable of these matchless cries. These solemn sentences
   have shone like the seven golden candlesticks or the seven stars of the
   Apocalypse, and have lighted multitudes of men to him who spake them.
   Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so
   doing have arranged them into different groups, and placed them under
   several heads. I cannot give you more than a mere taste of this rich
   subject, but I have been most struck with two ways of regarding our
   Lord's last words. First, they teach and confirm many of the doctrines
   of our holy faith. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they
   do" is the first. Here is the forgiveness of sin--free forgiveness in
   answer to the Saviour's plea. "To-day shalt thou be with me in
   paradise." Here is the safety of the believer in the hour of his
   departure, and his instant admission into the presence of his Lord. It
   is a blow at the fable of purgatory which strikes it to the heart.
   "Women, behold thy son!" This very plainly sets forth the true and
   proper humanity of Christ, who to the end recognised his human
   relationship to Mary, of whom he was born. Yet his language teaches us
   not to worship her, for he calls her "woman," but to honor him in whom
   his direst agony thought of her needs and griefs, as he also thinks of
   all his people, for these are his mother and sister and brother. "Eloi,
   Eloi, lama sabachthani?" is the fourth cry, and it illustrates the
   penalty endured by our Substitute when he bore our sins, and so was
   forsaken of his God. The sharpness of that sentence no exposition can
   fully disclose to us: it is keen as the very edge and point of the
   sword which pierced his heart. "I thirst" is the fifth cry, and its
   utterance teaches us the truth of Scripture, for all things were
   accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, and therefore our
   Lord said, "I thirst." Holy Scripture remains the basis of our faith,
   established by every word and act of our Redeemer. The last word but
   one, "It is finished." There is the complete justification of the
   believer, since the work by which he is accepted is fully accomplished.
   The last of his last words is also taken from the Scriptures, and shows
   where his mind was feeding. He cried, ere he bowed the head which he
   had held erect amid all his conflict, as one who never yielded,
   "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." In that cry there is
   reconciliation to God. He who stood in our stead has finished all his
   work, and now his spirit comes back to the Father, and he brings us
   with him. Every word, therefore, you see teaches us some grand
   fundamental doctrine of our blessed faith. "He that hath ears to hear,
   let him hear."

   A second mode of treating these seven cries is to view them as setting
   forth the person and offices of our Lord who uttered them. "Father,
   forgive them; for they know not what they do"--here we see the Mediator
   interceding: Jesus standing before the Father pleading for the guilty.
   "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in
   paradise"--this is the Lord Jesus in kingly power, opening with the key
   of David a door which none can shut, admitting into the gates of heaven
   the poor soul who had confessed him on the tree. Hail, everlasting King
   in heaven, thou dost admit to thy paradise whomsoever thou wilt! Nor
   dost thou set a time for waiting, but instantly thou dost set wide the
   gate of pearl; thou hast all power in heaven as well as upon earth.
   Then came, "Women, behold thy son!" wherein we see the Son of man in
   the gentleness of a son caring for his bereaved mother. In the former
   cry, as he opened Paradise, you saw the Son of God; now you see him who
   was verily and truly born of a women, made under the law; and under the
   law you see him still, for he honours his mother and cares for her in
   the last article of death. Then comes the "My God, my God, why hast
   thou forsaken me?" Here we behold his human soul in anguish, his inmost
   heart overwhelmed by the withdrawing of Jehovah's face, and made to cry
   out as if in perplexity and amazement. "I thirst," is his human body
   tormented by grievous pain. Here you see how the mortal flesh had to
   share in the agony of the inward spirit. "It is finished" is the last
   word but one, and there you see the perfected Saviour, the Captain of
   our salvation, who has completed the undertaking upon which he had
   entered, finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in
   ever lasting righteousness. The last expiring word in which he
   commended his spirit to his Father, is the note of acceptance for
   himself and for us all. As he commends his spirit into the Father's
   hand, so does he bring all believers nigh to God, and henceforth we are
   in the hand of the Father, who is greater than all, and none shall
   pluck us thence. Is not this a fertile field of thought? May the Holy
   Spirit often lead us to glean therein.

   There are many other ways in which these words might be read, and they
   would be found to be all full of instruction. Like the steps of a
   ladder or the links of a golden chain, there is a mutual dependence and
   interlinking of each of the cries, so that one leads to another and
   that to a third. Separately or in connection our Master's words
   overflow with instruction to thoughtful minds: but of all save one I
   must say, "Of which we cannot now speak particularly."

   Our text is the shortest of all the words of Calvary; it stands as two
   words in our language--"I thirst," but in the Greek it is only one. I
   cannot say that it is short and sweet, for, alas, it was bitterness
   itself to our Lord Jesus; and yet out of its bitterness I trust there
   will come great sweetness to us. Though bitter to him in the speaking
   it will be sweet to us in the hearing,--so sweet that all the
   bitterness of our trials shall be forgotten as we remember the vinegar
   and gall of which he drank.

   We shall by the assistance of the Holy Spirit try to regard these words
   of our Saviour in a five-fold light. First, we shall look upon them as
   THE ENSIGN OF HIS TRUE HUMANITY. Jesus said, "I thirst," and this is
   the complaint of a man. Our Lord is the Maker of the ocean and the
   waters that are above the firmament: it is his hand that stays or opens
   the bottles of heaven, and sendeth rain upon the evil and upon the
   good. "The sea is his, and he made it," and all fountains and springs
   are of his digging. He poureth out the streams that run among the
   hills, the torrents which rush adown the mountains, and the flowing
   rivers which enrich the plains. One would have said, If he were thirsty
   he would not tell us, for all the clouds and rains would be glad to
   refresh his brow, and the brooks and streams would joyously flow at his
   feet. And yet, though he was Lord of all he had so fully taken upon
   himself the form of a servant and was so perfectly made in the likeness
   of sinful flesh, that he cried with fainting voice, "I thirst." How
   truly man he is; he is, indeed, "bone of our bone and flesh of our
   flesh," for he bears our infirmities. I invite you to meditate upon the
   true humanity of our Lord very reverently, and very lovingly. Jesus was
   proved to be really man, because he suffered the pains which belong to
   manhood. Angels cannot suffer thirst. A phantom, as some have called
   him, could not suffer in his fashion: but Jesus really suffered, not
   only the more refined pains of delicate and sensitive minds, but the
   rougher and commoner pangs of flesh and blood. Thirst is a common-place
   misery, such as may happen to peasants or beggars; it is a real pain,
   and not a thing of a fancy or a nightmare of dreamland. Thirst is no
   royal grief, but an evil of universal manhood; Jesus is brother to the
   poorest and most humble of our race. Our Lord, however, endured thirst
   to an extreme degree, for it was the thirst of death which was upon
   him, and more, it was the thirst of one whose death was not a common
   one, for "he tasted death for every man." That thirst was caused,
   perhaps, in part by the loss of blood, and by the fever created by the
   irritation caused by his four grievous wounds. The nails were fastened
   in the most sensitive parts of the body, and the wounds were widened as
   the weight of his body dragged the nails through his blessed flesh, and
   tore his tender nerves. The extreme tension produced a burning
   feverishness. It was pain that dried his mouth and made it like an
   oven, till he declared, in the language of the twenty-second psalm, "My
   tongue cleaveth to my jaws." It was a thirst such as none of us have
   ever known, for not yet has the death dew condensed upon our brows. We
   shall perhaps know it in our measure in our dying hour, but not yet,
   nor ever so terribly as he did. Our Lord felt that grievous drought of
   dissolution by which all moisture seems dried up, and the flesh returns
   to the dust of death: this those know who have commenced to tread the
   valley of the shadow of death. Jesus, being a man, escaped none of the
   ills which are allotted to man in death. He is indeed "Immanuel, God
   with us" everywhere.

   Believing this, let us tenderly feel how very near akin to us our Lord
   Jesus has become. You have been ill, and you have been parched with
   fever as he was, and then you too have gasped out "I thirst." Your path
   runs hard by that of your Master. He said, "I thirst," in order that
   one might bring him drink, even as you have wished to have a cooling
   draught handed to you when you could not help yourself. Can you help
   feeling how very near Jesus is to us when his lips must be moistened
   with a sponge, and he must be so dependent upon others as to ask drink
   from their hand? Next time your fevered lips murmur "I am very
   thirsty," you may say to yourself, "Those are sacred words, for my Lord
   spake in that fashion." The words, "I thirst," are a common voice in
   death chambers. We can never forget the painful scenes of which we have
   been witness, when we have watched the dissolving of the human frame.
   Some of those whom we loved very dearly we have seen quite unable to
   help themselves; the death sweat has been upon them, and this has been
   one of the marks of their approaching dissolution, that they have been
   parched with thirst, and could only mutter between their half-closed
   lips, "Give me to drink." Ah, beloved, our Lord was so truly man that
   all our griefs remind us of him: the next time we are thirsty we may
   gaze upon him; and whenever we see a friend faint and thirsting while
   dying we may behold our Lord dimly, but truly, mirrored in his members.
   How near akin the thirsty Saviour is to us; let us love him more and
   more.

   How great the love which led him to such a condescension as this! Do
   not let us forget the infinite distance between the Lord of glory on
   his throne and the Crucified dried up with thirst. A river of the water
   of life, pure as crystal, proceedeth to-day out of the throne of God
   and of the Lamb, and yet once he condescended to say, "I thirst,"
   before his angelic guards, they would surely have emulated the courage
   of the men of David when they cut their way to the well of Bethlehem
   that was within the gate, and drew water in jeopardy of their lives.
   Who among us would not willingly pour out his soul unto death if he
   might but give refreshment to the Lord? And yet he placed himself for
   our sakes into a position of shame and suffering where none would wait
   upon him, but when he cried, "I thirst," they gave him vinegar to
   drink. Glorious stoop of our exalted Head! O Lord Jesus, we love thee
   and we worship thee! We would fain lift thy name on high in grateful
   remembrance of the depths to which thou didst descend!

   While thus we admire his condescension let our thoughts also turn with
   delight to his sure sympathy: for if Jesus said, "I thirst," then he
   knows all our frailties and woes. The next time we are in pain or are
   suffering depression of spirit we will remember that our Lord
   understands it all, for he has had practical, personal experience of
   it. Neither in torture of body nor in sadness of heart are we deserted
   by our Lord; his line is parallel with ours. The arrow which has lately
   pierced thee, my brother, was first stained with his blood. The cup of
   which thou art made to drink, though it be very bitter, bears the mark
   of his lips about its brim. He hath traversed the mournful way before
   thee, and every footprint thou leavest in the sodden soil is stamped
   side by side with his footmarks. Let the sympathy of Christ, then, be
   fully believed in and deeply appreciated, since he said, "I thirst."

   Henceforth, also, let us cultivate the spirit of resignation, for we
   may well rejoice to carry a cross which his shoulders have borne before
   us. Beloved, if our Master said, "I thirst," do we expect every day to
   drink of streams from Lebanon? He was innocent, and yet he thirsted;
   shall we marvel if guilty ones are now and then chastened? If he was so
   poor that his garments were stripped from him, and he was hung up upon
   the tree, penniless and friendless, hungering and thirsting, will you
   henceforth groan and murmur because you bear the yoke of poverty and
   want? There is bread upon your table to-day, and there will be at least
   a cup of cold water to refresh you. You are not, therefore, so poor as
   he. Complain not, then. Shall the servant be above his Master, or the
   disciple above his Lord? Let patience have her perfect work. You do
   suffer. Perhaps, dear sister, you carry about with you a gnawing
   disease which eats at your heart, but Jesus took our sicknesses, and
   his cup was more bitter than yours. In your chamber let the gasp of
   your Lord as he said, "I thirst," go through your ears, and as you hear
   it let it touch your heart and cause you to gird up yourself and say,
   "Doth he say, I thirst'? Then I will thirst with him and not complain,
   I will suffer with him and not murmur." The Redeemer's cry of "I
   thirst" is a solemn lesson of patience to his afflicted.

   Once again, as we think of this "I thirst," which proves our Lord's
   humanity, let us resolve to shun no denials, but rather court them that
   we may be conformed to his image. May we not be half ashamed of our
   pleasures when he says, "I thirst"? May we not despise our loaded table
   while he is neglected? Shall it ever be a hardship to be denied the
   satisfying draught when he said, "I thirst." Shall carnal appetites be
   indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried :I thirst"? What if the
   bread be dry, what if the medicine be nauseous; yet for his thirst
   there was no relief but gall and vinegar, and dare we complain? For his
   sake we may rejoice in self-denials, and accept Christ and a crust as
   all we desire between here and heaven. A Christian living to indulge
   the base appetites of a brute beast, to eat and to drink almost to
   gluttony and drunkenness, is utterly unworthy of the name. The conquest
   of the appetites, the entire subjugation of the flesh, must be
   achieved, for before our great Exemplar said, "It is finished," wherein
   methinks he reached the greatest height of all, he stood as only upon
   the next lower step to that elevation, and said, "I thirst." The power
   to suffer for another, the capacity to be self-denying even to an
   extreme to accomplish some great work for God--this is a thing to be
   sought after, and must be gained before our work is done, and in this
   Jesus is before us our example and our strength.

   Thus have I tried to spy out a measure of teaching, by using that one
   glass for the soul's eye, through which we look upon "I thirst" as the
   ensign of his true humanity.

   II. Secondly, we shall regard these words, "I thirst," as THE TOKEN OF
   HIS SUFFERING SUBSTITUTION. The great Surety says, "I thirst," because
   he is placed in the sinner's stead, and he must therefore undergo the
   penalty of sin for the ungodly. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
   me?" points to the anguish of his soul; "I thirst" expresses in part
   the torture of his body; and they were both needful, because it is
   written of the God of justice that he is "able to destroy both soul and
   body in hell," and the pangs that are due to law are of both kinds,
   touching both heart and flesh. See, brethren, where sin begins, and
   mark that there it ends. It began with the mouth of appetite, when it
   was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is
   graciously denied. Our first parents plucked forbidden fruit, and by
   eating slew the race. Appetite was the door of sin, and therefore in
   that point our Lord was put to pain. With "I thirst" the evil is
   destroyed and receives its expiation. I saw the other day the emblem of
   a serpent with its tail in its mouth, and if I carry it a little beyond
   the artist's intention the symbol may set forth appetite swallowing up
   itself. A carnal appetite of the body, the satisfaction of the desire
   for food, first brought us down under the first Adam, and now the pang
   of thirst, the denial of what the body craved for, restores us to our
   place.

   Nor is this all. We know from experience that the present effect of sin
   in every man who indulges in it is thirst of soul. The mind of man is
   like the daughters of the horseleech, which cry for ever, "Give, give."
   Metaphorically understood, thirst is dissatisfaction, the craving of
   the mind for something which it has not, but which it pines for. Our
   Lord says, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," that
   thirst being the result of sin in every ungodly man at this moment. Now
   Christ standing in the stead of the ungodly suffers thirst as a type of
   his enduring the result of sin. More solemn still is the reflection
   that according to our Lord's own teaching, thirst will also be the
   eternal result of sin, for he says concerning the rich glutton, "In
   hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment," and his prayer, which was
   denied him, was, "Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip
   of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this
   flame." Now recollect, if Jesus had not thirsted, every one of us would
   have thirsted for ever afar off from God, with an impassable gulf
   between us and heaven. Our sinful tongues, blistered by the fever of
   passion, must have burned for ever had not his tongue been tormented
   with thirst in our stead. I suppose that the "I thirst" was uttered
   softly, so that perhaps only one and another who stood near the cross
   heard it at all; in contrast with the louder cry of "Lama sabachthani"
   and the triumphant shout of "It is finished": but that soft, expiring
   sigh, "I thirst," has ended for us the thirst which else, insatiably
   fierce, had preyed upon us throughout eternity. Oh, wondrous
   substitution of the just for the unjust, of God for man, of the perfect
   Christ for us guilty, hell-deserving rebels. Let us magnify and bless
   our Redeemer's name.

   It seems to me very wonderful that this "I thirst" should be, as it
   were, the clearance of it all. He had no sooner said "I thirst," and
   sipped the vinegar, than he shouted, "It is finished"; and all was
   over: the battle was fought and the victory won for ever, and our great
   Deliverer's thirst was the sign of his having smitten the last foe. The
   flood of his grief has passed the high-water mark, and began to be
   assuaged. The "I thirst" was the bearing of the last pang; what if I
   say it was the expression of the fact that his pangs had at last begun
   to cease, and their fury had spent itself, and left him able to note
   his lessor pains? The excitement of a great struggle makes men forget
   thirst and faintness; it is only when all is over that they come back
   to themselves and note the spending of their strength. The great agony
   of being forsaken by God was over, and he felt faint when the strain
   was withdrawn. I like to think of our Lord's saying, "It is finished,"
   directly after he had exclaimed, "I thirst"; for these two voices come
   so naturally together. Our glorious Samson had been fighting our foes;
   heaps upon heaps he had slain his thousands, and now like Samson he was
   sore athirst. He sipped of the vinegar, and he was refreshed, and no
   sooner has he thrown off the thirst than he shouted like a conqueror,
   "It is finished," and quitted the field, covered with renown. Let us
   exult as we see our Substitute going through with his work even to the
   bitter end, and then with a "Consummatum est" returning to his Father,
   God. O souls, burdened with sin, rest ye here, and resting live.

   III. We will now take the text in a third way, and may the Spirit of
   God instruct us once again. The utterance of "I thirst" brought out A
   TYPE OF MAN'S TREATMENT OF HIS LORD. It was a confirmation of the
   Scripture testimony with regard to man's natural enmity to God.
   According to modern thought man is a very fine and noble creature,
   struggling to become better. He is greatly to be commended and admired,
   for his sin is said to be seeking after God, and his superstition is a
   struggling after light. Great and worshipful being that he is, truth is
   to be altered for him, the gospel is to be modulated to suit the tone
   of his various generations, and all the arrangements of the universe
   are to be rendered subservient to his interests. Justice must fly the
   field lest it be severe to so deserving a being; as for punishment, it
   must not be whispered to his ears polite. In fact, the tendency is to
   exalt man above God and give him the highest place. But such is not the
   truthful estimate of man according to the Scriptures: there man is a
   fallen creature, with a carnal mind which cannot be reconciled to God;
   a worse than brutish creature, rendering evil for good, and treating
   his God with vile ingratitude. Alas, man is the slave and the dupe of
   Satan, and a black-hearted traitor to his God. Did not the prophecies
   say that man would give to his incarnate God gall to eat and vinegar to
   drink? It is done. He came to save, and man denied him hospitality: at
   the first there was no room for him at the inn, and at the last there
   was not one cool cup of water for him to drink; but when he thirsted
   they gave him vinegar to drink. This is man's treatment of his Saviour.
   Universal manhood, left to itself, rejects, crucifies, and mocks the
   Christ of God. This was the act too of man at his best, when he is
   moved to pity; for it seems clear that he who lifted up the wet sponge
   to the Redeemer's lips, did it in compassion. I think that Roman
   soldier meant well, at least well for a rough warrior with his little
   light and knowledge. He ran and filled a sponge with vinegar: it was
   the best way he knew of putting a few drops of moisture to the lips of
   one who was suffering so much; but though he felt a degree of pity, it
   was such as one might show to a dog; he felt no reverence, but mocked
   as he relieved. We read, "The soldiers also mocked him, offering him
   vinegar." When our Lord cried, "Eloi, Eloi," and afterwards said, "I
   thirst," the persons around the cross said, "Let be, let us see whether
   Elias will come to save him," mocking him; and, according to Mark, he
   who gave the vinegar uttered much the same words. He pitied the
   sufferer, but he thought so little of him that he joined in the voice
   of scorn. Even when man compassionates the sufferings of Christ, and
   man would have ceased to be human if he did not, still he scorns him;
   the very cup which man gives to Jesus is at once scorn and pity, for
   "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." See how man at his best
   mingles admiration of the Saviour's person with scorn of his claims;
   writing books to hold him up as an example and at the same moment
   rejecting his deity; admitting that he was a wonderful man, but denying
   his most sacred mission; extolling his ethical teaching and then
   trampling on his blood: thus giving him drink, but that drink vinegar.
   O my hearers, beware of praising Jesus and denying his atoning
   sacrifice. Beware of rendering him homage and dishonouring his name at
   the same time.

   Alas, my brethren, I cannot say much on the score of man's cruelty to
   our Lord without touching myself and you. Have we not often given him
   vinegar to drink? Did we not do so years ago before we knew him? We
   used to melt when we heard about his sufferings, but we did not turn
   from our sins. We gave him our tears and then grieved him with our
   sins. We thought sometimes that we loved him as we heard the story of
   his death, but we did not change our lives for his sake, nor put our
   trust in him, and so we gave him vinegar to drink. Nor does the grief
   end here, for have not the best works we have ever done, and the best
   feelings we ever felt, and the best prayers we have ever offered, been
   tart and sour with sin? Can they be compared to generous wine? are they
   not more like sharp vinegar? I wonder he has ever received them, as one
   marvels why he received this vinegar; and yet he has received them, and
   smiled upon us for presenting them. He knew once how to turn water into
   wine, and in matchless love he has often turned our sour
   drink-offerings into something sweet to himself, though in themselves,
   methinks, they have been the juice of sour grapes, sharp enough to set
   his teeth on edge. We may therefore come before him, with all the rest
   of our race, when God subdues them to repentance by his love, and look
   on him whom we have pierced, and mourn for him as one that is in
   bitterness for his firstborn. We may well remember our faults this day,

   "We, whose proneness to forget

   Thy dear love, on Olivet

   Bathed thy brow with bloody sweat;

   "We whose sins, with awful power,

   Like a cloud did o'er thee lower,

   In that God-excluding hour;

   "We, who still, in thought and dead,

   Often hold the bitter reed

   To thee, in thy time of need."

   I have touched that point very lightly because I want a little more
   time to dwell upon a fourth view of this scene. May the Holy Ghost help
   us to hear a fourth tuning of the dolorous music, "I thirst."

   IV. I think, beloved friends, that the cry of "I thirst" was THE
   MYSTICAL EXPRESSION OF THE DESIRE OF HIS HEART--"I thirst." I cannot
   think that natural thirst was all he felt. He thirsted for water
   doubtless, but his soul was thirsty in a higher sense; indeed, he seems
   only to have spoken that the Scriptures might be fulfilled as to the
   offering him vinegar. Always was he in harmony with himself, and his
   own body was always expressive of his soul's cravings as well as of its
   own longings. "I thirst" meant that his heart was thirsting to save
   men. This thirst had been on him from the earliest of his earthly days.
   "Wist ye not," said he, while yet a boy, "that I must be about my
   Father's business?" Did he not tell his disciples, "I have a baptism to
   be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" He
   thirsted to pluck us from between the jaws of hell, to pay our
   redemption price, and set us free from the eternal condemnation which
   hung over us; and when on the cross the work was almost done his thirst
   was not assuaged, and could not be till he could say, "It is finished."
   It is almost done, thou Christ of God; thou hast almost saved thy
   people; there remaineth but one thing more, that thou shouldst actually
   die, and hence thy strong desire to come to the end and complete thy
   labour. Thou wast still straightened till the last pang was felt and
   the last word spoken to complete to full redemption, and hence thy cry,
   "I thirst."

   Beloved, there is now upon our Master, and there always has been, a
   thirst after the love of his people. Do you not remember how that
   thirst of his was strong in the old days of the prophet? Call to mind
   his complaint in the fifth chapter of Isaiah, "Now will I sing to my
   wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved
   hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and he fenced it, and gathered
   out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and
   built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein."
   What was he looking for from his vineyard and its winepress? What but
   for the juice of the vine that he might be refreshed? "And he looked
   that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild
   grapes,"--vinegar, and not wine; sourness, and not sweetness. So he was
   thirsting then. According to the sacred canticle of love, in the fifth
   chapter of the Song of Songs, we learn that when he drank in those
   olden times it was in the garden of his church that he was refreshed.
   What doth he say? "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I
   have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my
   honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, O friends; drink, yea,
   drink abundantly, O beloved." In the same song he speaks of his church,
   and says, "The roof of thy mouth is as the best wine for my beloved,
   that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to
   speak." And yet again in the eighth chapter the bride saith, "I would
   cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate."
   Yes, he loves to be with his people; they are the garden where he walks
   for refreshment, and their love, their graces, are the milk and wine
   which he delights to drink. Christ was always thirsty to save men, and
   to be loved of men; and we see a type of his life-long desire when,
   being weary, he sat thus on the well and said to the woman of Samaria,
   "Give me to drink." There was a deeper meaning in his words than she
   dreamed of, as a verse further down fully proves, when he said to his
   disciples, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." He derived
   spiritual refreshment from the winning of that women's heart to
   himself.

   And now, brethren, our blessed Lord has at this time a thirst for
   communion with each one of you who are his people, not because you can
   do him good, but because he can do you good. He thirsts to bless you
   and to receive your grateful love in return; he thirsts to see you
   looking with believing eye to his fulness, and holding out your
   emptiness that he may supply it. He saith, "Behold, I stand at the door
   and knock." What knocks he for? It is that he may eat and drink with
   you, for he promises that if we open to him he will enter in and sup
   with us and we with him. He is thirsty still, you see, for our poor
   love, and surely we cannot deny it to him. Come let us pour out full
   flagons, until his joy is fulfilled in us. And what makes him love us
   so? Ah, that I cannot tell, except his own great love. He must love, it
   is his nature. He must love his chosen whom he has once begun to love,
   for he is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. His great love
   makes him thirst to have us much nearer than we are; he will never be
   satisfied till all his redeemed are beyond gunshot of thee enemy. I
   will give you one of his thirsty prayers--"Father, I will that they
   also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may
   behold my glory." He wants you brother, he wants you, dear sister, he
   longs to have you wholly to himself. Come to him in prayer, come to him
   in fellowship, come to him by perfect consecration, come to him by
   surrendering your whole being to the sweet mysterious influences of his
   Spirit. Sit at his feet with Mary, lean on his breast with John; yea,
   come with the spouse in the song and say, "Let him kiss me with the
   kisses of his mouth, for his love is better than wine." He calls for
   that: will you not give it to him? Are you so frozen at heart that not
   a cup of cold water can be melted for Jesus? Are you lukewarm? O
   brother, if he says, "I thirst" and you bring him a lukewarm heart,
   that is worse than vinegar, for he has said, "I will spue thee out of
   my mouth." He can receive vinegar, but not lukewarm love. Come, bring
   him your warm heart, and let him drink from that purified chalice as
   much as he wills. Let all your love be his. I know he loves to receive
   from you, because he delights even in a cup of cold water that you give
   to one of his disciples; how much more will he delight in the giving of
   your whole self to him? Therefore while he thirsts give him to drink
   this day.

   V. Lastly, the cry of "I thirst" is to us THE PATTERN OF OUR DEATH WITH
   HIM. Know ye not, beloved,--for I speak to those who know the
   Lord,--that ye are crucified together with Christ? Well, then, what
   means this cry, "I thirst," but this, that we should thirst too? We do
   not thirst after the old manner wherein we were bitterly afflicted, for
   he hath said, "He that drinketh of this water shall never thirst:" but
   now we covet a new thirst. A refined and heavenly appetite, a craving
   for our Lord. O thou blessed Master, if we are indeed nailed up to the
   tree with thee, give us a thirst after thee with a thirst which only
   the cup of "the new covenant in thy blood" can ever satisfy. Certain
   philosophers have said that they love the pursuit of truth even better
   than the knowledge of truth. I differ from them greatly, but I will say
   this, that next to the actual enjoyment of my Lord's presence I love to
   hunger and to thirst after him. Rutherford used words somewhat to this
   effect, "I thirst for my Lord and this is joy; a joy which no man
   taketh from me. Even if I may not come at him, yet shall I be full of
   consolation, for it is heaven to thirst after him, and surely he will
   never deny a poor soul liberty to admire him, and adore him, and thirst
   after him." As for myself, I would grow more and more insatiable after
   my divine Lord, and when I have much of him I would still cry for more;
   and then for more, and still for more. My heart shall not be content
   till he is all in all to me, and I am altogether lost in him. O to be
   enlarged in soul so as to take deeper draughts of his sweet love, for
   our heart cannot have enough. One would wish to be as a spouse, who,
   when she had already been feasting in the banqueting-house, and had
   found his fruit sweet to her taste, so that she was overjoyed, yet
   cried out, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick
   of love." She craved full flagons of love though she was already
   overpowered by it. This is a kind of sweet whereof if a man hath much
   he must have more, and when he hath more he is under a still greater
   necessity to receive more, and so on, his appetite for ever growing by
   that which it feeds upon, till he is filled with all the fulness of
   God. "I thirst,"--ay, this is my soul's word with her Lord. Borrowed
   from his lips it well suiteth my mouth.

   "I thirst, but not as once I did,

   The vain delights of earth to share;

   Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid

   That I should seek my pleasures there.

   Dear fountain of delight unknown!

   No longer sink below the brim;

   But overflow, and pour me down

   A living and life-giving stream."

   Jesus thirsted, then let us thirst in this dry and thirsty land where
   no water is. Even as the hart panteth after the water brooks, our souls
   would thirst after thee, O God.

   Beloved, let us thirst for the souls of our fellow-men. I have already
   told you that such was our Lord's mystical desire; let it be ours also.
   Brother, thirst to have your children save. Brother, thirst I pray you
   to have your workpeople saved. Sister, thirst for the salvation of your
   class, thirst for the redemption of your family, thirst for the
   conversion of your husband. We ought all to have a longing for
   conversions. It is so with each one of you? If not, bestir yourselves
   at once. Fix your hearts upon some unsaved one, and thirst until he is
   saved. It is the way whereby many shall be brought to Christ, when this
   blessed soul-thirst of true Christian charity shall be upon those who
   are themselves saved. Remember how Paul said, "I say the truth in
   Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy
   Ghost that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For
   I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
   kinsmen according to the flesh." He would have sacrificed himself to
   save his countrymen, so heartily did he desire their eternal welfare.
   Let this mind be in you also.

   As for yourselves, thirst after perfection. Hunger and thirst after
   righteousness, for you shall be filled. Hate sin, and heartily loathe
   it; but thirst to be holy as God is holy, thirst to be like Christ,
   thirst to bring glory to his sacred name by complete conformity to his
   will.

   May the Holy Ghost work in you the complete pattern of Christ
   crucified, and to him shall be praise for ever and ever. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Mark 15:15-37; Psalm 69:1-21.
     __________________________________________________________________

Believers Free from the Dominion of Sin

   (No. 1410)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 21, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the
   Law, but under Grace." Romans 6:14.

   OUR constant hearers will remember that a Sabbath or so ago we spoke
   upon, "Submit yourselves unto God." [#1408, The Reason Why Many Cannot
   Find Peace.] It is both the way to peace and the way of peace to submit
   one's whole self unto God. Nor is it an irksome task to a true
   Believer, but the desire of his heart, the pleasure of his life. He
   shudders at the idea of yielding his members as instruments of
   unrighteousness unto sin, but according to the language of the verse
   which precedes our text, he yields himself unto God as one who has been
   made alive from the dead and his members as instruments of
   righteousness unto God. Complete consecration of every faculty of mind
   and body unto the Lord is our soul's deepest wish. We can sing most
   sincerely that sweet consecration hymn--

   "Take my hands and let them move,

   At the impulse of Your love.

   Take my feet and let them be,

   Swift and beautiful for Thee.

   Take my voice and let me sing,

   Always, only for my King!

   Take my lips and let them be,

   Filled with messages from Thee.

   Take my will and make it Thine,

   It shall be no longer mine.

   Take my intellect, and use

   Every power as You shall choose.

   So that all my powers combine,

   To adore Your Grace Divine,

   Heart and soul a living flame,

   Glorifying Your great name."

   But, Beloved, we find another law in our members warring against the
   law of our mind. To the full yielding up of all our members we find a
   hindrance in the sin which dwells in us--that sin which finds its haunt
   and hiding place in our mortal body--in the desires, passions and
   appetites of our animal nature. These within proper limits are right
   enough-- it is right that we eat and drink, and so forth, but our
   natural instincts are apt to demand indulgence and so to become lusts.
   Our mortal body, in its natural desires, affords dens for the foxes of
   sin. The carnal mind, also, readily leans to the indulgence of the body
   and thus there is presented a powerful opposition to the work of Divine
   Grace. Every true child of God must be conscious of the presence of the
   rebellious power and principle of sin within him.

   We strive to keep it under, to subdue and conquer it, and we hope to
   see it utterly exterminated at the last, for our case is like that of
   Israel with the Canaanites and we long for the day when, "There shall
   no more be the Canaanite in the house of the land." Sin is a
   domineering force. A man cannot sin up to a fixed point and then say to
   sin, "Up to here shall you come, but no farther." It is an imperious
   power and where it dwells it is hungry for the mastery. Just as our
   Lord, when He enters the soul, will never be content with a divided
   dominion, so is it with sin--it labors to bring our entire manhood
   under subjection.

   Therefore we are compelled to strive daily against this ambitious
   principle--according to the working of the Spirit of God in us we
   wrestle against sin that it may not have dominion over us. It has
   unquestioned dominion over multitudes of human hearts and in some it
   has set up its horrid throne on high and keeps its seat with force of
   arms so that its empire

   is undisturbed. In others the throne is disputed, for conscience
   mutinies, but yet the tyrant is not dethroned. Over the whole world sin
   exercises a dreadful tyranny. It would hold us in the same bondage were
   it not for One who is stronger than sin, who has undertaken to deliver
   us out of its hand and will certainly perform the redeeming work! Here
   is the charter of our liberty, the security of our safety--"Sin shall
   not have dominion over you." It reigns over those who abide in
   unbelief, but it shall not have dominion over you, "because greater is
   He that is in you, than he that is in the world."

   The whole world lies in the Wicked One, but, "you are not of the world"
   and, therefore, "sin shall not have dominion over you." If we are
   distressed by the fear that sin will ultimately get the mastery over
   us, let us be comforted by our text. Holy jealousy leads us to fear
   that though we have for many years been enabled to maintain a spotless
   character before men, we may in some unguarded hour make shipwreck of
   faith and end our life voyage as castaways upon the rocks of shame. The
   flesh is frail and our strength is perfect weakness and, therefore, we
   dread lest we should make some terrible fall and bring dishonor upon
   the holy name by which we are called. Under such feelings we may fly
   for comfort to the rich assurance of the text, "Sin shall not have
   dominion over you."

   Three things will demand our consideration and afford us consolation
   this morning. The first is the peculiar position of Believers--"You are
   not under the Law, but under Grace." Secondly, the special assurance
   made to them, "Sin shall not have dominion over you." And thirdly, the
   remarkable reason given for this statement, "Sin shall not have
   dominion over you: for you are not under the Law, but under Grace."

   First, then, here is A PECULIAR POSITION--"You are not under the Law."
   All men are under the Law by nature and, consequently, they are
   condemned by it because they have broken its commandments and apart
   from our Lord Jesus men are only reprieved criminals, respited from day
   to day, but still under sentence and waiting for the appointed hour
   when the warrant shall be solemnly executed upon them. But Believers
   are regarded as having died in Christ and, by that death, they have
   escaped from under the Law--they are clean delivered from the Law by
   the fact that their Redeemer endured the penalty of the Law on their
   behalf and, at the same time, He honored the Law by rendering perfect
   obedience to it. Thus in a two-fold manner, He met all the Law's
   requirements so that it has no more demands upon His people.

   "Not under the Law," being interpreted, means that we are not trying to
   be saved by obedience to the Law. We do not pretend to earn eternal
   life by merit, nor hope to claim anything of the Lord as due to us for
   good works. The principle which rules our life is not mercenary. We do
   not expect to earn a reward, neither are we flogged to duty by dread of
   punishment. We are under Grace--that is to say, we are treated on the
   principle of mercy and love, and not on that of justice and desert.
   Freely, of His own undeserved favor, God has forgiven us for Christ's
   sake! He has regarded us with favor, not because we deserved it, but
   simply because He willed to do so, according to that ancient
   declaration, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
   have compassion on whom I will have compassion."

   The Lord did not choose us because of any goodness in us, but He has
   saved us and called us according to the purpose of His own will.
   Moreover, our continuance in a state of salvation depends upon the same
   Divine Grace which first placed us there. We do not stand or fall
   according to our personal merit, but because Jesus lives, we live.
   Because Jesus is accepted, we are accepted. Because Jesus is beloved,
   we are beloved. In a word, our standing is not based upon merit, but
   upon mercy--not upon our changeable character, but upon the immutable
   mercy of God. Grace is the tenure upon which we hold our position
   before the Lord. "For by Grace are you saved through faith; and that
   not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."

   "But that no man is justified by the Law in the sight of God, it is
   evident: for the just shall live by faith. And the Law is not of faith:
   but, the man that does them shall live in them." Let us endeavor to
   recount the privileges of this position by mentioning the evils from
   which it releases us. First, we no longer dread the curse of the Law.
   Those who are under the Law may well be horribly afraid because of the
   penalties which are due through their many failures and transgressions.
   They have broken the Law and are, therefore, in constant danger of
   judgment and condemnation. The careless try to shake off the thought as
   much as possible by putting off the evil day, by forgetting death and
   by pretending to disbelieve in judgment and eternal wrath. But still,
   more or less, this thought disturbs them--a dreadful sound is in their
   ears.

   When men are once awakened, the dread of punishment for sin haunts them
   day and night and fills them with terror! And well it may, for they are
   under the Law and the Law will soon cast them into its prison from
   which they will never

   escape. Every transgression and disobedience must receive a just
   recompense of reward. Now, Believers have no fear as to the punishment
   of their sin, for our sin was by the Lord, Himself, laid upon Jesus and
   the penalty was borne by Him-- "The chastisement of our peace was upon
   Him and with His stripes we are healed." "Christ has redeemed us from
   the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: as it is written,
   Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree."

   Substitution clears the Christian from all debt to justice and he dares
   to challenge the Law itself with the question-- Who is he that
   condemns, since Christ has died? Yes, He goes further and challenges an
   accusation--Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect, since
   God has justified? No penalty do we dread, for we are forgiven and God
   will not pardon and then punish! "As far as the east is from the west,
   so far has He removed our transgressions from us." Will God punish
   those from whom He has removed transgression, or cast those into Hell
   whose sins He has cast behind His back? Impossible!

   Therefore, when we see the stern array of the Judgment Seat and hear
   the threats of vengeance, we who are Believers rejoice to feel that
   these terrors have nothing to do with us. The Great Surety has secured
   His people from all risk of wrath. The undying worm is not for them!
   The unquenchable fire is not for them! Neither shall the Pit shut her
   mouth upon them, for they are not under the Law! Then the Believer no
   longer drudges in unwilling obedience, seeking to reach a certain point
   of merit. The man under the Law who is awakened and awakened very
   frequently, tries to keep the commands in order to attain, at any rate,
   a fair measure of goodness. For this He labors very hard, as men who
   tug at the oar to escape from a tempest.

   If he could but reach a certain degree of virtue he would feel safe. If
   he were equal to such an one he would be at rest. Alas, he has no power
   to attain even to his own ideal! He finds his resolutions written in
   water and his goodness vanishes like the morning mist. His servile
   works are ill done and fail to yield him peace of mind. The Believer is
   under no such drudgery--Christ has fulfilled the Law for him and he
   rests in that finished work. He does not aim at high attainments in
   order to win the favor of God--he has that favor--it has come to him
   freely and undeserved and he rejoices in it! A high ambition moves him,
   but it is not that of saving himself by his own works.

   He obeys out of love. He delights in the Law after the inner man and
   confesses with Paul, "the Law is holy, and just, and good." He wishes
   that he could live without sin, but he never dreams that even then he
   could make an atonement for the past, nor does he fancy that by his own
   merit he is to obtain salvation for the future. The work through which
   he is saved is complete--it is not his own work, but the work of
   Jesus--and, therefore, when he sees his own shortcomings and
   iniquities, he does not doubt his salvation, but continues to rest in
   Jesus. He is no longer a slave, flogged with the whip of fear and made
   to labor for his very life and gather nothing for his pains. He is free
   from the principle of the Law and works from a principle of love--not
   to secure Divine favor--but because that favor has been freely
   manifested towards him.

   The Christian man is now no longer uncertain as to the continuance of
   Divine Love. Under the Law, no man's standing can be secure, since by a
   single sin he may forfeit his position. If a legalist should be able to
   persuade himself that he has reached a sufficient point of merit and is
   safe, yet he cannot be sure of continuing in his exalted position, for
   like the flower of the grass all human comeliness withers away. However
   meritorious a man may conceive himself to be, yet he may fall short of
   the standard even now. And if not, in the future he may spoil it all!
   The learned Bellarmine, one of the great antagonists of Martin Luther,
   once gave utterance to language which I cannot verbally remember, but
   which was to the following effect.

   Of course, being a Papist, he believed in justification by works, but
   yet he observed that, "nevertheless, seeing that even in the best of
   men good works are usually marred by sin, and seeing that no man can
   know when he has performed quite enough good works to save him, it is
   upon the whole, safest to trust only in the merits of Jesus Christ." We
   agree with the cardinal and accept the safest way as good enough for
   us! Safest, indeed, it is to us, for it is the only way which we can
   tread, since all the good works we have ever done are defiled and
   polluted either in motive beforehand, or in the spirit in which they
   were done, or by proud reflections afterwards! We dare not trust even
   in our prayers and devotions and almsgivings, or repentances--but must
   rest only upon the merits of Christ.

   The merits of Christ are always a constant and abiding quantity. If,
   therefore, we rest thereon, our foundation is as secure at one time as
   at another. The merits of Jesus will be throughout eternity sweet
   before God on our behalf. Is He not "the same yesterday, today, and
   forever"? Therefore the confidence of the Believer rests upon a
   foundation which will

   no more be shaken in the future than it is today. Glory be to God, He
   does not cast away His people whom He did foreknow! He does not love
   today and hate tomorrow--nor favor with His Grace the child whom He has
   adopted and afterwards disown him. "If, when we were enemies, we were
   reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled,
   we shall be saved by His life."

   We are free from the bondage of the Law since we are no longer under
   the Covenant of Works, but have come under the Covenant of Grace which
   is founded upon promises which nothing can disannul. In consequence of
   this, the Believer is no longer afraid of the Last Great Day. Shall all
   our sins be read and published before an assembled universe? "If so,"
   says the man who is under the Law, "it will go hard with me." Judgment
   is a terrible word to those who are hoping to save themselves, for if
   their doings are to be put into the balances, they will surely be found
   wanting. But judgment has no terror in it to a Believer! He can sing
   with our poet--

   "Bold shall I stand in that great day, For who anything to my charge
   shall lay? While through Your blood absolved I am From sin's tremendous
   curse and shame."

   Will the sins of Believers be published at the last day? If it is to
   the glory of forgiving love, let them be! Who among us need be afraid
   since at the end of the whole list there shall be written, "and all
   these were blotted out for Jesus Christ's sake." And if not published
   at all because all our sins were cast behind Jehovah's back--and if,
   instead thereof, the Judge shall only proclaim the good works of His
   people and say, "I was hungry and you gave Me meat, I was thirsty and
   you gave Me drink; and inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the
   least of these, My brethren, you have done it unto Me," then we may
   well welcome the last assize and cry, "Welcome, welcome, Son of God."

   When the Book of Record shall be opened which might justly condemn us,
   yet it is written, "And another book was opened, which was the Book of
   Life." If our names are there we have nothing to fear! One word may be
   added here, namely, that the Believer, being no longer under the Law,
   has no slavish dread of God. As long as I am at enmity with God, guilty
   of breaking His Law and liable to His righteous wrath, I dread His name
   and shrink from His Presence. The soul under the Law stands as the
   Israelites did--far off from the mountain--with a barrier set between
   themselves and the Glory of God. Distance and separation are the
   natural condition of all who are under the Law.

   "Run," cries the heart of man when it beholds God touching the hills so
   that they smoke! And when it hears the voice of God like a trumpet,
   waxing exceedingly loud and long, it pleads that it may not hear such
   words any more. Not so the Believer, for his heart and his flesh cry
   out for the Lord and he pants to come and appear before God! We have
   access with boldness to the Throne of the heavenly Grace and we delight
   to avail ourselves of it. Through the Mediator we have fellowship with
   the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ! The Holy Spirit has made us
   long to be brought nearer and nearer to our Divine Father. Our God is a
   consuming fire, but that consuming fire has no terror for us since it
   will only melt the alloy from the gold and remove the dross from the
   silver.

   The Law could only say to us, "Depart, you cursed," but Grace says,
   "Come, you blessed." The Law said, "Draw not near here: put off your
   shoes from off your feet," but Grace cries with a voice of pity,
   "Whoever is thirsty, come and whoever will, let him come." We have
   accepted the call of Grace and now we know the Lord and love Him.
   Perfect love has cast out fear, for fear has torment. We are not under
   the Law, but we have "known and believed the love that God has to us."

   Now I speak to you Christian people, even to you who believe in Christ,
   and I beg you to understand this freedom from the Law and then to hold
   it fast. There are some of you who return, in a measure, to the legal
   yoke, whereas the Apostle says, "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty
   wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the
   yoke of bondage." Do you feel helpless, cold and heavy? Do you,
   therefore, conclude that you are not saved? Are you not coming under
   the Law and measuring the power of the Grace of God by your own merits
   or excellencies? If you judge your standing before God by anything
   except your faith in His promise, you will bring yourself into bondage!

   You can walk by faith, but you will stumble if you try any other way.
   There is but one deliverance for me when I question my own state--and
   that is to fly to simple faith in Jesus. When Satan says, "You are no
   saint," do not argue with him, for he is too subtle for a poor soul
   like you. Yield the point and say, "It may be I am no saint, nor are
   you either." "No," he says, "you are deceived, you are a hypocrite."
   Reply to him, "If I am not a saint, I am a sinner. And being a sinner,
   I find it written that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
   sinners. I put myself in that list, O Satan,

   and even you cannot deny that I am such! I believe in Jesus and,
   believing in Him I am justified before God by the righteousness of my
   Lord--and I have peace with God through Jesus Christ."

   Beloved, this is safe standing. If we are, indeed, saved by the
   righteousness of Another, why do we question the power of that
   righteousness to save us because of our own conscious feebleness? We
   are not saved by our own strength or feebleness, but by the power of
   the Lord Jesus! If we are standing with one foot on the rock of
   Christ's finished work and the other upon the sand of our own doings,
   then we may well stand or totter according to which foot we are
   trusting at the moment! But if we set both feet upon the Rock, then we
   may stand fast though the sea roars and the floods sweep the sand away!

   Mind you, do not try the double foundation, for it will never hold!
   Partly Christ and partly self will soon come to a failure. No, our
   great Redeemer cried, "It is finished," and it is finished! And those
   who rest on Him have a finished salvation, for they are not under the
   Law, but under Grace.

   II. Now, secondly, we come to THE SPECIAL ASSURANCE of the text--"Sin
   shall not have dominion over you." This is a very necessary assurance,
   especially at times. Sin is a great working power and all around us we
   see its hideous operations--it is an evil as incessant in its activity
   as it is deadly in its results. As we look at its forcible work, we cry
   in alarm, "It will surely drag me down one of these days!" But the
   dread fear is removed by the cheering voice of the Holy Spirit who
   assures us, "Sin shall not have dominion over you."

   Alas, we not only see the evil working in others, but it assails
   ourselves--our eyes are drawn aside to look on vanity, our ears hearken
   to evil talk and our heart, itself, at times grows cold or wanders.
   Then we are apt to be cast down and to doubt. Here the sweet assurance
   cheers us--though you are tempted you shall not be led astray, for "sin
   shall not have dominion over you." "Resist the devil and he will flee
   from you." Stand in the strength of faith and in the power of the
   precious blood and though you are beset with evil suggestions a
   thousand times a day, and every sense is assailed by the witcheries of
   evil, yet, "sin shall not have dominion over you."

   Cheered by such a word as this we remain on our watchtower and are not
   overcome with evil. Sometimes sin forces its way into our souls and
   rouses our inward evil to an awful degree so that the imagination sets
   fire to our lusts and the smoke of the conflagration blows in the eyes
   of the affections, almost choking the understanding. Yes, sin may
   invade your soul and, for a while, find a lodgment there, so as to be
   your plague and torment. It may even crush you down, rob you of your
   comfort, injure your Graces and create war to the detriment of your
   peace, but it shall not have dominion over you!

   Those of you who are acquainted with John Bunyan's, "Holy War," will
   remember how wonderfully the glorious dreamer describes Diabolus
   besieging the town of Mansoul after it had been occupied by the Prince
   Immanuel. After many battles and cunning plots, the enemy entered into
   the city, filled all the streets with the yells of his followers and
   polluted the whole place with the presence of his hosts. But yet he
   could not take the castle in the center of the town, which held out for
   Immanuel. That castle was the heart and he could, by no means, secure a
   footing in it. He beat his big Hell drum almost day and night around
   the walls, so that those who had fled to the castle had a very terrible
   time of it. And he set all his huge machinery to work to batter down
   the walls, but he could not enter.

   No, sin may, for a while, seem to prevail in the Believer till he has
   no rest and is sorely beset, hearing nothing but the devil's tattoo
   sounding in his ears--"Sin, sin, sin"--but nevertheless sin shall not
   have dominion over him! Sin may haunt your bed and board and follow you
   down the streets in your walks. It may enter the very room into which
   you withdraw to pray--but your inmost self shall still cry out against
   it, for, "sin shall not have dominion over you." Sin may vex you and
   thrust itself upon you, but it cannot become your lord! The devil has
   great wrath and rages horribly for a while, knowing that his time is
   short, but he shall be subdued and expelled, for the Lord our God gives
   us the victory through Jesus Christ.

   Sometimes, alas, sin not only enters us, but prevails over us and we
   are forced, in deep anguish, to confess that we have fallen beneath its
   power. It is terrible that it should be so, even for a moment, and yet
   it would be idle to deny the mournful fact. Who among us can say, "I am
   clean, I have not sinned"? Still, a temporary defeat is not sufficient
   to effect a total subjugation. Sin shall not have dominion over the
   Believer, for though he falls he shall rise again. The child of God,
   when he falls into the mire, is like the sheep which gets up and
   escapes from the ditch as quickly as possible. It is not his nature to
   lie there. The ungodly man is like the hog which rolls in the filth and
   wallows in it with delight. The mire

   has dominion over the swine, but it has none over the sheep! With many
   bleatings and outcries the sheep seeks the shepherd again, but not so
   the swine.

   Every child of God weeps, mourns and bemoans his sin and he hates it
   even when, for a while, he has been overtaken by it--and this is proof
   that sin has not dominion over him. It has an awful power, but it has
   not dominion--it casts us down, but it cannot make us take delight in
   its evil. There are times when the Believer greatly feels his danger.
   His feet have almost gone, his steps have well near slipped! Then how
   sweetly does this assurance come to the soul, "Sin shall not have
   dominion over you." The Lord is able to keep you from falling and you
   shall be preserved even to the end! This assurance secures us from a
   very great danger--from the danger of being under the absolute sway of
   sin.

   What is meant by sin having dominion? Look and see. There are men who
   live in sin and yet they do not appear to know it. Sin has dominion
   over them by spreading a veil over their hearts, so that their
   conscience is deadened. They are so enslaved as to be content in
   bondage. You shall not be so--you shall be enlightened and instructed
   so that when you sin you shall be well aware of it. Self-excuse shall
   be impossible for you. Many men live in gross sin and are not ashamed.
   They are at ease in it and all is quiet. But it shall not be so with
   you, in whom the life of God has been implanted. If you do wrong, you
   shall smart for it and your nest shall be stuffed with thorns.

   God has so changed your nature by His Grace that when you sin you shall
   be like a fish on dry land. You shall be out of your element and long
   to get into a right state again. You cannot sin, for you love God! The
   sinner may drink sin down as the ox drinks down water, but to you it
   shall be as the brine of the sea. You may become so foolish as to try
   the pleasures of the world, but they shall be no pleasures to you--you
   shall cry out with Solomon, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." That
   marvelous man tried the world at its best and was disappointed! And you
   may be quite sure that where he failed, you will not succeed.

   If the Lord loves you, sin will never yield you satisfaction. In
   worldly company you shall be all the while like a man who sits upon
   thorns, or walks amid vipers and cobras. And in worldly amusement you
   shall feel as if the house would fall upon you. An ungodly man under
   the dominion of sin loves sin, but that you shall never do. He wishes
   he could sin more, for he has upon him the thirst of intoxication! But
   as for you, you shall never be made happy by evil, but shall groan
   under it if you ever yield to its power. You shall hate yourself to
   think you ever consented to its solicitations! You shall be wretched
   and unhappy and shall find no rest till you return to your Lord. Your
   nature has been so changed that you cannot give a moment's
   entertainment to sin without feeling like one who carries burning coals
   in his bosom, or thrusts thorns into his flesh.

   No, Beloved, if you are, indeed, a Believer in Christ, you must fight
   with sin till you die! And, what is more, you must conquer it in the
   name of the Lord. You are sometimes afraid that it will vanquish you,
   but if you are of the true seed it cannot prevail. Like Samson, you
   shall break all its bands. You shall rise superior to habits which now
   enthrall you! You shall even forget those strong impulses which now
   sweep you before them. Your inward Graces shall gather force, while the
   Holy Spirit shall help your infirmities and you shall be changed from
   glory to glory as by the Presence of the Lord. This assurance is
   confirmed by the context--"Sin shall not have dominion over you,"
   because you are dead to it by virtue of your union to Christ.

   You died with Christ and you have been buried with Christ--how, then,
   shall sin have dominion over you? Besides, you live in Christ in
   newness of life by reason of His living in you! How can the new nature
   live in sin? How can that which is born of God live like that which is
   born of the devil? No, no, it cannot be! Christ has undertaken to save
   you from your sins and He will do it--He will keep you watchful,
   prayerful, vigilant--He will instruct you in His Word. He will help you
   by His Spirit. He will perfect you in Himself. You are bound for
   victory and you shall have it! Thanks be unto God who gives it to you
   through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Sin shall not have dominion over you."

   III. Now I come to my last head, which is THE REMARKABLE REASON that is
   given for sin's never having dominion: "For you are not under the Law,
   but under Grace." "There, there," says many an unconverted man, "did
   you ever hear such doctrine as he has been preaching to us this
   morning? Not under the Law?! Well, then, we may sin as we like." That
   is your logic. That is the way in which an evil heart sours the sweet
   milk of the Word of God. But it is not the argument of a child of God.

   Mark how Paul puts it--"What then? Shall we sin, because we are not
   under the Law, but under Grace? God forbid!" He flings away the
   inference with horror and detestation, crying, "God forbid!" Let me
   just show you why

   being under the Law is not helpful to holiness, while being under Grace
   is the great means of it. Those who are under the Law will always be
   under the dominion of sin and it cannot be otherwise. First, because
   the Law puts a man under the dominion of sin by pronouncing sentence of
   condemnation upon him as soon as he has transgressed.

   What does the Law say to him? "From this point on you are guilty and I
   condemn you. He that offends in one point is guilty of all." Thus the
   Law shuts a man up to being a sinner and offers him no space for
   repentance. It accuses, condemns and sentences--but affords no hope and
   offers no encouragement. It is not so with those who are under Grace!
   To them Grace says, "You are sinners, but you are freely forgiven. Your
   iniquity is pardoned, your transgression is put away! Go, and sin no
   more." Thus relieved, the penitent lifts up his head and cries, "Enable
   me to praise You and grant that I may be upheld by Grace in the way of
   uprightness." The amazing love of God, when shed abroad in the heart,
   creates a desire for better things and what the Law could not do, Grace
   accomplishes.

   A man under the Law is, by the Law, driven to despair. "What?" he asks,
   "Am I to keep this Law in order to be saved? Alas, I have already
   broken it and if I had not, it is too high and holy for me to rise to
   its full height." Therefore he resolves that he will not attempt the
   task and he sinks into indifference or, in some cases, he thinks of the
   old proverb that you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and he
   resolves that he will take his fill of sin. Because there is no hope,
   he will plunge into iniquity. He vows that if Hell must be his portion
   forever, he might as well enjoy the sweetness there is in sin while he
   may. So the Law, because of the evil heart it has to deal with, excites
   such a condition of heart that sin is confirmed in its dominion. Being
   threatened, the rebellious heart hardens itself and defies the Lord.
   And then, concluding that peace is impossible, it continues more and
   more to fight against the Lord.

   Not so the child of God! He says, "God, for Christ's sake, has cast my
   sins behind His back and I am saved. Now, for the love I bear His name,
   I will serve Him with all my might, because of all that He has done for
   me." Thus the Grace of our Lord Jesus, by its freeness and richness,
   breaks the dominion of sin which the Law only served to establish and
   confirm. Not that the Law is evil--God forbid! But because we are evil
   and rebel against the holy Law! A man under the Law does not escape
   from the dominion of sin because the Law wakes the opposition of the
   human heart. There are a great many things which people never wish to
   do, nor think of doing till they are forbidden.

   Lock up a closet in your house and say to your wife and children, "You
   must never enter that closet, nor even look into the keyhole." Perhaps
   they have never wanted to look into the dingy old corner before, but
   now they pine to inspect it! A number of bylaws have lately been posted
   up as to the use of Clapham-Common and I am half afraid to read them
   for fear I should want to break them. I dare say that many things which
   I never desired to do are now strictly prohibited and I shall feel
   vexed with the commissioners for lessening my liberty! I should not
   wonder but what numbers of persons who never visited the Common, will
   now become sinners against the new laws.

   Law, by reason of our unruly nature, excites opposition and creates
   sin, for what a man may not do he immediately wants to do. He who is
   under the Law will never escape from the dominion of sin, for sin comes
   by the Law by reason of the iniquity of our hearts. But when we are not
   under the Law, but under Grace, we love God for His love to us and
   labor to please Him in all things. The Law, moreover. affords a man no
   actual help. All it does is to say, "You shall," and, "You shall not."
   It can do no more. But Grace gives us what the Law requires of us. The
   Law says, "make a new heart." Grace replies, "A new heart, also, will I
   give you, and a right spirit will I put within you." The Law says,
   "Keep My Commandments." And Grace answers, "You shall keep My
   Commandments and do them."

   Grace brings the Holy Spirit into the soul to work in us holy
   affections and a hatred of sin and, therefore, what the Law could not
   do, in that it was weak through the flesh, Grace accomplishes for us by
   its own almighty power! Further, the Law inspires no sentiment of love
   and love, after all, is the fulfilling of the Law. If you are told you
   shall and you shall not, there is nothing in this to inspire love to
   the Lawgiver--Law is hard and cold, like the two tables of Moses. Law
   does not change the heart or remove enmity--it tends, rather, the other
   way. Law never excites enthusiasm for that which is right--it is too
   stern and chill to touch the heart.

   Mere Law does not even raise in a man's heart a high ideal of what he
   ought to be! Look at the legalist, the man who hopes for salvation by
   the Law--he looks upon religion as a task in which he has no delight.
   He is a bond slave and nothing more. He does as much or as little as he
   is forced to do, but his heart is not in it. The men who think they
   have kept the Law of God are evidently very far from understanding its
   meaning--they have a very poor idea of the mind of

   God or they would not have thought that they had fulfilled the will of
   God with such a poor, miserable, hypocritical righteousness as theirs!

   The Pharisee thought he had kept the Law, for he fasted twice a week
   and paid tithes of all he possessed. And yet the same man could go and
   swallow a widow's house behind the door and do all sorts of abominable
   things! It is clear that he had formed a shockingly low notion of true
   holiness. In fact, he had degraded the Law into a mere external
   ordinance which took note of the outside of the cup and platter and
   left the inside full of filthiness. But see what Grace does--it fires a
   man with enthusiasm and sets before him a lofty idea of excellence. It
   causes him to love the Lord and then it gives him a high idea of purity
   and holiness.

   Though he rises many grades beyond the Pharisee, yet the Believer
   cries, "I am not what I should be!" And if he becomes the most zealous,
   consecrated man that ever lived, the Law is still beyond him and he
   still asks that he may be able to rise to greater heights of holiness
   and virtue. This Divine Grace does, but this the Law can never do. The
   most pleasing service in the world is that which is done from motives
   of affection and not for wages. The servant who only does his work for
   his pay is not valued like the old attached domestic who nursed you
   when you were a boy and waited on your father before you. No money can
   purchase such service as he renders--it is so thoroughly hearty and
   prompt. If you could not afford to pay his wages, he would still stay
   with you. And if anything goes awry, he puts up with it because he
   loves you. You prize such a man above rubies!

   So it is with the child of God. The mere legalist does what he ought,
   or at least thinks he ought to do--but as for heartiness and zeal, he
   knows nothing of such things. The child of God, with all his feebleness
   and his blunders, is far more accepted, for he does all he can out of
   pure love and then cries, "I am an unprofitable servant! I have done no
   more than was my duty to have done! Lord, help me to do more." God
   accepts heart service, but heart service the Law never did produce and
   never will. The only true heart service in the world comes from those
   who are not under the Law, but under Grace and, therefore, sin shall
   not have dominion over those who are not under the Law.

   The spirit of the world is legal and its wise men tell us that we must
   preach to people that they must be virtuous or they will go to Hell.
   They tell us that we must hold out Heaven as the reward of morality.
   They believe in the principle of chain and whip. But what comes of such
   doctrine? The more you preach it, the less virtue, the less obedience
   there is in the world! But when you preach love, the effect is very
   different--"Come," says God, "I forgive you freely. Trust My Son and I
   will save you outright, though in you there is nothing to merit My
   esteem. Accept My free favor and I will receive you graciously and love
   you freely."

   This looks, at first sight, as if it gave a license to sin, but how
   does it turn out? Why, this wondrous Grace taking possession of the
   human heart breeds love in return, which love becomes the fountain of
   purity and holiness--and such as receive it endeavor to perfect
   holiness in the fear of God! Beloved, do not get under the Law! Do not
   yield to legal threats or legal hopes, but live under the Free Grace
   Gospel. Let the note that peals on your ears be no longer the thunder
   of Sinai, "Do and live," but let it be the sweet song of free Grace and
   dying love!

   Ah, ring those charming bells from morn till eve! Let us hear their
   liquid music again and again! Live and do! Not do and live--not work
   for salvation, but being saved, work! Being already delivered, go forth
   and prove, by your grateful affections and zealous actions, what the
   Grace of God has done for you! "Whoever believes in Jesus Christ has
   everlasting life." "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved,
   but he that believes not shall be damned." Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Under Constraint

   (No. 1411)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 28, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that if
   One died for all, then were all dead." 2 Corinthians 5:14.

   THE Apostle and his brethren were unselfish in all that they did. He
   could say of himself and of his brethren that when they varied their
   modes of action they always had the same objective in view--they lived
   only to promote the cause of Christ and to bless the souls of men. He
   says, "Whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we are
   sober, it is for your cause." Some may have said that Paul was too
   excitable and expressed himself too strongly. "Well," he said, "if it
   is so, it is to God." Others may have noticed the reasoning faculty to
   be exceedingly strong in Paul and may, perhaps, have thought him to be
   too coolly argumentative. "But," said Paul, "if we are sober, it is for
   your cause." Viewed from some points the Apostle and his co-laborers
   must have appeared to be raving fanatics, engaged upon a Quixotic
   enterprise and almost, if not quite, out of their minds.

   One who had heard the Apostle tell the story of his conversion
   exclaimed, "Paul, you are beside yourself; much learning does make you
   mad," and no doubt many who saw the singular change in his conduct and
   knew what he had given up and what he endured for his new faith had
   come to the same conclusion. Paul would not be at all offended by this
   judgment, for he would remember that his Lord and Master had been
   charged with madness and that even our Lord's relatives had said, "He
   is beside Himself." To Festus he had replied, "I am not mad, most noble
   Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."

   And to Corinthian objectors he gave a still fuller reply. Blessed are
   they who are charged with being out of their mind through zeal for the
   cause of Jesus! They have a more than sufficient answer when they can
   say, "If we are beside ourselves, it is to God." It is no unusual thing
   for madmen to think others mad and no strange thing for a mad world to
   accuse the only morally sane among men of being fools and lunatics! But
   Wisdom is justified of her children. If others assailed the Apostle
   with another charge and insinuated that there was a method in his
   madness--that his being all things to all men showed an excess of
   prudence--and was no doubt a means to an end, which end it is possible
   they hinted at was a desire for power, he could reply most
   conclusively, "If we are sober, it is for your cause."

   Paul had acted so unselfishly that he could appeal to the Corinthian
   Church and ask them to bear him witness that he sought not theirs but
   them. And that if he had judged their disorders with great sobriety it
   was for their cause. Whatever he did, or felt, or suffered, or spoke,
   he had but one design in it--the Glory of God in the perfecting of
   Believers and the salvation of sinners. Every Christian minister ought
   to be able to use the Apostle's words without the slightest reserve.
   Yes, and every Christian should be able to say the same--"If I am
   excited, it is in defense of the Truth of God. If I am sober, it is for
   the maintenance of holiness. If I seem extravagant, it is because the
   name of Jesus stirs my inmost soul-- and if I am moderate in spirit and
   thoughtful in mood--it is that I may in the wisest manner subserve the
   interests of my Redeemer's kingdom."

   God grant that weeping or singing, anxious or hopeful, victorious or
   defeated, increasing or decreasing, elevated or depressed we may still
   follow our one design and devote ourselves to the holy cause! May we
   live to see Churches made up of people who are all set on one thing and
   may those Churches have ministers who are fit to lead such a people
   because they, also, are mastered by the same sacred purpose. May the
   fire which fell of old on Carmel fall on our altar, whereon lies the
   sacrifice, wetted a second and a third time from the salt sea of the
   world, until it shall consume the burnt sacrifice and the wood, the
   stones and the dust--and lick up the water that is in the trench. Then
   will all the people see it and fall upon their faces, and cry, "The
   Lord! He is God! The Lord, He is God!"

   The Apostle now goes on to tell us why it was that the whole conduct of
   himself and his co-laborers tended to one end and objective. He says,
   "The love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge, that if One
   died for all, then the all died." I give you here as exact a
   translation as I can. Two things I shall note in the text--first, under
   constraint. Secondly, under constraint which his understanding
   justified.

   I. Our main point will come under the head, "UNDER CONSTRAINT. Here is
   the Apostle, a man who was born free, a man who beyond all others
   enjoyed the greatest spiritual liberty--glorying that he is under
   constraint! He was under constraint because a great force held him
   under its power. "The love of Christ constrains us." I suppose,
   "constrains us," is about the best rendering of the passage that could
   be given, but it might be translated, "restrains." The love of Christ
   restrains true Believers from self-seeking and forbids them to pursue
   any objective but the highest. Whether they were beside themselves or
   sober, the early saints yielded to Divine restraint, even as a good
   ship answers to her helm or as a horse obeys the rein.

   They were not without a restraining force to prevent the slightest
   subjection to impure motives. The love of Christ controlled them and
   held them under its power. But the word, "restrained," only expresses a
   part of the sense, for it means that he was, "coerced or pressed," and
   so impelled forward as one carried along by pressure. All around him
   the love of Christ pressed upon him as the water in a river presses
   upon a swimmer and bears him onward with its stream. Bengel, who is a
   great authority, reads it, "Keeps us employed," for we are led to
   diligence, urged to zeal, maintained in perseverance and carried
   forward and onward by the love of Jesus Christ. The Apostles labored
   much, but all their labor sprang from the impulse of the love of Jesus
   Christ.

   Just as Jacob toiled for Rachel solely out of love to her, so do true
   saints serve the Lord Jesus under the Omnipotent constraint of love.
   One eminent expositor reads the word, "constrains us," as though it
   signified that the Lord's servants were kept together and held as a
   band under a banner or standard. And he very appropriately refers to
   the words of the Church in the Song of Songs, "His banner over me was
   love." As soldiers are held together by rallying to the standard, so
   are the saints kept to the work and service of their Lord by the love
   of Christ which constrains them to endure all things for the elect's
   sake and for the Glory of God--and like an ensign--is lifted high as
   the center and loadstone of all their energies. In our Lord's love we
   have the best motive for loyalty, the best reason for energy and the
   best argument for perseverance!

   The word may also signify, "compressed," and then it would mean that
   all their energies were pressed into one channel and made to move by
   the love of Christ. Can I put restraint and constraint, and all the
   rest, into one by grouping them in a figure? I think I can. When a
   flood is spread over an expanse of meadow land and stands in shallow
   pools, men restrain it by damming it up--and they constrain it to keep
   to one channel by banking it in! Thus compressed it becomes a stream
   and moves with force in one direction. See how it quickens its pace!
   See what strength it gathers! It turns yonder wheel of the mill, makes
   a sheep wash, leaps as a waterfall, runs laughing through a village as
   a brook where the cattle stand in the summer's sun. Growing all the
   while, it develops into a river, bearing boats and little ships! And
   this done, it still increases and stays not till it flows with mighty
   flood into the great sea.

   The love of Christ had pressed Paul's energies into one force, turned
   them into one channel and then driven them forward with a wonderful
   force till he and his fellows had become a mighty power for
   good--always active and energetic. "The love of Christ," he says,
   "constrains us." All great lives have been under the constraint of some
   mastering principle. A man who is everything by turns and nothing long,
   is a nobody! A man who wastes life on whims and fancies, leisure and
   pleasures, never achieves anything! He flits over the surface of life
   and leaves no more trace upon his age than a bird upon the sky. But a
   man, even for mischief, becomes great when he becomes concentrated.

   What made the young prince of Macedon, Alexander the Great, but the
   absorption of his whole mind in the desire for conquest? The man was
   never happy when he was at ease and in peace. His best days were spent
   on the battlefield or on the march. Let him rush to the front of the
   battle and make the common soldier grow into a hero by observing the
   desperate valor of his king--and then you see the greatness of the man!
   He could never have been the conqueror of the world if the insatiable
   greed of conquest had not constrained him. From this come your Caesars
   and your Napoleons-- they are whole men in their ambition, subject to
   the lust of dominion.

   When you carry this thought into a better and holier sphere, the same
   fact is clear. Howard could never have been the great philanthropist if
   he had not been strangely under the witchery of love to prisoners. He
   was more happy in a

   hospital or in a prison than he would have been at Court or on the sofa
   of the drawing room. The man could not help visiting jails--he was a
   captive to his sympathy for men in bondage--and so he spent his life in
   seeking their good. Look at such a man as Whitfield or his associate,
   Wesley. Those men had but one thought and that was to win souls for
   Christ--their whole being ran into the one riverbed of zeal for God and
   made them full and strong as the rushing Rhone. It was their rest to
   labor for Christ! It was their honor to be pelted while preaching and
   to be maligned for the name of Jesus! A bishopric and a seat in the
   House of Lords would have been the death of them! Even a throne would
   have been a rack if they must have ceased hunting for souls.

   The men were under the dominion of a passion which they could not
   withstand and did not wish to weaken. They could sing--

   "The lo ve of Christ does me constrain To seek the wandering souls of
   men! With cries, entreaties, tears, to save, To snatch them from the
   fiery wave." Their whole life, being, thought, faculty, spirit, soul
   and body became one and indivisible in purpose. And their sanctified
   manhood was driven forward irresistibly so that they might be likened
   to thunderbolts flung from the eternal hand which must go forward till
   their end is reached. They could no more cease to preach than the sun
   could cease shining or reverse his course in the heavens!

   This kind of constraint implies no compulsion and involves no bondage.
   It is the highest order of freedom, for when a man does exactly what he
   likes to do, if he wants to express the enthusiastic joy and delight
   with which he follows his pursuit, he generally uses language similar
   to that of my text. "Why," he says, "I am engrossed by my favorite
   study. It quite enthralls me. I cannot resist its charms, it holds me
   beneath its spell." Is the man any the less free? If a man gives
   himself up to a science, or to some other pursuit, though he is
   perfectly free to leave it whenever he likes, he will commonly declare
   that he cannot leave it--it has such a hold upon him that he addicts
   himself to it!

   You must not think, therefore, that when we speak of being under
   constraint from the love of Christ we mean, by it, that we have ceased
   to exercise our wills, or to be voluntary agents in our service. Far
   from it! In fact, we acknowledge that we are never so free as when we
   are under bonds to Christ! No, our God does not constrain us by
   physical force. His cords are those of love and His bands are those of
   a man. The constraint is that which we are glad to feel--we give a full
   assent to its pressure--and therein lies its power. We rejoice to admit
   that, "The love of Christ constrains us!" We only wish the constraint
   would increase every day.

   We have seen that Paul had a great force holding him--we advance a step
   further and note that the constraining force was the love of Christ. He
   does not speak of his love to Christ--that was a great power, too,
   though secondary to the first. But he is content to mention the
   greater, for it includes the less--"The love of Christ constrains us,"
   that is, Christ's love to us is the master force! And O, Brothers and
   Sisters, this is a power to which it is joy to submit! This is a force
   worthy to command the greatest minds! "The love of Christ." Who shall
   measure this Omnipotent force? That love, according to our text, is
   strongest when seen in His dying for men. Mark the context, "because we
   thus judge, that if One died for all." The peculiar display of the love
   of Christ which had supreme sway over Paul was the love revealed in His
   substitutionary death!

   Think of it a moment. Christ the Ever-Blessed, to whom no pain, nor
   suffering, nor shame could come, loved men! O singularity of love! He
   loves guilty men, yes, loves His enemies! Loving poor fallen men, He
   took their nature and became a Man. Marvelous condescension! The Son of
   God is also Son of Mary and, being found in fashion as a Man, He
   humbles Himself and is made of no reputation. See Him taken before
   human judges and unjustly condemned! Seized by Roman lictors and lashed
   with the scourge! Gazing a little longer, you see Him nailed to a
   cross, hung up for a felon, left amid jeer and jibe and cruel glance
   and malicious speech to bleed away His life till He is actually dead
   and laid in the grave!

   At the back of all this there is the mystery that He was not only
   dying, but dying in the place of others, bearing almighty wrath,
   enduring that dread sentence of death which is attached to human sin.
   Herein is love, indeed, that the infinitely Pure should suffer for the
   sinful, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God! Love did never
   climb to so sublime a height as when it brought Jesus to the bloody
   tree to bear the dread sentence of inexorable Law! Think of this love,
   Beloved, till you feel its constraining influence!

   It was love eternal, for long before the earth was fashioned, the
   eternal Word had set His eyes upon His people and their names were
   engraved on His heart. It was love unselfish, for He had nothing to
   gain from His redeemed--there were harps enough in Heaven and songs
   enough in the celestial city without their music! It was love most free
   and spontaneous, for no man sought it or so much as dreamed of it! It
   was love most persevering, for when man was born into the world and
   sinned and rejected Christ--and He came to His own and His own received
   Him not--He loved them still, loved them even to the end. It was
   love--what shall I say of it? If I were to multiply words I might
   rather sink your thoughts than raise them!

   It was love infinite, immeasurable, inconceivable! It surpasses the
   love of women, though the love of mothers is strong as death and
   jealousy is cruel as the grave. It passes the love of martyrs, though
   that love has triumphed over the fury of the flame. All other lights of
   love pale in their ineffectual brightness before this blazing sun of
   love, whose warmth a man may feel but upon whose utmost light no eye
   can gaze! He loved us like a God! It was nothing less than God's own
   love which burned within that breast which was bared to the spear that
   it might redeem us from going down into the Pit! It is this force,
   then, which has taken possession of the Christian's mind and, as Paul
   says, "constrains us."

   Now we may advance another step and say that the love of Christ
   operates upon us by begetting in us love to Him. Brothers and Sisters,
   I know you love our Lord Jesus Christ, for all His people love Him. "We
   love Him because He first loved us." But what shall I say? There are
   scarcely any themes upon which I feel less able to speak than these
   two--the love of Christ to us and our love to Him--because somehow love
   needs a tongue elsewhere than this which dwells in the mouth. This
   tongue is in the head and it can therefore tell out our thoughts--but
   we need a tongue in the heart to tell out our emotions which have now
   to borrow utterance from the brain's defective orator.

   There is a long space between the cool brain and the blazing heart--and
   matters cool on the road to the tongue, so that the burning heart grows
   weary of chill words. But oh, we love Jesus! Brothers and Sisters, we
   truly love Him! His name is sweet as the honeycomb and His Word is
   precious as the gold of Ophir. His Person is very dear to us--from His
   head to His feet He is altogether lovely. When we get near Him and see
   Him at the last, I think we shall swoon away with excess of joy at the
   sight of Him and I, for one, ask no Heaven beyond a sight of Him and a
   sense of His love! I do not doubt that we shall enjoy all the
   harmonies, all the honors and all the fellowships of Heaven, but if
   they were all blotted out, I do not know that they would make any
   considerable difference to us if we may but see our Lord upon His
   throne, and have His own prayer fulfilled, "Father, I will that they,
   also, whom You have given Me be with Me where I am, that they may
   behold My Glory." He is happiness to us, yes, He is All in All!

   Do you not feel that the sweetest sermons you ever hear are those which
   are fullest of Him? When I can sometimes hear a sermon, it sickens me
   to listen to fine attempts to philosophize away the Gospel, or to
   pretty essays which are best described as a jingle of elegant words.
   But I can hear with rapture the most illiterate and blundering Brother
   if his heart burns within him and he heartily speaks of my Lord, the
   Well-Beloved of my soul! We are glad to be in the place of assembly
   when Jesus is within, for whether on Tabor with two or three, or in the
   congregation of the faithful--when Jesus is present it is good to be
   there.

   This joyful feeling, when you hear about Jesus, shows that you love Him
   and your endeavors to spread the Gospel show that you love His cause.
   The love of Christ to you has moved you to desire the coming of His
   kingdom and you feel that you could give your life to extend the
   borders of His dominions! He is a glorious King and all the world
   should know it! Oh that we could see all the nations bowing before His
   scepter of peace! We love Him so much that till the whole earth smiles
   in the light of His throne, we can never rest. As to His Truth, a very
   great part of our love to Christ will show itself by attachment to the
   pure Gospel. I have not much patience with a certain class of
   Christians, nowadays, who will hear anybody preach so long as they can
   say, "He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born
   orator."

   Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, Sirs, to me the
   ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my
   admiration! I cannot endure false doctrine, however neatly it may be
   put before me. Would you have me eat poisoned meat because the dish is
   of the choicest ware? It makes me indignant when I hear another gospel
   put before the people with enticing words by men who would gladly make
   merchandise of souls! And I marvel at those who have soft words for
   such deceivers.

   "That is your bigotry," says one. Call it so if you like, but it is the
   bigotry of the loving John who wrote--"If there come any unto you and
   bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid
   him God speed: for he that

   bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." I would to God we
   had all more of such decision, for the lack of it is depriving our
   religious life of its backbone and substituting for honest manliness a
   mass of the tremulous jelly of mutual flattery. He who does not hate
   the false does not love the true! And he to whom it is all the same
   whether it is God's Word or man's, is himself unrenewed at heart! Oh,
   if some of you were like your fathers, you would not have tolerated in
   this age the wagon loads of trash under which the Gospel has been of
   late buried by ministers of your own choosing! You would have hurled
   out of your pulpits the men who are enemies to the fundamental
   doctrines of your Churches and yet are crafty enough to become your
   pastors and undermine the faith of a fickle and superficial generation!
   These men steal the pulpits of once orthodox Churches because otherwise
   they would have none at all!

   Their powerless theology cannot, of itself, arouse sufficient
   enthusiasm to enable them to build a mousetrap at the expense of their
   admirers and, therefore, they profane the houses which your fathers
   have built for the preaching of the Gospel and turn aside the
   organizations of once orthodox communities to help their infidelity! I
   call it by that name in plain English, for "modern thought" is not one
   whit better--and of the two evils I give infidelity the palm, for it is
   less deceptive. I beg the Lord to give back to the Churches such a love
   to His Truth that they may discern the spirits and cast out those which
   are not of God.

   I feel sometimes like John, of whom it is said that though the most
   loving of all spirits, yet he was the most decided of all men for the
   Truth of God. Once when he went to the bath and found that the heretic,
   Cerinthus, was there, he hurried out of the building and would not
   tarry in the same place with him! There are some with whom we should
   have no fellowship! No, not so much as to eat bread! And though this
   conduct looks stern and hard, it is after the mind of Christ, for the
   Apostle spoke by Inspiration when he said, "If we, or an angel from
   Heaven preach to you any other Gospel than that which you have
   received, let him be accursed." According to modern efficiency he ought
   to have said, "Let him be kindly spoken with in private, but pray make
   no stir! No doubt the thought was original and we must not question his
   liberty. Doubtless, he believes the same as we do, only there is some
   little difference as to terms."

   This is treason to Christ, treachery to the Truth of God and cruelty to
   souls! If we love our Lord we shall keep His Words and stand fast in
   the faith, coming out from among the false teachers! Nor is this
   inconsistent with charity, for the truest love to those who err is not
   to fraternize with them in their error, but to be faithful to Jesus in
   all things! The love of Jesus Christ creates in men a deep attachment
   to the Gospel, especially to the doctrines which cluster around the
   Person of our Lord. And I think more especially to that doctrine which
   is the cornerstone of all, namely, that Christ died in the place of
   men. He who touches the doctrine of Substitution, touches the apple of
   our eye! He who denies it, robs our soul of her only hope, for there we
   gather all our consolation for the present and our expectation for days
   to come. A great force, then, held the Apostle--that force was the love
   of Christ--and it worked in Him love to Christ in return!

   Now, this force acts proportionately in Believers. It acts in every
   Christian more or less, but it differs in degree. We are all of us,
   alive, but the vigor of life differs greatly in the consumptive and the
   athletic--and so the love of Jesus acts upon all regenerate men, but
   not to the same extent. When a man is perfectly swayed by the love of
   Christ, he will be a perfect Christian. When a man is growingly under
   its influence, he is a growing Christian. When a man is sincerely
   affected by the love of Christ, he is a sincere Christian. But he in
   whom the love of Christ has no power whatever is not a Christian at
   all. "I thought," says one, "that believing was the main point." True,
   but faith works by love and if your faith does not work by love it is
   not the faith which will save the soul.

   Love never fails to bloom where faith has taken root. Beloved, you will
   feel the power of the love of Christ in your soul in proportion to the
   following points. In proportion as you know it. Study, then, the love
   of Christ--search deep and learn its secrets. Angels desire to look
   into it. Observe its eternity--without beginning. Its
   immutability--without change. Its infinity--without measure. Its
   eternity--without end. Think much of the love of Christ, till you
   comprehend with all saints what are its breadths and lengths. And as
   you know it, you will begin to feel its power. Its power will also be
   in proportion to your sense of it. Do you feel the love of God shed
   abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit? Knowing is well, but enjoyment
   as the result of believing is better! Does it not sometimes force the
   tears from your eyes to think that Jesus loved you and gave Himself for
   you?

   On the other hand, does it not at times make you feel as if, like
   David, you could dance before the ark of the Lord, to think that the
   love of God should ever have been set on you--that Christ should die
   for you? Ah, think and think again--for you the bloody sweat, for you
   the crown of thorns, for you the nails, the spear, the wounds, the
   broken

   heart--all, all for love of you who were His enemy! In proportion as
   your heart is tender and is sensitive to this love, it will become a
   constraining influence in your whole life. The force of this influence
   will also depend very much upon the Divine Grace which dwells within
   you. You may measure your Grace by the power which the love of Christ
   has over you. Those who dwell near their Lord are so conscious of His
   power over them that the very glances of His eyes fill them with holy
   ardor. If you have much Grace you will be greatly moved by the love
   which gave you that Grace and made you wondrously sensitive to it. But
   he who has little Grace, as is the case with not a few, can read the
   story of the Cross without emotion, and can contemplate Jesus' death
   without feeling. God deliver us from a cold and hard marble heart!

   Character also has much to do with the measure in which we feel the
   constraint of Jesus' love. The more Christ-like the more
   Christ-constrained. You must become, dear Brothers and Sisters, by
   prayer through the Holy Spirit, to be like Jesus Christ. And when you
   do, His love will take fuller possession of you than it does at this
   moment and you will be more manifestly under its constraining power.
   Our last point upon this head is that wherever its energy is felt it
   will operate after its kind. Forces work according to their nature--the
   force of love creates love--and the love of Christ begets a kindred
   love. He who feels Christ's love acts as Christ acted. If you really
   feel the love of Christ in making a sacrifice of Himself you will make
   a sacrifice of yourself. "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because
   He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for
   the brethren."

   We shall, for our Lord's sake, count all things but dross for the
   excellency of His knowledge. O Soul, you will have no choice left after
   you have once known and chosen your Lord! If that road leads to wealth,
   but if it does not glorify Christ, you will at once say, "Farewell
   wealth." That road leads to honor--you will be famous if you will take
   that path. But if it will bring no glory to Christ, if you feel the
   power of His love in your soul, you will say, "Farewell honor! I will
   embrace shame for Christ, for my one thought is to sacrifice myself for
   Him who sacrificed Himself for me." If the love of Christ constrains
   you, it will make you love others, for His was love to others, love to
   those who could do Him no service, who deserved nothing at His hands.
   If the love of Christ constrains you, you will specially love those who
   have no apparent claim upon you and cannot justly expect anything from
   you, but on the contrary deserve your censure. You will say, "I love
   them because the love of Christ constrains me."

   Dirty little creatures in the gutter. Filthy women polluting the
   streets. Base men who come out of jail merely to repeat their
   crimes--these are the fallen humanities whom we learn to love when the
   love of Christ constrains us! I do not know how else we could care for
   some poor creatures, if it were not that Jesus teaches us to despise
   none and despair of none. Those ungrateful creatures, those malicious
   creatures, those abominably blasphemous and profane creatures whom you
   sometimes meet with and shrink from--you are to love them because
   Christ loved the very chief of sinners! His love to you must be
   reflected in your love to the lowest and vilest. He is your Sun--be you
   as the moon to the world's night.

   The love of Jesus Christ was a practical love. He did not love in
   thought, only, and in word, but in deed and in truth--and if the love
   of Christ constrains us--we shall throw our souls into the work and
   service of love. We shall be really at work for men, giving alms of our
   substance, enduring our measure of suffering and making it clear that
   our Christianity is not mere talk, but downright work! We shall be like
   the bullock of the burnt offering, laid upon the altar to be wholly
   consumed. We shall consider nothing but how we can most completely be
   eaten up with the zeal of God's House, how without the reserve of one
   single faculty we may be entirely consumed in the service of our Lord
   and Master. May the Lord bring us to this!

   II. THE CONSTRAINT OF WHICH WE HAVE SPOKEN WAS JUSTIFIED BY THE
   APOSTLE'S

   UNDERSTANDING. "The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus
   judge." Love is blind. A man may say that in the affairs of love he
   exercises a calm discretion, but I take leave to doubt it. In love to
   Christ, however, you may be carried right away and be as blind as you
   like and yet you shall act according to the most sound judgment. The
   Apostle says warmly, "The love of Christ constrains us," and yet he
   adds with all coolness, "because we thus judge." When understanding is
   the basis of affection, then a man's heart is fixed and his conduct
   becomes in a high degree exemplary. So it is here.

   There is a firm basis of judgment--the man has weighed and judged the
   matter as much as if the heart were out of the question--but the
   logical conclusion is one of all-absorbing emotion and mastering
   affection as much as if the understanding had been left out of the
   question. His judgment was as the bronze altar, cold and hard, but on
   it he laid the coals of burning affection, vehement enough in their
   flame to consume everything. So it ought to be with us. Religion

   should be with a man a matter of intellect as well as of affection--and
   his understanding should always be able to justify the strongest
   possible passion of his soul, as the Apostle says it did in the case of
   himself and his brethren.

   They had reasons for all that they did. For, first, he recognized
   Substitution--"We thus judge, that if One died for all." O Brothers and
   Sisters, this is the very sinew of Christian effort--Christ died in the
   sinner's place! Christ is the Surety, the Sacrifice, the Substitute for
   men! If you take the doctrine of vicarious Sacrifice out of the
   Christian religion I protest that nothing is left worth calling a
   revelation! It is the heart, the head, the soul, the essence of our
   holy faith-- that the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all and
   with His stripes we are healed! The Apostle firmly believed this to be
   a matter of fact and then, out of his belief, there grew an intense
   love to Jesus, as well there might. Did Jesus stand in my place? Oh,
   how I love Him! Did He die for me? Then His love has mastered me and
   will always hold me as its willing captive! O sacred Substitute, I am
   Yours and all that I have!

   In the next place, he recognized union to Christ, for, he said, "If One
   died for all, then the all died," for so it runs, that is to say, the
   all for whom Christ died, died in His death. His dying in their place
   was their dying! He dies for them, they die in Him. He rises, they rise
   in Him. He lives, they live in Him. Now if it is really so, that you
   and I who have believed in Christ are one with Christ and members of
   His body, that Truth of God may be stated coolly, but like the flint,
   it conceals a fire within it! For if we died in Jesus, we are dead to
   the world, to self--to everything but our Lord! O Holy Spirit, work in
   us this death even to the fullest! The Apostle recognizes the natural
   consequence of union with the dying Lord and resolves to carry it out.

   Brothers and Sisters, when Adam sinned, we sinned. And we have felt the
   result of that fact--we were constituted sinners by the act of our
   first representative and every day we see it to be so. Every little
   child that is carried to the grave bears witness that death passes upon
   all men, for that all have sinned in Adam, even though they have not
   personally sinned after the similitude of his transgression. Now, just
   as our sin in Adam effectively operates upon us for evil, so must our
   death with Christ effectively operate upon our lives for good. It ought
   to do so. How can I live for myself? I died more than 18 centuries ago!
   I died and was buried! How can I live to the world? Eighteen hundred
   years ago and more the world hung me up as a malefactor--yes, and in my
   heart of hearts I have also crucified the world--and regard it as a
   dead malefactor. How shall I fall in love with a crucified world, or
   follow after its delights? We thus died with Christ.

   "Now," says the Apostle, "the love of Christ constrains us; because we
   thus judge, that if One died for all, then the all died." All who were
   in Christ, for whom He died, died when He died. And what follows from
   it but that they should not live unto themselves, but unto Him that
   died for them and rose again? We are one with Christ and what He did
   for us we did in Him and, therefore, we are dead because He died!
   Therefore we ought no longer to live in the old selfish way, but should
   live only to the Lord. This is the basis upon which the intellect rests
   and then the affections yield themselves to the sacred force of Jesus'
   dying love.

   I close with the following reflections, putting them very briefly. The
   first reflection is--how different is the inference of the Apostle from
   that of many professors. They say, "If Christ died once for all and so
   finished the work of my salvation, then I am saved and may sit down in
   comfort and enjoy myself, for there is no need for effort or thought."
   Ah, what a mercy to feel that you are saved and then to go to sleep in
   the corner of your pew! A converted man and, therefore, curled up upon
   the bed of sloth! A pretty sight, surely, but a very common one! Such
   people have but little or no feeling for others who remain unconverted.
   "The Lord will save His own," they say and they little care whether He
   does so or not. They appear to be dreadfully afraid of doing God's
   work, though there is not the slightest need for such a fear, since
   they will not even do their own work!

   These are presumptuous persons, strangers to the Grace of God, who know
   not that the main part of salvation lies in our being saved from
   selfishness and hardness of heart! It is the devil's inference that
   because Christ did so much for me I am now to do nothing for Him! I
   must even beg the devil's pardon, for I scarcely think that even he is
   base enough to draw such an inference from the Grace of God. Assuredly
   he has never been in a position to attempt so detestable a crime. It is
   to the last degree unutterably contemptible that a man who is indebted
   to the Lord Jesus Christ for so much should then make the only
   consequence of his indebtedness to be a selfish indolence! Never will a
   true child of God say, "Soul, take your ease. You are all
   right--nothing else matters!"

   Oh no! "The love of Christ constrains us." How much more ennobling,
   again, is such conduct as that of the Apostle than that of many
   professed Christians? I am not about to judge anyone, but I would beg
   you to judge yourselves. There

   are some and I would try to hope that they may be Christians--the Lord
   knows them that are His--who give to the cause of God, who serve God,
   after a fashion. But still, the main thought of their life is not
   Christ nor His service, but the gaining of wealth! That is their chief
   objective and towards it all their faculties are bent. There are other
   Church members--God forbid we should judge them--whose great thought is
   success in their profession. I am not condemning their having such a
   thought, but the chief ambition of the Apostle and of those like he was
   not this, but something higher! The chief aim of all of us should be
   nothing of self, but serving Christ! We are to be dead to everything
   but our Lord's Glory, living with this mark before us--this prize to be
   strained after--that Christ shall be glorified in our mortal bodies!

   In our business, in our studies, in everything, our slogan must be,
   Christ, Christ, Christ! Is it not a far more noble thing for a man to
   have lived wholly unto Christ than for mammon, or honor, or for himself
   in any shape or form? I speak as to wise men--judge what I say! Do you
   not think, also, that such a pursuit as this is much more peace-giving
   to the spirit? People will judge our conduct and they are sure to judge
   as severely as they can. If they see us zealous and self-denying they
   will say of us, "Why, the man is beside himself." This will not matter
   much to us if we can reply, "It is for God." Or if they say, "Oh, you
   old sober sides, how grave you are," we shall not be offended if we can
   reply, "Ah, but it is for the good of others that I am sober."

   You will be very little distressed by sharp criticisms if you know that
   your motive is wholly unselfish. If you live for Christ and for Christ,
   alone, all the carping of men or devils will never cast you down. Do
   you not think that a life spent for Jesus only is far more worth
   looking back upon at the last than any other? If you call yourselves
   Christians, how will you judge a life spent in making money? It cannot
   be very much longer before you must gather up your feet in the bed and
   resign your soul to God. Now, suppose yourself sitting in your chamber
   all alone, making out the final balance-sheet of your stewardship--how
   will it look if you have to confess, "I have been a Christian
   professor. My conduct has been outwardly decent and respectable, but my
   chief purpose was not my Master's Glory. I have lived with the view of
   scraping together so many thousands and I have done it."

   Would you like to fall asleep and die with that as the consummation of
   your life? Or shall it be, "I have lived to hold up my head in society
   and pay my way and leave a little for my family"? Will that satisfy you
   as your last reflection? Brothers and Sisters, we are not saved by our
   works, but I am speaking, now, upon the consolation which a man can
   derive from looking back upon his life. Suppose he shall have felt the
   power of my text and shall be able to say, "I have been enabled, by the
   Grace of God, to which I give all the glory, to consecrate my entire
   being to the entire glorification of my Lord and Master. And whatever
   my mistakes, and they are many--and my wanderings and failures, and
   they are countless--yet the love of Christ has constrained me, for I
   judged myself to have died in Him, and I have lived to Him. I have
   fought a good fight. I have kept the faith"?

   Why, I think it were worth while so to die! To be constrained by the
   love of Christ creates an heroic life, exalted, illustrious--no, I must
   come down from such lofty words--it is such a life as every Christian
   ought to live! It is such a life as every Christian must live if he is
   really constrained by the love of Christ, for the text does not say the
   love of Christ ought to constrain us--it declares that it does
   constrain us. Brothers and Sisters, if it does not constrain you, judge
   yourselves that you be not judged and found wanting at the last! God
   grant we may feel the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
   Spirit. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Where True Prayer is Found

   (No. 1412)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 5, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore has Your servant found in his heart to pray this prayer to
   You." 2 Samuel 7:27.

   DAVID had first found it in his heart to build a house for God. Sitting
   in his house of cedar, he resolved that the Ark of God should no longer
   abide under curtains, but should be more suitably housed. The Lord,
   however, did not design that David should build His Temple, though He
   accepted his pious intentions and declared that it was well that it was
   in his heart. From which we may learn that our intentions to serve the
   Lord in a certain manner may be thoroughly good and acceptable and yet
   we may not be permitted to carry them out. We may have the will but not
   the power--the aspiration but not the qualification. We may have to
   stand aside and see another do the task which we had chosen for
   ourselves--and yet we may be none the less pleasing to the Lord who, in
   His great love, accepts the will for the deed.

   It is a holy self-denial which in such cases rejoices to see the Lord
   glorified by others and at the Captain's bidding cheerfully stands back
   in the rear when zeal had urged it to rush to the front. It is as true
   service not to do as to do when the Lord's Word prescribes it. The
   reason why David was not to build the house is not stated here, but you
   will find it in 1 Chronicles 28:2, 3. "Then David the king stood up
   upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my brethren, and my people: for me, I
   had in my heart to build an house of rest for the Ark of the Covenant
   of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had made ready for
   the building: but God said unto me, You shall not build an house for My
   name, because you have been a man of war, and have shed blood."

   David's wars had been necessary and justifiable and by them the people
   of the Lord had been delivered. But the Ever Merciful One did not
   delight in them and would not use for building His Temple an instrument
   which had been stained with blood. The great Prince of Peace would not
   have a warrior's hand to pile the palace of His worship, choosing
   rather that a man whose mind had exercised itself in quieter pursuits
   should be the founder of the place of rest for the Ark of His Covenant
   of Peace. He is not so short of instruments as to use a sword for a
   trowel, or a spear for a measuring rod, especially when these have been
   dyed in the blood of His creatures.

   In your own household affairs you do not use the same implement or
   utensil for opposite purposes. If David, therefore, is used to smite
   Philistines, he is not to be employed in erecting a Temple. Solomon,
   his son, a man of peace, is called to do that holy work. I have
   sometimes trembled on behalf of our own nation and especially just now,
   lest its warlike propensities should disqualify it for what has, up to
   now, appeared its highest destiny. If it should resolve to pick a
   quarrel and wantonly plunge itself into a bloody war, it may come to
   pass that our God may judge it to be unfit for the accomplishment of
   His purposes of Grace. Even if it were granted that the war would be
   most just and right, yet should it be undertaken with solemn
   reluctance, lest it should deprive our nation of the capacity to be the
   preacher of righteousness and the herald of the Cross.

   With what face can we preach the Gospel of Peace among the heathen if
   we, ourselves, provoke war? Little wonder would it be if the Lord
   should say of the English people, "You shall not convert the nations
   nor build up a Church for My name, because you delight in war and have
   needlessly shed blood." God grant that all things may be so ordered
   according to His infinite wisdom that this land may be the true Solomon
   among the nations and build a Temple for God which shall enclose the
   whole earth, wherein every language and every nation shall be heard
   praising and magnifying the Lord! Labor, I pray you, O you servants of
   the loving Savior, to promote peace if the temporary rage of the
   multitude may be appeased without carnage!

   To return to personal cases--it may happen to any one of you to be
   called to pass through business or domestic trials in which you may be
   altogether blameless--and yet you may, at the close of them, find
   yourself disqualified for certain prominent positions of usefulness, at
   least for a time. Therefore you may not hope to accomplish certain high
   and noble

   purposes which once were laid upon your heart. God may have to say to
   you afterwards, "Your use lies elsewhere. I will not employ you for
   this, but, still, I accept you and it was well that it was in your
   heart." And if He should so see fit, do not repine, but, like David, do
   all you can towards the work that the man who is to perform it may find
   materials ready to his hand. David gathered much of the treasure to
   meet the cost and did it, none the less earnestly, even though another
   name would outshine his own in connection with the Temple.

   Beloved Friends, there is a very sweet consolation in my text for those
   who may be placed in circumstances similar to those of David. If by any
   means a man of God becomes disqualified for any form of desirable
   service which was upon his heart, yet nothing can disqualify him from
   prayer. If he finds it in his heart to pray, he may boldly draw near to
   God through the sacrifice of Christ. He may still use the way of access
   which the dying body of our Lord has opened! And he may win his suit at
   the Throne of Grace. It was well for David that when the building of
   the Temple was in his heart it could not be, yet when a prayer was in
   his heart it might be presented with the certainty of acceptance! If
   you, my Brother or my Sister, are denied the privilege of doing what
   your heart is set upon, be not angry with God, but set your heart
   towards Him in prayer. Ask what you will and He will give you the
   desire of your heart.

   By my text three thoughts are suggested. The first is it is well to
   find prayer in our heart--"therefore has Your servant found in his
   heart to pray this prayer to You." Secondly, it is pleasant to be able
   to see how the prayer came there--I shall trace the rise and progress
   of the prayer of David. And, thirdly, it is most profitable to use a
   prayer when we find it in our heart, for David solemnly prayed the
   prayer which he discovered in his soul.

   I. First, then, IT IS WELL TO FIND PRAYER IN OUR HEARTS. In no other
   place can true prayer be found. Prayer with the lips, prayer with
   bended knee and uplifted hand is worth nothing if the heart is absent.
   Prayer as a mere matter of form and routine is but the husk--heart-work
   is the kernel! Words are the oyster shell--the desire of the heart is
   the pearl. Do not imagine that the Lord looks down with any pleasure
   upon the tens of thousands of forms of prayer, whether liturgical or
   extempore, which are presented to Him without heart--such forms rather
   weary Him than worship Him! They are not adoration, but provocation.
   The God of Truth can never accept an untruthful devotion. Our prayers
   must flow from our heart or they will never reach the heart of God.

   But prayer is not found in every man's heart. Alas, many of our fellow
   men never pray! And many who think they pray are yet strangers to that
   sacred exercise. If an angel were now suddenly to announce that he
   would mark every man and woman here who has never prayed, I fear that
   many of you would be in a great fright for fear the mark should be on
   you! If suddenly the complexion could change and each prayerless
   person's face should gather blackness, I wonder how many there would be
   among us whom we should gaze upon with intense surprise! There shall be
   no such Cain-like mark set upon any of you, but will you set some sort
   of seal upon your own conscience if you are compelled to confess, "I am
   one of those who have never prayed"?

   What an acknowledgment for a rational being to make! Twenty years of
   life without a prayer to the Creator of its being! Be astonished, O
   heavens, and amazed O earth! Perhaps you deny that you are guilty, for
   you have always said a prayer and would not have gone to sleep at night
   if you had not done so. Then I pray you remember that you may have
   repeated holy words from your youth up and yet may have never prayed a
   prayer with your heart! To pray as the Holy Spirit teaches is a very
   different thing from the repetition of the choicest words that the best
   of writers may have composed, or the utterance of random words without
   thought. Have we prayed with our hearts or not? Remember, a prayerless
   soul is a Christless soul--and a Christless soul is a lost soul--and
   will soon be cast away forever!

   The verses were meant for children, but I cannot help quoting them
   here, for they, in simple language, express my meaning--

   "I often say my prayers

   But do I ever pray?

   And do the wishes of my heart

   Go with the words I say? I may as well kneel down And worship gods of
   stone, As offer to the living God A prayer of words alone. For words
   without the heart

   The Lord will never hear. Nor will He to those lips attend Whose
   prayers are not sincere." Further, let me observe that the spirit of
   prayer, though it is always present in every regenerated heart, is not
   always alike active. It is not, perhaps, today nor tomorrow that every
   Christian will be able to say, "I find in my heart to pray this one
   particular prayer to God." It may for the present be beyond our
   standard of Grace and we may therefore be unable to grasp the blessing.
   In some respects we are not masters of our supplications. You cannot
   always pray the prayer of faith in reference to any one thing--that
   prayer is often the distinct gift of God for an occasion. Others may
   ask your prayers and, sometimes, you may plead very prevalently for
   them, but at another time that power is absent. You may, at that time,
   feel no liberty to offer a certain petition, but on the contrary feel
   held back in the matter. Well, be guided by this inward direction and
   follow, rather than press forward, in such a case.

   There are times with us when we find it in our heart to pray a prayer
   and then we do so with eagerness and assurance. But we cannot command
   such seasons at our pleasure. How freely, then, does prayer come from
   us as the leaping water from the fountain? There is no need to say, "I
   long to pray," we do pray, we cannot help praying, we have become a
   mass of prayer! We are walking the streets and cannot pray aloud, but
   our heart pleads as fast as it beats! We enter our house and attend to
   family business and, still, the heart keeps pleading as constantly as
   the lungs are heaving! We go to bed and our last thought is
   supplication. If we wake in the night, our soul is still making
   intercession before God and so it continues while the visitation
   remains. O that it were always so!

   Now it is a very happy thing when the Christian finds it in his heart
   to pray with marked and special fervor unto God. Then he puts no
   pressure upon himself, nor thinks of supplication as a matter of
   duty--it has become a pleasant necessity, a sacred passion of the
   inward life--a holy breathing of the soul not to be restrained. So it
   should always be, but, alas, most of us have to mourn that in the
   matter of prayer we are the subjects of many changeful moods. O that we
   had learned more perfectly how to be praying always in the Holy Spirit!
   The presence of living prayer in the heart indicates seven things about
   that heart upon which we will speak with great brevity. First, prayer
   in the heart proves that the heart is renewed. True prayer dwells not
   in a dead, corrupt, stony heart!

   If you find in your heart to pray a prayer unto God you have assuredly
   been born again! "Behold he prays," is one of the first and one of the
   surest marks of the new birth. The faintest movement of the pulse
   proves that life still remains in a drowning man and though prayer is
   weak, feeble, fragmentary, yet if it is there at all the soul lives
   unto God! Though to your apprehension your prayer is so poor and broken
   and unworthy that it cannot be accepted, yet the desire of the soul
   towards God is an index of spiritual life most hopeful and instructive.
   Have hope, Brothers and Sisters, as long as you can pray, for none who
   pray believingly, in the name of Jesus, can ever be cast into Hell! He,
   whom faith in Jesus has taught to cry to God, shall never hear Him say,
   "Depart, you cursed," for has not the Lord said, "Whoever calls upon
   the name of the Lord shall be saved"? Be glad, therefore, if you find
   it in your heart to pray, for it proves that the root of the matter is
   in you.

   To find prayer in the heart proves, next, a reconciled heart. David
   might have been upset with God and have said, "If I cannot build a
   Temple I will do nothing, for I have set my heart upon it and I have
   already laid up treasure for it. It is a laudable project and it has
   had the sanction of the Prophet and I am hardly used to having my
   designs rejected." There are some professors who would do a great thing
   if they might, but if they are not permitted to act a shining part in
   it, they sulk and get angry with their God. David, when his proposal
   was set aside, found it in his heart not to murmur, but to pray! Job
   asks concerning the hypocrite, "Will he always call upon God?" and he
   meant to say that only true and loyal hearts will continue to pray when
   things go hard with them. Let this be a test for you and for me. Can
   you pray, Brothers and Sisters, now that the delight of your eyes has
   been cut off by death? Can you pray now that your substance is
   diminished and your bodily health is failing? Then I take it as a sign
   that you have submitted yourself unto God and are at peace with Him,
   being reconciled to Him by His Grace. To cease from complaining and to
   give the heart to prayer is the sign of a soul renewed and reconciled.

   Prayer is also the index of a spiritual heart. David sat in his house
   of cedar--it was costly and carved with great art--but it did not draw
   his mind away from God. It has too often happened that prospering
   professors have become proud professors and have forgotten God. When
   they were poor they associated with Christian Brethren whom they felt

   pleasure in recognizing. But now that they have gotten a large estate
   they no longer know the poor people of God and they spend their
   Sabbaths where they can meet with a little "society," and move among
   their "equals," as they call them--they, being so very much superior to
   the holy men and women whom once they held in honor! Such folks become
   high and mighty like Nebuchadnezzar--and as they walk their grounds or
   sit in their painted chambers they say, "Behold this great Babylon
   which I have built." A "self-made man," risen from the ranks, comes to
   have a name like the name of the great men that are upon the face of
   the earth--is not this something?

   Oftentimes has it happened that these things have turned away the
   hearts of professors from the God who loaded them with benefits. It was
   not so with David! In his cedar palace he found it in his heart to
   pray. The more he had, the more he loved his God. The more he received,
   the more he desired to give thanks to the Lord for his benefits.
   Plants, when they are root-bound in their pots, become poor weak things
   and so do men's hearts when they are earth-bound, doting upon their
   riches! As a traveler finds it difficult to move when his feet stick in
   the mud of a miry way, so do some men make small progress heavenward
   because they are hindered by their own wealth. Happy is that man who
   has riches but does not suffer riches to have him--who uses wealth and
   does not abuse it by idolizing it--but seasons all with the Word of God
   and prayer.

   Prayer in the heart also proves an enlightened heart. A man who does
   not pray is in the dark. He knows not his own needs, otherwise he would
   make supplication. If he understood his own danger--the temptations
   which surround him-- and the corruptions which are within him, he would
   be incessantly in prayer! He who has left off praying has surely lost
   his wits. If the Holy Spirit has taught us anything, He has taught us
   this--we must pray without ceasing. David prayed, too, as an
   enlightened man because he felt that devotion was due to God. Since the
   Lord had done so much for him, he must worship and adore. "Therefore
   has Your servant," he says, "found in his heart to pray this prayer to
   You." He who is well taught by the Spirit of God knows his position to
   be that of a humble dependent who is bound to reverence his God with
   all his heart and, therefore, he daily sings, "Your vows are upon me, O
   God, I will render praise unto You."

   The heart in which prayer is found constantly welling up is, also, a
   lively heart. We do not all possess lively hearts, nor do we all keep
   them when we get them. Some men appear to have fatty degeneration of
   the heart after a spiritual manner since their heart acts very feebly
   in prayer. They are lethargic and lifeless in devotion. Do we not all
   find ourselves, at times, in a cold state in reference to prayer?
   Brothers and Sisters, I believe that when we cannot pray, it is time
   that we prayed more than ever. And if you answer, "But how can that
   be?" I would say--pray to pray, pray for prayer--pray for the spirit of
   supplication. Do not be content to say, "I would pray if I could." No,
   but if you cannot pray, pray till you can! He who can row down stream
   with a flowing tide and a fair wind is but a poor oarsman compared with
   the man who can pull against wind and tide and still make headway. This
   our soul must endeavor to do.

   But, Beloved, how wonderful it is when you can pray and cannot
   stop--when your heart pours forth devotion as the roses shed their
   perfume, or the sun gives his light! I love to feel my soul on the wing
   like the birds in spring, which are always singing and flitting from
   bough to bough, full of life and vigor. Oh to have the soul mounting on
   eagle's wings and no longer groping in the earth like a mole! To be
   instant, constant, eager at prayer--this is health, vigor and delight!
   To feel the heart in prayer like the chariots of Amminadib outstripping
   the wind--this is a joy worth worlds! Beloved, this finding in the
   heart to pray proves, in the sixth place, that the heart is in
   communion with God, for what is prayer but the breath of God in man
   returning from where it came?

   Prayer is a telephone by which God speaks in man. His Heaven is far
   away but His voice sounds in our soul! Prayer is a phonograph--God
   speaks into our soul and then our soul speaks out, again, what the Lord
   has spoken! Conversation must always be two-sided. God speaks to us in
   this Book--we must reply to Him in prayer and praise. If you do not
   pray, my Brothers and Sisters, why, then, you have shut the gates of
   Heaven against yourself and there is neither coming in nor going out
   between you and your Lord! Prayer keeps up a heavenly commerce
   acceptable to God and enriching to your own souls. Do you find yourself
   mightily moved to pray? Then the Lord is very near to you! The Beloved
   has come into His garden to eat His pleasant fruits--take care to feast
   Him with your love!

   Prayer in the heart is the echo of the footsteps of the Bridegroom of
   our souls who is seeking communion with us! Open wide the doors of your
   soul and let Him in and then detain Him and constrain Him, saying,
   "Abide with us." When we find prayer in the heart, we may know that our
   heart is accepted of God and the prayer is, too. Brothers and Sisters,
   when a desire comes to you again and again and again, take it as a
   favorable omen regarding your supplication. If the

   Lord should especially prompt you to any one desire--laying your child,
   perhaps, more than usual upon your heart, or causing the name of a
   friend constantly to occur to you so that you find yourself frequently
   praying for him--take this as a token from the Lord that He would have
   you turn your thoughts in that direction and that a blessing is in
   store for you. If a certain Church which seems to need revival is laid
   upon your soul, or a township or a district, mark well the fact.

   Suppose you find your heart going out towards a special country or
   city, bearing your mind there and working to pray with tears and
   entreaties--grieving because of its sin and entreating that God would
   remember and forgive--be sure that this is a prophecy of good to that
   place and redouble your petitions! When the gale blows, the navigator
   spreads his sails to catch the wind! And when the Spirit, who blows
   where He wills, comes upon you, influencing you to this or that, be
   sure to spread all sails! Reckon that the inclination to pray is the
   foretaste of the coming blessing! As coming events cast their shadows
   before them, your desire is the shadow of the mercy which God is
   sending down to you. He moves you to pray for it because He, Himself,
   is about to give it! Thus I have shown that it is well when we find it
   in our hearts to pray a prayer, for it proves the heart to be, in many
   respects, in a healthy condition.

   II. Now, secondly, IT IS PLEASANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE HOW THE PRAYER CAME
   INTO THE HEART. "I

   find it in my heart," says David. Well, David, how did it come there? I
   answer as he did not, that any true prayer which is found in the human
   heart comes there by the Holy Spirit! If there is anything excellent in
   us, even if it is only a desire to pray acceptably, it is of the Holy
   Spirit's creation and unto Him be all the praise! But the modus
   operandi, the way in which the Spirit operates upon us is somewhat in
   this fashion.

   First of all, He puts the promise into the Word of God. David tells us
   very plainly that it was because God had revealed such-and-such
   promises that, therefore, he says, "Has Your servant found in his heart
   to pray this prayer unto You." The Lord gives the promise and that
   becomes the parent of our prayer. For first there are some mercies we
   should never have thought of praying for if He had not promised them.
   They would never have suggested themselves to us and we would not have
   known our need of them unless the supply had taught us and the promise
   of God, itself, incited us to the desire. There are other mercies for
   which we should not have dared to pray if the promise had not
   encouraged us.

   We could not have had the heart to ask such great things if the Lord
   had not promised them to us. So that the Word of God suggests the
   desire and then encourages us to hope that the desire will certainly be
   fulfilled. Moreover when promise comes very close home to a man, as it
   did to David when it was spoken personally to him by the Prophet, it
   vivifies the soul, causes the mind to realize the blessing and both
   intensifies desire and gives grasp and grip to faith. We should not
   have felt the gift to be real had it not been placed before us in plain
   words. Brothers and Sisters, this is how our prayers come into our
   heart!

   The Word of God suggests them, encourages us to seek them and then
   gives us a realizing power so that we plead with eagerness and believe
   with force. In saying, "therefore," David means not only that the Word
   of God had put the prayer into his mind but that his whole meditation
   had led him to the finding of this prayer in his heart. Had he not been
   sitting before the Lord in quiet thought, he might never have noticed
   the work of the Spirit upon his soul. But inward searching brought the
   right prayer to light. Will you kindly look through the chapter while I
   very briefly sum up its contents and show that each item excited David
   to pray? When the king sat before the Lord and spoke out his heart, his
   first word was about the Lord's past goodness to him and his own
   insignificance--"Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that You
   have brought me here?"

   Brethren, who are we that God should have been so good to us? But
   inasmuch as His Grace to us has been amazing, do we not find it in our
   heart to pray a prayer to Him that He would bless us still more? Can
   you not enquire of the Lord in the words of the hymn which we sang just
   now--

   "After so much mercy past Can You let me sink at last?"

   He has been mindful of us, He will bless us. Let our memory of His past
   loving kindness excite us to prayer for present and future favors.
   David then passed on to speak of the greatness of the promise--"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." We also have
   received exceedingly great and precious promises. And since God has
   promised so much, will we not be much in prayer? Shall He be large in
   promising and shall we be narrow in asking? Shall He stand before us
   and say, "Whatever you shall ask in

   prayer, believing, you shall receive," and will we be content with
   slender, starved petitions? Beggars seldom need pressing to beg and
   when a promise is given them, they usually put the widest possible
   construction upon it and urge it with great zeal! Will it not be well
   to take a leaf out of their book? Come, Brothers and Sisters, the
   argument is strong with those who have spiritual sense--the greatness
   of the promise encourages us to find many a prayer in our heart!

   Then he speaks of the surprising "manner" of God. "Is this the manner
   of man, O Lord God?" He saw that God acted far more graciously than the
   most generous human beings act towards their fellows. He perceived that
   "as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God's ways
   above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts," and therefore he
   opened his mouth wide in prayer. Was he not right in doing so? And are
   we right, my Brothers and Sisters, if we do not imitate his example? We
   are advised by the wise man not to go into our brother's house in the
   day of our calamity. And the same wisdom would move us not to ask too
   much from friends and neighbors. But no such prudence is necessary
   towards our Friend above! To Him we may come at all hours and to Him we
   may plead the largest requests!

   Since the Lord deals not as men deal, but gives liberally and upbraids
   not. Since He opens the windows of the treasury of Heaven and is
   pleased to make no stint whatever in the showers of His liberality, let
   us wait upon Him continually. His unspeakable love should encourage us
   to abound in prayer. Then the king goes on to speak of God's free
   Grace, which was another argument to pray. "For Your Word's sake, and
   according to Your own heart, have You done all these great things to
   make Your servant know them." The Lord had entered into covenant with
   him, not because David had merited so great an honor, but entirely for
   His own mercy's sake. David recognizes the freeness and Sovereignty of
   the Grace and seems to say, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in
   Your sight. If You have loved me so, then am I bold to ask great things
   of You. If You wait not for the merit of man, nor for human merit, then
   will I ask You still further to bless me, unworthy though I am, to the
   praise of the glory of Your name."

   Pray mightily, my Brothers and Sisters, since God sits on a Throne of
   Grace! When the choicest treasures are to be had for the asking, who
   can refuse to pray? Then He proceeded to mention the greatness of God,
   "Why You are great, O Lord God: for there is none like You, neither is
   there any God beside You." Surely, to a great God we should bring great
   prayers! We dishonor Him by the fewness of our petitions and the
   littleness of our desires. My Soul, enlarge your desires! Be hungry, be
   thirsty, be greedy after Divine Grace, for whatever you desire you
   shall have, provided it is, indeed, for your good. Your desire to
   obtain shall be the test of your capacity to receive! Brethren, we have
   not because we ask not, or because we ask amiss. "Up to now have you
   asked nothing in My name," said the Lord Jesus to His disciples.

   And He might say the same to us, for all we have ever asked comes to
   next to nothing compared with what He is prepared to give, compared
   with what He will give when once He has tutored us into something like
   largeness of heart in prayer like that of Solomon, of whom we read,
   "God gave him largeness of heart even as the sand which is on the sea
   shore." We need to be delivered from narrow conceptions of God and
   limited desires in prayer, that we may ask of infinity with suitable
   capacity of soul, and so may receive Grace upon Grace and be filled
   with all the fullness of God! David closed his meditation by speaking
   of God's love to His people, saying, "And what one nation in the earth
   is like Your people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a
   people to Himself, and to make Him a name, and to do for You great
   things and terrible, for Your land, before Your people, which You
   redeemed to You from Egypt, from the nations and their gods? For You
   have confirmed to Yourself Your people Israel to be a people unto You
   forever: and You, Lord, are become their God."

   Well, since the Lord loves His people so intensely, we may well be
   encouraged to ask great things for ourselves and especially to seek
   great things for the Church. We are no strangers to God--His chosen are
   neither aliens nor foreigners--they are His children, dear to His
   heart! And if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our
   children, how much more sure is it that our heavenly Father will give
   good gifts to them that ask Him? When you pray for Zion, plead for
   great prosperity and speak with boldness, for you are asking blessings
   upon those whom God delights to bless, asking prosperity for that
   Church which is as the apple of His eye!

   I will sum up this point as to the pleasure of seeing how prayer comes
   to be in our heart, by briefly tracing the line of beauty along which
   it runs. First of all the thought and purpose of blessing arises in the
   heart of God--David perceived that to be the case, for in the 21st
   verse he says, "For Your Word's sake, and according to Your own heart,
   have You done all these great things." Prayer owes its origin to the
   heart of God! The next stage is reached when it is revealed by
   Inspiration--the Lord sent Nathan to tell David of His gracious intent
   towards him. The thought has passed, you see,

   from God's secret purpose into God's revealed Word, and now it filters
   into the heart of David and David sends it back to God in prayer!
   Prayer, like our Lord Jesus, comes forth from God and returns to God!
   That is the pedigree and history of all true supplication. It is like
   the mist which you see in the early morning, rising from the plains
   towards Heaven in the form of clouds. It is like incense from an altar.

   How did it get there? First of all, the moisture was in the heavens, in
   the secret treasuries of God. Then came a day when it fell in drops of
   rain and did not return void, but watered the earth. Afterwards, when
   the blessed sun shone forth, it steamed up again, to return to the
   place from where it came. The clouds are like the Divine Decree--who
   shall enter into the secret place where Jehovah hides His purposes? The
   rain is like the Word of God with its sparkling drops of precious
   promises--the outcome of the mysterious purposes of God. These revealed
   blessings we see standing in pools in the Scriptures. Turn to the Book
   or listen to the Lord's servants whom He helps to speak and you shall
   hear a sound of abundance of rain!

   This rain waters the soul of man and when the warm love of God comes
   shining on the saturated heart it rises up in earnest petitions. Prayer
   is never lost, for though the mist which rises in yonder valley may
   never fall again into the same place, it drops somewhere! And so, true
   prayer, though it comes not back into the offerer's own bosom, is
   fruitful in good in some way or other. The result of honest hearty
   prayer may not be distinctly this or that according to your mind or
   mine, but it is always good. Supplication is never wasted, it is
   preserved in the Divine reservoir and in time its influence visits the
   earth and waters it with "the river of God, which is full of water."

   When you find a rare flower by the roadside and wonder how it came
   there, for it is no indigenous weed but a fair stranger from another
   clime, it is pleasant to trace out its way to the place it beautifies.
   And even so, when you find a prayer in your heart, it is gladsome to
   see how it comes forth from the heart of God, by the Word of God, to
   blossom in the garden ofyour soul!

   III. In the third place IT IS VERY PROFITABLE TO USE A PRAYER WHEN WE
   FIND IT IN OUR HEART.

   Notice the phraseology of my text. He says, "Your servant has found in
   his heart to pray this prayer unto You." Not to say this prayer, but to
   pray this prayer. There is great force in the expression. Some prayers
   are never prayed, but are like arrows which are never shot from the
   bow. Scarcely may I call them prayers, for they are such as to form,
   matter and verbiage, but they are said, not prayed. The praying of
   prayer is the main matter. Sometimes, Beloved, we may have a prayer in
   our hearts and may neglect the voice of the Lord within our soul--and
   if so, we are great losers.

   What does praying a prayer mean? It means, first, that you present it
   to God with fervency. Pray as if you meant it. Throw your whole soul
   into the petition. Entreat the Lord with tears and cries. If you do not
   prevail at first, yet come to Him importunately again and again with
   the resolve that since He has written the prayer in your heart, you
   will not take "no" for an answer. Heat your prayers red hot! In naval
   warfare, in the old days, our men of war fired red hot shot--try that
   system, for nothing is so powerful in prayer as fervency and
   importunity. Pray spiritually, also, for the text says, "I have found
   it in my heart to pray this prayer to Fou."

   It is of no use pray to yourself or to the four walls of your room.
   Some persons even pray to those who are around them, like the preacher
   of whose prayer the remark was made that, "it was one of the finest
   prayers that ever was presented to a Boston audience." I am afraid many
   prayers are presented to audiences rather than to God. This should not
   be. Moreover, when you find a prayer in your heart, do not talk it over
   nor say to another, "I feel such-and-such a desire"--but go and pour it
   out before God! Speak it into the Divine ear! Realize that God is there
   as distinctly as if you could see Him, for that is the way to make a
   proper use of the prayer which is in your heart.

   Pray with specialty. The text indicates that--"I have found it in my
   heart to pray this prayer." Know what you pray. Prayer is not putting
   your hand into a bag and pulling out what comes first. Oh, no! There
   must be definite desires and specific requests. Think carefully about
   it and ask for what you need and for nothing else but what you need.
   Pray this prayer. David had a promise about his house and his prayer
   was about his house--that God would bless and establish it. Much of
   what we think to be prayer is really playing at praying. The archers in
   the English armies of old, with their arrows a cloth-yard long, when
   they met the foe, took steady aim and they sorely galled the foe! Give
   your little boy his bow and arrow and what does he do? He shoots at
   random and sends his arrows all over the place--he plays at archery.

   A good deal of praying is of that sort. There is no steadily taking aim
   at the white and drawing the bow with strength--and watching the arrow
   with anxiety. Lord, teach us to pray! We ought to pray, too, dear
   Friends, when we find prayer in our hearts, with much boldness. He
   says, "I found in my heart to pray," that is, he had the heart to pray,
   the courage to pray! The promise influenced him to be bold with God.
   Some men fail in reverence for God, but far more fail in holy boldness
   towards God! Men who are mighty for God are generally famous for
   courage with Him. Look at Luther! They say it was wonderful to hear him
   preach, but a hundred times more so to hear him pray! There was an
   awful reverence about that heroic man, but there was also such a
   childlike simplicity of daring that he seemed as though he did really
   lay hold of God.

   That is the way--try it in your chamber this afternoon. Be bold with
   God! Find it in your heart to pray this prayer unto Him. And do so
   promptly. Let promptness mark your prayer as it did that of David. He
   did not wait a week or two after he had obtained the promise--he went
   straight away and sat down before the Lord and began to plead the
   Divine Word. He said, "Do as You have said." He found the petition in
   his heart and before it could lose its way, again, he brought it before
   God! He was studying his soul and as he observed its movements, he saw
   a prayer lift up its head. "Ah," he said, "I will seize it." And he
   held it fast and presented it before God--and so obtained a blessing. I
   suggest, dear Friends, to those whose hearts feel touched in the
   matter, that we should today make special supplication to God as to the
   peace of nations, now so miserably endangered.

   You will meet as teachers in the school. You will meet in the classes.
   And others of you will be at home in meditation this afternoon. But you
   can all, in various ways, help in the common intercession. At this
   moment it is upon my heart very heavily to pray this prayer to God and
   I wish you would all make a point of joining in it--"Send us peace in
   our days, good Lord." Not as politicians, but as followers of Christ we
   are bound to entreat our Lord to prevent the cruel war which is now
   threatened. A curse will surely fall upon all who are causing the
   strife, but blessed are the peacemakers! I believe that if all
   Christians would join in pleading with God, they would do much more
   than all the public meetings and all the petitions to the Houses of
   Parliament or to the Queen will ever accomplish. O Lord, prevent war,
   we pray

   You!

   Another thing. During this week the various societies are holding their
   public meetings and I suggest, if you find it in your hearts, that you
   spend a little extra time in praying to God to bless His Church and its
   mission work. There will, also, be meetings held of great importance,
   this week, in connection with certain religious bodies. There are
   denominations which are sadly diseased with skepticism. But a healthy
   love for the Truth of God remains with many and, therefore, there will
   come a struggle between the evangelical and the philosophical parties.
   This week will witness such a struggle. Pray God to send the conquest
   to the right, to strengthen hesitating Brethren and to give decision to
   those who have long been too timorous in their actions. Pray that power
   and guidance from on high may be given to those who hold the orthodox
   faith. I find it in my heart to pray so and shall be glad to know that
   others are agreeing with me.

   Find it in your hearts, too, at this time, to pray for the work of
   this, our own Church, and I call special attention to the work of our
   tract distributors. We have, now, nearly 90 Brothers going from village
   to village, from house to house, distributing the Word of God and
   preaching it to those who in the hamlets might otherwise be left
   without the Gospel. Find it in your hearts to invoke a blessing upon
   them! And, if there is anything that is more upon your heart than
   another, be wise enough to hedge in a quarter of an hour in order to
   pray the prayer unto the Lord. Shut yourself up and say, "I have
   business to do with the Master. I feel a call within my heart to speak
   with the King."

   Beloved Brothers and Sisters, when such a season comes upon you, I
   would most humbly but most affectionately ask those of you who are
   benefited by my ministry to whisper my name into the King's ear, for I
   have much need of His Grace and help. May the Lord accept your
   petitions, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Underneath

   (No. 1413)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 12, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Underneath are the everlasting arms." Deuteronomy 33:27.

   GOD surrounds His children on all sides--they dwell in Him. The passage
   before us shows that the Lord is above, for we read, "There is none
   like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the Heaven to help you,
   and in His excellency on the sky." Assuredly He is around them, for,
   "The eternal God is your refuge." And He is before them, for, "He shall
   thrust out the enemy from before you; and shall say, Destroy them."
   Here, according to the text, the Lord is also under His saints, for,
   "Underneath are the everlasting arms." "Lord, You have been our
   dwelling place in all generations," and by You we are surrounded
   everywhere, as the earth is by the atmosphere--

   "Within Your circling power I stand. On every side I find Your hand.
   Awake, asleep, at home, abroad, I am surrounded still with God."

   The verse which contains our text should be interpreted somewhat after
   this fashion--"The eternal God is your dwelling place, or your rest,
   and underneath are the everlasting arms." The parallel passage is that
   verse in the Song wherein the bride exclaims, "His left hand is under
   my head, and His right hand does embrace me." The soul has come to its
   resting place in God and feels itself to be supported by the Divine
   strength. The heart has learned to abide in Christ Jesus to go no more
   out, but to lean on His bosom both day and night. It is somewhat in the
   condition of Noah's dove which, when weary, was about to drop into the
   destroying waters, but Noah put out his hand and plucked her to him
   into the ark. And when she was all safe, in the hollow of his hands,
   held by her preserver with a firm but tender grasp, she found in that
   place a refuge which surrounded her and upheld her from below. The
   hands covered her on all sides and came beneath her, too. Even thus,
   the hand of God sustains all those who dwell in the secret place of the
   Most High and abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

   I am going, however, to take the words just as they stand in our own
   authorized version and to consider them apart from the context. I ask
   your most careful consideration of them, for they must be very full of
   meaning and very emphatic in their force. The words are placed at the
   end of Moses' song and they are its crown and climax. He had wound
   himself up to the highest pitch of poetic excitement and spiritual
   fervor--and this passage is the result. He had spoken grandly, before,
   concerning the separate tribes and the words which fell from his lips
   are unspeakably rich. But now he is about to close and, therefore, he
   pours forth his loftiest strains and utters full and deep meanings--the
   ripest and choicest fruit of a lifetime of communion with God! As our
   Lord ascended to Heaven blessing His disciples, so did His servant
   Moses, before climbing to Pisgah, pour out a torrent of benedictions,
   full and deep, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

   It is not possible, therefore, that the language can be too greatly
   prized. The words mean all that we can make them mean! The nectar of
   their consolation is altogether inexhaustible! May God the Holy Spirit
   help us to weigh and measure them and then distil their inner sense and
   drink of the spiced wine of His pomegranate. "Underneath are the
   everlasting arms." I shall handle the text in this fashion. Where?
   "Underneath." What? "The everlasting arms." When? They are underneath
   us now and always and if it is so, what then?

   I. First let us attend to the question--WHERE? "Underneath." Now,
   "underneath," is a region into which we cannot see. We glance down and
   the dead cold earth stops our gaze. When we are heavy in spirit we fix
   our eyes upon the ground and look, and look, and look--but even an
   eagle's glance cannot see far below. We scarcely can peer beneath the
   thin green sod--the bottom of a grave is well near the full range of
   mortal vision. The underworld is mysterious. We associate the
   subterranean with all that is dark and hidden and, because of this, it
   is often regarded as terrible. A man

   scarcely ever fears that which he can see in proportion to his dread of
   what he cannot see. Therefore, our alarm at the "underneath."

   What may be underneath us when we leave this sunlit region for the
   grave's overshadowing vault? What will happen to us in eternity? Life
   will soon end--what is death? What is the immediate result of death?
   What shall we feel when we are traversing those unknown tracks and
   finding our way to the Judgment Seat of God? Not knowing except that
   little which has been revealed to us, we are all too apt to conjecture
   terrors and invent horrors--and so to begin trembling concerning that
   which we do not understand! What a comfort it is to be told by the
   Voice of Inspiration that, "Underneath are the everlasting arms!"

   Poets have usually been in a gloomy humor when picturing the
   underworld. Imagination is very apt to spin a black and tangled thread.
   You have read of dark caverns where the bodies of men are fast
   detained, of which caverns Death has the key. Of this the grim
   Anglo-Saxon poet wailed the warning note--

   "Loathsome is that earth-house, And grim within to dwell! There you
   shall dwell, And worms shall divide you!"

   You have heard of gloomy ruins where the night raven forever sits and
   croaks. You have heard of corridors where prisoners incessantly rattle
   their chains to the dolorous music of sullen groans and hollow moans.
   We have been afraid of death because of the horrors with which our
   ignorance has surrounded it! And we have been dismayed at the future
   because of the mysteries which darken it.

   Be comforted! Our text, like a lamp, reveals the abyss of death and
   lifts up the veil of the future! Follow its gleam and you will see how
   it dispels the darkness! If you are a child of God, you may descend
   without fear into the lowest depths-- even if, like Jonah, you had to
   cry, "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her
   bars was about me forever," yet you need not be dismayed--for,
   "Underneath are the everlasting arms." If you were called to take some
   such awful journey as Virgil and Dante have fabled in their poems, when
   their heroes descended into the dread Avernus, you need not tremble,
   though it were said of you as of them--

   "Along the illuminated shade Darkening and lone their way they made."
   If, I say, you were bound to traverse the sepulchral vaults and all the
   gloomy dungeons of Hades, yet you need not fear, for, "Underneath are
   the everlasting arms."

   Mystery of mysteries! Death, you are no longer terrible to us because
   the Light of lights is shining upon you! Depths unfathomable, we no
   longer fear to pass through you, for there is One whose love is deeper
   than the depths beneath as it is higher than the heights above! And He
   has said, "I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring them up from
   the depths of the sea." We gladly take our journey downward at the call
   of God! And without fear we pass through the gates of the tomb and
   enter the doors of the shadow of death, for, "Underneath are the
   everlasting arms." "Underneath"--the word awakens thought and enquiry.
   Everything ought to be sound, solid and substantial there. "Underneath"
   must be firm, for if that fails we fail, indeed!

   We have been building and our eyes have been gladdened with the rising
   walk and with the towering pinnacles. But what if something should be
   rotten "underneath?" Great will be the fall then, if we have built as
   high as Heaven, if sand lies underneath, yielding and shifting in the
   day of flood. "Underneath" is the great matter to which the architect,
   if he is wise, will give his best attention. And truly, Brothers and
   Sisters, when you and I begin to examine our Graces and our
   professions, that word, "underneath," suggests many a testing question.
   Is it all right with us as to the root of the matter--"underneath?" If
   not, the fair flower above ground will wither very speedily. The seed
   has sprung up hastily, but how is the soil underneath? For if there is
   no depth of earth, the scorching sun will soon dry up the superficial
   harvest.

   "Underneath," though it is mysterious, is also intensely important and,
   therefore, the great joy of being able to say by faith, "Yes,
   'underneath' is well secured, we have trusted in God and we shall not
   be confused. We have relied upon the eternal promises and they cannot
   fail. We have rested on the infinite merits of the atoning Sacrifice of
   God's dear Son and we shall never be ashamed of our hope." Happy is he
   who rests upon the Everlasting Covenant ordered in all things

   and sure, for with him all is safe underneath! And, though the earth is
   removed and the mountains are carried into the midst of the sea, he
   need not fear, but may patiently hope and quietly wait for the
   salvation of God.

   For a period we may be content with superficial pleasures, but there
   are times of trial when we have to fall back upon something deeper and
   more reliable--earthly props give way, in their season, and we need
   superior sustaining power. The carnal mind meets with an hour when "the
   proud helpers do stoop under him" and Believers, too, in proportion as
   they foolishly lean upon an arm of flesh, find their confidences
   departing. Then it is that we feel the value of Divine upholding and
   rejoice that "Underneath are the everlasting arms."

   Let us look more closely into this most important matter. "Underneath
   are the everlasting arms." That is, first, as the foundation of
   everything. If you go down, down, to discover the basement upon which
   all things rest, you come, before long, to "the everlasting arms." The
   things which are seen are held up by the invisible God! This outward
   visible universe has no power to stand for a single instant if He does
   not keep it in being. By Him all things exist. There are no forces
   apart from God's power! No existences apart from His will! He bears up
   the pillars of the universe. He, only, spreads out the heavens and
   treads upon the waves of the sea. He makes Arcturus, Orion, the
   Pleiades and the chambers of the south. Foolish are those philosophers
   who think that they can reach the essence and soul from which visible
   things were evolved unless they bow before the invisible God! He is the
   foundation of creation, the fountain and source of being, the root and
   basement of existence. "Underneath" everything "are the everlasting
   arms."

   Most true is this with regard to His Church. He chose her and redeemed
   her to Himself--the very idea of a Church is from the Lord alone. As a
   temple He devised her architecture, saying, "I will lay your
   foundations with sapphires." And He has built up her every stone by His
   own power. He sustains her walls against her enemies so that the gates
   of Hell cannot prevail against her, for the foundation of God stands
   sure. The foundation of every true Church is the Lord Himself, the
   Highest, Himself, establishes her. God is in the midst of her--she
   shall not be moved. "Underneath are the everlasting arms." Blessed be
   God, what is true of the Church as a corporate body is true of every
   member of the Church! There abides no spiritual life in the world which
   is not founded upon the everlasting arms.

   Beloved, if the life of God is in you, if you search deep and go to the
   basis of it, you will find that your life is staying itself and drawing
   its constant nurture, yes, deriving its very existence from the life of
   the eternal God. Jesus says, "Because I live, you shall live also."
   Your life is the life of God in you, for the Divine seed is the
   foundation of all spiritual life. Beware, then, of harboring in your
   heart anything which has not underneath it the everlasting arms. If
   there is any hope, let it be founded on the Everlasting Covenant of
   God. If there is any joy, let it well up from the everlasting love of
   God. If there is any confidence, let it be stayed upon the everlasting
   strength of Jehovah. If there is any service rendered, let it be
   according to the everlasting commandment.

   If in your soul there is any Divine Grace. If there is any virtue. If
   there is any praise, suffer none of these matters to be superficial or
   pretentious--the creation of your own native strength--but let them all
   be founded upon the work of the Holy Spirit in your soul. In fact, let
   it be said of each of them, "Underneath are the everlasting arms."
   Nothing will serve our turn in the trials of life, the terrors of
   death, or the solemnities of the Last Great Day, except that which has
   underneath it the everlasting arms! See how the nations reel when God
   no longer sustains them--"He removes the mountains and they know not,
   He overturns them in His anger." See how those Churches fly into
   apostasy which have not underneath them the everlasting arms--they are
   quenched as the fire of thorns and only a smoke remains!

   Did not Jesus say, "Every plant that my Father has not planted shall be
   rooted up"? See how hypocritical professors disappear like the morning
   mist when the sun rises! Nothing will abide the day of the Lord's
   coming unless its foundation is laid in the eternal God. The Lord help
   us to know what this means so that we may be like the wise man who dug
   deep and built his house upon a rock. Again, we may read the words,
   "Underneath are the everlasting arms," in the sense of being the bottom
   and end and object of everything. If in faith you search into Divine
   Providence, however dark and trying it may appear, you will soon find
   that underneath it are the everlasting arms.

   Satan may be mining, but God is undermining! Even under the deep
   devices of Hell the everlasting arms are to be found. Satan's craft is
   deep to us, but it is very shallow to the Lord, whose wisdom goes far
   deeper than all the cunning of the Prince of Darkness. The evils and
   errors which are in the world should not cause us to despair of the
   ultimate victory of the Truth of God, for beneath them there is still
   the immutable decree of the Ever-living and the Ever-blessed--and

   that decree shall be accomplished, whoever may oppose it! Has He not
   said, "I have sworn by Myself, the word is gone out of My mouth in
   righteousness, and shall not return. That unto Me every knee shall bow,
   every tongue shall swear"?

   His purpose shall stand. He will do all His pleasure. He works all
   things according to the counsel of His own will. Trace your present
   trials below their surface--trace them to the deeps, instead of
   groaning over their outward appearance--and you will find that
   underneath each trouble there is a faithful purpose and a kind intent.
   Yes, beneath the utmost depths of distress and grief, God is still at
   work in love to your soul! From seeming evil still educing good and,
   better still--and better still in infinite progression--underneath the
   best events are the arms of love to make them good and underneath the
   worst that can happen are the same everlasting arms to moderate and
   overrule them! As the design and object of all, "underneath are the
   everlasting arms."

   I take the text, "Underneath are the everlasting arms," to mean, next,
   that the arms of God are there as the preservation of His people. His
   people sometimes appear to themselves to be in very great danger, but
   it is written, "He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you
   in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash
   your foot against a stone." Certain of the saints are set in very high
   places and their brain might well be turned so that they would fall.
   But they shall not slip with their feet, for God upholds the righteous.
   If under deep depression of spirit and sore travail of heart their feet
   should be almost gone, what a blessing it is to think that "underneath
   are the everlasting arms."

   Sometimes faith walks upon a very slender thread high up above the ways
   of common men. Poising her balancing pole of experience, she tries to
   keep her feet--but her satisfaction is that even if she should slip for
   a while and her joy should fail, yet there is a net beneath her which
   will receive her in her fall so that she shall not be utterly dashed in
   pieces. "I have prayed for you that your faith fail not" is the
   gracious safeguard of those who fall, as Peter did, when Satan has them
   in his sieve. The people of God must and shall be safe! Satan may cast
   them down, but God shall save them before they fall into Hell. Let us
   walk carefully, none the less, because of this. Let us watch well our
   footsteps as much as if our preservation entirely depended upon
   ourselves--but let us always look only to our Lord--knowing that He,
   alone, keeps the feet of His saints.

   Holiness, strength of faith and ultimate perfection are the things
   which we must daily aim at, but it is a blessed consolation that when,
   through infirmity or carelessness, we do not fully maintain our
   consecrated walk, we are not, therefore, cast away forever, for it is
   written, "Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the
   Lord upholds him with His hand." "Underneath are the everlasting arms."
   That leads me to read my text in the fourth sense as teaching us that
   the everlasting arms are the rest of His people. If these everlasting
   arms are always outstretched to preserve me lest I totter in weakness
   and fall into destruction, then on those arms let me lean my whole
   weight for time and for eternity! That is the practical lesson of this
   choice word.

   Keep yourselves, Beloved, in those arms which even now are embracing
   you! Why vex your heart when you may be free from care? Underneath
   everything, your Father's arms are placed--what, then, can fret you?
   Why are you disquieted when you might dwell at ease and inherit the
   earth? Are you afraid to rest where the universe rests? Are not your
   Father's arms a sufficient pillow for you? Do you think that it is not
   safe to be at peace when the love and might of God, like two strong
   arms, are stretched out to hold you up and the Divine Voice whispers to
   you "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him"? His own Word to His
   Prophets is, "Comfort you, comfort you My people, says your God. Speak
   you comfortably to Jerusalem." Will you not accept the comfort which He
   sends by His Spirit and bids His servants impart to you?

   When God Himself does rest in His love will you not rest in it and
   shall it not, again, be proven that, "we that have believed do enter
   into rest"? Is not the Lord Jesus our peace? Why, then, are we
   troubled? Well may you lie down to sleep in peace when underneath you
   are the everlasting arms! Well may your spirit be filled with composure
   and become indifferent to outward trials when you are thus held up!
   Blow, you winds and toss, you waves, the boat cannot sink, or if it did
   sink it could not sink to our destruction--we should only drop into the
   great Father's hands--for underneath even the sinking vessel are the
   everlasting arms! Now, let the earth reel with earthquakes or open wide
   her mouth to swallow us up quickly--we need not fear to descend into
   her dreariest gulf--since underneath us would still be the everlasting
   arms! What a fullness of rest this secures to the believing people of
   God!

   I will fetch from the text one more meaning while I am speaking upon
   the position of these arms. The text seems to give us a promise of
   exaltation and uplifting. We may be very low and greatly cast down, but
   "underneath are the everlasting arms." The merciful God is great at a
   dead lift. "He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy
   out of the dunghill that He may set him with princes, even with the
   princes of His people." Who can tell how high a man may be lifted
   up--to what sublime elevations he may safely ascend when the Lord makes
   his feet like hind's feet that he may stand upon His high places? If
   still underneath him are the everlasting arms he may safely obey the
   word, "Get up into the high mountains." He may outsoar the eagle,
   mounting higher and higher till he has left the sun like a speck
   beneath his feet and still underneath him shall be the everlasting
   arms. Therefore higher and yet higher may we hourly ascend in thought,
   in joy, in holiness, in likeness to our God!

   This is meant to encourage us to rise, since there can be no danger
   while the arms of God are underneath. This, then, my Brothers and
   Sisters, is where we may expect to find the strength and power of
   God--it is underneath us, bearing us up! We may not always see it, for
   the underneath is hidden from our sight, but surely as in secret the
   Lord upholds the huge columns of the universe so He bears up all His
   own servants and their concerns! "Underneath are the everlasting arms."

   II. Secondly let us meditate upon WHAT it is which is beneath us. The
   everlasting arms. What is meant by this? I hope the gentlemen who are
   so ingenious in toning down the word "everlasting" will not meddle with
   my text. A new way of reading the Bible has been invented in these
   highly enlightened days. I used to get on exceedingly well with the
   Book years ago, for it seemed clear and plain enough, but modern
   interpreters would puzzle us out of our wits and out of our souls, if
   they could, by their vile habit of giving new meanings to plain words!
   Thank God I keep to the old simple way--but I am informed that the
   inventors of the new minimizing glasses manage to read the big words
   small--and they have even read down the word, "everlasting," into a
   little space of time! Everlasting may be six weeks or six months
   according to them. I use no such glasses! My eyes remain the same and
   "everlasting" is "everlasting" to me whether I read of everlasting life
   or everlasting punishment. If I clip the word in one place, I must do
   so in another. And it will never do to have a terminable Heaven. I
   cannot afford to give it up here when its meaning is joyous to the
   saint and, therefore, not there when its sound is terrible to the
   sinner!

   What, then, are "the everlasting arms?" They are arms which always were
   and always will be. They are arms which always were strong and will
   never grow faint or weary. They are arms which, once outstretched, will
   never be drawn back again. They are arms which, once engaged for the
   defense of the chosen people, shall never cease to work for their good,
   world without end! Not failing arms, nor dying arms, but everlasting
   arms are underneath the saints of God! I understand the words to mean,
   first, the arms of everlasting purpose, "according to the eternal
   purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." His purpose may be
   called His arms, by which He stretches out His hands to do His work and
   these can never fail, for, "The Lord of Hosts has purposed and who
   shall disannul it? And His hand is stretched out and who shall turn it
   back?" "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His
   heart to all generations." "He is in one mind, and who can turn Him?
   And what His soul desires, even that He does."

   We have to deal with One whose gifts and calling are without
   repentance. In the Book of His purpose it is written and His Providence
   and Grace shall tally with the secret decree, "He will have mercy on
   whom He will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He will
   have compassion," and the everlasting purpose of Sovereign Grace shall
   be carried out to the end. O my Soul, when your poor purposes shift and
   vanish and you have to change them 20 times a day, what a blessing it
   is to think that the purpose of your God stands fast, and He, Himself,
   is without the shadow of a turning! He has declared that He that
   believes in Christ shall be saved and so you shall be, though all Hell
   assail you! Come what may, the eternal purpose lies at the bottom of
   all, and will be the end and result of all, and so all Israel shall be
   saved, for, "underneath are the everlasting arms" of unchanging
   purpose.

   But next we see here the everlasting arms of love. I do no violence to
   Scripture when I compare love to arms, for is it not written, "I have
   loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have
   I drawn you"? Love has hands and arms with which it draws us and these
   are, at this moment underlying all the dealings of God with us. This
   love is everlasting love--without beginning, without variation, without
   end. Underneath you, child of God, is the infinite affection of the
   Omnipotent God--what, then, can harm you?

   Your love? Ah, how it flames forth at times and then how dull it
   becomes! But your safety comes from a love which never varies, which
   many waters cannot quench and which the floods cannot drown. Look
   beneath you and you may see a depth of love, fathomless and eternal,
   which may well remind you of what Moses said when he spoke of "the deep
   which lies under." The strength of love which abides in God, who is
   Love itself, no mind can conceive! All this is placed under you, O
   Believer, for your succor, support and security. Immovable arches of
   immortal Love sustain your soul from fear of ruin. Rest there and sing
   unto the Lord your song upon your stringed instrument as long as you
   have any being.

   But next, these arms may be described as the arms of power. And what
   says Isaiah the Prophet? "Trust you in the Lord forever, for in the
   Lord Jehovah there is everlasting strength." What said Jeremiah? "Ah
   Lord God! Behold, You have made the Heaven and the earth by Your great
   power and stretched out arm and there is nothing too hard for You."
   Strength is needed to uphold the people of God lest they fall to their
   confusion and that strength is always ready, no, it is always in
   exercise! Believer, you have been able to stand because the arm of
   Divine strength has never been withdrawn. He is able to keep you from
   falling and to present you faultless and He will do it. "O bless our
   God, you people, and make the voice of His praise to be heard: which
   holds our soul in life, and suffers not our feet to be moved." These
   are the arms of Immutability, for God abides forever the same. "I am
   God; I change not: therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed."

   He saved His people "with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, for
   His mercy endures forever." They are the arms of everlasting blessing,
   for God has determined to make His people happy and happy they shall
   be. "Surely," He says, "in blessing I will bless you." "Your blessing
   is upon Your people." He gives liberally unto them and that liberality
   is never diminished, nor can it be stopped. Underneath you, Believer,
   are the everlasting arms, forever carrying you as a nurse carries her
   child, forever gathering up for you innumerable blessings and carrying
   them for your provision. He shall gather the lambs with His arms and
   with those same arms will He show strength unto His people. How blest
   are they who have such arms beneath them!

   I heard of a man who was spending a great deal of money, living in
   grand style and launching out in business. Certain of his fellow
   tradesmen told me that they could not see a reason for his cutting such
   a figure. But said one, "There is somebody at his back, we are quite
   sure of that." And so it is with us--we may well be strong, we may well
   be happy--for there is an unseen power which is at our back--the
   everlasting arms are underneath us--and we cannot fail! Let us be
   joyous, confident and praise the right hand of the Lord! Yes, though
   our conflicts should multiply, let us not fear, but let us sing unto
   the Lord, "Your right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power. The
   right hand of the Lord is exalted. The right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly." For this right hand upholds the cause of His servants.

   III. Now, in the third place, let us consider WHEN the everlasting arms
   are underneath us. The only answer is now and for evermore. Now, at
   this moment, Beloved, the everlasting arms are underneath us! The life
   of a Christian is described as walking by faith and to my mind, walking
   by faith is the most extraordinary miracle ever beheld beneath the sun!
   Walking on the waves, as Peter did, is a type of the life of every
   Christian. I have sometimes likened it to ascending an invisible
   staircase far up into the clouds. You cannot see an inch in front of
   you, but you wind up towards the Light. When you look down, all is
   dark, and before you lies nothing visible but clouds. Beneath you yawns
   a fathomless abyss.

   Yet we have climbed, some of us, for years up this perpetually
   ascending stairway, never seeing an inch before us. We have often
   paused almost in horror and asked in wonder, "What next? What next?"
   Yet what we thought was cloud has proved to be solid rock! Darkness has
   been light before us and slippery places have been safe. Every now and
   then, when the darkness has been denser than usual--a darkness which
   might be felt, when all the past behind us has vanished and nothing has
   been seen but the one step we stood on--we have said, "How did I get
   here? What a strange, mysterious life mine has been!" We have almost
   wished ourselves down on the level among the worldlings who can always
   see their way and know what is underneath them. But faith has come to
   our help, again--we have believed--and believing we have seen the
   invisible and grasped the eternal! And then we have gone on, have put
   our foot down again and soon have run up, with joy, the shining way!

   What an ascent we have sometimes made upon that ladder of light so that
   we have companied with angels and left the world far down beneath our
   feet! Now and then we have enjoyed a glimpse through the thick darkness
   of the jeweled walls of the Eternal City which needs no candle, neither
   light of the sun. We have seen, I say, its brightness and determined,
   still, to climb the mysterious way. Well, Believer, at this moment,
   though you cannot see your way, yet since

   you are walking by faith, "underneath are the everlasting arms." It is
   so, though at this moment you fear that you are going down into a
   gloomy glen. You have lost a great deal of money lately and the friend
   who so kindly helped you is taken away, so that you are going down in
   the world--yes, but underneath are the everlasting arms.

   You are getting nearer to those arms now. Friends and wealth came
   between you and the almighty arms--but now you must lean only on them.
   The creature fails and you must rest on the Creator! You will have
   sweeter fellowship, now, than you ever had, since there is nothing to
   come between you and your Lord. "Ah," says one, "but I am sinking in
   spirit. I am greatly depressed." Still underneath are the everlasting
   arms. Your soul is sinking, like Peter in the waves, but a hand is
   outstretched to save you--you cannot sink while your heavenly Father's
   hands are near. Go on sinking, if the Lord so wills it. Sometimes the
   greatest sweetness in life is found and intense bitterness. I never
   have in my soul a more solid and real joy than when I have been cast
   into the dust with fearful depression of spirit. I stay myself upon my
   God and Him, only, and then I touch the confines of bliss, though
   trembling all the while. I hardly know how to express the unrivalled
   sweetness of resting upon only the Lord!

   When you are flung altogether upon God, then does your soul enter into
   the most Divine peace! The natural spirits have gone, everything that
   sprang from the vigor of youth and the natural elasticity of the mind
   has departed--now you come right upon God and lie naked in His hands.
   And then there is cast into your cup a foretaste of Heaven which the
   soul sits down and humbly sips to herself, for the secret she can never
   tell--no ear would understand her if she did. "Underneath are the
   everlasting arms." And so, dear Friends, if you should sink both in
   circumstances and in spirits and your experience should happen to be a
   very downcast one, it will still be well. If now you have to discover
   the corruption of your nature, which you knew little of before. If now
   your experience, instead of being that of the Brethren of the higher
   life, should be one of humiliation, of prostration of spirit, of deep
   self-loathing--still, underneath you are the everlasting arms. If you
   are not to climb to Pisgah with Moses, but must dive to the bottom of
   the mountains like Jonah, still underneath are the everlasting
   arms--even at the lowest point of your going down! So it shall be
   forever and forever, for the arms are everlasting in their position as
   well as their power.

   Now you have come to die. You have gathered up your feet in the bed.
   The death sweat stands upon your brow. You are sinking, so far as this
   life is concerned, among the sons of men, but underneath you shall then
   be the everlasting arms! Beautifully has Bunyan described confidence in
   death, when he pictures the pilgrims passing the river. Christian cried
   out to young Hopeful, "I sink in deep waters! The billows go over my
   head! All His waves go over me." Then said Hopeful, "Be of good cheer,
   my Brother, I feel the bottom and it is good." Thus, Beloved, shall it
   be with you! You shall feel the bottom of death's chill river, but you
   shall say, "It is good," for underneath are the everlasting arms!

   Then comes the last plunge and we shall be as when a man stands on the
   edge of a precipice and leaps over into the clouds below him. You need
   not fear to take your last farewell and drop into your Father's arms,
   for underneath you shall be the everlasting arms! And oh, how sweetly
   shall you be caught up together with the Lord in the air, pressed to
   the bosom of the great Father and borne upward into the Heaven of
   heavens where you shall behold the face of the Well-Beloved and find
   yourselves entranced in His company forever and forever! O heir of
   Glory, underneath you there is no Hell! Underneath you there is no
   annihilation! Underneath you are the everlasting arms--therefore commit
   your spirit unto your faithful Creator and then welcome life or death,
   for all is well with you!

   IV. Lastly, let us reply to the query, WHAT THEN? If underneath us are
   the everlasting arms, what then? First, let us look underneath. My
   Brothers and Sisters, you have been going on with great discomfort,
   sighing and crying because your way is rough and because sometimes you
   think it dangerous and fear that you will slip into a chasm and perish.
   Now, instead of complaining after this fashion, and fearing the road,
   stop a little and begin to examine--"What is underneath me? What is the
   bottom of my hope?"

   You hypocrites dare not examine! You formalists dare not search! You
   are afraid to ask questions and to open your eyes lest you should see
   too much. But those who are honest and sincere in the way of our Lord
   are not afraid to be tested. You who are under any anxiety will do well
   to pull right up and say, "I have been troubled with doubts and fears
   and I will no longer endure it. I will know the end of this! I will
   search myself and know my ways and pray the Lord to let me see the
   worst of my case, for I long to know what there is underneath." If you
   are believing in Jesus Christ with a sincere heart and resting in the
   atoning Sacrifice and the Covenant of which His blood is the seal, you
   can afford to search underneath--for you will find all things solid and
   eternal!

   It is well to look underneath an outward Providence when it frowns
   darkly upon you, for it conceals the eternal purpose of love. The
   sorrows which you see are but, as it were, a napkin hiding the precious
   treasure of eternal Grace and, therefore, you can say to yourself in
   all ill weathers, "All is well, for all is well underneath! The eternal
   purpose is working out my lasting good." Do not be afraid to search
   underneath, my trembling Brothers and Sisters. but when you do so and
   find the everlasting arms to be there, then sing unto the Lord with all
   your might!

   The next inference is, if underneath us are the everlasting arms, let
   us lean heavily. We are afraid to lean too hard on God. To be careful
   not to encroach on a friend is a very proper disposition. Do not spoil
   a generous friend by drawing upon him so heavily that he will dread to
   see you again. I wish some people had a little more of that
   disposition, as far as I am concerned, but this is not a right feeling
   when you have to deal with the Lord! Never fear that you will weary
   your God! Never say to yourself, "I will ask as little as I can." Why,
   He says, "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it!" Never say, "I will
   trust Him a little. I will take Him a part of my cares and rest a
   portion of my trials upon Him." No, lean with your whole weight!

   Do not keep a spare ounce for your own carrying--that will break your
   back! Bring all the tons and the pounds and the ounces and the
   pennyweights and cast them all on God! He loves His children to treat
   Him with entire confidence. All your weight will not trouble Him. You
   know Aesop's fable of the polite little gnat which apologized to the ox
   for burdening him when he lighted on his horn, and the ox replied that
   he really did not know he was there. Your God will not tell you that,
   for He counts the very hairs of your head, but He will tell you that
   your load is no burden to Him. Why, if you had 50 kingdoms burdening
   your brain and if you carried the politics of a hundred nations in your
   mind, or were loaded with all the cares of a thousand worlds, you might
   safely leave them with the Wonderful Counselor and go your way
   rejoicing! Lean hard, Brothers and Sisters! For underneath you are the
   everlasting arms!

   The next thing is, then, let us rise confidently. Do not be afraid of
   ascending to heights of love. Do not be afraid of having a high
   ambition for a wholly consecrated life. Be not afraid of high
   doctrines, or high enjoyments, or high attainments in holiness. Go as
   high as you like, for underneath you are the everlasting arms! It would
   be dangerous to speculate, but it is safe to believe. Some men are
   always going downward, turning diamonds into gas and hallelujahs into
   howls! They are trying to get rid of precious Truths of God and to
   substitute some new theories for them. Let us be brave in the other
   direction and seek to comprehend with all saints what are the heights
   and depths, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. You
   may climb, my dear young Brothers and Sisters, nor fear to fall even if
   you reach the masthead of Truth, for underneath are the everlasting
   arms!

   Once more, let us dare unhesitatingly and be very courageous for the
   Lord our God--

   "Through floods or flames, if Jesus leads, I'll follow where He goes"

   for underneath are the everlasting arms! Are you called upon to lose
   everything for Christ? Go on and leap like Curtius into the gulf for
   your Lord Jesus, for underneath you are the everlasting arms! Does your
   Master call you to an enterprise which seems impossible? Nevertheless,
   if God has called you to it, attempt it, for He renders to every man
   according to his work. Remember what the Negro said--"If Massa Jesus
   say to me, 'Sam, you jump through that brick wall,' I jump. It is Sam's
   business to jump--it is Massa's work to make me go through the wall."
   So it is with you. It is yours to leap forward when the Captain gives
   the watchword--and in confidence to attempt what mere nature cannot
   achieve--for the supernatural is with us!

   The best of all is, God is with us! Underneath us are the everlasting
   arms! Less reliance upon self and more reliance upon God! Less counting
   of the barley loaves and fishes--and a greater readiness to bring them
   to His hands who can multiply them till they shall feed the
   thousands--this is what we need! God grant us Grace to trust in His
   almighty power and sing from now on and forever, "underneath are the
   everlasting arms!"
     __________________________________________________________________

No Difference

   (No. 1414)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, MAY 12, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on
   thejust and on the unjust." Matthew 5:45.

   [On this night the Tabernacle was free to all comers, the regular
   congregation having vacated their seats.]

   You see our Lord Jesus Christ's philosophy of Nature. He believed in
   the immediate Presence and working of God. As the great Son of God, He
   had a very sensitive perception of the Presence of His Father in all
   the scenes around Him and, therefore, He calls the sun, God's sun--"He
   makes His sun to rise." He does not speak of the daybreak as a thing
   which happens of itself as a matter of course, but He traces the
   morning light to His Father and declares, "He makes His sun to rise."
   As for the rain, our great Lord and Master does not speak of the laws
   of condensation causing the vapor to become fluid and fall to the earth
   in a beneficial shower, but He says of His Father, "He sends rain upon
   the just and upon the unjust."

   Jesus knew far better than any of us all the laws by which the great
   Creator governs the world of matter and yet He never speaks of these
   laws as though they operated without the Divine power making them to be
   effective. In Christ's philosophy, the Lord God Himself was everywhere
   present, working all things--yes, even numbering the hairs upon the
   heads of His chosen--and marking the falling of a sparrow to the
   ground. Let such be your philosophy and mine, for it is the true one!
   Dr. Watts taught us to sing when we were children--

   "My God, who makes the sun to know

   His proper hour to rise,

   And to give light to all below,

   Does send him round the skies." So our mothers taught us and they
   taught us the truth. But the very wise men of this proudly enlightened
   age seem to be spinning all sorts of theories to get rid of God, to
   turn our Benefactor out of His own world and put man's best Friend as
   far away as possible.

   I am sometimes reminded by these schools of philosophy and science of
   Tom Hood's, "I remember, I remember." Here is a verse of it--

   "I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high I used to think
   their slender tops Were close against the sky. It was a childish
   ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from Hea ven
   Than when I was a boy."

   It were a good thing for our skeptical teachers who have banished God
   out of His own universe if they could go back to their mothers' knees
   and learn to talk simply and naturally after the fashion of the wisest
   man that ever lived, namely, our Lord and Master. Then would they also
   confess that our heavenly Father "makes His sun to rise and He sends
   the rain," for so it is. Laws of Nature can do nothing without a power
   at the back of the laws. What is Nature, about which many infidels
   speak so very plentifully? Ask them to tell you what Nature is and they
   will reply, "Why, it is Nature." Well, but what is that? And they can
   only say, "Why Nature, you know, you know, you know, Nature is Nature."

   Some such sensible reply was given to certain of our friends on
   Kennington Common by one who was there reviling his Maker. Now, if men
   did but understand Nature, they would know that Nature is simply God's
   creation, workshop, laboratory, storehouse and banqueting hall. In
   Nature, what God has made and what God is doing are made visible before
   our eyes. God is among us still, blessed be His name! Believing this,
   we at once perceive that the Lord has been talking with us during the
   last few days very sweetly and delightfully. The merciful Father speaks
   to us with charming eloquence on such a day as this, of which George
   Herbert would have said--

   "Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and
   sky." Coming just in the middle of this fair season of hope and
   promise, concerning which he sang--

   "Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets
   compacted lie," it has a still small voice which all should wish to
   hear.

   What a blessing to have enjoyed such a May day as this has been! We
   have had God speaking to us according to the exact style of our
   text--He has made His sun to shine, and He has us sent rain. Our days,
   for some little time, have been made up of sunshine and shower with,
   every now and then, that wondrous masterpiece of glory in the sky which
   we call the rainbow, of which God has said, "I, even I, do set My bow
   in the cloud," "whose warp is the raindrop of earth and whose woof is
   the sunbeam of Heaven!" Glorious symbol of His Grace and faithfulness,
   who hung it in the clouds! Now what does God say to us in the sunshine
   and the shower which come, the one after the other, in such pleasant
   alternation, making the grass so green and causing flowers to deck both
   tree and herb? What does He say in all this?

   There is a voice full of the music of love, to which we shall do well
   to listen. There is one instruction in it and only one that I shall be
   able to expound tonight. It is the fact brought out in the text, "He
   makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on
   the just and on the unjust." One of the most considerable heights
   anywhere near London is Leith Hill, near Dorking. And if you have ever
   stood there, as I often have done with delight, you may, perhaps, have
   thought over our text. You see far around the distant lands, pasture,
   parks, woods, with here and there the laughing water. And beyond the
   blue hills the distant sea. Up comes a gleam of sunlight, where all was
   cloud before. By-and-by the sun bursts out in full beauty.

   Do you notice how impartial it is? Men have mapped out the country--so
   far is allotted to this squire, so far to that--with here and there an
   insignificant patch pilfered from the wayside or the common which may
   belong to some industrious peasant. But the sun shines on all, glances
   into the halls, peeps into the cottages, gleams from the white spires
   of the churches and flashes from the tavern signboards swinging in the
   breeze. It shines on the wayside and floods the green with its golden
   light where the children are at play--it sweeps over all, in fact. Now
   that farm over yonder belongs to a fool who is sure to rake his stubble
   after the harvest, lest the poor should glean an ear or two--a man who
   fights and quarrels with his neighbors, yet the sun shines on his
   selfish heritage!

   Yonder farm belongs to one who would, if he could, rob the orphan and
   fatherless and the widow--a heartless wretch unworthy to gather a sour
   apple from the sharpest crab--yet the sun shines on his wheat and
   barley just the same as on that portion of land which belongs to the
   generous-hearted and the free, to the gracious and the godly. There is
   no distinction made between the meadows of the righteous and the
   pastures of the wicked! As you see the sunlight bathe the whole of the
   scene before you, the entire landscape smiles with universal joy. While
   you are watching, that cloud which all day long you had suspected would
   turn to a shower, comes rushing up with the wind--the Great Father
   blowing with His breath this traveling fountain of the sky!

   Then it begins to pour. We seek the shelter of the lofty tower of Leith
   without a murmur, for we know that the rain is seasonable. The land
   needs it. It has been dry and parched for weeks. Down comes the blessed
   shower that shall fill our barns with plenty. Yes, yes, the Lord is
   pouring forth a shower of food-creating moisture and, look, it is
   raining on the fool's piece of land just as much as on his liberal
   neighbor's! It is watering the farm of the man who would rob the
   fatherless of his shoes if the law permitted him. It is making his
   broad acres teem with plenty just as surely as it is fattening the poor
   man's patch, or falling upon the widow's scanty plot, or on the farm of
   the gracious godly man.

   As though He did not regard human character at all, God bids His sun
   shine on good and bad. As though He did not know that any men were
   vile, He bids the shower descend on just and unjust. Yet He does know,
   for He is no blind God! He does know and He knows when His sun shines
   on yonder miser's acres that it is bringing forth a harvest for a fool.
   He

   does it deliberately. When the rain is falling upon yonder oppressor's
   crops, He knows that the oppressor will be the richer for it and means
   that He should be. He is doing nothing by mistake and nothing without a
   purpose. It is of His own will that He thus scatters sunlight with both
   His hands and pours the bounteous shower on all things that grow. He
   knows what He is doing, blessed be His name! He sends forth, on
   purpose, sunshine and shower on the evil and on the good--and that is
   the one lesson we want to bring out tonight.

   What is the meaning of this boundless generosity? Why this impartial
   bounty, this indiscriminate liberality? What does God say to us when He
   acts thus? I believe that He says this--"This is the day of free Grace.
   This is the time of mercy." The hour for judgment is not yet, when He
   will separate between the good and the bad, when He will mount the
   Judgment Seat and award different portions to the righteous and to the
   wicked. Sheep and goats, as yet, feed together and He gives to them all
   their fodder. Wheat and tares grow in the same field and He ripens both
   for the harvest. This is not the Day of Justice, but the period of
   mercy--free, rich mercy--mercy to the undeserving, Divine Grace to the
   worthless, sunlight of love for the evil and showers of blessings for
   the unjust!

   That is the teaching of the great Father to us tonight and, in trying
   to bring it out, I shall first show how forcible it is made to appear
   by its being placed as an example. Secondly, I shall dwell upon the
   act, itself, drawing inferences from the impartiality of sunshine and
   shower to encourage all who long to receive Grace at the great Father's
   hand. And, lastly, I shall let the plants and grass and trees talk to
   you a little.

   I. First, then, this which is spoken concerning God's causing His
   sunshine to fall on the evil as well as on the good is set before us as
   AN EXAMPLE AND HENCE THE EMPHASIS OF ITS MEANING. We are, according to
   the verses which precede our text, to love our enemies, to bless them
   that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, to pray for them which
   despitefully use us and persecute us because, if we do, we shall be
   like our Father in Heaven who blesses with sunshine and showers the bad
   as well as the good. It must mean, then, that He, in causing His sun to
   shine upon the bad, is rendering good for evil, is wishing well to
   those who treat Him ill, is intending favor to those that despitefully
   use Him and persecute His cause.

   That is what the text means. God would not command us to do what He
   will not do, Himself, if placed in similar circumstances! He bids us
   forgive because His sunshine and showers teach us that He is ready to
   forgive. He bids us do good to those who do us ill, because in sunshine
   and showers He is doing good to those who hate Him and despitefully use
   Him. Now suppose, my Brethren, that we were all enabled, by Divine
   Grace, to follow out the precept which is set before us? Our conduct
   would be regarded by most men as being very extraordinary--for most
   people say, "Well, I will do good to a man if he is a deserving
   character, but you cannot expect me to help the undeserving. I will
   cheerfully render a measure of assistance to a person who is grateful,
   but to the ungrateful and the evil you do not expect me to be kind?
   Yes, I will be kind to my neighbor, but that man who the other day was
   so contemptuous in his behavior as to treat me worse than a dog and
   seemed as if he would tread me under his feet like dirt--would you have
   me do him kindness?"

   Now, suppose that you are able to rise to the example which is put
   before you and that you persistently do good and only good even to the
   worst of men? And when you are treated with evil, let us suppose you
   are able to do only more good and thus heap coals of fire upon the
   offender's head by being more generous to him than ever--that will be
   very extraordinary conduct, don't you think? You think so, I know, for
   you feel the proposal to be too hard for flesh and blood to carry out
   and so, indeed, it is! And if you are enabled to rise to so great a
   height, you will astonish all around you and become a wonder to many!
   Admire, then, with all your hearts, the marvelous conduct of your God!

   He is prepared to put away all the offenses of the past and He is ready
   to forgive and to do good to those who have been doing ill all their
   days. Yes, to take into His very heart of love and make into His
   children the very persons who have hated Him and spoken evil against
   Him! Will it not be extraordinary if He does that to you, dear Friend,
   if such has been your character? Know, then, that the Lord loves to do
   extraordinary things! "Who is a God like unto You, passing by
   transgression, iniquity, and sin?" "As high as the heavens are above
   the earth, so high are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above
   our thoughts." God is prepared to save extraordinary sinners by an
   extraordinary act of love, wiping out the past and causing them to
   begin a new life in which they shall be enriched with His favor and
   preserved by His love.

   Again, if a man should carry out what I have tried to set forth--the
   continuous rendering of good to the undeserving--he would be regarded
   by all thinking persons whose judgment is worth taking, to be very
   noble. When a

   man has been abused, misrepresented and slandered, and he simply smiles
   and says, "If you knew me better you would not treat me so." And, if
   the first time he finds an opportunity, he helps the man who injured
   him and still gets no gratitude, but, on the contrary, worse treatment
   than before, and he is still able to persevere in doing good--most of
   you would say, "What a noble fellow he is!" Even the man who does not
   praise him is obliged to feel his greatness. There is about such a man
   a superiority which covers him with honor in the consciences of those
   who observe his gentle spirit!

   Now, listen, you that are conscious of great sin against God! If the
   Lord were, tonight, to put all your sins behind His back and would take
   you into His family, as He took the poor returning prodigal and make a
   great feast for you as He did when His son that was lost was found,
   would it not be noble of Him? Would you not feel that His thoughts are
   far above your thoughts? Of course you would! Yes, but my God does
   noble deeds such as make the harps of Heaven ring with ecstatic music
   as the cherubim and seraphim behold His Grace. O thrice noble God,
   there is none like You, so ready to pardon and to receive each
   returning penitent and restore him to Your favor! To pardon you, my
   sinful Brother, would be extraordinary and honorable to the last
   degree, but God is prepared to act after that noble fashion! Will you
   not accept such boundless love and be at peace with such a Lord?

   Do you not all feel that if you could act in so noble a style it would
   be very pleasurable to you? No doubt there is some pleasure in knocking
   a fellow down who insults you, but it cannot last long. When the fire
   of passion goes out, a man begins to think whether it was a good thing
   to do, after all--but not to do it, to turn the other cheek when you
   have been struck, to do good instead of evil--have you ever tried that?
   If you have done so, you have heard music in your heart at midnight at
   the remembrance of your forbearance! When you have been lying awake,
   you have thought it over and you have said to yourself, "It makes me
   happy to think that I did not reply to that angry man in an angry
   tone--to think that I did not, after all, give him a smart blow when he
   gave me one--but that I showed patience and good temper and endured ill
   treatment for Christ's sake." It is a pleasure as deep as it is noble!
   To be Christ-like is to enjoy a Heaven within your breast!

   And even so, it is a pleasure to God to have mercy upon sinners. He
   delights in mercy! Nothing gives God greater delight than to save those
   who have offended Him. He is always ready for a gracious deed and
   freely, of His own will, He meets those who seek His face. He does not
   want you to melt His heart with tears in order to win His love and He
   does not require the laceration of your body by penance, nor a long
   period of agonizing doubt before He grants full and effectual pardon.
   It is His joy to pardon! He meets returning sinners when they are yet a
   great way off and kisses them. So rejoiced is He to receive them that
   if they are glad to be received, yet He is the more glad of the two!
   Joyous is the great Father's heart when He presses His Ephraims to His
   bosom!

   Did I hear somebody say, "But this that you are talking about is not
   justice"? Listen--it is not unjust. Look at the conduct which our Lord
   commands us and see if that would be unjust. If a man has insulted me
   and I forgive him, am I unjust? If a man has slandered me and I
   overlook it, am I unjust? If a man has done me an injury and I refuse
   to take any revenge except that of doing good to him, am I unjust?
   Certainly I am not acting according to the laws of justice, but then I
   am not the judge--and not being the judge--why should I undertake an
   office to which I am not called? God is the Judge of all by necessity
   of His Nature, but He will not fully display that Character till the
   day when in the Person of His Son He shall come with all His holy
   angels to summon men to His bar. For the present He does not deal with
   living men after the rule of justice, but He deals with them according
   to His Grace.

   If anyone should question why He should give His Grace to the
   undeserving, here is a sufficient answer for them-- "May I not do as I
   will with My own? Is your eye evil because Mine is good?" If you choose
   to show kindness to those who do not deserve it, who shall say to you,
   "no"? May not a man be as generous and forbearing as he pleases? What
   Law, human or Divine, forbids him? And if God, with infinite
   sovereignty of mercy, chooses to dispense His favors even to those who
   deserve nothing at His hands, let Him be adored forever, but let Him
   not be questioned for so doing! At any rate, it ill becomes the
   undeserving, themselves, to raise such a question--rather let them
   eagerly accept the bounty of the pardoning God!

   And then note this thought--that to do good to the evil is, after all,
   promotive of righteousness. To be good to the unjust is to help on the
   cause of right, for goodness to the evil is one of the most wooing
   things in the world, wooing them, I mean, to repent and do good in
   return! Let me give you an anecdote. There was a farmer who lived in
   one of the new settlements of America. We will call him Mr. Wrath, for
   he was a man of a horrible temper and everybody who lived

   near him was made to know it. He had an excellent Christian man living
   near him--a gentle, good, easy-tempered soul--and on one occasion this
   good man's hogs strayed into the bad man's wheat and caused damage. Mr.
   Wrath came down in a tearing rage and said what he would do and what he
   would not do.

   The other offered to pay for the damage and said that he was very sorry
   for his neglect and would do his best that it should not happen again.
   However, it did happen again, and the owner of the wheat was in a great
   passion. He caught the swine and killed them all, put their bodies on a
   cart and took them back to his neighbor. "Your hogs," he said, "got
   into my wheat--here they are." And sure enough there they were, all
   dead. Of course, the owner of the hogs might have gone to the
   authorities against Mr. Wrath and obtained damages at more or less the
   cost of trouble and temper, but he merely said that he was exceedingly
   sorry that his hogs had transgressed again and there ended the matter.

   Some time after, it came to pass that Mr. Wrath's pigs went astray, as
   pigs will do, and they damaged the Christian's wheat. What did he do?
   He had not sought a legal remedy against his adversary--would not it
   have been fair and straightforward to butcher Mr. Wrath's hogs on the
   principle of tit for tat, as the proverb puts it? Of course it would
   have been, but a Christian does not act upon that worn-out legal
   principle! Instead of killing the creatures, he caught them all, tied
   their legs, put them on a cart, drove up to the door and said, "Friend
   Wrath, your hogs got into my wheat. I have brought them to you. Here
   they are"--the very words that Mr. Wrath had used to him.

   Mr. Wrath went to the cart, of course expecting to find his swine all
   dead. But there they were, all right enough, grunting in proof of their
   continued existence. "There," the neighbor said, "hogs are always
   troublesome. I dare say you could not help their getting into my
   wheat." Mr. Wrath's temper was changed from that very day. How could he
   behave badly to such a neighbor who had vanquished him by forgiving him
   the injury that he had done him? Now, just as men can win upon men by
   their kindness, so does God win upon the hearts of men by His love when
   the Holy Spirit leads them to see and feel that He acts graciously
   towards them. There is no power to win a man like the power of love! If
   you have ever been converted, dear Friends, I think that you have felt
   that you could say--

   "I yield, by Sovereign Love subdued-- Who can resist its charms?"

   The thunderbolts of God might have broken you down, but they could not
   have forced love into your terrified soul! Yet, when Jesus came in love
   and mercy, you were compelled to yield and that most gladly and
   heartily!

   So God's goodness to the unjust is aiding and assisting the cause of
   righteousness and justice and who, therefore, shall say a word against
   it? "Ah," says somebody, "but it is very liable to be abused. If you go
   and help the bad and benefit the unjust, you will find that they will
   take your charity and spend it wrongly, or perhaps they will turn,
   again, and harm you." This is very true, but still, the Master says,
   "Love your enemies and pray for them that despitefully use you." He
   does not insert a clause to the effect that we are only to do this
   where we are sure that it will not be abused. No, it is absolute! If
   they make bad use of it, that is no business of ours. Your heavenly
   Father knows that the fool, when he reaps his harvest, will simply
   spend it on himself, yet He sends him the sunlight and the shower. He
   knows that yonder oppressive wretch will, with his wealth, go on to
   grind the poor, but He sends his crops the warm, genial sun and the
   refreshing rain, notwithstanding it.

   But, dear Friends, there is this thing to be said about Divine Grace,
   that if God gives it to you, you cannot misuse it, for Grace will
   change your heart and renew your nature! And if He is so ready to give
   to men those benefits which they can and do abuse, much more will He
   bestow that Grace which is liable to no such ill usage. Let me add,
   however, if anybody does abuse God's mercy, just as if any man abuses
   your practical kindness, it involves him in great guilt. Men cannot do
   despite to goodness without becoming exceedingly vile. You will soon
   see this if I mention one anecdote. In Holland, in the days when the
   Baptists were persecuted, it happened that the canals were frozen over
   and one poor despised Baptist escaped from a person who was seeking to
   drag him before the magistrates to get blood money for his head. He ran
   across the river, which was wide and frozen. The ice was strong enough
   to bear him and he got safely to the other shore.

   The person who was seeking his life was a heavier man and he slipped
   through the ice and went into the water. And what did this poor hunted
   Christian man do? He turned round and at the peril of his own life he
   helped his persecutor out and landed him on the bank. And what did the
   wretch do but seize him and drag him before the magistrates--and he was
   burnt as the result of his own act of generosity! There is not a man in
   the world who does not feel that the wretch

   deserves universal condemnation! Everybody denounces him at once. So
   if, after God's mercy to the unjust and the bad, they still go on to
   sin against Him I will leave the universal conscience of mankind to cry
   them down!

   I heard, the other day, an instance of a dog's returning good for evil
   and this places the matter in an equally strong light. A man had taken
   a dog with the intention of drowning him--a large Newfoundland dog. He
   went into a boat with a big stone intending to throw the dog out of the
   boat into the stream with the stone about his neck. Somehow or other,
   before he had securely tied the stone, the dog had become free and in
   some little scuffle between them the boat was upset and dog and man
   were both in the water. The man sank and was nearly drowned, but the
   dog, noble creature, swam up and seized hold of the man and drew him
   safely to shore.

   Now suppose he had drowned the dog after that! Did I hear some
   indignant person say, "Let him be drowned himself? He would not deserve
   to live, surely. I would take such a dog as that home and say, "While I
   have a crust, there shall be a bit for you, good dog who saved my life
   when I was destroying yours." Now, if even a dog, when it renders good
   for evil, gets a claim upon us, what shall I say of the great God who,
   with generous liberality, continues to feed and keep in life and health
   the undeserving sons of men? And who, more than this, has given His own
   Son to die and sent a message of amazing love to mankind, in which He
   says, "Come to Me: I am ready to forgive you. Come and accept My love
   and mercy. Let us be friends, for I delight to forgive sin"? Is it not
   clear that to abuse such love is black-hearted baseness? I beseech you,
   be not guilty of it!

   II. Now, secondly, we may gather fresh hope and encouragement from THE
   FACT ITSELF. When the sunlight comes upon a wicked man's field and the
   rain descends upon the farm of a blaspheming atheist, the man has done
   nothing to deserve either shower or sun, but yet they favor him. And,
   blessed be God, He gives His Grace to those who have done nothing to
   deserve it! If all your life long you cannot think of one good action
   you have ever performed, nevertheless the Grace of God is free to you
   if you will have it. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
   saved" is preached to you--deserving and merit are out of the question!
   God gives freely even to the evil and the unjust!

   Showers and sunlight from Heaven come to those who have not sought them
   at the Lord's hands. That fool, there, never prayed for the sunlight.
   He does not believe in praying--not he! And that oppressor over yonder,
   that we spoke of, never asked God to send the rain--he said it was a
   matter of chance and he did not see the good of praying about it. Yet
   it came. And oh, what a wonder it is that God is often found of them
   that sought Him not! Persons have come into this Tabernacle and the
   last thing they thought of was that they would be saved that night--and
   yet they have been! God's infinite mercy sometimes comes to those who
   do not ask for it, according to the text, "I am found of them that
   sought Me

   not."

   Look at Colonel Gardiner. He had made a commitment and was about to
   perpetrate a gross act of vice, but the person whom he expected to meet
   had not come and, therefore, he had to wait an hour or two. While he
   waited he saw or thought he saw, a vision of the Savior who said to
   him, "I did all this for you, what have you done for Me?" That
   question, with the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ, by Divine Grace,
   changed his heart! He never kept that appointment but, as most of you
   know, he became one of the most devout Christians in the world! Oh,
   tell it the wide world over that as the rain tarries not for man, nor
   waits for the sons of men, but comes according to the good favor of
   God, so often does His Grace visit those who knew not God and sought
   not after Him! Let Him be praised and extolled forever and ever because
   of this.

   Now, if Grace sometimes comes to those who have not asked, do you not
   think that it will come to you who are asking for it? Oh you that are
   groaning for it, sighing for it and longing for it--do you think it
   will be denied to you? God forbid! He will be sure to bless you.
   Believe in the Lord Jesus and it is yours at once! The rain comes to
   those who do not even acknowledge the existence of God. It waters the
   atheist's fields and refreshes the pastures of the fool who says in his
   heart, "There is no God." Even so, I have known the Grace of God
   descend on those who have loudly denied His very existence. In our
   Church there is one, at least, who not long ago was a loud spokesman
   against God, but upon his dropping into this house, the Word came with
   power to his soul and again, and again, and again it described his
   case, till at last he said, "There is a God, for He has found me out.
   The preacher seems to know my case and character." Every time he came,
   something was said which so accurately described himself that he could
   not understand and interpret it in any other way than that God had
   spoken to his soul!

   Now, if God calls by His effectual Grace some that even doubt His
   existence, how much more will He look on you who have been made to
   tremble before Him and who desire to be reconciled to Him? Surely He
   will hear the cry of the humble and grant your penitent request! The
   Lord sends the rain to some that never thank Him for it. "A heavy
   shower, William," says the fool. "Yes, Sir," says his pious servant,
   "God be thanked for it." "I do not know much about that, William. I
   dare say the wind had a good deal to do with it. I knew it would come,
   for the glass was down." So he ends that talk. Yes, but, dear Friend,
   if God sends temporal blessings to those who do not thank Him, will He
   not give His Grace to those of you who feel that you would bless Him
   forever if He would but save you?

   A good woman said, when she sought the Lord, "If He saves me He shall
   never hear the last of it, for I will praise Him as long as ever I live
   and then to all eternity." Well, now, you may reckon quite surely that
   when a soul feels after that manner the Lord will not deny it the sun
   of His love, or the rain of His Grace! He gives rain even to those whom
   He knows will remain thankless--will He not give His Spirit to those
   who will become His grateful children? Remember, too, dear Friends,
   that God gives this rain and this sunshine year after year! If I were
   very kind to a man and he treated me unthankfully I should think that I
   had a good deal of Grace if I kept on being kind to him for a year. And
   supposing I kept on seven years, I fancy that I should think that I had
   endured a long enough trial of him and should get a little tired of
   being grieved by him--wouldn't you?

   Yet, look, God has sent sunshine and showers upon the fields of the
   wicked all their lives long! He has continued to be kind to them and He
   has not grown weary. Perhaps some of you are 50 years old and yet have
   never yielded to the love of God. Ah, you have been hearing sermons
   these 50 years. Perhaps you are getting on for 70 now. Why, you have
   heard tender words of love that went further than your ears and touched
   your conscience--but you have still held out against God! Oh, the
   patience of God to have borne with you from day to day! Now, if He has
   suffered you so long, and if tonight you turn to Him with purpose of
   heart and say, "I have had enough of this rebellion. Lord, I would be
   at peace with You," do you think that He will refuse you? Far from it!
   For His mercy endures forever!

   One more remark on this. The sunshine which you saw today, I do not
   doubt, was as bright a sunlight as that which Joshua saw when he bade
   the sun stand still. And the showers that fell the other day,
   especially as it fell in these quarters and at Brixton, I should say
   were quite as plentiful as any downpour which our grandsires can
   remember. It is evident that the sun's fire is not burnt out and that
   the clouds are not exhausted. Well, it is so in heavenly things, for
   there the eternal fullness dwells! God has as much love as ever and as
   much Grace as ever--and as a thousand years ago He poured forth His
   Grace to convert the bad and the unjust--He is just as able to pour
   them out now upon the most guilty and the most worthless.

   His Grace in conversion, pardon, adoption and preservation is as large
   as ever! Glory be to His blessed name, He still rains His bounties on
   the unjust! And that Christ who, when we were dead in sins, died for
   us, and who, while we were yet sinners, manifested His great love to
   us--that Christ who came into the world to save sinners--still abounds
   in power to save and bless! And if you will go to Him (and oh, may His
   Grace make you) you shall find it to is so!

   III. Lest I should weary you, I will finish with the last head, under
   which I should like to MAKE THE EARTH, THE

   FLOWERS AND THE TREES WHICH HAVE BEEN WATERED AND WARMED, SPEAK TO YOU
   A LITTLE.

   And, first, I will suppose, dear Friend, that you are here tonight and
   feel that you cannot pray--feel as if you could not come to God, could
   not do anything. The flowers say, "We are cheered by the sun and
   refreshed by the rain. We do nothing to deserve these blessings, but we
   do long for them." The little flowers say, "We do long for the rain."
   Look at them--they droop their heads during a long drought. See the
   grass, how brown it gets! See the leaves, how dry they are! See the
   earth, how chapped it is after a dry season.

   Now, Soul, do you long for the mercy of God? Do you pine for it, sigh
   for it, cry for it? God help you to do that! To be forgiven, to get the
   love of God shed abroad in your hearts--is not that worth having? Do
   pant for it, I say, as the flowers sigh for the rain and the sun! And
   next, the flowers seem to say, "Do turn to it." If you keep a plant in
   your window, see how it grows the way the sun comes! Notice the trees,
   how they put out their branches sunward. See the sunflower how it turns
   its head in the direction of the sun. The flowers love the sun! If you
   cannot do anything to get Divine Grace, at least turn your head that
   way! Look that way! Long that way! Grow that way! You will receive
   it--it will not be denied. It will come to you. It has already come to
   you if you have begun to turn to it with longing gaze!

   And then the flowers seem to say, "Drink it in when it does come." In
   January there was the crocus just peeping up from the soil and the sun
   shone on it and in gratitude it brought up from the deeps--from its
   cellar somewhere--a gold cup and set it out to catch the sunbeams till
   the sun smiled and graciously filled it to the brim! And have you
   noticed when the soft April showers fall, how the flowers seem, each,
   to have a cup to hold a share of Heaven's bounty? And certainly beneath
   the soil each flower has its little traveling rootlets sucking up each
   drop of moisture they can find. Now, dear Hearers, when Grace comes
   specially near to you, drink it in! Is the sermon blest to you? Do not
   go away and lose its influence! Do you feel some tender movements in
   your conscience? Yield to them! Is there an invitation? Accept it! Is
   there a threat? Tremble at it! Open your bosom and say, "Come in, my
   Savior, come in and reign and save my soul from the wrath to come."

   But then the flowers say, once more, "Do thank God for it." The last
   two or three days I have seemed to live in a temple! When I go into my
   garden I have a choir around me in the trees. They do not wear
   surplices, for their song is not artificial and official. Some of them
   are clothed in glossy black, but they sing like little angels! They
   sing the sun up and wake me at break of day. And they warble on till
   the last red ray of the sun has departed, still singing out from bush
   and tree the praises of their God! And all the flowers--the primroses
   that are almost gone--these bring into my heart deep meanings
   concerning God till the last one shuts his eyes. And now the
   forget-me-nots and the wallflowers and the lilacs and the guilder roses
   and a host of sweet beauties are pouring out their incense of perfume,
   as if they said, "Thank the God that made us! Blessed be His name! The
   earth is full of His goodness!"

   Now, dear Hearers, if you get the Lord's Grace, thank Him for it. Grow
   by it, blossom with it, be fragrant with it. If you only receive a
   little Grace, be very grateful for it, for a little Grace is worth a
   great deal. If God gives you Grace enough to be called starlight, thank
   Him for it and He will give you moonlight! And when you get moonlight
   Grace, thank Him for it and He will give you sunlight! And when you
   have obtained sunlight Grace, thank Him for it and He will give you the
   light of Heaven which is as the light of seven days!

   Lastly--and this the flowers cannot teach you, because the flowers
   cannot do it--pray for Grace. It will come. It will come! Do you
   remember George Herbert's pretty verse. With that I will finish. He
   says--

   "The dew does every morning fall-- And shall the dew outstrip Your
   Dove? The dew for which grass cannot call-- Drops from above."

   See his point? The dew comes every morning. The grass cannot ask for
   it, but it comes. And shall the dew be more free and swift than the
   Holy Spirit? No, says the poet--I can pray for that holy Dove--will He
   not come to me, who prays, since the dew comes to the grass which
   cannot call for it? Behold He visits the earth and waters it with the
   river of God which is full of water and flings back the curtains of the
   sky and bids the sun shine out with genial face upon the poor dead
   soil! And if He does all this for the fields that cannot pray and for
   flowers that cannot speak, how much more will He do it for you who seek
   His face through Jesus Christ?!

   Come, then, to Him! He will gladly welcome you. Come and trust His Son.
   Come and rest in the merit of Jesus' blood and you shall find eternal
   life! May God bless you all, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Great Difference

   (No. 1415)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 19, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Where is the God of Judgment?" Malachi 2:17.

   "Then shall you return, and discern between the righteous and the
   wicked, between him that serves God and him that serves Him not."
   Malachi 3:18.

   You were not here, I am thankful to say, last Lord's-Day evening, for
   it was your duty and privilege to stay away to give others an
   opportunity of hearing. My subject, then, [Sermon #1414, No Difference]
   was our heavenly Father who makes His sun to rise upon the evil and
   upon the good and sends rain upon the just and upon the unjust. Then I
   set forth the universal benevolence of God and the way in which He
   stays the operations of Justice to give space for forbearance and
   long-suffering. Now this fact, this gracious fact, which ought to lead
   man to repentance, has, through the perversity of human nature, been
   used for quite another purpose. Men have said, "He blesses the evil as
   well as the good. The sun shines on all alike. The rain
   indiscriminately enriches the field of the tyrant and the pasture of
   the generous heart-- where is the God of Judgment? Is there such a God?
   Is it not one and the same whether we fear Him or disregard Him?"

   Side by side with this has run another circumstance perhaps even more
   readily misunderstood. God is, in this life, preparing His people for a
   better world and part of that process is effected by trial and
   affliction so that it frequently happens that the godly are in
   adversity while the wicked are in prosperity. Having no such designs
   toward them as toward His people, the Lord permits the wicked to enjoy
   themselves while they may, so that oftentimes they are as bullocks
   fattened in rich pastures--but they forget that they are fattened for
   the slaughter! The righteous, brought very low, are often in poverty,
   frequently in sickness and not seldom in despondency of spirit--but all
   to prepare them for Glory! From the trials of the godly, which are all
   sent in wisdom and in love, shortsighted man has inferred that God has
   no regard to human character and even treats those worst who serve Him
   best.

   In Malachi's days the blaspheming crew even said that God takes sides
   with the wicked and they wearied God by saying--"Everyone that does
   evil is good in the sight of the Lord and He delights in them." Then
   again they uttered the old rude but plain-spoken question, "Where is
   the God of Judgment?" Truly Brothers and Sisters, in looking with these
   poor eyes upon the affairs around us, they do appear to be a great
   tangle and snarl, a mixed medley of strange happenings. We see the true
   princes of the earth walking in the dust and beggars riding upon
   horses! We mourn as we see servants of God and heirs of Heaven lying,
   like Lazarus, sick at the gate of the ungodly miser, while the vicious
   libertine is rioting in luxury and drinking full bowls of pleasure!

   Until we perceive the clue, Providence is a labyrinth into whose center
   we can never penetrate. But there is a clue which opens all its
   secrets! There is a God of Judgment, not sitting in Heaven in blind
   indifference, but looking down upon the sons of men and working out
   purposes of righteousness at all times. At this time I propose to speak
   upon the fact that God does put a difference between the righteous and
   the wicked and makes no mistake between Egypt and Israel. The Lord
   knows them that are His and in His dealings, which we cannot always
   understand, He has not confused His people with the world, nor does the
   rod of the wicked rest upon the lot of the righteous. He has a right
   hand of acceptance for them that fear Him and He has a left hand of
   punishment for those that fear Him not.

   This distinction is not so apparent, yet, as it shall be, but we shall
   now trace the gradual widening of the division between the two classes
   and show that still there is a God of Judgment and that, by-and-by,
   even the blindest eye shall be able to discern between the righteous
   and the wicked, between him that serves God and him that serves Him
   not.

   I. First, then, THERE ARE SIGNS OF SEPARATION between the righteous and
   the wicked. The first sign is seen in the evident difference of
   character. "They that feared the Lord" are spoken of. That is to say,
   there are still some on the face of the earth who believe that there is
   a God, who believe in the Revelation which He has given, who accept the
   Atonement which He has provided and who delight to be obedient to the
   will which He has declared. How came they to fear the Lord? The answer
   is, it is a gift of His Grace and a work of His Spirit wherever it is
   found. It makes a distinction very deep, very vital and, consequently,
   very lasting, for it shall continue throughout eternity!

   Let us bless God that in the worst times He still has a remnant
   according to the election of Grace! And when blasphemers grow bold in
   sin and say, "Where is the God of Judgment?" there are at least a few
   hidden ones who nevertheless look up and behold the Lord exalted above
   the rage of His foes. There will always be a band who bow the knee and
   worship the Most High because their hearts stand in awe of Him. God is
   beginning to separate His chosen from the world when He gives them an
   inward sense of His Presence and a consequent holy fear and sacred awe
   of Him. The dividing work begins here--in the bent and current of the
   heart.

   This difference in real character soon shows itself in a remarkable
   change of thought and meditation. According to the passage before us,
   those who are said to, "fear the Lord," are also described as those
   who, "thought upon His name." Their thoughts are not always towards the
   transient things of this world, but they are much engaged with the
   eternal God and His truth--they are not always groveling after the
   creature, but soaring towards the Creator. The Hebrew word has the idea
   of "counting"--they reckon the Lord as the chief consideration when
   they count up their arguments for action. Others do not take Him into
   the reckoning, they act as if there were no God at all. But the
   righteous make much of Him and account Him to be the greatest factor in
   all their calculations--they fall back upon God in trouble-- and joy
   most of all in Him when they are glad.

   They reckon not without the Lord of Hosts. They say, "The best of all
   is, God is with us." And concerning any action, if it is contrary to
   His mind, they reject it. If it is according to His will they think
   upon Him and they delight to carry it out. This makes a great
   difference in their course of life and also in their happiness. Dear
   Hearers, I trust there are many among you who can truly say that your
   meditation of God has been very sweet and you have been glad in the
   Lord. This, then, is working out a distinction between you and the
   wicked who forget God. You fear the Lord and you take delight in
   meditating upon Him in secret, but this, the worldling cannot
   understand. This makes a distinction between you and the careless which
   does not long exist without operating in a further direction--you grow
   weary of their frivolous conversation and they cannot endure your
   serious observations! And so two parties are formed, as of old there
   were two lines--the sons of God and the children of Cain.

   You will soon see Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob living over again
   if you watch the thoughtless worldling and the pious Christian and mark
   how much they differ. Therefore there grows out of this difference of
   thought and feeling a separation as to society. "Then they that feared
   the Lord spoke often one to another," which shows that they often met
   and that they delighted in one another's company. Each man felt himself
   feeble in the midst of the ungodly and, therefore, he sought out a
   Brother that he might be strengthened by association. Each man felt
   himself to be like a sheep in the midst of wolves, but knowing the
   nature of sheep to be gregarious, each one sought his fellow, that they
   might make up a flock, hoping that, as a flock, they might gather round
   the Good Shepherd. Yes, and in the ungodliest times there are not only
   gracious people here and there, but these chosen souls, by some means
   or other, make mutual discoveries and come together and so form the
   visible Church of the living God!

   In Rome, in the days of the Caesars, when to be a Christian meant to be
   condemned to die without mercy, if Believers could not meet in their
   houses, they would meet in the abodes of the dead--in the
   Catacombs--but they must meet. It is the nature of God's children that
   they do not like going to Heaven alone, but prefer to go up to the
   temple in bands and companies--and the more the merrier, as the proverb
   has it--for they delight to go with the multitude that keep Holy Day
   and they rejoice to fly in flocks like doves to their windows. There is
   a Divine sweetness in Christian communion and every true saint delights
   in it! The essence of our religion is love and he that loves not the
   Brethren, loves not God and lacks an essential point of the Christian
   character.

   By the exercise of holy Brotherhood the Lord continues to call out His
   own people and thus to create a manifest separation. Likeness of
   character and thought produce a mutual affection and so a corporate
   body is formed and the solitary secret ones become manifest in the
   mass. The chosen stones are quarried and are built into the similitude
   of a

   palace--what if I say that they come together bone to His bone to
   fashion the spiritual body of the Lord Jesus Christ? This distinct
   association leads on to a peculiar occupation--for, "they that feared
   the Lord spoke often one to another." They heard others speak against
   the Lord and they resolved to speak, too. Of others the Lord
   complained, "your words have been stout against Me, says the Lord," and
   these men felt that it would be a shame if they were silent. They did
   not cast their pearls before swine, yet they wore their pearls where
   those who were not swine, but saints, could see them! In society where
   the Truth of God would be appreciated, they were not backward to
   declare it--"they spoke often one to another."

   It was a time of noise and tumult. It was a time of speaking very
   bitterly against the Lord. Therefore when they met together they spoke
   for the Lord and each one opened his mouth that the Lord might not lack
   for witnesses. I take it that the expression means that they renewed
   and repeated their testimony. "They spoke often one to another." They
   said, "Ah, we can answer what the ungodly are saying! Our experience
   testifies that they speak not aright. It is not a vain thing to serve
   God. How do you find it, Brother?" Then the Brother would say, "I find
   it exceedingly comforting and cheering to my soul. They have said, What
   profit is it that we have kept His ordinances? But I have found it
   exceedingly profitable, for in keeping His commandments there is great
   reward." Then a third would say, "It has enriched our souls to walk
   according to the mind of God and in the blessed ordinances of His house
   our souls have been fed and exceedingly nourished."

   A fourth would add, "The ungodly say it is in vain that we have walked
   mournfully before the Lord of Hosts--do you find it so, Brother?" The
   reply would be, "No, my mournful days have often been most profitable,
   like the days of shower and cloud which have most to do with the
   harvest." "Besides," said another, "we do not walk mournfully before
   the Lord as a rule, for we rejoice before Him, yes, in His name we do
   exceedingly rejoice!" Thus, you see, by their testimony, the one to the
   other, they supported each other's minds against the popular
   infidelities of the time. They set their thoughtful experience against
   the vicious falsehoods of unbelieving men and so they both honored God
   and benefited each other.

   When they "spoke often one to another" I have no doubt they expressed
   their affection, one for the other. They said, "Let us not marvel if
   the world hates us! Did not our Master say, 'It hated Me before it
   hated you'? Did He not tell us to beware of man? Did He not remind us
   that our worst enemies should be those of our own household." "Yes,
   Brothers and Sisters," they would say, one to another, "let us love one
   another, for love is of God." The elders would speak like John the
   Divine and say, "Little children, love one another." And the younger
   ones would respond by acts and words of loving respect to the older
   saints. Their mutual expressions of love would increase love! As when
   we lay live coals together, they burn the better, so loving
   intercommunications increase the heat of affection till it glows like
   coals of juniper which have a most vehement flame!

   No doubt, for we know by what we see, this speaking, one to another,
   assisted each other's faith. One might be weak, but they were not all
   weak at once! One and another would be strong just then. We all have
   our ups and downs, but the mercy is that when one is sinking, another
   is rising! It will frequently happen that if the sun does not shine on
   my side of the hedge, it is shining on yours, and you can tell me that
   the sun is not snuffed out but that it will shine on me, too,
   by-and-by. Commerce makes nations rich and Christian communion makes
   Believers grow in Grace. Speaking often, one to another, with the view
   of helping the weak hands and confirming the feeble knees is a means of
   great blessing to the souls of Christians!

   When they met, one would tell what he knew which his Brother or Sister
   might not know, and a third would say, "I can confirm that statement
   and add something more," and so the first speaker would learn as well
   as teach. Then a fourth Brother would say, "But there is yet another
   Truth which stands in relation to that which you have stated, do not
   overlook it." Thus by communion in experience and each one expressing
   what the Lord had written upon his heart, the whole would be edified in
   righteousness. Now, Beloved, it is in proportion as the children of God
   speak often, one to another, in this way that the Church is brought out
   into a visible condition. A silent Church might grope through the world
   unobserved, but a speaking Church--speaking often within itself--is of
   necessity soon heard beyond the doors of the house in which it dwells!

   Soon does the sound of Gospel music steal over hill and dale. "Their
   sound has gone forth throughout all the earth and their words unto the
   end of the world." The speaking together of assembled saints at
   Pentecost led to the gift of

   tongues and then they spoke so that every man in His own language heard
   the wonderful works of the Lord! An increase of private communion among
   the saints would lead to a fuller public communication to the outside
   and the world would receive a blessing. Thus I have shown you that the
   Lord thus gradually begins to separate a people to Himself. The fear of
   the Lord in the heart and the thought of God in the mind lead to
   association in persons of similar mold--hence arises the Church. Then
   the interchange of expression between the godly makes them zealous and
   this leads to public testimony and the people of God are revealed!

   You will say that this does not prove that God is dealing differently
   with them from other men. "Where is the God of Judgment?" is the
   question, and how is it to be answered? My reply is, in all this the
   Lord is putting a difference. To work His fear in the heart is an act
   of Sovereign Grace, but to enable the soul to find deep enjoyment in
   meditating upon Divine things is a reward as well as a gift of
   Grace--and a reward more valuable than if He gave the God-fearing man
   wealth and fame! Christian society is also no small token of the Divine
   favor and is another reward of the God-fearing. I do not know how you
   find it, but I can truly assert that my choicest delights are with the
   people of God. What a great deal some of us owe to Christian
   fellowship! People whom we should never have known and never have
   thought of speaking to are now our choicest friends and have been and
   are incalculably helpful to us. Christian love has enlarged our family
   circle wonderfully! We have come to be intertwisted, the one with the
   other, and the separate threads have ceased to be such for they have
   become a threefold cord which cannot be broken! And this is no small
   gift of Divine Grace.

   Moreover, the communications which have arisen out of this society in
   which we have edified one another, have they not been very precious to
   us? Can you not say you had rather dwell for a day in the courts of the
   Lord than reign in the tents of wickedness for ages? Is it not so that
   when we are able to rejoice together and tell our experiences, we find
   a pleasure which makes the wilderness and the solitary place to be
   glad? Best of all, it is in the midst of these communications where
   holy society yields us gracious fellowship, that God Himself is found!
   This is the grand distinction in God's relation to the universe at this
   present time--that He is with His people and they know it--while He is
   far from the wicked. The Lord listened and heard of old and He still
   listens and hears--and the Lord answers the prayers of His children out
   of His holy place--and sends tokens of acceptance to those who praise
   and magnify His name.

   "The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge." Oh
   come, let us exult before Him, for He is not far away, nor has He
   hidden His face from us, but He dwells between the cherubim and shines
   forth among His saints in the Person of His dear Son and manifests
   Himself to us as He does not to the world! Even now, Israel in Egypt is
   not Egypt, for God is pitying the sighs and cries of His people! Israel
   in the Arabian desert is not Arabian, for, lo, the fiery cloudy pillar,
   like an lifted up standard, gathers around it a separated people. Lo,
   "The people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the
   nations." Even now the faithful, in going out from the world and being
   separate, find the promise fulfilled--"I will dwell in them and walk in
   them. And I will be their God and they shall be My people." There is
   the first answer to the question, "Where is the God of Judgment?" The
   separation is already beginning--there are signs of it now!

   II. Secondly, THERE ARE PREPARATIONS FOR A FINAL SEPARATION and these
   are, at this moment,

   proceeding. What these preparations are we learn from the 16th
   verse--"The Lord listened and heard it and a book of remembrance was
   written before Him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon
   His name." There is a day coming in which He will separate the two
   sorts of men, the one from the other, as a shepherd divides the sheep
   from the goats. The great net is now dragging the sea bottom--the day
   is coming when the net shall be hauled in and drawn to shore. What a
   medley it contains of good and bad fish, of creeping things, weeds,
   shells and stones--this mass must be separated! Then will come the
   putting of the good into vessels and the casting of the bad away.

   When that is done it will be executed with great solemnity and care.
   There will be great discrimination used in the dividing of the
   righteous from the wicked and, as at a trial, everything proceeds upon
   evidence, the separating work is being prepared for us every day
   because the evidence is being collected and recorded. The evidence in
   favor of the righteous might be forgotten if it were not duly preserved
   in order that in the day when the separation shall be consummated there
   may be no mistake and nobody may be able to challenge the decision of
   the great Judge. Remember this, dear Friends, that evidence is being
   written down in a book--evidence of fidelity to God in evil times. When
   others were thinking against God and speaking against God, there were
   some who spoke on His behalf because they feared Him and thought upon
   His name--and their conduct was reported upon and chronicled!

   God's gracious eyes never overlooks one single act of decision for Him
   in the midst of blasphemy and rebuke. If the timid girl in the midst of
   a Christless family still patiently endures reproach and holds on to
   her Master's Truth--though she cannot speak eloquently--behold, it is
   written in the book! Though her tears may often be her strongest
   expressions, they are in the book, also, and shall not be forgotten!
   When the workman in the shop speaks a word against filthy language, a
   word for the sacredness of the Sabbath, a word for his Lord, it is all
   written in the Book of Remembrance! A commission is instituted for the
   collection of evidence as to those that fear the Lord and think upon
   His name.

   Are you, dear Friends, furnishing evidence, do you think, evidence
   which will prove that you are truly godly? Do you clearly stand out
   from among your fellows and are you manifestly separate, so that even
   Satan himself at the Last Great Day will not be able to challenge the
   evidence that will be given, that you did, indeed, fear the Lord when
   others reviled Him? This evidence is being taken by the Lord Himself!
   There is much consolation in this, because others might be prejudiced
   and give an unfavorable view of what we do. But when the Lord Himself
   bears witness, the truth will be manifested. "The Lord listened and
   heard." It is a very strong expression! He not only "listened," as one
   trying to hear, but He did actually hear all that was said! What a
   witness God will be in favor of His saints! If we really fear Him and
   think upon His name He will set our holy fear, our godly thought and
   our gracious talk in evidence on our behalf.

   He reads our motives and these are a deep and vital part of character.
   Others might err, but He cannot--what He hears is accurately heard and
   correctly understood. Evidence is being collected, then, by a Witness
   who is Truth itself! This evidence is before God's eyes at all times.
   If you notice, "the book of remembrance was written before Him," as if
   while every item was being put down, the book lay open before His gaze.
   From Him the record is no more concealed than the act itself--past
   deeds of virtue are present to His eyes. Every recorded act of Grace is
   especially noticed by the Lord. Every separate word of faithfulness and
   act of true God-fearing life is noted, weighed, estimated, valued and
   safely preserved in memory to justify the verdict of the last grand
   dividing day!

   Think of it, then, Beloved Brothers and Sisters--all that Divine Grace
   is working in you of humble faithfulness to God is being recorded! No
   annual report will proclaim it. It will never be printed in a magazine,
   nor advertised through the newspapers so as to bring you renown. But a
   Book of Remembrance is written before the Lord Himself! There it lies
   before Him whose single approval is more than fame! There, read a
   page--"Such an one thought upon My name. So-and-So spoke to his brother
   concerning Me and helped to the mutual edification of the body and to
   the bearing of powerful testimony for My Truth against the assaults of
   error."

   This evidence, moreover, dear Friends, is of a spiritual kind and this
   is one reason why it is taken down by God and by no one else, for it is
   evidence concerning the state of the heart in reference to God! And who
   is to form that estimate but the Lord who searches the heart? Who is to
   know the thoughts of the mind, save God alone? There is an ear that
   hears thought. Though it is not indicated by a sound so loud as the
   tick of a clock, nor so audible as the chirping of a little bird, yet
   every thought is vocal to the mind of the Most High and it is written
   down in the Remembrance Book! Certain great actions which every man
   applauds may never go into that book because they were done from
   motives of ostentation, but the thought which nobody could have known
   and which must otherwise have remained in oblivion is recorded by the
   Lord and shall be published at the last assize!

   Perhaps it ran thus, "What can I do for Jesus? How can I help His poor
   people? How can I cheer such-and-such a languishing spirit? How can I
   defeat error? How can I win a wandering soul for my Master?" Such
   thoughts as these are reckoned worthy of record and they are supplying
   evidence which, in His gracious love, the Lord is collecting that the
   sentence of His great tribunal may be justified to all. That evidence
   concerns apparently little things, for it mentions that "they spoke one
   to another." Of course people will gossip when they get together--what
   is there in talk? Oh, but what sort of gossip was it? That is the
   question! For a holy theme turns gossip into heavenly fellowship! It is
   written, they "thought upon His name." Surely it is not much to think?
   Ah Brethren, thinking and speaking are two very powerful forces in the
   world and out of them the greatest actions are hatched. Thoughts and
   words are the seeds of far-reaching deeds and God takes care of these
   embryos and germs--men do not even know of them and if they did know,
   would not esteem them--but they are put down in the Book of Remembrance
   which lies always open before the Most High!

   Now, all this is going on every day and every night as certainly as
   time's sands drop through the hour-glass. Letter after letter, stroke
   by stroke, the story is being written in the Book of Remembrance and
   though men see it not, the evidence is being gathered up to be used in
   that dread solemnity in which, amidst the pomp of angels, the great
   Infallible

   shall separate the blessed of His Father from those who are accursed!
   Thus every day the God of Judgment is working towards the time when
   even the most careless shall discern between the righteous and the
   wicked.

   III. This brings us to the third point that IN THAT SEPARATION GREAT
   PRINCIPLES WILL BE

   MANIFESTED. I shall only have time to mention them rapidly. First, the
   principle of election will be displayed. God will have a people who are
   more His than other men can be. "They shall be Mine, says the Lord of
   Hosts, in that day." "All souls are Mine," says God, and His witness is
   true, but He rejects some souls because of sin and says, "You are not
   My people." As for His chosen, they are His portion, His peculiar
   treasure, His regalia, His crown jewels and they shall be His forever.
   Then will special love and peculiar choice be manifest, for in the day
   of the separation it shall be seen that the Lord knows them that are
   His and while He counts others to be as mere stones of the field, He
   has set His heart upon the saints who are the gems of His crown.

   And then will come, as the next principle, the fact of essential
   value--namely, that the Lord's people are not only His but they are His
   jewels. There is something in them which Grace has put there, which
   makes them to be more precious than other men. "The righteous is more
   excellent than his neighbor." God's Grace makes His children to be
   purer, holier, heavenlier than the rest of mankind--and they are
   rightly divided from the impure and worthless mass. They will at the
   last, by evidence, be proved to have been jewels among men and nobody
   shall be able to question their worth. They shall be confessed by all
   men to have been precious stones and pebbles, gold and dross.

   Then will come up the next principle of open acknowledgment. They were
   the Lord's and they shall be acknowledged as such. "They shall be Mine,
   says the Lord of Hosts, in that day." He Himself will declare the fact,
   for it is written, "He is not ashamed to call them Brethren," and in
   that day the Lord Jesus will say, "Here am I, and the children that You
   have given Me." Oh, what a joy it will be to be thus openly confessed
   by Jesus Himself! Now we are unknown if we are God's people, for the
   world knows us not because it knew not our Master Himself. We are dead
   and our life is hid with Christ in God. But when He who is our Life
   shall appear, then shall we, also, appear with Him in Glory! "Then
   shall your righteousness shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their
   Father." Then shall be carried out the principle that there is nothing
   hid which shall not be known and those who were secretly servants of
   the Lord shall have evidence of that fact read aloud before assembled
   worlds--and God, the judge of all--shall not be ashamed to declare,
   "They are Mine, they are My peculiar treasure."

   But even in their case the principle of mercy will be conspicuous. I
   want you to notice very specially. "When I make up My jewels they shall
   be Mine, and I will spare them." Sparing applies to those who, under
   another mode ofjudgment, would not escape. Had it been a question of
   merit as under Law, they would have been doomed as well as others, but
   the Lord says, "I will spare them." O God, even though You have made
   Your chosen to be Your treasure, yet You do spare them, for the
   evidence does not prove them meritorious, but shows that they were
   saved in Christ Jesus and, therefore, taught to fear You. When the
   Apostle had received great kindness from a friend whom he had valued,
   he offered a prayer for him which you may be sure would be a very
   earnest and comprehensive one, but it was this--"The Lord have mercy
   upon him in that Day."

   That is all we can expect and, blessed be God, it is all we need! The
   matter of justice is settled by our Great Substitute and to us mercy
   comes freely! The brightest saint that ever reflected the image of
   Christ on earth will have to be saved by mercy from first to last! "I
   will spare them," He says, for He might have dealt otherwise with them
   had He taken them on grounds of Law and judged them apart from the
   mercy which flows through the atoning Sacrifice! True, they were jewels
   and they were the Lord's own treasure. But if He had laid up their sins
   as evidence, instead of their marks of Grace--if that Book of
   Remembrance which is written before Him had contained an account of
   their shortcomings and their transgressions as the basis of
   judgment--it would have gone otherwise with them. But now He calls to
   remembrance their godly fear, their sacred thoughts and their holy
   conversation and He spares them!

   They will be dealt with on the principle of relationship, also. "I will
   spare them as a man spares his own that serves him." You spare your son
   when you know he is doing his best to serve you. He has made a blunder
   and if he had been a mere hired servant you might have been angry, but
   you say, "Ah, I know my boy was doing all he could and he will do
   better, soon, and therefore I cannot be severe. I see that he is
   imperfect, but I see equally well that he loves me and acts like a
   loving son." The word here used signifies pity or compassion, "Like as
   a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him."
   He will at the last look upon us with a love which has pity mingled
   with it, for we shall need

   it in that Day. He will "remember that we are dust" and will accept us,
   though cognizant of all the faults there were and of all the
   infirmities that there had been.

   He still will accept us because we are His own sons in Christ Jesus
   and, by His Grace, desire to serve Him. We do not serve Him to become
   sons, but because we are sons. It is a sweet name for a child of God--a
   son-servant--one who is a servant to his father and, therefore, because
   he is his son, serves not for wage, nor of compulsion, but out of love.
   Such service is mentioned as evidence of sonship and not as a
   claim--and we shall be saved through Grace, our holy service of sonship
   being the proof of that Grace..

   Beloved, on these principles will God make the final division. He will
   say, "You are Mine--I chose you. You are My saints and there is a
   gracious excellence in you. I acknowledge you as Mine and I am not
   ashamed to do so, for you bear My Nature. I chose you in mercy and, in
   consequence of My having chosen you, I have made you to be My
   son-servants and so I accept your holy conversation as the token of
   your sincere love to Me and I receive you into My Glory to be Mine
   forever and ever.

   IV. And now, lastly, comes the sure truth that THE SEPARATION, ITSELF,
   WILL BE CLEAR TO ALL. Then

   shall you mourn, you sorcerers and adulterers, you that oppress the
   hireling and turn aside the stranger from his right, you false swearers
   and enemies of God! You now can go on your way and say, "God cares
   nothing about righteous or wicked, He deals with all alike, or even
   smites His children worst of all." But you shall look another way,
   by-and-by. Compelled to turn your heads in another direction from that
   of this poor fleeting world, you shall see something that will astound
   you! For though you wish it not, even you and much more the godly shall
   then "discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that
   serves God and him that serves Him not." The division will be sharp and
   decisive!

   Wherever you read in the Bible you find only two classes. You never
   read of three--you find the righteous and the wicked--him that fears
   God and him that fears Him not. A certain order of persons puzzle us in
   making division here below because we do not know to which party they
   belong. But when the Book of Remembrance is finished and shall be
   opened, there will be no sort of difficulty in knowing them--the two
   classes shall roll apart like the two portions of the Red Sea when
   Moses lifted up his rod--and there shall be a space between. On which
   side, my dear Hearer, you that are hesitating between two opinions--on
   which side will you be?

   There will be no border land, no space for non-committal and
   neutrality--you will, then, be among the fearers of God or among those
   that fear not His name! Who may abide the day of His coming? That
   coming may be very speedy, for none of us knows the day nor the hour
   when the Son of Man shall appear. The separation will be sharp and
   decisive. There will be no undecided ones left. And it will obliterate
   a host of pretensions, for the day comes that shall burn as an oven and
   all the proud shall be as stubble. The Pharisee who thought he took his
   place among those that were the jewels of creation will find that the
   coming of the Lord will burn up his phylacteries and his broad
   hems--and utterly consume all his boasts as to fasting thrice in the
   week and taking mint and anise and cumin--for these things were never
   written in the Book, nor worth recording there.

   What was put there was fearing the Lord and thinking upon His name and
   speaking one to another. Ceremonials and niceties of observance are not
   thought worth a stroke of the recording pen! There is nothing in the
   Book to act as evidence for the proud, but everything to condemn him!
   Therefore the Day shall burn him up and utterly consume him and his
   hopes! That division will be universal, for all they that do wickedly
   shall be as stubble, not one of them escaping. Though they hid their
   wickedness and bore a good name. Though they concealed their sin even
   from those who watched them. Though they entered the Church and gained
   honors in it as Judas did in the college of the Apostles, yet that Day
   shall discover all that do wickedly! Talk how they may and speak as
   they please, their outward conduct will be the index of their inner
   alienation from God--and in the hour of their judgment the fire shall
   consume them from off the earth!

   Then shall both classes perceive that the distinction involves two very
   different fates. Once the righteous were in the fire and, according to
   the third chapter and the third verse, the Lord sat as a refiner and
   purified them in a furnace like silver! But now the tables are turned
   and the proud--and they that do wickedly--are in a more terrible fire!
   The Day shall burn as an oven! The righteous were profited by their
   fire, for they were good metal--and to part with the dross was no loss!
   But the wicked are such base metal that they shall utterly fail in the
   testing fire. The tables will be turned,

   again, for the righteous were under the feet of the wicked--they
   ridiculed and mocked them and called them "cants and hypocrites."

   But then the ungodly shall be laid low and the righteous shall tread
   them as ashes under their feet. The cause of evil will be a worn-out
   thing--it will be burnt up and there will be nothing left of it upon
   the earth but memories of its former power and of the fire by which it
   perished. That Day comes and let the mighty ones among the sons of men
   who rebel against God know it! They shall no more be able to resist the
   terror of His Presence than the stubble is able to stand against the
   blazing fire. When they pine forever in the place where their worm dies
   not and their fire is not quenched, they will know the God of Judgment
   and see how utterly He consumed them out of the land!

   Look at the lot of the righteous. When Christ, the Sun of
   Righteousness, shall arise upon the earth and gild it with His own
   light, there shall be a new Heaven and a new earth--and the righteous
   shall go forth and leap for joy like cattle which, before, had been
   penned in the stall! No works of the ungodly shall be left. As far as
   this world is concerned, they shall be utterly and altogether gone.
   There shall then be no tavern songs or ale-house ribaldry. There shall
   be no village profligate around whom shall gather the youth of the
   hamlet to be led away by his libidinous and blasphemous words. There
   shall then be no shameless reviler who shall provide a hall where
   blasphemers may congregate to try which can utter the blackest
   profanities against the Lord of Hosts. There shall be no shrine of
   virgin, or of saint, or idol, or image, or crucifix. Superstition shall
   be swept away!

   There shall be no congregations where pretended preachers of the Gospel
   shall deal out new philosophies and suggest newly invented skepticisms,
   or which at least they hoped men would accept as new, though they were
   the old errors of the past picked off the dunghill upon which they had
   been thrown by disgusted ages! Sin shall all be gone and not a trace of
   it shall be left! But here shall dwell righteousness and peace! The
   meek shall inherit the earth and the saints shall stand, each one in
   his lot, for the Lord Himself shall reign gloriously among His
   ancients! From every hill and every vale shall come up the one song of
   Glory unto the Most High and every heart that beats shall magnify His
   name, who at last has answered the question, "Where is the God of
   Judgment?"

   Then, cast into the nethermost Hell, in the place appointed for the
   devil and his angels, the ungodly shall never ask again, "Where is the
   God of Judgment?" And saints, triumphant in their Lord, with whom they
   shall reign forever in eternity, shall also perceive that He, "discerns
   between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serves God and
   him that serves Him not." Beloved Hearer, where? O where will you be?
   Where shall I be in that Day?
     __________________________________________________________________

The Faithful Saying

   (No. 1416)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 26, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ
   Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." 1
   Timothy 1:15.

   IT is worthy of notice that Paul, in the passage before us, as, indeed,
   in all his writings, exhibits great sensitiveness with regard to sin.
   The sin which he had, himself, committed against the Lord Jesus, looked
   at from some points of view, might have been greatly extenuated on
   account of the honest, although mistaken, motive which lay at the
   bottom of it. But Paul, after allowing for his ignorance, declares that
   of sinners he had been chief and that he obtained mercy that in him,
   first, Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern
   to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting. He
   describes himself as having been "a blasphemer, a persecutor and
   injurious" and, he is evidently lost in grateful astonishment that he
   should have been saved.

   This godly sensitiveness with regard to sin was associated in the
   Apostle's mind with an equally vivid sense of the freeness and richness
   of Divine Grace. That Christ died, not for the righteous, but for the
   guilty, is the great thought which is upon his mind and he has no
   hesitancy whatever in declaring it--and in speaking most boldly
   concerning the exceedingly abundant Grace of God in forgiving sin. The
   union of these two feelings in Paul is, by no means, an unusual
   occurrence among human minds, for you will generally find that the
   preacher who is most clear in his witness that salvation is by Grace,
   is also the man to whom sin is exceedingly sinful! Indeed, all those
   who prize Grace most are men who feel most sorrow concerning their
   transgressions.

   All systems of theology, except that which is founded upon Free Grace,
   in some way or other take off the edge of guilt. If they try to
   compromise the business and make salvation to be partly a matter of
   human effort and human merit--and partly a work of Divine Grace--they
   are sure, in the process, to conceal the exceeding iniquity of sin. Man
   is made out to be a poor, weak creature victimized by a Law too rigid
   for his frailty. It is represented that he has a right to mercy and a
   great uproar is made if we deny him any such right! And much anger is
   felt if we declare that mercy is the Sovereign prerogative of God which
   may be exercised at His own absolute discretion.

   Rebellion against Divine Election is often founded on the idea that the
   sinner has a sort of right to be saved and this is to deny the full
   guilt of sin. You will find that he who sets forth Free Grace as the
   only fountain and source of human salvation--and declares that sin is
   pardoned and put away freely by the mercy of God in Christ Jesus--is
   most plain and severe in denouncing sin with all his might and most
   tender in sorrowing over his own personal iniquities. I shall preach
   Grace to the chief of sinners at this time without reserve and without
   guarding my words in any respect whatever! I shall fling the big net of
   the Gospel right into the sea, let it go where it may! But do not,
   therefore, conclude that we think little of sin. Far from it! It is to
   us the sum of all abominations and the fire of Hell! And this, I trust,
   shall be apparent all along, though for the present we shall confine
   our thoughts to the greatness of the Grace of God, since to that
   subject our text summons us.

   The Apostle Paul had been describing himself and his sin. He confessed
   that he was, before, a blasphemer and a persecutor, "But," he says, "I
   obtained mercy." His was an instance of a sinner saved and he now
   declares that his case was a type of all others, for Christ Jesus came
   into the world to save sinners! The tendency is to set up the Apostle
   as an exceptional convert, but he corrects the idea by asserting the
   grand doctrine that the Savior's errand was to those who are guilty and
   undeserving--among whom he counted himself to be the chief. This coming
   of Christ to save sinners as sinners he regards as a Truth of God so
   well known in the Christian Church that it had come to be a saying,
   "familiar in their mouths as household words." It had become a sort of
   proverb with Christians that Christ Jesus came to save sinners and

   Paul says that it might justly be received as a proverb among all
   nations, for it was worthy of universal acceptance from the weight of
   its meaning, the importance of its subject and the Divine authority
   with which it was sealed.

   Moreover, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners is so
   true that it is not merely a saying, but a faithful saying, worthy of
   all confidence, being as sure as the Truth of God, Himself! Pass it
   round, you Christians! Repeat it among yourselves without the slightest
   hesitancy or question! Let it be a proverb among you, an undoubted
   fact, an unquestionable Truth of God-- Jesus came into the world for
   the salvation of sinners! He contemplated the saving of no other sort
   of persons but those who are sinful.

   I. Our first observation from this statement will be THAT SINNERS ARE
   IN AN AWFUL CONDITION. A man who needs saving is evidently in a very
   undesirable state. Now, every man and woman among you this day who has
   not been saved by Christ Jesus needs saving. You have kept the Law, you
   say, from your youth up, so what do you lack? My answer is that you
   need saving, notwithstanding your fine ideas about yourselves. But you
   have also been religious from your earliest recollection and you do not
   know that you have ever committed anything very wrong, you say!

   Dear Friend, despite your morality and outward religiousness, we are
   compelled to tell you that you need saving just as surely as the
   unchaste or the profane! Despite all that you say in your own favor,
   you have broken the Law of God and you are a sinner. And as a sinner
   you are in a terrible position from which nothing can save you but the
   hand of God. For, first, it is a grave peril to be a sinner. You have
   broken your Maker's commandments--is not that a calamity? You have
   neglected His will, which is holy and just and good--is not that a
   crying evil? To have a heart which does not choose the right, but which
   leans to evil--is not that ruinous? To have a mind which does not love
   God, but cares for itself more than for its Maker and Lord--is not that
   to be in a diseased state of soul? The polluting influence of sin upon
   the soul is the direst of all mischief, the worst of all
   destructions--it is spiritual death! From the defiling presence of sin
   every man needs to be saved.

   Moreover, the thrice holy God hates sin with a hatred scarcely to be
   conceived by any of us since we have lost the sensitiveness of perfect
   purity. Whatever things are impure, unchaste, untrue, unloving,
   unrighteous, God loathes with all the infinity of His perfect Nature.
   Doubtless, sin is a grief to godly men, but it is far more obnoxious to
   the Lord our God. "The wicked and him that loves violence, His soul
   hates." "The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord."
   The Lord has fierce indignation against everything that is evil--this
   is no arbitrary trait of His Character-- He does not choose to be angry
   with this or angry with that without a cause! No, from the very
   necessity of His Divine Nature He must delight in everything that is
   good and He must abhor everything that is evil.

   O Sinner, what a plight you are in since there is in you and upon you
   the sin which God cannot endure! What must your position be, for it is
   written concerning the Lord, "You hate all workers of iniquity," and
   such are you! Can you bear the thought? Furthermore, you are condemned
   and before long this will be made evident to all intelligent beings.
   There comes upon the swift wings of time a Day in which the Judge of
   all the earth will lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the
   plummet--and every transgression and iniquity shall receive its just
   recompense of reward. It is not possible that it should be otherwise,
   for there must come a reaping to every sowing! Idle thoughts, idle
   words and evil deeds must bear their fruit and, therefore, every sinner
   is in danger of eternal fire! As surely as the righteous through Christ
   shall go into everlasting happiness, so shall the ungodly depart into
   everlasting punishment where there shall be weeping and wailing and
   gnashing of teeth!

   And this may happen to any unpardoned sinner before he has heard the
   next word which I am about to utter! He may find himself shut out from
   all hope, eternally shut out from God before yonder clock shall strike!
   This is a perilous condition for an immortal soul! Yet every sinner not
   saved by Christ is in this condition! To this may be added the further
   reflection that the sinner is quite unable, of himself, to escape
   either from sin itself, or from the wrath which he has awakened, or
   from the punishment which is appointed for his transgressions. What can
   you do, O Ethiopian, to change your skin? O leopard, how can you remove
   your spots? And if, being evil, you could learn to do good, how could
   you put away the sin of the past? By what process could you take out
   the stains offormer years? Do not the sins of your youth lie in your
   bones even to this day? And they must be there forever unless the
   strong hand of Christ shall take them away.

   One of old cried, "O generation of vipers, how shall you escape the
   damnation of Hell?" And the question may well be asked of the most
   cunning and crafty of sinners. If you neglect the great salvation,
   which it shall be our joy to preach

   to you today, how shall you escape from the wrath to come? Chained up,
   then, as within a wall of fire, with that fire already burning within
   his soul in the form of evil lusts and drawing nearer to him from
   without every day he lives, the sinner is in a terrible position,
   indeed! O unforgiven Sinner, what do you think of this? Perhaps that
   position may be all the better defined if I remind you of the way by
   which a sinner has to be rescued from it. There is no hope for any
   sinner unless the Son of God, Himself, saves Him!

   You may safely measure the depth of the danger by the Glory of the
   Person who undertook to deliver us from it. It is the Son of God whom
   angels worship who has come to save sinners! It must be a deep
   destruction from which only God Himself can rescue man. And though He
   were the Son of God, yet when He came, observe how He had to be
   equipped. And from His equipment learn the sternness of the task. He
   must be Jesus--a Savior and then He must also be Christ-- anointed for
   the work! He must come with a commission from God with Divine
   authority--and the Spirit of God must rest upon Him to qualify Him for
   the great undertaking. For the text says not that Jesus came into the
   world, but Christ Jesus, the anointed Savior, came that He might save.
   If this equipment was needed, then surely the state of man was a
   grievous one.

   Note also that even Christ Jesus could not save men had He stayed in
   Heaven. He came into the world to save sinners. The Fall was so
   grievous that He must come right down into the place of our ruin! He
   must come to the dunghill that He might lift us out of it! God sat in
   Heaven and said, "Let there be light," and the darkness fled before
   Him. But He could not sit in Heaven and save sinners--He must needs
   come into the world to do so--down into this polluted creation the
   eternal Creator must, Himself, descend! Look, there in Bethlehem's
   manger He sleeps and on a woman's breast He hangs! He cannot save
   sinners, so great is their ruin, unless He becomes Incarnate and takes
   upon Himself our nature! And being here, think how dreadful must be the
   ruin when we see that He cannot return, saying, "It is finished,"
   until, first of all, He dies!

   That sacred head must be crowned with thorns! Those eyes must be closed
   in the darkness of the tomb! That body must be pierced even to its
   heart and then must lie a chill, cold corpse in the grave before man
   can be redeemed! And all that shame, suffering and death were but the
   outer shell of what the Savior suffered, for He passed under Divine
   wrath and bore a load such as would have crushed the whole race of men
   had they been left to bear it! O Sinner, you are awfully lost, you are
   infinitely lost, since it needs an infinite Savior to present the
   Atonement of His own body in order to save sinners from their sin! This
   is the first Truth of God, then, which is included in this faithful
   saying--may the Holy Spirit write it on our hearts.

   II. The second observation which clearly contains the very heart of the
   text is THAT CHRIST JESUS CAME TO SAVE MEN AS SINNERS. His salvation is
   meant for men who are sinners and for none else. Somebody says, "But is
   not that a plain matter of fact?" It is, but it is a fact scarcely
   realized--indeed, its real meaning is not known until God the Holy
   Spirit reveals it! A great many persons have a notion that Christ Jesus
   came into the world to save respectable people who, if they have done
   any wrong, have repented of it and have made things square. He came,
   according to them, to save persons who do their very best by attendance
   at worship, taking the sacrament, giving to the poor, paying their way
   and saying their prayers.

   These are doing all they can to get right and keep right--and surely
   they will be saved--so men talk. Their theory of salvation is very
   mixed, but it comes to this--the Gospel is for good people. They do not
   quite do without Jesus Christ--He comes in somewhere or other. But
   their religion is a kind of mingle-mangle--partly they save themselves
   and partly Christ saves them--and between the two they are not saved at
   all! Their vain fancy is that though they cannot do quite as much as
   they ought, Jesus comes in as an excellent make-weight and turns the
   scale in their favor. That is the notion of the bulk of mankind and in
   many places of worship you may hear something very much like it. Too
   much of the preaching of the present day mingles the Old Covenant with
   the New--you do not know whether, after all, you are going to be saved
   by merit or mercy, whether Christ came to save sinners or the
   righteous.

   The trumpet gives an uncertain sound. It is far too generally supposed
   that there must be something to recommend the sinner to God and that
   God could not send His Son to save men whom He views in the base and
   horrible character of sinners. "Surely," say the enemies of Free Grace,
   "He must have regard to their repentance or to something which He
   either sees or foresees in them." That He should see man to be evil and
   only evil and yet visit Him in mercy for mercy's sake seems hard for
   the carnal heart to believe! Therefore, lest we should be
   misunderstood, we lay down this straight line

   that Christ did not come into the world to save anybody but
   SINNERS--and He viewed those sinners as sinners and nothing more! He
   did not view them as repenting sinners, nor as believing sinners, nor
   as humble sinners, nor as sanctified sinners, nor anything else but
   sinners--and under that character He contemplated their salvation!

   The text says nothing more and nothing less than this, "Jesus Christ
   came into the world to save sinners." There is not a qualifying word.
   It is clear that only sinners are the objects of salvation, for none
   but sinners need saving! And if there had been no sinners there would
   certainly have been no saving and no Savior. Who needs saving but a
   lost man? Who needs a Savior but a man who, through his sin, has ruined
   himself? The very term, "Savior," and the very name, "Jesus," imply
   that salvation work is for sinners. We have some sinecure offices in
   our Government--I have heard of a Master of the Buckhounds who never
   mastered a buckhound in his life--but my Lord Jesus holds no sinecure
   in His office of Savior, for there are plenty of sinners and He is
   always saving them!

   If sinners are not contemplated by the plan of Grace, then the office
   of Savior is obsolete! But this can never be, since He is Jesus Christ,
   the anointed Savior, the same yesterday, today and forever! Nor would
   the Gospel be required for any but sinners, since none but the guilty
   need glad tidings of pardon and Grace. If man can be secure under the
   Law, let him stay under the Law. If the Law can justify, let the Law
   justify. What need of a second system to take away the first unless
   through the weakness of man the first system shall be found to be of no
   effect? No, verily the Law is glorious! Mount Sinai shines
   resplendently and verily perfection would have been by the Law if it
   could have been kept by mankind! No need for another glory or
   excellence, for the first would have sufficed if men had not been
   sinners--for the Law is holy, just and good!

   The very sound of that word, "Gospel," is lost and its sweetness
   dissipated in the midnight air unless there are sinners, for they,
   above all men, need glad tidings of a Savior born among men! Salvation
   must be for sinners, for to them, only, can mercy ever come. If I am
   brought before a court of justice and I plead, "Not guilty," and the
   magistrate replies that he will have mercy upon me, I repel his
   observation with indignation--I need no mercy of him--I am innocent.
   Let him give me justice--that is all I ask! It is an insult to the
   innocent to offer him mercy and, therefore, unless man is guilty God
   cannot show him mercy! Mercy has no room to bestow her blessings of
   amnesty and pardon till, first of all, guilt is admitted. To the
   sinner, forgiveness can come, but to none else!

   Moreover, the characters whom Jesus came to save are always so
   described that they must be sinners. Sometimes we read of them as
   being, "dead in trespasses and sins." And it is written, "And you has
   He quickened." Sometimes they are represented as enemies--"If when we
   were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." They
   are called aliens, strangers, wandering sheep, prodigal sons and so
   forth--and all these imply distance from God by sin. Sometimes they are
   represented as debtors--and when they have nothing to pay, He freely
   forgives them all their debt. All the descriptions of persons for whom
   the mercy of God is intended bear upon their forefront the notion of
   their being sinners and our Lord, Himself, says, "I came not to call
   the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

   The coming of Christ has no bearing towards the 99 that went not
   astray, except that they are left where they were. The Good Shepherd
   comes after the lost sheep and only after the lost sheep and if you can
   prove that you are not a lost sheep, then you have proved that Christ
   never came to save you. The whole of His errand looks this way--He came
   to save sinners and only sinners. Look now at what He did when He was
   here. I will only ask you to consider the crowning act of His work when
   He hung upon the Cross. What do those bruises from the scourge mean?
   What do those deep furrows on His blessed back mean? What do those
   pierced hands and feet mean? They mean this, that He is suffering on
   account of human sin! "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him and
   with His stripes we are healed." "All we like sheep have gone astray;
   we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him
   the iniquity of us all."

   Self-righteous men and women, what has the Cross to do with you? You
   carry it on your bosoms and make an ornament and a plaything of it, but
   that is all it is to you! None but the guilty can know the true meaning
   of the Cross and derive benefit from it. For them the dreadful tree
   bears the precious fruit of substitutionary Sacrifice and peace and
   pardon through the atoning blood! But to those who are not sinners the
   Cross is a barren tree! O Christ of God, only a sinner can know Your
   worth! A saint may admire You in Your Glory, but a sinner trusts You in
   Your shameful death, for You are meant for sinners! "He gave Himself
   for our sins"--for what else could He give Himself and yield Himself
   unto death?

   Besides that, where is Jesus gone, now, but to Heaven? And what is He
   doing? When He went to Heaven He received gifts for men and, listen to
   this Word of God--"Yes, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God
   might dwell among them." He pleads today, but for whom is He an
   Advocate? He makes intercession for the transgressors! Prove that you
   are not rebellious nor transgressors and there are neither gifts nor
   pleadings for you, for the whole drift of what He is now doing is
   towards the sinful! Look, Sirs, at the legacy which our Lord has left
   us! He has left us the Holy Spirit and what for? The Holy Spirit is
   here to convict of sin! Of what use would He be to those who have no
   sin? He is here to regenerate, but of what use would He be to those who
   are so good by nature that they do not need a change of heart? He is
   here that He may work in us repentance and faith, but of what use would
   those be to persons who have no sin to repent of and no need to believe
   in a Savior?

   The whole plan and scheme of redemption contains in it marks and
   evidences clear and palpable that it is meant for sinners, for guilty
   men, for such and such alone! All else that there is in man beside his
   sinnership is not truly his. If I were to preach, today, to sinners
   with some qualification, I should not be preaching the Gospel in its
   fullest reach. If, for instance, I were to say that Christ Jesus came
   into the world to save humble sinners, that would be a clipping of the
   truth--for if any sinner is humble, that humility is not natural to
   him, but already the work of salvation commenced in his being has made
   him humble! Jesus Christ died to give humility to sinners as well as to
   save them when they are humble. But surely we must believe in Christ?
   Yes, and there is salvation for believing sinners--but no man believes
   in Christ until that faith is given to Him from above--and Christ came
   not to save sinners who make themselves believe, but to save sinners by
   giving them faith.

   He not only saves sinners when they repent but He goes lower down, for
   He is exalted on high to give repentance as well as remission of sins.
   But did He not die for penitent sinners? Assuredly! But He died for
   them when they were impenitent and, therefore, that is why they come to
   repentance! He who would come to Jesus must come as a sinner and never
   think of pleading any sort of goodness or qualification, for, "this is
   a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
   into the world to save sinners." SINNERS--write that in capitals and
   set it by itself, for it is the whole of the description and no one may
   dare to add to it! Away with your human addition of sensible sinners
   and so on--the text is not cumbered and spoiled by any such qualifying
   words!

   III. This leads me, in the third place, to say THAT UPON THIS POINT
   SPECIAL CLEARNESS IS REQUIRED. That Jesus Christ came into the world to
   save sinners as sinners must always be kept clearly before the human
   mind because, as I have said, man does not like the notion and if you
   put it baldly and boldly he cavils at it and waxes wrathful. Hear him
   mutter about immoral doctrine and encouraging sin! Hear it and marvel
   at the audacity which makes a guilty rebel express anxiety about the
   morals of his God! A set of criminals are shut up in a condemned cell
   to be hanged and a message comes that the king freely forgives
   them--and they exclaim that they will not accept mercy because it might
   encourage immorality!

   Morality! What have these lawbreakers to do with that? Surely they are
   repeating the devil's hypocrisy when he rebuked sin! They are living in
   sin and yet pretend to be the guardians of universal justice! Vile
   hypocrisy! When I have known the pens which have written against the
   Gospel under the pretense of advancing morality, I have pitied the
   paper which they defiled with their black words. Pleaders for morality!
   Why, men known to be debauched and drunken are often the very loudest
   talkers against Free Grace and the greatest sticklers for morality! Let
   them go and wash in Jordan seven times and be clean, themselves, before
   coming out in that fashion. It is for you and me, being guilty, to get
   mercy, first, and then talk of what we will do in the matter of
   morality!

   Know you not that the man who believes not in Christ is condemned
   already? Shall a condemned man cavil at mercy's freeness? On your
   knees, Sir, and plead guilty before the Most High, for only so shall
   you find Grace! How often are we told in sermons that we are in a state
   of probation--as if we had to do something by which we should prove our
   worthiness and were still in a position in which we might or might not
   be condemned? My Hearers, you are NOT in a state of probation! No, not
   one of you! If you are saved, you are saved--and if you are not saved
   you are lost! You are forgiven, or else you are "condemned already!"
   And, unless Jesus Christ saves you, you will abide in condemnation
   forever and ever! The die is cast and cast against you! You are
   condemned and in the Book of God so it stands. Christ Jesus came to
   save the condemned--and blessed shall you be if you are willing to take
   up the condemned position at this moment and accept the Grace which He
   has brought for sinners.

   I say, then, let the Truth of God be made clear, because man will
   muddle it if he can. Mark you, if this doctrine is not made clear, you
   will not lead sinners to look to Christ. If I preach that Jesus Christ
   died to save men of tender heart, what will be the result of the
   sermon? Every thoughtful hearer will look to see whether he has a
   tender heart. Is that a desirable result?--

   "There is life for a look at the Crucified One," but there is no life
   by looking into our own hearts! Suppose I preach certain marks and
   evidences as tokens of the men whom Christ came to save? Then each man
   will look to see whether he has those tokens within himself--and that
   is precisely the thing which we do not want men to do, for we desire
   them to look right away from themselves to Christ alone! If they should
   imagine that they find some good thing within themselves, they will
   make it the basis of their hope and that will be an error of the
   gravest kind. Sinner, all the hope you can ever have lies in Him who
   died upon the tree! As for yourself, settle it in your mind that you
   are as bad as bad can be. Give over all hope from your own doings,
   willings, feelings and resolves!

   Do not expect to obtain comfort from your own nature any more than to
   find fire in the midst of a rock of ice! Look right away from self to
   Christ, and Christ alone, for this is the way of salvation! When a man
   comes to Christ as a sinner, he has taken the safest way. If I say to
   myself, "Jesus came to save me because I am a believing sinner, or a
   repenting sinner, or a humbled sinner," then I have to ask the
   question, "How about my repentance, my humility--are they genuine?" My
   foundation shakes and my trust fails me because it rests on myself! But
   when I trust in Jesus because He is the sinner's Savior and because I
   am a sinner, then I am beyond doubtful questions. This, also, is a
   constant ground to go upon. Imagine a man who is deeply in debt saying
   to his creditors, "I am in a terrible fix, but I can promise you 10
   shillings in the pound." Very well. They accept it.

   Is he not at ease? Let me whisper in your ear--he is not worth two
   pence in all the world! Is he clear? Oh no. He tries a little trading
   and puts off the hour of payment, but again he has to call his
   creditors together and confess--"I am sorry. I cannot manage the 10
   shillings, but I will try to scrape together two-and-sixpence--will you
   take that?" Yes, they will take the half-crown. Is he out of his
   difficulties, now? No, he is not one inch nearer, for he is not worth a
   penny! Again he summons his creditors and tells them that he has made
   another mistake, but he could arrange to pay sixpence. Is he at rest
   now? Not a bit, because he has not a penny and he can no more pay
   sixpence in the pound than the whole 20 shillings! He is absolutely a
   pauper.

   What is the best thing for him to do? Why, to admit the truth and say,
   "Here I am. I have no assets whatever. I am in debt over head and ears
   and I have not a single penny to pay with. Do whatever you like with
   me. Put me in prison if you like. Sell these bones and the rags which
   cover them, but there is the truth, you cannot get anything out of me
   because I have nothing." Now, if the creditors give him a clear
   discharge, he is safe and at rest--which he never was while he had even
   a sixpence to pay! Now, you needy sinners, be wise and go to the Lord
   in that penniless style and you shall have your debt forgiven. Remember
   the parable of the two debtors and the Truth of God which it teaches--

   "But let our debts be what they may, However great or small, As soon as
   we have nothing to pay, Our Lord forgives us all." Assuredly, there is
   nothing like going to the bottom of a thing and knowing the worst of
   your case.

   I have a friend who had a bad knee. Something ailed it, he could not
   tell what. The doctors blistered, applied poultices and did a great
   deal to it--and showed their skill by making bad, worse, but they
   assured him that the knee was not out of joint but would come all right
   by outward applications. Under such professional treatment the patient
   became quite lame. At last he went to a renowned bone-setter and as
   soon as he saw the joint, he said, "I tell you, Sir, your bone is out."
   "Impossible," he said, "the doctors have never hinted at that." "Yes,
   it is, or if it is not so, we will make it so, and then set it right."
   With a terrible pull the operator seemed to drag the bone out of its
   place and then it flew back, again, into its socket and my friend felt
   that all was right.

   "Now," said the bone-setter, "walk across the room." And he did so at
   once. There is nothing like knowing that the bone is out, for then it
   can be set. But while we understate the mischief, we shall not find an
   effectual cure. Reckon on the worst and you will not be deceived! If
   there is something good about you and you begin trusting in it, that
   something good will grow less and less, like the 20 shillings which
   came down to sixpence and ended with nothing! But if you throw

   up all legal hope and say, "I am a sinner. If I am saved it must be
   entirely through the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. I accept Christ to
   save me as a sinner"--that is a sure and constant foundation to rest
   upon! Beware of the slippery belief that Christ died for you as long as
   you are humble, or as long as you are this or that, for, if you talk in
   that fashion, instead of trusting in Christ you are trusting in your
   own humility, your own feelings--and there is no soundness in your
   faith.

   Often, Beloved, I feel that this way of coming to Christ, as a sinner,
   is the only available one for me. I have preached the Gospel, not
   without zeal for the Truth of God and have tried to consecrate my whole
   being to my Lord's service, but times out of mind I would not give a
   brass farthing for all that I have done or felt or been! I am glad to
   sink the whole in oblivion and come to Christ and say, "Save me, for I
   have sinned." What I rejoice to do, I feel sure that my Brethren have
   to do, also, and it will be your safety to be so doing continually.
   Why, Brothers and Sisters, this doctrine must be true because it
   glorifies Christ! If Christ comes to save men who meet Him half way
   with their prayers and tears and beliefs and doings--and He only saves
   them because of these things--then salvation is half of man and half of
   Christ! But if it is that Jesus comes to save sinners and begins a work
   in them when they are in their nakedness and filthiness and spiritual
   death, oh, then, Free Grace does the more abound and the crown sits
   securely on the royal head of Him who is anointed to be both a Prince
   and a Savior--to give repentance as well as remission of sins!

   I need to say, also, that the recognition of the Truth that Christ came
   into the world to save men as sinners is essential to salvation. You
   ask me, "How so?" I reply, "When a man comes before God simply as a
   sinner, he is then upon the line of truth." All the while he was
   claiming to be this and that, which was good, he was on a false tack.
   But when he says, "Lord, I have broken Your Law. I have done the things
   I ought not to have done and have left undone the things that I ought
   to have done. And if I am saved it must be by your Grace alone"--he is
   now speaking according to truth. It is something to bring a sinner
   round to the truth. When he has come to that, he will go further in the
   right direction. Do you not see that line is doing homage to the Law of
   God, for he confesses that he has broken it and deserves punishment?
   Thus the man is already honoring the Law of God in his heart--his
   salvation has begun!

   Now he does honor to God, Himself, for he bows before the Most High and
   begs for mercy. He is already saved from presumption! God must be King
   and the man is willing that He should be, even though he, himself,
   should be condemned! And now he reads that God's salvation "comes to
   the guilty," and he cries, "I am guilty! I accept Your mercy." That
   done, he loves the Lord God for mercy received. Why, the man is being
   saved before our eyes! He was the enemy of God, before, but now a sense
   of free mercy causes him to love and fear the Lord! The next thing he
   says is, "Have I been so freely forgiven all my transgressions, not
   because of anything I was or felt or did, but out of free mercy? Then,
   Lord, I will strive to avoid every sin if You will help me."

   See, his mind is becoming pure and by the operation of the same blessed
   Truth of God upon him, he will ultimately be perfected and stand
   complete before the Truth of God--and what do you think will be his
   song? He will join with all the saints and sing, "We have washed our
   robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." There is nothing
   like Free Grace to change the human heart! You may tell a man what he
   is and what he ought to be, and he will remain unmoved. But tell him
   that God meets him as a lost, guilty and condemned sinner and that
   simply because He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, He blots
   out all His sins and transgressions and accepts Him through Christ
   Jesus-- why, that makes the man's heart leap within him for joy! And
   then he begins to say, "Cleanse me, O God, from this hateful sin, for I
   love You because of Your wondrous love to me."

   Thus Jesus Christ's coming to save sinners makes the point of our being
   sinners a very essential one in the matter of our being saved from the
   power of sin.

   IV. I close by saying, let us, dear Friends, feel THAT IT WILL BE WISE
   TO ACCEPT AT ONCE THE TEACHING

   OF THE TEXT. Let us, on the spot, confess we are sinners! Whether you
   have been saved or not, come over, again, to Jesus. Take with you words
   and say unto Him, "We have sinned." Confess your sinnership! Does it
   trouble you to do so? Have not you abundant evidence of it? Do not
   confess it with your mouth, only, but with your heart. Let me say
   sinners are very rare things--you cannot find them dead or alive. If
   you go into a cemetery with an intelligent child, the first question it
   will ask will be, "Papa, where do they bury the sinners? These are all
   good people who are buried here."

   Living sinners are equally scarce. We are all surprisingly good and
   though we say we are sinners, that is a part of our goodness, for it
   shows how very humble we are. If we come to details and are questioned
   as to our sins, how many turn

   out to be no more sinners than the beggars in the street are really
   lame, or blind, or sick, or sore? Many who say, "Lord, have mercy upon
   us miserable sinners," do but sham their sinnership before God! Now,
   mark, there is nothing but sham salvation for sham sinners! But you
   real sinners, you who have broken God's Law and know it! You who are
   ready to stand upon the drop of confession beneath the fatal tree of
   Justice feeling that you could not say a word against Divine Justice if
   you were now executed--come and welcome, for Jesus Christ came to save
   such as you are! Confess your sins and when you have done so, rest on
   the salvation provided in Christ Jesus!

   At this moment I think I speak the language of every child of God when
   I say the top and bottom, the beginning and the ending of all my hope
   lies in this--that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I
   trust myself as a sinner with Him. The devil often tells me, "You are
   not this, and you are not that," and I feel bound to acknowledge that
   the accuser of the Brethren makes terrible work with my spiritual
   finery so that I have to abandon one ground of glorying after another.
   But I never knew the devil, himself, dare to say, "You are not a
   sinner." He knows I am and I know it, too! And as in due time Christ
   died for the ungodly, I rest in Him and I am saved! If I can perish
   resting in Christ I must do so. But I will tell it throughout the
   realms of Hell that I did trust in Christ and was lost. I will publish
   it in the infernal dens that I trusted in Jesus with all my soul and
   was confounded.

   Will it ever be? No, never! For He has said, "Him that comes unto Me I
   will in no wise cast out." Poor Sinner, whoever you may be, surely this
   is a very simple matter! But do not reject it because it is so simple.
   It is your life! You shall find it your life at this very instant if
   you will trust my Lord. Have you any doubt about your being a sinner?
   Then bid farewell to hope, for Christ did not come to save you! But if
   you know you are a sinner, cast yourself on Jesus right now, even now,
   just as you are! "Will He save me?" Try it, Brother! Try it, Sister!
   Sink or swim, fling yourself upon Christ! Are you still holding to your
   prayers or your tears, or somewhat of your own? You will perish if you
   do! You must be disconnected with all grounds of self-hope and
   self-trust or they will prove your ruin!

   Now cut the cable! Let every rope go! Break the last thread and commit
   yourself to the tide of Free Grace. You will never be a wreck if you do
   so. Well does Dr. Watts put it--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall! Be
   You my strength and righteousness, My Jesus and my All."

   "You have taken away from us, Sir, every hope we ever had, and you make
   us out to be nothing but sinners." Yes, that is what I want to do! I
   long to make all things rock and reel under you till you feel that you
   have no place for the sole of your feet--and so fall before my Master's
   Cross! This old house of yours which you have been patching up so often
   will fall upon you before long. Its walls bulge, its roof drops, its
   timbers are rotten! However much you try to prop it up, it will come
   down and destroy you!

   I, as an architect, advise you to tear it all down! Clear every wall
   away, stick and stone. Yes, and take out the very foundations, for
   every stone is ruinous! Clear the ground of the whole concern. You
   complain that there is a deep and ugly trench where the foundations
   used to be and I am glad of it, for, behold, the Lord lays in Zion, for
   a foundation, a stone, elect, precious, even Christ Jesus! And he that
   believes in Him shall never be confounded. You must remove all the
   wood, hay and stubble, and build with precious stones! None but Jesus,
   none but Jesus! Neither beam, nor stone, nor pin, nor nail must be our
   own. We may not take from a thread to a shoelace of self, but Christ
   must be first, last, midst and everywhere!

   What do you say, fellow Sinners? Will you and I have Christ? I will,
   whether you will or not! Come along. Do not draw back. Take what God
   freely presents to you and from this day trust Jesus to be your Savior
   and we will meet in Heaven! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"Your Salvation"

   (No. 1417)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 2, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now
   let Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word: for my eyes
   have seen Your salvation." Luke 2:28-30.

   LAST Lord's-day morning [No. 1416, The Faithful Saying] we used the
   broad axe to clear the forest of self-righteousness--one after another
   human hopes were made to fall, for the axe was laid at the root of the
   trees. Now let us cultivate the clearing and sow the good seed! We
   might have had for our slogan, then, "The Lord of Hosts has purposed
   it, to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all the
   honorable of the earth." We tried to sweep away every vestige of
   anything like self-trust as we showed that Christ Jesus came to save
   men as sinners and that only as sinners could they have any part or lot
   in Him. Our Lord gave Himself for our sins, but He never gave Himself
   for our righteousness! We bore witness that human goodness is a mere
   fiction and that it is rather a hindrance than a help to the work of
   salvation, since it opposes itself to the grand principle of Grace by
   which, alone, men can be saved. So far our work has been to root out,
   to pull down, to destroy and to throw down. And we hope it has been
   done very thoroughly.

   But there is a time to build up as well as a time to break down. And as
   we showed on the former occasion where salvation is not and cannot be,
   so today let us, by the help of God's Spirit, endeavor to point out
   where salvation really is--so that those who have learned to look away
   from themselves may now be taught to look to Christ! May the Holy
   Spirit grant us this desire of our heart and may thousands, by this
   sermon, find salvation!

   Observe that Simeon found Christ in the Temple, being conducted there
   by the Holy Spirit. There was an ancient promise, "The Lord whom You
   seek shall suddenly come to His Temple," and this probably drew the
   holy man to the courts of the Lord. But the Lord might have come and
   Simeon might not have been there. Or the good old man might have been
   occupied in some other court of the holy place. But, being led of the
   Spirit, he came to the appointed spot at the very time when the mother
   of Christ was bringing the Baby in her arms to do for Him according to
   the Law. In this, Simeon is an instance of the Truth of God that they
   find Christ who are led by the Spirit and they, alone. No man ever
   comes to Christ by his own wit and wisdom, nor by his own unprompted
   will--he, only, who is drawn of the Spirit comes unto Christ.

   We must submit ourselves to Divine teaching and Divine drawing, or else
   Christ may come in His Temple, but we shall not perceive Him. I,
   therefore, would earnestly remark at the outset of this discourse, how
   necessary it is that we should submit ourselves to the movements of the
   Holy Spirit upon our souls. Let me rather say what a privilege it is to
   be moved by the Spirit and how gladly we should welcome His Divine
   influences. Beloved Hearer, as you love your soul, be very tender
   towards the Holy Spirit and prize even the least spark of His Divine
   fire. Quench not the Spirit, neither grieve Him. Prize the love of the
   Spirit and pray to feel His power. When He comes upon you to convict
   you of sin, be plastic in His hand! Yield to His teaching and humbly
   confess the faults and follies of which He convicts you.

   When He comes to lead you gently to the Savior, be not as the horse or
   as the mule which have no understanding, but gladly follow where He
   draws, according to the prayer of the spouse in the song, "Draw me, we
   will run after You." All your hope of finding Christ, dear seeking
   Friend, lies in the Spirit of God illuminating your understanding,
   constraining your will and quickening your affections--therefore never
   vex Him, but be ever ready to obey His faintest monition. The wind
   blows where it wills and when you feel its breath, be glad to spread
   your wings that you may be borne upward by its power.

   Simeon, being thus led of the Spirit, came where Christ was, but mark
   how quick the old man's eyes were to see Him! How should He know that
   this Baby in swaddling clothes was the Lord's Christ? Doubtless there
   were many others in the temple who saw Joseph and Mary and the priest,
   but they thought that nothing was to be seen but a young peasant

   woman and her husband bringing their poor offering to redeem their
   first-born child. The frequenters of the Temple passed to and fro and
   felt no interest in so common a scene--but the watching eyes of Simeon
   had no sooner lighted upon the infant Person of our Divine Lord than at
   once they were held spellbound and filled with tears ofjoy! The aged
   saint went immediately to the mother, took up the Baby in his arms and
   without hesitation said, "Mine eyes have seen Your salvation."

   Those who have been looking and longing for Christ are usually the
   first to perceive Him! This man had been waiting for the consolation of
   Israel and in the process he had gained discernment so that when Jesus
   appeared he knew Him at once. O Soul, if you are longing for Christ,
   you will know when He is near you, even as the thirsting harts of the
   desert scent the waters from afar. If you have an intense hunger after
   the Lord Jesus, you will not need to be told which is bread--you will
   not be deceived by a stone, for your hunger will instruct you. In this
   case an instinct springs out of an appetite, discernment grows out of
   desire--if you long for Christ, you will not readily be deceived by
   false teachers, for you will know what your soul craves after and will
   not be content with anything else!

   As soon as a truly awakened soul sees Jesus, though it is but the
   beginnings of Him, it recognizes Him! It recognizes the hem of His
   garment and the print of His feet. Though the Lord is seen only as an
   Infant and the heart's idea of Him is very incomplete, yet He is
   perceived to be The Incomparable One and the soul cries out, "He is all
   my salvation and all my desire." May we thus be taught by the Spirit of
   God and thus made to long for Christ--and we shall have a quickness of
   eye to perceive Him and to see infinitely more in Him than this blind
   world has ever dreamed! From Simeon we shall try to learn this morning.
   Should not the aged teach us wisdom?

   Three things appear to me to be worthy of our attentive observation.
   First, that Christ is salvation, for that is the pith and marrow of
   Simeon's song--"My eyes have seen Your salvation." Secondly, that
   Christ is to be taken up into the arms and looked upon. And thirdly,
   that when He is thus treated, Christ has a wonderful effect upon the
   soul. May we be led to try all this for ourselves. Personal testing is
   far better than mere hearing. I may preach to you and it may end in
   nothing, but if you will now come and take my Lord in your arms, an
   eternity of good will come of it! O taste and see that the Lord is
   good!

   I. In the first place we learn from Simeon that CHRIST IS SALVATION. He
   is a Savior, for so the angels sang-- "Unto you is born this day in the
   city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." But He is more than
   a Savior--He is salvation itself! Moses sang, "He also has become my
   salvation." David said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation," and
   Isaiah exclaimed, "Behold, God is my salvation." It is well to see
   salvation in the work, life and death of Christ, but we must never
   forget that the essence of it lies in His Person--He Himself is
   salvation!

   Then he took Him up in his arms and said, "My eyes have seen Your
   salvation." This was before our Lord had begun to preach or to teach,
   or to suffer for our sins--as a Baby He was God's salvation! The Gospel
   loses very much of its sweetness when the Person of Christ is placed in
   the background and treated as if it were a mere myth, or as if it were
   quite a secondary consideration. Why, this is the choicest dainty of
   the feast! It is the most substantial food whereon the saints are
   nourished--His flesh is meat, indeed, and His blood is drink, indeed!
   Everything about our Lord is saving, but He, Himself, is salvation. His
   teaching, His example, His love, His tenderness, His sufferings, His
   Glory--all help us-- but it is His own glorious self which puts
   efficacy into them! Had He not been Man, He could not have died! And
   had He not been God, His dying could not have availed for our
   redemption!

   We are bid to come, not to His work, but to Him--"Come unto Me, all you
   that labor and are heavy laden." To Him we come and our heart can say,
   "He only is my rock and my salvation." Let us pursue this theme by
   saying of our Lord that He is the only salvation. Simeon had not found
   another. We are told of that aged saint, that he was just and
   devout--and assuredly if any man could have seen salvation by the Law,
   Simeon would have seen it! Just towards man, devout towards God, he had
   hit upon the true balance of a perfect character! But he had not seen
   salvation in his own character! He looked for it to the Lord's Christ.
   Neither to his honest actions before his fellow men, nor to his secret
   prayers and communing with God did Simeon turn for eternal life,
   otherwise he would not have been looking for a salvation which he had
   already found--nor would he, at the sight of Jesus, have rapturously
   exclaimed, "My eyes have seen Your salvation."

   Not in yourself, O Simeon! Not in all that you had done, or felt, or
   said had you seen salvation! But there in the Baby you did behold it
   with supreme delight! Simeon, too, had been very familiar with the
   courts of the Lord's House.

   He was one of those who almost lived in the temple. Sacrifices were
   seen by him every morning and every evening and upon all high
   festivals. But in the blood of bullocks and lambs he had never seen
   salvation. Frequently did he gaze upon the instructive types and
   symbolic ordinances of the Law. But as he looked on them he saw only
   shadows and still watched for the Substance. Never over the morning
   lamb, or the paschal supper, had Simeon said, "My eyes have seen Your
   salvation"--that exclamation was never uttered till he had seen Christ
   Himself!

   Beloved, salvation is not to be found in ordinances nor in sacraments!
   God forbid we should say, when we have seen a Baptism, or the imitation
   of it, "We yield You hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it has
   pleased You to regenerate this infant with Your Holy Spirit, to receive
   him for Your own child by adoption and to incorporate him in Your holy
   Church." There are some who wickedly talk so, though we can hardly
   imagine that they believe what they say! It is in vain to show them
   their folly--they are wedded to it--but let us pray, "Father, forgive
   them, for they know not what they do." God forbid we should talk about
   salvation in connection with the Lord's Supper as the superstitious do,
   who seem to regard it as a passport to Paradise and, therefore, press
   it upon the dying! Truly we may, in the Lord's Supper, eat and drink
   condemnation to ourselves unless we discern the Lord's body.

   It is in the Lord Himself that there is salvation and in none
   other--not even in the outward ordinances of God's ordaining is
   salvation to be found, for the Lord has not placed it there. See Jesus
   and you have seen salvation! And the only salvation! The most moral
   life and the most attentive remembrance of sacred ceremonies will land
   you short of the salvation of your soul unless you see Jesus and take
   Him to be your All in All. We must all learn to sing that song which
   Isaiah has recorded in his 12th chapter--"Behold, God is my salvation;
   I will trust and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and
   my song; He also is become my salvation."

   According to Simeon's song, the Lord Jesus is God's salvation. Dwell on
   that little word, "Your." "My eyes have seen Your salvation." In the
   Person of Christ we see the salvation which God had of old covenanted
   to bestow upon His people--the salvation which, in due season, the Lord
   had prepared before the face of all people--a Light to lighten the
   Gentiles and the Glory of His people Israel. The promised,
   predestinated and prepared salvation of God is Christ Jesus! This is
   the salvation of which the Prophets spoke, to which all the symbols
   pointed--the salvation which was hidden from ages and from generations
   that it might shine forth like the sun upon this favored dispensation.
   It is a salvation devised and provided by God which manifests and
   glorifies God! It is a salvation which is Godlike, being both just and
   gracious! It is great beyond conception! In a word, it is God's
   salvation.

   O Beloved, think much of Christ because the Lord God Almighty ordained
   Him for you and gives Him to you! God gave up His own Son for you, even
   His well-beloved Son! And He Himself, by the Holy Spirit, has revealed
   Him to you and in you, teaching you to know Him, to trust Him, to love
   Him and to follow Him! Therefore value Jesus beyond all price as God's
   own salvation! God Himself accepts Christ in our place and makes Him
   our salvation--will we not accept Him? God Himself does rest in
   Christ--will we not rest in Him? God smells a sweet savor in the
   Sacrifice which Christ has offered--will we not also rejoice and eat
   the peace offering and be glad before the Lord? Are any of you seeking
   salvation at this moment? I pray you do not think of inventing a savior
   of your own, but are willing to take God's salvation! And when you ask
   what and who that salvation is, our only answer must be--Christ is the
   salvation of God!

   If you have seen Jesus by the eyes of faith, your eyes have seen God's
   salvation! You are saved, saved on the spot, saved forever! Jesus is
   Heaven's balm for earth's wounds, God's remedy for man's diseases! Do
   not put away this priceless gift of infinite mercy. Receive it
   heartily--receive it at once! Jesus is set before you, take Him up in
   your arms! When Simeon said, "My eyes have seen Your salvation," he
   must have meant that in that little Baby he saw salvation set forth in
   its essence. Can you bring yourselves, now, in fancy and in faith,
   which may, for once, work together, into the courts of the Temple? Can
   you see Mary with the little Christ in her arms? Look upon Him and take
   Him up and put yourself into Simeon's place and say, "My eyes have seen
   Your salvation."

   This little child is salvation and yet how can it be? By the light of
   Scripture we can understand what else would seem incredible. For here
   is, first, God in human flesh! The Divine Nature in mysterious union
   with the human! Behold, He who is now in your arms as an Infant is also
   the Infinite God! Feeble as He is as to His humanity, He is Omnipotent
   as to His Deity! He is at once the Son of Man and the Son of God!
   Herein is man's salvation! When we think of the fact that God came down
   to our low estate and espoused our nature, we are sure that He means
   nothing but good to man and we

   are ready to burst out with Simeon's joyous exclamation and cry, "My
   eyes have seen Your salvation!" We are sure that man will be lifted up
   to Heaven now that Heaven has come down to man!

   Our Lord was not merely a Child, but a poor Child. He was so poor that
   His mother, when she had to redeem Him, could not bring a lamb, which
   was the sacrifice for all who could afford it. She presented the poorer
   offering, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons, and so she came
   as a poor woman and He was presented to the Lord as a poor woman's
   Child. Herein lies, also, rich comfort for lowly hearts. And as they
   think of it, each one may say, "My eyes have seen Your salvation." When
   I think of the Prince of Glory and the Lord of angels stooping so low
   as this, that a poor woman bears Him in her arms and calls Him her
   Baby, surely there must be salvation for the lowest, the poorest and
   the most sunken! When the all-glorious Lord, in order to be Incarnate,
   is born a Baby, born of a poor woman and publicly acknowledged as a
   poor woman's child, we feel sure that He will receive the poorest and
   most despised when they seek His face! Yes, Jesus, the son of the
   carpenter, means salvation to carpenters and all others of lowly rank!

   But why has Mary brought Him to the Temple? She has brought Him to
   redeem Him. He was her firstborn and therefore He must be redeemed. Was
   He then under the Law? Yes, for our sakes He was under the Law and He
   who redeemed us had to be, Himself, redeemed! When I think of the 12
   and sixpence, or thereabouts, which His mother paid as redemption
   money, what a contrast rises before me! He has redeemed us unto God by
   His blood and yet, as Mary's firstborn, a price was paid in silver for
   Him. "A good price that I was priced at of them." Now, because our Lord
   Jesus came under the Law and obeyed its precepts, we see salvation in
   Him. When God Himself, Incarnate, came under the Law so as to have
   redemption money paid for Him, we understand it all, for it is written,
   "But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made
   of a woman, made under the Law, to redeem them that were under the Law,
   that we might receive the adoption of sons."

   This wondrous stoop of Deity to lowly humanity and this marvelous
   honoring of the Law in our nature by One who is Immanuel, God With Us,
   has brought salvation to our fallen race! Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,
   for Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a
   curse for us that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles
   through Jesus Christ--that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
   through faith! But, to my mind, Simeon did not only see salvation
   represented in its Essence, but his faith saw salvation guaranteed by
   the appearance of the wondrous Child. Incarnation is the beginning of
   Substitution and the commencement of Substitution is the guarantee of
   the completion and the continuance of it! Our Lord would not have taken
   upon Himself the nature of the seed of Abraham if He had not intended
   to do so effectually to redeem and deliver them. "Forasmuch then as the
   children are partakers of flesh and blood, He, also, Himself likewise
   took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had
   the power of death, that is, the devil."

   Be you sure of this, that He will not commence to battle with Satan and
   then leave the conflict before the enemy is destroyed! In that Baby,
   Simeon did well to see all the work of saving men, for the appearing of
   the Lord in our flesh and blood was the sure pledge of it! He saw,
   there, a perfect obedience presented to God, for the Baby was brought
   under the Law at the very outset and its redemption money was paid--a
   sure sign that to the end the Incarnate God would say, "Thus it becomes
   us to fulfill all righteousness." No jot or tittle of the Law would
   Christ omit, since even as a Baby He was both circumcised and presented
   in the Temple according to the Law. Simeon, I doubt not, saw in the
   presentation of Christ in the temple, a foreshadowing of His death on
   the Cross. The time would come when He must be brought to the altar and
   no redemption would be offered for Him, for He, Himself, must be the
   price for His people.

   Simeon saw, as he gazed upon the Child, the agony and bloody sweat, the
   Cross and passion, for he knew that the Incarnate God would not shrink
   from anything which He had undertaken. That fair and lovely face, the
   most beautiful probably that human eye ever rested upon--Simeon could,
   by faith, see it more marred than that of any man while, in our place,
   He suffered the wrath of God. Simeon was so well instructed that his
   faith saw the Child, in due time, dead-- dead because the Law had
   carried out its penalty and the Sin-Bearer had been made to die. And he
   could see the Resurrection, too. As he saw the Child carried home by
   the rejoicing mother, because He had been redeemed, he foresaw the hour
   when Jesus should return unto the Father, having accomplished eternal
   redemption for all His people! He saw in that Child both Light and
   Glory and he felt deep peace suffuse his mind at the sight and,
   therefore, I feel sure that he saw in the Infant Christ the pledge and
   assurance of that perfected work which closed with, "It is finished."

   Bethlehem ensures Gethsemane and Calvary, for the Christ of God will
   not fail nor be discouraged, but having put forth His hand, He will
   finish the work which His Father gave Him to do. So then, Beloved, if
   you see Christ, you have seen the sum and total of His work. His Person
   is so intimately connected with all that He has done that He bears
   within Himself all its virtue and efficacy--and by a look at Him we
   receive the result of all that He has accomplished! Trust Jesus as born
   in our nature, as living a life of holiness, as dying a sacrificial
   death, as buried, as risen, as interceding and as, by-and-by, to
   return, and you have salvation! Jesus anywhere, Jesus everywhere is
   salvation! Those who have only a contracted view of Him and behold Him
   rather in His Infancy than in His Glory have, nevertheless, seen His
   salvation!

   Come, then, you trembling, tottering, timorous ones and see salvation
   secured by a Savior who exactly suits your weakness! Even a feeble old
   man can lift a baby! Come in your feebleness and embrace the Savior in
   whose condescending littleness salvation lies secure! I might say many
   things here, but I prefer just to keep to that one point, that Jesus
   Christ is the whole of salvation. Simeon did not say, "My eyes have
   seen a part of Your salvation." No, but the whole of it. Christ bought,
   by His blood, all that was necessary for our redemption! And having
   bought it, He brought it down to us, descending to seek and to save the
   lost. He came on earth to proclaim salvation and to let all men know
   that it is treasured up in Him. "It pleased the Father that in Him
   should all fullness dwell."

   As He contains salvation so does He dispense it, for He is exalted on
   high to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins. As He
   dispenses it, so out of His fullness has He made all of us to receive
   Grace for Grace. Because He draws us to Himself, we have come and are
   coming to Him perpetually. In Him we have our life preserved and by Him
   our steps are upheld. Because He lives, we, also, live--He is made of
   God unto us wisdom and sanctification. Christ has salvation within
   Himself and he that gets Him has complete salvation. "He that believes
   in Him has everlasting life." Brothers and Sisters, you are saved from
   the ruin of the Fall if you have Christ! The second Adam has repaired
   the ruins of the first. Brothers and Sisters, you are saved from the
   guilt of sin if you have Christ, for your sin is yours no longer-- it
   is not imputed to you--"The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us
   all."

   Brothers and Sisters, you are delivered from the power of original sin
   if you have Christ for, behold, the new-born life within you shall be
   in you a well of water springing up unto everlasting life! Christ has
   entered into you and He will bind the strong-armed man and cast him
   out. In having Christ, my Brethren, you have obtained victory over the
   world, the flesh and the devil--for this is the victory which overcomes
   all these--even our faith! Go forward and grasp what is already your
   own. Yes, and when death comes, it shall not be death to you, for he
   that lives and believes in Him shall never die! You shall be more than
   a conqueror in this thing, also--therefore be not in bondage through
   fear of death! You have salvation in every aspect of it and every form
   of it as soon as you have obtained Christ.

   Very commonplace teaching, perhaps, you think. Yes, let it be
   commonplace! Let it be the bread you live upon, the air you breathe. I
   beseech you never forget that the whole of salvation is in Christ! Do
   not expect to find a portion of it in yourselves, nor in outward
   ordinances, nor in the works of the Law, nor in priestcraft, nor
   anywhere else--the body of salvation is Christ and all its substance is
   in Him. Do you object to this? Then let me ask you, in what point is
   Christ deficient? What more do you need? Do you need penances? Has He
   not already suffered all that Justice requires? What do you need? Would
   you toil to gain the kingdom of Heaven? Lo, He has opened it to all
   Believers by a toil which covered Him with bloody sweat! What more is
   required? Washing? There is the fountain filled with blood. Clothing?
   There is the robe of spotless righteousness. Medicine? Truly with His
   stripes we are healed!

   Think of anything that can be required to make a man perfect and you
   will find it all in Christ. "For you are complete in Him." "Christ is
   all." Suppose, Beloved, that our Lord Jesus were not perfect as a
   Savior, what then? Could any of us make up the deficiency? What is
   there of ours that we could bring to Him? If His robe of righteousness
   were not finished, would any of our filthy rags be fit to be joined to
   His cloth of gold? If that fountain were not full and efficacious for
   cleansing, what would you pour into it? What could you contribute but
   your own pollution? What help could that be? Dream of yoking a gnat
   with an archangel and then imagine that you can help your Lord in the
   work of salvation! Shall a creeping worm be needed to complete the work
   of Him who made the world? What wild nonsense is this! Must the Son of
   God be helped by sinners dead in sin? O Friends, if Jesus is not able
   to save you from first to last, you are lost, for neither yourself, nor
   priest, nor pope can bring anything to the Lord but dross and dung--and
   shall this be added to that most fine gold tried in the fire with which
   Christ redeems the souls of men?

   At this moment I speak personally of my own confidence--I have no hope
   of being saved if Jesus is not the whole of my salvation. I trust Him
   in everything and for everything and I solemnly warn any here who are
   trusting a little in Christ and also somewhat in themselves, that their
   hope will be vain! Jesus must be everything or nothing! If we take
   Christ we must take the whole of Christ. There must be no picking and
   choosing. We must have all of Christ and He must be all our salvation
   and all our desire. What hinders? Surely we delight to do this at once!

   II. We leave our first head for you to think upon and turn to the
   second. CHRIST IS TO BE TAKEN UP INTO OUR ARMS AND TO BE LOOKED AT. I
   am quite sure that when Simeon took Christ up into his arms, although
   that was a physical action, yet there was a spiritual action underneath
   it. It was in his heart that he took up our Lord. And when his natural
   eyes saw Christ, he beheld Him also with the eyes of his soul--of this
   we are sure, for if the mere sight of Christ with his eyes had been so
   pleasing to Simeon, he would have said, "Lord, let Your servant never
   go away, for my eyes have seen Your salvation. Let me, therefore, stay
   here and always see Him."

   But the sight was spiritual and, therefore, he, though he had known
   Christ after the flesh, did not desire to know Him any more--but was
   willing to depart to the realm of pure spirits--for which that sight
   had prepared him. Now, will you try and picture Simeon taking up Christ
   that you may do the same? He no sooner saw Him than, asking nobody's
   leave, he lifted up the blessed Baby in his arms! That was a grasp of
   faith and its meaning was, "He is mine! I take Him to be my salvation."
   For himself he embraced the Incarnate Lord and he was not ashamed to
   avow his faith in the courts of the Lord's House in the midst of
   Jerusalem! It had been revealed to him that he should not see death
   until he had seen the Lord's Christ and now he openly acknowledges that
   this was the Christ, the Consolation of Israel!

   Dear Hearers, can you not put forth your arms, this morning, and take
   up my Lord to be your own forever? There is nobody to forbid you--no,
   many are inviting you! Take Him, now, and be happy. Does your heart
   say, "Yes, He shall be mine"? Then delay not to claim Him! What a mercy
   it is that Jesus could be taken up in the arms and salvation thus be
   held in men's hands! He that in the beginning was with God and is,
   indeed, God Himself, nevertheless can be taken up in the arms of faith!
   A whole Christ can be held in an old man's feeble arms! O that other
   aged men would come and take Him! Yes, and young men and women, too!
   Would God that thousands of every age and sex would now confess the
   Lord Jesus to be their salvation! God help you so to do at once!

   Simeon held that Baby in the grasp of love as well as of faith, for I
   am sure the old man pressed the Baby to his bosom and looked most
   fondly upon Him as he said, "My eyes have seen Your salvation." He
   could not have held Him out at arm's length--that would have been
   impossible in such a case--but he felt that he at last saw the dearest
   Object of his desires and so he clasped Him to his bosom! Come, let us,
   one by one, do the same. "My Jesus, my Salvation, You are all mine and
   I love You. The Heaven of heavens cannot contain You and yet I hold
   You! You fill all worlds and yet I have You, all my own, the beloved of
   my soul forever." What an armful that aged saint had obtained! Did ever
   human arms hold a burden more precious, a treasure more desirable?
   Come, then, Brothers and Sisters, and say, "Christ shall be mine this
   morning, all mine and forever mine! By faith I take Him to be my very
   own." God help you, by His Holy Spirit, to give your Lord such an
   embrace.

   While Simeon was thus holding the child in his arms, he gazed upon Him
   with intense delight. I know he did, for he said, "My eyes have seen
   Your salvation." With what wondering pleasure and reverence he looked
   into that dear face and marked those altogether lovely features.
   Doubtless he looked and looked, and looked, and looked and looked
   again! He could scarcely bear to lift his eyes. So must you do with
   Christ. First, take Him to be yours and then let your eyes be riveted
   upon Him. Never let your thoughts forsake this choicest of all subjects
   for godly meditation! Think much of Him who is the whole of your
   salvation and embrace Him in that respect.

   Alas, there are some Christians who never think of Jesus in that way.
   There is a certain creed which tells you you may be saved today and
   lost tomorrow! No Believer has obtained eternal salvation according to
   that theory, but only a temporary and possible salvation. On that
   theory there is no seeing the whole of God's salvation as soon as you
   see Jesus--you only see a bare hope of it. But we know that whoever
   believes in Jesus is saved and, therefore, we assert that Christ is
   salvation and He that has Him is saved! Christ's words are, "I give
   unto My sheep eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall
   any pluck them out of My hand." And he who knows the meaning of these
   words rejoices that he has the whole of salvation in his arms and he
   may look at it as long as he lives and never cease to look, for it is
   worthy of lifelong admiration!

   I like the thought of Simeon being an old man and taking the Infant
   Jesus in his arms. I have a hope that one of these days, by God's
   mercy, this poor old world of ours, which has come to her dotage and
   decay, may be led, by Sovereign Grace, to embrace Jesus the ever new!
   Then will the Millennium dawn and the world may then pray for the last
   conflagration to end her sorrowful history, saying, "Now let this globe
   depart in peace, for it has seen Your salvation." But, to drop all
   figurative speech, it is a great blessing to the aged man to have Jesus
   in his arms. Though he shall be compelled by the infirmities of age to
   ask with Barzillai, "Can your servant taste what I eat or what I
   drink?" Yet he shall find great sweetness in the Bread of Heaven and
   the name of Jesus shall be as wine on the lees well refined. If,
   through age and infirmity, he can hear no more the voice of singing men
   and singing women, he that has Christ, has music in his heart forever!

   In old age Solomon tells us that the grasshopper is a burden, but this
   Child is none. Then the sun, the light, the moon and the stars are
   darkened, but this Child gives light to all who see Him. Then the
   keepers of the house tremble, but they are strengthened as they hold
   the Lord! Then they that look out of the windows are darkened, but they
   are bright when they gaze upon the Savior. The doors are shut in the
   streets, but no door shuts out the Lord Jesus! The voice of the bird
   awakens the light sleeper, but no sound shall break the repose of those
   who rest in Jesus. With the aged, desire fails, but not with the aged
   saint, for he sees in Christ Jesus all his desires fulfilled! And
   though man goes to his long home, he that has the holy Child Jesus to
   go with him may even long for the journey, saying, "Lord, now let Your
   servant depart in peace." Mourners may go about the streets of earth,
   but he who has seen in Christ the salvation of God ascends to other
   streets where sorrow and sighing are fled away. Thrice blessed old age
   which thus renews its youth with Christ Jesus!

   III. That brings us to our last point, upon which we have no time for
   more than a few words. WHEN CHRIST IS

   TAKEN UP INTO THE ARMS AND LOOKED UPON, HE HAS A WONDERFUL EFFECT.
   Notice the case before

   us. First, waiting is ended. Simeon had been waiting for the
   consolation of Israel, but he could now say, "Lord, what do I wait
   for?" We, too, had been waiting, wishing, longing and pining--but when
   we found our Lord, we no longer waited, but we could each one say--"I
   need nothing, I wish for nothing, I long for nothing, I pine for
   nothing. 'My eyes have seen Your salvation.'" Now, also, Simeon was
   excited to praise the Lord. He took Him up in his arms and blessed God.
   None can bless God like those who have Christ in their arms! I do not
   know that Simeon had ever been a poet before, but he began to pour out
   his swan song, his last, sweetest and, perhaps, his only hymn. Every
   line is full of exultation and delight!

   Simeon soon had a song in his mouth when he had Christ in his arms!
   Then shall the tongue of the dumb sing! The very stones would cry out
   if a man could see God's salvation and yet be silent. Those who could
   never speak six words before have grown eloquent when Christ Jesus has
   been their theme. He is my God and I will praise Him! He is my father's
   God and I will extol Him. And now that he has seen the Lord's Christ,
   notice the effect upon Simeon's eyes. He desires to close them upon all
   else. I have heard of some who have looked on the sun unadvisedly till
   they could not see anything else--but this I know--he who looks on
   Christ becomes blind to all rival attractions! If these eyes have once
   seen the salvation of God, it looks like sacrilege to set them upon the
   base things of time and sense! Let the gate be closed through which
   Jesus has entered--it seems profane to allow a single object belonging
   to this traitorous world to enter our mind by eye-gate any more!

   Having eaten the white bread of Heaven, we want no more of the husks of
   earth! Having had a glimpse of the Incarnate God, what more is there to
   see? Simeon's eyes had seen Christ and what then? Why, now they were
   prepared to look on death! He had been told he should not see death
   till he had seen the Lord's Christ and now he is ready to see his final
   hour and all of gloom which may attend his departure. He says, "Lord,
   now let Your servant depart." He regards it not as dying, but as going
   from the present scene to a more glorious country! If you have ever
   looked Christ in the face, the king of terrors has lost his terror and,
   instead of being a king, has become your servant! We may well long for
   the time when we shall have done with earth and be shut in with our
   Beloved! The proverb is, "See Naples and die," but we may much improve
   upon it, and say, "See Christ and never die," but be quite content to
   depart and to be with Him!

   Lastly, that sight, of course, had made Simeon's eyes ready to behold
   the Glory of God. I suppose if we could be taken up just as we are into
   Heaven--if we were unrenewed men and women--we should not be able to
   see the Glory of God for lack of spiritual eyes. We must first look at
   Christ--and when our eyes have been brightened and strengthened

   by the splendors of Incarnate Deity, they will be fitted to behold the
   King Himself as He sits upon His Throne! At any rate, when some of us
   have had a sight of Christ, we have wondered what more we could see in
   Heaven. When Solomon's Song has come to be our everyday talk and the
   Beloved has made us to feel that His left hand is under our head while
   His right hand embraces us, we have almost thought we would not give a
   pin change earth for Heaven--for whether in the body or out of the body
   we could not tell--but this we knew, we could sing, "My Beloved is mine
   and I am His. He feeds among the lilies."

   If your soul once comes there and if the Lord helps you to continue
   there, then dying will be nothing more than crossing the threshold and
   going from the doorstep of the King's palace to the interior of its
   halls! Some Believers dwell in the suburbs of the Celestial City and
   little will be their change when, in a little while, they shall enter
   the central golden streets where the sun shall no more go down, neither
   shall the Lord withdraw Himself! The Lord give you to find all your
   salvation in Christ! And may He teach you a great deal more than these
   poor stammering lips can ever tell you. May Christ Jesus our Lord be
   every day more near and dear to me and to you. To Him be Glory forever
   and ever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Holdfast

   (No. 1418)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 9, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is
   your life." Proverbs 4:13.

   FAITH may be well described as taking hold upon Divine instruction. God
   has condescended to teach us and it is ours to hear with attention and
   receive His words. And while we are hearing, faith comes, even that
   faith which saves the soul. To take "fast hold" is an exhortation which
   concerns the strength, the reality, the heartiness and the truthfulness
   of faith--and the more of these the better. If to take hold is good, to
   take fast hold is better! Even a touch of the hem of Christ's garment
   causes healing to come to us, but if we want the full riches which are
   treasured up in Christ, we must not only touch but take hold. And if we
   would know from day to day the very uttermost of the fullness of His
   Grace, we must take fast hold and so maintain a constant and close
   connection between our souls and the eternal Fountain of Life.

   It were well to give such a grip as a man gives to a plank when he
   seizes hold of it for his very life--that is a fast hold, indeed! We
   are to take fast hold of instruction and the best of instruction is
   that which comes from God. The truest wisdom is the Revelation of God
   in Christ Jesus--of that, therefore, we are to take fast hold. The best
   understanding is obedience to the will of God and a diligent learning
   of those saving Truths which God has set before us in His Word so that,
   in effect, we are exhorted to take hold of Christ Jesus our Lord, the
   Incarnate Wisdom in whom dwells all the treasures of wisdom and
   knowledge. We are not to let Him go, but to keep Him and hold Him, for
   He is our life.

   Does not John, in his Gospel, tell us that the Word is our light or
   instruction and at the same time our life? "In Him was life, and the
   life was the light of men." The more we abide in the Lord Jesus and the
   more firmly we take hold upon Him, the better will it be for us in a
   thousand ways. I intend at this time to speak, as the Holy Spirit shall
   enable me, upon this fast hold and I reckon that the subject is one of
   the most important which can occupy your attention at this particular
   crisis in the history of the Church.

   Many there are around us who believe in Christ, but it is with a very
   trembling faith. Their hold is unsteady! We need to have among us men
   of tighter grip who really believe what they profess to believe. We
   need men who know the Truth in its living power and are persuaded of
   its certainty so that they cannot, by any means, be moved from their
   steadfastness. Among the vacillating crowd we long to see fast-holders
   who are pillars in the House of our God, whose grasp of Divine Truth is
   not that of babies or boys, but of men full grown and vigorous! We
   shall handle our subject by speaking, first, upon the method by which
   we may take fast hold. Then upon the difficulties which will lie in our
   way in so doing. Thirdly, upon the benefits of such a firm grasp. And,
   lastly, upon the arguments for our holding fast mentioned in the text.

   I. First, then, THE METHOD of taking fast hold upon true religion, upon
   the Gospel--in fact--upon Christ. At the outset, my Brothers and
   Sisters, much must depend upon the intense decision which a man feels
   in his soul with regard to eternal things. If he intends trifling, he
   will trifle, but if he means taking fast hold he will, by God's Grace,
   do so. Under God, this, in many cases, depends very much upon a man's
   individuality and force of character. Some men are naturally thorough
   and whole-hearted in all things upon which they enter, whether of this
   world or the next. When they serve the devil they are among his
   lifeguards and they rush to the front in all kinds of iniquity. Among
   sinners they become the chief, for they have no fear and no
   hesitancy--they are daredevils, defying both God and man--sinning
   greedily with both hands.

   Such men, when converted, often become eminent saints, being just as
   thorough and resolute in their following after God as they were in the
   pursuit of evil! They are determined to vindicate His holy cause and
   spread abroad the knowledge of His love. I must confess an earnest
   longing that many such may be brought into the Church of Christ at this
   time to

   brace her up and inspire her with new energy. Many in our Churches
   appear to have no depth of earth. With joy they receive the Word of
   God, from the very fact that they are so shallow, but as soon as the
   sun rises with burning heat, it is discovered that they have no root,
   for they wither away. Others are truly religious and probably will
   remain so, but they are not zealous. In fact, they are not intense
   about anything, but are lukewarm, weak and unstable. These are mere
   chips in the porridge, neither sour nor sweet--they give forth no
   flavor--they take the flavor of that which surrounds them.

   They are the creatures of circumstances, not helmsmen who avail
   themselves of stream and tide, but mere driftwood carried along by any
   and every current which may take hold of them. They have no fullness of
   manhood about them, they are mere children. They resemble the sapling
   which can be bent and twisted and not the oak which defies the storm.
   There are certain persons of this sort who in other matters have
   purpose enough and strength of mind enough, but when they touch the
   things of God, they are loose, flimsy, superficial, half-hearted. You
   see them earnest enough in hunting after wealth, but they show no such
   zeal in the pursuit of godliness! The force of their character comes
   out in a political debate, in the making of a bargain, in the
   arrangement of a social gathering--but you never see it in the work of
   the Lord. The young man comes to the front as a volunteer, or as a
   member of a club, or in the house of business--but who ever hears of
   him in Sunday school, the Prayer Meeting, or the home mission? In the
   things of God such persons owe any measure of progress which they make
   to the influence of their fellows who bear them along as so much dead
   weight! They, themselves, never throw enough weight into the matter to
   add a single half-ounce of spiritual power to the Church!

   Now, all this is mischievous and wrong. My dear Friends, we must all
   confess that if the religion of Christ is true, it deserves that we
   should give our whole selves to it. If it is a lie, let it be
   eradicated from creation! But if it is true, it is a matter concerning
   which we cannot be neutral or lukewarm, for it demands our soul, our
   life, our all--and its claim cannot be denied. There must be a
   determination worked in our souls by the Holy Spirit to be upright and
   downright in the work of the Lord or else we shall be of little worth.
   We come, however, to closer matters of fact when we observe, next, that
   our taking fast hold of the things of God must depend upon the
   thoroughness of our conversion. In this Church we try, as far as we
   can, in receiving Church members, to receive none but those who give
   clear evidence of a change of heart.

   But this evidence can be imitated so skillfully that the best
   examination and the most earnest judgment cannot prevent self-deceived
   persons from making a profession of religion. This we cannot help, but
   woe to those who willfully deceive! Many exhibit flowers and fruits
   which never grew in their own gardens. Their experience is borrowed and
   does not spring from the essential root of the Holy Spirit's work
   within their souls. This is sad, indeed. Our condition before God is a
   personal matter and can never be settled by the judgment of our
   fellows, for what can others know of the workings of our hearts? Each
   man must judge himself and examine himself, for whatever a Church may
   attempt in its zeal for purity, it can never take the responsibility of
   his own sincerity from any man. We do not pretend to give certificates
   of salvation! If we did, they would be worthless--you must, yourselves,
   know the Lord and be really converted or else your profession is a
   forgery and you are counterfeits.

   If a man shall, in later life, hold fast to the things of God, he must
   be soundly converted at first. Very much of his later life depends upon
   the thoroughness of his beginning. There must at the very first be a
   deep sense of sin, a consciousness of guilt, a holy horror of evil, or
   he will never make much of a Christian. I do not say that all or even
   any of those doubts and temptations and Satanic suggestions which some
   have had to struggle with are necessary to make a true conversion. But
   I must confess that I am not at all displeased when I meet with a good
   deal of battling and struggling in the experience of the newly
   awakened. It is not pleasant for them, but we hope it will be
   profitable. Those whose souls are plowed and plowed and plowed again
   before the seed is sown upon them often yield the best crop.

   John Bunyan's, "Grace Abounding," very much accounts for John Bunyan's,
   "Pilgrim's Progress." If it had not been for his terrible conflicts of
   soul, he might not have known how to hold fast to his confidence when
   shut up for 12 years in prison. Nor would he have seen visions of the
   Celestial City, when all around him was as the valley of the shadow of
   death! I do not wish to see seeking souls distressed by Satan, but I do
   press for this--that there shall be an end of self-trust, a total
   destruction of self- righteousness, a complete giving up of all legal
   and carnal hopes. If not, the conversion will be a mere show and he who
   is the subject of it will be like Ephraim--a silly dove without a
   heart. Unless repentance of sin is real in you, you will never take
   fast hold of the Truth of God.

   And there must be, dear Friends, a very sincere laying hold upon Christ
   Jesus. If you have any doubt about the doctrine of Atonement, I am not
   surprised if your religion soon wears into shreds. No, you must,
   without question, accept the Substitutionary Sacrifice. Your soul must
   feel that the precious blood is her only hope--that this, and this
   alone--can make her clean before the living God! You must fly to Christ
   in desperation and cling to Him as all your salvation and all your
   desire--there can be no hesitancy here. At the very outset of the
   Christian life these two things should be very distinct with you--sin
   which has ruined you and Christ who has saved you! Make a muddle at
   first and your life will be a tangle.

   Some tradesmen never carry on their business well. They evidently do
   not more than half understand it and are mere bunglers. Now, if you
   come to enquire, you will find that they were never thoroughly grounded
   in their calling. Either they never served an apprenticeship, or else
   they were lazy lads and never became masters of their trade. This bad
   commencement sticks to them all their lives. It is the same with the
   higher learning. A man may go a long way in the classics, but if he is
   not grounded in the grammar, he will be everlastingly making mistakes
   which a sound scholar will soon discover. Every teacher must work hard
   at the elements if his pupils are to succeed. Whatever you do with the
   higher forms, do teach that little boy his grammar and ground him in
   the rudiments or he will be injured for life.

   To borrow another illustration, we have heard of a bridge which spanned
   a stream and for some years stood well enough, but, by-and- by, through
   the force of the current, it began to show signs of giving way. When it
   came to be examined it was soon seen that the builders never went deep
   enough with the foundations. There is the mischief of thousands of
   other things besides bridges! We must have good and deep foundations,
   or otherwise the higher we build, the sooner the fabric will fall. Look
   at many of the wretched houses in the streets around us--they are the
   disgrace of the city--you will see settlements and cracks everywhere
   because of bad foundations and bad materials. The same is true in the
   characters of many professed Christians--for lack of a good
   commencement you can see innumerable flaws and cracks--and you wonder
   that they do not come down in sudden ruin!

   So indeed they would, but, like those wretched houses, they hold one
   another up! Many professors only keep upright because they stand in a
   row and derive support from their associations. I wish we could see
   more Christian men of the sort who dare to stand alone, like those old
   family mansions which stand, each one in its own garden, so well built
   that when we begin to take them down, each brick is found to be solid
   as granite and the mortar is as hard as a rock. Such buildings and such
   men become more rare every day--we must come back to the old style--and
   the sooner the better! Those of you who are yet in the early days of
   your piety should see to this. See that you are right, sound and
   thorough--and take fast hold of the Truth of God in the days of your
   first love, or yours will be but a sickly life in years to come.

   This being taken for granted, the next help to a fast hold of Christ is
   hearty discipleship. Brothers and Sisters, as soon as you are
   converted, you become the disciples of Jesus! And if you are to become
   fast-holding Christians you must acknowledge Him to be your Master,
   Teacher and Lord in all things! You must resolve to be good scholars in
   His school. He will be the best Christian who has Christ for His Master
   and truly follows Him. Some are disciples of the Church, others are
   disciples of the minister and a third sort are disciples of their own
   thoughts. He is the wise man who sits at Jesus' feet and learns of Him
   with the resolve to follow His teaching and imitate His example. He who
   tries to learn of Jesus, Himself, taking the very words from our Lord's
   own lips, binding himself to believe whatever the Lord has taught and
   to do whatever He has commanded--he, I say, is the stable Christian!

   Follow Jesus, my Brothers and Sisters, and not the Church, for our Lord
   has never said to His disciples, "Follow your Brethren," but He has
   said, "Follow Me." He has not said, "Abide by the denominational
   confession," but He has said, "Abide in Me." Nothing must come between
   our souls and our Lord! What if fidelity to Jesus should sometimes lead
   us to differ from our Brethren? What does it matter so long as we do
   not differ from our Master? Crochets and quibbles are evil things, but
   a keenly sensitive conscientiousness is invaluable. Be true disciples
   of Christ and let His least Word be precious to you! Remember that if a
   man loves Him, he will keep His Commandments. He has said, "He that
   shall break one of the least of these, My Commandments, and shall teach
   men so, the same shall be least in the kingdom of Heaven." Shun all
   compromises and abatements of the Truth! Be thorough and determined,
   holding fast your Savior's Words! Follow the Lamb where ever He goes!
   If such is your resolve, by the Grace of God, you will take fast hold
   of instruction and will never let it go.

   It will help you to do this if, in the next place, you have a studious
   consideration of the Word of God and meditate much upon the Truth which
   you have received. I am persuaded there is too little studying of the
   Scriptures nowadays. Books, magazines, papers and the like, bury the
   Bible under heaps of rubbish, but he who means to be a man of God to
   the fullness of his manhood will feed upon the Word of God at first
   hand. Like the Bereans, he will be of a noble spirit and he will search
   the Scriptures daily. "I want," says he, "to obtain my creed, not
   secondhand from others, but directly for myself from the very Word of
   God itself--the pure well of undefiled Gospel." This is a very
   important point. I have heard often, of late, a misused expression--"I
   do my own thinking." Let us correct it and then adopt it by saying, "I
   do my own searching of the Word of God."

   Remember, we are not called to think out a new Gospel, as some imagine,
   but we are called to be thinkers upon the old Gospel, that we may know
   and understand its principles and its bearings and become confirmed in
   the belief of it. We need to think over the Word of God till we are
   thoroughly permeated with it. The silk of certain insects takes its
   color from the leaves on which they feed--and a Christian's life will
   always take its color from that which his soul feeds upon. Oh, to live
   upon the Word of God, even upon the deep things of God, for so shall we
   be rooted and grounded in the faith and shall take fast hold of eternal
   wisdom! An established Christian is one who not only knows the
   doctrines, but who also knows the authority for it, having looked
   around it and pondered it in his heart. By careful meditation he is
   taught in the Truth of God and is able to give a reason for the hope
   that is in him with meekness and fear.

   Nor is he merely a man of the letter--his study in the power of the
   Holy Spirit has carried him into the essence of the Word. He has asked
   the Spirit of God to make him acquainted with Divine Truth so that he
   has not only read it, but he has communed with it and now lives upon
   it, eats it, drinks it, receives it into the inward parts of his soul
   and retains it there as a living and incorruptible seed! A man who does
   this year after year is the kind of man who, by God's Grace, will take
   fast hold of instruction and will prove a faithful witness for his
   Lord. Add to this, also, an earnest seriousness of character and you go
   a long way towards maintaining a fast hold of Christ. We do not mean,
   by this, that we are to dismiss cheerfulness--may the Lord give us more
   of it, for it is as oil to wheels and is a high recommendation of
   religion to the unconverted. There are some who are a deal too gloomy
   in their religion and seem to think that the Grace of God is never
   displayed by them unless they are sullen and doleful.

   But at the same time there is a flippancy which is not commendable and
   a levity which is far from the mind of Christ! Christian life is not
   child's play. We, above all men, ought to make our lives sublime and
   not ridiculous. We are not called into this world to trifle away the
   hours and kill time in doing nothing, for this life links itself to
   eternity and that eternity, in spite of all that is said to the
   contrary, will be one of endless misery or of endless joy! It is,
   therefore, no small thing to possess an immortal mind and to be
   responsible before God. Sin is no trifle, pardon is no trifle and
   condemnation is no trifle! Eternal life is precious beyond all things,
   but to lie under the wrath of God is dreadful beyond conception! I love
   to see, especially in young Christians, with regard to the things of
   God, deep seriousness of purpose and spirit, showing that they feel it
   to be a weighty thing to be a Christian and that they cannot afford to
   have their Christianity put under the shadow of suspicion, nor dare
   they appear to be mere players upon a stage, for they fear and tremble
   at His Word.

   Now, if all these things are in you and abound, there will grow around
   them an experimental verification of the things of God. I mean that you
   will not only read of the love of God, but you will feel it from day to
   day and so be assured of it. You read in the Scriptures of the power of
   sin and you believe what you read--but to this will be added the
   confirmatory fact that you feel it in your members and, therefore,
   cannot doubt it! You read of the efficacy of the precious blood of
   Jesus--but you do more, for you feel its cleansing power upon your
   heart and its consoling influence over your conscience--and so you are
   established in the blessed Truth of God! We hardly know anything till
   we have lived it! You must get the Truth of God burnt into you with the
   hot iron of experience, or you will forget it.

   I believe that the pains and grief and afflictions of many of God's
   children have been absolutely necessary to establish them in the faith.
   And I can only hope that you who are the children of joy may derive as
   much benefit from your gladness as mourners have found in their
   sorrows--it might be so and should be so--but I fear it seldom is. The
   whole of our life should be a daily testing of the Gospel and a
   continuous verification of the eternal Truth thereof. Our life should
   agree with this Book of Life--just as the book of Nature, being written
   by the same Author as the Book of Revelation, shows the same hand and
   style--so the book of the new creation within us, being inscribed by
   the same Spirit who has

   written these Scriptures, will display the same style and manner. And
   we shall thus be growingly assured of the things which are verily
   revealed to us by God.

   Go on, dear Friends, and may the Lord grant that whatever your
   experience may be, whether it shall abound in bitterness or in
   sweetness, the testimony of God may be confirmed in you and your grip
   of it may be intensified by every year's experience. I must add one
   other word. I believe that in the mode of taking fast hold upon the
   Gospel, practical Christianity has a great influence. I refer
   especially to practical usefulness. Some members enter the Church and
   never do a hand's turn. We have the distinguished privilege of seeing
   them sit in their pews and that is all we know about them. We cannot
   bring them under Church censure, for they are punctual in religious
   observances--but they are barren limbs. Give me the young man who, when
   he joins the Church, says, "I shall take a little time to study the
   Gospel till I know more of it by the teaching of God's Spirit." And
   then, having done so, says, "I have not learned this for myself. There
   is something for me to do in connection with the Church of God and I am
   determined to find out what it is and to do it."

   You see such a young Believer teaching in Sunday school, or you find
   him beginning to speak in a cottage, or becoming a visitor and seeking
   to speak personally to individuals about their souls. If he is a man of
   the right kind, his work will be another holdfast to his mind. Look at
   him, how he keeps to the Gospel--how he clings to the old, old Truth of
   God! He is not the man to run after new theories and modern doubts, for
   he is helped to keep right by his practical connection with spiritual
   disease and its remedy. Go into the back slums of London and see if you
   will doubt the doctrine of Human Depravity! Oh no, it is your ladies
   and gentlemen that wear lavender kid gloves who doubt that doctrine!
   Try to rescue a harlot from her sin and if you are enabled to lead her
   to Jesus, you cannot doubt the power of the precious blood of Jesus to
   cleanse the heart!

   Not those who battle with vice, but those who practice it, themselves,
   are the ones who quibble at the doctrine of the Atonement. Those who
   are busy plucking brands out of the fire are little given to
   speculation, but are firm abiders in the Gospel. I think there are few
   exceptions to the rule that the "advanced thought" gentlemen are not
   engaged in practical work for the salvation of souls. They are grand
   talkers, but very poor workers. I am not hypercritical when I say that
   if you will mention a "modern thought" professor, it will generally
   turn out that he is not worth his salt as to practical usefulness--not
   he--he has the parrot faculty of pulling things to pieces, but what
   positive work has he ever done? He may be a distinguished dignitary or
   a noble scholar, but as to actually grappling with the hearts and
   consciences of men and entering into the dark and troublous experience
   of tempted souls, he is quite at sea, for he knows nothing about it!

   He would talk after another fashion if his hands had ever been laid to
   hard work among sinful men and afflicted consciences! I tell you, Sirs,
   that to argue with a poor distressed conscience and to try to bring it
   to peace in Christ soon lets you know the truth of the Gospel! To stand
   by a dying bed and hear the holy triumph of even the most illiterate of
   the children of God, or what is equally efficacious, to watch the last
   sad hours of an impenitent sinner dying without hope--will make you
   know that there is a world to come, joyful or terrible as the case may
   be--and you will also learn that sin is a great evil and that the
   Atonement is a great reality!

   Young convert, if you want to be one of the firm holders of the Gospel,
   you must get to work as well as to study, for this, by the overruling
   power of the Holy Spirit, will strengthen you in the faith of God's
   elect! Thus I have brought forward the method, may it prove to be
   instructive.

   II. Very briefly, I want, now, to show THE DIFFICULTIES of taking fast
   hold of instruction. And every difficulty I mention will tend to show,
   all the more clearly, the necessity of it. The first difficulty is that
   this is the age of questioning. Everybody questions! Our friends over
   in Germany have pushed the questioning business to the furthest point
   and in their thorough way they have produced its legitimate fruit in
   cold-blooded attempts to murder a venerable monarch. Professed
   ministers of the Gospel have taught the German mind to doubt
   everything--and now the basis of society is shaken and law and order
   are undermined. What could they expect otherwise? He who does not fear
   God is not likely to honor their king!

   When men give up their Bibles, they will care but little for human
   laws. We have plenty of the same evil here in England and certain
   clergymen and dissenting divines are spreading it with hideous
   industry! Young gentlemen, whose whiskers have not yet developed, are
   authoritatively deciding that nothing can be decided and dogmatically
   denouncing all dogmas! We meet them every day and we notice that in
   proportion to their ignorance is their confidence in sneering at every
   holy thing! According to them, nobody is sincere, nothing is sacred.
   These great men, who would never have been

   heard of if they had not been heretical, know better by far than God
   Himself! As for Apostles and Prophets, they are just nothing at all to
   these infallibles! Their own "thought" is more precious than
   Inspiration itself! This conceited skepticism is in the air--it seems
   to be everywhere and you cannot help encountering it--therefore let us
   be the more earnest to hold fast the faith!

   Worse than this, this is an age of worldliness. Everybody wants to be
   rich and nobody is rich now at the point at which his forefathers were
   content to stop! Our good old deacons and respected Church members were
   content with very moderate incomes. They were satisfied and happy with
   thrift and prudence and would have been deeply grieved with the
   extravagance which is seen on all sides at this time. They not only
   considered their shops and their fields, but they planned to have time
   to look after the Sunday schools in which they were proud to serve and
   the Prayer Meetings which they delighted to attend. But, dear me,
   Prayer Meetings, lectures, sermons, Sunday schools--these are all
   despised, now! If a man can make an extra guinea or two by putting
   himself where they are out of the question, he jumps at the chance!

   We must be rich, we must cut a dash, we must spend more than our
   neighbors and for this the work of the Church may go to the dogs! Oh
   for a few simple, earnest Christians who will judge their Lord and His
   cause to be worth some consideration and will lay themselves out to
   serve His Church! When worldliness is so predominant, it becomes so
   much the harder to take fast hold of eternal things! One needs to hear
   the Word of God, "Seek you, first, the kingdom of God and His
   righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Unless we
   hear it, we shall be tempted to take fast hold on the world and let the
   things of eternity slip by us!

   Then, besides this, there is and always has been a great desire for
   novelty. We are all the subjects of it. We all like something fresh.
   But there are some who are sick of the changeable disease--you see them
   zealots for a creed today, but all of a sudden you find them deeply
   immersed in the opposite teaching! Ah, now they have discovered
   something very wonderful--just as the idiot who saw the rainbow and
   believed that there was a pot of gold at the end of it and ran for
   miles to seize a glittering sapphire and grasped a piece of glass
   bottle--so they forever pursue and never attain! We have a few of these
   gentlemen in most of our Churches, but you will find them nowhere very
   long! Another inventor starts a new system and away they go--pining
   always to be the first disciples of each new prophet! May God save us
   from the Athenian spirit which forever hungers for something new!

   Another difficulty, and the worst of all, is the corruption of our own
   hearts. "Take fast hold of instruction," says the text. "Why," I hear a
   Brother say, "my dear Sir, sometimes it is as much as I can do to take
   hold of it at all. I have to question whether I have been converted! I
   go down into such depths of despondency that unless the Truth of God
   holds me, I shall never hold it." Well, but I hope this is all a means
   of helping you to hold it all the more firmly! You now see that
   salvation must be by Grace from first to last! By this very process you
   will be compelled to hold the Doctrines of Grace the more intensely,
   because you are made to see how utterly unable you are, in and of
   yourself, to think a good thought, much less to remain steadfast in the
   whole Truth of Christ!

   And then there is Satan, too--how busy he is in trying to undermine the
   fundamentals of the faith! Has he not suggested to some of us all kind
   of doubts? Yes. I said to a man, one day, who had uttered some
   blasphemy in my presence against a certain Truth of God, "You think you
   stagger me? My dear Man, I have had more doubts pass through my
   thoughts than you could tell me, or 50 like you!" The doubts which the
   devil insinuates into the minds of the people of God are at times quite
   as horrible as any which a Voltaire or a Tom Paine was ever able to
   invent! And yet, by God's Grace, we have not given up the Gospel, nor
   shall we though Heaven and earth shall pass away! Because we are one
   with Christ we shall live in the Truth of Christ, for He will keep and
   preserve us even to the end.

   III. Thirdly, let us consider THE BENEFITS of taking fast hold. I wish
   I had an hour in which to dilate upon the benefit of so doing, but I
   must briefly say that it gives stability to the Christian character to
   have a firm grip of the Gospel. Men who take fast hold are the backbone
   of a Church. All through the dark reign of moderates in Scotland, who
   kept up the testimony for the Truth of God? Why, those solid Christians
   who were known as, "the men," who held the faith and walked with God in
   the power of it. These were men much in prayer and much in meditation.
   They lived on when all sound teaching had left the pulpits! Their souls
   were sustained by secret communion with God on the hillside. When the
   time came for the pure Truth of God to revive in Scotland, these men
   came to the front and were honored as the men who had kept the flame
   alive in the land.

   What was it that delivered our country, in still earlier times, from
   being altogether under the hoof of Rome? When prelates forsook Christ
   and preachers by the hundreds in Mary's day turned from Protestantism
   to Popery, the true faith lived on in the hearts of poor men and
   women--weavers and cobblers who believed what they did believe and
   could not deny the Truth of God. Everybody in the parish knew them as
   the, "stubborn heretics," who could not be frightened or argued down!
   They knew. They were sure. They were confident and, therefore, they
   spoke. It did not matter to them that they were in a minority, for they
   knew that a minority of one, on God's side, is a majority!

   "I, Athanasius, against the world," said that grand old confessor when
   they told him everybody had gone over to Arianism and that nobody
   believed in the Deity of Christ! "The earth and all the inhabitants
   thereof are dissolved. I bear up the pillars of it," said one of
   old--and happy is that man to whom such an office is given! A firm grip
   of the Gospel will give you strength for service. The man who can "hold
   the fort," at one time, is the very man who can capture a fort at
   another! He who can stand well can march well! The hands of the Church
   are made of the same material as its backbone! It is of no use sending
   poor hesitating professors into the field of holy labor. If you hardly
   know what you believe, how can you teach other people? But when the
   Truth of God is written upon your very soul and engraved as with the
   point of a diamond upon your heart--you will speak with confidence and
   there will be a power about your utterances which none shall be able to
   withstand or deny!

   For the sake, then, of your spiritual strength, I press the exhortation
   of the text, "Take fast hold of instruction." And this, too, will bring
   you joy. The outskirts of our Jerusalem are dreary--her Glory lies
   within. Where shines the brightest light? It is in the Holy of Holies
   in the innermost shrine! The skin and husks of religion are poor
   things, but the juice, the life, the vital power of religion--therein
   lies the sweetness! You must not be satisfied with the "name to
   live"--it will never comfort you--it will even distress you. The life
   of Christ mightily developed in you must be the joy of your heart!
   Multitudes of Christian professors get next to nothing out of
   Christianity. How can they? They hold their religion as some rich
   farmers hold "off-hand farms." Nobody ever makes anything out of
   off-hand farms--the man who makes farming pay lives on the spot and
   gives his whole time and energy to it!

   So is it in the things of God! If you make your minister your bailiff
   in religion, you will get nothing out of it. You must live in it and
   upon it--and then you will prosper! I want you to say, "If there is
   anything in godliness I am going to know it. If prayer has power I am
   going to pray. If there is such a thing as communion with God I will
   enjoy it! If there is such a thing as likeness to Christ I will obtain
   it. Godliness shall not be an addition to my life, but it shall be my
   life itself." Ah, Brothers and Sisters, then you are the man of the
   shining countenance, you are the man of the sparkling eyes! You drink
   deep and you find that the deeper you drink the sweeter the draught
   becomes!

   Lastly, with regard to this summary of benefits--persons of this kind
   are the very Glory of the Church--they are the persons in whom true
   religion displays its brightest beams! They may be humble cottagers, or
   obscure members of a large Church who are scarcely known. But those who
   live with them--those who are at all acquainted with them, say of
   them--"These men and women are a credit to the Church and an honor to
   the name of Christianity." Not your frothy talkers, not your flimsy
   professors, but your deep taught, Grace-instructed men and women--these
   are they who are the beauty of the Church and the Glory of Christ!

   I would to God we had many more! I look around and see that the cause
   does not prosper as I would wish throughout the land. And then I
   remember in one spot an earnest village preacher--in another a holy
   laborious deacon, in a third a gracious woman, zealous in every good
   work--and I am comforted! Thank God there is life in the old Church
   yet! There is still hope for her because of her fast-holding people! If
   I study the statistics of the Churches, I have to say, "What is the
   good of these figures? Probably a Church of 200 members might be cut
   down to 20 earnest effectives." For my part, I would sooner stand on
   this platform with 12 holy men and women to back me up than with 12,000
   mere pretenders to religion such as can be found in crowds anywhere!
   No, it is the fast grip of faith--it is vital godliness which makes a
   man to be a real power in the Church!

   IV. Now, lastly, I have to mention THE ARGUMENTS of the text, which are
   three. All through the sermon I have been using arguments, therefore I
   shall be the more brief and draw to a close. The first argument is,
   take fast hold of true religion because it is your best friend. Read
   the text--"Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go." You cannot
   find your way to Heaven without this guide, therefore do not suffer it
   to leave you. Do as Moses did, who, when his father-in-law, Hobab, was
   with him, would not suffer him to depart, "for," he said, "you shall be
   to us instead of eyes, for you

   know where to encamp in the wilderness." As Moses kept Hobab, so you
   keep the faith, for you cannot find your road except by holding the
   true Gospel with a true heart.

   What a sweet companion the Gospel is! How often it has cheered you! How
   easy has the road become while you have been in communion with it! Do
   what the disciples at Emmaus did when Jesus talked with them--they
   constrained Him, saying, "Abide with us." Do not let Him go! You will
   be a lonely pilgrim if you do. No, if you could be led by an angel, but
   must lose the Presence of your God, you would be wise to cry out
   against such an evil and, like Moses, plead--"If Your Spirit go not
   with us, carry us not up hence."

   The next argument is that true godliness should be held fast, for it is
   your treasure. "Keep it," says our text. It is your best inheritance at
   the present moment and it is to be your eternal inheritance--keep it,
   then! Let everything else go, but do not part with a particle of the
   Truth of God. The slightest fragment of Truth is more valuable than a
   diamond! Hold it, then, with all firmness. You are so much the richer
   by every Truth of God you know--you will be so much the poorer by every
   Truth of God you forget! Hold it then and hide it in your heart. A
   certain king who had a rare diamond sent it to a foreign court,
   entrusting it to a very faithful servant. This servant was attacked,
   however, on the road by a band of robbers and, as they could not find
   the diamond, they drew their swords and killed him. He was found dead,
   but his master exclaimed, "He has not lost the diamond, I am sure!" He
   judged rightly, for the trusty servant had swallowed the gem and so
   preserved it with his life.

   We, also, should thus place the Truth of God in our inward parts and
   then we shall never be deprived of it. A priest took a Testament from
   an Irish boy. "But," cried the boy, "you cannot take away those six
   chapters of Matthew that I learned by heart." They may take away our
   books, but they cannot take away what we have fed upon and made our
   own! "His flesh is meat, indeed. His blood is drink, indeed," for when
   we have fed upon Him, our Lord Jesus remains in us the hope of Glory.
   Hold fast the truth, O believers in Jesus, for it is your treasure!
   Lastly, it is your "lift." Mr. Arnot, in His very beautiful book upon
   the Proverbs, tells a story to illustrate this text. He says that in
   the Southern seas an American vessel was attacked by a wounded whale.

   The huge monster ran out for the length of a mile from the ship and
   then turned round. And with the whole force of its acquired speed
   struck the ship and made it leak at every timber, so as to begin to go
   down. The sailors got out all their boats, filled them as quickly as
   they could with the necessaries of life and began to pull away from the
   ship. Just then two strong men were seen leaping into the water who
   swam to the vessel, scrambled on board, disappeared for a moment and
   then came up, bringing something in their hands. Just as they sprang
   into the sea down went the vessel, and they were carried round in the
   vortex, but they were observed to be both of them swimming, not as if
   struggling to get away, but as if looking for something, which at last
   they both seized and carried to the boats.

   What was this treasure? What article could be so valued as to lead them
   to risk their lives? It was the ship's compass which had been left
   behind--without which they could not have found their way out of those
   lonely southern seas into the high road of commerce! That compass was
   life to them and the Gospel of the living God is the same to us! You
   and I must venture all for the Gospel! This Infallible Word of God must
   be guarded to the death! Men may tell us what they please and say what
   they will, but we will risk everything sooner than give up those
   eternal principles by which we have been saved! The Lord give all of us
   His abundant Grace that we may take fast hold of Divine instruction.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Encouragement to Trust and Pray

   (No. 1419)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 16, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He will be very gracious unto you at the voice of your cry; when He
   shall hear it, He will answer you." Isaiah 30:19.

   THE great sin of man is his alienation from God. He has said in his
   heart, "No God," and in his life he labors to escape from the Divine
   Presence. The journey into the far country is not only made for the
   sake of the riotous living, but that he may get away from the Father's
   house. One would have thought man would turn unto the Lord in the day
   of trouble, even as Hosea said, "In their affliction they will seek Me
   early." But this, alas, is not in truth and sincerity, for too often
   the sinner follows the example of Ahaz, of whom it is written, "In the
   time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord: this is
   that King Ahaz."

   All the trials and troubles in the world will not, of themselves, drive
   a man to God, but will rather hurry him into rebellion, despair and
   hardness of heart! Man will look in all directions sooner than look to
   God. He will sooner, like Saul, seek the help of a witch or a devil
   than seek the living God. He will rather make a league with death and a
   covenant with Hell than turn his heart towards his best Friend and
   Helper. It is written, "Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and
   stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in
   horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy
   One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!"

   Vain is the warning, for man still leans upon an arm of flesh and
   counts it a foolish and fanciful thing to rely upon the almighty God.
   Man shifts his ground of trust full often and now depends on this, then
   on that--and in due course upon a score of equally unreliable
   confidences. Very early he is deceived. The staff of the broken reed
   upon which he chose to lean pierces his hand. He smarts and bleeds. He
   repents of his folly in one direction and repeats it in another! He
   cries in the pride and stoutness of his heart, "The bricks are fallen
   down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down,
   but we will change them into cedars." Though again and again deceived
   by his false confidences, he returns to them like a dog to his vomit.
   He chooses his own delusions and attempts, again, to build upon that
   sandy foundation which the tide has already shifted so many times.

   Nor is it only when he is deceived that he persists in his folly, for
   he continues in it when he knows that he has paid heavily for his folly
   and has been impoverished by spending his money for that which is not
   bread. Egypt has drained his treasure and has yielded him no
   assistance--and yet he sends more treasure to the same market only to
   be, again, ashamed of a people that could not profit him. He exercises
   painful thoughts. He spends his mental force. He schemes. He frets. He
   worries himself to find, in his carnal confidences, some little
   consolation. And so he wastes his life and dries up the very marrow of
   his bones in seeking for that in the creature which might so readily be
   found in the Creator! He rises up early, he sits up late and he eats
   the bread of carefulness--but he will not turn unto the Lord who alone
   gives His Beloved sleep.

   Even when impoverished and worn out with unbelief, man will not look to
   the Lord! Even then he dotes upon some new thing which promises him
   assistance. He seems anxious to be duped and willing to be deluded! If,
   at last, all carnal trust is excluded by sheer failure of every hope,
   he will lie down and die sooner than seek the Lord! He suffers, ah, how
   cruelly, from the vain joys in which he trusted, yet would he still
   pursue them if he could. He faints, pines, is ready to die, for he
   cannot fill his belly with the husks the swine eat but yet he will not,
   until almighty Grace causes him, turn his face toward the house where
   there is bread enough and to spare! He will sooner perish with hunger
   than confess his sin against Heaven and begin to live by faith in God!

   This is the fruit of the Fall, the black evidence of our depravity, the
   fruitful mother of destruction--"the carnal mind is enmity against
   God." We must have something to rely upon which we can see with our
   eyes and touch with our

   hands--the invisible Jehovah we cannot trust and yet He, alone, is the
   living and true God! Oh that we were wise, that we would understand
   this and say within our hearts, "Come, and let us return unto the Lord,
   for He has torn, and He will heal us. He has smitten and He will bind
   us up." Now all this time, while man is struggling to get away from
   God, the Lord is willing enough to receive him, to forgive him, to
   bless him and to enrich him with every joy! Nor is He merely willing,
   but He is able, fully able to assist the troubled heart in every
   difficulty and to comfort under every distress.

   Therefore does the Lord wait that He may be gracious and He is exalted
   that He may show mercy. If the unwillingness were on God's part, we
   might very readily understand and, in a measure, justify the
   unwillingness of man to turn unto God. But when the Lord bids man
   return, invites him, reasons with him, entreats him and makes every
   preparation for his reception, why is it that man refuses? His Lord has
   given rich promises of every help that he can desire and it is
   inexcusable ingratitude and wicked obstinacy on the part of man that he
   still persists in keeping aloof from his Creator! He chooses to perish
   forever, sooner than trust his God! Is not this the case of some who
   hear these, my words?

   I desire at this time to set forth the graciousness of God and His
   readiness to listen to the cry of the needy, with the hope that some
   here present who may have forgotten this, to whom it may be a time of
   need, may hear it and be encouraged to say, "I will arise and go to my
   Father." It is joy to me to hope that it will be so, but I remember,
   with sadness, that if I should be helped to set this forth clearly and
   if any of you who are in trouble should afterwards refuse to trust in
   the Lord, your alienation will be aggravated and your sin will become
   still more trying.

   He who will not trust when he knows that the Lord will be gracious to
   him, sins against his own soul and plunges himself in sevenfold wrath!
   If the Lord says that He will be very gracious at the voice of your
   cry, what must be your doom if you will not cry?

   I. In trying to set forth the overflowing Grace of the Lord our God, I
   shall first of all speak upon the fact that THIS ASSURANCE IS
   PARTICULARLY SUITABLE TO CERTAIN CHARACTERS. "He will be very gracious
   unto you at the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it, He will
   answer you." This is applicable and comfortable to all afflicted
   people! To such I speak. You are depressed at this time by heavy grief.
   Things have gone amiss with you--you do not prosper in business, or you
   are sickening in body--or a dear one lies at home pining away. We do
   not wonder that you feel exceedingly burdened in spirit! At the same
   time, you are ill at ease as to your own state. The iron is entering
   into your soul.

   While passing through this thick darkness you will be strongly tempted
   to think harshly of God and to blame Him for the troubles which now
   surround you! Yet this will only make matters worse and increase your
   sin and your sorrow! Perhaps, also, you will be ready to despair and
   say, "There is no hope, I am taken as in a net and there is no escape
   for me." Though if you knew all, you would chase away despair as your
   greatest enemy! Possibly you will be ready to try some wrong method by
   way of helping yourself out of present straits. Satan will suggest to
   you dishonest, impure, or reckless courses which hold out some shadow
   of relief. This is your danger at this time and, in pity to you, the
   Lord bids us assure you that there is a far wiser course open to you,
   namely, to turn to Him, for He will be very gracious unto you at the
   voice of your cry--and when He hears it, He will answer you!

   There is help in God for your present trial, whatever form it assumes.
   Infinite wisdom understands it and infinite power can help you through
   it. God can remove from you that which you are suffering, or He can
   prevent the occurrence of that which you dread. Or, if, in His Divine
   wisdom, He shall see fit to lay the rod upon you, He can enable you to
   bear it and make it to turn to your everlasting good! Be well assured
   that He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men out
   of any delight in their sorrows. He pities those who are afflicted, for
   He is very tender and full of compassion. And He is ever swift to
   succor the suffering. There is a reason for the heavy trial which now
   bows you down--depend upon that and do not complain.

   The Lord is not now visiting you in wrath, but there is kindness in His
   severity. Can you not believe this? It is really so and your strength,
   your comfort, your ultimate deliverance out of it all will come through
   your knowing this to be true and acting accordingly! By yielding
   yourself to God and trusting Him in this, your evil plight, you will
   obtain deliverance. "For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of
   Israel: in returning and rest shall you be saved; in quietness and in
   confidence shall be your strength."

   In so large a congregation as this, there must be some with broken
   hearts on account of their temporal trials. I am persuaded that I am
   speaking to some of the sons and daughters of woe. Go, you sorrowing
   ones! Turn unto the hand

   that smites you! Kiss the rod and Him that has appointed it and let
   your confidence henceforth be in the Lord, for He is God and besides
   Him there is none else! Say, "From this time, my Father, I will seek
   You and You shall be my Guide. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, I will
   approach You, trusting in His precious blood. Help me and deliver me."
   You shall find Him ready to pardon and rescue you and you shall live to
   sing of Him whose "mercy endures forever." Let me whisper in your ears
   the sweet assurance of the text--"He will be very gracious unto you at
   the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer you."

   A second class of persons to whom the text will be very applicable
   consists of those who are troubled on account of sin--sinners who are
   beginning to feel the iniquity of their sins compassing them about. You
   are at this time overthrown with a sense of guilt and with the fear of
   punishment. You cannot well be smarting under severer blows than the
   Law of God can give when it begins to smite the conscience and the
   heart! Now, in order to escape from sin and punishment, the very first
   thing with you is to come back to your God whom you have offended,
   since He alone can pardon you. There must be a turning of the face in
   repentance and a looking of the eyes by faith unto God in Christ Jesus,
   or you will die in your sins.

   The natural tendency of your heart, even when under a sense of sin,
   will be to stay away from the Lord. Alas, you will look at your sin
   again and again and again, till you are ready to pine away in
   despair--but you will not look to Christ Jesus and be saved! A terrible
   sound is in your ears as of an approaching judgment and you listen both
   to it and to the howls of the dog of Hell--but you refuse to hear the
   loving voice of compassion which tells of pardon bought with blood,
   freely given to all who trust their Savior God! Possibly you may
   conclude that there is no hope for you in better things and, therefore,
   you had better enjoy such pleasures as may be found in sin and take
   your swing while you may.

   Now, do not believe this lie of Satan! There is hope! You are still in
   the land of mercy! Poor guilty Sinner, you are where pardons are
   commonly given, where God is gracious to all them that seek Him! You
   have not yet come to the Judgment Seat and to the voice of a trumpet
   waxing exceedingly loud and long. Calvary is before you with dying
   love, not Sinai with consuming fire! Today is the day of salvation! The
   hour of vengeance is not yet come! God wills not your death, nor takes
   delight in your suffering, but desires that you turn to Him and live,
   for He delights in mercy!

   A joyful acceptance awaits you if you return to your Father's house--He
   will not upbraid you for your wandering, but He will take off your rags
   and put on the best robe of Christ's righteousness! He will fill the
   house with music concerning you and He, Himself, will rejoice over you.
   You need do nothing to make the Lord propitious, He is love already!
   You need not undergo penance, nor pass through grievous anguish of
   spirit in order to render God more merciful, for His Grace abounds! In
   Christ Jesus the stream of Divine Love flows freely, swiftly, richly to
   the worst of men! Only return unto God against whom you have
   transgressed, acknowledge your transgression and put your trust in Him
   through Jesus Christ, His Son, and, "He will be very gracious unto you
   at the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer you."

   Equally sweet will the assurance of our text be to backsliders filled
   with their own ways, who are alarmed and distressed at their grievous
   departures from their God. It is true, my dear Friend, that you have
   very greatly transgressed in becoming a backslider. You have sinned
   against much light, against much love and this makes sin exceedingly
   sinful. What peaceful hours you once enjoyed when you had communion
   with your Savior and your God! You have sinned against those sweet
   enjoyments and against the condescending endearments of eternal love.
   You have done despite to the Spirit of God and crucified the Son of God
   afresh! You were taught of the Lord in the deep things of His Word and
   the secret of His Covenant was opened up to you. You had an
   experimental acquaintance with the Divine life and you entered into the
   joys of sacred fellowship.

   And yet you have turned aside from the way of the Lord and been
   unfaithful to all your vows. You have left the cold flowing waters
   which come from the Rock of Ages to drink of the muddy pools of earth!
   You have turned away from the living God to live upon the beggarly
   elements of the world. You have bowed down before the golden calf, or
   some other image of jealousy! You have gone far astray from the Most
   High, defiled the chastity of your soul and provoked the Lord
   exceedingly. Moreover, you may well be grieved, for you have done much
   dishonor to the name of God among the ungodly--you have pierced His
   saints with many sorrows--and you have made His ministers to go as with
   broken bones. You and such as you are our shame and our anguish! If you
   were cast off forever as a traitor and left to die as a son of
   perdition what could be said but that you were reaping the fruit of
   your own ways?

   Yet the text rings in your ears at this time like a clear silver bell
   and its one note is Grace--"He will be very gracious unto you." "Turn,
   O backsliding children, for I am married unto you, says the Lord."
   Return, return! It is your Bridegroom's voice that calls you! With what
   sweeter notes would you be wooed? "O Israel, return unto the Lord your
   God, for you have fallen by your iniquity." O beloved Friend, hear the
   exhortation and let your heart say, "I will return unto my first
   husband, for it was better with me, then, than now." He has not shut up
   the heart of His compassion, but He cries in the greatness of His love,
   "Go and proclaim these words toward the north and say, Return,
   backsliding Israel, says the Lord; and I will not cause My anger to
   fall upon you: for I am merciful, says the Lord, and I will not keep
   anger forever."

   He has chastened you sorely, but He has not given you over unto death!
   He hears your groaning at this time and His soul pities you. Behold, He
   cries, "How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you,
   Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim?
   My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together. I
   will not execute the fierceness of My anger. I will not return to
   destroy Ephraim: for I am God and not man." Listen to me, O wanderer!
   Let a Brother softly whisper it in your ear and may the Holy Spirit
   speak it to your heart--"He will be very gracious unto you at the voice
   of your cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer you."

   We are sure that a fourth class of persons will be very glad of the
   text, namely, all Believers in Christ who are at all exercised in heart
   and we are all in that condition at times. We do not always dwell upon
   the Mount of Transfiguration nor sit at the festival of love in
   rapturous fellowship. At times we are thrust into the furnace of
   soul-trouble and our faces become black as a coal through grief of
   heart! We find it hard, even, to retain a spark of faith. We even
   question whether we are the Lord's, though we resolve to battle on in
   His name, come what may! Even when by full assurance we can read our
   title clear, we are apt to look forward and there comes over us the
   fear that we shall yet fall by the hand of the enemy! If trials
   multiply, how will faith be able to stand? When the days of weakness
   arrive, what shall we do in our old age?

   Behind all stands the skeleton form of death! What shall we do in the
   swellings of Jordan? We remember how we ran with the footmen in our
   former trials and they wearied us. And we ask ourselves, "How shall we
   contend with horsemen?" When eternity is close in view and when within
   a few hours we shall be made to confront the Judgment Seat, shall we
   bear it? Will our religion, then, prove to be a reality, or will our
   hope dissolve like a dream? Such questions torment our souls. Now,
   Brothers and Sisters, it will not do to try and answer these questions
   by taking counsel with the flesh. If you consult your own strength, it
   is clear that you cannot win the battle of life! What is your strength
   but perfect weakness?

   If you look to your own wisdom, it is evident that you cannot guide
   your own way across the pathless desert of life. What is your wisdom
   but the essence of folly? Come back, then, in childlike confidence, to
   God and go no more from Him. Come to the very spot where your spiritual
   life commenced and find strength, wisdom, rest and all in the living
   God! Let this verse smile on you and beckon you to God--"He will be
   very gracious unto you at the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it,
   He will answer you." No trial shall happen to you but such as is common
   to man and when the temptation comes, the way of escape shall come with
   it! The burden shall always find your back strengthened to bear it, or
   else if your back is weak, the burden shall not be laid upon you.

   The whole of your future history, though unknown to yourself, is spread
   out like a map before the eyes of your great Leader and Guide! Follow
   where Jesus leads you and know that He cannot forsake you! He will make
   you to lie down in green pastures and His goodness and His mercy will
   follow you all your days. Be careful for nothing! Be prayerful for
   everything! Commit your way unto the Lord--trust, also, in Him, and He
   shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your judgment as the light
   and your righteousness as the noonday. Go to His Mercy Seat in every
   time of trial, for He will be very gracious to you! Pour out your heart
   before Him and you shall have an answer of peace from the God of your
   salvation!

   Now, I think those four cases include the bulk of us and, therefore, I
   would pray the Holy Spirit to speak the words of the text to everyone
   here present. May we feel them dropping into our hearts like a soft
   saturating rain--"He will be very gracious unto you at the voice of
   your cry; when He shall hear it, He will answer you."

   II. Now we will make a second observation and dwell upon it for awhile.
   It is this--THE ASSURANCE HERE GIVEN IS VERY FIRMLY BASED. The words of
   our text are no old wives' fable, they are not such a pretty tale as
   mothers sometimes tell their children--a story made to please them, but
   not actually true. Our text is no fiction, it is a

   faithful saying from the mouth of God. "He will be very gracious unto
   you." What, then, is the ground of this assurance? And first I would
   say, the ground of our comfort is found in the plain promise of God as
   given in the text and in many similar declarations which are scattered
   all over the Scriptures.

   I have repeated this text a great many times in my sermon, because it
   is far better than anything which can be spoken by man. Let me read it
   again. You want to know why we should turn to God and trust Him? It is
   because thus says the Lord who can neither lie nor change--"He will be
   very gracious unto you at the voice of your cry; when He shall hear it,
   He will answer you." This is a portion of His Infallible Word, is it
   not? It is true, then--you have no doubt about its being so! Come,
   then, with your Bible open, put your finger upon the Words and say, "I
   believe that God is here declaring His readiness to be very gracious to
   me and to hear my prayer." Now, what more do you need? Does a child
   need any better assurance than his father's word? Does a true disciple
   ask any stronger evidence than his Master's promise?

   "It is written." Is not that enough for you? Go on your knees and plead
   this Word of God at once! If your friend had said, "I will grant your
   request," would you not believe him? Doubt not, then, your God, your
   Father! He has never given you cause to mistrust His Word. Are not all
   His promises faithful? Come, then, the assurance is well-grounded. If
   there were only this one promise, it ought to be enough, but see how
   many there are! The gracious promises of God's Word are as many as the
   stars which brighten the midnight sky. "I will never leave you nor
   forsake you." "My Grace is sufficient for you." "Fear not, I will help
   you." "He that believes shall not be confounded." "Trust in the Lord
   and do good, so shall you dwell in the land and verily you shall be
   fed." I need not quote them, for you know them well and their number is
   very great. But they are all made to faith and none of them to
   unbelief! Have faith in them and believe your God and His Words shall
   be fulfilled in your happy experience!

   A second ground upon which this assurance is built is the gracious
   Nature of God. The text intimates this. "He will be very gracious unto
   you." It is the Nature of God, the God of Israel, to be very generous
   in His dealings! He opens His hands and supplies the needs of every
   living thing. He is the God of bounty! Nor does He stop there, for
   while He is bountiful to His needy creatures, He is also merciful to
   His sinful creatures! Judgment is His strange work, but He delights in
   mercy! Nothing pleases Him more than to pass by transgression, iniquity
   and sin. That He might indulge His attribute of mercy He sacrificed the
   darling of His soul, even His Son, Jesus! He loved His Son, but He
   loved His mercy so greatly and He loved sinful man so heartily that,
   "He spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all"--
   that He might have mercy upon our guilty race.

   See, then, what a merciful God He is! Nor does He end even here, for to
   those whom He has forgiven He is rich in loving kindnesses. His love is
   very wonderful--deeper than the abyss, higher than the heavens--broader
   than the sea! Well, now, what is your trouble? Trust your merciful God
   to help you. What is your sin? Trust your merciful God to forgive you.
   What are your backslidings? Trust your merciful God to restore you!
   What are the trials you are expecting? Rely upon your merciful God to
   bear you through. If He were a tyrant you might well flee from Him, but
   as His mercy endures forever, it will be your wisdom to turn to Him!
   Come, let us all together go, by an act of faith, this moment, and cast
   ourselves at Jehovah's feet and, though we see Him not, yet let us
   henceforth trust Him as He has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus and so
   shall we be at peace with Him and good shall come unto us.

   It is certain from the Character of God, which abounds in love, Grace
   and mercy, that He will be gracious to those who seek Him. Let us seek
   Him at once, every one of us! The text says not, "He will be gracious,"
   but, "He will be very gracious." I love to see Grace thus decorated
   with expressive words! It refreshes my mind to think that very
   frequently, when we read of the mercy of God in Scripture, there is
   some word with it by way of intimating its greatness, its freeness, or
   its excellence. "God who is rich in mercy." "You, Lord, are plenteous
   in mercy." "The Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting." "The tender
   mercy of our God." "His mercy endures forever." "His merciful kindness
   is great toward us." "According to His abundant mercy He has begotten
   us, again, unto a lively hope." "According to the multitude of His
   tender mercies." See what great words go with the mention of the Lord's
   mercy! There is no fear of exaggerating it, for all language falls
   short!

   In the text we have the word, "very." "He will be very gracious unto
   you." Do you need special comfort? You shall have it! Do you need great
   help? You shall have it! Come, you grievous Sinner, here is plenty
   forgiveness! Come, you

   sorely afflicted one, here is rich consolation! Come, you weary
   wanderer, here is complete restoration! Come you impoverished and needy
   one, here are abounding supplies!--

   "Rivers of love and mercy here,

   In a rich ocean join.

   Salvation in abundance flows,

   Like floods of milk and wine."

   The assurance of the text is grounded upon the merciful Nature of God
   and may be relied upon without hesitation! And next it is based upon
   the grand fact of the prevalence ofprayer. "He will be very gracious to
   you at the voice of your cry." Is it not an amazing thing that God
   permits men to pray? It is a more amazing thing that they do not pray
   when He permits them!

   It is marvelous that God should listen to the voice of a man! This has
   been so astonishing to mere thinkers that they cannot admit it to be
   true and, consequently, they have asserted that there could be no
   actual power in prayer to move the heart of God. I do not wonder that
   they should have thought so, for though this surprising Truth of God is
   not contrary to reason, it is certainly far above reason! Now, we know,
   for we have tried it, that God hears prayer! Therefore we say to you,
   go to Him and test Him, for He will be gracious to the voice of your
   cry! God has been pleased to set up a Mercy Seat! Answer me, O doubting
   one, would there be a Divinely-appointed Mercy Seat for the
   presentation of prayer if the Lord did not intend to hear prayer? He
   has sprinkled that Mercy Seat with the blood of His only-begotten Son,
   that through that Atonement the guilty might approach Him. Would He
   shed that matchless blood and yet reject the sinner who comes trusting
   there?

   In addition to all this, He has promised to give the Holy Spirit to
   assist in prayer, helping our infirmities because we know not what we
   should pray for as we ought. Would He give that Holy Spirit and still
   suffer prayer to be ineffectual? It is not conceivable! It delights God
   to listen to the cries of His creatures! Your voice may be very cracked
   and inharmonious and your prayer may be like an infant's wailing, or
   like the cry of a young bird in its nest when it is hungry--but He who
   hears the young ravens when they cry will hear your inarticulate,
   discordant utterances-- therefore pour out your heart before Him! He
   will answer you, too, and that very quickly. "When He hears your
   prayer, He will answer you"--so says the text! Has He not said, "Before
   they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I

   will hear"?

   Where there is true prayer for Grace in the heart, the prayer is heard
   before it is offered! For it is Grace that makes us pray in such a
   fashion! He who sincerely asks for Grace, has Grace already, in a
   measure, or else he would not be inclined to ask for more! Let this
   encourage us. Since God waits to be gracious and has in wondrous
   condescension endowed prayer with such privileges in His sacred courts,
   who among us will not turn to Him now, with all our heart, and cry to
   Him, "My Father, save and help me!"? I am pleading for my God and I
   know that I am advocating the best of causes, but my tongue and my mind
   fall short in the argument. I do not, however, much regret my need of
   eloquence in this matter, for it is better that the theme should plead
   for itself. May the Lord, by His Eternal Spirit, make the
   reasonableness and the blessedness of the claim to appeal to your
   conscience and your heart--and instead of searching elsewhere for
   succor--may you now turn to your God in loving trustfulness.

   If you required further confirmation of your faith beyond the three
   truths which I have laid before you, namely, the promise itself, the
   Nature of God, and the efficacy of prayer, I could ask many in this
   house, today, to give their personal testimony as to the result of
   faith in God and supplication to Him. We can speak positively, for we
   speak from actual trial of faith and prayer. I have now reached middle
   life and, having known the Lord from my youth up, I can speak from 28
   years' experience. Through the favor of God I have led a very happy
   life by faith in His name. I have not been without many trials,
   sicknesses and difficulties--and some of these are daily with me--but
   in all things faith sustains me. I bear my witness that confidence in
   man is utter folly and brings sorrow to the soul! But I am more than
   ever certain that confidence in God is always wise, never leads to
   disappointment and never causes regret.

   I mourn that I have not trusted my Lord more fully and I lament that I
   have not attempted greater things in reliance upon His Word. But I have
   no question that faith is right and I am sure that it will always be
   justified by results. Speaking deliberately, as though I were bearing
   witness concerning my fellow man in a court of justice, I have no word
   to say by way of questioning the faithfulness, goodness and
   truthfulness of my Lord! I am bound to declare that He has heard my
   prayers, not once or twice, but always and has been gracious to the
   voice of my cry! Why do I speak thus? Why

   must the objectionable, "I," be introduced? Because I cannot ask anyone
   else in the audience to stand up and speak without disturbing the order
   of our service! But if I could do so, my Brothers and Sisters here by
   the hundreds would each one offer similar testimony!

   Dear Friends, your troubles have been different from mine. You have
   tested God in other directions than I have done, but you have equally
   found Him true, have you not? Is not His Word like silver tried in a
   furnace of earth, purified seven times? Some of you are older than I.
   The snows of many a winter whiten your brows, but in no one day of all
   those 70 years has the Lord been unfaithful to you! Are you verging
   upon fourscore? Still in that long period there has not been a single
   breach of the Covenant on the part of your Lord! Your last days are
   freer from doubt than your former years! Though your spirits are by no
   means so elastic, your peace is less disturbed. Each year of your life
   trust in God grows easier, for facts prove the reality of His working
   and fellowship with your invisible Friend makes His influence over you
   to be more constant and powerful! The path of faith increases in
   brightness--every hour accumulates evidence for its support. We know
   and are persuaded of the love which God has towards us! Verily He is
   gracious and inclines His ear to His people.

   III. There I leave this matter and I close by the third observation,
   which is this--THE ASSURANCE OF THE TEXT BEING SO WELL CONFIRMED, IT
   SHOULD BE PRACTICALLY ACCEPTED AT ONCE. If God will be gracious to the
   voice of our cry and when He hears it will answer us, let us renounce,
   at once, all earthly confidences! Let us defile the covering of our
   graven images and cast them away and say unto our false confidence,
   "Get away from me!" "We have done so," says one. Do it again, Brother,
   for the tendency of your heart is still to rest in that which is seen
   rather than in the invisible Jehovah! Idolatry is bound up in our
   hearts! Cast out the idols again and again!

   Alas, some of you have never done so. Your carnal hope still usurps the
   place of God. Let me put it to you. What is your confidence for life?
   You all have some confidence or other. What is yours, young man? What
   is your reliance, O man in middle life? Especially, O graybeard, what
   is your confidence? You have good reason to examine it, for soon you
   will need it--and woe to you if it is found to fail! What is your
   confidence, my brother? Is it your wealth? Is it your strong common
   sense? Is it your stalwart frame--that strong pair of arms which up to
   now have enabled you to stem the current? What are you relying upon?
   Will it support you in death? Will it stand you in good stead in
   eternity?

   I know it will not if it is anything short of the love of God in Christ
   Jesus our Lord! Come, let us flee from all creature confidence as from
   a filthy thing, for it is base to the last degree for a creature to be
   trusting in another creature and putting that creature into the place
   of its Creator! Let us abhor such idolatrous trust! Let us shun it,
   also, as a vexing and deceitful thing, for it is treacherous as the
   smooth, deceitful sea and it mocks us as the mirage of the desert mocks
   the thirsty traveler. Let us flee from vain confidence in self or in
   man, for it is a poisonous thing! The fiery flying serpent of Egypt was
   not more deadly than confidence in an arm of flesh! Let us flee from it
   and never return.

   O you who trust only in that which is seen, leave your idols, cast them
   to the moles and to the bats, even the dearest of them all! If your
   confidence is in yourself, flee from yourself, for you have no worse
   enemy! Flee from unbelief and carnal trust and provoke not the Lord to
   jealousy by setting up another God, for there is no other. "Once have I
   spoken, yes, twice have I heard this, that power belongs unto God."
   Trust not, then, where there is no power, but set all your confidence
   upon the Almighty. If this is done and you flee away from other trusts,
   then let me commend you at the same time to refuse despair. When a man
   sees that his confidences are broken up like a potter's vessel till, to
   use the expressive figure of the Prophet, there is not a piece left
   large enough to take fire from the hearth, or to take water out of the
   pit, then he is apt to exclaim, "Now it is all over with me, and I must
   perish."

   You loved your wife. She was all the world to you. But, alas, she is
   dead and you cry, "Let me die also!" You hugged your wealth. It has
   melted--that speculation has dissolved it and left you a beggar--and
   now you cry, "What is there worth living for?" Beware of dark thoughts
   which may beset you just now. In your worst moment, should Satan
   whisper in your ear a suggestion concerning rope, or knife, or poison
   bowl, or sullen stream, flee from it with all your soul! Obey the
   Apostolic word, "Do yourself no harm." Nothing could be worse for you
   than to break the Law which says expressly, "You shall do no murder."
   Self-destruction, if done by a man in his senses, is a daring defiance
   of God and the sealing of damnation! This is to leap from measured
   trouble into infinite woe--the depth of which none can guess!

   Why should you do this? Turn to your God! That is a wiser thing for a
   man to do than to destroy his own life! Yes, there is something braver
   for a man to do than to rush upon the pikes of the foe because the
   battle is too hot for him! Go

   to your great Captain, even to Him whom God has given to be a Witness
   to the people--a Leader and Commander to the people--and He will make
   you more than a conqueror! There are brighter days in store for you!
   Yes, there are days to come which shall never end of everlasting life
   and blessedness if you will but, now, in your distress, cast yourself
   upon the covenanted mercies of God in Christ Jesus His Son!

   It is grand to spring up from despair into the fullness of delight and
   many a man has done this in an instant! This earth moves by slow
   degrees from the frosts of winter into the bright days of June, but God
   can make our souls to pass out of the deepest despair into the
   brightest hope in a single moment--and if we do but trust and rest in
   Him it shall be done! I know some who do not trust their all with God
   because they have picked a quarrel with Him. They resemble a little
   child I have heard of who one night would not say his prayers. His fond
   mother said to him, "Dear child, why do you not pray?" "Mother," said
   he, "I shall not say my prayers to God any more because he let my
   little bird die." Do not some people talk thus against God? They have a
   quarrel about their dead child, or their lost property.

   Now, if you get into such a state of sullenness it will go hard with
   you! It would be far better if you would bow to the Divine decision and
   believe that God means your good. Oh, believe the words of my text! May
   His Holy Spirit lead yon to believe them. "He will be very gracious
   unto you at the voice of your cry." Those two counsels being followed,
   namely, the renunciation of carnal hope and, at the same time, the
   determination not to despair, there remains only this, that we now try
   the power of prayer and childlike confidence in God. "But," you cry,
   "there is no hope for me!" Have you ever sought for mercy? "I do not
   think I should be heard." Have you ever tried? Dear Heart, have you
   ever gone into your chamber, shut your door, opened the Word of God and
   discovered a gracious promise? And then have you ever said, "Lord,
   fulfill this promise to me. For Christ's sake be gracious to me. I
   trust You, and expect You to be gracious to me"?

   If any one of you has tried this and it has failed, please let me know,
   for I am in the habit of continually saying that, "Him that comes to
   Christ, He will in no wise cast out," and I do not want to spread a
   lie! If you find that Jesus casts you out, let me know, for I would not
   like to go about telling lies! I have asked others and I have tried for
   myself, but I have never found any exception to the rule--"He that
   believes in Him shall not be ashamed nor confounded." Nor of that other
   rule--"Everyone that asks, receives, and he that seeks, finds, and to
   him that knocks, it shall be opened." If I can have evidence, true and
   certain, that God does not honor faith and does not hear prayer, I must
   revise my convictions, contradict my statements and disbelieve my own
   consciousness!

   Have you ever tried believing prayer? Most of the people who disbelieve
   the Bible have never read it with care and attention. Those who doubt
   the faithfulness of God have never tried it! And those who deride
   prayer have never practiced it! But, mind you, I am speaking of real
   prayer, not of repeating certain good words! I am not talking of formal
   prayer, but of going, with your heart, to the unseen God and telling
   Him what you feel and what you need--and trusting Him to supply your
   needs and help you. Have you done this? Go and try prayer at once, I
   beseech you!

   Divine Spirit, help these poor souls to pray this day! If you pray and
   trust this day, it shall be unto you as the beginning of days--and from
   now on you shall delight yourselves in the abundance of peace! O
   Believer, it shall be true of you, "His soul shall dwell at ease and
   his seed shall inherit the earth"! From the Lord's good Spirit there
   shall come to you such Grace that you shall be blessed and become a
   blessing to others! You shall walk happily before the Lord in this land
   of the dying and then shall abide with Him forever, above, in the land
   of the living! God bless you all for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Headstone of the Corner

   (No. 1420)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 23, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the
   corner. This is the Lord's doing; itis marvelous in our eyes. This is
   the day which the Lordhas made; we willrejoice and be glad in it, Save
   now, I beseech You, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech You, send now
   prosperity." Psalm 118:22-25.

   It would be difficult, if not impossible, to fix with certainty the
   occasion which first suggested this Psalm. It has even been thought to
   be purely prophetic and rather foretelling history than narrating it. I
   rather incline to the opinion that some Israelite hero, chosen of God
   to high office in the midst of his people, had been rejected by the
   rulers, had passed through many struggles--some of them of the most
   violent kind--and at last, notwithstanding the rejection of his people
   and their leaders, had attained to a prominent position, no, to a chief
   place in the midst of the nation!

   The Psalm is applicable to Christ and to Him it is referred in the New
   Testament several times, but probably from the human point of view it
   was at first intended to celebrate the victory of some chosen man of
   God who, despite his Divine election, had been rejected by his
   countrymen. Providence conducted him to a crowning success and he
   magnified the Lord for it. In some way or other, a stone has come to be
   connected with several persons whose history was of this character.

   Remember Jacob. He flees from his father's house because Esau threatens
   to kill him. He appears to be the rejected member of Isaac's family by
   whom the house would never be built. At the end of a day's journey he
   lies down with a stone for his pillow and, as he sweetly slumbers, he
   sees Heaven open. He beholds the mystic ladder and rises, assured of
   the love of the Almighty God! By faith thus infused into his soul, he
   becomes strong for his future life and so lives that now the house of
   Abraham and Isaac stands represented in the seed of Jacob, alone. And
   Esau, with all his dukes, has utterly passed away.

   The next occurrence of the stone happens in reference to Joseph, of
   whom the dying Jacob said, "From thence is the shepherd the stone of
   Israel." He was separated from his brothers by their envy and
   grievously wounded by their malice. They said, "Behold, this dreamer
   comes," and they sold him for a slave into the stranger's land. From
   the dungeons of Egypt he climbed to the throne and became the
   cornerstone of Israel's house! On his bosom his aged father could lay
   his head and dream as he did at Bethel! And by his power and wisdom,
   the shepherd family was happily built up. Then came David, whom his
   elder brothers despised and even his father passed him over, until the
   Prophet of God asked for him, that he might be anointed with oil!

   Out of his hand went that stone of Israel which laid low the pride of
   Philistia! Goliath must bite the ground when the stone of Israel flies
   from the hand of Israel's shepherd who was destined to be her king! He
   was rejected and hated by Saul so that he wandered about in the
   wilderness, hiding in caves and rocks until the hour came when he was
   called to the throne. Then the stone which the builders refused became
   the headstone of the corner and he and his people confessed that it was
   the Lord's doing and it was marvelous in their eyes! Be not afraid, O
   you persecuted ones, for you shall fulfill your destiny!

   It has happened again and again in history that those who have been
   destined to do great things for the Lord have, first of all, been
   compelled to pass through a trying ordeal of misunderstanding and
   rejection! Such history repeats itself and it may do so in your
   instance. The speckled bird of the family, the one least beloved, often
   rises to take the most prominent place. Jephthah was driven out from
   his father's family and yet in their distress his brethren were glad
   enough to make him their champion and accept him as their head. Bow
   your head in patience, young man, and bear whatever God or His enemies
   may lay upon you, for assuredly as the Lord is in you and with you, He
   will bring you forth and of

   you, too, it shall be true in your own little way, "The stone which the
   builders refused, the same is become the headstone of the corner."

   At this time, however, we shall confine our application of these verses
   to our blessed Lord, Himself, to whom they most evidently refer. Their
   meaning is focused upon Him and, in reference to Him, each word is
   emphatic. He applied them to Himself, for Matthew tells us in the 21st
   chapter of his Gospel that our Lord said to the chief priests and
   Pharisees, "Did you never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the
   builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?" You
   remember, also, how Peter said in the face of the crucifiers of Christ,
   "Be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel, that by the
   name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised
   from the dead, even by Him does this man stand here before you whole.
   This is the stone which was set at nothing of you builders, which is
   become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other
   for there is none other name under Heaven given among men whereby we
   must be saved."

   In his first Epistle, Peter refers again to this Psalm in the
   well-remembered words, "Why also it is contained in the Scripture,
   Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious: and he that
   believes on Him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which
   believe He is precious: but unto them which are disobedient, the stone
   which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the
   corner." Of our own exalted Lord we are going to speak at this time and
   may the Spirit bear witness in our hearts to His honor!

   I. First, I invite your thoughts to CHRIST REJECTED--"The Stone which
   the builders refused." The Lord Jesus came into this world at the
   fullness of time when the Messiah was expected by those devout men who
   waited for salvation in Israel. He came born of parents descended from
   that royal house from which Messiah was prophesied as coming and He was
   born in the very city which had been pointed out by Seers of old! All
   details of His life in His early days corresponded with prophetic
   intimations and answered to the signs which the Lord had appointed.
   There was nothing in which He did that did not exactly fit the symbols
   of the sanctuary and the personal types of history! Everything which
   could speak cried with one voice, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

   He was clearly placed before the Jewish people as the Stone which God
   would lay in Zion as the Foundation of their hopes, but they
   persistently refused Him. It was not from lack of evidence, for John
   came prophesying concerning Him and, as I have already said, John was
   but the last of a long list of Prophets who had all pointed to Him as
   the Anointed of the Lord--and yet Israel rejected Him! His own miracles
   and teaching were more than sufficient evidence of His mission, but
   Israel would have none of Him! He was a Stone evidently of God's
   quarrying and preparing. His extraordinary birth marked Him out as
   differing from all the rest of mankind! His surpassing excellence and
   moral beauty declared Him to be destined to the highest position!

   His Person displayed the marvelous love and wisdom of God and with half
   an eye, if they had willed to see it, the Jews might have perceived
   that He was anointed to be the Cornerstone of the spiritual Temple--but
   yet they refused Him! "He came unto His own and His own received Him
   not." He came to those who had the oracles, but in this thing they set
   at nothing the oracles! He came to those who had the Law and the
   Prophets, but they were deaf to all holy testimonies and disowned Him!
   Alas, for the blindness of men's hearts! His rejection was rendered the
   more remarkable and the more sorrowful because He was rejected by the
   builders or leaders of the nation. "The Stone which the builders
   refused."

   If the common people, who were ignorant of the Law, had not perceived
   Him to be the chosen Stone, we might not have wondered. But there were
   men of learning and research among the people and these rejected Him!
   They had builders who understood spiritual architecture, or professed
   to do so--the scribes who studied the Law and the priests who taught
   the people--these were the master builders whose business it was to
   make the selection of the Cornerstone. But these rejected our Lord. It
   was not only the mob of Jerusalem that rejected Christ, but the rulers
   led the way! True, the many cried, "Crucify Him!" but not till they
   were bribed by the priests, the clergy of the day, the Sadducees, the
   skeptical men of science, the Pharisees and ritualistic
   professors--these were they who sat in Moses' seat--in whom the people
   had confidence! And by their evil, the people were led to reject the
   Cornerstone which the Lord Himself had laid!

   Concerning this rejection we must also remark that it was no common
   one--it was a violent and indignant rejection! They were not content to
   say, "He is not the Messiah," but they turned their hottest malice
   against Him! They were furious at the sight of Him! This precious Stone
   was kicked against and rolled about with violence and all manner

   of ridicule was poured upon it. Nothing would content them but the
   blood of the Man who had disturbed their consciences and questioned
   their pretensions. "The Stone which the builders refused" is to be read
   with a heavy stress upon the word REFUSED. Peter says, "He was set at
   nothing of you builders." They slandered Him in life and mocked Him in
   death! They spat their accusations against Him when He was free and
   gave Him over to be defiled with the spit of the soldiers' mouths when
   He was bound! They made Him live an outcast's life and then they hung
   Him up to die a felon's

   death!

   This rejection was most unreasonable--they did violence to truth and
   justice by their evil deed. For which of His works did they stone Him?
   There was nothing in His Character which should have incensed them!
   There was nothing about Him which ought to have excited their doubts,
   much less their wrath. But yet they willfully and resolutely rejected
   Him. They said, "We will not have this Man to reign over us." The
   cause, in part, was blind prejudice. They expected a king surrounded
   with earthly pomp and girt with physical force to break the Roman yoke
   and create an Israelite empire more famous than that of Solomon.

   But because He came as the Son of a lowly virgin, robed in a peasant's
   dress and humbly dwelt among the sons of men in meekest fashion,
   therefore they refused Him. There was no real reason why He should have
   been refused because of His humiliation, for was not their Messiah so
   to come? Did not Isaiah say, "He shall grow up before Him as a tender
   plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He has no form nor
   comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we
   should desire Him." He agreed with the prophecies, but not with their
   prejudices and, therefore, they cried, "Away with Him! Away with Him."
   Those prejudices were the result of sheer ignorance, for if they had
   studied the Word of God they would have seen that the Christ of God was
   not the Christ of their dreams! And had they searched the Scriptures
   they might have known that Jesus of Nazareth was the Lord of Glory!

   They had eyes, but would not see! The Light was around them, but they
   comprehended Him not. The pride of their hearts kept them in
   ignorance--they did not want to know! The proud philosophic Sadducee
   felt sure of his ground, for he was a thinker and despised the
   vulgar--he did not wish for evidence as to the existence of angel or
   spirit, or of the resurrection of the dead--therefore he scornfully
   rejected the Man who brought life and immortality to light! The
   Pharisee, supremely righteous in himself, did not want to know a Man
   who taught him that he was lost and came to be the Savior of sinners.
   He felt too safe, already, to need saving! Thus the Ever-Blessed was
   chased out of the world by the pride which scorns all excellence except
   its own!

   Men flung away God's dearest Jewel because He outshone their own
   counterfeit jewelry! Nor was it pride, alone, for that mother sin was
   surrounded with all other evils. They wanted to devour widows' houses
   in secret and He exposed them! They wanted to go on saying their long
   prayers and yet to persecute the righteous--and Jesus unmasked them!
   Certain of them wanted to be free-thinkers and yet to be thought
   orthodox--and He denounced them as hypocrites! They denied the
   essential principles of Revelation, but He came forth from the Father
   to bear witness of God and, therefore, they utterly abhorred Him! Their
   sin, as it could not associate with His holiness, raised a clamor
   against Him and with cunning and malice they denounced, condemned and
   utterly rejected the Stone which God had appointed to be the Foundation
   and Cornerstone of His New Jerusalem!

   Ah, my Brothers and Sisters, you know what came of it. They threw that
   chosen Stone away and when they had removed it away from their
   Babel-building they thought their troubles at an end when, indeed, they
   had just begun! That Stone was removed out of the way and yet they
   stumbled upon Him--they stumbled to their own confusion--yes, they
   stumbled to their own destruction! How broken were they by that Stone
   at the awful siege of Jerusalem when they and their city perished! Now,
   also, that Stone has been lifted up into Heaven by the mighty power of
   God and in the fullness of time it will descend upon these foolish
   builders with terrible effect--for upon whomever it shall fall it will
   grind him to powder!

   Even while that Stone was here, they fell upon Him and were broken! But
   when He comes a second time, He will fall upon them and woe unto them
   in that Day! Let us not be among the company of the rejecters! Let us
   not consort with those who cast doubts upon the Gospel of Jesus! Rather
   let our hearts joyfully bless God for appointing Him to be the
   Headstone of the corner! Let us accept Him in that Character and at
   once build upon Him--

   "Chosen of God, to sinners dear, And saints adore the name!

   We trust our whole salvation here, Nor shall we suffer shame."

   God forbid that we should reject the testimony of God concerning His
   Son and so make God a liar and bring down eternal wrath upon our own
   heads! Our safety lies in reception, not in rejection, for to "as many
   as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even
   to them that believe on His name."

   As for those who reject Him, we hear with trembling these words from
   the lips of the loving Jesus--"But those, My enemies, which would not
   that I should reign over them, bring here and slay them before Me."

   II. With great delight I now pass to the second topic which is CHRIST
   EXALTED--"The Stone which the builders refused is become the Headstone
   of the corner"--that is to say, at this moment Christ has the chief
   place of honor in the building of God! He is the Headstone, for He is
   higher than the kings of the earth! He is higher than all the opposing
   powers of wisdom or of superstition and He is the Head over all things
   to His Church! Glory be to His name--in the midst of His people He is
   above all and over all--we worship Him with rapture!

   He is King of kings and Lord of lords, "for by Him were all things
   created that are in Heaven and that are in earth, visible and
   invisible, whether they are thrones, or dominions, or principalities,
   or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him," There is none
   like He among the sons of men! In all things He has the preeminence. He
   that was crucified is now enthroned! He that lay in the grave now
   reigns in Glory! Nor is He only eminent for His position of honor, but
   for His surpassing usefulness! He is the Headstone of the corner, that
   Stone which joins two walls together and is the bond of the
   building--Jew and Gentile are now one in Christ Jesus!

   It is true He is a Stone in Israel's wall, but He is also a Stone in
   the Gentile's wall. In Him is neither Jew nor Gentile distinctively,
   for they are both there inclusively. He has made both one! The
   Pharisees would have it that the wall should finish within the line of
   Judah's race, but not so thought our Master! His heart went forth to
   the other sheep which He had that were not yet of the fold. This made
   them wrathful, but their wrath did not prevent His accomplishing His
   design and now He is the Bond of the building, holding Jew and Gentile
   in firm unity! This precious Cornerstone binds God and man together in
   wondrous amity, for He is both in one! He joins earth and Heaven
   together, for He participates in each! He joins time and eternity
   together, for He was a man of few years and yet He is the Ancient of
   Days!

   Wondrous Cornerstone! You bind all of us together who are in You, so
   that by love of You we are built together for a temple of the Holy
   Spirit! You are the perfect Bond, the eternal Holdfast, the Divine
   Cement which holds the universe in one! Is it not written, "By Him all
   things consist"? Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, is brought up from all
   rejection and shame to which His enemies put Him. He is, by usefulness
   and by honor, the grandest Person upon the face of the earth! And all
   this, none the less, but all the more, because He was rejected! He lost
   nothing by His enemies. They scourged His back, but they did not rob
   Him of that imperial purple which now adorns Him! They crowned Him with
   thorns, but those thorns have increased the brilliance of His diadem of
   light!

   They pierced His hands and thereby prepared them to sway an
   irresistible scepter of love over men's hearts! They nailed His feet,
   but those feet stand firm forever upon the Throne of Sovereignty! They
   crucified Him, but His crucifixion led Him to His greater honor, since
   He therein finished the work which was given Him to do and now, also,
   God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every
   name! As it has been, so is it, and so shall it be--man's opposition to
   the Gospel will not interfere with it one single whit--but the eternal
   purposes of Jehovah shall be fulfilled! Our adversaries may mine and
   undermine. They may openly oppose and secretly assail. But upon this
   Rock, even upon Christ, shall the Truth and the Church forever rest and
   no harm shall come to it! The Lord will lift the Stone which the
   builders refused and make it to become the Headstone of the
   corner--therefore let us not fail nor be discouraged!

   Already our text has been fulfilled! Our Lord Christ was dead and
   buried, but His foes were desperately afraid that He would rise again
   and so they rolled a stone to the tomb's mouth and sealed it. But He
   rose, for all that, and became the first fruits of them that slept, the
   Headstone of the Resurrection! His Resurrection utterly defeated those
   who reckoned upon destroying His power! What could they do against One
   whom Death itself could not silence? When His Resurrection attested His
   mission, what could they say against Him? Nor was this all, for to add
   to His honor, He was received up into Heaven! Beyond the eternal hills
   He rose, the gates of Heaven opening at His coming! And amidst the
   acclamation of angels and redeemed spirits, He ascended to the highest
   place that Heaven affords!

   What a change from Gabbatha and all the maltreatment of the Pavement to
   the sea of glass mingled with fire and to the seat of infinite Majesty!
   Jesus has gone from the bar to the Throne, and there He sits in
   majesty! His adversaries may grind their teeth at Him, but the King is
   set upon the holy hill of Zion beyond their wrath. "Why do the heathen
   rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" Jehovah Jesus is King and
   none can challenge His sovereignty! At Pentecost, too, this was
   fulfilled, for when His few and humble disciples were inspired by the
   Holy Spirit and began to speak with tongues of fire, all Jerusalem rang
   with the wonder--and then, again, the despised and rejected Stone was
   made the Headstone of the corner!

   Very speedily throughout the known world the testimony of His name was
   made to sound forth till His Word had gone forth as far as the sun's
   utmost track and all nations beheld the light thereof. Then the gods of
   the heathen tottered and colossal systems of idolatry were ground to
   powder. Glory be unto You, O Christ! You did triumph gloriously in
   those first ages of Your Church! That triumph is still proceeding. It
   will be consummated by-and-by. What confusion will take hold upon the
   hearts of His adversaries when He shall be revealed! He is hidden now
   and His people with Him, but the day draws near when He shall come a
   second time to be admired in all them that believe! What astonishment
   will then take hold upon those who refused His righteous claims! Then
   will they know that this is the Lord's doing though it will be terrible
   in their eyes! All intelligent beings, even down to the blackest devil
   of Hell, shall, at the Second Advent of our Lord be obliged to confess
   that the Stone which the builders refused has become the Headstone of
   the corner!

   The Man of Nazareth shall be Lord of all before the eyes of all
   mankind! We look forward to that Day! I call upon you, dear Brothers
   and Sisters, this morning, to greatly rejoice in the fact which we have
   thus brought before you! It is a grand Truth of God that Christ Jesus
   is now enthroned beyond the reach of those who rejected and despised
   Him--

   "Honor immortal must be paid, Instead of scandal and of scorn While
   glory shines around His head, And a bright crown without a thorn."

   III. Thirdly, I ask your attention to the next point, which is
   introduced to us by the 23rd verse. THE EXALTATION OF CHRIST IS DUE TO
   GOD ALONE--"This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."
   Now, this was so as a matter of history. Jesus Christ's name and work
   were, at length, had in honor in the world, but this was due to no
   man's wisdom, eloquence, or power, but entirely to the Lord, who is
   wonderful in counsel and great in might! Look, my Brothers and Sisters,
   if the Scribes and Pharisees had endorsed the claims of our Lord, it
   might have been said that Christianity was grafted upon the old stock
   of Judaism and, therefore, grew with vigor.

   And if Pilate, or Herod, or any of the great ones, especially if the
   Caesar of the day had accepted it, then the following ages would have
   said, "Oh yes, He derived His power and was lifted to His place through
   the prestige of empire and the prowess of arms." But it was not so! All
   the establishments on earth were against Him--rank and station despised
   the carpenter's Son--superstition abhorred His simplicity and
   spirituality! Ceremonialism would have nothing to do with Him who said
   that the Temple was to be destroyed! Skepticism could not endure Him,
   for He gave not a jot of ground for its doubts, or food for its
   speculations!

   And the kings of the earth and the statesmen utterly derided Him, for
   He spoke of a kingdom which was not of this world! And yet He
   triumphed, and now His name is the most famous among the sons of men!
   This was not because poets sat waiting upon Parnassus to pour forth
   their loftiest lays, or because minstrels, with their fingers on their
   harp strings, stood prepared to draw forth matchless music to celebrate
   His advent. No, the hymns which were composed in His honor had a lowly
   virgin and an equally humble matron as their authors. And the music
   which saluted Him was the noise of children in the streets, shouting,
   "Hosanna to the Son of David." The Son of Man owes nothing of His glory
   to man-- His elevation to the throne is the Lord's doing and marvelous
   in our eyes!

   And while this is true as to the past, it remains true at this day, for
   the Gospel of Christ, whenever it spreads in the earth, owes its
   triumphs entirely to Divine interposition. When I consider how hostile
   is human nature to the Gospel, the very existence of a True Church in
   the world is, to me, a miracle! Nor to me, alone, does it appear so,
   for it really is a superhuman work and is worked by the Lord alone!
   Just think of it. Why, at this very day, we have all the wisdom and
   power and eloquence and skill of the superstition of the world arrayed
   against the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. Though they are agreed in
   nothing else, they all unite against Christ!

   He of the Seven Hills has nothing but maledictions for the pure Gospel
   of Jesus and with him stand a hierarchy clothed with terrible power and
   a troop of Jesuits who stop at nothing! Completely organized, numerous,
   subtle, all-pervading--the warriors of Rome are a great host and not to
   be lightly thought upon! See how superstition multiplies in this land!
   See how the builders, appointed by the State to build up a Protestant
   Church, are pulling it down with both hands! These are priests,
   clergy--God's heritage! And what are they doing? Lifting up an
   idolatrous crucifix in the place of the doctrine of the Cross! They are
   setting sacraments in the place of the precious blood and preaching
   salvation by their own priestcraft instead of salvation by the Grace of
   God through Jesus Christ!

   The builders are rejecting Him and yet His cause lives on! The wise men
   on the other side of the house, the builders who claim to be scientific
   scholars and persons of advanced thought and thorough culture--these,
   also, have their fling against the Gospel. For anything I can see of
   their pretended depth of learning, I would recommend them to attend to
   their science and obtain a little more culture before they set up for
   teachers or they may expose their own shallowness. These boastfully
   wise men, these self-styled thinking men are all against the Gospel of
   Jesus Christ! When I see the power which, at the present time, is
   enlisted on the side of doubt and skepticism, I, for my part, am
   astonished that anybody believes the Gospel at all--and I feel that it
   is the Lord's doing and marvelous in my eyes!

   True faith is supernatural--it stands not in the wisdom of man, but in
   Divine power! Wherever Christ is exalted, as, blessed be His name, He
   is in many Churches, it is not because of any wit or skill or power on
   the part of the minister, but because the Holy Spirit is at work among
   the people bringing them to Christ! Do not, then, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, despond on behalf of Christ's cause. The real progress of
   Christianity must be supernatural! Whenever we fight with the wooden
   sword of reason, we may expect to be defeated--not because the Gospel
   is against reason or contrary to it--but because it is so much above
   reason that we cannot comprehend it and, therefore, lose power by
   hearing Gospel Truth as if it were a human discovery!

   If there is not working with Christianity a Divine agency altogether
   above its reasonableness. If there is not, in fact, the Spirit of God
   working with it to convert men, then it will come to nothing and vanish
   like other systems. Our reliance must be, therefore, not upon evidences
   which we can bring to prove the Truth of the Gospel, nor upon eloquence
   by which we may advance its claims, but upon the Eternal Spirit of God,
   for it is He, and He alone, who can lift the rejected Stone and make it
   to become the Headstone of the corner! It is impossible for blinded
   human nature to believe the Truth of God! And, therefore, we must be
   born again! Gospel teachings are so humbling, so radical, so pure, so
   spiritual, so much above our thoughts that nobody will accept them
   unless taught of God! His chosen people shall be taught of the Spirit
   and the rest will choose to remain in blindness. So it has been, and so
   it ever shall be!

   But, Beloved, let us not tremble because of this, for despite human
   blindness and the opposition of the wise, Christ must reign even to the
   world's end. Did I hear a whisper that ministers are, nowadays, very
   broad and have given up the old Gospel? I know it and I am not
   surprised! The builders are the first to reject the chosen Stone.
   Christ owes little to preachers and some of His worst enemies are found
   in their ranks! Unconverted men are in too many pulpits and are seeking
   out many inventions to set aside the pure Gospel which exalts Christ
   Jesus. Let them alone! The ditch is gaping for these blind guides. Our
   Lord can do without them. He owes His victories to Himself and to
   Himself, alone! And, therefore, let the faith of His people rest in
   peace, for if they will have patience, they shall see greater things
   than they have yet beheld.

   Our text says that it is not only the Lord's doing and marvelous, but
   it is marvelous, "in our eyes," which it could not be if we did not see
   it. We shall see and we shall marvel! Some of us may have passed away,
   but you who are younger may live to see modern thought obtain supremacy
   over human minds--German rationalism which has ripened into Socialism
   may yet pollute the mass of mankind and lead them to overturn the
   foundations of society. Then "advanced principles" will hold carnival
   and free thought will riot with the vice and blood which were years ago
   the insignia of "the age of reason." I say not that it will be so, but
   I should not wonder if it came to pass, for deadly principles are
   abroad and certain ministers are spreading them!

   If it ever should be so, do not, O Believers, for a single moment
   despair, but rest certain that the Lord is about to do a marvelous
   thing in the earth and that He will lift up, once again, the Stone
   which the builders have again refused and cause it to become more than
   ever the Headstone of the corner! Never dream of defeat! Be calm amid
   all the din of controversy, for the hand which holds the Gospel must
   win the victory! This is the Lord's doing and we shall see it!

   IV. Let us now notice that THE EXALTATION OF THE REJECTED CHRIST
   COMMENCES A NEW ERA. For

   what says the 24th verse? "This is the day which the Lord has made; we
   will rejoice and be glad in it." We date from our Lord's Resurrection,
   even as the Jews of old counted from the night wherein they went out of
   Egypt. What is this day which the Lord has made? I reply first, it is
   the day of the Gospel! Through our Lord's exaltation, pardon for the
   guilty is freely preached among all nations and whoever believes in Him
   has everlasting life! Now is Christ exalted on high to give repentance
   unto Israel and remission of sins! Now is He on the throne of power
   that He may be able to save to the uttermost them that come to God by
   Him!

   Let us rejoice and be glad in Him. How can we rejoice and be glad in
   Him except by believing in Him? Come, let us believe the Gospel, the
   Gospel of the once rejected, but now exalted Savior! Let us put our
   trust in Him and then let us sing for joy of heart because we have a
   royal Savior, an exalted Savior, an almighty Savior in whose hands our
   souls are safe! The era of the Gospel ought to be a time of gladness,
   for its favors are rich, its light is clear, its promises are abundant
   and its truth is certain! To be unhappy, now that Jesus reigns, is to
   be ungrateful! It is a royal feast! Let us eat to the full and so honor
   the King and bless ourselves!

   What day is this which the Lord has made? Why, in the next place, it is
   a Sabbath day, the beginning of a long line of Sabbaths! The day in
   which our Lord Jesus rose from the dead is now sacred to rest and holy
   joy. Let us keep it with reverent love and bless God for making it--

   "This is the day the Lord has made,

   He calls the hours His own.

   Let Hea ven rejoice, let the earth be glad,

   And praise surround the Throne!

   Today He rose and left the dead

   And Satan's empire fell!

   Today the saints His triumphs spread,

   And all His wonders tell."

   The world calls the Sabbath, Sunday, do not let us turn it into
   Cloud-day! Certain good Christian people look upon the Lord's Day as a
   season so solemn that it can only be properly kept by being as dreary
   as possible! Draw down the blinds, darken the room, chide the children,
   cherish every smile--now we are getting Sabbatic! Let us go up to the
   House of Prayer like convicts exercising in the prison yard and there
   let us be as decorously miserable as possible! Let the preacher be as
   dull and as monotonous as though he had no subject to preach about but
   death and destruction and must preserve an air of melancholy, or none
   would think him gracious!

   Such is NOT the teaching of our Master, nor is it according to His mind
   and spirit! Herbert well says of the Sabbath--

   "You are a day of mirth,

   And where the weekdays trail on ground,

   Your flight is higher, as your birth." It should be "a day most calm,
   most bright," fit to be called, "the endorsement of supreme delight!"
   It is a time of the singing of birds, for the winter of our Lord's
   humiliation is over and He has risen from the dead! Today we celebrate
   the Glory of Christ in the highest heavens as the elect of God and the
   cornerstone of His Church--surely it ill becomes us to go about with
   our hands upon our loins as if we mourned His victory and begrudged His
   honor! No, let us clap our hands with exultation! "The Lord reigns! Let
   the earth rejoice! Let the multitude of the isles be glad thereof."

   Again, "This is the day which the Lord has made." The Resurrection of
   Christ commences an era of triumph! We have spoken of the Gospel day
   and the Sabbath day, but it is also a day of victories. As Jesus Christ
   rose from the dead, so will His Truth continually rise from the
   sepulcher into which men may cast it. As He triumphed over the powers
   of death and darkness, so will His Gospel triumph over all opposition!
   Whenever at any time your hearts are heavy, I would bid you stand at
   the open tomb of Christ and remember that He rose! And if He could not
   be held by the bands of death, certainly neither He nor His Gospel can
   be held by any other bands! His adversaries thrust His Gospel into the
   tomb again! They proclaim that the old doctrines are effete, but as
   surely as Jesus our Lord lives they shall see the Truth of God revive!
   Walk in patience, for the vision will not tarry. The day comes when in
   yet greater power the Gospel shall renew its youth and the world shall
   assuredly know that the Lord has done it!

   Let us rejoice and be glad that we live in an era bright with victories
   of the right and the true. We may have to fight for them and wait for
   them, but they will surely come and Christ shall reign forever and
   ever! I would to God that the thought of the exalted Christ would be
   the beginning of days to some of you! This day began with sunlight but
   at this hour it deepens into gloom. The skies are overcast and a
   tempest is hurrying up. I trust that with my dear Hearers it may be the
   absolute reverse--that if you began this morning amid clouds of doubt
   and showers of tears, you may see Christ exalted in the highest Heaven
   because He has offered for you His great atoning Sacrifice--and may you
   look to Him and find clear shining after the rain, a great calm after a
   great storm!

   V. I close by saying that THE EXALTATION OF CHRIST SUGGESTS A PRAYER.
   The 25th verse supplies us with it. "Save now, I beseech You, O Lord: O
   Lord, I beseech You, send now prosperity." First, it is a prayer for
   salvation. It may mean, "God save the King: may Jesus live forever,"
   and in that sense we would make the heavens ring with it! But we will
   take it, this morning, to be a prayer for the salvation of men. Since
   Christ is the exalted and victorious Savior, let us beseech Him to save
   all those who are around us! Save them, Lord! Save them all! Save them
   NOW!

   Put it in the present tense! Ask for a display of the present saving
   power of our exalted Head! O Christ Jesus, Prince and Lord, save the
   sinners in Zion! We beseech You save those who occupy these pews
   Sabbath after Sabbath and hear about You, but do not know You! Save,
   too, the strangers that are within Your gates and are strangers to You
   as well as to us. Save the careless, good Lord! Save the anxious! Save
   the seekers! By Your Glory at the Father's side, we beseech You, save
   men! Do you believe that Christ Jesus is at the right hand of God? If
   you do, all things are possible with Him and He has promised to hear
   prayer! Hear me then, you thousands of Israel, as I entreat you now to
   breathe one hearty unanimous prayer to this effect--"Save now, O Lord,
   we beseech You!"

   Put the name of your child to the prayer if you please, or that of your
   wife, or father, or sister, or brother--but put up the prayer to Him
   who is enthroned on purpose to save! Save now, O Lord! You are no more
   despised and rejected! Unveil Your Glory by saving men! You could save
   even in Your agony--on the Cross you saved a dying thief! But now, in
   Glory, You have mightier power! Therefore, O Savior, save now! Will you
   not importunately urge that petition, O you who know His readiness to
   hear? Sinners, will you not pray thus for yourselves? Here, now, as we
   sit together in this dense gloom, so unusual in the month of June, let
   us feel that the shadow of the Eternal is brooding over us, that the
   Almighty is now covering us with His wings!

   Do you not feel near to Him? Be sure of this, He is very near to you!
   Call upon Him while He is near! In all probability we shall, in a few
   moments, hear His majestic voice rolling in thunder through the sky and
   before long we shall see the flash of His glittering spears. Let all
   this deepen our reverence and prompt us to entreat Him now to save us!
   The God that thunders at His pleasure is near! Bow before Him and trust
   in His Son, Christ Jesus, and let the prayer go up, "SAVE NOW." Do not
   wait for tomorrow, nor even until the storm has passed over, but now,
   even now, seek His salvation!

   The other half of the prayer is for prosperity. "O Lord, send now
   prosperity." This is what we continually need in this Church. The
   prayer is in harmony with the whole passage. Since, Lord, You have
   lifted the chief Stone into its place, be pleased to raise up other
   stones of Your Temple into their places! O fit them, one upon another,
   and send a prosperous building up! Lord, You have conquered all the
   foes of Christ--come and conquer the foes of your Church today. Lord,
   You did gather out a people to His praise and build up a Church in the
   first centuries of Christianity and then Your Son Jesus was gloriously
   the Corner and Headstone! Come again and build up Your own Church
   throughout all the lands, a Church in which the Lord Jesus shall be
   exalted even to the highest!

   "Send now prosperity." I pray you, Beloved, join in this prayer! Pray
   that Jerusalem may have peace and prosperity, for they that love her
   and her peace still have great happiness. Join in the supplication to
   the once rejected but now exalted covenant Head of the Church and the
   Lord will bless you for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Hiding of Moses by Faith

   (No. 1421)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents,
   because they sa w he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of
   the king's commandment." Hebrews 11:23.

   As I observed to you in the exposition, the stress in these passages of
   sacred biography should be laid upon the words, "by faith." The mighty
   deeds of heroes and the obedient acts of pilgrim fathers are only told
   to us because they spring out offaith.. It is to commend the root that
   the fruits are mentioned. The children are named one by one that the
   mother may have the praise, for faith is the mother of all virtues.
   According to this Book, God estimates men by their faith and "without
   faith it is impossible to please God." Faith is well-pleasing to the
   Most High, but it is in proportion to its strength, for there are cases
   in which weakness of faith has evidently been followed by chastisement
   and other cases in which strength of faith has been abundantly honored.

   The more you believe, the more God blesses you. If you believe with
   faith as small as a grain of mustard seed you shall be saved, for where
   there is faith there is salvation. But if your faith is weak, you shall
   miss many comforts and only as your faith grows and becomes strong
   through Divine Grace shall you be a receiver of the greater, deeper and
   higher things of the Covenant of Grace. More faith is what we need and
   the Lord is willing to give it, Grace upon Grace! He delights,
   especially, to strengthen the faith which we already possess by trying
   it, by sustaining it under trials and thus rooting and grounding it. He
   thus causes it to become firm and vigorous.

   Oh that we might always live so that the Lord might see in all our
   actions that they spring from faith. Then shall our actions as well as
   ourselves be always accepted of Him by Christ Jesus, for the Lord has
   plainly declared, "the just shall live by faith; but if any man draws
   back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him"--that is, draws back from
   faith and runs in the way of sense and feeling. Having begun by faith
   we are to live by faith. We are not to find life in the Gospel and then
   nourish it by the Law. We are not to begin in the Spirit and then seek
   to be made perfect by the flesh, or by confidence in man--we must
   continue to walk by the simple faith which rests only upon God, for
   this is the true spirit of a Christian.

   Faith is the freewoman's child and it cannot live with merit, or
   self-righteousness, for that is the bondwoman's child and the Scripture
   says, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman
   shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman." Faith is, in God's
   sight, the very soul of all holy actions. That which is done without
   faith, even though, considered in itself, had there been faith at the
   back of it, it might have been accepted, yet it is not accepted without
   faith. As no sacrifice, even though it were an unblemished one, should
   be offered except with salt and with fire-- and that fire a holy and
   heavenly fire--so nothing will be accepted of God except it is mixed
   with faith.

   Hearing is no hearing to profit if it is not mixed with faith in them
   that hear it. And even doing may stand in our way unless, first of all,
   we have attended to that work--that God-like work, that work of
   God--that we believe in Him whom He has sent. There must be faith!
   Without it, it is impossible to please God and He measures our actions
   according to the faith from which they proceed. I do again, therefore,
   very strongly say I take the meaning of these texts to be not a
   laudation of the acts, themselves, as much as an honor put upon faith,
   itself, by the Holy Spirit.

   If you read of those who subdued kingdoms, that is not the
   point--others have subdued kingdoms--but it is, "who through faith
   subdued kingdoms." If you read of those who escaped the edge of the
   sword--many have done that, but none are recorded here but those--"who
   by faith escaped the edge of the sword." "Turned to flight the armies
   of the aliens." Many have done that by valor and strength. But to do it
   by faith--that is the thing! Many have endured scourging and bonds and
   imprisonments. Many have wandered about destitute, afflicted,
   tormented. But such sufferings are nothing unless they are borne by
   faith!

   I might almost quote the words of Paul, only altering them a little,
   "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
   faith, I have become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
   though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and
   all knowledge. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and
   though I give my body to be burned, and have not faith, it profits me
   nothing" Faith--first, middle, last--must be the walk, life and triumph
   of the Christian! God gives to faith, God accepts from faith, God saves
   through faith, God keeps through faith, God sanctifies through faith,
   God perfects through faith. In all good things the power, life and
   acceptance are, "not of works, lest any man should boast," but by faith
   that all things may be of Grace alone!

   I come, now, to take up the instance of faith mentioned in the text,
   and as I do so I trust many here will be asking themselves the
   question, "Have I that faith which sees the invisible? Have I a faith
   which exercises an operative power over my entire life? Am I a believer
   in God, in His dear Son, in His most sacred Word? Is that faith real,
   practical, effective? If not, I can be sure that I am without God and
   without hope in the world! If He, by His Grace, has given me the faith
   of His elect whereby I discern Him, recognize Him, act towards Him as
   the God that is and is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,
   then I am accepted in Christ Jesus."

   Let us read our text again and then we will fall to and gather
   instruction from it. "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three
   months by his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they
   were not afraid of the king's commandment"--their faith made them brave
   and led them to preserve their little one.

   I. My first observation about this brief narrative is this--IT IS A
   GREAT BLESSING WHEN IN A FAMILY BOTH THE PARENTS HAVE FAITH. Paul, in
   one text, says, "By faith he was hid three months by his parents." Now
   you will please to notice that Moses, himself, in the account which he
   gives in the second chapter of Exodus, ascribes this to his
   mother--"When she saw that he was a good child she hid him three
   months." Stephen, in his speech before the Sanhedrin, says, "In which
   time Moses was born and was exceedingly fair, and nourished up in his
   father's house three months." Thus mentioning, rather, his father than
   his mother.

   Paul writes in Hebrews, "He was hid three months by his parents," thus
   mentioning both of them. No doubt the Apostle combined the two other
   Inspired utterances. Do you wonder that Moses chiefly mentions his
   mother, Jochebed? I do not. What man is there among us but always
   delights to mention his godly mother? And though we would have no
   partialities about our parents, yet without controversy, great is the
   mystery of a mother's love and there are some points about it in which
   it makes a deeper impression upon the memory than a father's care.
   Prize fathers as you may, and will, and should--yet there is a tender
   touch that comes home to every man's heart when he thinks of his
   mother!

   It seems natural that Moses should, when he wrote the account, mention
   most of all his mother and, indeed, and of a truth, a mother has more
   to do with a baby than a father can have. In its tender infancy she is
   naturally its chief guardian. Perhaps, too, though we cannot be sure,
   Jochebed may have been the stronger Believer of the two and may have
   been the main instigator of the child's preservation. There are other
   instances in Scripture of the same sort, if it were so. Manoah would
   have been sadly put about if it had not been for his wife when she
   said, "If the Lord had meant to destroy us, He would not have showed us
   such things as these."

   The mother of Zebedee's children is often mentioned, while very little
   is said about Zebedee. And I know there are many instances now extant
   where, if we had to write the religious history of families, albeit
   that the father is a good man, yet the mother, I was about to say, is
   better and would be the prominent actor in any family deed of faith.
   Well, let us imagine it to have been so. Jochebed, the wife, has the
   stronger faith. She is not a business person. She stays at home and
   looks after little Moses as she did after little Aaron and little
   Miriam in their time. The father must go out brick-making and earn the
   family bread. But mother at home, though not conspicuous, but rather
   obscure, walks near to God and believes in Him and so becomes the very
   center and pivot upon which the household rests and turns.

   It is often so and blessed is that man who can say as much of his own
   wife. He will never be envious of her, but rather rejoice that, if he
   is Amram, God has given him a Jochebed whom his son, Moses, will
   mention in years to come even if he forgets his father! The husband
   will be well content to have it so, for the joy and peace which he
   receives from a godly woman of decided and vigorous piety will be an
   abundant compensation for being a little overshadowed in the memory of
   an honored son. But what a blessing it was, dear Friends, that although
   Moses does not say his father hid him, yet he had his share in it, for
   Stephen says he was nourished three months in his father's house.

   The father was cognizant of it, helpful in it and hopeful about it. He
   was fully agreeing, consenting and assisting in all that the mother
   did. Would God it were so in all families! When husband and wife fit
   together in the things of God like brick and mortar, then is the house
   well built! But when the mistress pulls one way and the master draws
   the other-- when one is for Christ and the other is for Belial--the
   house is divided against itself and how can it stand? It is no marvel
   when both parents serve the Lord that their children are brought up in
   His fear and become their happiness and their honor! And it is equally
   natural that if an ungodly father undoes all that can be done by a
   godly mother, the evil example of the stronger should be followed
   rather than the godly example of the weaker.

   If I address any husband here who is as yet an unbeliever, I can but
   pray the Lord and join my prayers with those of his wife that he may be
   brought to know the Lord and rest in Him. Both the parents of Moses
   believed, so my text says, and both acted by faith in disobeying the
   cruel order of the king. If they had not agreed about it, I do not see
   how Moses could have been concealed. But they both went together in the
   hiding of the child and, dear Friends, how well it will be if we all go
   together in the endeavor to bring our children to Christ! If our
   prayers are united, if our example is one, if our teaching is never
   contradictory, if both parents are with like earnestness seeking the
   salvation of their little ones, we may rest assured the promise will be
   kept, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he
   will not depart from it."

   II. Our second remark shall be that TRUE AND EVEN REMARKABLE FAITH MAY
   ACT IN A VERY COMMONPLACE WAY. What do we read? By faith they "subdued
   kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
   of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the
   sword," and so on, and so on. Why, these are great things and worthy of
   mention among memorable deeds! Yes, but this, also, is great in its
   way-- "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his
   parents." It has no trumpet ring about it like stopping lions' mouths,
   quenching fires and subduing kingdoms--but in God's consideration--from
   his point of view, the hiding of a little baby three months may be as
   great an instance of admirable and acceptable faith as any of them!

   Even turning to flight the armies of the alien may not be greater than
   defeating the malice of a king by saving a little child! But you say to
   me, "It was a very natural thing for a mother to do. When Pharaoh had
   given orders that all the male children should be destroyed, was it not
   natural enough that a mother should try to preserve her child's life?
   Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have
   compassion on the son of her womb?" Yes, yes, I know all that and admit
   it! But still, the Lord is not praising the natural affection, but the
   supernatural faith. A very strong current is seen when Nature and faith
   both set the same way. Yet it is not Nature but faith which bears the
   sway!

   Sometimes faith has to go against Nature, as in the case of Abraham
   when he was told to offer up his son. And then faith wins the victory!
   And here, though faith and Nature ran together and so made the current
   stronger, still the text does not say, "By the force of Nature, by the
   natural love of parents for their child, Moses was hid three months."
   No, but they did it, "by faith," so the Spirit says, and He knows how
   they came to do it better than we do! We would say, "Nature led them to
   conceal the baby," but God says, "Faith led them to do it." And, in
   their degree, both are true. Nature prompted, but faith compelled,
   constrained and enabled them to do what else their timidity would not
   have ventured upon.

   But was it not a very simple thing to be doing by faith--the mere
   hiding of a child? Yes, but not so easy as it looks. Sometimes, I
   suppose, the mother said, "Hush! Hush! Hush! Dear child, you must not
   cry, whatever your pain, as Egyptian children may, for if some stranger
   should hear a child's cry, it will be reported to Pharaoh's murdering
   officers and you will die." Many, many times the instinctive cry must
   have been hushed by a mother's sedulous care. And when neighbors came
   to the door, little can we tell the difficulty to put them off the
   scent, to keep them from knowing that there was such a little living
   treasure anywhere about the house. How often would callers in the
   daytime put the family into a fever? And in the middle of the night how
   readily would both parents start if someone knocked at the door, or
   loitered under the window!

   A rustling outside their poor little house would make them full of
   alarm. They were so distressed because they were breaking the king's
   law and though they were not afraid of it, they were afraid of the
   king's officers who might come and seize their child. Yes, it was a
   very simple thing to do, just to hide away a baby--keep it quiet and
   not let anybody know about it--but it was done by faith and that makes
   the act Divine. It was natural. It was simple. I admit all that, but
   when

   the Holy Spirit says, "By faith his parents hid him," it makes the
   simple and the natural action to glow with an unusual glory, like the
   bush in Horeb, which was only a bush, but yet the Lord appeared in it!

   And here is the point of it, dear Friends, Mothers, Daughters, Sisters
   and all of you engaged in common life--do you not see how you can use
   faith to honor God in ordinary things? You think I preach by faith in
   this pulpit and so I do, blessed be God! But then you can darn
   stockings by faith, mend and piece and save and make a little go a long
   way by faith! When you are ill, you can lie and cough by faith without
   being impatient! You can keep your temper sweet with a provoking
   husband, or a disobedient child by faith! You can do all sorts of
   things by faith! It rides the whirlwind, but it threads a needle! It
   climbs up to the Throne of God and yet it stands by a baby's cradle!

   Faith can obtain the promises, but it can sit down and twist bulrushes,
   boil bitumen and stir a tar pot to pitch a little ark within and
   without with pitch, if it is necessary. There is nothing that faith
   cannot make noble when it touches it! You need not say, "I need to get
   away from my daily business, or from my domestic concerns, in order to
   show my faith." No, no! Stop where you are and show it! If a soldier
   wants to be brave and asks his captain what he can do, he will tell
   him, "You keep rank in the day of battle. You fire your gun when the
   word is given." In order to be a brave man you need not leave the
   ranks, nor run up to the cannon's mouth out of mere bravado!

   Soldier of Christ, just keep your place! Do the work appointed by the
   great Lord, trusting in Him and believing in His power to help you. So
   shall you make your life sublime, however commonplace it may appear to
   carnal eyes. By faith these parents hid their child three months--a
   short time, perhaps, you will think. If you had to go through their
   anxieties you would reckon that it was the longest three months you
   ever lived! Three months the officers are after your darling child and
   every time you look it in the face you are afraid it will be snatched
   away from your arms to be flung into the river. In vain, O Mother, do
   you give your child its daily food! In vain do you delight in its
   dimpled cheek and laughing eyes, for it must die! The crocodiles of the
   Nile must feast upon that beloved flesh! Such would her fears be day
   and night!

   Three months both parents must have been in great distress and they
   could hardly have held on under such an agony of mind if it had not
   been by faith! But faith enabled them to watch during the weary days
   which must have been crowded with tortures. Though the time seems short
   to you who never lost a child and to all of us who never knew what it
   was to live under the heart-rending peril of having our infants
   murdered, yet it filled all the little world of a mother's and a
   father's heart--and what could be worse? They bore the perpetual
   anxiety and hid the child by faith, believing and hoping that God would
   have pity upon them.

   III. A third principle which we will lay down is this, that FAITH WILL
   ACT WITH A VERY SLENDER

   ENCOURAGEMENT. "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months
   by his parents, because they saw he was a proper child." As I read
   these words I thought to myself, "I wonder what parents do not see
   their children to be very proper children?" It seems to be the general
   rule that we have, all of us--at least all mothers--the most beautiful
   children that ever have been born! A slender reason, it seems, to be
   for hiding a child three months! Stephen says in his speech that the
   child was "exceedingly fair" and, if you look at Stephen's speech, you
   will see that the translators have put in the margin, "fair to God." So
   it may run, "when they saw that the child was fair to God."

   Now, I gather from that expression that the child was exceedingly
   beautiful--beyond the common run of children. That there was a charm
   about its features, a remarkable glory about its face and something
   superhuman, probably, since it was fair to God. A spiritual air floated
   about the child's face, as if it bore some glimmerings of the Glory of
   Sinai, of the wondrous shepherd-lawgiver who led the people 40 years
   through the wilderness. In the baby's face there were prophecies of the
   man of God. Surely among them that have been born of women there has
   not been born a greater than Moses! And about him as a child there was
   a something so striking, so marvelously beautiful, that his parents
   were fascinated by him.

   Now, you can get a great deal of sunshine through a little hole and you
   can see a very large prospect through a small glass--and it is, as it
   were, a little space that the faith of Amram and Jochebed looked
   through--but they saw great things! Here was born to them a lovely
   child, an extraordinary child, a child fair to God! Well, what did they
   say? "This remarkable child, surely, was not brought into the world
   without some purpose on the part of God with regard to it. We will keep
   it alive. This is not a child that can die or shall die. We will keep
   it alive. Pharaoh or no Pharaoh, such a child as this must and shall
   live."

   Perhaps they remembered that it was close upon the time when God had
   promised to deliver His people, Israel. I should not think that
   believing Israelites had quite forgotten that God had told Abraham that
   they should be in bondage 400 years--and they must have known that the
   time would expire within another 80 years--and it is probable that the
   mother said, "There is to come a deliverer. There is something about
   this child's face which makes me hope that he will be the deliverer."
   Jochebed's faith that God would deliver His people was strong and so
   she thought, "Perhaps this is to be the champion who shall bring Israel
   out of Egypt. I will save him. I will save him! He shall be hid.
   Pharaoh shall not have him. All his edicts shall not drive me to expose
   him to death." She looked for a deliverer and expected him to
   come--this was faith!

   O dear Friends, if we had but such faith as this woman had, what
   wonders we should do because we have not to look through a little
   glass, but have a wide window open before us! She had no Bible! The man
   who was to write the first Book in the Bible was her own little child!
   She had only oral traditions handed down from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and
   her fathers. And she had only the fact that their child was exceedingly
   comely to cheer her in this special hope. But she believed in God and
   that enabled her to endure danger for her child's sake. She believed
   God. Now "God who in old times spoke to His servants by the Prophets
   has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed
   heir of

   all things."

   He has let the full Glory of Heaven blaze forth in the face of Jesus!
   What manner of Believers ought we to be, surrounded by such a light and
   nursed in the midst of such mercy? May God grant that our faith, having
   so much encouragement, may act strongly to the Glory of God! But if
   sometimes you should seem to have very little to catch hold upon, dear
   Brother, dear Sister, do not throw away that little! If you should only
   see some little token for good--some one little cloud the size of a
   man's hand--still expect a shower of mercies! Even if all things should
   seem to be against you, and only one thing should appear to be for you,
   still draw sweet inferences from slender promises, or from what may
   appear to be slender promises, for truly the Lord is good and His mercy
   endures forever--and you may stay yourselves upon Him!

   IV. A fourth principle is clear in the text, namely, that FAITH HAS
   GREAT POWER IN OVERCOMING FEAR.

   The text says they were not afraid of the king's commandment. The
   king's commandment made all Egypt tremble! It does now! The Egyptians
   are still the meanest of all peoples. The description given of them in
   the Prophet holds good to this day! Everywhere, all over Egypt, you
   will hear the stick going. No other race of men would ever bear the
   beatings as the Egyptians do--the whole mass of them working,
   practically, for one man--that he may spend a superabundance upon
   himself. As they are now, so they have been from the beginning--a
   generation of yielding slaves, trodden down perpetually by greedy
   oppressors!

   The Israelites in Egypt had no doubt caught very much the spirit of the
   Egyptians and the spirit of the Egyptians was the exact opposite of the
   spirit of a true-born Englishman! You and I rejoice that we are free.
   We are in the habit of discussing laws and criticizing statutes and if
   there were an unjust edict passed, we should not scruple for a single
   moment to break it! We should even feel a pleasure in putting our foot
   through an unrighteous act of Parliament, for we have been trained for
   centuries in the habits and ways of liberty and think and speak for
   ourselves! But it has never been so in Egypt and specially was it not
   so in those days. Then they might well swear by the life of Pharaoh for
   they all lived by the permission of Pharaoh!

   They belonged to him--their lands and everything. Therefore it must
   have taken a good deal for these two, son and daughter of Levi, to feel
   that they could go against the king's commandment! They had a right to
   do so. What right had Pharaoh to order them to destroy their children?
   It was their duty to break the king's commandment and they did it
   because they had faith! I am bound to admit, though I have commended
   the spirit of Englishmen, that there are a great many people, even in
   this country, who are very much ruled by what is called Law. The Church
   established by Law will always enjoy a vast prestige because it has
   royalty for its head and the State at its back. To me its connection
   with the State is worthy to be called, "the king's evil," but to others
   it seems a beauty spot!

   To the unthinking crowd, that which is established by Law must be
   right! Do the ritualistic priests come to us with legal authority?
   Well, then, who among us may dare to question their doings? Have
   certain rubrics been ordained by the Lords and Commons in assembled
   Parliament? Has Her Majesty given consent to them? Well, then, they
   must be proper and correct! A great many people have never got out of
   that style of thinking and perhaps never will! Whereas, to me, it

   seems to be a first principle of the Christian Church that Christ's
   Kingdom is not of this world and that to all these great ones of the
   earth, the only thing is to say, "Keep your hands off the Ark lest you
   meet with the doom of Uzziah! Come humbly, like disciples, to sit at
   the feet of Jesus and learn of Him--but do not set up to be legislators
   for His dominion, nor dare to intermeddle or make rules or regulations
   for the spiritual Kingdom! We care nothing for your ordinances and
   regulations! You have no power here! Let Caesar have his own, but he
   must not touch the things which belong to

   Christ."

   Now this woman, by faith, had got beyond the fear of Caesar, the Caesar
   of the age, the Pharaoh of the period. Whatever he might establish by
   law was just nothing at all to her. She broke away from it. There was,
   no doubt, appended to Pharaoh's statute, a punishment for anybody who
   should not obey the law. Perhaps four lives were in danger for the sake
   of that one little life--her husband, herself, Aaron and Miriam, her
   daughter. If the officers enter the house and they find that little
   Moses has been saved, it may be they will destroy the family, root and
   branch. That fear must have been upon her, but yet, through faith, she
   will run all risks--and so will all her family risk themselves that
   this promising child whom they believe God has sent to them for a noble
   purpose may live!

   Now, dear Friends, I want you, if you have faith in Christ, to manifest
   it by overcoming all fear of the consequences of doing right. It is
   right to obey God rather than man! God has the first claim upon us.
   Indeed, God has the only claim upon us! We are to obey men for God's
   sake! But when man's authority oversteps itself and interferes with the
   authority of God, then it becomes treason to the great King to obey
   even the greatest of kings! Parents and all in authority over us are to
   be obeyed in all things up to that point. It stops there! I pray that
   you may have Grace to do the right thing, everyone among you, even if
   it costs you everything. If to be honest would make you lose your
   employment. If to speak the Truth of God would bring you into trouble
   about your daily bread, do it and dare it!

   "We must live," says somebody. I do not know that. It might be better
   to die than to live under some circumstances--certainly better to die a
   martyr than to live a traitor--better to die for the right than to live
   in sin! You say, "We must live." I will tell you another, "must." We
   must die! And it becomes us to live with that always before us, for we
   shall be called to "give an account for the things done in the body,
   whether they are good or whether they are evil." Beloved, may we have
   the faith that masters fear so that we can go through the world
   fearless of popular opinion, fearless of ungodly censure, fearless of
   the little circle around us to whom some are altogether slaves! May we
   fear God and therefore be no more afraid of man's commandments. Be just
   and fear no consequences! If the heavens, themselves, should shake, we
   would do no wrong, nor tell a single lie to prop up the skies! Let the
   sun, moon and stars come down sooner than we should, ourselves, fall
   from our integrity! May faith give us such a fearless walk as this!

   V. But now, fifthly, and very briefly, I want you to notice that FAITH
   IS OFTEN A PRECURSOR TO GREAT

   IDEAS. The mother of Moses had to hide her child. I have no doubt if
   she were here and if her husband were here, they would have a long
   story to tell of the things that happened--how often their hearts were
   in their mouths, how frequently poor Amram was in a cold sweat because
   one of his companions with whom he worked talked of going home with
   him! How that prying neighbor of theirs, who always wanted to put her
   finger into everybody's business, tried to find out what there was that
   made Mrs. Jochebed stay at home so much.

   They might relate how they were afraid, even, of their own little
   children, lest they might, in their play, talk of their little brother!
   What fear was upon the whole family, lest discovery should lead to
   destruction, we may guess from their hiding the baby. The mother was
   forced to come up with ingenuous ways to hide her child and she used
   all her wits and common sense. She did not put her child in the front
   room, or carry it into the street or sit at the open door and nurse it!
   No, she was prudent and acted as if all depended upon her concealing
   the baby.

   Some people suppose that if you have faith you may act like a fool! But
   faith makes a person wise. It is one of the notable points about faith
   that it is sanctified common sense! That is not at all a bad definition
   of faith. It is not fanaticism, it is not absurdity--it is making God
   the grandest asset in our account--and then reckoning according to the
   soundest logic. It is not putting my hands into boiling water with the
   impression that it will not scald me! It is not doing foolish and
   absurd things! Faith is believing in God and acting towards God as we
   ought to do. It is treating Him, not as a cipher, but as a grand
   over-topping numeral in all our additions and subtractions!

   It is realizing God--that is what it is! And in that sense, faith is
   the truest reason, spiritualized and lifted up out of the ordinary
   sphere in which godless men choose to indulge in it. It is sanctified
   reason, enlightened from on high! The

   mother wants the Lord to preserve her child, but she knows that God
   would have her to be the instrument of it, so she hides him. And when
   she can no longer hide him, then comes that little business of making
   an ark. Faith is inventive, but at the same time faith always likes a
   precedent! I imagine that the mother of Moses thought of making that
   ark and pitching it within and without because she had heard about
   Noah's ark!

   Her faith made her love the memorial of the Lord's working salvation in
   days of old. She had not a book to read, but she had been told that
   story about Noah's ark. "Well," said she, "I will have a little ark for
   my little Noah and as I cannot otherwise save him, I will act as Noah
   did when, being moved with fear, he prepared an ark for the saving of
   his house." Brothers and Sisters, it is always safe for faith to think
   out her plans, but if she can discover one of God's plans and adopt it,
   then faith is more confident! There are always precedents if you look
   for them. You can find a Noah's ark somewhere and make a little one
   after that model. Of course your ark cannot be as big as Noah's, but
   then, if it were, it would be too big for little Moses--he would be
   lost in it! A little ark will do for a little Moses.

   Go upon your own scale and work after the model which some servant of
   God was taught to set you. And as you have the same God to deal with
   and He has the same love to you as He had for the saints of old, you
   will find the old plans work exceedingly well! Some of you young folks
   always want something new of your own. Well, after a good deal of
   trying all sorts of new things, I always find out that if my new plans
   succeed, they turn out to have been old ones! There is nothing new
   under the sun that is worth trying! As sure as ever you strike out a
   new path you will find, if it is the right path at all, that somebody
   went that way years before. One has wittily complained of the ancients,
   that they have taken all our original thoughts and all our original
   plans--and carried them out before we had an opportunity to claim them!

   But still, the faith of Moses' mother was inventive. She invents the
   ark, yet does she borrow from the precedent of former days! She
   considers the days of old and her spirit makes diligent search--and she
   acts after the way in which men of God had acted before. A critical
   commentator complains that the faith of these parents was somewhat
   weak. It made them go part of the way towards putting their child out
   of existence by putting him out in the ark and leaving him among the
   bulrushes. Well, I do not know anything about that! I am always
   satisfied with not knowing what I do not know--that is to say, if I see
   that God says nothing about their weak faith, I think we had better not
   say anything about it, either!

   By faith they did what they did and they did the best thing possible!
   And if there was weakness, as probably there was, still, as a painter,
   when he was sketching a favorite prince, took care to put his finger
   upon an uncomely spot in his face, so does the Holy Spirit, when He
   speaks of these godly parents, omit all mention of defects in their
   faith! He praises their faith and it would be presumption on our part
   to modify His verdict. May we have as much faith as they had when we
   are tried and we shall have no need to fear.

   VI. Lastly, FAITH'S SIMPLE ACTS OFTEN LEAD ON TO THE GRANDEST RESULTS.
   "Take care of that child, Miriam. Do not let him cry, for fear anyone
   should hear." Now, that everyday act of Miriam in nursing the baby. The
   mother giving the child the breast to stop its cries. The father
   watching the door and all those little things, were small matters, yet
   how wonderfully they conduced to the great future by which Pharaoh's
   power was broken! The whole history of Israel rested upon hiding that
   little child! The whole history of Israel, did I say? Think of the
   names that hung upon the child's life--Aaron, Joshua, Samson, Barak,
   David, Solomon and even the Divine Baby of Bethlehem and the whole
   history of Israel were connected with Moses!

   Wrapped up in that child was the history of the world, for in the
   Jewish people all nations were blessed and blessing comes only to us
   Gentiles through the Jew! Greater blessings are yet to come by the same
   channel! Oh yes, she takes care of Moses and hides him and her reward
   is that Moses lives--and in due time, there he is, ready for his
   work--waving his rod over the fields of Zoan, working plagues and
   wonders! And there he is by the dark sea, drowning all Pharaoh's host
   and then leading the people to the mount of God, even to Horeb, and
   bringing them to the margin of the promised land! There he is! And he
   could not have been there if by faith his mother had not hid him three
   months!

   You do not know all you are doing when you do little things in faith!
   Brothers and Sisters, do not despise domestic duties, but bring up all
   your children, your little children, in God's fear! Correct their
   little habits, bear with their little ways, teach them their little
   hymns--all lead up to great results! Do not, I beseech you, despise and
   sin against the child! You know not what is in him, or her, or what in
   God's great book of history those tiny hands are yet to write! If you
   have no children but have some other sort of work to do for God, do not
   think little of it! Grand events hinge on little

   incidents! Great wheels turn on little axles! There is a tiny part to
   each machine of unutterable importance. You never know the infinity of
   the influence of a word! To the wise man nothing is little--to the fool
   nothing is truly great. Make all things great by doing them by faith!

   So there I finish. Have you faith in God? Are you really believing in
   Him? Are you trusting in Jesus? Have you accepted His way of salvation?
   My dear Friend, if you have not, you are going the wrong way to work in
   everything! If I were to go into a country where there was a king and I
   took note of everything except that king and the king's laws, I should
   soon get into trouble. If he were a king whose power was everywhere
   present and yet I never recognized him, I should certainly make a
   failure of my life in his dominions!

   You come into this world where God is and He is Omnipotent to bless or
   curse you--will you disregard Him? You come under certain Laws of His
   and if you take no note of them or Him, but live only seeing what your
   eyes can see and only knowing what comes under the cognizance of your
   senses, you will lead a bankrupt life and fail at the last. Why, Sirs,
   I dare to say concerning myself that the grandest object of my thought
   is always my God in Christ! I have most excellent and admirable friends
   here who love and esteem me, but I dare not lean on one of them! I must
   lean upon God alone!

   He gives me many mercies and favors, but I know what it is to have been
   without them and to have been just as happy as I am with them! And now
   I know what it is to live above them and just live upon God! I could
   bear to let all go if you leave me my God. But if there is no God, then
   I am, of all men, most miserable! I have learned to live on Him, to
   trust Him and to run to Him with all my troubles and I find that He
   always sustains me. I go to Him with all my joys and He keeps me steady
   under them. He is All in All to me and I can and do only say this much
   about myself that I may recommend my Lord to you all! I beseech every
   young man and woman, every middle-aged man and woman and even every old
   man and woman here to taste and see that the Lord is good!

   I cannot understand some of you poor people--how can you live without
   God when you have so little comfort of a temporal sort? I cannot
   understand you rich people--how can you live without God when He is so
   good and kind to you? How can you forget Him who daily loads you with
   benefits? You seem to me to get the husks and not to look for the
   kernels! You are living on the outside skins and never suck the juice
   of joy! The soul of life is to live to God! The peace, the deep, the
   heavenly rest which the soul gets must always come by a living faith in
   Jesus Christ!

   I say this because there is not one among you who, if you have this
   faith, may not exercise it whatever your calling may be! You may drive
   horses, you may measure calico and weigh up sugar--and do all by faith
   to God's Glory! You may be on the Exchange, or you may be a
   book-folder, or a porter, or a nursery governess, or a plain cook--but
   everywhere, faith has something to do and you can show the power of
   faith in common life! God grant you may have faith worked in you by the
   Holy Spirit. God is true, why do you not trust Him? God is true, why do
   you not believe Him? The Christ of God is gracious, why do you not
   accept Him? He loves to save sinners! He receives all them that come to
   Him! Why do you not come to Him? God grant you may, for Jesus' sake.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Chief Physician and the Centurion's Servant

   (No. 1422)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 30, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Jesus said unto him I will come and heal him." Matthew 8:7.

   "And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go your way; and as you have
   believed, so be it done unto you." Matthew 8:13.

   THE centurion of Capernaum is an example to us in a matter which bears
   upon the collection appointed for today, which, you know, is for
   hospitals. This good soldier feared for the sick and was anxious for
   the recovery of his palsied servant. Every employer should take a
   sympathetic interest in his domestics when they are ill, but in some
   cases this is not thought of. "If they cannot do their work, they must
   go"--this is too often the language used about them--and they are
   driven out of the house as soon as possible. I do not say that masters
   and mistresses are often cruel, but I fear that some of them are none
   too kind.

   Among religious persons, kindness towards man should be as manifest as
   piety towards God. The centurion had done what he could to benefit,
   religiously, the people among whom he dwelt, for the elders of the Jews
   said, "He loves our nation and he has built us a synagogue." But he
   combined with a desire to benefit the soul, a sincere desire for the
   welfare of the body. This was apparent in the interest which he took in
   his, "boy," his personal servant, or young valet. God has joined body
   and soul together and they ought not to be divided in our deeds of
   charity. This captain's sympathy with his suffering valet was shown by
   practical action.

   He did not say that he felt for him and then go off to the guardroom
   and keep clear of the sick youth. Nor did he merely stand and watch him
   in his pain to see how he would fare, but he did something--he went
   out, he called together the elders of the city, he summoned his choice
   friends to him--in fact, he made the whole circle of his acquaintances
   feel a sympathy with him concerning the illness of his servant. Then he
   sent these elders and friends to the best Physician of the age and, I
   think, also followed at their heels, himself. He used the surest means
   within his reach and appealed to Him to whom none ever appealed in
   vain!

   From the centurion I gather that we must not be content with loving our
   people and building them synagogues, but we must also build them
   hospitals and dispensaries! Find them preachers, by all means, but find
   them surgeons, too! We may not forget the soul, but we must also
   remember that the soul dwells in a body liable to many disorders. We
   may become just a little too spiritual--so spiritual as to spirit away
   the very Spirit of Christianity! God grant us Grace to be as tenderly
   considerate of suffering humanity as this centurion was and we probably
   shall be so if we have as strong a faith and as deep a humility as he
   had.

   Our Lord, Himself, in our text, sets us an example which may plead with
   us on behalf of hospitals today! He was here upon the high errand of
   our redemption, yet He did not consider it at all derogatory to His
   Divine purpose to be continually engaged in healing diseases! For three
   years He walked the hospitals--He lived all day long in an infirmary,
   for all around Him, at one time, they laid the sick in the streets--and
   at all times physical evil in some form or other came in His way. He
   put forth His hands, or spoke a word and healed all sorts of maladies.
   This our Lord did very readily, for it was part of His lifework. "I
   will come and heal him," He said, for He was a physician in constant
   practice and would be around at once to see the patient.

   "He went about doing good" and in all this He would let His people know
   that He intended not to bless one part of man alone, but the whole of
   our nature, taking upon Himself not only our sins, but our sicknesses!
   Jesus means to bless the body as well as the soul! And though for this
   present time He has left our body very much under the power of
   sickness,

   for still the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life
   because of righteousness. Yet He foreshadows in His healing miracles
   the Resurrection, when He shall raise us perfectly healed and the
   inhabitant shall no more say, "I am sick." Every restored limb, opened
   eye and healed wound is a token that Jesus cares for our flesh and
   blood and means that the body shall share the benefits of His death by
   a glorious resurrection!

   As in our Lord's life His teaching was always connected with healing,
   He would have the Church, also, take a very deep interest in the bodily
   sorrows of the people as well as in their spiritual needs. It will be a
   very great pity if ever it should be thought that benevolence is
   divorced from Christianity, for up to now the crown of the faith of
   Jesus has been love to men. It is, indeed, the glory of Christianity
   that wherever it goes, it erects buildings altogether unknown to
   heathenism--hospitals, asylums and other abodes of charity! The genius
   of Christianity is pity for the sinful and the suffering.

   Let the Church be a healer like her Lord--at least if she cannot pour
   fourth virtue from the hem of her garment, nor "say in a word" so that
   sickness may fly--let her be among the most prompt to help in
   everything that can relieve pain or assist poverty. So ought it to be,
   for, "as Jesus was, so are we, also, in this world." Did He not tell
   us, "As the Father has sent Me, even so send I you"? We cannot too
   diligently study His Character, for He has left us an example that we
   may follow in His steps. Since we cannot practice the healing art, let
   us give support to those whose whole time is spent in it, that they may
   be able, without fee or reward, to watch over the sick poor. And let
   none among us act the tightwad when the blind, the crippled and the
   lame cry to us as they did to our Master of old!

   This said, I desire to pass on to my subject which is of a spiritual
   kind. I want you to mark the development of the faith of the centurion
   and, side by side with it, the growing manifestation of our Lord's
   power. Both are seen in the narrative. The centurion had evidently
   heard about Christ. Perhaps the healing of the ruler's child had
   satisfied him that Jesus was the Messiah. He had attended at the
   synagogue. I cannot doubt that a man who had built a synagogue would be
   sure to go to it--and there he had learned of the Coming One--foretold
   by Prophets and expected by saints. This Anointed One was to work
   wonders among mankind and especially wonders of healing.

   Thus he had gathered that Jesus was the Christ and he believed in Him
   as having power to heal his sick servant. The first practical result
   was that he humbly sent the elders with the urgent request to "come and
   heal him." He believed that Jesus, if He were present, could restore
   the dying youth. He had thought it over and his faith had reached as
   far as that of Mary and Martha when they said, "Lord, if You had been
   here, my brother had not died." In effect he said, If You will come
   here, great Master, my servant will not die. He therefore cried, "Come
   and heal him!" Observe that our Lord's answer was exactly proportioned
   to the measure of faith in the prayer--"I will come and heal him."

   "You cry, 'Come and heal him!' I reply, I will come and heal him." So
   far so good. But the captain's faith is to be seen in a still clearer
   light. He has been considering the matter still further and his
   humility leads him to feel that he ought not to expect Jesus to come to
   his house. Why should he trouble the Master to leave the crowd and to
   cease preaching, to come and attend to his servant? He is grieved to
   think that he should have proposed a visit--he feels himself unfit to
   entertain One so holy and so great and, therefore, he sends off his
   friends, post haste, to offer humble apologies and to beg the Master
   not to come!

   He has, at the same time, advanced in his belief in Christ's power, for
   he says in effect, "There is no need that You should come--only will
   it--merely say the word and the healing is worked. For I, also, am a
   man under authority, deriving authority from being under it and I have
   only to say to one soldier, go, and to another, come, and my will is
   done. I have no need to execute my own wishes personally, for my will
   governs my troops and each man is eager to do my bidding. So, great
   Master, stay where You are. Go on with Your other work and only will to
   bless me and it will be enough. Your desire will be accomplished
   without fail. Oh great Emperor of all the forces of the universe, bid
   Your triumphant eagles fly this way and the foe will vanish before
   You."

   Here was growing faith and, side by side with it, was a clearer
   manifestation of the Master's power! Our Lord Jesus, then and there,
   wills that healing power should go forth--He moves no further towards
   the house where the palsied patient lies, but rather He turns
   around--and in obedience to the wish of the centurion He walks away!
   Yet the miracle is worked! The paralytic child has risen from the bed,
   the captain's heart is gladdened--and those who came to plead stand in
   the house to praise the Lord!

   Awe-struck by the finger of God so near and so manifest, what could
   they do but bless the Lord who had visited His people? That is the
   story and it proves that our Lord Jesus Christ is Omnipotent in the
   physical world! He can do what He wills and though at this present time
   we do not appeal to Him for miraculous cures, it were well if we
   trusted Him more upon that point, for all of the power which dwells in
   medicine and all of the skill which is found in physicians is only
   effective through His tender mercy! We know, however, that our Lord is
   Omnipotent in the moral and spiritual world--and there, today, He
   displays His most sublime feats of power and wisdom! We are going to
   think about this and may the Holy Spirit make the meditation useful to
   us.

   I. The first thing I invite you to consider is THE PERFECT READINESS OF
   OUR LORD JESUS for works of mercy. The centurion was concerned about
   his servant, just as you and I are, I hope, today concerned about
   certain poor souls which lie paralyzed by sin. We mourn over them and
   if we could heal them we would gladly suffer any self-denial or
   suffering. If we could bring our neighbors to Christ, it would be the
   utmost joy to us--their perishing souls are, to some of us, as a
   burdensome stone--a load heavy to bear. How can we endure to see them
   die? The mass of working men around us, yes, and the majority of our
   wealthy neighbors are under the power of the Wicked One!

   To them the things which are seen are the only objects of their
   thoughts. They will not regard the Gospel of Christ, or eternity, or
   judgment, or Heaven, or Hell. The privileges with which our country is
   so largely endowed are treated as if they were of no value
   whatever--Sabbaths, Bibles, the Gospel and the Throne of Grace are
   despised. This is mournful, indeed! Brethren, we must go to Jesus about
   this evil thing and it may help us to do this if we now think of His
   great willingness to bless servant, child, or any other person whom we
   may bring before Him in prayer!

   That willingness we shall see, first, if we notice that He did not
   cavil at the pleas which the Jewish elders urged on behalf of the
   centurion, though they must have been very distasteful to His mind.
   They said, "He is worthy for whom You should do this." That was not the
   right style of pleading with Him who came to save the lost and bless
   the undeserving in the freeness of His Grace! The elders said, "He
   loves our nation and he has built us a synagogue," and so on. Poor
   souls, they were doing their best and using the kind of argument by
   which their own hopes were sustained.

   Our Lord regarded the spirit of their intercession rather than the form
   in which they offered it and though the plea, laying so much stress
   upon human merit, might very well have warranted Him in saying, "hold
   your peace, for you are damaging rather than helping the case," our
   Lord was so willing that He raised no question. From afar He read the
   heart of the centurion and He knew that the good man's advocates were
   altogether misrepresenting His views and feelings! The last thing in
   the world that the lowly-minded soldier would have pleaded would have
   been personal worthiness! His own words were, "I am not worthy"!

   Had he known that his advocates would have talked in that fashion, he
   would never have allowed them to speak on his behalf. If the centurion
   could have been there, he would have said, "Your words cut me to the
   quick, for I am not worthy. What little I have been able to do, I
   cannot boast. I have done no more than I ought to have done! Do not
   speak to my Lord in such a way." But Jesus was so willing to go that He
   put up with all the blunders of the elders and responded to their
   request, "I will come and heal him."

   Beloved, very likely you and I make quite as great mistakes when we
   pray--we fancy we pray very correctly, but I wonder what our Lord
   thinks of our prayers? Surely He has often to pick out the meaning of
   our hearts from among the errors of our lips! But so willing is He to
   bless us, that if there is first a willing mind, it shall still be
   accepted, for He rejoices to hear every prayer which seeks healing for
   sin-sick souls! His willingness is seen, next, in the fact of His so
   cheerfully granting the first prayer in the form in which it was put.
   They besought Him that He would, "come and heal" the servant.

   Now, that was not exactly the best form in which to put it. Certainly
   it was not that which commended itself to the more mature thoughts of
   the centurion. Why should Jesus go? He could heal the patient without
   moving from the spot! Was there not a considerable measure of unbelief
   about the elders' prayer? Yet our blessed Master took the prayer just
   as it was and He seemed to say, "I see the measure of your faith and I
   will give you the blessing as you are able to receive it." The Lord is
   very generous to come down to our capacities. If He were always to act
   according to His own Divine standard, we should be greatly dazzled--but
   we should be afraid to draw near to Him! He condescendingly lays aside
   the splendor of His majesty to act as well as to speak to us after the
   manner of men--and then we see the sweet voluntariness of His Grace and
   the cheerful willingness of His spirit to do us good.

   If we cannot receive a blessing in any other than a second-class way,
   we shall have it in the way in which we can take it. As our faith can
   get no further, He will do the wonder according to the manner in which
   our scanty thought is able to conceive and ask and receive. Oh what a
   willing Friend we have in Christ! He bows the heavens and comes down,
   meeting the weak in his weakness and the fainting in his faintness. He
   comes answering prayers, not only according to the riches of His Glory,
   but according to the poverty of our infirmity!

   Notice further that when the centurion sent a fresh deputation of his
   choice friends to say to the Master, "Trouble not Yourself, I am not
   worthy that You should come under my roof," our Lord did not quarrel
   with the change of the prayer. Some people would have said. "What is it
   that you want? First, I am to come and when I am almost there I am met
   with a request not to come--what do you mean? This is not respectful
   and I will not come." Our gentle Jesus spoke not so. Oh, no--such talk
   might come from you and from me who are so great in our own esteem--but
   never from Him because He is so much greater than we are! He thought
   not of Himself, nor of His own dignity.

   Let us imitate His meek and quiet spirit. When you are trying to do
   good, you will often be put about by the whims of those whom you would
   benefit. You will find that when you do what people ask you, they are
   not satisfied. Many adults are like sick children who are always cross
   and fretful. We must humor these poor hearts as our Lord did. He was so
   willing to bless that He seemed to give carte blanche to those who
   asked of Him! "Yes, you shall have the blessing whichever way you like,
   so that you are but to receive it. It shall be given to you according
   to your faith." Our Lord shifted His movements without pressure and
   would go to the house or not, just as the centurion's faith might lead
   him to pray!

   Blessed, forever blessed, is our most gracious Savior who never wearies
   of us, nor takes offense at our childish changes! The Savior's
   willingness to bless this centurion's servant was very manifest from
   the fact that He did not impute an ill motive to the centurion when he
   bade Him refrain from visiting the house. There was no mistrust about
   our Lord. He knew too much, both of man's evil and of the sincerity of
   those in whom His Grace was placed, to suspect and to interpret
   harshly. Ignorance and selfishness are mistrustful, but love thinks no
   evil. If there are two ways of understanding a sentence, my Brothers
   and Sisters, and one is better than the other, always read it in the
   kinder way if you can. Never put hard constructions upon words and
   actions.

   You and I might have said in the case before us, "You see, he does not
   want me in his fine house. He is a centurion and thinks much of himself
   and I am wearing a poor garment and, therefore, he does not want me in
   his villa to disgrace his halls. He is a captain, a man in authority,
   having soldiers under him. His pride forbids my approach and,
   therefore, I will have nothing to do with him." But no, it was not in
   the Master's heart to think thus bitterly, but as at the first He had
   said, "I will come and heal him," so now, when genuine humility
   requests him not to come, He turns around, but works the miracle all
   the same!

   Brothers and Sisters, our condescending Savior must be very willing to
   bless men since He takes the true meaning of their prayers where others
   would write a harsh interpretation. Be not afraid to approach Him
   however unworthy you are, for He will put the best construction upon
   your broken petitions and interpret them always to your gain! His
   disciples may severely criticize one another and may criticize you, but
   they have learned no hard words in His company. Nor did He object at
   all to the comparison which the centurion made. "I also," said the
   centurion, "am a man under authority."

   If you were to read that expression with dark spectacles, you might
   make a great deal of mischief out of it. A caviler might say, "How dare
   he even, for a moment, compare himself to the Son of God? How can he
   draw a parallel of which he is one side and the blessed Lord the other?
   What impertinence!" Brethren, our Lord was no critic. No, among the
   brotherhood of fault-finders you never see the Christ of God! When He
   has to deal with sincere people, He picks no holes, imputes no motives
   and dwells on no mistakes. The centurion did not wish to make his
   metaphor go on all fours and our Lord did not treat him as if he did.
   Many a time have some of us had to suffer from this mode of attack, but
   never from our Master, nor from those who imitate Him.

   He took the meaning of the centurion's illustration and He admired it,
   for, indeed, it was a grand and beautiful idea to set forth our Lord
   Jesus as the great Emperor of the universe to whom all things are under
   rule and to whose faintest word each form of force, whether good or
   evil, is sure to render obedience! He showed that he had rightly
   estimated Christ and enthroned Him as He should be enthroned in the
   place of unlimited sovereignty and power! The Master did

   not, therefore, for a moment, object to anything he said. No, but the
   prayer had been offered that the servant might be healed and the prayer
   was granted! The faith had been exercised which believed that Christ
   could heal--and that faith was honored! Our Lord did exactly as the
   prayer requested Him. He came when He was asked to come. He stayed when
   He was asked to stay. He spoke the word when He was requested to speak
   the word. He healed when He was asked to heal! In all things He yielded
   Himself entirely to the centurion's wish to show His cheerful alacrity
   in benefiting the suffering boy and in answering his master's prayer.

   Come, then, dear Friends, we may be quite sure of our Lord's sympathy,
   though we are not praying about a sick boy, but pleading for our sinful
   neighbors! He loves sinners better than we do, for they have cost Him
   more than they have ever cost us--even if we have spent nights in
   watching and prayer on their behalf. To Him it is committed of the
   Father to save the lost and His zeal to accomplish the work never
   flags! Therefore we may be sure that our pleading and efforts will
   touch a kindred chord in His heart!

   II. Secondly, an equally interesting topic is before us in THE
   CONSCIOUS ABILITY OF OUR LORD. You have

   seen His perfect willingness, now behold His boundless power! I do not
   know how it affects your minds, but that sentence from the lips of
   Jesus, "I will come and heal him," has a strange majesty about it to my
   soul. It is the word of a king wherein there is power. Perhaps the most
   majestic word that was ever uttered was, "Light be"--no sooner was it
   heard than the eternal darkness fled and light was!

   But surely this is scarcely second in grandeur, if second at all! Its
   sound is as much the voice of the Lord as that which scattered the
   primeval shades--"I will come and heal him." Yet this royal and
   powerful word was spoken as a matter of course. Our Lord Jesus did not
   deliberate, but the healing words flowed from Him as naturally as the
   perfume from the flowers. "I will come and heal him"--it is an
   utterance resolute, true, clear, comprehensible, unconditional and to
   Him, natural and commonplace--though to us Divine! It shows, dear
   Friends, our Lord's conscious ability to deal with all manner of evil
   since He was not at all puzzled by this intricate case!

   Almost any other physician would have felt some measure of perplexity.
   The case is described as that of a man sick of the palsy and yet
   "grievously tormented." How could that be? Paralysis can hardly be
   connected with acute pain. It brings numbness and so ends sensation, at
   least such is my impression. Some interpreters think the disease must
   have been a form of tetanus, but there is no mention of tetanus in
   either account. It was a palsy and yet he was "grievously tormented." I
   know nothing about it, but I have read that there is a period in which
   paralysis may turn into apoplexy and the patient may suffer extreme
   agony. If so, this may explain the mystery. However, though the case
   perplexed many, it did not perplex the Lord Jesus, for He said, "I will
   come and heal him."

   Now, my Brother ministers, have not you and I a great many cases coming
   in our way which tax our experience and make us feel at a loss? I have
   had, during this week, to deal with several tempted ones whose
   difficulties have put me to a non plus, or would have done so if I had
   not borrowed from my Lord. Some experiences are a tangled skein--we
   cannot follow the thread--and so far as we do follow, its knots and
   snarls are our chief reward. See how Jesus sweeps away all debates
   with, "I will come and heal him." All the complicated phenomena of
   human disease He comprehends and, along the dark labyrinth of human
   experience, His mighty word makes a way for itself! Undisturbed and
   even undelayed, the eternal energy enters the soul, for Jesus says, "I
   will come and heal him."

   Neither did the extremity of the case at all dishearten Him, for this
   poor man was ready to die, so Luke tells us, just on the verge of
   expiring. Yet Jesus says, "I will come and heal him." It does not
   matter to Jesus what the stage of the disease may be! A common
   physician would shake his head and say, "Ah, you should have sent for
   me before. I might have done something at an earlier date, but the
   sufferer is now beyond all human help." Poor souls are never beyond the
   reach of the Divine Healer and so He says without a word of doubt, "I
   will come and heal him." Yes, had He been dead, Jesus could have said
   and could have done the same! "I will come and heal him" is a word for
   all emergencies!

   Beloved, let us never hesitate to hope in prayer because the persons
   for whom we plead are such great and horrible sinners and so very far
   gone in crime! So long as they are not actually in Hell, let us firmly
   believe that Christ can save them and, verily, if we can believe in our
   great Savior with mighty faith, we shall yet hear Him say of many a
   reprobate and outcast, "I will come and heal him." I again remark that
   our Lord speaks of this healing as quite a matter of course, for His
   language is after the manner of speech which men use when they know
   that they are at their work and can do it as soon as they have it
   before them.

   A person asks a workman to repair a lock or a window and he answers,
   "Yes, I will come and attend to it." He means that he can do it, it is
   his profession and it is as easy to him to do it as to come. So can our
   blessed Master save a sinner as easily as His Spirit can come to that
   sinner--and we all know that His Spirit is a free Spirit--and like the
   wind, blows where He wills! Jesus could come to the centurion's house
   and He could as easily heal as He could come. "I will come and heal
   him"--the work is simple enough to the Divine Redeemer to whom nothing
   is impossible! No disease of sin can baffle the Savior or even cost Him
   special effort to eject it! Look to Him, you ends of the earth, and
   prove for yourselves that none are beyond His mercy's reach! Oh that
   all who hear me this day would make a like trial of His healing might!

   As for the method of procedure, our Lord, in His conscious power,
   treats the modus operandi as a matter of indifference. He grants the
   first petition as it was presented to Him and will come and heal the
   servant. But when He is requested not to come, He quite as willingly
   says, "According to your faith so be it unto you." He could heal as
   well at a distance as near at hand! Present or absent, it was all the
   same to Him! A touch, a word, a thought could do all that was needed.
   It was so and it is so still, for our blessed Lord saves sinners in all
   sorts of ways. He can save them in their pews under the preaching which
   they have heard so constantly, or He can meet with them in their lonely
   chambers, reading some godly book! Or He can wound their hearts by a
   loving word spoken during a walk with a friend.

   We have known Him call men, by His Grace, right out of the paths of
   sin, wounding them with secret arrows when they were at ease and secure
   in the service of the devil! Where no means of Grace, as we call them,
   were present, yet have sinners been smitten at heart and have been
   turned to God by that heavenly influence of the Spirit which remains
   the supreme miracle of the present dispensation! Saul of Tarsus was not
   on his knees in prayer, but hastening to shed innocent blood--and yet
   the Lord brought him down and made him seek salvation. Beloved, our
   Lord knows how to reach inaccessible persons! They may shut US out, but
   they cannot shut HIM out!

   This should much encourage us in pleading for souls which are out of
   our usual line of action. When we plead with Jesus, let us never bind
   Him down to ways and means of our choosing, but let us leave to Him the
   method of salvation! Jesus was so conscious of His power that you never
   find Him uttering an expression of wonder, or manifesting the slightest
   surprise when His will is done and a notable miracle is worked! No, but
   He did marvel at the centurion's faith and on another occasion He
   marveled at the people's unbelief! He is so in the habit of doing it
   and He is so able to do it that it is no wonder that Christ saves
   sinners!

   You and I will wonder and throughout eternity we will declare that
   wonder, singing with rapture and surprise the loving kindness and
   pardoning power of Christ Jesus, but He does not wonder. Virtue goes
   out of Him almost unconsciously, for He is so full of power that He can
   bless on all sides and scarcely know it! Even as the sun shines north,
   south, east and west and never wonders at its own shining, or as a
   fountain sends forth its sparkling drops and never stops to admire
   itself, or to marvel at its own flashing flow, so does Jesus readily,
   easily, out of His very Nature scatter pardon and salvation on all
   sides! He marvels at our faith! He marvels more often at our
   unbelief--but to Him His own power is not a thing of wonder at all!

   Beloved, I want you to get fast hold of this thought if you can, and I
   beg you to hide it away in your hearts--that Jesus Christ is, beyond
   measure, able to save! We do not half believe it! We think we do, but
   we do not even a tenth believe it, for when we meet with a rather hard
   case we are ready to give it up in despair. Despairing persons we too
   soon leave in their gloom--and even melancholy men and women we are shy
   of, we wish we had never seen them, instead of believing up to their
   point--and believingly interceding until we see them happy in Christ!
   If we meet with a horrible blasphemer, or a foul person, or a bloated
   drinker, we feel quite out of our latitude and in the land of monsters!
   Whereas it is with such cases that our Lord is much at home and we
   ought to pray most about such persons--and to be most confident that
   the Gospel was meant to meet their grievous ills. Is there not a great
   Savior for great sinners?

   III. We shall close by a third equally interesting point of great
   practical value. I have spoken of our Lord's

   willingness and power. Now we will note THE ABIDING METHOD OF OUR LORD
   JESUS. The first method

   mentioned here was, "Come and heal him." Jesus then went about doing
   good, but He does not now vouchsafe His bodily Presence, or give
   physical tokens of His being near to anyone. If any say to us, "Lo
   here," or, "Lo there," let us not believe them, for Jesus is not, now,
   upon the earth--He has gone up on high. We do not now pray, "Come and
   heal him," in the sense of expecting a vision or revelation of Christ
   after the flesh to those whom we love. We believe that He

   will come one day, a second time, and heal the sicknesses of this poor
   world, but till then we know Him not after the flesh, neither do we
   seek any personal coming.

   The other and permanent mode of our Lord's action was that He should
   speak the word and so perform the cure. "Say in a word and my servant
   shall be healed." That is the style of our Lord, today and throughout
   the whole of this dispensation. The healing energy of Jesus is now
   seen, not by His personal Presence, but by the power of His Word in
   answer to the prayer of faith. This is henceforth His fixed and abiding
   method of cure--the Word rendered effectual by believing prayer.

   Now, I want you to notice that this mode of operation is outwardly
   similar to the Lord's usual and natural way of exercising His power in
   Nature and in Providence. Though clearly it is one of the highest forms
   of supernatural action, it may not at first seem to be so. Look at
   this--when Jesus stands at a bedside, bows over the sick child and
   touches his little hand and he is healed, the deed is notable and is a
   great miracle. But will it not seem to you to be even a greater display
   of power, if possible, that Jesus should remain at a distance and not
   see the suffering one, nor even speak so as to be heard in the darkened
   chamber--and yet His mere will shall be able to quicken life and
   restore health? It is a very clear display of supernatural power, is it
   not?

   This healing by volition, or by a single word? Yet it does not seem so
   striking, somehow, to half-opened eyes when you look at it from the
   grosser point of view, for this is just how the good God is working
   every day in Nature and in Providence, achieving His purposes by His
   silent will and by those echoes of His creating voice which still
   linger among us. When but a little while ago your fields were bare and
   your gardens desolate, if the Lord had suddenly come forth in awful
   glory and caused snow and ice to fly before Him and had then benignly
   touched the valleys and the hills and covered them with grass and corn,
   you would have exclaimed, "This is a great miracle!" But in truth it is
   an equally great display of power that the deed is done, though by less
   glaring processes!

   The will of the Lord transforms the clods of the valley into an army of
   wheat ears and clover balls! His quiet wish reddens the clusters of the
   vineyard and ripens the fruit of the garden! Is not this, also, a
   marvel of power? Though the Lord has not come forth riding upon cherub
   wings, nor has He spoken audibly in commanding sentences, yet the
   secret energy of the eternal Word is evermore going forth to give us
   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat. What more Divine form of miracle
   is to be desired? I believe that when we rise to the possession of a
   fully developed faith we shall see ourselves to be daily compassed
   about with the Omnipotence of God and shall look on every tiny blade of
   grass and upon the insect which balances itself on it--and the dewdrop
   that decorates it--as being quite as manifestly the finger of God as
   when the Nile turns to blood, or the dust of Egypt becomes flies!

   To the Believer, miracles have not ceased, but the common course of
   Nature teems with them! The power of the Word of God in answer to the
   prayer of faith is now our Lord's way of blessing and this method
   exactly suits the wish of true humility. Humility says, "I am not
   worthy that God should do anything for me which would attract attention
   to me or make me seem honored above others." The lowly soul hears of
   one who was saved through a dream or a vision and he feels that he is
   not worthy to be thus favored! No, my Friend, and you need not wish for
   it, the Word of the Lord is enough and that Word is near you at this
   moment--in your mouth and in your heart--you have but to hear and your
   soul shall live!

   If I were pleading for the conversion of a sinner I should feel
   hampered by my own unworthiness if I believed that salvation
   necessitated a bodily manifestation of my Lord or some extraordinary
   display of power before men's eyes. But if my Lord will save by His
   Word, only, then do I venture to ask with confidence! Here is no parade
   of power, but quiet Divine energy and this the meek of the earth
   delight in! I am sure that it pleases faith better than any other way.
   Oh that the power of the Word might be displayed at this time! Oh my
   Lord, how I desire of You that You would save thousands and I would be
   glad if it were done without me, without any of Your servants, if only
   You would say in a Word and by Your Holy Spirit cause a nation to be
   born in a day!

   Certain professors eagerly pine for a great stir--they will not believe
   that the kingdom of God prospers unless thousands crowd into our
   assemblies--and unless great excitement reigns and all the papers are
   ringing with the names of famous preachers! They like it all the better
   if they hear of persons being thrown into fits during the meetings, or
   read of men and women falling down, or screaming under excitement and I
   know not what besides. They can believe in Christ's power if there are
   signs and wonders, but not otherwise! That is going back to, "come and
   heal him." But we are

   content to abide by the second mode. Can you not believe that by each
   one of us making the Gospel of God to have free course, our Lord can
   effectually save men by His Word?

   Quietly, without observation, without signs or wonders, Jesus will
   bless believing testimonies and answer believing prayers! Strong faith
   is well content with the Lord's settled and usual mode of action and
   rejoices to see Him save men by His Word in answer to the prayer of
   faith. It is perfectly reasonable that we should expect our Lord to
   display His healing power in this way. What the centurion said was full
   of forcible argument. He said, "I am a captain of a troop. I do not
   have to go about from place to place to do everything personally. No, I
   remain in my quarters and issue orders, and I am sure of their being
   carried out. I say to this one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to my servant,
   'Do this,' and he does it."

   Is it not clear that the far greater Captain of our salvation does not
   need to come forth bodily in order to save any? His Word will suffice!
   Give Your order, O Immanuel! Speak to the powers of darkness and the
   captive sinner shall be free! Speak, and the human will must yield to
   You and the human heart must receive You! Is it not so? My Brothers and
   Sisters, we do not believe enough in our Lord! I come back to that--we
   do not believe enough in what is so perfectly reasonable! If we will
   but speak our Master's Words and let it go forth, with less and less of
   our own words to cripple and hinder them, souls must be saved! Do you
   not believe in the plain preaching of the glad tidings? Do you not
   believe in the rams' horns?

   O children of Israel, do you despise the rams' horns and do you long
   for horses and chariots and battering rams and mighty engines of war?
   Remember Jericho and how, by God's own appointed, though simple means,
   the huge walls rocked to their fall? Will not the Lord's own means
   suffice still? Oh, Believers, do you need anything this day except the
   simple preaching of the Gospel? If so, you are departing from the point
   where your faith ought to remain, since it still pleases God by the
   foolishness of preaching to save them that believe! "The world by
   wisdom knew not God," and never will know God! Trust not philosophy,
   but stand by the old, old story and pray the Master to work by it as in
   former ages. You need no new word to be spoken, only let the Living
   Word be filled with power and souls will be healed!

   Now, if anyone here will try in his own case this Divine method of
   healing, it will succeed in his instance as in that of the centurion's
   servant. If you, dear Hearer, will believe the power of Christ and
   trust Him to save you, you shall certainly obtain eternal life and that
   at once! Can you heartily believe in Jesus as you find Him revealed in
   Scripture? Can you be content without strange feelings, without
   remarkable terrors, without dreams or visions? Can you be content
   simply to trust your Savior? You shall be healed immediately, yes, this
   very moment--before this rain shower has ceased the showers of
   Everlasting Grace shall have fallen upon you! You must not ask the Lord
   to come by some singular feeling within you, but just to speak while
   you are hearing and the miracle of Grace will be worked!

   Let me add once more--if you who are converted long to see others
   saved, you will be wise to keep to the established method. Pray,
   believe and then expect the Lord to work by His own Word in answer to
   your prayer! The centurion rose to this method. He began lower by
   desiring a personal visit, but he grew up to this plain, simple, yet
   glorious way! Can you not do the same? Seek no marvels, but test the
   power of the Gospel upon your friends. Do not ask the Lord to go out of
   His way, but beseech Him to apply His Word with power to those whose
   eternal welfare lies near your heart. Bring your loved ones under the
   sound of the Gospel and entreat the healing Lord to put forth His power
   thereby and your desire shall be accomplished!

   Alas, if the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? If He
   were to come now and ask us all to put into the collection box what
   faith we have--when He opened it, would it come to the eighth part of a
   farthing? Yet every man among us that is a Believer ought to have an
   inexhaustible treasure of golden faith! Lord, we believe! Help You our
   unbelief! Lord, increase our faith! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Sacred Solo

   (No. 1423)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I
   am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I
   praise Him." Psalm 28:7.

   THIS passage has, to my mind, a peculiar charm. I do not know whether
   it breaks on your ears with like pathos and power. To me it seems
   charged with softness and sweetness, like some gentle strain of tender
   music. Let us read it again. "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my
   heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly
   rejoices and with my song will I praise Him." I think I see a battle
   raging furiously, yet he whom it most concerns, after having displayed
   his prowess and fought valiantly, steps aside and, sitting down in a
   quiet place, bomb-proof and almost out of sound of the cannons' roar,
   thus talks with his heart. He forgets the raging strife--he is
   expecting a joyful victory! He knows his weaknesses, but he has caught
   a glimpse of the Divine strength which is guaranteed to him.

   He is trembling, perhaps, from the toil of the fight, and yet he rests
   as one insensibly subdued to settled calm and mild composure--he rests
   in God. In like manner, I want you, dear Friends, to get out of the
   crowd a while, this evening, and take shelter in a quiet place. Forget,
   just now, the various troubles of business. The domestic cares which
   often harass you and the inward conflicts which vex your souls.
   Whatever there may be to disturb, distress, or distract you, let it
   alone! Now, for a while, revel in that sweet peace which God, alone,
   can give, the peace of God which passes all understanding--and say unto
   your soul--"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in
   Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my
   song will I praise Him."

   The sentence, you will notice, divides itself into three parts. The
   first tells us of an assured possession--"The Lord is my strength and
   my shield." The second speaks of a definite experience--"My heart
   trusted in Him, and I am helped." There are no, "ifs," no, "buts," no
   suspense of the soul midway between hope and fear--he speaks without a
   trace of hesitancy, for he tells of his own actual experience. The
   third part of our text very properly closes with an expressed
   emotion--a very deep emotion it is--"My heart greatly rejoices." And
   then, you see, the inward emotion is interpreted in a most proper
   fashion by an audible utterance--"With my song will I praise Him."

   I beg to call your studious attention to the remarkable form of this
   verse! There is a pair in the case of each of my divisions and the pair
   in each case consists of inward and outward. Notice, "The Lord is my
   strength," that is inward. "My shield," that is outward. "My heart
   trusted in Him," that is inward. "And I am helped," that is outward.
   "Therefore my heart greatly rejoices," that is inward. "And with my
   song will I praise Him," that is outward. It is by no means trifling to
   note these arrangements in the structure of sacred poetry, for there is
   a lesson to be learned--it teaches us that truth and beauty are to be
   linked together and that to be holy we need not be uncouth.

   Full often we may observe a beautiful form and an admirable fashion in
   the language which embodied the thoughts of the inspired Psalmist. If
   we look at them long enough and meditate upon them fondly enough, we
   shall discern a symmetry in all his hallowed compositions which charms
   the taste, rivets the attention and helps the memory. The sacred poet
   served the Lord with his best powers, reckoning nothing to be good
   enough for the Lord whom he loved so well! Slovenly preaching, doggerel
   verses and discordant singing ought to be avoided, if possible, and our
   devotion should have the sweetest possible expression.

   I. Let us begin with the first division of our text and may the Spirit
   of God give us full faith to accept it in all its depth of meaning. We
   have here A SURE POSSESSION--"The Lord is my strength and my shield."
   With a double grip he takes hold of the Divine Covenant. "The Lord is
   my strength and my shield." He gets a two-handed grasp of the God of
   Salvation. A touch of the hem of the Savior's garment will heal--what
   Divine virtue, then, must stream into a man who can hold with both
   hands--not merely the garment's hem, nor even the garment itself, but
   the Lord Himself! "The Lord is my strength and my shield."

   Perhaps some of you cannot give the double grip. Then give the finger's
   touch and it will save you! But do not be always content with that
   touch--ask to lay hold upon Jesus and say, "I held Him and I would not
   let Him go." Ask to grasp Him, like Jacob at the brook Jabbok with the
   brave resolve--"I will not let You go except You bless me." No, get
   beyond that and pray to have Paul's hold of Christ, which was so strong
   and firm that he said, "Who shall separate us from the love of God
   which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" Both hands take hold, for the
   Psalmist sees a double blessing! He knows, also, that he has a double
   need, and so he takes a double grip. "The Lord is my strength and my
   shield."

   Were you to leave out the, "my," repeated again and again in this
   verse, how the sense would be spoiled! Let us try it--"The Lord is a
   strength and a shield." Well, that is very true, but of what use is
   that to me? My comfort must come from the fact that, "the Lord is my
   strength and my shield." Faith matured by experience, faith
   strengthened by the promise, faith invigorated by the Holy Spirit, who
   is the Nourisher as well as the Author of it--such faith is fired with
   sacred energy when it dares to lay hold on God and say, "The Lord is my
   strength and my shield!" This is blessed work! God grant that each of
   us may know how to perform it and to this end let us seek the help of
   the Holy Spirit, without whom we can do nothing.

   Notice what it is that David lays hold upon with his hands. "The Lord
   is my strength and my shield"--it is not the Lord's promised Grace, nor
   is it the bounties of Providence which He has bestowed on me which I
   regard as my strength and my shield. It is not even the Lord's work in
   my soul, nor the assurance of my faith, nor the ardor of my love that
   has become my strength and my shield. It is not the Lord's Book, even,
   though its Inspired Oracles can enlighten the eyes, fortify the heart
   and refresh the spirit. It is not the Lord's attributes of power and
   faithfulness and watchfulness--no, but it is JEHOVAH Himself who is
   strength and shield to me!

   Now, he that lays hold on God has done a daring deed, at which even,
   "the man greatly beloved," might stand aghast, were it not written,
   "Let him take hold of My strength." Oh to say, "My God!" There is more
   eloquence in those two words than in all the orations of Demosthenes or
   Cicero! All the genius, learning and penetration of the heathen world
   could never teach us how to claim the Deity and take possession of the
   God of the whole earth! What can we discover in the philosophy of
   Pythagoras, Aristotle, or Socrates that will compare with this? The man
   who can truly say, "The Lord is mine," has an inheritance which death
   cannot wither, which space cannot compass, which time cannot limit,
   which eternity cannot explore!

   He may be poor in pocket-money, as I suppose the owners of large
   estates occasionally are, but he is infinitely rich, for he has real
   property and an absolutely indefeasible title to it. He may feel
   distressingly weak, but he is infinitely strong. He may account himself
   to be empty, but he has all things and abounds--he, I mean, who can
   say--"The Lord is mine." Come, my Brothers and Sisters, be bold enough
   to look into your privilege! Think of it! What if you could say, "The
   world is mine"? It will be consumed by fire. What if you could say,
   "Heaven is mine"? Yet if the God of Heaven were not there, it would be
   a wilderness. Oh, Beloved! If you can say, "GOD is mine--Father, Son
   and Spirit are mine"--what more do you need to gratify your eager quest
   for unspeakable joy?

   Come, can you conceive satisfaction more substantial than to be sure
   that God is your Father, your Redeemer, your Sustainer, your All--your
   All in All? Do you wish for a better song than this--

   So I my best Beloved's am, So He is mine."

   Can you imagine any sweeter music than the minstrelsy of a love so
   tuneful, touching as it does the strings of that mysterious instrument,
   the soul? Is not this the climax of all wishes, all passions, all
   desires, all delights? We hail you, son of Jesse, as the harmonious
   music of your sublime Psalms breaks on our ears! But oh, You Son of
   David! We adore You that You have taught us to take up the strains as
   our own! We, ourselves, have felt in fact what the sweet Psalmist felt
   in figure. We, as Your willing followers and Your acknowledged
   disciples, do now, by right and privilege which You have given us,
   appropriate to ourselves the poems, parables and prophecies which once
   vibrated in dark sayings from David's harp, as precious utterances
   concerning heavenly favors to which Your Sovereign Grace has made us to
   be fairly and fully entitled!

   Unhappy you must be who cannot call this God your God, whatever else
   you may have to glory in! But happy you who know that God is yours,
   however little of this world's store may fall to your portion! Thus
   have we considered the

   double grip and what it lays hold upon. Let us not pass on till we have
   imitated the grasp of faith and appropriated the infinite treasure. May
   the Holy Spirit enable us! Notice under what aspects God is thus laid
   hold of. Inwardly, first, as we have said, as our strength--"The Lord
   is my strength." Brothers and Sisters, do you know how strong you are?
   If you have said, "The Lord is my strength," I challenge you to say how
   strong you are! "Ah, Sir," you say, "I know how weak I am." That I will
   also take liberty to question, for albeit that you know yourself to be
   as weak as water, you are weaker yet--weaker than even your despondency
   has dreamed!

   "I know I am nothing," you say. Yes, but you would not even have had
   Grace enough to know you were nothing if God had not given it to you!
   To be nothing is ours by nature, but to know that we are nothing and to
   confess that we are nothing is a gift of His Grace! Brethren, we are
   emptier than emptiness and more vain than vanity! We may tax language
   and use extravagant hyperboles, but we shall never be able, fitly, to
   estimate our own utter insignificance! We are weakness itself, hampered
   with the conceit of power! And yet, if we can say in truth, "The Lord
   is my strength," we cannot estimate how strong we are, for there is no
   measuring Omnipotence!

   Come, let us consider the matter and let each Believer speak
   personally. He who made the heavens and the earth is my strength. He
   who fixes the mountains firm so that they start not from their places
   in the day of tempest, when the cedars are breaking, is my strength.
   Although He will one day rock Heaven and earth and before His Presence
   all creation shall flee away, yet He is my strength! These are but the
   hidings of power, but, truly, all the force reserved and lying latent
   in the Almighty bosom is engaged for His saints and is my portion.
   Whatever Omnipotence can do--(and that is a wrong expression to use,
   for Omnipotence knows no frontier or confines to its sphere of possible
   action)--is ours! All that God has done is but little in comparison
   with what He can effect when His arm shall be bared to complete His
   mighty purposes. Yet all the possibilities that pertain to God belong
   to His people! "The Lord is my strength."

   With Jehovah for our strength, we obtain a matchless capacity for
   endurance! It is marvelous how much a Believer can bear when the Lord
   sustains him. "Out of weakness we are made strong." See that bruised
   reed over yonder? It is a fit emblem and a fair picture of a man alone.
   You cannot trust the weight of an ounce to it. It bends under its own
   slender weight even though there is no pressure to force it down. That
   is you, dear Brother! That is you, dear Sister! But see that strong and
   potent column which bears upon it a huge roof or an iron road across
   which will thunder thousands of tons? That is yourself when God is with
   you! Yes, you are stronger than that, for nothing shall be able to
   break the man to whom God is His strength!

   "I could not bear that," you say, "I know I should be crushed." What
   are you thinking about--the loss of that favorite child? Thinking about
   the death of your dear husband? God grant that you may not have to
   suffer it. The death of a wife? The loss of all your goods, the cruel
   wounds of slander, or the desertion of friends? Are all those trials
   likely to befall you, and do you say, "Alas, I could not live if such
   afflictions should overtake me"? My dear Friend, if you can say, "The
   Lord is my strength," you can bear anything and everything! You could
   bear a martyr's death if the Lord should be your strength! He could
   make a stalk of wheat to bear up the whole world if He strengthened
   it--and the faintest and most trembling child of His that ever
   whispered a prayer--He can make to bear the greatest griefs and the
   heaviest trials without the slightest repining, for His Spirit can
   infuse unconquerable patience into the believing heart.

   Of course, the power to endure depends upon the strength imparted and
   not upon the inherent fortitude of the individual. It does not make
   much difference what the struggle or what the sorrow if we have
   sufficient strength. A little child with a small basket may be
   overloaded, while His father with ten times the load to carry will walk
   briskly and whistle as he carries his burden along the street, thinking
   lightly of his burden. The increase of the burden is not the thing to
   groan about if there is a proportionate increase of strength! Emigrants
   have told us that they could labor with less fatigue in Australia than
   they could loiter in England! Whether that is so or not, assuredly it
   is easier to toil with Divine aid than to rest without it.

   "As your days your strength shall be." Mark that. If the Lord shall
   heap the load upon your poor shoulders, He will impart courage to your
   mind and vigor to your spirit so that you shall suffer all His
   righteous will and find your soul thrice blessed in the endurance! "The
   Lord is my strength." Then we can, like Samson, slay the lion and find
   honey in it, or smite the Philistines and divide their spoil--

   "Let me but hear my Sa vior say 'Strength shall be equal to your day!'

   Then I rejoice in deep distress, Leaning on all-sufficient Grace." If
   the Lord is our strength, our inward strength, we can do anything! At
   times we faintly reckon that we cannot get through our task, for the
   tale of bricks appears to be doubled and straw is hard to find. Look
   up, for the Great Taskmaster always bestows upon us special ability
   when He demands of us peculiar service!

   Perhaps we are called to a high and solemn engagement of more than
   common responsibility. We shrink with timidity and put our mouths in
   the dust at the thought of it, and say, "Who am I, and what are my
   qualifications, that I should be summoned to speak for God, to act as
   His ambassador, or to fill a post of such vast importance? I am but a
   child! How shall I undertake an enterprise at which venerable sires
   might well be daunted?" But the Lord's answer is, "I will be with your
   mouth. I will be your strength." Well, then, we may cry with David, "I
   will speak of Your statutes before kings and will not be ashamed!" If
   the Lord make us strong, there is no office upon which we may not
   venture, there is no duty we cannot perform, there is no sacrifice
   which we cannot cheerfully offer, there is no battle in which we cannot
   prevail!

   Very likely I may be addressing someone who does not know or appreciate
   the faith which thus fortifies the feeble followers of Christ. Are you
   a very strong man and do you boast of your strength? Friend, the
   strength of Samson served him a sorry turn when he was without his
   God--let his blindness warn you! Another man, conscious that he is a
   man of education and culture, doubts not that he can make his way in
   the world. Oh, Sir, Solomon's wisdom was of poor account when he forgot
   the statutes of the Lord, pursued the fashions of his times and
   suffered altars to be built to the strange gods of his wives whose
   sensual fascinations took away his heart! There is no strength of
   muscle or of mind but in God. "God has spoken once. Twice have I heard
   this, that power belongs unto God." Blessed are they who look for
   strength to the strong, for wisdom to the wise, for safety to the
   Savior. They shall say, in the words of our text, "The Lord is my
   strength."

   David, in two grips, laid hold upon God as to the outward
   manifestation--"He is my strength and my shield." Looking back upon the
   past, I trust that many of you can say that God has been your shield.
   It is He who protects us from known adversaries, from the temptations
   of the world, the flesh and the devil. He protects us from all the
   arrows that fly by day and from all the terrors that haunt us by night.
   From adversaries of whom we know and against whom we would be ever on
   our guard if we could, God is our shield. "No weapon that is formed
   against you shall prosper." He who has made the Lord his refuge and the
   Most High his habitation shall be safe. No real evil shall happen unto
   the just. "The Lord is my shield."

   Nor is He only our shelter from open enemies, He is our guardian
   against those dangers which we know not. How many perils may have
   menaced your personal safety, your domestic happiness, or your fair
   reputation of which you never knew! Thank God for unknown mercies, as
   well as for hair-breadth escapes! Often in traveling you may be within
   an inch of death and never be aware of it. Our gratitude to God may be
   stirred when we perceive a danger and escape it, but are we not even
   more beholden to Him when we do not even perceive the peril and reach
   our journey's end, or awake in the morning, or live through a year
   without sickness, without calamity, without alarm? Without violently
   imagining mischiefs or nervously inventing perils, we may soberly judge
   that dangers have frequently hovered around us even in the calmest
   hours--and from all these we have been preserved because the Lord is
   our shield!

   It is the greatest comfort to feel God's Spirit within you making you
   strong. But it is no small joy to know that God is round about you,
   making you safe. "He is my shield." Knowing, as we do, that our
   adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may
   devour, and that he may be, perhaps, trying to seize upon one of us at
   this very moment--our security from his hostile attacks is this--"The
   Lord is our shield." Satan wastes his arrows against the Eternal
   Buckler. There may be a plot formed against you by a cruel adversary
   whose hatred is unknown to you, but fret not yourself with fear of
   hidden dangers. Let them lie where God permits them to conceal
   themselves! Do not unearth the foxes nor stir up the young lions, for
   you are safe in your simplicity.

   Is it not written that "the sucking child shall play on the hole of the
   asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den"?
   "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
   divination against Israel." Though earth and Hell should blend their
   malice, they are safe whom God protects! The close designs and crooked
   counsels of those who conspire against the saints shall all be foiled,
   for there is One who frustrates every evil device and

   takes the wise in their own craftiness. "Where would you hide
   yourself," said one to Luther, "if the elector of Saxony should
   withdraw his protection?" He smiled, and said, "I put no trust in the
   Prince of Saxony. Beneath the broad shield of Heaven I stand secure
   against Pope and Turk and devil."

   So he did and so do we. If we have but faith in God, we can sing, in
   the language of the text, "The Lord is my strength and my shield. He
   strengthens me within and He protects me without. What more do I need?"
   Before I leave those first two sentences, I want you to notice that
   this is a matter of fact, a fact which many here present can attest--
   "The Lord is my strength and my shield." It is not a pretty speech that
   we have selected as an appropriate slogan for a retrospect, nor is it a
   piece of sentimental religious poetry which counterfeits a Christian's
   experience! It is a positive fact, to which full many of us who have
   been tried and tutored in the pilgrimage of life can bear our personal
   testimony. "The Lord has been my strength."

   At this moment I set my hand and seal to that statement before you all.
   I should have proved myself to be weakness itself in many an emergency
   had not Eternal Power upheld me! I should have been far from calm
   resolution and drifted near to madness--not firm and steady, but frail
   and faltering--had He not interposed on my behalf and kept this heart
   in the hour of trouble! Is not the same confession due from each of
   you? You have waded through your trouble, dear Sister. You have escaped
   from that dilemma, my Brother. And do you not ascribe your deliverance
   to the Lord who strengthened you? Come, now, from where else did you
   get your strength? You cannot trace it to any other than a Divine
   source! Has not the Lord been your shield? Have not some of you been in
   positions in which no one else could have guarded you?

   Perhaps your own fault has placed you in predicaments out of which you
   could never have extricated yourself had He not stretched out His hand
   and plucked your feet out of the net. Then you said to your soul, "This
   is no fiction. This is the finger of God!" It is right-hearted
   sincerity and not wrong-headed enthusiasm which prompts us, personally,
   to avow--"The Lord is our strength and our shield." We can say it as
   deliberately as the miser might say, "The bank is my confidence, my
   money is my trust," or as the merchant might say, "My wealth is on the
   sea, my ships bring me in my yearly income," or as the mother might
   say, "My children are my joy." We can boldly publish it and challenge
   all gainsayers, for it is really so, "The Lord is our strength and our
   shield!" Beyond doubt or question this is an assured possession!

   II. Now, have patience with me while I endeavor, in the second place,
   to expound to you A DEFINITE EXPERIENCE. It is related in these
   words--"My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped." Here, too, we have
   both inward and outward, as I told you before--"My heart trusted in
   Him," that is work done indoors, within the soul. "I am helped," that
   is mercy received outdoors, openly and actually. Notice the scrupulous
   loyalty of the Believer whose entire confidence is centered in God. "My
   heart trusted." I did not say, 'I trusted,' as one who makes a
   profession with his lips, but rather with strong conviction and
   profound emotion, "my heart trusted."

   It is truly shocking to see people stand up and recite a creed to the
   truth of which they attach no importance. They say or sing, "I believe
   this and I believe that," and as they repeat the words prescribed for
   them, they superstitiously turn in a certain direction. But happy is
   that man who, turning east, west, north, or south, does in his heart
   trust--does in his secret soul believe! There is no believing worthy of
   the name except heart-believing. If your head believes a thing, it is
   of small consequence. But in soul-saving faith the heart is so
   believing as to trust and the mind is so assured as to be at peace. "My
   heart trusted in Him. My poor heart fluttered in the time of trouble,
   it was agitated, it was distressed, for all its visible refuge had fled
   away. But at last I said, 'I must hang upon my God and to Him I must
   cling.' In very despair of all other things, I cast myself at the foot
   of His Throne. My heart trusted in Him."

   Has it been so with you of late? Has your heart been trusting in God?
   That is a very strong expression of the Prophet when he speaks of the
   heart going a whoring from God. The language is vehement even to
   coarseness, but it is none too forcible, for it involves the commission
   of a spiritual uncleanness when the heart trusts any other helper than
   God. "My heart trusted in Him." Oh, it is so easy for the heart to get
   to trusting in itself! And he that trusts his own heart is a fool! It
   is frightfully easy for the heart to rely upon man, as we know right
   well! Did you ever notice the middle verse of the whole Bible? It is
   the eighth verse of the 118th Psalm--"It is better to trust in the Lord
   than to put confidence in man." The comparison will not bear a thought,
   the preference is infinite--for confidence in man will betray your
   hopes, but

   faith in God will enrich you beyond your expectations! May our heart
   always keep to that--trusting God--trusting in God alone. "My heart
   trusted in Him."

   In the next clause of the sentence, which is the outward manifestation
   of the inward experience, we have the result-- "I am helped." If I had
   been writing this Psalm of my own head, I think I should have written
   it thus--"My heart trusted in Him, and I was helped," for it is a rule
   in composition that if you bracket two sentences together you should
   write them in the same tense. But, as old Master Trapp says, faith has
   no tenses, because faith deals with a God who has no tenses except the
   present, for His name is, "I AM." Faith does not say, "I trusted in Him
   and I was helped." No, she has all former mercy present before her eyes
   and she sings, "I am helped." Nor does Faith say, "My heart trusted in
   Him, and I shall be helped." Perhaps the needed help has not yet
   arrived, but she is so sure that it will come that she cries, "I am
   helped! Am I as poor as I was before I prayed? No, I am not, for I have
   obtained the blessing I asked for. I appear to be as weak as I was
   before I trusted Him, but I am not, for the Lord is my strength and,
   having trusted in Him, I am helped." I wish we lived more in that
   blessed present tense in which God dwells!--

   "He fills His own eternal 'now,' And sees our ages pass."

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, let all the past of God's mercy come up to
   your memory and let that be a part of the "now." And then just take, as
   it were, a spring, and bounce forward into the future--yes, leap right
   across life, as though it were a narrow rivulet, into Heaven, and put
   the eternal future into the present, "now," and sing as our sweet poet
   does--

   "Lo! A 'newsong'isin mymouth, To long-loved music set: Glory to You for
   all the Grace I have not tasted yet."

   "I am helped." I have now the good I crave. By faith I realize it as a
   present possession. I am helped. I am helped. The past lives in my
   gratitude, the future lives in my confidence and both alike meet in the
   present and my soul is glad! "My heart trusted in Him and I am helped."
   You must notice, reverting again to the words of the text, that this
   confidence was, from first to last, confidence in God and, therefore,
   was it honored with a gracious result. "My heart trusted in Him, and I
   am helped." Many and many a time we have been obliged to say, "My heart
   trusted in So-and-So, and I am deceived." But here it is, "and I am
   helped."

   Sometimes it happens, "My heart trusted in such an one and I am
   disappointed, though not deceived. He would have helped me, but he
   could not." But here it is, "My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped,"
   All has happened according to promise--there has been no failure of
   faithfulness, no breach of Covenant, no forgetfulness, no delay. I am
   helped sufficiently, punctually, continually and so I always shall be
   helped till toiling and traveling days are over! Glory be to God for
   this! Dear Friends, have all of you who are Christians attained to a
   Christian experience? Doctrine, you know, is very important. It is well
   that you should learn it, understand it and adhere to it--but doctrine
   is only the Truth of God in which you are instructed and is useless for
   growth in Divine Grace until you experience the power of it in your own
   souls!

   Do you know why so many people run away from the Truth, as it is in
   Jesus, and take up with strange conceits and new-fangled notions? It is
   because they have no inward experience of the old Truths of God. Let a
   man once have a deep experience of the evil of sin and I will guarantee
   you he will feel his need of a Savior and the necessity of the
   Atonement made by blood. Let him have an experience of the power of the
   blood upon his conscience, the peace that comes out of Substitution,
   and he will cling to the Cross! He will be ready to die for the Cross!
   He has such joy rising out of it as he never found elsewhere. I am
   obliged to cling to the Gospel, for if it is not true I am a lost man!
   I must hold fast to it, for all my hope is fixed there and if it is
   taken away, my sun is quenched, the well of my joy is dried up and life
   becomes a lingering death!

   And, Beloved, an experience of those blessed Truths which God has
   revealed to us by His Spirit writes them where they cannot be erased!
   Not upon the tablet of the brain, from which they may be erased, for
   men forget, but upon the tablet of the heart from which they cannot be
   obliterated, for men do not disclaim that which has become a part of
   their inward consciousness and which God has made as dear to them as
   their lives! May you all have such a definite experience as the text
   sets before us. The Holy Spirit will work it in all the saints.

   III. Lastly, here we have A DECLARED EMOTION--"Therefore my heart
   greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him." Here, again, is
   the inward phase, you see, "My heart greatly rejoices," and then there
   is the outward embodiment of the internal feeling--"and with my song
   will I praise Him." Behold a heart rejoicing with a sacred and intense
   delight! Some people's rejoicing is but skin deep. They laugh, their
   face is surfaced over with smiles and their mouth bubbles up with silly
   glee. To my mind there is hardly anything more sad than the frequent
   laughter which exposes a vacant mind. The moment company has gone, this
   volatile mirthfulness subsides and the jolly companions resolve into
   solitary individuals, each one dull and dreary--far enough from any of
   them being happy.

   You may, perhaps, have heard of Carlini, one of the most celebrated
   clowns of the beginning of this century. He was a man whose wit and
   humor kept all Paris in a roar of laughter! But he, himself, had little
   share of the cheerfulness he simulated so well and stimulated so much.
   His comedies brought him no comfort. Though a professor of mirth, he
   was a victim of melancholy. He consulted a physician and asked him for
   a prescription to relieve his lowness of spirits and habitual
   despondency. His physician gave him some medicine, but advised him by
   way of recreation to go to the theater and hear Carlini, whose fun and
   frolic were of such repute. "If he does not fetch the blues out of you,
   nobody will." "Alas! Sir," said he, "/ am Carlini."

   And so, doubtless, it has often happened that men make glee for others
   when they are full of gloom themselves. The face smiles like summer,
   but the heart is freezing with the cold of winter. Not so the man who
   has laid hold on God. "My heart rejoices," he says, "my heart
   rejoices." No, he puts in the word, "greatly." "My heart greatly
   rejoices," as if it were as full of joy as ever it could be! As though
   it throbbed and danced joyously with a fullness of delight. "My heart
   greatly rejoices!" And Christians can say this whenever they lay hold
   on God, even though they are surrounded with a world of trouble! We
   know, sometimes, what it is to wear a sad face with a glad heart, just
   as some others are wearing a glad face with a sad heart. Blessed is the
   man whom God has taught greatly to rejoice! Let him indulge the holy
   humor to the best of his ability!

   What, now, is the outcome of this sacred, soul-satisfying joy? He says,
   "With my song will I praise Him." Whenever you feel exceedingly glad in
   the Lord, be sure to let people know! This is one of the emotions which
   ought never to be concealed. When I have been preaching among the
   Primitive Methodists, at the very mention of joy in the Lord, I have
   heard them shout out, "Hallelujah." In Wales I have heard the,
   "Gogoniant"--glory be to God! We do not commit such improprieties here,
   do we? We are too quiet and proper to transgress the rules of enforced
   decorum! And yet, sometimes, it might be the most natural thing in the
   world for a Christian to feel that he could not hold his strong
   emotions in stiff restraint, but must shout aloud, "Bless the Lord, O
   my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!"

   Do you think, dear Friends, we sing enough? I do not think we do. The
   world is very pleased with singing of a certain sort. Tuneful airs are
   tacked on to trashy words. What foolishness we hear in the popular
   songs of the day! I have been quite unable to understand the sense when
   the sound has jingled in my ears. When I have asked, "What does it
   mean?" nobody has been able to interpret, or at least to make me
   comprehend it. To them it may have appeared like a clever ballad, but
   to me it seemed mere empty doggerel! Well, if they are not ashamed to
   sing their bacchanalian songs and sometimes to make night hideous with
   their choruses, surely we need not be ashamed to sing the songs of
   Zion--and to sing them with spirit, too!

   Good woman, why don't you sing? You would handle that box-iron just as
   well if you sang a Psalm. You could mend those children's clothes quite
   as cleverly if you would sing a hymn. Good Friend, there, you could
   crack your whip as you walked along by the side of your pair of horses
   pulling the cart and yet hum a favorite tune. To get alone and sing
   some sacred melody by yourselves is very refreshing. My father had,
   years ago, a servant who was always singing. And when he asked her why,
   she said that it helped to keep bad thoughts away. I knew a boy who was
   so fond of singing the praises of the Lord that his employers would let
   him go out on the Common, sometimes, to give vent to his vocal powers,
   for he sang rather too much and too loud for a quiet house.

   I love to see young Christians fall ofjoy! It is good, sometimes, to
   get away and have a time to yourself, as much as if you said, "I am not
   singing for any of you, but I am singing to God." I listened one night
   and heard the nightingale with its delicious, "joog, joog, joog,"
   pouring forth such sweet music that it seemed to make the moon stand
   still, charmed with the strain! I know that the nightingale did not
   sing to me. He did not know that I was listening, nor would he have
   cared if he had known! Perhaps if he had noticed that I had been so
   close, he might have flown away! He was singing

   without regard to human ears. It is a sweet thing just to sing unto the
   Lord. Classical music is all very well, but heart music is the essence
   of sweetness. "My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my
   heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him."

   Did you ever, when you walk through the woods in springtime, come upon
   a stretch of blue hyacinth? You fancy that a piece has been torn away
   from the azure mantle of the sky and thrown down among the trees! Why
   are those hyacinths clothed in such cerulean splendor? For what purpose
   is their sweet perfume poured forth in such lavish profusion? Do you
   say, "They waste their sweetness on the desert air"? No, O Man! Know,
   rather, that God is near! Those flowers are His and this is His garden!
   He delights to gaze on their living sapphires! Did you ever light upon
   a clump of lovely flowers in a lone spot of forest, moor, or common
   where the foot of man has seldom profaned the soil? Have you not paused
   to admire?

   There they stand with their golden cups, like chamberlains of a king!
   Why are they here in such gorgeous livery? Who is all this beautiful
   variety of form and color intended to greet? "Solomon in all his glory
   was not arrayed like one of these." What king has come to dine here and
   sip from those jeweled chalices? It is the eternal God who made them
   and who takes delight in the work of His hands! It is He who walks
   among these solitary beauties in the cool of the day. Did you not see
   the flowers bow their heads in worship as they felt His breath among
   their foliage? Down deep at the bottom of the sea the coral grows in
   luxuriant abundance and many-tinted shells that seem like unfinished
   rainbows are lying there unseen, never to be seized by human hands, or
   bartered in the market for gain. The Lord visits those cool grottoes
   and takes pleasure in His own delicate handiwork!

   All things are not for greedy man! The Lord has His reserved gardens,
   His springs shut up, His fountains sealed. So let it be with us. Do not
   let us wait to praise the Lord till we can get an audience of our
   fellow creatures, though we may sometimes wish that our songs would
   charm their ears and win their love for Jesus. But let us, oftentimes,
   retire into holy solitude and then, all alone, break the silence of our
   loneliness, saying, "My heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I
   praise the Lord. As long as I live and when I die, and when I rise
   again, and through eternity, with my song will I praise

   Him."--

   "In blessing You with grateful songs, My happy life shall glide away.
   The praise that to Your name belongs, Hourly with lifted hands I'd
   pray. Abundant sweetness! While I sing Your love, my ravished heart
   overflows; Secure in You, my God and King, Of glory that no period
   knows." How I wish that some would begin at this moment a life of
   praise! Begin by taking God to be your strength--begin by trusting in
   Christ to be your shield! Begin by an experience of the power of prayer
   to bring you help! If you do, you shall rise from height to height in
   your flights of praise! You shall, first, join with us below to sing as
   best you can and, afterwards, you shall mount into the upper orchestra
   where all the chosen singers meet and sit and chant with them the
   endless anthem which ascends unto Jehovah, our strength and our song!

   God bless you, Beloved, and give you to know and prove the sweetness of
   this blessed text--and make you to sing David's Divine song to the
   stringed instruments of your renewed hearts all the days of your lives.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Great Bargain

   (No. 1424)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Again, the kingdom of Hea ven is like unto a merchant, seeking good
   pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold
   all that he had, and bought it." Matthew 13:45, 46.

   A MERCHANT endeavors to trade so as to make a profit. Whether he deals
   in pearls or in grain, he does not hope to obtain riches by labor. He
   leaves that to those who eat their bread in the sweat of their face. He
   tries to get his by the sweat of his brain. He is dependent not so much
   upon labor as upon knowledge, upon skill, upon the advantage which
   superior acquaintance with the article which he deals in gives him.
   Now, this merchant is, at the very commencement, in some measure, a
   picture of the seeker after Christ. Christ and His salvation are not to
   be earned--they are not to be procured as the result of labor. Christ
   is to be had by knowledge. What says the Scripture? "By his knowledge
   shall My righteous servant justify many," that is, through their
   knowing Christ they become justified.

   This is, indeed, another way of putting the system of salvation which
   is stated thus, "How shall I hear without a preacher?" The work begins
   with hearing the preacher. It then goes on to believing what you hear
   and through believing you are saved. This is virtually knowledge--the
   knowledge communicated by God's messenger or by God's Word--the
   knowledge heard, the knowledge believed. So men come to the knowledge
   of Him whom to know is life eternal, for when a man knows Christ and
   understands Him so that he gives his heart to Him, then is he saved!

   Inasmuch, then, as the merchant seeks his advantage by superior
   knowledge, he becomes a type of the man who gets saved through
   obtaining the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus
   Christ. I shall not, however, enlarge upon this analogy, but proceed at
   once to speak of the merchant in this parable, for here we have a fit
   emblem of many who lay hold on Christ and find Him to be their All in
   All. Let us watch this merchant while he is doing four things. First,
   seeking, then finding. Then selling and, fourthly, buying again.

   I. First, then, we shall WATCH HIM WHILE HE IS SEEKING. "The kingdom of
   Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking good pearls." It is different
   from the man we read of just now who, by accident, discovered a
   treasure while he was in the field. He was looking for something else
   and came upon the treasure. That is the man whom God, in infinite
   Sovereignty, saves, though He was heretofore indifferent and careless.
   This is a person of a nobler sort. He is of a higher grade of mind. He
   is of an altogether different mental constitution. He is seeking good
   pearls--something good, not exactly seeking the one Pearl of Great
   Price, for at first he does not know about it. But, still, he is
   seeking pearls and he comes upon one pearl in consequence of his
   seeking.

   Now, notice about him, as a seeker, that he has his mind awakened and
   engaged. He is thinking about something-- thinking about pearls. His
   heart is occupied with his business. His energies are thrown into it.
   All his thoughts are in the direction of precious stones. Oh that we
   could wake men up to exercise the faculty of thinking and then to
   direct, to regulate and to control their thoughts! But thinking is an
   occupation that a great many persons altogether dislike! They are
   frivolous. We cannot get them to think about anything. Why is it that
   people are so passionately fond of reading novels and so seldom read
   the true histories which are quite as interesting and far more capable
   of affording pleasure and pastime? It is because the minds of men are
   frivolous.

   An idle tale--a silly story of a love-sick maiden--will engross them by
   the hour together! But anything that is solid and worth the knowing
   seems to have small charm for their shallow brains. Many minds never
   get on the wing at all. Many men work so hard with their hands and
   suffers such fatigue from bodily labor that they are scarcely able to
   think much, while there are others who dissipate their time and consume
   their lives in idleness till they are utterly disqualified for any
   vigorous thought. They are lazy and sluggish. They have dry rot in
   their very souls! Their brains do not work. They seem to live in one
   everlasting lethargy and daydream. Oh that men were wise, that they
   were thoughtful! Happy was the preacher who knew that he was addressing
   himself to a thoroughly intelligent, thoughtful congregation! We

   would expect, then, that the handfuls of good seed would drop into the
   furrows readily and bring forth an abundant harvest!

   This merchant's mind was awakened. He had something before him. Equally
   evident is it that he had a fixed definite objective. He had given
   himself to pearl hunting and pearl hunting was to be the one objective
   of his life. If you had met him and said, "What are you seeking?" He
   would have answered in a moment, "I am seeking good pearls. Have you
   any to sell me?" He would have been sure to have the answer ready to
   hand. But ask many a man whom you meet with, "Sir, what are you living
   for?" he would, perhaps, tell you what his trade or what his profession
   might be! And if you pressed him with the question, "What is your main
   objective in life?" he would not like to say that he was living only to
   enjoy himself--seeking his own pleasure. He would hardly like to say
   that he was living to grasp and grab and get a fortune. He would hardly
   know how to answer you!

   Many young men are in this condition--they don't have a definite
   objective. Now, you will not make a good captain if you do not know the
   port you are sailing for. You will make a poor life of it, young Man,
   if you go out as an apprentice and then, afterwards, as a master with
   no definite aim and end. Say to yourself, "I can only live for two
   things. I can live for God, or I can live for the devil--which, now, am
   I going to do?" Get your mind well fixed and firmly resolved as to
   which it shall be. I will put it to you as boldly and baldly as even
   Elijah did when he said, "If Baal is God, serve him, but if Jehovah is
   God, serve Him." If the world, if the flesh, if the devil are worth
   serving, go follow the career of a sensualist and say so! Let yourself
   know what you are at--but if God is worth serving and your soul worth
   the saving, go for that! Do not sneak through this world really seeking
   yourself and yet not having the courage to say to yourself, "Self, you
   are living for yourself." Have a definite and distinct objective, or
   else your vital energies will be wasted and your most industrious days
   will be recklessly squandered!

   This merchant, in the next place, had an objective which was not at all
   commonplace. Other people might go in for bricks and stones, or for
   grain, or for timber. He went in for pearls. He was a merchant seeking
   pearls and those the best he could find. He did not go in for common
   sea pearls, or pearls such as you may get in a Scotch river, but he
   went in for good pearls. He took a high aim, as far as that line of
   action was concerned. He went into a fine business. I would to God that
   many who have not found Christ, nevertheless had sufficient common
   sense, sprinkled over with Grace, to say, "I will go in for something
   good. My life shall not be an evil one"--

   "Lives of great men all remind us We may make our lives sublime."

   It goes well for a young man when he has such an aspiration as this
   within him--"My life, too, shall be sublime. I will not seek mean or
   menial objects. I will not cultivate any depraved or groveling tastes.
   I will seek something that I can commend to my own
   conscience--something that will bear reflection when I come to
   die--something that will carry the sterling mark when I have to value
   it in another world." O young Merchant, if you are about to start in
   business, I recommend this business of seeking good pearls! Seek the
   Truth of God, seek honor, seek temperance, seek peace, seek love, seek
   that which will make you good and true and right! I will tell you,
   soon, where you may find these, but for the present it may suffice me
   to inculcate a laudable ambition for everything that is honest and of
   good repute--and an eager desire with your heart for that which your
   conscience commends.

   The merchant went to seek pearls and he sought them with diligence. The
   merchant was seeking good pearls. He did not open a shop and say,
   "Pearls bought here if anybody likes to bring them," but he went forth
   in quest of them. How far he traveled I do not know, but the oriental
   trader frequently goes immense distances. You may meet a
   Nijni-Novgorod, in the south of Russia, with traders who have been all
   round the globe seeking what they want--men who do not always travel by
   railway, but who will walk any distance to obtain the very article on
   which they have set their minds and in which they deal. Distance seems,
   with them, to be no object. Ah, and when a man has got a noble
   objective before him, and says, "Before I die, I will accomplish
   something that shall be right and true and beneficial to my fellow
   men," he will face hardships that would baffle his fellows!

   I pray God that he may have the perseverance to carry that out and that
   he may say, "Is there anything right to be learned? I will learn it,
   let it cost me what it may of care and toil, of headaches and
   heartaches, of buying experience and burning the midnight oil! If there
   is anything to be done that is good and true, I will do it at any
   hazard, for I am seeking good pearls." And as the merchant was seeking,
   so he was using discrimination at the same time. When we are very

   diligent and full of desire, we are in imminent danger of being easily
   deceived, but this man, seeking good pearls, was not like a lady
   unacquainted with the nature of pearls--he was a man who knew a pearl
   when he saw it! He knew the character of pearls and the value of
   pearls. He could tell which were cloudy and which had a soft radiance
   and which were of the first water.

   Indeed, he could tell a genuine pearl from an imitation one! He was a
   merchant seeking good pearls. Yes, dear Friend, and I pray God that if
   He put into the heart of any Brother or Sister here to live for the
   right and for the true, He would give you great discrimination, for
   there are many shams in the world and you may readily grasp that which
   appears to be substantial goodness--and it may turn out to be a shadow.
   Seek not only pearls, but seek good pearls. Go in for the good! Yes,
   cast your soul about to find the best! Evidently this merchant went
   into the business with comparatively moderate expectations. He was
   seeking pearls. They must be of a tolerable size and pure. He evidently
   expected to buy a good many of them. It was what he was seeking,
   seeking good "pearls" (in the plural).

   He had not reckoned that he should be fortunate enough to light upon
   one huge pearl that should be worth an emperor's ransom! That he had
   not looked for, though he did feel a desire that way. If anybody had
   said, "Would you like to find a big pearl?" he would have said, "That I
   would! That is infinitely better than to find a number of little ones."
   He hardly hoped for it and, therefore, he did not seek it, but, still,
   he was ready enough to have it if it came his way. And so, my dear
   Friends, I am speaking of a class of persons--and I hope there may be
   representatives of them here--who want everything they can get that is
   good and true.

   You need to be temperate in all things. You need to have an unsullied
   character. I remember that was my own desire, when first I thought of
   the life that lay beyond me. Before I knew the Lord I used to think, "O
   that I might be kept from dishonesty, that I might be preserved from
   falsehood, that I might be kept from a malicious spirit, that I might
   be right-hearted and true." Those were the pearls that I wanted! I did
   not know, just then, that I could find something that would include all
   these minor pearls and a good deal more! Still, it is well when such a
   desire as that is in the heart, especially of any young man. I wish it
   were in the heart of the old, if up till now they have never found the
   Pearl of Great Price!

   Thus have I shown you the man while he is seeking. I wonder whether he
   has come in here tonight and is sitting among this assembly. Perhaps it
   is not a man at all, but a woman, a merchant woman. They can do trading
   well. Lydia, that seller of purple, was, no doubt, an admirable
   tradeswoman, and in the Divine trade of which we are now speaking there
   is no difference. Well, you do not know the Lord yet, dear Friends, but
   you do need to seek everything that is excellent. So far so good.

   II. Let us go a stage farther, then, and look at this man's FINDING. He
   was buying pearls everywhere. Where he went he asked people if they had
   any pearls. He went down back streets, into the slums of big cities and
   searched out the Jews in those old days, living in the dirtiest corners
   of the city. He wanted to know whether they had any pearls. It was
   pearls in the morning, pearls at mid-day, pearls at night! If under his
   window at night anybody had cried, "Pearls!" he would have been
   downstairs in an instant to get them! He was hard after pearls and so
   it came to pass that he lit upon a pearl that he never hoped to see. It
   was more than he expected! Ah, I pray God that some here, whose hearts
   are honestly seeking after that which is right, may find Christ, who
   has in Him more of the spirit of temperance, uprightness, truth and
   philanthropy than will be found anywhere else! Oh, that they might find
   Him who is the Truth and whose doctrine is perfect holiness and
   everlasting life! It will be more than they ever expected to find! And
   when they do find it, how glad they will be!

   Certainly this man was in the way of finding a fine pearl if anybody
   was. He was seeking good pearls, not the one pearl, but he was in the
   pearl line and so he was likely to discover the best pearl if anybody
   discovered it. "Being in the way, the Lord met with Him," says one of
   old. Oh, if you have desires after that which is right and true and
   good, I trust that the Lord Jesus will manifest Himself to you and that
   you will say, "This is the very thing I sought for! I have longed and
   pined after it and here it is." This find was to this merchant a
   remarkable one! He did not find good pearls--he found what was much
   better--one pearl. And to him that one pearl contained all the little
   pearls that he had before been seeking after. Tell it and let all men
   know it, that all that is good beneath the sun--all that is true, all
   that is right, all that is loving, all that is philanthropic, all that
   is of good report, commendable before God and praiseworthy among
   men--is to be found in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ!

   And it will be given to us and worked in us when we submit ourselves to
   Him and make Him our All in All. He who is a Christian, if he is
   perfectly a Christian, has all good things in one! If there is anything
   that is to be praised and extolled by philosopher or sage, you shall
   find it in the example of the Master! And He will give us Grace to
   exhibit it in ourselves! So this man found all in one. What the value
   of that pearl was I do not know. The estimate of its value is not
   given. We only know that he thought it worth all that he had and he
   went away and sold all that he had that he might buy it. And he
   evidently thought it worth all the other pearls he had ever been
   seeking because if he spent his all upon that one pearl it would be
   clear that he must have abandoned the searching after smaller pearls
   since he had no capital left!

   But he thought the one pearl of more account than all other pearls and
   worth more than all that he had. Yes, I guarantee you that he thought
   it worth a great deal more than all that he possessed. He would not
   have sold all that he had in stock to buy it if he had not the notion
   that it was worth ten times the price then and, that when he had paid
   for it, he should have made his fortune and should be rich beyond a
   miser's dream--for that is how traders in such things are sure to fetch
   their bargains! Well, when a man finds Christ I cannot tell you how
   much he values Him, but this I know-- all the world besides seems
   nothing to a Christian when he has once found His Lord and Master! "Oh
   what a Christ I have!" he says. But he cannot tell how dear--how
   inconceivably precious--the Christ of God is to his soul!

   Concerning this find we must mark, next, that the man, having found it,
   was resolved that he would have it. Having found a pearl of great
   price, he did not question whether he should buy it or not. If he had
   not gone out honestly to seek pearls, he would have objected to the
   price, but being intent upon finding pearls, he no sooner found this
   one than he said, "I must have that. I can let the little pearls go if
   you like, but I must have that." And it is a grand thing when the Lord
   brings the human mind to this! "I see that in Christ there is
   everything I need--pardon for my sin, cleansing for my nature, Grace to
   maintain my character and to make me perfectly fit for Heaven. There is
   all in Christ that I need and I must have Him! I must have Him! It
   comes to this--at any price--whatever it may cost me, I must and I will
   have Him!"

   Now, although the parable does not say it in so many words, it is
   perfectly clear that the person with whom he was dealing was willing to
   sell. When he had found a pearl of great price, he bought it, which he
   could not have done if the other had not been ready to sell it. Albeit
   the Lord, in His mercy, does not sell His Grace, but gives it freely,
   the manner in which He disposes of it is here described under the
   figure of selling. If you want Christ, you may have Him if you are
   willing to come to the terms which God lays down. Of this I shall have
   to speak presently. If you desire this Pearl of Great Price, there is
   no reason in the world why that Pearl should not be yours tonight!

   If now you have found Him, who is "the chief among ten thousand" and,
   "altogether lovely," and you value Him so that you cannot be happy
   without Him, He will become, at once, your portion! If, having heard of
   Christ, your desire is toward Him as all your soul can need and you are
   ready to say, "I will not leave this house of prayer till Christ is
   mine," there is no obstacle to your possessing this priceless Gift!
   Yes, God, even the Father, is willing that you should have His only
   begotten Son to be your Pearl from now on and forevermore!

   III. Having thus described the seeker and described the finder, we must
   go on to describe him SELLING. He sold all that he had. It had taken
   him a long time to get it together and, I have no doubt, he had much
   pleasure in the accumulation. But now he has great pleasure in selling.
   "Buy my farm," he says to one man. "Come, buy it!" "I don't know that I
   want to buy farms," says the other. "It is nothing! It is nothing!"
   "Nevertheless, let us come to terms. I need money and I must have
   money." And away went the furniture in the house, one article after
   another! They must all go! Clear them all out! This was a rapid sale.
   He must have money. Everything must go for that pearl! Though he did
   not tell anybody his motive, that pearl was on his brain and on his
   heart--and all must go.

   He is more glad to get rid of his possessions than ever he was to
   obtain them! Away they shall go at the best price they will fetch, but
   go they must, for he must have the pearl! Well now, Jesus Christ is to
   be had, but there is a great deal that a man must give up if he is ever
   to call Christ his own. "What, then," says one, "what am I to give up?"
   Well, there must be a selling off tonight of a whole mass of old
   prejudices. Sometimes when the Truth of God, as it is in Jesus, comes
   to a man's mind, he repels it because it is so different from what he
   has learned ever since he was a child. And the notion is that you had
   better follow the religion of your parents. If you had been a
   Hottentot, you would have worshipped a fetish. If you had been born in
   Hindustan, you must have worshipped Juggernaut, according to that
   theory.

   But it is a great mercy when a man says, "Now, I understand that Jesus,
   the Son of God, has died in the place of sinners that believe in Him
   and I am simply to believe in Him and I shall be saved! On my believing
   I shall receive a new

   nature and be born again by the Holy Spirit, and from that time on I
   shall become the disciple and the servant of Christ. Now," says the
   man, "I will do it! It is contrary to what I have always been told. I
   have been led to think that it was my good works which would save me. I
   have heard that Saving Grace was in the sacraments, but at last I
   perceive that God teaches in His Word that salvation is by faith in
   Jesus Christ, and I will have it! I will sell my prejudices! Away they
   shall

   go."

   Next to that you must sell off your righteousness. It will not fetch
   much, but I daresay you think it is a fine thing. Up to now you have
   been very good and your own esteem of yourself is that as far as the
   Commandments--"All these have I kept from my youth up." And what with a
   good deal of Church going, or attendance at the Meeting House and a few
   extra prayers on Christmas and Good Friday, and just a little dose of
   sacraments, you feel yourself in tolerably good shape! Now, Friend,
   that old moth-eaten righteousness of yours that you are so proud of,
   you must sell off and get rid of, for no man can be saved by the
   righteousness of Christ while he puts any trust in his own! Sell it
   all--every rag of it! And if nobody will buy it, at any rate you must
   part with it! Assuredly it is not worth putting among the filthiest of
   rags, for it is worse than they are!

   And everything else that you have before now thought fit to boast
   of--come on, you must get rid of it! You know so much. Well, you had
   better sell off what you know, for unless a man become as a little
   child he cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven. You are somebody--you
   fancy you are not cast in a common mold--you have a great strength of
   will and can force your way to Heaven! You will have to get rid of that
   little conceit, for that strength of yours will be your weakness! It is
   only when we are weak in ourselves that we can ever be strong in
   Christ! Are you content to do so? Will you sell off all the old
   prejudices and all the old righteousnesses? Going, going, gone! Will
   you let them go, or have you got a reserve price? Let them go, for they
   are dross and dung and the sooner they are gone the better--for then
   you can buy the Pearl of Great Price--but not till then!

   Yes, and there are some men that will have to give up a good deal of
   what they call pleasure--sinful pleasure. No pleasure which is honest,
   which is really beneficial to us, need ever be denied to us--

   "Religion never was designed To make our pleasures less."

   It makes them vastly more! But any pleasure that savors of sin is to be
   done away with. Come, can you sell all that? That mixing in loose
   company, anything approaching to lewdness, anything that has to do with
   the gratification of the vile passions of the flesh--come, for Christ's
   sake, can you give it up? Well, if you cannot, of course you cannot
   have the Pearl! If you must have the world you cannot have Christ. If
   you can find pleasure in the haunts of sin, you are of your father, the
   devil, and you do his works. But come out from it! Give them all up!
   Cast it behind you. These things must be sold off if we are to have the
   Pearl.

   And, then, sometimes, in some cases, men have to give up a good deal of
   the honors and the satisfaction of life that arise from the esteem of
   their fellow creatures. Has it come to this, "If I become a Christian
   they will ridicule me"? Well now, can you not put up with a little
   disgrace for Christ? "But if I am an earnest Christian, then I shall
   have to encounter all sorts of slander." Be it so. And can you not give
   up the applause of men for the sake of Christ? Come and let the dogs
   tear your character to shreds as long as you are right before Him and
   your motive is pure! "Yes, but I know what it is. I shall get the cold
   shoulder in society if I become a thoroughly earnest Christian. There
   is Lady So-and-So, for whom I have very great respect, whose good
   opinion I would not forfeit on any account--and she would not recognize
   me any more." Very well, but can you put the whole lot of it into the
   scale and say, "I sell it all off! I let it all go, that I may have the
   Pearl"?

   That man is not worthy of Christ who would be ashamed to stand in the
   pillory with Him, or go with Him to prison and to death! We must so
   love Him that we count reproach for His sake to be honor, even as Moses
   counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of
   Egypt. "Well, you have taken enough, surely." Yes, but this pearl
   hunter sold all that he had, but you have got a little left. You have
   got some prospects. If you become a Christian your old uncle will cut
   you out of his will. You know very well that if you shall go to hear
   the Gospel at such-and-such a place you are very likely to be fired
   from your employment. "But we must live," says somebody. This is not at
   all clear to my mind! I know that we must die, but as to, "must live" I
   do not feel quite so certain about that!

   It is infinitely better to die than ever to do a dishonorable thing! If
   Jesus Christ is our Master, we must be content to let the fairest
   prospect go and all things that seem to encourage our success in this
   life must be secondary in our thinking! We must seek, first, the
   kingdom of God and His righteousness. Yes, and sometimes even love that
   has been longed for must go for Christ's sake. Company that has been
   delightful must be forsaken for Christ's sake. And if all this is done,
   yet it is still not enough! He that has Christ must give himself and
   all that he has to Christ! I should doubt whether I were a follower of
   Christ if I had not in my very soul given up to Him all that I am and
   all that I have, to be forever His.

   He has bought us with a price and it is not right for us to give him
   only one arm, one eye, one foot and half a heart! He that is a true
   Christian is a Christian through and through! Whatever he possesses of
   talent. Whatever of substance he owns, he looks upon nothing as being
   his own, but as all belonging to his Master and he is prepared to use
   all for his Master's Glory and to part with all if so it were necessary
   for the maintenance of his Master's kingdom! The merchant sold all that
   he had! I think I see you draw back. "This--this is too hard a line."
   Very well, if you do not want to buy the Pearl--that is to say, if you
   do not want to make your fortune, for the buying of the pearl was the
   making of the merchant's fortune--if you do not think the Pearl is
   worth it, pray do not have it!

   It is not possible to estimate the intrinsic value, the real worth of
   Christ! We do not cast pearls before swine. If you do not want Him,
   there are plenty who do. He need not come begging of you that you will
   be His customer. God forbid you should refuse, but if you do not want
   Him, then say so! Only say it, and definitely and distinctly say it, "I
   will have nothing to do with Him." But this man went and sold all that
   he had. I tell you he was glad to sell it. He counted that the man who
   bought his farm was doing him a favor. "Take it," he said, "there, I
   will let you have it under price if you will only let me have the
   money. I so much want to get money."

   No, but he did not dare tell him such for fear he should go and raise
   the price, but in his heart, "I do so much want to get that pearl that
   I really would be obliged to anybody who will take that stock off my
   hands." So if you really want Christ, instead of needing Him to urge
   you to dispose of these poor effects which I have described, you will
   be eager to be rid of them that Christ may be yours! May the Spirit of
   God work in you such a high resolve!

   IV. Now, the last thing is THE BUYING. He had sold all that he had and
   then he pays the shekels--pays them over that he may have the
   pearl--and he gets the pearl. It was a considerate purchase--a
   deliberate bargain. He did not see the pearl and then, in a hurry go
   and sell his goods and guess at the value of it. No, but he had looked
   at it, for he was a seeker of pearls. He knew a pearl when he saw it,
   though I dare say he did not tell the seller all that he had seen in
   it. He said to himself, "That is a wonderful pearl. If I can get the
   money--my little stock won't fetch above 500 pounds--but if I can get
   it for that, I am a made man."

   And so he thought it over. It did not need much thinking over. Oh, if a
   soul did but know Christ, he would not think twice before he would have
   Him! If men were not such fools--if they had but light from Heaven to
   see the value of my Lord and Master--instead of our standing here and
   having to beg and persuade and find out new words of commendation, I
   think they would only say, "Tell us about Him! We will have Him! What
   does He ask of us? What can we do for Him? What can we submit to so
   long as we may but make sure of Him who forgives all sin, who gives
   immediate and perfect salvation to all who trust Him? So long as we may
   have the Christ of whom it is written, 'He that believes in Him has
   everlasting life,' we shall be content."

   It was a well considered purchase. And it was an immediate purchase. He
   did not go home and say, "I shall think about this." No, but he knew
   that pearl and he said, "If I let that slip through my fingers I shall
   never see the likes of it again. If anybody else gets that bargain,
   then I shall have lost the one opportunity of my life." And so he does
   but take time enough to go and sell his farm and the little land he had
   and the little property he had. He was back quickly with his money,
   only afraid somebody might have slipped in between and offered another
   thousand or two more than he was able to raise and that he might lose
   the pearl. So, dear Friends, he that comes to Christ aright may well
   deliberate about it, but the end of his deliberation ought to be very
   speedy. "If He is to be had, let me have Him. Oh, if I can know my sins
   forgiven, let me know it! Oh, if by any means I can have peace with
   God--if I can become a child of God and an heir of Heaven--if my
   eternal happiness can be secured, oh, let it be secured! How is it
   done? Come, tell me at once! I wish not to leave my seat till I have
   found that which you speak of."

   It was a deliberate bargain--an immediate bargain. And then it was a
   joyful one! I am sure his eyes twinkled as he paid over his money. I
   should like to have a picture of his face, when at last he had got his
   pearl! Now, that which he had

   been all over the world for, he not only got, but something a great
   deal better! He got his pearl and, I dare say, he was ready to jump for
   joy to think that he got it! Ah, when a soul gets Christ it is--

   "Happy day, happy day,

   For He has washed my sins away." It is the beginning of delight to a
   soul when he can say, "Jesus is mine! I know He is! Grace has enabled
   me to lay hold upon Him." And, oh, what an enriching purchase it was
   which the man had made! When he had once got the pearl, instead of his
   property, he thought to himself, "Why, I have got a hundred times more
   property, now, than I had! Though I have given up that bit of land I
   can buy half a province, now, if I like, with this pearl which I have
   obtained!

   So, Brothers and Sisters, if you have ever given up anything for
   Christ, I am sure that the Lord Jesus Christ has made you very ample
   rewards! Some years ago a person rather eccentrically advertised for
   persons who had been losers by obedience to the Divine Command--that if
   anyone who had lost anything through love to Christ would apply to him,
   he would make it up. The odd advertisement appeared for some months in
   one of our religious periodicals. But the oddest thing is that nobody
   ever answered it! I would have thought that somebody would have tried
   and made up a case, but nobody did! You cannot make up such a case--you
   are no losers by Christ!

   "But," say some, "the martyrs were, were they not?" Well, they are up
   there, ask them! They will tell you as you look at them with their ruby
   crowns, all brilliant in the light of God, as they stand--

   "Fairest of the sons light, Midst the bright ones, doubly bright," that
   they counted it their honor that they should be permitted to lay down
   their lives for Jesus' sake! Oh, there is no losing when you deal with
   Him! You will make 500 per cent over this exchange--be sure of that!
   No, it shall be a thousand per cent, for, "No man," says He, "shall
   lose house and lands for My sake that shall not receive in this world a
   hundredfold, and in the world to come, life everlasting."

   This was a final purchase. The merchant, according to the parable,
   never went buying pearls anymore. "No," said he, "No. I have bought a
   pearl of great price and now I will go out of the business." And when a
   man once finds Christ-- ah, then he seeks nothing more! If Jesus Christ
   is mine, more than all in Him I find. He does not need a secondary
   object. His desires all stay home and satisfy themselves with the
   fullness that is in Christ Jesus. He went out of the pearl-hunting
   line, for he had found all the pearls he should ever need. And it was a
   purchase he never regretted. The parable does not say that he came back
   to the seller and said, "There, take your pearl, and let me have my
   house and lands back." No, it was done! The great transaction was done!
   He never wished to have it undone! With his pearl of immense worth, he
   was a rich man, worthy to be the rival of princes, and he felt that it
   was enough.

   Oh, blessed are they who can say, "It is enough," and can rejoice and
   bless and magnify the Lord--

   "Now rest, my long-divided heart! Fixed on this blissful center, rest!
   With ashes who would grudge to part, When called on angels' bread to
   feast?" Let me, however, just put in one word of caution. Take care,
   dear merchant Brothers, that when you buy a pearl, you buy a good
   one--that it is the Pearl of Great Price! I have known noble spirits
   whom I have admired and felt ready to weep over--men that have been
   heroic in the pursuit of that which seemed to them perfectly true and
   have made a sacrifice of all that they had for it--and yet they have
   been deceived. They have grasped antichrist instead of Christ! They
   welcomed the lie of Hell which came to them in the garb of the angel of
   light! Mind, mind that you get Christ and His Truth as you find it
   revealed in Scripture and revealed a second time in your own heart by
   the Holy Spirit--for whatever is short of Christ will prove a cheat and
   deceive you.

   Some years ago one of the largest pearls that was ever found passed
   into the hands of a Russian. It was a very large pearl, indeed--as
   large as an egg and of a pear shape. He purchased it, the party who had
   it being ignorant of its value. He was a man of substance and he kept
   it and prepared a house which, though sparse on the exterior, was
   sumptuously furnished within. And he would take his guests into an
   inner chamber which, when it was unlocked, contained a table of marble
   in the center of which was a box which had to be unlocked with several
   keys and the reading of an alphabet, and so forth, and at last he
   produced this pearl. He was very reluctant of ever permitting it to
   depart from his hands, for it was of immense value.

   The Emperor of Russia bid an enormous price for it and promised him
   honor and rank, but he would not part with it. It happened, however,
   that the possessor of this pearl was implicated--whether truthfully, or
   not, I cannot tell--in a conspiracy and had to leave his home at St.
   Petersburg. He took with him nothing but his pearl and came to Paris
   sufficiently rich in the possession of that pearl. On a certain day,
   the Duke of Brunswick, who was his only rival in such matters, came
   with some others to see the pearl. The owner unlocked it with great
   care and much deliberation. And when he had opened it, he was observed
   to turn suddenly pale. It seemed as if he had been stricken with death.
   Unhappy man! His pearl had suddenly become clouded, as pearls sometimes
   do. It had been taken with some disease which happens to pearls, if I
   may so express it. In a short time it would turn to powder--it had
   ceased to be of any value, whatever, and he had come down from a
   millionaire to a pauper! Yet he had bought a good pearl,
   notwithstanding this seemingly tragedy.

   There is only one Pearl that never can be clouded and will last right
   on throughout eternity and that is the Son of God, "who only has
   immortality." If you get Him, you have a Divine hope which can never
   fail you! But if your hope is in priests or a hope connected with
   sacramentarianism, or any other hope but that of which Christ is top
   and bottom, beginning and end--you may make what sacrifice you
   will--your brightest prospects will end in bitterest disappointment!
   May the Lord grant that none of us may ever be thus balked of our
   life-confidence--that no such blank bewilderment may ever fall on our
   spirits.

   Listen to me, you that follow after righteousness, you that seek the
   Lord. The voice of Jesus is heard in this parable of the kingdom
   describing and directing the seekers. Such persons comprise no small
   fraction of an assembly like the present. It would, indeed, be strange
   if seekers were not always largely represented here and, in every stage
   of anxious enquiry! I am sure some of you have seen the Pearl you want
   sparkling before your eyes. I wonder how many of you have resolved to
   sell all you have to buy it? But who among you all have actually made
   the Pearl your own and rejoice in its possession? That such of you will
   go on your way rejoicing there is no doubt! But will you not return and
   give glory to God? Shall we not have the happiness of greeting you here
   in the fellowship of the kingdom of His Grace? The Lord grant it may be
   so for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Concern For Other Men's Souls

   (No. 1425)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me
   witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great hea viness and continual
   sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that I were accursed from Christ
   for my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh, who are Israelites,
   to whom pertains the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and
   the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose
   are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who
   is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." Romans 9:1-5.

   WHAT an intense man Paul was! Once convince him and his whole nature
   moved in the direction which he judged to be right. He was
   whole-hearted when he persecuted the Church of God and he was equally
   whole-hearted when, afterwards, he labored with all his might to build
   up the Church which he had sought to destroy! I would to God we were
   all as thorough-going in the service of our Lord! The pity is that so
   many professing Christians appear to have no heart, while others borrow
   a heart for some occasions but do not seem to keep one permanently
   beating in their own bosoms. O for a warm, engine-like heart all
   consecrated and forever pulsing mightily!

   What a change was worked in Saul of Tarsus, that he who was so ardent a
   persecutor should become so fervent a preacher! His conversion is one
   of the proofs of the Divinity of Christianity. The study of the story
   of Paul was the means of the conversion of Lord Lyttleton who read it
   with the design of exposing it as a hoax. His friend, Gilbert West,
   was, at the same time, considering the resurrection of our Lord in a
   similar spirit and, happily, with the same result--the friends met to
   unite in the joint conviction that the Bible is the Word of God! Dr.
   Johnson says of Lyttleton's, "Observations upon the Conversion and
   Apostleship of St. Paul," "it is a treatise to which infidelity has
   never been able to fabricate a specious answer."

   Consider for a moment the renowned conversion of Paul. It was
   singularly Providential that just at that period when the Church needed
   such a man, the Apostle with his remarkable education, his noble
   purpose and his acquaintance with Jewish and Greek literature, should
   have been called out from the world and placed in the very forefront of
   the battle for Christ! Truly might he say that he was not a whit behind
   the very chief of the Apostles, though in his humility, he felt himself
   to be nothing. No name in the Christian Church can be pronounced with
   greater honor after that of our glorious Master than the name of Paul
   who was, indeed, a wise master builder.

   When you remember what he was by nature, you will marvel at the
   extraordinary change of thought and feeling which was worked in him! He
   who was cruel to the saints, who gave his voice against Stephen and
   held the garments of those that stoned him, became tenderhearted as a
   nurse towards her child! Though his Jewish brethren terribly persecuted
   him and pursued him from city to city, there is not a trace of
   resentment in any word he writes! Rather, he is full of gentleness. The
   lion had become a lamb and he that breathed out threats breathed out
   prayers! He who seemed to burn with enmity became a flame of love!

   Dear Friends, before we go any further, pause and answer this
   question--has such a change as this been worked in you? Perhaps you
   have never been conspicuously a blasphemer or a persecutor as Paul was,
   but still, if converted, there will have been a very wonderful change
   in you. Old things will have passed away and all things will have
   become new. Do you feel that and do you recognize the change both in
   your inner and outer life? If not, you must be born again! Unless you
   are converted and become as little children, you cannot enter into the
   kingdom of God!

   Our first thought, after reading this passage, is, what a wonderfully
   tender and loving preacher Paul must have been. One of the early
   fathers was known to say that he wished he could have seen Solomon's
   temple in its glory, Rome in its prosperity and Paul preaching! I think
   the last the grandest sight of the three! Oh, to have heard him speak!
   It might have shamed us into deeper tones of earnestness. Though, I
   suppose, his oratory was not very astonishing as mere rhetoric, for
   some said his speech was contemptible, yet it must have been
   wonderfully powerful upon the heart, for it abounded in sighs and tears
   and other tokens of evident emotion! Besides, his awful intensity of
   look and tone must have made his discourses irresistible!

   He would never have written as he has done in his Epistles if he had
   been one who could speak with icicles hanging about his lips. He must
   have spoken from a burning heart which shot forth red-hot bolts of
   fiery words! He poured his language out like lava from a volcano from
   the flaming furnace of his soul! His sentences burned their way into
   the hearts of those who heard him! Brother, if you are called to preach
   the Gospel, let Paul be your model! I reckon that we never preach
   aright unless we pour out our inmost soul! And unless we long and
   hunger and thirst for the conversion of our hearers, we might as well
   be in bed and asleep! We shall teach them to be indifferent if we,
   ourselves, are indifferent.

   If it will satisfy us to read through a little essay or to speak a few
   godly words without heart and life, we are not called to the
   ministry--we are not sent, for we feel no woe upon us! We have not the
   anointing, for the live coal from off the altar has never blistered our
   lips! John Bunyan says that he often felt, while preaching, that he
   would give up his own salvation for the salvation of his hearers--and I
   pity the man who has not felt the same. To preach with the harps of
   angels ringing in your ears, anxious that all your hearers should
   stand, at last, among the elect company above, or to preach with the
   groans of Hell rising in your ears and piercing your heart, anxious
   beyond all things that no man who listens to your voice should ever
   come into that place of torment--this is the Pauline style! The style
   of Demosthenes, the manner of Cicero, the method of the forum--these
   are nothing! Commend me to the eloquence of Paul and to the oratory of
   his Master, for Paul was a great preacher because he caught his
   Master's spirit and spoke in the manner of Him of whom they said of
   old, "Never man spoke like this Man."

   Now, coming to the text and dwelling upon it, I shall want to notice
   first, the persons about whom Paul felt the anxiety which he expresses.
   Then, secondly, we shall look further into the character of that
   anxiety. And, lastly, we shall dwell awhile upon the excellence of each
   one of us feeling just as Paul did, for a thousand good results would
   follow if God the Spirit would bring us to the same condition of heart!

   I. First, then, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE FOR WHOM PAUL WAS ANXIOUS BEYOND
   MEASURE? To begin with, they were his worst enemies! The name of Paul
   brought the blood into the face of a Jew. He spat in rage. More than 40
   of them had bound themselves with an oath that they would slay him and
   the whole company of the circumcised seemed, wherever he went, to be
   moved by the same impulse. He frequently gathered large congregations
   of Gentiles who attended to him earnestly, but the Jews stirred up
   riots and mobs and, frequently, he was in danger of his life from them.
   They detested him, regarding him as an accursed apostate from the faith
   of his fathers.

   Remembering how earnest he had been against Christ, they could not
   believe in his sincerity when he became a Christian, or, if they did,
   they hated him as a fanatic whose delusion was mischievous beyond
   measure. His generous retaliation was to pray for them--no, more--to
   carry the whole nation on his heart as a burden. "I have great
   heaviness," says he, "and continual sorrow of heart for my kinsmen
   according to the flesh." Now, if any of you, in following Christ,
   should meet with opposition, avenge it in the same way! Love most the
   man who treats you worst! If any man would kill you in his anger, kill
   him with your loving prayers. If he strikes you on one cheek, turn to
   him the other, also, in submission and lift both hands and eyes to
   Heaven and cry, "Father forgive them, for they know not what

   they do!"

   Never let oppressors see your anger. They will observe your emotion and
   your grief and they will perceive that you are naturally vexed and
   troubled, but let them also see that you bear them no malice and only
   desire their welfare. I commend this to those who have a hard fight for
   Christ in the workroom, in the midst of sneers and jests. Never use the
   devil's weapons, though they lie very handy and look very suitable.
   Only use Christ's Omnipotent weapon of love and so shall you be His
   disciples.

   Next, these people for whom Paul was in so much concern were his
   kinsfolk according to the flesh. It is well said that charity must
   begin at home, for he that does not care for his own household is worse
   than a heathen and a publican. He

   who does not desire the salvation of those who are his own kin, "how
   dwells the love of God in him?" Christianity is expansive--it makes the
   bosom glow with love to all that God has made--but, at the same time,
   our love does not expand so as to lose force and this is seen when it
   turns its power towards those who are nearest home. Is your husband
   unsaved? O Woman, love him to Christ! Is your child unconverted? O
   Parent, pray that child to Christ! Are your neighbors still out of
   Christ? Lay them on your heart as an intercessor before God on their
   account--and cease not to plead till they are saved!

   Think much of the heathen--by all means regard India and China and the
   like--but do not forget Newington, Butts, Lambeth and Southwark, or
   wherever else it is your lot to live! Next to your homes let your own
   neighborhoods be first of all considered and then your country, for all
   Englishmen are kin! Wherever we wander we are proud of our common
   country and, like the Romans of old, we are somewhat quick to make
   known our citizenship. Therefore, let us never cease to plead for this
   beloved island and our kinsmen according to the flesh! Paul prayed for
   his countrymen and never let us bear within our bones a soul so dead as
   to forget our native land!

   We may regard those for whom he prayed, in the next light, as persons
   of great privileges--a very important point. They had privileges by
   birth--"who are Israelites." Many of you are highly favored. You are
   not Israelites, but you are the children of godly parents which is much
   the same thing. Almost the first sound you ever heard from your
   mother's lips was the voice of prayer for you. You can remember when
   you were taken, for the first time, to the House of Prayer, when,
   perhaps, you did not understand anything, but still, your godly friends
   thought it well that you should sit, in your earliest days, in the
   courts of the Lord's house! In that sense you are like the Jews. You
   have the privilege of being born in the midst of holy and gracious
   influences--an advantage not to be despised.

   Those poor gutter children, born, we scarcely know where, who pine in
   poverty and breathe an atmosphere of vice--their young ears are from
   the first so much acquainted with the voice of blasphemy that they will
   never tingle should the profanity of Hell be let loose around them.
   Those, I say, start in the race of life under terrible disadvantages!
   But you, some of you, have had everything in your favor! For you, the
   path of right is smooth and there are many beckoning you to walk in it.
   And yet we tremble for you, lest you, with other children of the
   kingdom, should be cast out while many come from the east and from the
   west and sit down at the banquet of Grace! If there are any people we
   ought to pray for above others, it seems to me they are the unconverted
   who live in the light but will not see--who have the bread of Heaven
   upon the table before them but will not eat--who have Free Grace and
   dying love sounding in their ears, but yet refuse the wondrous message
   of Grace! Beloved, let us not rest unless we feel a deep concern for
   those who stand on a par with Israelites, since they have the privilege
   of being born under a Christian roof.

   The objects of Paul's prayer had yet a higher privilege, for it is
   said, "to whom pertains the adoption." There was an outward adoption.
   "Israel is my first-born," says God. Israel enjoyed national advantages
   and we, also, living in such a land as this, possess innumerable Gospel
   privileges. England is, as it were, the favorite of Heaven! God has
   been pleased to adopt the nation as His child, giving it special
   liberty, an open Bible, the free proclamation of the Gospel and the
   Church of God in the midst of it to be its light. To Israel belonged
   the glory, too. That is to say, God had revealed Himself in their midst
   from the Mercy Seat in the bright light of the Shekinah.

   And, oh, in this very House of Prayer, I am sure I may say it, the Lord
   has manifested His Glory very wonderfully! How many hundreds have been
   turned from darkness to light in this place! At times the power of God
   has been gloriously revealed. It was so last Sunday evening! We felt
   it, we distinctly recognized it and we are looking for many to come
   forward to declare what God did for souls on that occasion! Well, then,
   if you have seen this Glory, if you have heard the glorious Gospel, if
   you have felt, in some degree the working of the gracious Spirit and
   have had some longings, some wishes towards salvation, what a sad thing
   will it be if, after all, you should be cast away! I fear that this
   will be true of many of you and I have great heaviness in my heart at
   the thought!

   And then they had the first hold of all the spiritual gifts which the
   Lord bestowed upon the sons of men. They had, as it were, a monopoly of
   Light and Truth among them. The Jewish people had been singularly
   favored--they had seen God revealing His Son to them by types, by
   priests, by sacrifices, by the temple, by a thousand signs and marks.
   Verily the kingdom of God had come very near to them. But the
   privileges of the Jews were not greater than the privileges of men and
   women who hear the Gospel in these days, for Christ is not so well seen
   in bleeding bulls and rams and hyssop

   and scarlet wool as He is seen in the preaching of the Gospel! In the
   Gospel, God has torn the veil and made bare His heart to us in the
   Person of His dying Son.

   You have no longer to search for the mind of God by mysterious
   hieroglyphs--it is written in plain letters and the wayfaring man,
   though a fool, need not err therein! You have but to hear it and with
   the exercise of an ordinary understanding, the letter of its meaning
   may be comprehended. And if there is a willing heart, no matter how
   small the capacity of the mind, there is intellect enough to receive
   the saving Truth of God! You do not now live in the moonlight of the
   Jewish dispensation, but you bask in the noontide sunlight of the Truth
   of God! God, who spoke to our fathers by the Prophets, has, in these
   last days, spoken to us by His Son who is the express image of His
   Person and the brightness of His Glory! "See that you refuse not Him
   that speaks."

   Because we fear you may do so, our heart is heavy and we have sorrow of
   heart for some of you. We are distressed for you whose feeling comes
   and goes like the midnight meteor. Your case is one of such peril that
   we are deeply concerned about you. O God, help all Your servants to
   feel what a dreadful thing it will be for persons so highly privileged
   to be lost forever! I should not have completed the subject if I did
   not say that Paul had a great concern for these people because he saw
   them living in the commission of great sin. Some of them were
   exceedingly moral and the bulk of them extremely religious, yet they
   were living in gross sin! Do you know what is the greatest of sins? It
   is to be at enmity with God! The most damning of iniquities is to
   refuse Christ!

   Did God send out of His bosom His only-begotten Son to die for men and
   do men reject Him? Ah, this is worse than rejecting the Law! This is
   worse than rejecting the Gospel! It is a direct personal insult to the
   loving God--this rejecting the Son of God, His only Son, His bleeding,
   dying Son! Here sin reaches its climax and surpasses itself in infamy!
   These men rejected Christ and set up their phylacteries, their paying
   of tithes of anise and mint and cumin, their fasting thrice in the week
   and I know not what trifles besides, in insulting competition with the
   Savior! In the same manner at this hour, many persons value their
   external religiousness above faith in Jesus. They attend to the
   ceremonies of this Church or of the other and refuse the righteousness
   of God in Jesus Christ! The greatest of sins lies there!

   You may as easily be lost religiously as irreligiously unless your
   religion is God's religion and is based upon faith in His dear Son!
   This grieved the Apostle, that they were mad against Him whom they
   ought to have loved, and were violent against Him in whom they should
   have believed, so that they had become a race anathematized from
   Christ! I know he means that, because he says he could wish that he
   himself could stand in their place and take that anathema upon himself
   which he felt was upon them. They had said, "His blood be on us and on
   our children" and Paul knew that it would be! He remembered the
   Master's words when He said, "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! Behold your house is left unto you
   desolate." He could see in spirit the siege of Jerusalem--the most
   tremendous of all human slaughters--the most fearful of all scenes of
   blood enacted on the face of the earth! And His heart sank within him
   and his spirit quailed at the thought of the tremendous judgment!

   Some in these days describe the penalty of sin as though it were a
   trifle. I beseech you, do not regard it such! If I had one dying before
   me whom I loved, if I was in any fear about the salvation of that dying
   person, I would not say, "Perhaps when you go out of this world you may
   be unsaved, but there is a larger hope, and I would not have you
   distress yourself about immediate repentance, for mercy may come to you
   in another state." Sirs, I dare no more talk that way than administer a
   draught of poison to one I love! No, rather would I say. "My Brother,
   my Sister, it is now or never with you. Seek the Lord while He may be
   found! Call upon Him while He is near! For when once the Master of the
   house has risen up and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and
   knock and to say, 'Lord, Lord, open unto me,' He will not say, 'Wait a
   while. I will open by-and-by,' but His final reply will be, 'Verily I
   say unto you, I know you not.'"

   There is no hope of blessing for those who die impenitent anyhow or
   anywhere! They must depart, depart, depart, and that forever! O my
   Hearer, I beseech you, do not run the risk of the everlasting wrath of
   God! May God help you, by His infinite mercy, to feel how terrible a
   thing it is to be out of Christ, for our God is a consuming fire and it
   is written, "Beware you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and
   there be none to deliver."

   Now the thought of all this made the Apostle feel great heaviness and
   continual sorrow in his heart for his brethren, his kinsfolk according
   to the flesh. If he had thought that they would be annihilated when
   they died, he would have had no heaviness about them. If men and women
   are nothing, after all, but cats and dogs and have no immortal souls,
   I, for

   one, will never bother my head about them. If they can die, let them
   die--it is nothing to me that they should be immortal! It is because I
   know that they are immortal and if they die unsaved they will have
   forever to endure the wrath of God that my soul feels and desires to
   feel more than ever, a continual heaviness of heart concerning every
   unsaved soul that still lives! May God grant us more of this heaviness
   of spirit! May we be deeply pained by that dread, awful,
   overwhelming--I will even dare to add--horrifying thought of souls
   being lost forever!

   II. I have spoken enough, then, as to the persons for whom Paul was
   anxious. Now let us notice, secondly, HIS DESCRIPTION OF THIS ANXIETY,
   which was very truthful. There was no sham about it. It is pretty easy
   to work yourself up into a state of feeling, but it was not passing
   emotion with Paul, it was deep, true, constant grief. He says, "I say
   the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness
   in the Holy Spirit." He did not fancy that he felt, but he really was
   heart-broken for guilty souls. He did not sometimes get up into that
   condition or down into it, but he lived in it. "I lie not," he says, "I
   do not speak more than the truth. I do not exaggerate." For fear he
   should not be believed he asserts as strongly as is allowed to a
   Christian man--"I say the truth in Christ. I lie not."

   His was true heaviness, real sorrow. Do we feel the same, or is it only
   a little excitement at a revival meeting, a chance feeling which passes
   over us through sympathy with other people who are earnest? May the
   Lord plow your soul deep, dear Friend! If He means you to be a
   soul-winner, He will. May the plowers make deep furrows upon your
   heart, as once they did upon your Master's back! You are not fit to
   carry souls on your heart till it has been bruised with grief for them.
   You must feel deeply for the souls of men if you are to bless them.
   Paul's feeling was very gracious. It was not an animal feeling, or a
   natural feeling--it was a gracious feeling, for He says--"I say the
   truth in Christ." When he was nearest to his Lord. When he felt most
   his union with Christ and communion with Him, then he felt that he did
   mourn over men's souls.

   It was truth in Christ that he was expressing because he was one with
   Christ! He had a love for sinners because his very soul was knit to
   Christ. He had a heaviness such as his Master knew when He, also, was
   very heavy and sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane, in the day of
   His passion. O Beloved, we need the Spirit of God to work this feeling
   in us! It is of no use to try to get it by reading books, or to pump
   yourself up to it in private--this feeling is the work of God! A
   soul-winner is a creation. As a Christian has to be created, so out of
   a Christian the soul-winner has to be fashioned. There has to be a
   careful preparation, a softening of the soul to make the worker know
   how naturally to care for the welfare of others. Paul had been trained
   and qualified for soul-saving work. He says that his conscience bore
   him witness that he spoke the truth and then he says the Holy Spirit
   bore witness with his conscience. May we have such a manifest love for
   sinners that we can ask the Holy Spirit to bear witness that we have
   it!

   Brothers, Sisters, I am sometimes afraid that our zeal for conversion
   would not stand the test of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we want to
   increase our denomination, or enlarge our Church for our own honor. Or
   we want to get credit for doing good, or to feel that we have power and
   influence over others. None of these motives can be tolerated! Our
   concern for souls must be worked in us by the Holy Spirit. It must come
   irresistibly upon us and become a master passion. Just as the birds,
   when the eggs are in the nest, have upon them what the Greeks call an
   oropyn--a natural feeling that they must sit on those eggs and that
   they must feed those little fledglings which will come from the
   eggs--so if God calls you to win souls, you will have a natural love
   for them, a longing worked in you by the Holy Spirit so that the whole
   of your being will run out in that direction, seeking the salvation of
   men!

   Then the Apostle goes on to say that he had great heaviness--not only
   heaviness, but great heaviness. Was he, therefore, an unhappy man? By
   no means! He had great joy in other things, though he had great
   heaviness on this point. We are not to imagine that Paul went about
   publicly groaning and sighing because Israel was not saved. Oh, no! He
   rejoiced in the Lord and bade others rejoice. But still there was the
   skeleton in the closet--a silent, heartbreaking grief was on him. We
   are many men in one and each man is a very complicated piece of mental
   machinery. We can be in great heaviness and in great exultation at the
   same time! Whenever Paul's thoughts turned towards his Jewish brethren,
   a great heaviness came upon him. It bore him down and he would have
   sunk under it if it had not been for sustaining Grace. "O God," he
   said, "shall my nation perish? Shall my people die? Shall my kinsmen be
   anathema? Shall it come to this, that they shall hear the Gospel in
   vain and perish, after all?"

   He had great heaviness and he tells us that this did not come on him at
   times, but that he always felt it whenever his thoughts turned that
   way--I have "continual sorrow in my heart." In his very heart, for it
   was not a superficial desire. A

   continual sorrow, for it was no fitful emotion. It always grieved him
   to think that his kinsmen should reject Christ. He thought of Jerusalem
   and of its doom. He thought of his brethren and their unbelief--and
   then he thought of how they had been the enemies of Christ and,
   therefore, sorrow filled his heart. I could wish that in full many a
   professor the same sorrow reigned, for then there would be much more
   holy work done for souls! The strongest expression which Paul uses is
   that which is contained in the third verse, "For I could wish that I
   were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the
   flesh."

   The margin reads, "separated from Christ." Now this text has so puzzled
   the expositors that they have done their very best to kill it and tear
   out its heart--to get rid of its obvious meaning. They have invented
   all kinds of interpretations, such as that he did once wish himself
   separated from Christ. Now, do you think the Apostle Paul would have
   begun by saying, "I say the truth in Christ. I lie not," and so on, if,
   after all that mountain of expression, he was going to bring out this
   little insignificant sense, that once upon a time he also wished to be
   separated from Christ? Besides, the Greek does not bear such a
   preposterous rendering! Our version has given, as fully as it could,
   the meaning of the Apostle. The gentlemen who like to dissect texts and
   pull them to pieces say, "Well, but he could not have wished to be an
   enemy to Christ, an enemy to God and to be lost--and yet he could not
   be lost without being an enemy to Jesus."

   My dear Friends, if you take passionate expressions to pieces with icy
   hands, you will never understand anything which comes from the heart!
   Of course the Apostle never thought of wishing that he could be an
   enemy to Christ! But he did, sometimes, look at the misery which comes
   upon those who are separated from Christ until he felt that if he could
   save his kinsmen by his own destruction, yes--by himself enduring their
   heavy punishment--he could wish to stand in their place. He did not say
   that he ever did wish it, but he felt as if he could wish it when his
   heart was warm. His case was parallel with that of Moses when he prayed
   the Lord to spare the people and said, "If not, blot my name out of the
   Book

   of Life."

   Do you think He wished it done? No! It was because that blotting out
   would have been, to him, the most horrible thing supposable that,
   therefore, he went even to that length for the good of his people!
   Because the last of all things the Apostle could have thought of was
   being separated from Christ, therefore he says there were times when he
   could even have borne that most horrible, unthinkable thing if he could
   but have saved the people! Is there a minister of Christ who has not,
   sometimes, used expressions which cool logic could never justify? Why,
   Sirs, love knows nothing of grammar even in its common talk! A true
   passion grinds words to dust. When the heart is full of love, even the
   boldest hyperboles are simple truths! Extravagances are the natural
   expression of warm hearts even in ordinary things and, when a man's
   whole soul gets to seething like a caldron and boiling like a pot with
   sympathy and pity for men that are being lost, he speaks what, in cold
   blood, he never would have said.

   What the cool doctrinalist pulls to pieces and the critic of words
   regards as being altogether absurd, true zeal, nevertheless, feels!
   Some of us have felt, at times, that our lives would have been cheaply
   spent a thousand times over by the bloodiest and most cruel deaths if
   we could save our hearers! And there have been moments of passion when
   we have been ready to say, "Ah, if even my destruction could save them,
   I could almost go that length." Why this is Christ's method! This is
   Christ's method! "He saved others, Himself He could not save." It may
   be an extravagance in us, since we are not able to redeem our Brothers
   and Sisters or give God a ransom, but it is a blessed extravagance! Men
   are extravagantly prudent, nowadays, extravagantly dubious,
   extravagantly profane--and some of them extravagantly able to deny what
   their conscience must know is true!

   They may, therefore, well permit the minister of Christ to be
   extravagant in his love for others. I like a bit of hyperbole in our
   hymns. For instance, I admire the extravagance of that verse of
   Addison's--

   "But, oh, eternity's too short To utter half Hispraise."

   A gentleman said to me," That cannot be, because eternity cannot be
   short and, therefore, it cannot be too short!" If the Lord had put a
   drop of poetry into that critic's nature, he would not have dealt so
   harshly with the poet's language! And if the same Lord had put a little
   of the fire of Grace into the nature of some hard-headed commentators,
   they would have understood that this passage is not meant to be cut to
   pieces and discussed--but it is intended to be taken boiling hot and
   poured upon the enemy after the fashion of the olden times, when they
   poured melted lead or boiling pitch upon the besiegers who wished to
   take a tower or city!

   Such a text as this must be fired off red-hot! It spoils if it cools!
   It is a heart business, not a head business! The Apostle means us to
   understand that there was nothing which he would not suffer if he might
   save his kindred according to the

   flesh.

   III. Well, now, I close my sermon by speaking upon THE EXCELLENCIES OF
   THIS SPIRIT, because I pray the Lord to work it in each of you. I wish
   all felt it, but there are generally some in every Church who will
   never warm up to the right point. If we could once get the whole Church
   up to blood heat, we might be content. I never want you to get to fever
   heat, but to blood heat--the heat of the blood of Christ--to love as He
   loved! Oh, to get there and to stay there! Well, what would be the
   result, if we all felt as Paul did? The first effect would be likeness
   to Christ! After that manner He loved--He did become a curse for us! He
   entered under the awful shadow of Jehovah's wrath for us. He did what
   Paul could wish but could not do. He passed under the awful sword that
   we might be delivered from its edge forever!

   Brethren, I want you to feel that you would pass under poverty if you
   could save souls better by being poor! That you would gladly endure
   sickness if from your sick bed you could speak better for Christ than
   now! Yes, and that you would be ready to die if your death might give
   life to those dear to you! I heard of a dear girl, the other day, who
   said to her pastor, "I could never bring my father to hear you, but I
   have prayed for him long and God will answer my request. Now, dear
   pastor," she said, "you will bury me, won't you? My father must come
   and hear you speak at my grave. Do speak to him, then. God will bless
   him." And he did and her father was converted! The death of his child
   brought him to

   Christ!

   Oh to be willing to die if others may be saved from the eternal death!
   God give us just such a spirit as that! This should be our constant
   feeling--how else can we become like Christ? If we have this spirit it
   will save us from selfishness. They say--but it is a great
   falsehood--that we teach people to look after their own salvation and
   then, being saved, we bid them wrap themselves up in self-content. Was
   anything ever spoken more contrary to fact? We do urge men to seek to
   be saved from sin! How can they bear to abide in it? But the first
   instinct of a saved soul, to which we continually appeal, is a longing
   to bring others to Christ! Yet, Brothers and Sisters, lest there should
   grow up in your spirit any of that Pharisaic selfishness which was seen
   in the elder brother in the parable, ask to feel a heaviness for your
   prodigal younger brother who is still feeding swine!

   Pray for him that he may come to his father's house. It will keep your
   soul sweet if you open the window of sympathy and let the heavenly air
   of love blow through you. This will save you from any difficulty about
   forgiving other people. I do not suppose that Paul forgave the Jews for
   what they did to him, because he never went the length of thinking that
   he had anything to forgive--he loved them so much that he took their
   ill usage without anger or resentment! He loved them and, therefore, he
   bore with them. You will bear with those who scoff at you and you will
   put up with the idleness of the boys and girls in your class if you
   love them! Love mankind with all your soul and you will feel no
   difficulty in exercising patience, forbearance and forgiveness.

   This spirit will also keep you from very many other griefs. Some people
   are always fretting for need of something to fret about. No people are
   more uneasy than those who have nothing to do and nothing to think
   about! Such persons keep a little growlery in the house and use it as a
   trouble factory where they invent grievances. There are people that I
   know of who ought to be as merry as the birds of the morning and yet
   they are always worrying and stewing about nothing at all. Now, the
   best way to kill one grief is to introduce another. John Foster wrote
   of the expulsive power of a new affection and I want you to experience
   it. Get love for the souls of men--then you will not be whining about a
   dead dog, or a sick cat, or about the conceits of a family and the
   little disturbances that John and Mary may make by their idle talk. You
   will be delivered from petty worries (I need not further describe them)
   if you are concerned about the souls of men!

   When certain persons come to me with their sentimental sorrows, I wish
   the Lord would fill them with the love of souls and make their hearts
   break with anxiety for their conversion--then would their griefs be of
   a nobler sort. You would no longer weep over a mole hill if you began
   to move mountains! Get your soul full of a great grief and your little
   griefs will be driven out. These thoughts of Paul about his brethren
   cause us to feel that we, too, may make our lives sublime if in our
   hearts there shall burn the same ardent affection towards our fellow
   men. If you are moved by this feeling, it will put you much upon
   prayer. You will bring one and another before God, because you cannot
   help it. That is the right style of praying--when a man does not pray
   at a set time because it is his rule, but prays because he has an awful
   weight upon him and pray he must!

   You cannot force yourself to this, but when the Spirit of God has
   brought you to it, you will pray day and night for those whom you love!
   As you go down the road, something will suggest your praying for them.
   The very oaths and blasphemies so common in our streets will make you
   pray for sinners. A gracious meeting where some are saved will move you
   to prayer. A thousand things will lead you to pray and that prayer will
   lead you to effort--to proper and fitting effort. It is wonderful how a
   man can talk to souls when he loves them! If any one of you should say,
   "I do not feel any particular concern about other people's souls, but
   still, I will look out for somebody and speak to him," you will fail in
   it, Brothers and Sisters. You must love before you can plead! You must
   have such a concern for a man that you feel even if you could not say
   anything, still, you could put your hand on his shoulder and blurt out,
   "Friend, I am concerned about your salvation." The evident concern of
   your spirit will be one of God's ways of touching the hearts of others.
   I suppose His Spirit has used deep emotion more than almost any other
   instrument in arousing careless minds.

   Now, tonight, a good many of our friends are away, for the lawful
   claims of business detain them at this season. I hope that you who have
   come here on such a week evening are among those who aspire to the
   highest things in the kingdom of God. Do so, I pray you--they are all
   before you and within reach--and among them, aspire after great
   sensitiveness as to others. Let other men's sins grieve you! Let their
   eternal destiny be often on your mind! No better spur can be needed.
   You will labor for their good in proportion as you feel for them. I do
   not think that I can ask a better thing for the unconverted than that
   the converted may be in heaviness over them!

   We long to see many enquirers coming forward. Very well. Enquiring
   saints always bring enquiring sinners. "For this will I be enquired of
   by the house of Israel"--not by the sinners first of all--but "by the
   house of Israel, to do it for them." My Brethren, go and enquire at the
   Lord's hands and then you will soon prove a blessing to others!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Lifting Up of the Bowed Down

   (No. 1426)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And,
   behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen
   years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up.
   And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said unto her, Woman,
   you are loosed from your infirmity. And He laid His hands on her: and
   immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." Luke 13:10-13.

   I BELIEVE that the infirmity of this woman was not only physical but
   spiritual. Her outward appearance was the index of her deep and
   long-continued depression of mind. She was bent double as to her body
   and she was bowed down by sadness as to her mind. There is always a
   sympathy between body and soul, but it is not always so plainly seen as
   in her case. Many sad sights would meet us on all hands if it were so.
   Imagine for a moment what would be the result upon the present
   congregation if our outward forms were to set forth our inward states.
   If someone having an eye like that of the Savior could gaze upon us,
   now, and could see the inward in the outward, what would be the
   appearance of this crowd?

   Very deplorable sights would be seen, for in many a pew dead persons
   would be sitting, looking forth from the glassy eyes of death, bearing
   the semblance of life and a name to live, but all the while being dead
   as to spiritual things! My Friend, you would shudder as you found
   yourself placed next to a corpse! Alas, the corpse would not shudder,
   but would remain as insensible as ungodly persons usually are, though
   the precious Truth of the Gospel rings in their ears--ears which hear
   but hear in vain. A large number of souls will be found in all
   congregations, "dead in trespasses and sins," and yet sitting as God's
   people sit and not to be discerned from the living in Zion!

   Even in those cases in which there is spiritual life, the aspect would
   not be altogether lovely. Here we should see a man blind and there,
   another maimed, and a third twisted from perfect uprightness. Spiritual
   deformity assumes many forms and each form is painful to look upon. A
   paralyzed man with a trembling faith, set forth by a trembling body,
   would be an uncomfortable neighbor. A person subject to fits of passion
   or despair would be equally undesirable if his body also suffered from
   fits. How sad it would be to have around us persons with a fever upon
   them, or shivering with malaria, hot and cold by turns, burning almost
   to fanaticism at one moment and then chilled as with a northern wind
   with utter indifference.

   I will not try to sketch in further detail the crippled, lame, blind
   and impotent folks who are assembled in this Bethesda. Surely if the
   flesh were shaped according to the spirit, this Tabernacle would be
   turned into an hospital and each man would flee from his fellow and
   wish to run from himself! If to any one of us our inward ailments were
   to be set forth upon our brow, I guarantee you we should not linger
   long at the mirror, nor scarcely dare to think upon the wretched
   objects which our eyes would behold there. Let us quit the imaginary
   scene with this consoling thought--Jesus is among us, notwithstanding
   that we are sick! And although He sees nothing to delight His eyes if
   He judges us according to the Law, yet, since His mercy delights to
   relieve human misery, there is abundant scope for Him here in the midst
   of these thousands of ailing souls!

   In that synagogue on the Sabbath, this poor woman described in the text
   must have been one of the least observed. Her particular disease would
   render her very short in stature. She was dwarfed to almost half her
   original height and, in consequence, like other very short persons, she
   would be almost lost in a standing crowd. A person so bent down as she
   was might have come in and gone out and not have been noticed by anyone
   standing upon the floor of the meeting place. But I can imagine that
   our Lord occupied a somewhat elevated position, as He was teaching in
   the synagogue, for He had

   probably gone to one of the higher places for the greater convenience
   of being seen and heard. And for this reason He could more readily see
   her than others could.

   Jesus always occupies a place from which He can spy out those who are
   bowed down. His quick eyes did not miss its mark. She, poor soul, was
   naturally the least observed of all the people in the company, yet she
   was the most observed, for our Lord's gracious eyes glanced over all
   the rest and lighted upon her with fixed regard. There His tender look
   remained till He had worked the deed of love. Perhaps there is someone
   in the crowd, this morning, the least observed of anybody, who is yet
   noticed by the Savior! Remember, He sees not as man sees, but observes
   most those whom man passes over as beneath his regard. Nobody knows
   you, nobody cares for you. Your peculiar trouble is quite unknown and
   you would not reveal it for the world. You feel quite alone! There is
   no solitude like that which is to be found in a dense throng and you
   are in that solitude now.

   Be not, however, quite despairing, for you have a Friend left. The
   preacher's heart is going after you, but that will little help
   you--there is far more joy in the fact that as our Master observed
   most, the least observed one on that Sabbath in the synagogue, so we
   trust He will do, this day, and His eyes shall light on you, even you!
   He will not pass you by, but will deal out a special Sabbath blessing
   to your weary heart. Though by yourself accounted to be among the last,
   you shall now be put upon the first by the Lord's working a notable
   miracle of love upon you! In the hope that this may be so, we will
   proceed, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to look into the gracious deed
   which was done to this poor woman.

   I. Our first subject for consideration is THE BOWING DOWN OF THE
   AFFLICTED. We read of this woman, "she had a spirit of infirmity and
   was bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up." Upon which
   we remark, first, that she had lost all her natural brightness. I can
   imagine that when she was a girl she was light of foot as a young roe,
   that her face was dimpled with many a smile and that her eyes flashed
   with childish glee. She had her share of the brightness and beauty of
   youth and walked erect like others of her race, looking up to the sun
   by day and to the sparkling stars at night, rejoicing in all around her
   and feeling life to be a joy.

   But there gradually crept over her an infirmity which dragged her down,
   probably a weakness of the spine--either the muscles and ligatures
   began to tighten so that she was bound together and drawn more and more
   towards herself and towards the earth--or else the muscles commenced to
   relax, so that she could not retain the perpendicular position and her
   body dropped forward more and more. I suppose either of these causes
   might cause her to be bowed together, so that she could in nowise lift
   herself up. At any rate, for 18 years she had not gazed upon the sun!
   For 18 years no star of night had gladdened her eyes! Her face was
   drawn downward towards the dust and all the light of her life was dim.
   She walked about as if she were searching for a grave and I do not
   doubt she often felt that it would have been gladness to have found
   one! She was as truly fettered as if bound in iron and as much in
   prison as if surrounded by stone walls.

   Alas, we know certain of the children of God who are at this moment in
   much the same condition! They are perpetually bowed down and though
   they remember happier days, the memory only serves to deepen their
   present gloom. They sometimes sing in the minor key--

   "Where is the blessedness I knew When first I sa w the Lord? Where is
   the sweet refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word? What blissful hours I
   then enjoyed! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an
   aching void The world can never fill."

   They seldom enter into communion with God--seldom or never behold the
   face of the Well-Beloved. They try to hold on by believing and they
   succeed. But they have little peace, little comfort, little joy--they
   have lost the crown and flower of spiritual life, though that life
   still remains.

   I feel certain that I am addressing more than two or three who are in
   such a plight at this moment and I pray the Comforter to bless my
   discourse to them. This poor woman was bowed towards herself and
   towards that which was depressing. She seemed to grow downwards--her
   life was stooping! She bent lower and lower and lower, as the weight of
   years pressed upon her. Her looks were all earthward--nothing heavenly,
   nothing bright could come before her eyes--her views were narrowed to
   the dust and to the grave. So are there some of God's people whose
   thoughts sink

   always like lead and their feelings run in a deep groove, always
   cutting a lower channel. You cannot give them delight, but you can
   readily cause them alarm! By a strange art they squeeze the juice of
   sorrow from the clusters of Eshcol. Where others would leap for joy,
   they stoop for very grief, for they draw the unhappy inference that
   joyous things are not meant for the likes of them.

   Cordials expressly prepared for mourners, they dare not accept and the
   more comforting they are, the more are they afraid to appropriate them.
   If there is a dark passage in the Word of God, they are sure to read it
   and say, "That applies to me." If there is a thundering portion in a
   sermon, they remember every syllable of it and although they wonder how
   the preacher knows them so well, yet they are sure that he aimed every
   word at them! If anything occurs in Providence, either adverse or
   propitious, instead of reading it as a token for good, whether they
   might rationally do so or not, they manage to translate it into a sign
   of evil. "All these things are against me," they say, for they can see
   nothing but the earth and can imagine nothing but fear and distress.

   We have known certain prudent, but somewhat unfeeling persons blame
   these people and chide them for being low spirited. And that brings us
   to notice, next, that she could not lift herself up. There was no use
   in blaming her. There may have been a time, perhaps, when her older
   sisters said, "Sister, you should keep yourself more upright! You
   should not be so round shouldered. You are getting quite out of
   figure--you must be careful or you will become deformed." Dear me, what
   good advice some people can give! Advice is usually given free and this
   is very proper since in most cases that is its full value! Advice given
   to persons who become depressed in spirit is usually unwise and causes
   pain and aggravation of spirit. I sometimes wish that those who are so
   ready with their advice had themselves suffered a little, for then,
   perhaps, they would have the wisdom to hold their tongues. Of what use
   is it to advise a blind person to see, or to tell one who cannot lift
   herself up that she ought to be upright and should not look so much
   upon the earth? This is a needless increase of misery! Some persons who
   pretend to be comforters might more fitly be classed with tormentors.

   A spiritual infirmity is as real as a physical one. When Satan binds a
   soul it is as truly bound as when a man binds an ox or an ass. It
   cannot get free. It is of necessity in bondage and that was the
   condition of this poor woman. I may be speaking to some who have
   bravely attempted to rally their spirits--they have tried change of
   scenery, they have gone into godly company, they have asked Christian
   people to comfort them--they have frequented the House of God and read
   consoling books. But they are still bound and there is no disputing it.
   As one that pours vinegar upon niter, so is he that sings songs to a
   sad heart--there is an incongruity about the choicest joys when forced
   upon broken spirits.

   Some distressed souls are so sick that they abhor all manner of meat
   and draw near unto the gates of death. Yet, if any one of my hearers is
   in this plight, he need not despair, for Jesus can lift up those who
   are most bowed down! The worst point, perhaps, about the poor woman's
   case was that she had borne her trouble for 18 years and, therefore,
   her disease was chronic and her illness confirmed. Eighteen years! It
   is a long, long time! Eighteen years of happiness!--the years fly like
   Mercuries with wings on their heels--they come and they are gone!
   Eighteen years of happy life--how short a span!

   But eighteen years of pain! Eighteen years of being bowed down to the
   earth. Eighteen years in which the body approximated rather to the
   fashion of a brute than to that of a man--what a period this must be!
   Eighteen long years-- each with 12 dreary months dragging like a chain
   behind it! She had been 18 years under the bond of the devil--what a
   woe was this! Can a child of God be 18 years in despondency? I am bound
   to answer, "yes!" There is one instance, that of Mr. Timothy Rogers,
   who has written a book upon Religious Melancholy, a very wonderful
   book, too, who was, I think, 28 years in despondency. He tells the
   story himself and there can be no question as to his accuracy. Similar
   instances are well known to those familiar with religious biographies.
   Individuals have been locked up for many years in the gloomy den of
   despair and yet, after all, have been singularly brought out into joy
   and comfort.

   Eighteen years' despondency must be a frightful affliction and yet
   there is an escape out of it, for though the devil may take 18 years to
   forge a chain, it does not take our blessed Lord 18 minutes to break
   it! He can soon set the captive free! Build, build your dungeons, O
   Fiend of Hell, and lay the foundations deep and place the courses of
   granite so fast together that none can stir a stone of your fabric--but
   when HE comes, your Master who will destroy all your works-- HE does
   but speak and like the unsubstantial fabric of a vision, your Bastille
   vanishes into thin air! Eighteen years of melancholy do not prove that
   Jesus cannot set the captive free--they only offer Him an opportunity
   for displaying His gracious power!

   Note further about this poor woman, that bowed down as she was, both in
   mind and body, she yet frequented the House of Prayer. Our Lord was in
   the synagogue and there was she! She might very well have said, "It is
   very painful for me to go into a public place. I ought to be excused."
   But no, there she was! Dear child of God, the devil has sometimes
   suggested to you that it is vain for you to go anymore to hear the Word
   of God. Go just the same! He knows you are likely to escape from his
   hands so long as you hear the Word and, therefore, if he can keep you
   away, he will do so. It was while in the House of Prayer that this
   woman found her liberty! And there you may find it! Therefore continue
   to go up to the House of the Lord, come what may.

   All this while, too, she was a daughter of Abraham. The devil had tied
   her up like an ox or an ass, but he could not take away her privileged
   character. She was still a daughter of Abraham, still a believing soul
   trusting in God by humble faith. When the Savior healed her, He did not
   say, "Your sins are forgiven you." There was no particular sin in the
   case. He did not address her as He did those whose infirmity had been
   caused by sin, for, notwithstanding her being thus bowed down, all she
   needed was comfort, not rebuke. Her heart was right with God. I know it
   was, for the moment she was healed she began to glorify God, which
   showed that she was ready for it and that the praise was waiting in her
   spirit for the glad opportunity!

   In going up to the House of God, she felt some measure of comfort,
   though for 18 years she was bowed down. Where else could she have gone?
   What good could she have gained by staying at home? A sick child is
   best in its father's house and she was best where prayer was known to
   be made. Here, then, is a picture of what may still be seen among the
   sons of men and may possibly be your case, dear Hearer. May the Holy
   Spirit bless this description to your hearts' encouragement.

   II. I invite you, secondly, to notice THE HAND OF SATAN IN THIS
   BONDAGE. We should not have known it if

   our Lord had not told us, that it was Satan who had bound this poor
   woman for 18 years! He must have bound her very cunningly to make the
   knot hold all that time, for he does not appear to have possessed her.
   You notice, in reading the Evangelists, that our Lord never laid His
   hand on a person possessed with a devil! Satan had not possessed her,
   but he had fallen upon her once upon a time 18 years before and bound
   her up as men tie a beast in its stable. And she had not been able to
   get free all that while. The devil can tie, in a moment, a knot which
   you and I cannot unloose in 18 years!

   He had, in this case, so securely fastened his victim that no power of
   herself or others could help--in the same way, when permitted, he can
   tie up any one of God's own people in a very short time and by almost
   any means. Perhaps one word from a preacher, which was never meant to
   cause sadness, may make a heart wretched. One single sentence out of a
   good book, or one misunderstood passage of Scripture may be quite
   enough, in Satan's cunning hand, to fasten up a child of God in a long
   bondage. Satan had bound the woman to herself and to the earth.

   There is a cruel way of tying a beast which is somewhat after the same
   fashion--I have seen a poor animal's head fastened to its knee or
   foot--and somewhat after that fashion Satan had bound the woman
   downward to herself. So there are some children of God whose thoughts
   are all about themselves--they have turned their eyes so that they look
   inside and see only the transactions of the little world within
   themselves. They are always lamenting their own infirmities, always
   mourning their own corruptions, always watching their own emotions. The
   one and only subject of their thoughts is their own condition! If they
   ever change the scene and turn to another subject, it is only to gaze
   upon the earth beneath them, to groan over this poor world with its
   sorrows, its miseries, its sins and its disappointments. Thus they are
   tied to themselves and to the earth and cannot look up to Christ as
   they should, nor let the sunlight of His love shine fully upon them.

   They go mourning without the sun, pressed down with cares and burdens.
   Our Lord uses the figure of an ox or an ass tied up and He says that
   even on the Sabbath its owner could loose it for watering. This poor
   woman was restrained from what her soul needed. She was like an ass or
   an ox which cannot get to the trough to drink. She knew the promises,
   she heard them read every Sabbath. She went to the synagogue and heard
   of Him who comes to loose the captives, but she could not rejoice in
   the promise or enter into liberty. So are there multitudes of God's
   dear people who are fastened to themselves and cannot get to watering,
   cannot drink from the River of Life, nor find consolation in the
   Scriptures. They know how precious the Gospel is and how consolatory
   are the blessings of the Covenant, but they cannot enjoy the
   consolations or the blessings. Oh that they could! They sigh and cry,
   but they feel themselves to be bound.

   There is a saving clause here. Satan had done a good deal to the poor
   woman, but he had done all he could do. You may rest assured that
   whenever Satan smites a child of God, he never spares his strength. He
   knows nothing of mercy, neither does any other consideration restrain
   him. When the Lord delivered Job into Satan's hand for a time, what
   destruction and havoc he made with Job's property! He did not save him
   chick or child, or sheep, or goat, or camel, or ox. He smote him right
   and left and caused ruin to Job's whole estate. When, under a second
   permit, he came to touch him in his bone and in his flesh, nothing
   would satisfy the devil but covering Job from the sole of his feet to
   the crown of his head with boils and blisters.

   He might have pained him quite sufficiently by torturing one part of
   his body, but this would not suffice. He must glut himself with
   vengeance! The devil would do all he could and, therefore, he covered
   him with running sores. Yet, as in Job's case, there was a limit, so
   was there here--Satan had bound this woman, but he had not killed her.
   He might bend her towards the grave, but he could not bend her into it.
   He might make her droop over till she was bent double, but he could not
   take away her poor feeble life! With all his infernal craft, he could
   not make her die before her time! Moreover, she was still a woman and
   he could not make a beast of her, notwithstanding that she was thus
   bowed down into the form of a brute.

   Even so the devil cannot destroy you, O child of God! He can smite you,
   but he cannot slay you. He worries those whom he cannot destroy and
   feels a malicious joy in doing so. He knows there is no hope of your
   destruction, for you are beyond shot of his gun, but if he cannot wound
   you with the shot, he will frighten you with the powder if he can! If
   he cannot slay, he will bind, as if for the slaughter--yes, and he
   knows how to make a poor soul feel a thousand deaths in fearing one!
   But all this while, Satan was quite unable to touch this poor woman as
   to her true standing--she was a daughter of Abraham 18 years before,
   when the devil first attacked her and she was a daughter of Abraham 18
   years afterwards, when the fiend had done his worst!

   And you, dear heart, if you should never have a comfortable sense of
   the Lord's love for 18 years, are still His beloved! And if never once
   He should give you any token of His love which you could sensibly enjoy
   and, if by reason of bewilderment and distraction, you should keep on
   writing bitter things against yourself all this while, yet still your
   name is on the hands of Christ where none can erase it! You belong to
   Jesus and none shall pluck you out of His hands! The devil may bind you
   fast, but Christ has bound you faster, still, with cords of everlasting
   love which must and shall hold you to the end!

   That poor woman was being prepared, even by the agency of the devil, to
   glorify God! Nobody in the synagogue could glorify God as she could
   when she was, at last, set free! Every year out of the 18 gave emphasis
   to the utterance of her thanksgiving! The deeper her sorrow the sweeter
   her song! I should like to have been there that morning, to have heard
   her tell the story of the emancipating power of the Christ of God! The
   devil must have felt that he had lost all his trouble and he must have
   regretted that he had not let her alone all the 18 years, since he had
   only been qualifying her, thereby, to tell out more sweetly the story
   of Jesus' wondrous power!

   III. I want you to notice, in the third place, THE LIBERATOR AT HIS
   WORK. We have seen the woman bound by the devil, but here comes the
   Liberator! And the first thing we read of Him is that He saw her. His
   eyes looked round, reading every heart as He glanced from one to
   another. At last He saw the woman! Yes, that was the very one He was
   seeking! We are not to think that He saw her in the same common way as
   I see one of you, but He read every line of her character and history,
   every thought of her heart, every desire of her soul! Nobody had told
   Him that she had been bound 18 years, but He knew all about it--how she
   came to be bound, what she had suffered during the time, how she had
   prayed for healing and how the infirmity still pressed upon her.

   In one minute He had read her history and understood her case. He saw
   her and oh, what meaning there was in His searching glance! Our Lord
   had wonderful eyes! All the painters in the world will never be able to
   produce a satisfactory picture of Christ because they cannot copy those
   expressive eyes! Heaven lay calmly reposing in His eyes--they were not
   only bright and penetrating, but they were full of a melting power--a
   tenderness irresistible, a strength which secured confidence. As He
   looked at the poor woman I doubt not the tears started from our Lord's
   eyes, but they were not tears of unmingled sorrow, for He knew that He
   could heal her and He anticipated the joy of doing so!

   When He had gazed upon her, He called her to Him. Did He know her name?
   Oh, yes, He knows all our names and His calling is therefore personal
   and unmistakable. "I have called you by your name," says He, "you are
   Mine." Look,

   there is the poor creature coming up the aisle! That pitiful mass of
   sorrow, though bowed to the earth, is moving! Is it a woman? You can
   hardly see that she has a face, but she is coming towards Him who
   called her. She could not stand upright, but she could come as she
   was--bent and infirm as she was! I rejoice in my Master's way of
   healing people, for He comes to them where they are. He does not
   propose to them that if they will do something He will do the rest, but
   He begins and ends!

   He bids them approach Him as they are and does not ask them to mend or
   prepare. May my blessed Master, this morning, look on some of you till
   you feel, "The preacher means me, the preacher's Master means me!" And
   then may there sound a voice in your ears saying, "Come to Jesus just
   as you are." Then may you have Grace to reply--

   "Just as I am--poor, wretched, blind,

   Sight, riches, healing of the mind,

   Yes, all I need, in You to find,

   O Lamb of God, I come."

   When the woman came, the great Liberator said to her, "Woman, you are
   loosed from your infirmity." How could that be true? She was still as
   bent as she was before! He meant that the spell of Satan was taken off
   from her, that the power which had made her thus to bow herself was
   broken. This she believed in her inmost soul, even as Jesus said it,
   though as yet she was not at all different in appearance from her
   former state.

   Oh, that some of you who are God's dear people would have power to
   believe this morning that the end of your gloom has come--power to
   believe that your 18 years are over--and that you're time of doubt and
   despondency is ended! I pray that God may give you Grace to know that
   when this morning's sun first gilded, the east light was ordained for
   you! Behold, I come today to publish the glad message from the Lord!
   Come forth, you prisoners! Leap you captives, for Jesus comes to set
   you free today! The woman was liberated, but she could not actually
   enjoy the liberty and I will tell you why directly. Our Lord proceeded
   to give her full enlargement in His own way--He laid His hands on her.
   She suffered from lack of strength and by putting His hands upon her, I
   conceive that the Lord poured His life into her.

   The warm stream of His own infinite power and vitality came into
   contact with the lethargic stream of her painful existence and so
   quickened it that she lifted herself up! The deed of love was
   done--Jesus Himself had done it! Beloved mourners, if we could get you
   away, this morning, from thinking about yourselves to thinking about
   our Lord Jesus. If we could get you away from looking down upon your
   cares to thinking of Him--what a change would come over you! If His
   hands could be laid upon you, those dear pierced hands which bought
   you, those mighty hands which rule Heaven and earth on your
   behalf--those blessed hands which are outstretched to plead for
   sinners, those dear hands which will press you to His bosom forever--if
   you could feel these by thinking of Him, then would you soon recover
   your early joy and renew the elasticity of your spirit and the bowing
   down of your soul would pass away like a night dream, to be forgotten
   forever!

   O Spirit of the Lord, make it so!

   IV. I will not linger there, but invite you, now, to notice THE LOOSING
   OF THE BOUND. We are told she was made straight at once! Now, what I
   want you to notice is this--she must have lifted herself up--that was
   her own act and deed. No pressure or force was put upon her--she lifted
   herself up --and yet she was "made straight." She was passive, in so
   munch as a miracle was worked upon her, but she was active, too, and,
   being enabled, she lifted herself up. What a wonderful meeting there is
   here of the active and the passive in the salvation of men!

   The Arminian says to the sinner, "Now, Sinner, you are a responsible
   being! You must do this and do that." The Calvinist says, "Truly,
   Sinner, you are responsible enough, but you are also unable to do
   anything of yourself. God must work in you both to will and to do."
   What shall we do with these two teachers? They fell to fighting a
   hundred years ago most frightfully! We will not let them fight now, but
   what shall we do with them? We will let both speak and believe what is
   true in both their testimonies. Is it true what the Arminian says, that
   there must be an effort on the sinner's part or he will never be saved?
   Unquestionably it is! As soon as the Lord gives spiritual life there is
   spiritual activity. Nobody is ever lugged into Heaven by his ears, or
   carried there asleep on a feather bed! God deals with us as with
   responsible, intelligent beings. That is true and what is the use of
   denying it?

   Now, what has the Calvinist to say? He says that the sinner is bound by
   the infirmity of sin and cannot lift himself up and when he does so, it
   is God that does it all and the Lord must have all the glory of it. Is
   not that true, too? "Oh," says the Arminian, "I never denied that the
   Lord is to have the glory! I will sing a hymn with you to the Divine
   honor and I

   will pray the same prayer with you for the Divine power." All
   Christians are thorough Calvinists when they come to singing and
   praying! But it is a pity to doubt as a doctrine what we profess on our
   knees and in our songs! It is most true that Jesus, alone, saves the
   sinner and equally true that the sinner believes unto salvation. The
   Holy Spirit never believed on behalf of anybody--a man must believe for
   himself and repent for himself or be lost!

   But yet there was never a grain of true faith or true repentance in
   this world unless it was produced by the Holy Spirit. I am not going to
   explain these difficulties, because they are not difficulties, except
   in theory. They are plain facts of practical everyday life. The poor
   woman knew, at any rate, where to put the crown. She did not say, "I
   straightened myself," no, but she glorified God and attributed all the
   work to His gracious power. The most remarkable fact is that she was
   made straight immediately, for there was something beyond her infirmity
   to be overcome. Suppose that any person had been diseased of the spine,
   or of the nerves and muscles for 18 years--even if the disease which
   occasioned his being deformed could be entirely removed, what would be
   the effect? Why, the result of the disease would still remain, for the
   body would have become set through long continuance in one posture!

   You have doubtless heard of the fakirs and others in India--a man will
   hold his hand up for years in pursuance of a vow, but when the years of
   his penance are over, he cannot bring his hand down--it has become
   fixed and immovable. In this case the bond which held the poor bowed
   body was taken away and, at the same time, the consequent rigidity was
   removed and she, in a moment stood up straight! This was a double
   display of miraculous power! O my poor tried Friend, if the Lord will
   visit you this morning He will not only take away the first and
   greatest cause of your sadness, but the very tendency to melancholy
   shall depart! The long grooves which you have worn shall be smoothed!
   The ruts in the road of sorrow which you have worn by long continuance
   in sadness shall be filled up and you shall be strong in the Lord and
   in the power of His might!

   The cure being thus perfect, the woman rose up to glorify God! I wish I
   had been there! I have been wishing so all the morning. I would have
   liked to have seen that hypocritical ruler of the synagogue when he
   made his angry speech! I would have liked to have seen him when the
   Master so thoroughly silenced him! But especially I would have rejoiced
   to have seen this poor woman standing upright and to have heard her
   praise the Lord! What did she say? It is not recorded, but we can well
   imagine. It was something like this--"I have been 18 years in and out
   among you. You have seen me and know what a poor, miserable, wretched
   object I was! But God has lifted me up all in a moment. Blessed be His
   name, I have been made straight!"

   What she spoke with her mouth was not half of what she expressed! No
   reporter could have taken it down! She spoke with her eyes, she spoke
   with her hands, she spoke with every limb of her body! I suppose she
   moved about to see if she was really straight and to make sure that it
   was not all a delusion. She must have been, all over, a living mass of
   pleasure and by every movement she praised God from the sole of her
   feet to the crown of her head! Never was there a more eloquent woman in
   the universe! She was like one new-born, delivered from a long death,
   joyous with all the novelty of a fresh life! Well might she glorify
   God!

   She made no mistake as to how the cure was worked--she traced it to a
   Divine power--and that Divine power she extolled. Brother, Sister, can
   you glorify Christ, this morning, that He has set you free? Though
   bound so long, you need not be bound any longer! Christ is able to
   deliver you! Trust Him, believe Him, be made straight and then go and
   tell your kinsfolk and acquaintances, "You knew how depressed I was,
   for you cheered me in my sorrow as best you could, but now I have to
   tell you what the Lord has done for my soul."

   V. Fifthly, let us reflect upon OUR REASON FOR EXPECTING THE LORD JESUS
   TO DO THE SAME THING TODAY as He did 1,800 years and more, ago. What
   was His reason for setting this woman free? According to His own
   statement it was, first of all, human kindness. He says, "When you have
   your ox, or your ass tied up and you see that it is thirsty, you untie
   the knot and lead the poor creature away down to the river, or the
   tank, to water. None of you would leave an ox tied up to famish." This
   is good reasoning and leads us to believe that Jesus will help
   sorrowing ones!

   Tried Soul, would you not loose an ox or an ass if you saw it
   suffering? "Yes," you say. And do you think the Lord will not loose
   you? Have you more heart of mercy than the Christ of God? Come, come,
   think not so meanly of my Master! If your heart would lead you to pity
   an ass, do you think His heart will not lead Him to pity you? He has
   not forgotten you--He still remembers you. His tender humanity moves
   Him to set you free! More than that, there was a special relationship.
   He tells this master of the synagogue that a man would loose his ox or
   his ass. Perhaps he might not

   think it his business to go and loose that which belonged to another
   man, but if it is his own ass, his own ox--he will loose him.

   And do you think, dear Heart, that the Lord Jesus will not loose you?
   He bought you with His blood! His Father gave you to Him! He has loved
   you with an everlasting love--will He not loose you? You are His
   property! Do you not know that He sweeps His house to find His lost
   coin? He runs over hill and dale to find His lost sheep? And will He
   not come and loose His poor tied-up ox or ass? Will He not liberate His
   captive daughter? Assuredly He will! Are you a daughter of Abraham, a
   child of faith, and will He not set you free? Depend upon it, He will!

   Next, there was a point of antagonism which moved the Savior to act
   promptly. He says, "This woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan
   has bound." Now, if I knew the devil had tied anything up, I am sure I
   would try to unloose it, wouldn't you? We may be sure some mischief is
   brewing when the devil is working and, therefore, it must be a good
   deed to undo his work. But Jesus Christ came into the world on purpose
   to destroy the works of the devil! And so when He saw the woman like a
   tied-up ox, He said, "I will unloose her if for nothing else than I may
   undo what the devil has done." Now, dear tried Friend, inasmuch as your
   sorrow may be traced to Satanic influence, Jesus Christ will prove, in
   your case, more than a match for the devil and He will set you free!

   Then think of her sorrowful condition. An ox or an ass tied up to the
   manger without water would soon be in a very sad plight. Pity it, poor
   thing. Hear the lowing of the ox, as hour after hour its thirst gnaws
   upon it. Would you not pity it? And do you think the Lord does not pity
   His poor, tried, tempted, afflicted children? Those tears--shall they
   fall for nothing? Those sleepless nights--shall they be disregarded?
   That broken heart which gladly would, but cannot believe the promise,
   shall that forever be denied a hearing? Has the Lord forgotten to be
   gracious? Has He in anger shut up the heart of His mercy? Ah, no! He
   will remember your sorrowful estate and hear your groans for He puts
   your tears into His bottle!

   Last of all, there was this reason to move the heart of Christ, that
   she had been 18 years in that state. "Then," said He, "she shall be
   loosed at once." The master of the synagogue would have said, "She has
   been bound 18 years and she may well wait till tomorrow, for it is only
   one day." "No," says Christ, "if she has been bound 18 years, she shall
   not wait a minute! She has had too much of it already. She shall be set
   free at once." Do not, therefore, argue from the length of your
   despondency that it shall not come to an end, but rather argue from it
   that release is near! The night has been so long, it must be so much
   nearer the dawn! You have been scourged so long that it must be so much
   nearer the last stroke, for the Lord does not afflict willingly, nor
   grieve the children of men. Therefore take heart and be of a good
   courage!

   Oh, that my Divine Master would now come and do what I gladly would do
   but cannot, namely, make every child of God here leap for joy! I know
   what this being bound by Satan means. The devil has not tied me up for
   18 years at a stretch and I do not think he ever will, but he has
   brought me into sad bondage many a time. Still, my Master comes and
   sets me free and leads me out to water--and what a drink I get at such
   times! I seem as if I could drink up the Jordan at a draught when I get
   to His promises and quaff my fill of His sweet love!

   I know by this that He will lead other poor souls out to the water and
   when He does so to any of you, I pray you drink like an ox! You may be
   tied up again--therefore drink as much as you can of His Grace and
   rejoice while you may! Eat that which is good and let your soul delight
   in fatness. Be glad in the Lord, you righteous, and shout for joy all
   you that are upright in heart, for the Lord looses the prisoners. May
   He loose many now! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Wilderness Cry

   (No. 1427)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 4, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "O God, You are my God; early will I seek You: my soul thirsts for You,
   my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land, where there is no
   water; to see Your power and Your Glory, so as I have seen You in the
   sanctuary." Psalm 63:1,2.

   CHRYSOSTOM tells us that among the primitive Christians it was decreed
   and ordained that no day should pass without the public singing of this
   Psalm and, certainly, if we do not follow the ancient custom and
   actually sing the words every day, it is not because they are
   unsuitable or because their spirit has died out among us. This Psalm
   may be said or sung all the year round. Have we joyous days? Let us
   sing of the loving kindness which is better than love! Do the clouds
   return after the rain? Let us sound forth His praise whose right hand
   upholds us! Is it summertime with our souls? Then we may express the
   full assurance of our faith by joyfully crying, "O God, You are my God;
   early will I seek You!" Have we fallen upon the drought of autumn? Do
   the long hot days parch our spirits? Then may we chant the desire of
   our longing heart, "My soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs for You in
   a dry and thirsty land, where no water is."

   Is it winter with our spirit and does everything tend to chill us?
   Nevertheless let us not be silenced or rendered sluggish by the cold,
   but let us say, "I will bless You while I live, I will lift up my hands
   in Your name." Has the spring returned with all its wealth of fresh
   flowers and opening sweets? Then shall our glad voices sing aloud, "My
   soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall
   praise You with joyful lips." Is the day ended and has the darkness of
   night settled down upon our mind? Then in the language of the Psalm we
   will remember God upon our bed and meditate upon Him in the night
   watches! And because He has been our help, therefore, in the shadow of
   His wings we will rejoice!

   We may sing this Psalm in the days of battle, when those round about us
   seek our soul to destroy it, for, "they shall fall by the sword, they
   shall be a portion for foxes." And we may chant it with equal
   appropriateness in the time of victory, when we return from the
   conflict with banners gleaming in the sunlight of triumph, for, "the
   king shall rejoice in God: everyone that swears by Him shall glory." I
   know of no time and no season in which this Psalm would sound
   unsuitably from a believing tongue! Let us cultivate its earnestness!
   Let us endeavor to be baptized into its spirit! Let us live, while we
   live, after the fashion of holy men like David, the Psalmist, whose
   assurance of heart even sorrow could not shake--whose fertility of mind
   the desert could not wither--whose joy of spirit solitude could not
   destroy!

   This Psalm, however, especially belongs to any who, by their
   circumstances or by their state of heart, feel themselves to dwell in a
   desert land. There is a stage of Christian experience in which we are
   in Egypt and we are brought up out of it with a high hand and an
   outstretched arm. This symbolizes conviction, regeneration and
   conversion. Then we know the Passover and the sprinkling of the
   blood--our enemies drowned in the sea and the new song put into our
   mouth. Happy are they who have come thus far on their life journey!

   Then comes the stage of spiritual history which may be well described
   as wilderness experience wherein we have little rest, much temptation
   and consequent proving of heart and discovery of inward weakness. Many
   remain in this condition far longer than is necessary--what might be
   soon ended is drawn out into 40 years by unbelief! Then comes that
   blessed stage of experience in which faith begets peace and joy--then
   we have crossed the Jordan and entered into rest in Christ Jesus, "in
   whom, also, we have obtained an inheritance." In the Man who is our
   peace we obtain an earnest of Heaven and begin to divide the land of
   promise, "for He has raised us up together and made us sit together in
   the heavenly places."

   Each man claims his lot in Covenant provisions and sits under his own
   vine and fig tree, nothing scaring him. Yet even after we have been
   raised up together with Jesus and have obtained citizenship in Zion, we
   may find ourselves in the wilderness. As David, though king in Israel,
   had to flee across the Jordan to escape from Absalom, so may the most

   assured and the most sanctified of God's people be driven, for a while,
   into the dry and thirsty land where there is no water--and there hide
   himself from the offspring of his own flesh. There are songs for the
   Lord's banished ones to sing in a strange land, Psalms with which to
   arouse the silent land, sonnets to charm the howling wilderness into a
   fruitful garden and hymns to make the desert rejoice and blossom as the
   rose!

   I purpose to address myself, this morning, to any of my Brothers and
   Sisters who feel themselves to be just now in a dry and thirsty land
   where there is no water. It may be the Lord will give them deliverance
   by His Word this morning-- or if not delivered out of temporal trouble,
   they shall at least be made glad by His Holy Spirit and be led to
   magnify His name while yet in the land of drought!

   I. Our first head, this morning, shall be this--TRUE SAINTS ARE
   SOMETIMES IN A DRY AND THIRSTY LAND WHERE THERE IS NO WATER. Children
   of God are not always in the same happy state of mind. To hear some
   people talk, who know but little of religious experience, you would
   fancy that the Christian's life is all feasting and dancing. Children
   think that all there is in hunting is wearing a red coat and blowing a
   horn--they know nothing of the rough riding. We do, it is true, linger
   delightfully in the sweet Valley of Humiliation where men have found
   pearls and met with angels. We know that spot of which the Pilgrim's
   guide has said, "Behold, how green this valley is, also how beautiful
   with lilies."

   But we can never forget that in this quiet meadow Christian met
   Apollyon and was hard put to it in the fight and, but a little farther
   in his journey, he came to the Valley of the Shadow of Death where
   there are deep ditches and quagmires--and a narrow pathway which runs
   hard by the mouth of Hell! Sweet rest is to be had in the Palace
   Beautiful, but there is also a Hill Difficulty to be climbed. Let not
   the young be deceived by fluttering words, for they may be sure of
   this--there are bitters as well as sweets in the pilgrim life--and he
   who would be a Christian must not count upon unbroken joy. All things
   are changeable. We live in a world which hourly varies. What do our
   thermometers and barometers mean? Are they not measures of perpetual
   change?

   The things which live change even more than inanimate objects and the
   more of life usually the more of sensitiveness--and the more of
   sensitiveness so much the more of change! Your man of marble may appear
   to sweat through the condensation of the vapor around him, but he
   cannot possibly know anything of that dew of toil which covers the
   laboring limb. The cast in plaster is ignorant of the joy and the
   sorrow which flash through the man of flesh and blood! Your painted
   picture, hanging on the wall, represents a smiling ancestor who smiles
   on although his estates may have been alienated and his family
   disgraced! But not so the living parent who anxiously regards each turn
   in the affairs of his children! For him there are tears as well as
   smiles.

   A man of stone changes not, but a man of flesh feels the movement of
   the years--the plow of time gradually furrows his forehead and the
   crow's feet of age appear in the corners of his eyes. Living men must
   mourn and suffer as well as laugh and rejoice, for minds and hearts
   must change. Wonder not, therefore, that the glad-hearted sons of Zion
   are not always in the temple, but sometimes are driven into exile and
   sigh in a desert land! But beyond the fact of liability to change there
   are other reasons why God's people, at times, are wanderers in the
   wilderness. In some senses, to a Christian, this world must always be a
   dry and thirsty land.

   The new life which Divine Grace has implanted in us finds nothing here
   below upon which it can feed. The things which are seen are too gross,
   material, carnal and defiled to sustain life which comes by the Holy
   Spirit from the great Father. We are not carrion crows, else we might
   float upon the carcasses which abound in the waters around our ark! We
   are doves and when we leave the hand of our Noah, we find nothing to
   rest upon and we must go back to Him if we are to find food and rest
   for our souls. I am not speaking, now, of the world under its sorrowful
   aspect, only, but of the world at its best! It is a dry land for saints
   even when its rains are falling.

   When the world dresses itself in scarlet and puts on its silks and
   satins, it is still a poor world for us. She may paint her face and
   tier her head, but she is a Jezebel for all that! The world, should she
   come to us as she came to Solomon, would still be a deceiver! If she
   would indulge us with all her riches and give us all her power and all
   her fame, she would still be a mere mocker to the heart which is born
   from above! If you could stand on a high mountain and see all the
   kingdoms of the world before you--and the glory thereof and hear a
   voice saying, "All this will I give you"--yet might you turn round to
   Satan and say, "And all this is nothing to me, a sop for a dog, but not
   food for a child of God!"

   And then you might lift your eyes to the great Father above and say,
   "Whom have I in Heaven but You? There is none upon earth that I desire
   beside You!" You shall take prosperity at its flood. You shall have
   health and strength. You shall have all that heart can wish. But, after
   all, if there is a spark of Divine Life within you, your heart will
   compute the sum total of all earth's joys and say, "Vanity of vanities,
   all is vanity!" To a citizen of Heaven, this world is "a dry and
   thirsty land, where there is no water."

   If it is so at its best, what is it at its worst? If its pillows of
   down cannot rest us, what shall we say of its thorns and briars? If its
   flood tide cannot bear us up, what shall we say of its neap tide and
   its ebb, when mire and dirt succeed a glassy sea? Ah, truly, best or
   worst, it is well for us to look above the world and to fix our heart
   where our treasure is preserved, even in Heaven! But, dear Brethren, we
   could bear up with this present state and be well satisfied with it if
   that were our only difficulty--far more grievous is the fact that we
   carry an evil within us which would cause drought in Paradise, itself,
   if it could go there!

   The Christian gets into a land of drought because his own nature is
   dry! He finds a barren soil without because he has a barren heart
   within. Verily there is no doctrine more true to experience than
   this--corruption remains even in the hearts of the regenerate--and that
   when we would do good, evil is present with us! Within us there is
   still a carnal mind which is not reconciled to God, neither, indeed,
   can be! And, as long as we have this about us, if it is permitted, for
   a moment, to get the upper hand (and who among us is so watchful that
   this will never happen?) it is no wonder that the joys of Divine Grace
   seem to disappear and we find ourselves in a spiritual wilderness! We
   carry about with us enough evil to make another Hell, if the infernal
   pit were filled and its fires extinguished!

   "Oh, wretched man that I am," said the Apostle Paul, "who shall deliver
   me from the body of this death?" He said this not because He was not a
   saint, but because he was so far advanced in the way of holiness! The
   more saintly a saint becomes, the more will he loathe and mourn over
   the remains of indwelling sin which he finds in his nature! This will
   set him longing and thirsting after more Grace. When our old unbelief
   begins to wither our faith; when our natural indifference commences to
   dry up our life; when our doubts parch the pastures of our hope and our
   sins drain the wells of our consolation, it is little wonder if we come
   into a dry and thirsty land where there is no water!

   We may, dear Friends, have been so unwatchful as to have brought
   ourselves into this condition by actual faults of life and conduct. I
   would make it a matter of personal enquiry among you by asking
   thoughtful answers to a few questions. Have you restrained prayer? Do
   you wonder that the land grows dry? Has the Word of God been neglected?
   Have you left off its study through pressure of other concerns? Do you
   wonder if you have left the streams for which your soul thirsts? Have
   you been overly engaged in seeking temporal gain and has the hot desert
   wind of worldliness parched your heart? Has there been anything about
   your spiritual life that has grieved the Holy Spirit?

   Have you been idle as a Christian? Have you been content to eat the fat
   and drink the sweet, but to do nothing to win souls? Or have you, while
   you have fed upon the Word of God, taken the sweet things of the Gospel
   as a matter of course and not blessed the Lord for them? Has there been
   a lack of humility or a deficiency of gratitude? If so, how can you
   wonder that you are in a dry and thirsty land? Have you been careless
   in your walk? In domestic life has sin been permitted in the family?
   Have you been winking at evil in your children? Have you permitted it
   in yourself? If so, remember, it is written, "He turns rivers into a
   wilderness and water springs into dry ground, a fruitful land into
   barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein."

   You may have fallen into a parched condition of spirit because you have
   forgotten Him of whom in happier days you sang, "All my fresh springs
   are in You." Because you have walked contrary to God, God is walking
   contrary to you-- and it is your duty to repent and return at once to
   your Lord--only by doing so will peace return to you! If these various
   things do not account for the Believer being in a dry and thirsty land,
   there are still some other reasons which I will briefly mention.
   Sometimes Christians become very hungry and thirsty when they are
   banished from the means of Grace. Poor as our ministry may be, yet
   there are many of God's children who would miss it more than their
   daily food if it were taken from them!

   God's servants whom He calls to the work of the ministry are bound to
   think little of themselves and yet the loaves and fishes which they
   distribute to the multitude are by no means to be lightly esteemed--the
   people would faint by the way if they did not have them. It is a severe
   trial to some saints to be kept away from sanctuary privileges. I know
   that when you travel for pleasure or roam by the seaside for health--if
   you go to a place of worship on the Sabbath and find

   no spiritual bread, you fall into a miserable state of mind and sigh to
   spend your Sabbaths where the children's portion is dealt out liberally
   and all the servants have bread enough to spare! David loved the very
   doors of the Lord's House! He thirsted and pined because he was shut
   out from sanctuary privileges--and it was especially for that reason
   that he speaks of himself as being in a "dry and thirsty land, where
   there is no water."

   The same may happen when we are denied the sweets of Christian
   communion. David had poor company when he was in the wilderness in the
   days of Saul. His friends were not much better than freeloaders and
   runaways whom he would never have selected as friends had not the
   necessities of his own condition and of the political situation
   rendered it necessary that he should become a captain over them. They
   were a strange band of men! They were made up chiefly of those who were
   in debt and discontented--the rebellious against Saul's wretched
   administration--men of broken fortunes and suspected loyalty.

   Few of them were fit friends for the man after God's own heart. I do
   not wonder that he looked, even, at the sons of Zeruiah who loved him
   best and were his own kinsmen--and felt that as for holy communion his
   soul was in a dry and thirsty land where there was no water! Believers
   are to keep out of worldly company and yet it sometimes happens that
   Providence throws the child of God among the ungodly, like Obadiah in
   the family of Ahab; Nehemiah in the palace of Artaxerxes and Daniel in
   the court of Darius. Your lot is hard if you are called to dwell among
   worldlings, for they have power to injure your piety but they cannot
   help you. You look around upon a score of hard faces all eager after
   the almighty dollar and none of them caring for the almighty God--and I
   do not wonder that you feel yourself to be in a dry and thirsty land
   where there is no water!

   We owe much more to Christian friends than we think--and especially the
   younger folk among us do well to value Christian associations and to be
   much in the company of them that fear the Lord and that think upon His
   name. If they are denied this refreshment, they will find life to be a
   dry land where there is no water. Yes, but the same may happen from
   other causes as well. Sometimes a believing man may be treated with
   gross injustice and endure much hardship as the result. David was
   blameless and yet Saul hunted him as a traitor! He was upright, yet his
   people revolted from him. It tends to make a good man sour in spirit to
   be misrepresented and treated as guilty when he knows that he is
   innocent-- and this bitterness is very apt to put away from us many
   sources of comfort and leave us uncomfortable. Then many a spring
   becomes dry and the heart shrivels as under a burning sun.

   Sometimes, too, domestic conditions may be so changed that we cannot
   feel as we would wish. I do not know how you feel, but I think many
   must acknowledge that when they get away from their own room and from
   their regular habits, they are not always able to commune with God as
   usual. One likes to read from the very same Bible and to kneel at the
   very same chair. When the time comes for meeting with God, you are,
   perhaps, roaming up and down amid the choicest scenery and though you
   are reverent and adoring, yet you find it hard to reach the sweetness
   of fellowship with God which you have been accustomed to enjoy at home.
   Everything may be very lovely around you while you are
   tourists--everything may be attractive and delightful and yet, I should
   not wonder but what you will find it to be a dry and thirsty land where
   there is no water.

   I can well conceive that your hearts long for an hour of your
   accustomed quietude and familiarity with God. You would give anything
   to be back in the little room, looking out upon the hills, or to have
   an hour in that secluded little garden where you have been accustomed
   to take your pocket Testament and sit down and hear the Voice of Jesus
   speaking to your soul and to speak to Him in return. Even hours and
   places have much to do with our heart's condition. I know not how it
   is, but such strange creatures are we that in one place we cannot
   worship as we would like to do in another and, therefore, the soul
   finds its condition to be that of a wanderer in a dry and thirsty land!

   Then, too, much depends upon health and physical conditions. In some
   forms of sickness the soul is apt to be grievously depressed and cast
   out of its proper condition. Some of you may remember the venerable
   Watts Wilkinson, the Golden Lecturer. I was reading his life the other
   day and he tells us that after many years of health he suffered a
   season of sickness. And he learned by experience that sickness is not
   the best time, as he had formerly thought it was, for drawing near to
   God. The effects of sickness are often very beneficial under the
   sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, but they are seldom so at
   the time.

   It is "afterwards" that these things work the fruits of
   righteousness--but at the time it is often with us as it was with
   Wilkinson who says that he never in his life felt so dull in prayer and
   so heavy in reading the Scriptures as during his

   illness. I believe that often the condition of the body operates upon
   the condition of the mind and that our being in a dry and thirsty laud
   where there is no water may be occasioned by a feverishness or a
   feebleness of the flesh. Lack of faith may sometimes be little other
   than a need of natural cheerfulness and we may mistake infirmity for
   iniquity. We have our times of natural sadness. We have, too, our times
   of depression when we cannot do otherwise than hang our heads.

   Seasons of lethargy will also befall us from changes in our natural
   frame, or from weariness, or the rebound of over excitement. The trees
   are not always green--the sap sleeps in them in the winter--and we have
   winters, too. Life cannot always be at flood tide--the fullness of the
   blessing is not upon the most gracious at all times. We may always
   burn, but we cannot always flame! We may always grow, but we cannot
   always flower. And if we always bear fruit, yet the fruit is not always
   ripe, nor does the ripeness always wear the same delicate bloom. Till
   we are perfected we shall not be always at our highest point, otherwise
   earth would be turned to Heaven and time would have forgotten itself
   and merged its variableness in the immutability of eternity!

   So you see there are many reasons why the best of saints are sometimes
   in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

   II. The second head is a very short but very comforting one, that GOD
   IS STILL OUR GOD--"O God, You are my God." Yes, He is just as much our
   God in the dry land as if we sat by Siloa's softly flowing brook which
   glides by the oracle of God. O God, You are my God when I see the
   fountain leaping from the rock in a cascade of cool refreshment and You
   are just as much my God if every river bed is turned to a heap of
   stones and the burning sand on all sides mock my searching eyes! The
   Lord belongs to us by an eternal charter which will never lose its
   force, for the Scripture says, "This God is our God forever and ever."
   This is a very sweet and precious Truth of God and should be remembered
   always!

   Of course, when a man falls into a dull dry state of soul, he may very
   well question his condition before God and he ought not to rest till
   the question is satisfactorily answered. But where there is living
   faith the fact is certain and all question may be dismissed. God is
   your God still, my dear Brothers and Sisters, whatever condition you
   are in, if you can now come and grasp Him by faith and call Him yours
   with the voice of love. Can you join me in words like these? Lord, I
   have lost my comforts; I have lost my assurances; I have lost my
   delights, but I still trust in You. I have no God but You, neither will
   I worship any other, nor repose my confidence elsewhere. Though You
   slay me, yet will I trust in You. The wounds of Jesus for my sin are
   still my soul's one hope--the precious blood of Your dear Son is my
   sole confidence!

   If such is your language, you have not lost your God! All the other
   things you speak of may have gone for a while, but as long as you can
   still say, "O God, You are my God, early will I seek You," you are
   still among the living in Zion and your time to rejoice shall soon
   come! Just think a minute--it is not possible that God's love to His
   people should change with their condition--such a theology would
   represent God as very variable in His love! Yes, it would do worse than
   that, for it would make the Gospel into a Law and turn all evangelical
   Truth into legality!

   Does God love me because I love Him? Does God love me because I am
   bright and happy? Does God love me because my faith is strong and
   because I can leap like a hart in His ways? Why, then, He must have
   loved me because of something good in me--and that is not according to
   the Gospel! The Gospel represents the Lord as loving the unworthy and
   justifying the ungodly and, therefore, I must cast out of my mind the
   idea that Divine Love depends on human conditions! Can it be true that
   God only loves His children when they are in good spiritual health? Is
   it so with me? Do I love my child when he is strong and hate him when
   he is sick? When I see the spots of disease upon him do I put him away
   and say that he is no son of mine?

   If his poor eyes should fail him and he should become blind, should I
   cast him off? If his feet should fail him and he became a helpless
   cripple, should I disown him? If he lost his hearing and could not
   listen to my voice, would I discard him? Fathers, mothers, I speak to
   you! Come what may to your offspring, are they not still yours? And
   would you not still love them? Can a woman forget her suckling child,
   that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? The Lord
   has said, "They may forget, yet will He not forget His people." Be
   cheered, then, for into whatever state of unhappiness we may have
   wandered, the love of God does not depend upon our condition! It knows
   no ups nor downs, nor winters nor summers, nor ebbs nor flows, but
   abides forever sure!

   Even though the Lord should hide His face from us, He is still our God,
   for the Lord has taught us to cry, "My God, my God," even when we have
   to add, "why have You forsaken me?" When the Lord first loved us we
   were in a worse

   state than we are in now, for though we feel dry and sapless we are not
   utterly dead as we were then. Remember "His great love with which He
   loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins." We were
   enemies and yet He reconciled us! And we are not enemies now, though we
   fear we are poor, cold-hearted friends. We are sadly sick, perhaps, but
   we are not actually under condemnation as we were when first of all His
   Sovereign Grace came forth to do the deed of redemption and deliver us
   from the wrath to come. And if the Lord loved us then, why should He
   not love us now? We have not fallen into any state which takes the Lord
   by surprise, for He knew well enough what we should be.

   However we may blame ourselves and I hope we do blame ourselves
   severely for every evil within our hearts, yet He foreknew what we
   should be and is by no means disappointed in us. There has nothing
   happened which our God did not foreknow and if He chose us knowing all
   this, can it be possible that when it comes to pass He should turn from
   His purpose and change His mind? No, never! Brethren, we have had great
   experiences, some of us, of God's love in the past and this makes us
   feel that He can help us and will help us in the present! In the
   sanctuary we have seen His power and His Glory. Oh the delight, the
   heavenly joys which we have known at times in His service!

   At Prayer Meetings I know we have had our hearts warmed within us and
   felt that we could scarcely be happier in Heaven! Sometimes, under a
   sermon, we have been fired as with new life and we have felt that we
   could begin again with double strength! If this has happened to us in
   former times, when we were heavy and depressed, why can it not happen
   again? Does not the Lord delight to revive the spirits of the faint and
   weary? Angels' visits may be few and far between, but not the
   visitations of the Spirit of God, for He dwells with us and in us
   forever! Before we are aware, He can make us like the chariots of
   Amminadib, for He has done it and what He has done He is certainly able
   to do again! Why not comfort yourselves with these thoughts?

   Besides, if we are in the wilderness, is not God the God of the
   wilderness? Were not His greatest marvels worked when He led His people
   about through the howling wilderness and fed them with manna and
   revealed Himself in a fiery, cloudy pillar? Where did Hagar look to Him
   who saw her but in the wilderness? Where did Moses see the Lord in the
   bush but at the backside of the desert? Where did Elijah hear a voice
   speaking to Him but away there in the wilderness? And where did David,
   the Psalmist, meet with his God but in the lone, solitary land where
   there is no water? O my Soul, if you are in the desert now, expect your
   God to meet with you! Open your eyes and expect to see Him display His
   Grace now that you are as the dry ground! He will pour floods upon you
   now that you are empty! He will fill you with His Divine fullness! Your
   poverty prepares you to apprehend His riches! Your inward death
   prepares you to receive His everlasting life! Therefore, have hope and
   rise from your depression and fear!

   III. Thus much upon the second subject, by which we are led briefly to
   the third, namely, WHEN WE ARE IN A

   DRY AND THIRSTY LAND OUR WISEST COURSE IS TO CRY TO HIM AT ONCE. Now,
   Brothers and Sisters, I

   want to speak very practically to you, as I do to myself, for many of
   us are deeply and personally concerned in this matter. Very likely the
   warmth of the atmosphere on this warm summer morning may make you feel
   all the duller in devotion. You may not be enjoying the things of God
   because the air is heavy and makes you sleepy. Let us, then, bestir
   ourselves and break asunder the bonds of sleep!

   We can only do this by crying at once to God Himself. Let us go
   straight away to Jesus, our Friend and Physician, and let us cry, "O
   God, You are my God, early will I seek You. My soul thirsts for You, my
   flesh longs for You." Observe that David does not first pray for
   deliverance from the dry and thirsty land and then say, "There, I will
   now go and seek God!" But no, in the desert, itself, he cries, "My soul
   thirsts for You." Learn from this and do not say, "I will get into
   communion with God when I feel better," but long for communion now! It
   is one of the temptations of the devil to tell you not to pray when you
   do not feel like praying. Pray twice as much, then! When you feel least
   like praying, then pray the more, for you need it the more!

   And when you feel very little like coming near to God, then cry, "My
   God, I must be in a terrible state, or else I should have a greater
   longing after You. Therefore will I not rest till I find You and come
   to You." Do not, any of you, practice the sinner's folly--he declares
   that he will tarry till he is better--and then he never comes at all.
   No, children of God must not say, "We will seek the Lord when we are
   better," but you must seek Him at once! Practice the Gospel principle
   of, "Just as I am," and come to Jesus just as you are! Lethargic, half
   asleep, almost dead in spirit, yet nevertheless come to Jesus! Make a
   plunge for it. Say, "I must have a sense of His love and I must have it
   now! I must not

   lose this blessed Sabbath morning! I must enter into fellowship with
   God." Make a dash for it and you shall have it! Do not wait till you
   are delivered, but in the dry and thirsty land sigh after God!

   Neither, dear Friends, pray so much for ordinances as for the Lord,
   Himself. David does not say, "O God, You are my God, I will seek the
   sanctuary. My soul thirsts for a Prayer Meeting, my flesh longs for a
   sermon." No, he sighs for God! He thirsts only for God! I believe that
   our Lord sometimes strikes all ordinances dry to make us feel that they
   are nothing without Himself. The means of Grace are blessed breasts at
   which the soul may suck when God is in them, but they are emptiness,
   itself, when He is not there. The preacher who has best fed you will
   only disappoint you if his Lord is not with him, or if you are not
   prepared to look beyond the man to the Master! The Lord loves to famish
   His people of all earthly bread and water--to bring them to wait upon
   only Himself.

   I charge you, Beloved, this morning, that whatever your state may be,
   make a direct appeal to the Lord that He would immediately give you
   Himself by Christ Jesus! Nothing less than this can meet your needs and
   this will meet your case, though all outward ordinances should be
   denied. What if no point of the sermon should impress or quicken you?
   Yet the silent power of the Spirit of God can glide into your heart and
   become life to your soul! Seek it, then, and seek it believing that it
   may be had and had at once! The child of God may rise at once from
   slumber into earnestness and may leap from lethargy into zeal!

   It is wonderful how speedily the Spirit of God works! He needs not
   hours and days and weeks in which to make us young again! He works with
   amazing mastery over the lapse of time and perfects in an instant His
   good work. It was all darkness, primeval darkness, thick and black as
   ebony itself and Jehovah said, "Light be!" Then flashed the day and all
   was brightness! So may it be black as Hell with you at this moment and
   an infernal night may brood over every faculty of your being--yet if
   the enlightening Spirit comes forth--day shall dawn, a day that shall
   surprise you, a day above the brightness of that which comes of the
   sun! Do not be afraid, dear children of God, you that have fallen into
   a mournful state! Do not be afraid to cry out to God, this morning, in
   the language of the Psalmist!

   I know we sometimes feel as if we must not and dare not pray. We have
   become so dull, so lifeless, so unworthy that we do not expect to be
   heard and feel as if it would be presumption to cry. But our heavenly
   Father loves to hear His children cry all day long! Rutherford says,
   "The child in Christ's house that is most troublesome is the most
   welcome! He that makes the most noise for his meat is the best child
   that Christ has." You may not quite agree with that as to your own
   children, but it is certainly so with our Lord! Rutherford says, "It is
   a good child that is always whining each hour of the day for a piece
   and a drink." He speaks of a hungry soul hanging around Christ's pantry
   door and commends him for so doing. Assuredly the Lord wishes His
   children to have strong desires after Himself! Desire, then, and let
   those desires be vehement!

   If you can cry out to Jesus, He will joyfully hear you! If you will
   give Him no rest, He will give you all the rest you need! The Lord
   finds music in His children's cries. "Oh," you say, "I would cry, but
   mine is such a discordant and foolish cry." You are the very man to
   cry, for your sorrow will put an emphasis into your voice! Of all the
   cries your children utter, the one that comes closest home to you
   arises out of their pain and deep distress! A dying moan from a little
   one will pierce a mother's heart! Look, she presses the baby to her
   bosom! She cries, "My dear dying child," and weeps over it! You, too,
   shall be pressed to the bosom of Everlasting Love if you can only
   groan, or sob, or sigh! Only be careful that you are not happy in a dry
   and thirsty land! Be careful that you are not content away from
   God--for if you will not rest till you get at Him, you shall soon have
   Him! If you will groan after Him you shall find Him! A sigh will fetch
   Him!

   May there be much longing, panting and pleading among us at this hour!
   Do not let anyone here be satisfied to remain in a dull state. Do not
   say, "Well, but he says a child of God may experience dullness." Yes, I
   know I did, but I did not bid you fall into it! Above all, I did not
   tell you to live in it! One of your children may fall and cut his
   knees, but I should not recommend all his brothers to try a tumble, nor
   should I exhort him to lie on the ground. The dry and thirsty land is
   really a dry and thirsty land to the Believer, but if you can be
   satisfied to dwell there, it is not a dry and thirsty land to you!

   Now, child of God, if you have fallen into a dull state, I beseech you
   to labor to rise out of it. And I do this, first, because you are not a
   fit person to be in such a state. Yours is the land that flows with
   milk and honey! You are like David, driven out of Canaan for a time,
   but you must never be satisfied till you get back to Jerusalem! Oh, cry
   unto the Lord to bring you back that you may see the King's face and
   sit at the King's table and delight yourself with the marrow

   and the fatness which you ought to feed upon every day! You are a king
   and a priest unto God--will you go about in sordid beggar's rags and
   forget your dignity and sit on a dunghill with the paupers of this
   miserable world? No! Come away! Come away--the dry and thirsty land is
   not for you--yours is the land of plenty and of joy!

   Think of your obligations to your Savior. You have been bought with His
   precious blood! Your sins are forgiven you! You are a joint-heir with
   Him! Are you going to be cold and careless towards the Well-Beloved of
   your soul? I was about to say three-fourths of all the Christian people
   in this world live in such a way as rather to disgrace the Redeemer
   than to honor Him. I have not said that, but if I had chanced to make
   the statement I would not retract it, for I am afraid it is true. I am
   afraid that many of us are no credit to Christ. If worldlings look at
   us, they say, "Is that a Christian?" If my Lord were to send some of
   His sheep to a show, they would be far enough from winning a prize. If
   the prize were for joyous piety some would utterly fail! If the prize
   were for consistent courage and strength of heart, how few of us would
   be "highly commended."

   Many of His sheep are no credit to their Feeder and reflect no honor
   upon their Shepherd. Out of your dumps, my Brothers and Sisters! Why
   should you be sitting in darkness any longer with such Grace to be had
   and such a Savior to give it? Just think--you are losing a world of
   joy! You are sitting like an owl in a haunted ruin, blinking your eyes,
   when you might be flying like an eagle straight up to the Sun of
   Righteousness, in full communion with the great Lord! Why are you down
   there, down in the dens and caves of the earth, howling away among the
   dragons--when you might be up there among the cherubim and seraphim
   magnifying the Lord, for, "He has raised us up together and made us sit
   together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus"? I said you were children
   of God and, therefore, I am not condemning you, but I would brush you
   up if I could and bestir you to walk somewhat more worthily of the
   obligations imposed upon you by the Grace of God!

   Think, my dear Brothers and Sisters, if you and I all get into a dull,
   sleepy state--what is to become of this poor world? You have to go to
   your class this afternoon--are you going there half awake and half
   asleep? Are you going to dream among your children all the afternoon?
   "Oh," you say, "we do not do that." Don't you? Why, many a preacher is
   not above half awake when he delivers his sermon--he rather snores it
   than preaches it! Few of us ever were awake all through. We are awake
   half way! Oh that we were thoroughly awake, thoroughly alive,
   thoroughly in earnest! No wonder sinners are given to slumber when
   saints sleep as they do! No wonder that the unconverted think Hell a
   fiction when we live as if it were so! No wonder that they imagine
   Heaven to be a romance when we act as if it were so little a reality!

   Oh Lord, awaken us, even if it be by thunder claps! Oh God, for Jesus
   Christ's sake, bring us out of the dry and thirsty land! Have You not
   said that if we drink of the river of the Water of Life, out of our
   belly shall flow rivers of living water so that we shall neither
   complain of thirst, ourselves, nor shall there remain a desert around
   us? Help us, then, to drink abundantly!

   I have thus spoken to as many as believe in Jesus Christ, but to you
   that are unbelievers, much of this may equally well apply, for you,
   too, are in a land still more dry and thirsty. Do not go about to
   sacraments and sermons, much less to priests, but go straight to God in
   Christ Jesus! Cry to HIM! O Sinner, cry to Him, "O God, though You are
   not my God, yet still early will I seek You! My heart longs for You!
   Come to me and save me!" Jesus will come to you and save you, even you,
   to the praise of the glory of His Grace. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The True Position of the Witness Within

   (No. 1428)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 11, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He that believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself." 1 John
   5:10.

   SOME time ago I tried to set forth the manner of the witness and
   sealing of the Spirit and I have no doubt that the subject will still
   remain upon the memory of many of you. But I am led to refer to it
   again and to go over the same ground because I meet with so many
   instances in which mistakes are made in reference to it--mistakes which
   cause great sorrow and much sin. The letter which I will now read I
   received yesterday and it is one of many of the same subject. "Dear Mr.
   Spurgeon--May I ask your prayers and the prayers of your congregation,
   to God, that He will, by the Holy Spirit, reveal Himself to me. I have
   for a long time past, I may say, years, been trying to serve Him and
   have a strong desire openly to join with His people, but I have not the
   witness in myself that I am saved and until then I dare not take the
   step."

   Now, this letter breathes an anxious desire to be right and sincere in
   all things and this is to be highly commended. We ought to be jealous
   over our spirit, fearful of hypocrisy and resolved to do all things in
   truth and sincerity. We ought to abhor the idea of making a profession
   of that which is not true and, so far, this letter shows a spirit
   worthy of imitation. Everyone should be anxious that he should in
   nothing be a hypocrite and should not allow the profession of his lips
   to go one single inch beyond the feeling of his heart. It is, again, a
   most proper thing that every man should desire to have the very best
   possible evidence as to his soul's salvation and if there is an
   evidence to be had of a very special, decisive and certain kind, it is
   but right that every man should cry to God for it and should feel
   unsatisfied until he obtains it.

   But, when all this has been said, we are bound in honesty to add that
   it is very possible for this anxiety to become an obstacle to faith and
   for the desire after special evidence to become a hindrance to our
   receiving the evidence which the Lord has given us in His Word. In our
   ignorance we may be overlooking the true source of peace and assurance!
   While straining our eyes by looking for that which God will never
   reveal to us, we may be missing rare consolations which lie near at
   hand! While craving for something unusual we may be neglecting that
   which Infinite Wisdom has put within our reach, like the foolish child
   which utters hungry cries for the moon, but forgets to eat the bread
   upon its own plate!

   There are many who, in their sincerely earnest desires to gain some
   token for good, are forgetting that earnest of the Spirit which is
   already within their own bosoms and thus, through darkness of spirit,
   they miss present comforts and are too feeble for present duties. They
   sit in fetters forged by their own fancy, when they might as well arise
   and walk at large. May the Holy Spirit, therefore, instruct us so to
   handle this matter that many who are seeking for this inner witness may
   know that they already have it, or may at least obtain it this day
   through Jesus Christ our Lord. Here, then, is our text--"He that
   believes on the Son of God has the witness in Himself."

   I. Our first observation is that BELIEVING ON THE SON OF GOD COMES
   BEFORE THE INNER WITNESS. "He that believes on the Son of God has the
   witness in Himself--he believes before he has that witness--and it is
   only as a Believer that he obtains it. This is self-evident in the
   text. No one can read these words without seeing that a man must be a
   Believer before he has the witness in himself. It does not say, "He who
   has the witness in himself becomes a Believer," but the order is
   reversed--"He that believes has the witness in himself." He believes
   first and then he obtains the inner witness.

   The basis of faith is the testimony of God concerning His Son--the
   testimony of God as we find it in holy Scripture. I do not believe
   Christ Jesus to be the Son of God because of anything I feel within
   myself, but because God Himself declares Him to be such! Neither do I
   trust my soul with Jesus because of certain emotions felt within, but
   because God, in the Book which I accept as His testimony, declares that
   He has set forth Jesus to be the Propitiation for sin. In the

   Bible I see that God Himself witnesses that whoever trusts Jesus is
   thereby forgiven, accepted and saved! And, therefore, I trust Him. We
   have no other foundation for our faith to rest upon than the witness of
   God. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater."
   The testimony of God is surely enough for us! Dare we ask for more?

   We must not go about to buttress the solid pillar of Divine Testimony.
   "Thus says the Lord" is proof enough and it is blasphemous impertinence
   for us to demand further evidence! Dare we look around for something
   which we have observed or something which we have felt to be a support
   to the solemn declaration of the Most High? If so, we are not believing
   in God at all, but are waiting for a surer witness than God, who cannot
   lie! In such a case we are still lost, for we cannot be saved while we
   are calling God a liar by refusing to believe Him till He can bring
   corroborative evidence! If we were to obtain that additional evidence,
   it is clear that our faith would not then stand in God, but in the
   additional testimony and so we should remain as to God still
   unbelievers!

   The only basis for saving faith is the testimony of God Himself
   concerning His Son Jesus Christ! "And this is the testimony that God
   has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son." Note that
   the words which follow our text assure us very solemnly that the
   rejection of this basis, namely, God's own testimony, involves the
   utmost possible guilt. "He that believes not God, has made Him a liar,
   because He believes not the record which God gave of His Son." Now, it
   is quite clear that this does not refer to any inward witness, because
   the man who does not believe Christ has no inward witness and cannot
   have any! He cannot be guilty of rejecting what he never had--but God
   has given an outward witness to all mankind--a witness contained in
   Holy Scripture, clear and express and therein He declares that Jesus
   Christ is His Son and the appointed Savior of men! And He bids men
   trust in Him, promising that they shall thus be saved.

   It is the rejection of the Revelation of God which involves the
   unbeliever in transcendent guilt, because his unbelief is tantamount to
   saying that God speaks lies--that He has deliberately given us a Bible
   which is a fiction; that He has set before us hopes which will end in
   disappointment; that He has threatened us with a doom which is a mere
   bugbear--that He has sent us a Savior who cannot save, who has
   presented a Sacrifice in which there is no real efficacy! The rejection
   of Christ as our Savior is the most pointed way of calling the Lord a
   liar! Surely we ought to start hack from such guilt as this, for it
   stabs at God's honor and, inasmuch as it impugns His truthfulness, it
   robs Him of one of the brightest jewels of His crown!

   O beloved Hearers, be not guilty of this, I pray you, but believe your
   God! What if all men contradict Him--be it yours to believe Him--"Let
   God be true and every man a liar." Believe God, though every feeling of
   your nature should seem to controvert His testimony, for feelings
   deceive and consciousness may be a dream--but God cannot lie--His Word
   is Truth itself! This, then, is the basis of faith, and the basis of
   faith which cannot be rejected without the utmost sin. Let me put it
   another way. I hear and I read that God has sent His Son Jesus Christ
   to save sinners--and thus I learn that I must trust Christ and I shall
   then obtain the benefit of His salvation. I believe this. I trust
   Christ and I am saved. This salvation gives me peace and rest and I
   become confirmed in my belief.

   Now there are many who want this peace and rest before they will
   believe. They expect harvest before sowing and will not sow unless
   their preposterous desire can be granted! My dear Friend, you cannot
   expect to have the natural order reversed in this fashion! Why should
   you need it? Has not God spoken the Truth and if it is the Truth of
   God, why do you not believe it? The essence of faith lies in believing
   that God speaks the Truth and in acting upon His Word because it is the
   Truth! Is this more than God has a right to expect of you? Why should
   there be any refusal to render what is so manifestly His due? Why
   should we ask for further evidence whether it is in ourselves or in
   others? Should we not at once say, "God has said it. It is true. I will
   act upon it. And since He says Christ died for sinners and saves all
   that trust in Him, I will trust Him and I shall be saved"?

   Now, this basis of faith is abundantly sufficient. I feel half ashamed
   to have to insist upon this most evident Truth of God, for, if we were
   not desperately set on mischief and alienated from God, we should feel
   this at once! Has God said it? Then to ask any confirmation of it is a
   direct insult to Him--a gratuitous impertinence against the Majesty of
   Heaven! Has God said it? Then we are more bound to believe than if all
   the scientific men in the world for centuries had witnessed to it! Has
   God said it? We are more sure of it than if all the traditions of all
   nations had handed it down to us! Has God said it? Then we are surer of
   it than if our reason proved it by mathematical demonstration! Has God
   said it? Then we are more certain of it than if we saw it with our
   eyes--for they might be deceived--or than if we heard it with our ears,
   for they might be imposed upon. Our senses are deceivable, but God is
   not deceivable! He must be true and we may wisely

   cast the weight of our souls upon His faithfulness. And when we do, we
   may take all the consequences, fully assured that what the Lord has
   promised He is able to perform.

   Now, though this basis is sufficient, the Lord, knowing our unbelief,
   has been pleased not to add to it, but to set it before us in a
   graciously amplified manner. He says, "There are three which bear
   witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three
   agree in one." That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He can and
   does save sinners and that He will save all who believe in Him is
   proven, first, by the giving of the Holy Spirit. He descended first at
   Pentecost, visibly and perceptibly, in rushing wind and cloven tongues
   of fire and He manifested His power by the marvelous gift of speaking
   in languages which the disciples had never learned. The Holy Spirit was
   mightily with the Apostles, bearing witness that Jesus was the Son of
   God and that the Gospel which they preached was Divine.

   The Holy Spirit has not returned to Heaven and though His miraculous
   power is no longer seen among us in the physical world, He is still
   working spiritual miracles in the Church. He still regenerates; He
   still enlightens; He still consoles; He is still the help of our
   infirmity in prayer. He is still our Comforter and Guide. In many
   blessed and useful ways, for which He is to be adored, the Holy Spirit
   is still in the midst of the Church to witness to the truth of the
   Gospel. Instead of miracles we have the Presence of the Holy
   Spirit--men quickened from death in sin, hearts renewed, eyes
   enlightened, souls regenerated--these are the standing witnesses of God
   in the Church to the Truth of the Gospel.

   Then, there is the witness of the water. By the water, I understand to
   be meant that Living Water of which, if a man drinks, he shall live
   forever. And it indicates the spiritual life which abides in the
   Church--the life and the cleansing which God gives to Believers. Now,
   there are thousands of us who can bear witness that we possess a life
   to which we once were strangers--but by believing in Jesus Christ that
   life has been given to us--as it shall also be given to all who hear me
   this day, upon their believing in Jesus! That Water of Life abiding in
   the Church and always flowing out of the very midst of her living
   members is another form of the witness of God, a part of the one solid
   basis upon which true faith must rest.

   Then there is the blood--a third witness--that blood of Atonement which
   speaks better things than that of Abel, which brings peace to the
   guilty conscience and ends the strife within. There is no voice like it
   to believing ears! This is another and most powerful form of the
   witness of God. He does pardon sin and give peace to the
   conscience--the fact is known to thousands and is the abiding witness
   of God to His dear Son. The abiding power of the Spirit, the water and
   the blood are God's continuance of His one testimony that Jesus Christ
   is the appointed Savior and that whoever trusts in Him shall be saved.
   Beyond this evidence, the hearer of the Gospel may expect nothing. What
   more can he need? What more can he desire? If you refuse Christ upon
   the witness of God, you must refuse Him outright, for no other witness
   shall ever be given unto those who believe not upon the solemn
   testimony of God!

   And, Beloved, let me say that this basis which has been so graciously
   amplified in the triple witness of the Spirit, the water and the blood,
   has this to commend it--it is everlasting and immutable! Did you
   believe in Jesus Christ 50 years ago? Did you then trust Him because
   God declared Him to be worthy of your confidence? That witness of God
   remains in all its potency today! A thousand years ago a poor sinner
   came to Jesus because God had assured him in the Scriptures that there
   he should find mercy. And today another sinner may come with just the
   same confidence, for the guarantee of faith is unaltered! What a
   blessing this is!

   Our feelings change--sometimes the inward witness burns brightly and
   sometimes it becomes very dim--sometimes we feel tender in heart and at
   another time we are hard as a millstone! At one moment we are zealous
   and at another moment indifferent. It would never do to have such a
   shifting basis of our faith. Such a moving, shivering quicksand as this
   would never satisfy us very long! But what a rock we have in God's
   Word! He has said it and it must be true, "He that has the Son has
   life." When I look within I cannot always tell by my feelings whether I
   have obtained spiritual life or not. But since I know that I believe in
   Jesus, I know that I have eternal life because God has said so! I,
   trusting His Son Jesus Christ, know myself to be saved over the head of
   all my feelings, let them be what they may, for God has said, "He that
   believes has everlasting life."

   And you, poor Soul, are not invited to come to Christ this morning
   because there is something in you that is a guarantee for your
   coming--some inward witness bearing testimony to your fitness! No, you
   are to come because there is witness enough in this Book! Because there
   is witness enough in the fact that the Spirit of God is in the Church!
   Because there is witness enough that the Living Water is still imparted
   unto men and that the blood of Jesus has not lost its

   power, but cleanses from all sin! If you will not believe upon this
   all-sufficient witness, you cannot expect to receive any other, for
   this is the witness of God upon which men savingly believe in Christ
   Jesus!

   Now, dear Friends, the faith which will not and cannot rest on this
   basis is evidently no faith in God at all, but a proud resolve to
   demand other evidence than His Word. "Well," says one, "but suppose I
   were to see a vision? I should then believe." That is to say, you would
   believe your vision, but that vision would, in all probability, be the
   result of a fevered brain and you would be deceived! "Uh, but if I
   could hear a voice, then I could believe." That is to say, you refuse
   the sure Word of testimony in the Bible and will only believe God if He
   will condescend to indulge your whims! Voices which you might think you
   heard are not to be depended upon--for imagination easily creates them!
   When daydreaming I have heard many voices, or thought I did, but they
   may have been echoes, or birds far up in the air, or mere fancies.
   There is nothing to be depended upon in hearing a voice in the air!

   Will you put that in competition with the revealed will of God? "Oh,
   but if I had a special Revelation." Such a special Revelation you have
   no right to look for! I speak most plainly here--no additional
   Revelation is to be expected because the Book of God is ended--the
   Revelation of God is finished and he that adds to the sacred Book is
   cursed! If you, therefore, say that God has made a new Revelation to
   you, you run a dreadful risk of the curses which are written in this
   book! God, by His Spirit, brings old Truths of God home to the heart,
   gives new light to our eyes and causes the Word to exercise new power
   over us--but He reveals no new facts and He utters no words in any
   man's ears concerning his condition and state. We must be content with
   the old Revelation and with the life and power and force with which the
   Holy Spirit brings it to the heart.

   Neither must any of us seek to have any additional Revelation, for that
   would imply that the Scriptures are incomplete. What? Has God spoken
   all this volume that you may believe on His Son and is not that enough
   for you? Must He go out of His way to make some private communication
   to you? Is all that which He has already spoken to be treated as a lie
   unless He, at your dictation, condescends to say something for you,
   personally? Are you too good or too great to be saved like other
   sinners? That is what it practically comes to! "Oh," you say, "but if I
   felt such-and-such, I would believe." Suppose you did? Then your
   confidence would be in your feelings and not in God--and what would
   that be but presumption seeing that there cannot be anything in your
   feelings which can make God true! God is true, feel whatever you may!
   Believe Him, then, for it is to that faith in His Son that He gives
   salvation and not to faith in your feelings!

   Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. But
   if Abraham had stood higgling and haggling till he had seen this and
   that, he would not have believed nor found righteousness by faith! Let
   me tell those of you who will not believe in God till you get a certain
   experience, or sign, or wonder to be added to God's Word, that those of
   His people who have been the longest walking by faith have to come back
   very often to the first foundation of faith in the outer witness of God
   in His Word! It has been the privilege of some of us to possess the
   inner witness for years and yet, at certain times, it departs and we
   have to fall back on the foundation--the Truth of God.

   When the winds are out and the storms are loosed and temptation howls
   through the soul, we always fly to the Word of God and not to our own
   experience! We get away from what we feel to what the Lord has said.
   One ounce, of, "It is written," gives more confidence than a ton of
   what we have felt. We are apt, in troublous times, to judge that our
   happy feeling was a delusion and our confidence a mistake. "True, I did
   think that I stood and looked within the pearly gates and was full of
   heavenly joy. But, alas, it may have been all a dream!" This is,
   however, no dream--that Jesus Christ came into the world to save
   sinners--there is no mistake about that fact! That God has sent forth
   His Son to be a Propitiation for sin--there is no imagination about
   that!

   There it stands in black and white in the Scriptures of Truth and to
   that witness we again fly! Whether I am saint or sinner. Whether I am
   an heir of Heaven or an heir of wrath, there stands the Word of
   God--"He that believes in Him is not condemned." I do believe in Him
   and I am not condemned, nor shall all the devils in Hell make me think
   I am, since God has said I am not! On that my faith shall stand
   unshaken, come what may! Let this suffice upon our first head, that
   believing on the Son comes before the inner witness.

   II. Secondly, THE INNER WITNESS NATURALLY FOLLOWS UPON FAITH. "He that
   believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself." It is quite
   impossible that the inner witness should precede faith and this you
   will clearly see if you think a minute. Here is a medicine well-known
   to be exceedingly efficacious in a certain disease. A sick man says

   that he will not believe in its power until he has some inner witness
   of it! It is clear to you that he cannot possibly have any evidence of
   its power until he has at least enough faith to take the medicine and
   give it a chance of operating upon him. So is it with this blessed
   catholicon of the precious blood of Jesus--you cannot have any inner
   witness to its power till, first of all, you receive it by faith!

   "To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons
   of God, even to as many as believed on His name"--but the reception
   must come first! And you cannot have this witness apart from faith,
   because the Holy Spirit never sets His seal to a blank sheet of paper.
   There must, first of all, be the writing of faith upon the heart and
   then the Spirit of God puts His attesting seal to it! Would you have
   God the Holy Spirit witness to a falsehood? And yet He would be
   witnessing to a lie if He gave an inner witness of salvation to a man
   who is still an unbeliever and who, consequently, is already condemned!
   If you refuse to believe God's Word, how can you think that the Spirit
   will bear witness of anything in you except it is to your condemnation?
   There must be faith before--and then the witness will follow after.

   But let it be especially remembered that a man may have the witness
   within him and sometimes he may not perceive it. You say, "That is
   strange"? Yet reflect--you might be the possessor of a large estate and
   an adversary might contest your right to it. What if you cannot find
   your title deeds? The estate might be clearly enough yours, but those
   deeds of yours might be mislaid and locked up in a forgotten
   drawer--and you might be sorely put to it, perhaps, until the day of
   trial settles the dispute as to whether it is yours or not.

   I believe that many a child of God has plenty of witness in his own
   soul, but he has not the wisdom to perceive it. Plenty of witness, but
   through ignorance or carelessness he does not collect it and refresh
   himself with it. If he believes, he has the witness within himself and
   he will be comforted if he has but light enough to know what the
   witness is. But often, through negligence in searching the Word of God,
   he has the witness but cannot discover it. He wishes to read it, but
   his ignorance has mislaid it!

   Now, what is this witness within? It may be seen as follows--take the
   verses that precede my text and you get one form of it. Jesus Christ is
   the Son of God and the Savior of sinners--that is the main point to be
   witnessed. First the Spirit, after we have believed, bears witness in
   our soul that it is so, because we perceive that the Spirit has led us
   to believe in Jesus and has given us repentance. The Spirit has renewed
   us. The Spirit has made us different from what we were. The Spirit
   helps us in prayer. The Spirit lifts us up upon the wings of praise.
   The Spirit works upon us wondrously and so we gather that this comes to
   us through believing in Jesus. He is, indeed, the Savior of sinners,
   for we are saved!

   Then the water bears witness within us--that is to say, we feel a new
   life, we feel the Living Water in our hearts and we are conscious of
   being alive to things to which we were once dead! We find that now
   there is within us a new nature which we never possessed before. All
   this becomes comfortable evidence that what we have believed is true.
   We have proved it to be true, for we have the life which was promised
   to us upon our believing in Jesus. Thirdly, the precious blood within
   our souls bears further witness, for when it gives us peace, we sing as
   sinners bought with blood and rejoice before God as cleansed by the
   blood from all sin. And, as having access into that which is within the
   veil by the sprinkled blood, we feel deep peace within our souls
   through the voice of the blood. This is a witness, sweet and clear,
   within us, proving that what we received from God's Word without any
   other evidence is certainly true.

   Now we have confirmatory witness within our spirits, given not because
   we demanded it, but as a sweet reward and gracious privilege. We should
   never have received it if we had not first believed on the naked Word
   of God--only after that does the witness flow naturally into the heart.
   Another part of the witness lies in this, that when we have believed we
   receive life--and according to the 11th verse, this is the record that
   God has given us eternal life--and this life is in His Son. We have
   believed and we feel that we have obtained the life--we are doubly
   assured that the witness of God is true. We believed it, before,
   because God had said it. And now we are permitted to feel it since the
   life is welling up within our souls like a fountain! We now know that
   Jesus Christ must be the Son of God, for to whom else is it given to
   bestow life? Who else could have bestowed upon us this high, this
   spiritual, this heavenly life?

   In detail, the inward evidence lies very much this way. First, a
   wondrous sense of change comes over the Believer. Having believed in
   Jesus Christ upon the simple evidence of God, there is a work of
   regeneration performed upon him and he feels himself altogether
   transformed. A young girl once said, "Either the whole world is
   changed, or else I am." Everything seems so altered, for it is seen
   with new eyes! The man undergoes a radical change of feelings! All
   things are

   reversed to him--his sweets are now sour and his sours are now sweet!
   And finding himself so thoroughly new-created, he says, "This is the
   finger of God," and he infers that the power which has worked all this
   comes from the Son of God.

   Then, again, there is a wondrous power which goes with the Word of God,
   not always, but often. Are you not conscious, my Brethren, of often
   feeling, when you are reading the Word, or hearing it, as you never
   felt when listening to any other form of speech? Get to the foot of the
   Cross, for instance, and look up and view the flowing of your Savior's
   precious blood--do you not feel, then, as nothing else can make you
   feel? You are reading a religious book and it has a holy effect upon
   you. But if you reflect, you will see that it is only powerful because
   it is borrowed from the Word of God. The voice of God thrills your soul
   in a more than magical manner as no other voice ever can! Why, I
   guarantee you, a Christian blindfolded would know which was a text of
   Scripture and which was not by its effect upon his heart!

   The very words are so majestic that none can imitate their dignity--and
   when they are applied with power they lay us low or lift us up as only
   Divine Words could do! "Where the word of a king is, there is power,"
   and this becomes an inner witness to the sovereign Truth of the Gospel!
   The same witness is borne by a sense of being put into our right place.
   You were all out of place before, but having believed in Jesus Christ
   you are put in your right position. You stand in harmony with the
   Divine system and this you feel could only be effected by the Truth of
   God--for a lie works to disorder and not to right. If anybody had said
   to the prodigal son--"I doubt whether you have a father. I doubt your
   father's love. I doubt whether he has any house where there is bread
   enough and to spare,"

   He might have been puzzled to answer those wretched doubts while he was
   standing at the swine trough, but you could not trouble him with it
   when he has reached his father's house and was sitting down at the
   table of love listening to the sound of the music and dancing, and
   feasting upon the fatted calf! If any skeptic had then said to him,
   "There is no father's love," why, his cheeks still sweetly tingling
   with the kisses would have supplied him with his best reply! I do not
   suppose he would have deigned to answer the doubter except by a quiet
   smile! And he would have gone on feasting upon the fatted calf or, if
   he did answer, he would have said, "Go, take your doubts to one who
   will receive them. I am right again with my dear father, for he has
   forgiven me and I feel his love and know for myself that he abounds in
   tenderness."

   That deep feeling of peace which comes to us through believing in Jesus
   makes us feel quite sure that He can save and that we are secure in
   Him! We took God at His Word when we had no feeling, but having
   believed in Jesus Christ we are now conscious of a wonderful rest--"The
   peace of God which passes all understanding." We see that we are
   forgiven, justly forgiven, saved by mercy, but still not to the
   violation of the Justice of God and, therefore, we are perfectly at
   ease. Yes, and sometimes we rise beyond peace! I am not going to tell
   many of the high secrets of the inner life, this morning, but yet I
   will confess that at times--

   "Our joys divinely grow, Unspeakable, like those above, And Heaven
   begins below." This, again, is a part of the inner witness that the
   Gospel is true.

   And what if I were to speak of growing holiness of character, of
   increased conformity to Christ's image? Do not these form a good inner
   witness? What if I were to speak of growing strength so that the things
   we dare not once attempt we now accomplish with ease, or of growing
   patience under tribulation? Either of these would be noble proofs! What
   if I spoke of fellowship with God, or of peace in the prospect of
   death, or of a thousand other blessings which make up Christian
   experience? Might I not claim that all these go to make up a very
   powerful inner witness which abundantly seals the Truth of God which we
   at first accepted as matter of pure faith in the testimony of God?

   III. As time hastens I will only pause for a moment to say that THIS
   INNER WITNESS IS EXCEEDINGLY EXCELLENT. First, because it is very plain
   and easy to be understood. Numbers of you have never read "Butler's
   Analogy." And if you were set to study it you would go to sleep over
   it. Never mind, you may have an unanswerable "analogy" in your own
   souls! You might not understand Butler or Paley, but you will
   understand the witness of your own spirit! You may talk to a pauper
   about mastication and digestion and assimilation and he will open his
   eyes and wonder what you mean--but he will understand your practical
   meaning well enough if you give him a good dinner!

   So it is with the things of God--theological terms are difficult, but
   if you believe in Jesus Christ and He saves your soul, you will
   understand that He is the Divine Savior and nobody will be able to
   convince you otherwise! That is another point of its excellence--that
   it is unanswerable! A man is told that a certain medicine is mere
   quackery. "See here," says

   he, "it healed me." What do you say to such an argument? You had better
   leave the man alone. So when a Christian is told that the Gospel is all
   nonsense and he replies, "It saved me. I was a drunk and it made me
   sober and more. I was a man of strong passions and it tamed me and
   more." What can you say to such facts? Why, nothing! It must be with
   you as with the rulers of old--"When they saw the man that was healed
   standing with Peter and John, they could say nothing against them."

   Such argument as this is very abiding in its results. A man who has
   been transformed and feels himself daily renewed by the Gospel, cannot
   be baffled because every day his argument is renewed and he finds fresh
   reasons within himself for knowing that what he believed is true! Such
   argument is always impossible to defeat. Sometimes if you are
   challenged to a controversy you have to reply, "Wait till I run
   upstairs and consult a few books." But when the evidence is personal--
   "I have felt it, I know it, I have tasted it, handled it"--why you have
   your argument at your fingertips at all times! Such witness as this
   gives a man great boldness. He does not begin to conceal his opinions,
   or converse with his neighbor with an apologetical air, but he is
   positive and certain!

   I confess that when I have to argue about the truth of Divine things it
   is a dreary task. I am so sure of these things, myself, by living and
   actual test, that I am amazed that other people are not sure, too! And
   while they are wanting me to argue about this point or that, it seems
   to me like asking a man to prove that there is a sun in yonder sky. I
   bask in his beams, I swoon under his heat, I see by his light--and yet
   they ask me to prove his existence?! Are they mad? What do they want me
   to prove? That God hears prayer? I pray and receive answers every day!
   That God pardons sin? I was in my own esteem the blackest of sinners
   and sunk in the depths of despair, yet I believed, by God's Grace, and
   by that faith I leaped into a fullness of light and liberty at once!

   Why do they not try it themselves? You want me to prove that bread is
   fit for food? Why, Man, I have been living upon it for years! I do not
   know how to begin my proof. Take a bit of bread, Man, and eat and know
   for yourself. "Taste and see that the Lord is good." We believe and are
   sure and, therefore we speak, but we do not wonder if men reject our
   witness, for they refuse the witness of God!

   IV. I close by saying that excellent as this inner witness is, IT MUST
   NEVER BE PUT IN THE PLACE OF THE

   DIVINE WITNESS IN THE WORD. Why not? Because it would insult the Lord
   and be contrary to His rule of salvation by faith. Because, moreover,
   it is not always with us in equal clearness, or rather, we cannot
   equally discern it. If the brightest Christian begins to base his faith
   upon his experiences and his attainments, he will be in bondage before
   long. Beloved, build on what God has said and not upon your inward
   joys. Accept these precious things, not as foundation stones, but as
   pinnacles of your spiritual temple! Let the main thing be--"I believe
   because God has spoken." If any other evidence comes to your net,
   accept it, but go on fishing by FAITH! Faith in God, in God's naked
   Word!

   Then, if the Lord's hand should turn and you, in Providence, should be
   stripped bare like Job, so that you sit on a dunghill covered with
   boils, you will be able to say, "I believed that God loved me when He
   gave me children. I believed God loved me when I had sheep and oxen. I
   believed that God loved me when I had camels and asses, but still,
   these were not the grand reasons of my faith, but God Himself and,
   therefore, I still believe that He loves me now that every child is
   dead, all my property is swept away and I am sick. Yes, though He slay
   me, yet will I trust in Him." That is faith! God grant you to have that
   faith which can sing, "Though the fig tree shall not blossom and there
   shall be no herd in the stall, yet will I rejoice in the Lord."

   Though there is no evidences of Grace in me; though there are no joys;
   though there is a broken peace; though there is sin to mourn over and
   though there is hardness of heart to stagger me--yet I still took the
   Lord Jesus as a sinners' Savior at the first and I take Him as a
   sinners' Savior now! I did not trust Him at the first because I was a
   saint and now I will not doubt Him because I find out more and more
   that I am a sinner--but I will still go to Him just as I am and rest on
   the great salvation which God has provided for me! Sinner, I charge
   you, do not wish to put your notion of an inner witness into the place
   of God's own witness which He bears to you and to every creature under
   Heaven in His sacred

   Word!

   You may not say, "I will trust Jesus when I have the inner witness,"
   because you never can have the inner witness till you have first
   trusted in the redeeming Lord! Until you are willing to believe God's
   bare Word and come to Christ in all your guilt and accept His cleansing
   blood and perfect righteousness, you never can have any evidence
   within, unless it is evidence of your own folly and sinfulness!
   Therefore, what is the use of your looking for it? Why seek the living
   among

   the dead? You cannot have this inner witness before believing and you
   ought not to desire it--for the desire is unreasonable!

   I have shown you that it would be irrational to expect the Spirit of
   God to set His seal to a blank--how can He do so? If you will not
   believe God, why should you expect to be saved? And if not saved, how
   can you have the inner witness? If a king were about to pardon men
   simply upon the condition that they would trust his mercy--and they
   were to answer, "We will not believe in your clemency unless you
   indulge our whims"--would you wonder if he did not pardon them?
   Moreover, let me ask you, how can you ever be right with God if you
   will not believe Him? Certainly I could not count you to be my friend
   if you refused to believe my solemn statements. If you counted me a
   liar, how could I call you my friend? What peace can there be till
   confidence is restored? Are not those God's enemies who refuse to
   believe His witness about His own Son?

   Now, my Hearers, will you believe God or not? Dear Souls, will you
   believe God or not? "Oh," you say, "but!"-- Now, that is not the
   question! What "but" can there be about this matter? Either the Lord is
   true or false! I know you can make a hundred "buts," but will you
   believe God, or will you call Him a liar? O Spirit of the living God,
   show men the sin of unbelief and bring them to see how just and right a
   thing it is simply to trust God and believe His witness concerning
   Jesus Christ!

   Now, I put you to this--If God is not worthy to be trusted, say so and
   go your way! But if He is. If He has spoken the truth, why do you not
   believe Him? If, after this, you refuse to believe in Jesus, your doom
   will be upon your own heads! But if you will trust Christ, you may
   rejoice, for you are saved! This is the Gospel that we are commanded to
   preach to every creature--"He that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved, and he that believes not shall be damned." God give His own
   blessing for Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Faith's Sure Foundation

   (No. 1429)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 18, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He that believes on Him shall not be confounded." 1 Peter 2:6.

   MY sermon last Sabbath morning [#1428, The True Position of the Witness
   Within] was upon the true position of the witness within and I then
   tried to show that the guarantee and ground of our believing in Christ
   unto eternal life is the witness which God Himself has borne concerning
   His Son. Not our feelings, or experiences, but the testimony of God is
   to stand to us as the reason for our believing. I tried to set forth
   that doctrine very clearly and I have been greatly delighted to find
   that the blessing of God rendered it effectual. I have met with five
   young men who have each one said, "If this believing in Christ because
   God has set Him forth and borne witness to Him, is really the way of
   salvation, then we are saved and we come forward to declare that we are
   on the Lord's side."

   When a fisher fills his basket in one place, he is glad to fish there
   again and, therefore, close to the former spot. Upon a subject near
   akin to it, I cast in my lines a second time! I do so the more readily
   in the hope that those who have been brought to Christ may be
   established in the present faith and may see yet more clearly what is
   the basis of their salvation. As I tried on last Sabbath morning to
   show why they should believe, it shall now be my business to explain
   what they should believe. We will think not so much of the reason for
   believing as of the Object of our faith, the facts which are to be
   received and the Person who is to be trusted. We saw the Lord God
   laying the foundation upon which faith is to rest--we shall now
   consider the Foundation itself.

   The passage before us is a very favorite quotation with the Apostles.
   If you turn to the Epistle to the Romans you will find Paul quoting it
   again and again in rapid succession. The last verse of the ninth
   chapter is, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." And in the
   11th verse of the 10th chapter he repeats the quotation. It is a
   quotation from Isaiah 28:16 where we find it written--"Therefore thus
   says the Lord God, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a
   tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that
   believes shall not make haste," which Paul interprets, "shall not be
   ashamed" and Peter renders, "shall not be confounded." From the
   variation of the translations we obtain two or three different shades
   of meaning but all amounting to the same thing.

   That must be a very important part of God's Word which even the Holy
   Spirit Himself has quoted so frequently! He is prolific of thought and
   is always able to create new ideas. He abounds in language and cannot
   be straitened for expression and yet He quotes Himself in these three
   instances which I have given you--therefore we may be quite sure it is
   because no other expression would be more suitable! This sentence
   seemed, to the Divine Author, to be so full, so complete and so
   forcible that He repeated it often! The harp is a choice one--let us
   play upon it and let our ears drink in the melody--"He that believes on
   Him shall not be confounded."

   I. I shall first of all, this morning, consider THE FOUNDATION OF THE
   BELIEVER'S FAITH, this being the main subject of our discourse, "He
   that believes on Him.''" The foundation of the Believer's faith is
   Christ Jesus Himself. The Believer receives doctrine because Christ has
   taught it, but still it is not a doctrine which is the foundation of
   his confidence--it is a Person--"He that believes on Him." The Lord
   Jesus Himself, as the Son of God, is the Object of our faith--it is
   upon Him that we lean. The Apostle does not say in the Epistle to
   Timothy, "I know what I have believed," though that would be true, but,
   "I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep
   that which I have committed to Him." The faith which saves the soul is
   confidence in a Person, reliance upon One who will certainly effect the
   salvation of those who trust Him.

   But in what sense am I to believe in Jesus Christ? Under what aspects
   does the Believer rest in Christ? I reply, first, as God's appointed
   Savior of men. Mark how the text runs in Isaiah. The Lord says, "Behold
   I lay in Zion a sure foundation." We trust in Christ Jesus because God
   has set Him forth to be the Propitiation for sin. When sin first came

   into the world, God, in tender mercy gave our parents the first promise
   concerning the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's
   head--we believe Jesus of Nazareth to be that Seed of the woman and we
   trust in Him to bruise the serpent's head on our behalf. Promises were
   multiplied as the ages went on and Jesus was set forth under various
   types and figures, but always as the Messiah--one whom God would send,
   who would undo the mischief of the Fall, remove the guilt of sin,
   deliver ruined souls--and give them to partake of the mercy of God.

   Now, all those promises and prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus Christ
   the Son of God and, therefore, we rest in Him. Since God appoints Him
   as a Savior, we accept Him as a Savior! Since He comes authorized and
   empowered from the court of Heaven to be the Ambassador of Peace, we
   joyfully receive Him and find peace with God! We are glad to see the
   marks and seals upon Him by which God the Father has certified Him to
   be His beloved Son in whom He is well-pleased. We believe the Apostolic
   witness by the mouth of John, "We have seen and do testify that the
   Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world." This is the great
   stronghold of our confidence!

   We also believe in the Lord Jesus because of the excellency of His
   Person. I began by saying that our faith was in a Person and so it is.
   We trust Christ to save us because we perceive Him in every way to be
   adapted by the Nature and constitution of His Person to be the Savior
   of mankind. It was necessary that the Savior of men should be a man. A
   man had broken the Law and a Man must keep it, for only the obedience
   of man could answer the requirements of the Law. By the sin of a man we
   became subject to punishment and only by the penal sufferings of a Man
   could the Law be vindicated. It is with gladness that we perceive that
   the Son of God became a partaker of flesh and blood and came under the
   Law. Born of a virgin, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes like any
   other child--He grew in stature as other children do and lived with His
   parents till the time of His showing to the world.

   "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His Glory."
   He labored, He suffered, He died among us. He was really a man, but all
   the while a perfect Man without trace of fault. And thus He was able to
   fulfill the perfect Law of God on our behalf! We rejoice as we see that
   Jesus is our next of kin to whom the right of redemption belongs, the
   perfect Man, the second Adam of our race. But yet more confident are we
   because we see that His Manhood is in union with Deity! We subscribe to
   that ancient confession, "He is very God of very God." In no diminished
   sense, but with the strongest emphasis which can be laid upon words, we
   believe Him to be "God over all, blessed forever!" He is "Immanuel, God
   With Us," and we each one salute Him as, "My Lord and my God."

   We perceive that His Deity must have put an infinite merit into the
   sufferings of His humanity. We believe that because He was God, He was
   able to undertake the stupendous labor of our redemption and that His
   holy life and suffering death are, because of His godhead, fully equal
   to the redemption of the vast multitudes who by Him do believe in God
   who raised Him from the dead. My Brothers and Sisters, there is
   something here to rest upon! Surely we can trust Him who is "the true
   God and Eternal Life." We see Jesus to be completely equipped for His
   work. He is divinely strong yet humanly compassionate. He is eternally
   existing as God and yet capable of death because He was encompassed
   with a human body. O glorious One, whose name is fitly called
   Wonderful, my soul cannot imagine a Savior in whom she could confide
   with so much ease!

   Jesus is worthy of all confidence! It seems, now, but natural to us who
   are Believers, to rest in such a Person as He-- who can with one hand
   touch the Godhead and yet with the other hand embrace our nature--who
   is the Son of the Highest and yet the Son of Mary! He is "The Mighty
   God, The Everlasting Father" and yet a Child born unto us the Son of
   Man! We trust Jesus because we see Him to be first, ordained of God and
   then to be, in Himself, fitly constituted to achieve our redemption.
   Nor is this all. Another ground of our reliance upon Christ is that He
   has actually finished the work of our redemption. There were two things
   to be done. The first was the keeping of the Law on our behalf--that He
   has performed to the uttermost, even as He said to His Father, "I have
   glorified You on the earth, I have finished the work which You gave Me
   to do."

   The very best "Life of Christ" is the four Gospels. We read them with
   delight and we perceive the exceeding beauties of His matchless
   Character and are fully agreed that He is "fairer than the children of
   men." Righteousness was the belt of His loins, and He was clad with
   zeal as with a cloak. For innocence, He is spotless as the lily! For
   zeal He is red as the rose! There is no fault in our Beloved--in His
   Character there is no redundancy and no deficiency! He is a Lamb
   without blemish and without spot. His Character is rounded with
   perfection. He fulfils both tables of the Law and presents unto God a
   perfect righteousness on our behalf. When the Lord presents that
   righteousness to us that it may be set to our

   account, we feel the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputes
   righteousness without works and we are exceedingly glad.

   We also see our Lord doing the other part of His work, namely,
   suffering in consequence of our sins and our faith becomes fully
   established. I do not know a more delightful exercise--I hope you are
   familiar with its delights--than to accompany our blessed Lord to the
   garden of Gethsemane. There, every drop of blood pleads with us that we
   should trust Him! There His sighs, cries and throes of anguish while He
   wrestles with His God all plead with us that we should rely upon Him!
   Remember who and what He was. Regarding Him as the Son of the Highest
   we see an overwhelming argument for faith, for who can doubt the merit
   of that work which begins with the holy Son of God lying prostrate in
   Gethsemane, exceedingly sorrowful even unto death? We can surely trust
   our souls with a Divine Savior who suffered as this!

   Then, rising from the ground, we trace Him as He is seized by His
   captors and hurried to the High Priest, to Herod and to Pilate. How
   they pour contempt upon Him! How the smiters scourge Him! How the
   soldiers mock Him! Now, indeed, He seems to be "a worm, and no man; a
   reproach of men and despised of the people." His lowest shame, His
   worst desertion, His most bitter griefs, His dying pangs all say to
   us--"Cannot you trust Him? When you see the Lord of angels derided and
   His glorious name made into a by-word and a proverb, can you not trust
   in the merits of His substitutionary woes?"

   Then comes the death scene! With tears in our eyes we stand at the
   Cross and see those blessed hands and feet nailed to the tree that He
   might be made a curse for us! Can unbelief live after this? Before His
   heart is opened by the spear-thrust we see it bleeding in every part of
   His body and soul, for He is a mass of anguish! Of His sufferings we do
   not dare to speak, for they are of a depth which no plumb line can ever
   fathom! O Son of God, if ever it were treason to doubt Your power to
   save, it must be so when we see You hanging upon the Cross! You have
   triumphed over our unbelief upon the bloody tree! Now You lead our
   captivity captive and we bow before You, fully assured that You are
   mighty to save! We feel compelled to cry, "I must believe! Those nails
   have crucified my unbelief! That spear has slain my doubts! I trust
   You, O everlasting Son of God, when thus I see You made a curse for
   me." It is upon the sufferings of our Lord Jesus that we rely for our
   cleansing--"The chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His
   stripes we are healed."

   One other Truth of God must be mentioned, seeing that our Lord is now
   no longer dead we feel it more easy to place our confidence in Him
   because He always lives to see to the completion of our salvation. A
   living faith delights in a living Savior! This is the seal of all that
   went before. He must have finished the transgression, made an end of
   sin and brought in everlasting righteousness, or else He would not be
   sitting at the right hand of the Father, crowned with Glory and honor!
   Beloved, that one Sacrifice which our High Priest offered upon Calvary
   has put away, forever, all the sins of His people! There is, therefore,
   no need of a repetition of it. It is blasphemous to talk of the
   "unbloody sacrifice of the mass" as a continuation of the one
   Sacrifice, for it is finished! There is no continuation needed, for,
   "This Man, after He had offered one Sacrifice for sins forever, sat
   down at the right hand of God."

   The righteousness with which we are clothed is completely woven! The
   fountain in which we are washed is completely filled! And now none can
   condemn those for whom Jesus died and neither shall any soul be charged
   with sin whose sin He bore upon the accursed tree--for, "it is
   finished"--has ended every accusation. He lives to take possession of
   Heaven for His people and He has entered it as our Forerunner. He is
   our Representative by whom we are, today, in actual possession of
   Heaven! As a man holds a farm or other land by his agent who is upon it
   to keep possession for him, so all the Lord's people have possession of
   Heaven right now by their Representative! Being there, in our name, our
   Lord is preparing everything for us so that when the time shall come
   for us to climb to our thrones, nothing may be lacking to complete our
   joys.

   Meanwhile He is pleading the merit of His blood on behalf of all those
   who trust Him--and He is also working, by His unseen Spirit--to
   preserve His own in every day of temptation and to keep and perfect
   them--that they may be presented faultless at the last before His
   Presence with exceedingly great joy. "Why also He is able also to save
   them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives
   to make intercession for them." So then, our faith rests on this--God
   has set forth Christ to save us--Christ is, in His constitution and
   Person, such a One as we can trust to do the deed. He has already
   virtually accomplished it by His life and death and He lives to secure
   unto Himself the result of what He has done. For these most sufficient
   reasons we trust ourselves with the Redeemer, that He may save us from
   our

   sins. Into His hands we commit our spirits as unto a faithful Creator.
   This we do with all sincerity and deliberation, believing that these
   reasons will bear examination and are such as none need to be ashamed
   of.

   II. Secondly, let us consider THE MANNER OF THIS BELIEVING. How do we
   believe in Jesus Christ? Now, we

   have not to go a single inch to find an instructive illustration of
   what faith in Jesus is! The verse before us is connected with building.
   "Wherefore also it is contained in the Scriptures, Behold, I lay in
   Sion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious: and he that believes on Him
   shall not be confounded." Now, if we were to carry out the figure it
   would run thus--"He that is built upon Him shall not be removed." So I
   take it that we can most naturally understand the laying of a stone
   upon the foundation to be suggested as a description of faith.

   If, then, you want to know what it is to believe on Jesus, it is to lie
   upon Him as a stone lies upon a foundation when the mason puts it
   there. There is the foundation, firm and strong, a precious
   cornerstone, tried and sure. Here is a smaller stone, quarried from the
   pit and the builder places it upon the foundation. Its lying on the
   foundation represents faith. Our souls' eternal interests are laid on
   Christ! The foundation bears up the stone and holds it in its place--so
   Christ bears up our souls and holds them in their position so that they
   do not fall to the ground. The stone presses with all its weight upon
   the foundation and that is what the Believer does with His Lord--he
   casts all his cares upon Him. Faith is leaning, depending, relying! As
   the key hangs on the nail, so we hang on Jesus.

   Faith is the giving up of self-reliance and self-dependence--and
   resting of the soul upon Him whom God has laid in Zion for a
   Foundation! A stone thrown about from hand to hand is self-contained
   and independent, but when the mason puts it on the foundation it is
   dependent, it leans on the cornerstone upon which it is placed. Poor
   tempted Soul, that is just what you have to do! You must not be a loose
   stone resting on yourself and tossed here and there upon the earth, but
   you must lie still upon Christ and let Him bear your whole weight upon
   Himself! A stone rests wholly on the foundation. If a wall is
   well-built it is not shored up with timber so that the stones have two
   supports, but the whole structure rests on a common basis. There is a
   good foundation and each stone lies upon it.

   It can do no more, for it could not keep its place for an instant if
   the foundation were removed. If the foundation fails, the stone falls,
   but while the foundation stands, the stone remains secure. That is
   faith--resting wholly upon Christ and looking entirely to Him for
   everything that has to do with our salvation. Genuine faith in Christ
   does not trust Him to pardon sin and then trust itself to overcome sin.
   No, it trusts Christ for both the conquest of evil and for the
   forgiveness of it! Some of our friends make a great muddle here. They
   say they believe that the Lord Jesus will keep them as long as they are
   faithful to Him. That is true--but where do you rely for your being
   faithful to Him? Do you depend upon yourself for faithfulness?

   If so, there is a very weak spot in your confidence. That stone is not
   lying square upon the foundation--push it more home--it must not stand
   out of the line or it will be over directly. Personally I depend as
   much upon my Lord to keep me to the end as to pardon the past! And I
   feel that I need Him as much for tomorrow as for today. I could not
   rejoice in Him as a Savior if He would only promise to keep me as long
   as I kept myself--for I need a Keeper to keep me that I may keep
   myself! If His promise was that He would keep me, "if--alas--that,
   "if," would spoil it all! There must be no reliance upon anybody but
   Christ for anything that has to do with your salvation, or you are not
   laid square on the Foundation. Whether it is to your regeneration by
   which you enter into life, or your ultimate perfection by which that
   life shall come to its complete maturity, there must be no reliance for
   you but upon Christ!

   Dear Friends, see to it that for everything--for wisdom, righteousness,
   sanctification and redemption--you lie plumb and straight with Christ!
   Depend on no man, but only Jesus. You are complete in Him--you cannot
   add to perfection! It is the not getting down to the foundation and
   resting nakedly upon Christ which makes the most of our soul-trouble.
   There used to be on the top of Snowdon a raised platform for certain
   people to stand upon who wanted to see a little further than others.
   Now, if you got upon that platform, it might shake and tremble, but the
   mountain never did. I have known Brethren build up a pretty little
   wooden platform of their own experience--some of them have built it so
   high that they talk about being perfect--or very near it!

   These wooden affairs shake with a little extra weight and make people
   tremble. Get down upon the Rock! Stand on terra firma! Rest on the
   everlasting love of Jesus and you will be safe! Take care to lie flat
   on the promise--get as low as you can and grasp the Rock. Lie flat on
   Christ as a stone lies on the foundation, for that is the proper and
   natural position of all the living stones that are built up in Him. The
   stone laid on the foundation comes closer to that

   foundation every day. "To whom coming," says Peter, "as unto a living
   stone." When a house is finished there still goes on a measure of
   settlement and you are glad if it settles all in one piece! Every day
   the stone is brought, by its own weight, a little closer to the
   foundation--may every day's pressure bring you and me closer to Christ!
   Oh, that the pressure of our joys and griefs may press us nearer to our
   Lord!

   A well-built stone gets to be one with the foundation. In the old Roman
   walls the mortar seems to be as hard as the stones and the whole is
   like one piece! You must blow it to atoms before you can get the wall
   away. So is it with the true Believer--he rests upon his Lord till he
   grows up into Him--till he is one with Jesus by a living union, so that
   you scarcely know where the foundation ends and where the building
   begins! The Believer becomes all in Christ, even as Christ is All in
   All to him. I hardly know any illustration that would better explain
   faith. It is none of mine, you see--it is taken from the text itself.
   The Lord help you to lie upon Christ for all that concerns your eternal
   interests!

   "But," says one, "I thought I had to do something for my own
   salvation!" Does the stone do anything to maintain its position beyond
   lying in its place? Your strength is to sit still! Rest in the Lord and
   wait patiently for Him, for your expectation is from Him. There is
   plenty for you to do for your Lord to show your love to Him and to
   glorify His name. But you cannot add to the Foundation of your
   confidence, nor should you dream of doing so. How could you improve
   what your Lord declares to be finished? Is not His work all-sufficient?
   Do you want to move the Foundation? Does it not stand fast forever?
   Lean on it steadily and let this be your chief concern.

   O poor fainting Believer, the more you can lean upon Jesus the better
   He will be pleased. "Lean hard," He cries, "and prove your love to Me!"
   Trust Jesus for everything and trust Him at all times! Trust Him in
   life, in death and to eternity--and you shall not be ashamed or
   confounded, world without end!

   III. We have, thirdly, to consider THE EVIL WHICH WILL NEVER COME UPON
   THE MAN WHO BELIEVES ON JESUS. The text says, "He shall not be
   confounded," and the meaning of it is, first, that he shall never be
   disappointed. All that Christ has promised to be, He will be to those
   who trust Him. If the Father set forth Christ to save the believing
   sinner, depend upon it--He will be as good as His Father's word! He
   does not begin to build and then leave off from lack of means. He will
   keep the Believer. He will support the Believer. He will perfect the
   Believer! You shall never have to say of Christ, "Well, there is much
   good in Him, but not so much as I expected." You will never have to
   lament, "Alas, I placed too implicit a reliance upon the Christ of God
   and I was deceived."

   No, never! But, on the contrary, you will exclaim with the Queen of
   Sheba, "The half has not been told me." Even Inspiration itself could
   not tell us, so that we could fully understand it, how sweet, how
   excellent, how sure, how full our Lord is! We know His love, but yet it
   "passes knowledge." When you know more of your Lord you will say, "I
   wish I had never doubted Him, for I never had a cause. Oh that I had
   trusted Him more fully, for He has never disappointed me, but far
   exceeded my largest hopes." In consequence of our not being
   disappointed in our hope we shall never be ashamed of having indulged
   it.

   Alas, some Christians are, at times, ashamed to acknowledge their
   Master, but that is not what is meant in the text. What is intended
   here is the grand Truth of God that they shall never have any cause to
   be ashamed of Jesus upon whom they believe! They shall never be driven
   to confess that they made a mistake in trusting Him and are, therefore,
   ashamed at having been so miserably duped. No Believer will ever say,
   "I came with a childlike reliance and did cast myself upon Him because
   He promised so fairly, but I was taken in a snare. I ought to have
   known better and I am quite ashamed of my credulity." No, no! The most
   childlike confidence in God in Christ Jesus is nothing more than He
   deserves! Credulity towards Jesus is the purest reason.

   You are always most prudent when you cast away all caution and throw
   yourself upon Jesus, sink or swim! It can never be prudent to doubt Him
   who is "the Truth," but it is always the highest wisdom to place all in
   His hands and leave it there for time and for eternity. To risk all
   with Jesus is to end all risk. Our hymn says--

   "Venture on Him, venture wholly-Let no other trust intrude."

   But, indeed, there is no venturing in it--it is safe as the Throne of
   the Eternal! May the Holy Spirit lead you to make a speedy trial of it!

   And then comes the next rendering--you shall never be confounded or
   confused. When a man gets to be ashamed of his hope because he is
   disappointed in it, he casts about for another anchorage and, not
   knowing where to look, he is in a

   troubled state and greatly perplexed. If the Lord Jesus Christ were to
   fall through, my Brothers and Sisters, what should we do? It is a
   supposition which we need not indulge, but if He is not true, there
   remains no other person in whom we may confide. There are many
   religions on the face of the earth, but not one of them bears as much
   comparison with our holy faith as a candle to the sun! They are all
   hollow mockeries, offering nothing which can satisfy a hungry heart.
   Lord, to whom should we go if we should turn from You? Where could we
   fly? If wisdom is not in You, where shall we search for it? "The depth
   says, It is not in me: and the sea says, It is not with me."

   There remains no hiding place for man if this cleft of the Rock is
   closed! There is no ransom from wrath if this redemption price is null
   and void! No, Jesus, we shall not be confounded, for we shall never be
   disappointed in You, nor made ashamed of our hope! According to
   Isaiah's version we shall not be obliged to make haste--we shall not be
   driven to our wit's end and hurried to and fro. We shall not hurry and
   worry, fret and fume, trying this and trying that, running from pillar
   to post to seek a hope! But rather, he that believes shall be quiet,
   calm, collected, assured, confident. He awaits the future with
   equanimity as he endures the present with patience. Beloved, see what a
   blessed promise this is to those of you who are believing on Jesus!

   Now, the times of our special danger of being confounded are many, but
   in none of these shall we be confounded. Let us just turn them over in
   our minds. There are times when a man's sins all come up before him
   like exceedingly great armies. It is a mighty easy thing to think that
   you are believing in Christ when you are not conscious of any great
   sin-- but true faith is not confused even when it groans under a
   grievous sense of sin, conscious that it is the chief of sinners! No,
   though sin rolled over the Believer's head, he would still believe--as
   David did when he cried, "My iniquities are gone over my head!"

   Have you never had times in which all the ghosts of your dead and
   buried sins rise up and come marching upon you, armed to the teeth? If
   you have never experienced such a visitation, I hope you may, for it is
   good for us to be driven to our Lord Jesus by distress of soul! All
   your thoughts, words and deeds--your bad tempers and rebellions against
   God-- suppose they were all to rise at once, what would become of you?
   Why, even then, my Brothers and Sisters, "He that believes on Him shall
   not be confounded"--not even by a sense of horrible sin, for after he
   has seen the whole horde of his sins march by, he cries, "they are all
   gone into the tomb where Jesus slept! The blood of Jesus has cleansed
   me from them! The depths have covered them--there is not one of them
   left! They sank like lead in the mighty waters, for God has cast them
   all unto the depths of the sea!" He that believes on the pardoning
   Savior shall not be confused, though all his sins should accuse him at
   once!

   The unbelieving world outside labors to create confusion. The gentlemen
   of the higher criticism, the scientific discoverers, the possessors of
   boastful culture and all the other braggers of this marvelously
   enlightened 19th century are up in arms against the believers in Jesus.
   When I think of how this century has been befooled by its statesmen and
   philosophers, I, for one, feel small reverence for it! Perhaps it has
   the most light, but it has not the best eyes! Well, let all this wisdom
   of the world assail us! Let proud pretenders point their fingers at us
   and say, "You trust in Christ. You rely upon Jesus of Nazareth alone
   for your salvation. You are old-fashioned and as much out of place as
   the extinct animals would be if they could come back again!"

   I say that if all the sages of the world were to utter one thundering
   sarcasm--if they concentrated all their scorn into one universal sneer
   of contempt--I do not think it would affect me the turn of a hair, so
   sure am I that my Lord will justify my confidence! "I know whom I have
   believed" and I know, also, that my Lord Jesus Christ "sits above the
   floods! The Lord sits King forever!" "Why do the heathen rage and the
   people imagine a vain thing?" He can save me and I trust Him to perform
   all that which concerns me. Faith in Jesus can be justified before a
   synagogue of Satans! Faith in Jesus deserves the respect of a
   parliament of philosophers! To trust the Incarnate Son of God, whose
   advent into this world is a fact better proved by history than any
   other that was ever on record--to trust oneself upon His atoning
   Sacrifice is the most reasonable thing that a man can do!

   There is nothing illogical about it--nothing which demands apology! We
   fling back in the teeth of the scoffers the charge of unreasoning
   dogmatism--ours is the most reasonable of all beliefs. O you mighty
   thinkers and skeptics, you are more credulous than we are! We may seem
   fools to you, but we are not judged of your judgment. You shall see
   your own folly when He comes, whose name is Faithful and True--when He
   comes to reign as King of kings and Lord of

   lords! He that believes on Him shall not be confounded by human wisdom,
   for God has long ago confounded it and turned it into foolishness!

   But the world has done more than sneer--it has imitated Cain and sought
   to slay the faithful. The enemies of the Gospel have raged fiercely
   against the Church of God. What opportunities has God given to them to
   conquer if they could! Christ has seemed to say, "Come on, world! Here
   are My poor disciples whom you despise! Come and see if you can conquer
   them! I give you a fair opportunity. There is the Coliseum--heap up
   tier upon tier of men and women with your cruel eyes and savage hearts!
   Bring out the saints. Cry, 'Christians to the lions!'" There they
   stand. The lions are loose upon them. Do they cry for mercy and
   treacherously deny Christ? They are feeble men and women--do they
   recant and leave their Master? Not they! They die as bravely as ever a
   soldier fell in battle!

   The enemy resolves to try them with torture, with rack, rod and
   fire--let us see what will come of it. Blandina shall be tossed upon
   the horns of bulls and then shall be placed in a hot iron chair! Does
   her womanly nature flinch? Ah, no, she is more than a conqueror! They
   try every kind of torment with the saints, but they fail in every case.
   Remember Marcus Arethusa, smeared with honey and a hive of bees put
   upon him? Yet never for a single moment did he relent! Every form of
   possible cruelty has in later persecutions been tried by Rome's
   infernal Inquisition, but Believers have not been confused!

   Fiends in human form have glutted themselves with blood till they have
   turned away from Christian destruction as from a hopeless task--they
   saw that they could not overcome the true people of God, for, "He that
   believes on Him shall not be confounded." They tried persecution in
   this land in the days of Queen Mary, but their defeat was self-evident.
   Weavers and farmers defied bishops and cardinals and held their own.
   Even women laughed to scorn the wretched sophistries of their
   tormentors! Tompkins trusted in God and stood firm when Bonner held his
   hand in the candle flame and equally well did he play the man at the
   stake! What notable stories Foxe has preserved for us of how the saints
   of the Lord clapped their burning hands and cried, "None but Christ!"
   while the flames were devouring them! The enemy could not confound
   them. If persecution should revive, we shall again conquer, for, "He
   that believes on Him shall not be confounded,"

   We cannot strike our adversaries--but by bearing their blows we shall,
   like the anvil, break the hammers! As it has been until now, so shall
   it be unto the end--we shall not be ashamed of our hope. Well, but
   there will come other troubles to Christians besides these and even in
   them they shall not be confounded. They will be tried by the flesh--
   natural desires will break forth into vehement lusts and corruptions
   will seek to cast them down. Will Believers then perish? No! He that
   believes in Christ shall conquer himself and overcome his easily
   besetting sins. There will come losses and crosses, business trials and
   domestic bereavements. What then? He shall not be confounded! His Lord
   will sustain him under every tribulation! At last death will come to
   us. They will wipe the cold sweat from our brows and we shall gasp for
   breath--but even then we shall not be confounded!

   We may not be able to shout, "victory!" We may be too weak for
   triumphant hymns--but with our last breath we will lisp the precious
   name! They that watch us shall know by our serenity that a Christian
   does not die, but only melts away into everlasting life! O Beloved, we
   shall never be confounded, even amid the grandeurs of eternity! We
   shall pass into the next state and after a while the trumpet shall
   sound and these bodies shall rise--and we shall stand amidst the
   countless throng on that august Day for which all other days were made!
   While other men who have other foundations to rest upon shall cry to
   the rocks to hide them, we shall stand calmly and quietly, adoring our
   Lord, the Judge!

   It will be a solemn day, even for us! We shall not be able to see the
   rocks splitting and stars falling and creation, itself, passing away
   without deep solemnity--yet assuredly the words of our hymn are true--

   "Bold shallI stand in that great Day, For who anything to my charge
   shall lay? While through His blood absolved I am From sin's tremendous
   curse and shame?" We will tell the Father in that Day that we have
   rested on the salvation which He appointed! That we have confided in
   His own dear Son and that we believed that the blood of Jesus did make
   atonement for our sin. We shall not find that He disowns His promise!
   Oh, if that Foundation could fail us, how ashamed and confounded should
   we be! I do not know, but I sometimes seem to think that if the Gospel
   could possibly be a mistake, we should have the consolation of being
   able to say, "Great God, it was through love of You and trust in You
   that we fell into this error"--and we should at least

   have as good a plea as the self-righteous can offer! But it shall not
   be so! Our Foundation cannot fail us! We shall not be confounded! The
   two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie are our
   strong consolation!

   Now I close by saying that the reason of our knowing that we can never
   be confounded is just this--because the testimony we have received is
   true. It is God's testimony--there cannot be a lie in that. Next, the
   Person on whom we lean is true--there can be no falsehood in Christ
   Jesus, nor failure in Him. The Savior in whom we trust is almighty! He
   cannot possibly be defeated, or too heavily loaded. The declarations of
   the Word of God in which we trust are Infallible and Immutable--they
   cannot be altered one jot or tittle. The Father of Lights is without
   variableness and Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, today, and
   forever."

   No Believer in Christ can ever be confounded--mark this word--till the
   Godhead itself shall be defiled! I put it strongly. Until God the
   Father can break His word, He cannot destroy a soul that believes in
   His Son! And if He were to break His Word, (the mere supposition
   borders on blasphemy), then He would no longer be God, since truth is
   essential to Deity. Until Christ Himself shall fail, He cannot refuse
   to save one that trusts in Him! And if He were to fail it would prove
   that He was not Omnipotent and could not, therefore, be God! And if the
   Spirit of God, which has worked us to the same thing, even to this day,
   were, after all, to deny His own witness and suffer the new life which
   is in us to die out, then He is not the Almighty, indwelling Quickener
   and Comforter of former days!

   No, Beloved, everything hangs upon the Divine fidelity! If Believers
   are lost, God loses more than they do, for He loses His honor! He loses
   His Character for truthfulness and the Glory of His name is tarnished!
   If I am a sheep and I am lost, I am certainly a great loser--but then I
   am not my own, but belong to the Great Shepherd--and He has lost me and
   so is also a loser. If I am a member of Christ's body and I am lost, I
   am certainly a great loser, but my Head is a loser, too, for henceforth
   His body is incomplete. The Church is the fullness of Christ, "the
   fullness of Him that fills all in all" and, I venture to say it, Jesus
   Christ were not a perfect Christ if He lost the very least and meanest
   of those who put their trust in Him! It would be Hell's boast against
   Him to all eternity that He could not keep His own!

   If the devil could get a Believer in Hell, what a noise he would make
   about him! "Jesus of Nazareth! Here is one of Your own! One who trusted
   in You and yet he is in Hell! You kept the strong because they kept
   themselves, but You could not keep the weak and, therefore, here is one
   lost--lost forever." How would hellish malice exult if such an occasion
   for scorn were given! But it shall never be! Because Jesus lives, we
   also shall live and shall not be confounded! Let us rest in our Lord's
   faithfulness and accept the pledges of His eternal affection--

   "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 remove

   His favorites from His breast--

   In the dear bosom of His lo ve

   They must forever rest."

   Amen and amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

Refined, But Not With Silver

   (No. 1430)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in
   the furnace of affliction." Isaiah 48:10.

   THE Lord refines His people, but He exercises great discrimination as
   to the means by which He does so. A silver furnace is one of the very
   best for the removal of dross and would seem to be well adapted for
   refining the most precious things, but it is not choice enough for the
   Lord's purpose with His people. It is prepared with extreme care and
   has great separating power, but the purging away of sin needs greater
   care and more cleansing energy than a silver refinery can supply. The
   greatest delicacy of skill is exhibited by the refiner who watches over
   the process and regulates the degree of heat and the length of time in
   which the precious metal shall lie in the crucible--this, then, might
   well serve as a figure of the best mode of sanctification--but
   evidently the figure falls short in its delicacy.

   The process of silver refining is, no doubt, one of the best arranged
   and most ably conducted of the works of man, but when the Lord sits as
   a Refiner, He executes His work with greater wisdom and art. Silver
   refining is but rough work compared with the Lord's purification of His
   people and, therefore, He says, "I have refined you, but not with
   silver." The Lord has a furnace of His own, as it is written, "His
   furnace is in Jerusalem," and in this special furnace He purifies His
   people by secret processes unknown to any but Himself. He has a fire of
   His own kindling in Zion, compared with which all other flame is
   strange fire and only in this peculiar fire will He, in His own
   singular fashion, consume His people's dross and sin.

   His saints are more precious than silver or gold and, therefore, while
   in one place it is written, "You have tried us as silver is tried," yet
   in another He declares that He has gone about it after a more Divine
   sort and has refined us, "but not with silver." No one would think of
   refining silver by the same rough means as they smelt iron, so neither
   will the Lord purify His precious ones, who are far above silver in
   value, by any but the choicest methods. More subtle and yet more
   searching, more spiritual and yet more true, more gentle and yet more
   effectual are the purifying processes of Heaven! There is no refiner
   like our Refiner and no purity like that which the Spirit works in us!

   Note, then, that distinguishing and discriminating Grace finds room to
   exercise itself even in the trials of the elect-- "I have chosen you in
   the furnace, yet not in the best furnace that man could make, but in a
   furnace of My own, which I reserve for My peculiar treasures." There is
   distinguishing Grace in all the trials of God's people. Every man in
   the world has a measure of trial for, "we are born to trouble as the
   sparks fly upward," but there is a distinction between the sorrows of
   the wicked and the trials of the righteous--a very grave distinction
   between the punishments of the ungodly and the chastisements of them
   that fear God! There is a furnace for each metal, but the more precious
   the ore, the more special the refining.

   There is a furnace for all men--for kings upon their thrones--to whom
   sickness and bereavement come as freely as to the poor! There is a
   furnace for the rich in the midst of their wealth--from whom their
   substance departs or their power to enjoy what they have heaped
   together! But there is a special fire, a reserved furnace into which
   neither the great ones of the earth nor the wealthy ones shall ever be
   placed. It is kept for more precious material than the unregenerate
   children of men! God's furnace in Zion is especially meant for His own
   people. Of each of these right royal jewels He says, "I have refined
   you, not with the precious things of earth--the kings and princes, the
   silver ones among mortals--but I have refined you in a different manner
   and thus I make My election to be visible, even in connection with the
   furnace in which I refine My treasures."

   I will push the thought a little farther, dear Friends, and remark that
   the Lord has special dealings with each one of His saints and refines
   each one by a process peculiar to the individual. He does not heap all
   His precious metals into one furnace of silver, but refines each metal
   by itself. You do not know my trials--I am glad you do not--and neither
   do I know yours, nor do I wish to bear that which you may have to
   suffer. There is a common sympathy, for we all go into the

   furnace--but there is a distinction in the case of each one, for to
   each one the furnace differs. Some tender hearts would be utterly
   crushed if they were afflicted as others are. Does not even the farmer
   teach us this? He does not beat out the tender cumin and fitches with
   the cartwheel which he turns upon the heavier grain. No, he has
   different modes of operating upon the different kinds of seeds.

   They must all be thrashed, but not all thrashed in the same way. You,
   Brother, may be as a sheaf of the best corn. Be grateful! But remember
   you shall feel the sharp thrashing instrument having teeth. And you, my
   Brother, may be one of the tender seeds, the minor seeds of the
   Master's granary. Be grateful, for you shall feel a lighter flail than
   some others. But do not compliment yourself upon it, for you might
   regret that gentler flail because it proves that you are of lighter
   stuff, although still true grain, of the Master's sowing. Beloved, I
   would venture to go so far as to say that the lines have not fallen to
   any two men in precisely the same places.

   We rejoice as we read the life of David because he seems to set us all
   forth. David is to the Church of God what Shakespeare is to the world--

   "A man so various, that he seems to be

   Not one, but all mankind's epitome," and yet David is totally distinct
   from any of the other saints. There are not and could not be two
   Davids! So you and I may travel in lines almost parallel and we may,
   therefore, know each other's griefs and tenderly sympathize, but there
   is a turning in my life which you have never reached and there is a
   dark corner in your life which I have never seen. The skeleton in any
   one person's house is of a different sort to that which haunts any
   other dwelling. No one man is the exact replica of another.

   In all this, Divine Sovereignty operates in connection with Divine love
   and Divine wisdom, purifying all the sons of Levi, giving to each one
   his own separate purification according as his need may be. "I have
   refined you, but not with silver. I have chosen you." Mark--a distinct
   personal word is used and is addressed to each separate saint. "I have
   refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of
   affliction."

   Having thus sufficiently shown that distinguishing Grace is to be seen
   even in the trials of the chosen, we will now turn to the subject of
   this evening which is the sweet connection which exists between God's
   election and the furnace. I have many things to say to you and,
   therefore, I will say them as briefly as I can, asking you to jot them
   down upon the tablets of your memory and enlarge upon them when you are
   alone.

   I. And first, between God's election and the furnace there is this
   connection--that THE FURNACE WAS THE FIRST TRYSTING PLACE BETWEEN
   ELECTING LOVE AND OUR SOULS. God did not choose His people in the
   furnace in any sense in which it can be said that He never chose them
   before they were there, for He chose them before the foundation of the
   world! Before one solitary star had begun to peer through the darkness,
   the Lord had given over His people unto Christ to be His heritage and
   their names were in His book. But the first manifestation of His
   electing love to any of us was--where? Well, I venture to say it was in
   the furnace!

   Abraham knew little of God's love to Him till the voice said, "Get you
   out of your country and from your kindred, and from your father's
   house, unto a land that I will show you." This was a grievous trial for
   him--the breaking up of family ties and associations was a furnace to
   him--and then it was that he knew that God had chosen him, for the same
   voice said, "And I will bless you and you shall be a blessing." I do
   not think that Isaac knew much about God's choice of him till he went
   up the mountain's side and said to his father, "Behold the fire and the
   wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" When he found out
   that the burnt sacrifice was to be himself, it was there that he, like
   his father, knew Jehovah-Jireh and learned the Covenant!

   So was it with Jacob. Little did he understand the mystery of electing
   love till he lay down one night with the stones for his pillow, the
   hedges for his curtains, the skies for his canopy and no attendant but
   his God. As he slept, even there at the mouth of the furnace--an exile
   from his parents and his home--he began to understand that God had
   highly favored him in His electing love. Certainly Israel, as a nation,
   did not understand God's election till the people were in Egypt. And
   then, when Goshen, the land of plenty, became a land of brick making
   and sorrow and grief and the iron bondage entered into their souls--it
   was then, I say, that they cried unto God and began to understand that
   secret word-- "I have called My son out of Egypt." They knew, then,
   that God had put a difference between Israel and Egypt.

   The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied. The more they
   were afflicted, the more God blessed them! They perceived that the hand
   of God was in this and that He had met with them there in the furnace
   of affliction. Yes, if you want the trysting place of the electing God
   with the chosen soul, it is just there--at the back of the desert where
   the bush burns with fire and yet is not consumed! Now may you take off
   your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy ground, while out of
   the bush there comes the voice--"I am the God of Abraham, the God of
   Isaac and the God of Jacob." God finds His people in the place of trial
   and distress--and there He reveals Himself in His special Character as
   their God.

   Did He not say to Moses, "I have surely seen the affliction of My
   people which are in Egypt and I have heard their cry"? We will settle
   this matter by personal experience. When did you first know anything
   about God's choice of you? Was it not when you were in trouble--in many
   cases in temporal trouble? You had prospered in the world for years and
   you knew not God, but you were like the prodigal son, wasting your
   substance in riotous living. By-and-by things went against you and you
   became poor, sick and sorry. And then it was that you began to think of
   the Father's house and resolved to fly to it. Then it was that electing
   love began to deal with you! I admit that it was not so in all cases.
   With some of us it was very different, but I make no kind of exception
   to the rule, namely, that we first began to learn electing love when we
   were in spiritual distress.

   When that fine righteousness of ours turned out to be a spider's
   cobweb; when that hope on which we had built so fondly began to rock
   and reel beneath our feet; when we found ourselves on the borders of
   death and at the gates of Hell--it was then that Free Grace and dying
   love rang out most sweetly in our ears. We had often kicked against the
   doctrine of Free Grace before, but now we clutched at it as a hungry
   man at a piece of bread which before he had despised! We saw that it
   was the only hope for us and we turned to it and, blessed be God, we
   found salvation! Would our proud wills have ever bent before the
   scepter of Sovereign Grace if they had not, first, been melted in the
   furnace of soul-trouble?

   Would we have ever known that the Lord kills and makes alive if we had
   not, ourselves, been slain by the fire of His Word? Had He not
   permitted us to lie like Nebuchadnezzar's guards, slain at the furnace
   mouth, we would never have known the Truth of God! "It is not of him
   that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy." While
   we heard the thunder roll--"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy
   and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion"--we bowed
   our heads meekly, accepted the Grace which was in Christ Jesus and, at
   the furnace mouth, for the first time in our lives, we understood this
   text, "I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction."

   II. We will now pass on to a second remark which grows out of this. It
   is very clear that THE FURNACE OF AFFLICTION DOES NOT CHANGE THE
   ELECTION OF GOD. If He chose us in it, then His choice stands good
   while we are in it and when we are out of it. If the very first
   knowledge we had of His electing love found us at the gates of despair,
   we can never be worse than we were then, nor can His love see less to
   rest upon. If He loved us at our worst, when we were dead in sin, and
   yet quickened us, much more, then, now that we are quickened and
   forgiven, He will continue to love us!

   Yet I have known a great many fears cross the mind of God's anxious
   people when the smoke of the furnace has brought tears into their eyes.
   So let me declare plainly--no amount of trouble, no degree of pain, no
   possibility of grief can change the mind of God towards His people! The
   furnace may alter the Believer's circumstances, but not his acceptance
   with God. You were a fine gentleman once--you had a large house and
   grounds, but now you have to be satisfied with a small room and scant
   fare. You were a fine well-built young fellow once--but now you are a
   gray old man. Everybody bade you good morrow once--nobody knows you
   now. Forsaken by flatterers and forgotten by friends, you might sit
   down and weep were it not that the only Being worth caring for loves
   you, now, as much as ever and selects this as a season for declaring
   His love towards you!

   Ah, your Lord did not love you for your coat, nor for your house, nor
   for your health and beauty, for He "takes not pleasure in the legs of a
   man." He loved you of old for reasons known only to His own sacred
   heart and He loves you now the same as ever. O dear Soul, do not be at
   all discouraged because you are going down the hill into deep
   adversities, for His love will go with you! The Lord's love does not
   rise and fall like the thermometer according to the temperature of the
   surrounding air. Oh no, but it abides the same to His people whatever
   their condition! The furnace very often alters our friendship. Our
   friends knew us before we got into the furnace--we were so fresh and
   fair they were glad to know us! But

   we have come out of the furnace so wrinkled and scorched that they are
   ready to run away from us! Like Job, we have to mourn that our familiar
   acquaintances forget us.

   Yes, but God does not thus change! He is not "a man that He should lie,
   nor the son of man that He should repent." "I am God," says He, "I
   change not." Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and
   His friendship never turns to hate or to forgetfulness. Blessed be His
   name, He has known my soul in adversity and made the valley of Achor to
   be a door of hope to me! And therefore I must and will speak well of
   His name. Yes, and the furnace changes us very wonderfully. Do you
   think some of you would know yourselves of 20 years ago if you were to
   meet yourselves in the street? I hardly think you would. You have
   undergone a marked change, have you not?

   Aches and pains of body have altered you terribly. Your juvenile
   elasticity of spirit has altogether vanished and your outward
   appearance is very much the worse for wear. Ah, you have altered, but
   your God has not! What a mercy it is that though eternal ages roll over
   His Immutability, they cannot effect the shadow of a turning. He stands
   fast like the great mountains, but we, like the clouds that melt upon
   the mountain's brow, come and go, for we are and are not--the mists of
   an hour! He is the same and of His years there is no end--and this is
   our consolation while we sing with Moses, "Lord, You have been our
   dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought
   forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from
   everlasting to everlasting, You are God."

   I want you to believe very firmly in the permanence of the Divine
   choice so that when you next enter the furnace you may have no doubt
   about eternal faithfulness. When you lie sick by the weeks or by the
   months together, or when you are driven away from home, or plunged in
   poverty, or bereaved of friends, do not say in your heart, "God has
   forgotten to be gracious. He has cast me away from His heart." It
   cannot be, for the bonds of Divine love cannot be snapped! To prevent
   its being supposable that the Lord casts away His people because they
   are in adverse circumstances, the text says the very contrary--"I have
   chosen you in the furnace of affliction."

   III. So now we hasten onward to notice another Truth of God. Thirdly,
   THE FURNACE IS THE VERY ENSIGN OF ELECTION. The escutcheon--the coat of
   arms--of election is the furnace! You know that it was so in the Old
   Covenant which God made with Abraham. He gave him a type when the
   victim was divided. When a deep sleep fell upon the Patriarch, there
   passed before him a smoking furnace and a burning lamp--two signs that
   always mark the people of God. There is a lamp to light them, but there
   is also a smoking furnace to try them. "No cross, no crown," was true
   of old as it is true now! It is the escutcheon of the Covenant.

   If you think of our great Master's dying will and testament, what is
   its prominent codicil? "In the world you shall have tribulation." You
   may be quite sure that if you belong to Jesus, "in the world you shall
   have tribulation." Do you want to erase that sentence from the will?
   Then you must give up the whole deed of gift! You must give up the
   sweet blessing as well as that which looks like a bitter warning! The
   child of God must feel the smarting rod. Sooner or later, in some form
   or other, the Lord sets His mark upon His people--and His mark is the
   furnace mark! Some of you youngsters have not received it yet. You will
   have it. Before you get to Heaven you are sure to have it. As the king
   sets a broad arrow on all his stores, so does the King of kings set His
   mark on all His people!

   You must, I say, pass under the rod of the Covenant--it is the ensign
   of God's love. Do you not see that thus He shows His love to His own?
   You do not think of giving a flogging to a boy who is none of yours. A
   stranger may do as he likes, but if it is your own boy who is caught in
   mischief, you will not spare the rod. If you are a child of the devil,
   you may go and sin as you please and may even prosper all the more in
   worldly things. But if you are one of God's children, you will be
   scourged as sure as you transgress! Has He not, Himself, said, "You
   only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will
   punish you for your iniquities"?

   That the Lord refines us shows His value of us! A man does not build an
   elaborate furnace and then cast into it odd stones and heaps of useless
   slag. You would say, "What are you wasting all your fuel for?" And he
   could not give you a rational answer. But if you see ingenious
   contrivances, lavish use of fuel and the application of refining
   apparatus. And the person who is using them says, "This is silver," or,
   "this is gold," you know at once that the ore is worth the fuel and
   will repay the labor and expense. So, dear Friends, if we are precious
   in the sight of the Lord, He will bring us through the fire--rest
   assured of that!

   If He regards us as mere refuse, He may let us rest in quiet. But for
   precious ore there are many torturing processes in store! A man does
   not take his knife and go through the wood and prune all the dog roses,
   the blackberries and the haw

   thorns--he does not care anything about them! But if he is a gardener,
   see how he purges the vines and cuts the fruit trees! My gardener cut
   my roses back so very much that I thought no flowers could ever come,
   but when I saw the luxuriant roses, I acknowledged that he and his
   knife knew more than I! Good roses must be cut back! And God's saints
   must be afflicted! God's people will pay for pruning, but wild vines
   will not. So it is a type and mark of the love which God has for them
   that He chooses them in the furnace of affliction.

   And it is a mark, in another way, that when God afflicts His children,
   it shows that He is not going to let them have their portion in this
   life. It was a deed characteristic of Martin Luther when a great man
   called to see him and, having spent some few hours with him, gave him,
   I think, a hundred crowns. Martin said, "I must get rid of this. I will
   not have my portion in this life--I must give this to the poor at
   once!" He used to talk in this fashion--"God gives His dogs plenty. See
   how rich the Pope and the Grand Turk are--they can have any quantity of
   gold and silver--but I am not His dog and I am not going to be fed so.
   He is not going to put me off with gold and silver. I am looking for my
   heritage in the world to come!"

   Now, my Brothers and Sisters, the Lord does not try many of you in that
   manner. He keeps you on short commons, embitters your bread and mingles
   wormwood with your cup. Why is this? Why, because you are not to have
   your portion here! You once half thought you might have two heavens,
   but you were deceived. The other day you began feathering your nest,
   but a sharp thorn has been put into it of late. You are one of the
   Lord's birds and He wants you to be much on the wing and little in the
   nest--therefore does He make it uneasy for you. This is not your
   rest--make it as comfortable as you may--this world is not your rest!

   Though godliness has the promise of the life that now is, yet this is
   not our rest and woe unto us if we try to make it so! All the trees in
   this forest are marked with the axe and they are all to come down! You
   may build up there, Sir Crow, as fine a nest as you desire, but it must
   come down! Build your nests, my Brothers and Sisters, on the
   everlasting rocks where God's eagles make their nests--high above the
   reach of time and change, in the eternal purpose and everlasting love
   of God--for your portion is not for the present, neither can you be
   satisfied with the world, try as you will!

   Enough upon this point--it is plain that the furnace is one of the
   ensigns of the election of Grace.

   IV. Fourthly, THE FURNACE IS THE WORKSHOP OF ELECTING LOVE. What are we
   elected to, if God has chosen us? Why, He has chosen us unto holiness.
   There is no man in this world chosen to go to Heaven apart from being
   made fit to go there! We are chosen to be made the children of God;
   chosen to be made like Christ. Well, now, in the hands of God, the
   blessed Spirit, the furnace often becomes very helpful to this end, for
   it consumes much of our dross! Do you ask me what sort of dross does a
   man lose in the furnace? I answer, affliction helps to remove many a
   superfluity of naughtiness, but there is one which I will tell you of
   at once and that is mushroom faith and wild-fire joy.

   We have a great store of the fictitious and unreal, especially when we
   begin. Then we are mighty big Christians and are likely to surpass all
   that have gone before us! I do not know whether we have not reached the
   higher life, but certainly we are quite near it, for we are very rich
   and increased in goods and have need of nothing! It is wonderful what
   fine saints we are until we are tried--and then our beauty consumes
   away like a moth. The Lord puts us into the furnace three or four days
   and we wonder where one-half of us has gone! He keeps us there another
   week or two and we shrivel in a most satisfactory manner.

   What have we lost? Any Divine Grace? No, Brothers and Sisters, no man
   ever lost any Grace in the furnace! What have we lost? Well, we have
   lost what we thought was Grace--we have lost spiritual gas. We have
   parted with vast accumulations of self-conceit, self-confidence and
   self-esteem--and instead of glorying in ourselves, we begin to cry for
   mercy out of the very dust! I have known a child of God so big that he
   could hardly get inside the door of any ordinary Meeting House and by
   the time that the Lord had given him a twist or two, he was glad enough
   to creep into a mouse hole, so long as he might be somewhere near the
   people of God!

   Sanctified affliction is a wonderfully diminishing process, but that is
   the way we grow--we grow by becoming less and less in our own esteem!
   The Lord uses the furnace on purpose to this end--to take away
   fictitious Grace! Some of our young friends all of a sudden descend
   into the pit of despair and we are very grieved for them--but it is the
   best thing that can happen to them--for when they find their feet,
   again, they will have learned how to walk in a much more careful and
   godly manner than they did before! So you see that electing love uses
   the furnace to consume our dross.

   The Lord uses the furnace to also prepare the soul for a more complete
   fashioning. The metal must be melted before it can be poured into the
   mold and affliction is used by the Holy Spirit to melt the heart, to
   make it tender and pliable and to fit it to receive the fashion and
   take the shape of the sacred mold into which heavenly wisdom delivers
   it. Besides, affliction has much to do in loosening a Christian from
   this world--and this is a great and necessary part of his education,
   seeing that he is not to be here long--and yet is as apt to cling to
   earth as if he would dwell here eternally! He is soon to be up and away
   to his estates on the hilltops, yet he clings to this poor earth and
   would hug it yet more if it were not that the Lord makes it bitter to
   him!

   One said of old, "My soul is even as a weaned child." A great many
   might far more truly say, "My soul is even as a weaning child--very
   fretty and very willful--but not at all ready to give up its childish
   delights." A blessed thing it is when there has been enough furnace
   work to make a man say, "I have done with the world. Now all my
   thoughts rise towards the world to come, for there my treasure, by
   God's Grace, is laid up."

   My time flies so rapidly that I cannot stop long on any one branch of
   this very fruitful topic. There is no doubt that electing love does use
   the furnace as its workshop and that there the vessels of mercy are
   made to receive many a line of beauty and marks of Divine Grace.

   V. But now, fifthly, THE FURNACE IS A GREAT SCHOOL IN WHICH WE LEARN OF
   ELECTION ITSELF.

   First, in the furnace we learn the graciousness of election. When a
   child of God, in the time of trouble, sees the corruption of his
   heart--the little Hell, the perfect Sodom which reeks within his
   nature--he begins to say, "How can the Lord ever love me? If He has
   loved me, His affection must be traced to Grace, Free Grace, Sovereign
   Grace, Divine Grace and nothing but Grace." Now that is a great thing
   to learn!

   Then, too, we learn the holiness of election, for while we lie
   suffering, a voice says, "God will not spare you because there is still
   sin in you. He will cleanse you from every false way." Then we learn
   what a holy thing God's election is! Then we learn how clean they must
   be who are to stand in His Presence. Then we see how He would have His
   favorites loathe every sin! Then we learn how God sees it better that
   His children should always smart than that they should sometimes sin!
   He will sooner make them bleed at every pore than He will allow their
   hearts to go after their idols. What a holy thing election is when it
   involves rebukes and chastisements in order to our perfecting!

   Then, too, in the furnace we see what a loving thing election is, for
   never is God so loving to His people consciously as when they are in
   the flames of trouble. How tenderly He presses them to His bosom in
   their hour of grief! The mother always loves her child, but let that
   child be ill, let it pine away, let it become weaker and weaker and you
   will see the mother's heart! She loves that child better than the
   others because it needs more love! And when the Lord allows His dear
   children to grow poor, or to become distressed in mind or in body, then
   He lets out His heart to them--then will He show them His love in such
   choice and delicate ways as perhaps they never knew before. It is at
   such times that God's people know the power of electing love!

   "Ah," cries the instructed Believer, "I can now see how the decrees of
   God preserve my soul! I am in the furnace and if He had not kept me,
   the vehement heat would long ago have utterly consumed me." If you want
   to see what the power of God can do for a Believer you must stand where
   Nebuchadnezzar stood and look into the red mouth of the furnace! Those
   who threw in the holy children perished by reason of the vehemence of
   the flames so that there was no fancy about the fire--it was a real and
   killing flame! Look steadily in--your eyes can bear the gaze. You see
   three men walking. They were cast in bound, but they are walking loose!

   Three, did I say? There are four! There is a mystic Stranger with
   them--One who wears a crown brighter than all the crowns of earth--but
   who is He? "The fourth is like unto the Son of God." Shadrach, Meshach
   and Abednego had never seen the Son of God so near them as when they
   trod the glowing coals! Is it not written, "I have chosen you in the
   furnace of affliction"? When you go through the fire you shall not be
   burned. The Lord's choice of you shall be shown by His bearing you
   company! Yes, Beloved, and it is at such times that the sweetness of
   God's electing love comes home to the Christian heart, for he joys and
   rejoices in his tribulation while he is conscious of the love of God! I
   would not change my estate--no, not in the furnace--with the bravest
   worldling that lives! When everything else is gone, if electing love
   remains, I am rich to all the intents of bliss! Let me be sure of
   almighty love and all the rest is not worth a thought!

   So, Beloved, you learn election in the furnace and, though I do not
   desire any Believer the slightest harm, but wish him every blessing,
   yet as to some of my Christian Brothers and Sisters who never go very
   far into the deep things of God

   and are very cloudy about the Doctrines of Grace and cannot, indeed,
   say, "Grace," without somehow stuttering, "free will," I would to God
   that they had a little touch of the furnace for their eternal good! A
   scorch or two might do them good and they might, perhaps, be better
   able to speak to the praise of the glory of that infinite eternal Grace
   which chose the saints of old and will not cast them away!

   VI. Now, lastly, by the FURNACE SOME OF THE HIGHER ENDS OF A YET MORE
   SPECIAL ELECTION

   ARE OFTEN REVEALED for there is not only an election of Grace, but
   there is an election from among the elect to the highest position and
   to the noblest service! Jesus Christ had many choice disciples, but it
   is written, "I have chosen you twelve." Out of the 12 there were
   three--you know their names and out of the three there was one, elect
   out of the elect--that loving, tender John, who leaned upon his
   Master's bosom!

   The furnace has much to do with this, as a rule, since it usually
   attends and promotes the higher states of Divine Grace and the wider
   ranges of usefulness. First with the preacher this truth is
   seen--affliction makes him eminent. I do not think that the preacher
   will long feed God's saints if he does not read in that volume which
   Luther said was one of the three best books in his library, namely,
   affliction. That book is printed in black letters but it has some
   wonderful illuminations in it and he who would teach the people must
   often weep over its chapters. Men never bake bread so well as when the
   oven is well heated, nor do we prepare sermons so well as when the fire
   burns around us.

   When we have been in heaviness, ourselves, we are able to talk
   experimentally to the tried children of God. When the Lord means to
   train any of His servants for eminent usefulness in the building up of
   His people, He passes him through the fire--edification comes of
   tribulation. So is it with the Christian hero. He could never lead the
   host if he had not been chastened of the Lord in secret places. Men who
   have stood in the front of the armies of God have been trained by
   adversity. Martin Luther--grand, brave man--have you ever read his
   private biography? He was a man so tempted, so tried and so frequently
   the victim of depression of spirits and dire despondency that he was
   often ready to die in despair!

   There were times when he did not know whether he had any part or lot in
   the glad tidings which he loved so well. Though he went on thundering
   out the Gospel for other people, he sometimes could get no comfort
   himself. Those awful conflicts of his with the devil were the means of
   confirming his spirit in his public controversies! How could he be
   afraid of the Pope when he had faced the devil, himself? He could not
   fear to go to Worms because of the devils on the housetops of which he
   spoke--for he had faced all the infernal legions in his own house and,
   by God's Grace, had overcome them!

   Look at Calvin, again, that mightiest master in Israel--clear, upright
   and profound! He suffered daily under a list of diseases, any of which
   would have made an invalid of a less courageous man and, although
   always early in the morning at the cathedral, delivering his famous
   expositions which have enriched the Church of God, yet he always bore
   about him a body full of anguish. Nor could England find a Wycliffe,
   nor Scotland a Knox, nor Switzerland a Zwingli, except it were where
   the Refiner sits at the furnace door!

   It must be so! No sword is fit for our Lord's handling till it has been
   full often annealed. Well, as it is with the preachers and heroes, so
   it will be with us if we would rise. I would have you greatly aspire in
   holy things! Labor after a perfectly consecrated life! Renounce all
   selfishness and live for the salvation of souls and the glory of God!
   But remember that you will not reach it except by many a trial! Do you
   aspire to be Christly? I trust you do. But you never will be like Jesus
   if you never bear a cross! If your life is one of ease, can you be like
   He who had no place to lay His head? If you never know self-denial, if
   you never have reproach heaped upon you--if no man ever calls you
   devil, or mad--if everything goes swimmingly with you, how can you know
   fellowship with the Despised and Rejected of Men? God's true people are
   opposed by the current of the times, even as their Master was!

   Oh, yes, it will cost you many a sorrow, many a tear if you are to
   follow your Master fully! But do not, therefore, hesitate. Do you want
   to be heavenly? I know some that are already, in a measure, so. I could
   indicate some members of this Church whose speech is savored with
   eternity and glory--they cannot speak half-a-dozen sentences but their
   speech betrays that they have been with Jesus! Mark well this
   fact--they are tried people--they are mostly sick people of whom I
   would dare to say that they are heavenly! We ought all to be so, but
   oh, my Brothers and Sisters, we are very little what we should be till
   we are put upon the anvil and the Lord uses the hammer upon us! If He
   is doing that, now, with any of you and you have crosses to bear, do
   not repine, but let the soft whisper of the text sustain you--"I have
   chosen you in the furnace of affliction."

   There are tokens of consumption about you, dear Sister--I see that
   hectic flush, but do not dread the future, for the Lord says--"I have
   chosen you in the furnace of affliction." You have struggled hard, my
   Brother, to rise out of your situation, but as often as you have
   strived, you have fallen back, again, with broken wings to your
   somewhat hard lot. Do not be despondent, but abide in your calling with
   contentment since the Lord has said--"I have chosen you in the furnace
   of affliction." Young man, you have been to college and you were near
   taking your degree, but your health is failing you and you will never
   become a renowned scholar as you hoped. Do not distress yourself
   because your part will be passive rather than active, for the Lord
   says--"I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction."

   Merchant, your firm is going to pieces--you will be poor--but have
   faith in God. It is the Lord's will that you should go struggling
   through the rest of your life, but He says--"I have chosen you in the
   furnace of affliction." Mother, you have lost three or four little ones
   and there is another sickening and you say, "I cannot bear it." Yes,
   you will bear it, for the Lord says, "I have chosen you in the furnace
   of affliction." And are you here, Hannah? Are you here, tonight, you
   woman of a sorrowful spirit? Is your adversary bitter of spirit toward
   you? Are there those about you that grieve you and make you fret? Weep
   no more, for the Lord loves you when no one else does and He says, "I
   have chosen you in the furnace of affliction"!

   Some of you are like ferns. You never flourish except in the damp and
   in the shade. Too much sunlight would not be good for you. Some plants
   need a marsh and a fog to develop them and, perhaps, you are such.
   Perhaps your Master knows that if He puts you where you would like to
   be, it would be deadly to you and therefore He writes, "I have chosen
   you in the furnace of affliction." Now, I take my leave of you all by a
   morsel of personal experience. My Lord met me tonight and said, "I have
   chosen you in the furnace of affliction," and I endeavored to reply to
   Him, "My Lord, inasmuch as You do graciously condescend to say, 'I have
   chosen you,' I leave the rest of the sentence entirely to Your will and
   ask not whether it is in the furnace or out of it. Choose me and then
   choose everything for me. If you choose the furnace, I would choose the
   furnace, too."

   Remember the good woman who, when they said to her, because she was
   very ill, "Would you rather live or die?" replied, " I would rather
   God's will were done"? "Oh," they said, "but if God would let it be
   just as you wish, which should it be?" She replied, "If the Lord were
   to leave it to my will, I would beg Him to be so good as to let it be
   His will and not mine." O, Beloved, pray, "Not as I will." Grief is
   almost ended when self is slain! Sorrow well near ceases to be sorrow
   when you take the sting of self out of it! The Lord be with you, for
   Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Message from the Lord's Mouth

   (No. 1431)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Son of man I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel:
   therefore hear the word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me."
   Ezekiel 3:17.

   IN most places the seasons in the Church are the reverse of those of
   Nature. Our wintry season generally comes when our hearers are busy in
   the fields, or resting in their summer retreats. And our harvest time
   for the ingathering of souls comes to us in the winter when, during the
   long evenings, the people can come together and special meetings for
   prayer and exhortation can be held. Just now, as the damp of autumn
   begins to fall and the days are sensibly shortening, we ought to take
   note of the signs of the times and begin sharpening our sickles for a
   plenteous harvest. The time when kings go forth to battle is coming on
   and we must muster the host. The season when we can, with special ease,
   gather the people and hopefully labor for their conversion is now at
   our doors and it is well that we gird up our loins for it!

   I feel deeply anxious, dear Friends, that every time these seasons come
   round, all Christians should be fully prepared for them! I feel that we
   should make the best of every opportunity and use with
   thorough-heartedness, every hopeful occasion if, by any means, we may
   save some! Now is our time to use all our powers that we may be the
   means of bringing glory to our Lord Jesus Christ and of setting Him on
   high in hearts conquered by His love! We should all desire to take some
   part in this gracious work! Of course there are and always will be, in
   the Christian Church, special watchmen-- chosen men who are set apart
   by God for the warning of the people--whose one business it is to cry
   aloud and spare not, whether men will hear or whether they will not!

   Let us be thankful that the Lord gives us such men and let us beseech
   Him to multiply their number. We prayerfully expect to have our
   Ezekiels to whom the Lord shall say, "Son of man, I have made you a
   watchman." But still, Beloved, when the camp is in imminent danger,
   every man should turn watchman! And though the special sentinels must
   keep their posts, walk their beats and must with double vigilance act
   as if everything depended upon them--yet all the rest of the host must
   also mount guard and aid in keeping the watches both by day and night.
   It seems to me, Brother, that if the Lord has opened your eyes, you
   have become a Seer. And when you have become a Seer and can see, you
   should also become a watchman and watch for the good of the Church of
   God and for the salvation of souls!

   If this country were invaded, which may God grant it never may be, we
   could not confine the defense to our professional soldiers. No, every
   man would grasp such a weapon as he could reach and use it vigorously
   to drive the intruder over our white cliffs! I might even venture to
   say every woman would do the same--and matrons would become Amazons!
   Dear are our hearths and homes and none of us would ask to be excused
   in the defense of our beloved isle! Even so in the work of the
   salvation of souls, every saved one longs to have a share! Can we let
   sinners perish? Can we permit our own kinsmen to go down into the Pit?
   No, not if our prayers, tears and earnest teaching can rescue them!

   Jesus Christ, in mighty love has died to save sinners and He must be
   honored for His glorious deed of Grace--can we suffer His name to be
   trailed in the mire? Shall He still be despised and rejected by human
   hearts? Shall even the members of our own family refuse His gentle
   sway? No, not if our testimony may help to honor Him, nor if our
   earnest pleading may gain Him a throne in some human heart! We feel
   glad to think that Christ's battles are not such as require strength of
   muscle and bone, nor do they need great mental capacity. Even the
   appointed watchman is set only to warn the people--he has not to charm
   them with eloquence, nor to electrify them with novelties of oratory!
   He is simply to warn them and the most plain language may suffice for
   that!

   Surely it is a grave mistake of the present period that men think their
   preachers are bound to be oratorical and poetical. Why is such
   startling ability to be flaunted if the object is to warn a sinner to
   flee from the wrath to come? I fear that my Brothers are forgetting
   their real errand and are laboring to dazzle those whom the Lord sent
   them to warn! If a

   man is asleep and I have to wake him, I need not cultivate a fine tenor
   voice with which to sing him out of his slumbers! I have but to call
   with sufficient loudness and distinctness until he is startled. I am
   glad that you Christian people can all take a share in the service of
   your Master since that service is the warning of those around you! You
   will never deliver sensational discourses and I am sure you need not
   regret the inability! But you can give men warning from God. You can
   warn children, your own children to begin with. You can warn your
   neighbors. You can warn those of your own rank and age. You can warn
   all who come in your path, for that is simply to tell of danger and to
   recommend the way of escape. Brothers and Sisters, with but slender
   knowledge and stammering utterance, we can warn and we will!

   I am going to address you, this morning, upon the supposition that all
   of you who are believers in Christ are panting to take a share in the
   necessary and earnest work of warning men, lest they come to
   destruction. May I not hope that this is the case? To me it seems as if
   there is nothing else worth living for! It cannot be worthwhile to
   linger in this land of sorrow and of toil unless God is to be glorified
   by us! Nothing but the accomplishment of His gracious purposes can
   compensate us for our exile from Heaven. No merely earthly object is
   worthy of an immortal spirit. If we could win the Indies--what is
   wealth? If we could compel the trumpet of fame to engross itself with
   our exploits--what is honor? There is nothing beneath the sun worth a
   man's lifting his hand for except the glory of God! And God is best
   glorified by the conversion of men.

   You believe that, my Brothers and Sisters, and therefore you mean to
   have a share in it, if it is but the bringing of one poor child to
   Christ! Therefore to you I speak with confidence, hoping that God may
   bless my words so that we may begin a new campaign right well prepared
   for it and so may achieve a greater success than any we have gained up
   to now! What are the qualifications for serving God by warning men?
   Ezekiel had them. What can we learn from the Lord's words to Ezekiel by
   which we may better serve our Lord and act as watchmen to those around
   us? Three things I shall speak of this morning. First, the ears to be
   disciplined. Secondly, the tongue to be educated. Thirdly, a lesson in
   the text to be practiced. May the Holy Spirit bless the whole subject
   to us!

   I. If we would be found really useful and serviceable for our Lord and
   Master, THE EARS ARE TO BE DISCIPLINED. Read the text. "Son of man, I
   have made you a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the
   word from My mouth." To train the tongue you must begin with the ear.
   It is well known that no man is fit to command who has not first
   learned to obey--and assuredly no man is qualified to teach who has
   not, first of all, found pleasure in learning. You must be a disciple
   and sit at the Master's feet before you can become an Apostle and go
   forth to speak in the Master's name. To acquire eloquence we must train
   the ears and especially to warn our fellow men we must, ourselves, hear
   the voice of warning.

   The text says, "Hear the word from My mouth." What does this mean? I
   take it, first, that if we wish to be useful, our ears must be
   disciplined to hear only God's Word. We must receive the Gospel as
   God's own Word and go forth to proclaim it as such. I have lately met
   pretty frequently with the following sentiment--it is one of the fungi
   of this enlightened age of advanced thought--"The call is every day
   more loud for teaching which shall not appeal to the authority of the
   Bible but to the decision of the hearts and consciences of men! Our
   religious teachers should fall back upon the truth which men have
   gathered from their inner consciousness and should support their
   instructions by argument's fetched from the experience of the
   thoughtful and philosophical. It is too late in the day to be always
   referring to a book and attempting to prove certain statements by the
   stereotyped utterances of an antiquated volume."

   That is the favorite notion and those who believe in it may go on and
   dote and dream as much as they please! And those who think their
   statements worth listening to may listen to them--they will, no doubt,
   greatly please themselves and they will, for awhile, amuse the little
   coteries who look up to them as little popes of a little party! They
   may even worship them as little gods, for surely the creator and maker
   of truth within himself falls not very short of deity! Brothers and
   Sisters, we can afford to let this plague of flies pass away--the
   nuisance is great, but it will not long endure! There will come an end
   of all this trifling. Man's imaginations and reasoning are wood, hay
   and stubble--and the Day comes which will consume them!

   Vainglorious mortals would supplant the Eternal Testimony with their
   maunderings, but this their way is their folly! Our assurance is that
   the teaching which is needed for this age must come more and more
   distinctly from the Bible and must court daily testing by the Bible!
   Teachers, if they are to have power, must sustain everything with,
   "Thus says the Lord." Ours it is to stand or fall by Revelation and to
   declare, "We do not care one single farthing about your

   imaginary consciousness and the manufacturing of your dreams, your
   fancies and your whims! We declare to you that God has spoken and that
   what He has said, you are bound to receive because the Lord has said
   it!" This stands instead of all arguments--"The Lord has said it."

   Believe Him, for He cannot lie. We come to tell you of what we,
   ourselves, have received upon Divine authority and we demand that you
   receive our testimony, not because it is ours, but because it is
   supported by Divine authority and is, in fact, the echo of the Divine
   Word! Only by this mode of utterance can we hope to succeed! On any
   other footing we court failure and deserve it. Brother, do you say, "I
   desire to spread my religion because it is my own opinion"? You will
   never win anyone on such terms! How can you expect it? Your warning of
   another man, apart from God's Truth, will be of no use to him, for your
   opinion is as good as his and his opinion is as good as yours! And
   neither is worth much!

   Brother, do you say, "I regard my religion as my own views of things"?
   Ah, then your views of things and my views of things and everybody
   else's views of things are worth little enough--and there is no use in
   making a stir about them! Any opinion which bears your name at the
   bottom, or mine, might just as well not be written! What are our names?
   What are our views? No, Brother, if you would speak as to affect the
   heart and conscience and destiny of men, you must repeat what you have
   received from God's own mouth as God's own Word--there is a value about
   that, a permanence, a certainty and it goes forth with a supreme
   majesty, involving woe upon any who dare reject it! It is power!

   If it is, indeed, the Word of God, woe unto you if you do not speak it
   faithfully! And woe unto your hearers if they receive it not
   reverently! The very first thing, then, for us to remember, if we would
   be useful in warning men and saving souls, is that we feel the full
   conviction and impression that what we try to teach is God's own Word.
   "You shall hear the word from My mouth." We must feel it to be clothed
   with the imperial robe of Divine authority! We are not going to speak
   it because it is the doctrine authorized by the creed, nor because it
   is the doctrine of the community to which we belong, but because it is
   the sure Word of the living God! Here is power--power which hard hearts
   are forced to feel! Here is power before which even devils tremble! I
   guarantee you if you put God's Word down among 50,000 words of men, it
   shall be like a lion among a flock of sheep, tearing them in pieces and
   it will prove by its own natural force from where it comes and where it
   goes!

   Secondly, if we would have our ears educated, we must not only receive
   the Word as Divine authority, but to know what God's Word is. Beloved,
   there are many who are willing to begin winning souls who had better
   first commence learning Christ. "Go you into all the world and preach
   the Gospel to every creature" was spoken to men who had been, for some
   time, with Jesus and had learned of Him. For others who were to be
   called it was provided that after Baptism they should be taught--that
   in due season they, also, might go forth to instruct the nations. I
   like not that a man should become so much a learner that he never
   wishes to speak and to teach others. But I like as little that a man
   should be so anxious to be a teacher that he runs before he is sent and
   tries to bring others to a Savior of whom he knows next to nothing!

   Fill yourself, Brother, before you ask to be poured out, else there
   will not much come of your being poured out. Receive the bread and the
   fish from the Master, else you will have very little to distribute
   among the crowd. First of all get to know what it is you have to say,
   or else how can you speak for God? If a messenger runs swiftly and is
   out of breath at the end of his journey and then says, "I have
   something to say for my master, but I know not what it is," he will be
   laughed at for his pains. His swift running is of little consequence,
   seeing he had nothing to carry. He should have waited till he knew the
   tidings which he had to bring. Brother, hear the Word from God's mouth
   and then deliver it in God's name!

   What, then, shall we do? Let us study the Bible with diligence. Go to
   that fountain of the Truths of God, I pray you, and never be satisfied
   with a secondhand version of it. Go to the fountainhead and drink where
   the streams have not been muddied by human blundering. We desire to
   keep the Word of God pure, but we are conscious of infirmity--go to the
   undefiled well where there is no mixture of human error! Search the
   Inspired Book and desire to know everything which it teaches, for a
   little error may do much mischief to good teaching, like a fly in the
   pot of ointment. Even the omission of a Truth of God may injure a man's
   usefulness to a very great extent.

   The Lord does not bless some Churches as we would expect them to be
   blessed because they are in grievous error upon certain points and,
   though He will bless that part of the testimony which is true, yet the
   other portion hinders. Probably one reason why Christianity does not
   spread so rapidly just now as it once did is this--that it is so mixed
   up in

   most denominations with human tradition and opinion--and because, also,
   there is so little willingness to examine doubtful points to see
   whether or not they are according to the mind of God. The Church would
   be one with itself if it were one with the Truth of God. It would be
   impossible that there should be so many divisions if we all held to the
   one Lord, one faith, one Baptism--but there are sad mixtures which are
   allowed to go on from year to year unchallenged-- and if any man is
   honest enough to speak out, he is straightway charged with bigotry and
   uncharitableness! While these things are so, the blessing will be
   restrained.

   My dear Brother, if you would be eminently useful, let your mind bow
   before the doctrines of the Scripture! Seek to know all that the Bible
   teaches, especially upon the main points of salvation, and yield
   yourself to the mind of Christ in all things. Desire to tell your
   fellow men just what the Lord tells you, no more and no less! And
   endeavor throughout your whole life to follow after the revealed Truth
   of God in its purity, rather than the dogmas of the fathers or the
   decrees of the sects. The Truth of God as it is in Jesus, pure and
   simple as we find it in the Word of God, should be our rule and guide.
   This will greatly help us towards success. It does not seem a very
   practical remark, but it is so.

   The Holy Spirit first gives the Truth of God to our understanding and
   then gives us Grace to impart it to others. Get your ears cleansed,
   thoroughly cleansed, to hear God's Word as God's Word and be determined
   to know thoroughly what God's Word has really taught and thus shall you
   be instructed to speak as God's mouth to men. The great thing, I
   believe, with a successful winner of souls is to hear God's Truth from
   God's own mouth. What do I mean by this? I mean that a second-hand
   message is sure to be weakly delivered. A Brother repeats a story which
   somebody else has told to him! How cold it gets in passing from hand to
   hand--he who first saw the fact told it with far more life and energy!

   What you need to do, Brother, is to tell the message as God, Himself,
   has told it to you by His Holy Spirit. Look how Ezekiel was prepared to
   prophesy! He says, "The hand of the Lord was there upon me and He said
   unto me, Arise, go forth into the plain, and I will there talk with
   you." Yes, we must get alone with God and hear what He will speak, for
   only can we fitly be His mouth to others! Do you want to know Christ's
   way of making men useful? Turn to Mark 3:13-15 and read, "He went up
   into a mountain and called unto him whom He would and they came unto
   Him. And He ordained 12, that they should be with Him and that He might
   send them forth to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and to
   cast out devils."

   Do you see the order? He calls them to Him--you must not dream of
   winning souls till you first come to Christ, yourself. Next we read,
   "That they might be with Him"--you cannot go and teach Christ, or bring
   others to Him unless you have first been with Him. Communion with Jesus
   is training for service! To abide with your Lord must be your college
   and your preparation class for teaching others. After the fellowship
   comes the work--"That He might send them forth to preach and to have
   power." The process requires that the man who is to have power for
   Christ must first be with Christ. He cannot work miracles till He has
   dwelt with the great Miracle-Worker. "You shall hear the word from My
   mouth."

   There lies the word in the Book. What infinite majesty is there! As I
   read each letter in that Book of God, I worship the eternal mind which
   dictated it! But oh, when a passage of Scripture leaps out of the Book
   and enters into my soul by the Divine flame of the Holy Spirit, how
   much more mighty it appears! When my inner ears hears God speak the
   text, what energy there is about it! Sitting down with the Bible on my
   knee, I say to myself, "This is no common book which lies before
   me--there is Inspiration here, not the inspiration of Milton or of
   Shakespeare, but Divine Inspiration--this is the language of the
   Eternal as truly so as though I now saw Sinai on a blaze and heard out
   of the thick darkness these accents ringing with trumpet tones and with
   the deep thunder of, "Thus says the Lord."

   When we thus consider, we are in a right mood to hear the Lord's Word
   and to speak it to others. We must acknowledge and feel the majesty of
   the Gospel and be conscious of its power, or we shall not rightly warn
   men. Brothers, since this Book is God's Word to your own souls, take
   care that you deliver it in deep reverence and holy awe to those whom
   you aim to instruct! Is it not the voice of God to you? When it speaks
   home to your heart, does it not move you as nothing else can do? I
   confess that the words of Scripture thrill my soul as nothing else ever
   can--they bear me aloft or dash me down! They tear me in pieces or they
   build me up after an unrivalled fashion! The Words of God have more
   power over me than ever David's fingers had over his harp! Is it not so
   with you? Well, you will speak to others with power in proportion as
   you continually feel the power of the Word of God over your own heart
   and conscience.

   This is very wonderful, this hearing the Truth of God newly spoken from
   the Lord's mouth. Some will not know what I mean, but others of you
   will. The Holy Spirit has a way of showing unto us the old texts in a
   new light and applying them with new force--and this is what we greatly
   need. "You shall hear the word from My mouth." I would like you
   teachers, this afternoon, before you go to your classes, to go upstairs
   and say, "Good Master, let us hear what we have to tell the children.
   Let us hear it in our souls as from Yourself. We are going to warn and
   instruct and invite them--be pleased to show us how. Master, say the
   words to us! Make us hear Your voice and when we have heard Your
   message from Your own lips, we shall talk to the children in quite
   another style from that which is usual to us." Brothers and Sisters, in
   Spirit maintain your fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus
   Christ, and so will you warn souls with warm, loving admonitions which
   God will bless! Let us have done with second-hand messages! Speak as
   the oracles

   of God!

   Once more, to have our ears well tutored, we must feel the force of the
   Truth of God that we deliver. Ezekiel had to eat the roll. It must
   enter into himself before he could reveal its contents to the people.
   So we must feel the force and power of the Gospel before we can
   effectually declare it. Sin--are you going to talk about the evil of
   it? Do you know the evil of it, yourself? Get back to the place of
   repentance where you once wet the earth with your tears and talk to
   children or grown-up people about sin in that spirit! Pardon--are you
   going to speak about that? Do you know the sweetness of it? Go to the
   place where you first saw the flowing of the ever precious blood and
   feel, again, your load of guilt removed and you will speak of it most
   sweetly!

   The power of the Holy Spirit--are you going to speak about that? Have
   you felt His quickening, enlightening, comforting and sanctifying
   influence? Then according as you have felt, you will be able to speak
   with effectiveness! It is poor work to preach a Christ you never knew!
   It is terrible to talk of bread you have never tasted; of living water
   you never drank and ofjoys you never felt! The farmer that labors must
   first be a partaker of the fruits. Go home and ask the Lord to teach
   you, but do not go on His errands till first you have sat at His feet,
   for unto those whom He has not taught, God says, "What have you to do
   that you should declare My statutes? First come and hear the word from
   My mouth and then give the people warning from Me."

   I think I have said enough to show how the ears are to be disciplined.

   II. Secondly, THE TONGUE IS TO BE EDUCATED. That is, indeed, the aim of
   the discipline of the ears. And to what end is the tongue educated? I
   answer, first, to be able to deliver an unpleasant message. Any man's
   tongue is swift in telling good things, at least it ought to be, or
   where else is humanity? We are glad enough to tell you glad tidings of
   good things, but he that is to be useful must be willing to speak
   unpleasant things. Brothers and Sisters, are you ready when you meet
   with careless people to tell them Truths of God that will be
   unpalatable to them! And when they are awakened, are you willing, in
   God's name, to try and beat to pieces their refuges of lies--to tell
   them plainly of the mistakes that they are so fond of and point them to
   the only way of salvation?

   You and I cannot be useful if we want to be sweet as honey in the
   mouths of men! God will never bless us if we wish to please men so that
   they may think well of us. Are you willing to tell them what will break
   your own heart in the telling and break theirs in the hearing? If not,
   you are not fit to serve the Lord! You must be willing to go and speak
   for God though you will be rejected! See the seventh verse, where God
   says, "They will not listen unto you, for they will not listen unto
   Me." If they reject the Master, will they receive the servant? They
   took up stones to stone your own dear Lord and Master! And they finally
   took nails to fasten Him to the Cross! Do you think they will listen to
   you?

   If God is to bless you, dear Friend, you must be willing to bear
   witness for Him even if none should ever believe a word you
   say--because in so doing you will deliver your soul! Take good heed,
   all of you, to this danger of being guilty of the blood of others. Have
   not some of you quite forgotten it? There is blood on your garments! Do
   you see the spots? Some of you who never said a word for Christ to your
   own children, I say there are big drops of soul-blood on your garments!
   Soul-blood is worse than the blood of the body and you are smeared with
   it! Can't you see the spots? Wash them out, I pray you! Oh, you say, it
   is of no use warning them--they would only laugh at you! But you would
   lose the blood stains if you did. Their blood would not be required at
   your hands and, therefore, if you want to be useful, be willing to do
   unpleasant duties in order to feel, "I have warned them and cleared my
   soul."

   Next, you need your tongue tutored to speak the Truth of God as having,
   yourself, heard it. You know there are several ways of speaking. I was
   trying to illustrate differences of speaking when addressing my
   students the other day. I

   said, "Suppose you saw, by the look of my face, while I was sitting
   here, that I was in a terrible state of indignation when I rose to
   address you? You would say, 'Now we shall have it! We can see by the
   look of him that he will drive at us.'" Just so, when a man preaches,
   or warns others--it ought to be in a living style which indicates that
   something is coming. The man should be full of emotion, not moved by
   anger, but by a sacred passion which awakens him and makes the people
   feel that he is in awful earnest, carried out of himself, not
   delivering set phrases and words from his mouth outwards, but speaking
   from his inmost heart!

   Now, if we were to meet with our Lord Jesus, Himself, and were then to
   speak of Him in the state of mind in which His Presence left us, what a
   style of speech that would be! I think I hear a mother who has been
   with Jesus talking to her girl. She says, "Dear child, there is such
   joy in loving Jesus that I pant for you to know it! He is so great and
   good that my dear little daughter must not forget Him." I can imagine
   that a father has met with the Lord Jesus and felt God's Truth sent
   into his own soul by the Holy Spirit--and I am sure that when he gets
   his boy, alone, he pleads with him in deep and tender earnestness which
   commands the boy's ear and heart! He does not know what has happened to
   his father--he is so earnest and pleads so seriously--but the secret
   reason is that the father has listened to the Lord, Himself, and is,
   himself, the echo of that voice!

   Facts vividly brought before the mind greatly influence a speaker. A
   sinner seen as lost touches the heart. Jesus seen as crucified affects
   the speech! If I were to stand up in the council of a certain town to
   urge them to look to their fire escapes, I should do it with tremendous
   vehemence if I had just come out of the midst of that shuddering crowd
   which saw a poor woman hanging out of the window in the midst of the
   flames for lack of proper apparatus to reach her! Any man, fresh from
   such a sight, would plead with energy! His whole soul would burn as he
   thought of the poor perishing fellow creature in the midst of the fire!
   Would not yours? It is just so when you come fresh from talking with
   God--the Truth of God is vividly realized--an awe is upon you and holy
   zeal and sacred ardor inflame your breast!

   If you dwell away from God you do not feel the value of the Gospel
   message, nor the weight of men's souls. The grandest of all the Truths
   of God lose force when they cease to be realized facts--but their power
   returns when we come, again, under their actual influence! When the
   voice of Jesus' love is still ringing in your ears, then with a deep
   awestruck solemnity your whole soul is poured forth at your mouth and
   you speak as pleading with men that they would yield to God and accept
   His great salvation!

   The tongue must speak when the ears are tingling with the message of
   the Lord! The tongue needs to be trained in the case of each one of us
   to deliver the message as from God. I believe that God has given
   commission to every Christian who knows the Truth of God, to tell it,
   and that there is authority given to every man who has the living water
   within himself to let it flow out, for it is written, "Out of the midst
   of him shall flow rivers of living water." You see your calling,
   Brothers. You may not all be called to the work of prophesying as
   ministers are, but you are all called by some means to warn men of the
   wrath to come and lead them to Christ--and I want you to feel that God
   is at the back of you when you warn sinners.

   You never pray for a soul; you never weep over a soul; you never drop
   one kernel of Divine Truth into a human ear; you never utter one word
   of warning or expostulation but what God is with you in so doing. God
   will acknowledge His Truth, therefore never be ashamed of it. Make your
   face like adamant if their hearts are like adamant--if they are not
   ashamed to sin, do not you be ashamed to warn them! If they are not
   ashamed of their unbelief, be not you ashamed of your faith in the
   Divine Testimony! The hosts of Heaven are on your side, therefore be
   not dismayed! Your faith may hear the noise of the wings of the living
   creatures, the noise of the wheels and the noise of a great rushing,
   for all Heaven is astir when the watchman moves to warn the people
   (Ezekiel 3:13). If God is at your back, speak boldly and do not let
   your testimony be silenced!

   The Lord tells Ezekiel that the people would be a restraint to him and
   how often they are so. Non-success often ties the preacher up so that
   he can scarcely speak. "You, O Son of Man, behold they shall put bands
   upon you and shall bind you with them, and you shall not go out among
   them." But what a grand verse is the twenty-seventh--"But when I speak
   with you, I will open your mouth and you shall say unto them, Thus says
   the Lord God. He that hears, let him hear; and he that forbears, let
   him forbear: for they are a rebellious house." None can silence a mouth
   which God has opened! May we henceforth feel that now, between here and
   Heaven, we have souls committed to our charge and that we will be clear
   of their blood!

   Each one of you has his little plot of ground to sow. You must resolve
   that it shall not lie waste. You will be called home very soon, my dear
   fellow workers, therefore work while it is day. I who have to lead you
   in this plowing may soon be called away. I feel it and I feel that the
   same is true of each one of us--therefore, since these poor souls are
   dying as well as we are and they are sinking into Hell forever, let us
   be in earnest and may God help us to save them! Let us begin to weep,
   for weeping, perhaps, may be the fittest beginning of a higher life as
   it was the beginning of our natural life. Let us cry unto God! Let us
   watch for opportunities and as they come, let us avail ourselves of
   them, if by any means we may save some. We dare no longer fritter away
   life. Dare we? We dare not furnish a continuation of man's foolish
   history if, indeed, it is true that "all the world is a stage and all
   the men and women merely players."

   We do not believe that statement and if it is true we will alter it.
   Let us upset the stage, tear off the masks and truly live. "Life is
   real, life is earnest," as we shall know at the Judgment Seat of God!
   How real will it look by the light of the Last Great Day! Come, let us
   ask to have ears and tongue trained and let us begin, now, to serve our
   Lord by warning our fellow men!

   III. I finish my sermon this morning by, in the third place,
   endeavoring to practice THE LESSON OF THE TEXT. I desire to speak to
   those of you who are unconverted and to speak as if I had just come
   from an interview with my Lord and Master, as I trust I have. I want to
   speak as if I had just heard Him say what I am going to repeat to you.
   Try and help me with your imagination and may God give you faith!

   I have to say to you, dear Friends now present, that whatever may be
   your natural excellence of character and whatever the religiousness of
   your training, yet you must all of you be born again! You heard me say,
   "You must be born again," but I want to say it as Jesus said it when,
   one evening, He was visited by a ruler of the Jews, a man of spotless
   character, of admirable reputation and of deep learning. Sitting alone
   with Him, our Lord treated Him with great kindness, but yet with solemn
   emphasis. He said, "You must be born again."

   Yes, young Friend, there is much about you that is very admirable and
   you know a great deal of Divine Truth, but, "You must be born again."
   The Master would lay a strong tender emphasis upon the, "must." "You
   must be born again." Jesus would not demand of us more than is
   absolutely necessary, nor say a syllable that would tend to shut a soul
   out of Heaven. If He says, "You must," why then we must! I want you to
   admit that necessity.

   Next I desire to introduce you to Jesus sitting at the well with the
   woman of Samaria. You can see the smile upon His countenance as He
   instructs her. I need you, now, to hear Him say these words--"God is a
   Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
   truth." I should like to say to you, dear Friend, that all the outward
   forms of religion in the world will be of no value to you unless you
   are spiritual. You must have a spiritual mind and a spiritual nature
   through being born again--and then you must worship God in a spiritual
   way, for mere outward religion is nothing in His sight. I desire to
   warn you as to that fact, but I would rather you should hear my Master
   say the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in
   truth, "for the Father seeks such to worship Him." You believe it, do
   you not? Oh, ask that the Spirit of God would teach you how to worship
   in spirit and in truth!

   Now listen to my Master again. He is addressing the Jews and He uses
   these words. I give them accurately translated--"You search the
   Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and they are
   they which testify of Me. And you will not come to Me that you might
   have life." I am glad that you read your Bibles, but how is it that you
   feel so easy when you have read your chapter every day? Do you think
   you will get salvation by Bible reading? Alas, you are in error! You
   must go further than that! You must go to Christ Jesus Himself! Oh,
   that you would, by an act of faith, come to Him this morning! Do you
   think this Truth of God is hard? I hope you don't, for it is the
   teaching of Jesus and I have heard Him say it to my own soul. You must
   come to Jesus, Himself, or the Scriptures will do you no good! The
   Scriptures are a road sign pointing to Christ--it will never do to sit
   down by the road sign--we must hasten on to find the Lord, Himself.

   Listen to my Master once again. He says to the Jews, "If you believe
   not that I am He, you shall die in your sins." I know, now, you will
   say that I speak hard things! Perhaps I do, but not with a hard heart.
   Now, my Lord is always tender, never man spoke like this Man and never
   man wept as He did when He had a hard thing to say. Hear, then, His
   declaration, "Except you believe that I am He, you shall die in your
   sins." "Die in your sins"? Do you know what that means? To die in
   irons, to die in a ditch, to die on the gallows--these are nothing
   compared with dying in your sins!

   I must tell you some other things which my Master says, because
   nowadays the fine new theologians do not like to have them spoken. I
   have heard Him speak them in my very soul and I must, therefore, warn
   you of them. He says there are tares growing among the wheat and that
   the Day will come when the angels will "gather the tares in bundles to
   burn them." That is how He puts the destiny of the ungodly! Hear how
   the modern theologians hiss between their teeth, "Dreadful language.
   These horrible expressions are borrowed from Dante and Milton and the
   old writers."

   No Dante, Milton, or the old writers had existed then, but Jesus
   Himself says, "The Son of man shall send forth His angels and they
   shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which
   do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be
   wailing and gnashing of teeth." Such will be the lot of some of you
   unless you repent! Though growing up among Christian people and hearing
   the Gospel--and looking very much like Christians--you will be
   separated from among the wheat to be cast into the fire! Some of you
   are rich and enjoy yourselves a great deal. I must tell you what Jesus
   said of one who fared sumptuously every day but cared not for his soul.

   He said, "The rich man, also, died and was buried. And in Hell he
   lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and sees Abraham afar off, and
   Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy
   on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water
   and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." My Lord, my
   sweet Lord--my dying, my bleeding Lord--the Man who receives sinners,
   it was thus He spoke! I would not speak less tenderly than He if I were
   able, but I want to assure you rich people who have your comforts in
   this life and yet are out of Christ, that this is what will happen to
   you! Nor will this be for a time, but forever!

   You will never be able to escape from torment, according to my Master's
   teaching, for He says there is a great gulf fixed so that they who
   would come from there cannot. I pray you, therefore, take warning, as I
   would give you warning from His mouth! The last thing that was ever
   seen of my Lord and Master upon earth was this. He stood on tiptoe on
   this world which had treated Him so ill and around Him were gathered a
   few disciples. Just before He rose out of their sight He addressed them
   in loving tones and said, "Go you into all the world and preach the
   Gospel to every creature." They stood with their ears and eyes open to
   know how He would have them put the Gospel and He said, "He that
   believes and is baptized shall be saved. He that believes not shall be
   damned."

   Did He say that? Yes, just before the cloud received Him out of their
   sight, He said, "He that believes not shall be damned." It was He that
   said it! I should have liked to have seen how He looked when He thus
   spoke--the evident pain which crossed His mind and showed itself in His
   eyes as He said in effect, "There will be some who will not believe,
   but you must tell them plainly, "He that believes not shall be damned."
   I do warn you of this, men and women, every one of you--if I am not a
   believer in Christ, I shall be damned! And if you are not believers you
   will be damned! I beseech you run not so dreadful a risk!

   Trust yourselves with Jesus, right now, and you shall be saved, for it
   is He that says it, not I--"He that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved." And again, "He that believes in Him has everlasting life." I do
   not think He meant me to try and put this in any pretty shape in order
   to amuse you with it and so I have not tried to do so. I have spoken to
   you His own Word as best I know how. May He be pleased to weed out my
   frailties and throw them away, but may all that is His own live in your
   souls and mine unto eternal life! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Divine Interpositions

   (No. 1432)

   Suggested by the loss of the "Princess Alice,"

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, September 8th, 1878, by

   C.H. SPURGEON,

   At the [1]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters."—Psalm
   18:16.

   I DO not know how you feel, my brethren, at this time, but as for
   myself, a heavy cloud seems to hang over me all the day. The
   overwhelming calamity of last Tuesday, so crushing and so far reaching,
   of which we must have spoken to each other, I suppose, every hour
   during the past week, cannot be removed from the thoughts of our minds
   or from the affections of our hearts. The whole of London may well be
   likened to that ancient city of which we read—"The city Shushan was
   perplexed." Every man has been asking his fellow, "Have you lost a
   friend?" and no man wonders when the answer is, "Alas, I have been
   sorely bereaved." In our own immediate circle we have borne a special
   share of the grief, for five, at least, of those who are in church
   membership with us have been removed from our midst, and we can
   scarcely speak with any of our brethren without discovering that they
   have lost some connection or friend. Alas, that unhappy vessel has sunk
   with a more precious freight than ever loaded Spanish galleon, and her
   wreck has brought a greater loss to our city than if she had carried
   untold gold. We cannot help thinking of this dire affliction, and,
   therefore, we had better think of it with some practical purpose.

   I believe that this sudden grief comes, like every other event, from
   God, and comes as a voice from God to this our city—a voice which, we
   trust, will be heard and regarded. "The Lord's voice crieth unto the
   city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and
   who hath appointed it." We are of the mind of that old prophet who
   said, "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"
   (Amos 3:6.) Cometh there anything in the form of calamity upon the sons
   of men without the permission, control, and overruling of the Lord?
   Assuredly not. "The Lord killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to
   the grave, and bringeth up." I know that many minds are so stunned by
   this tremendous blow, that they can hardly think of God in connection
   with it, and half wish to believe that the Omnipresent was not there.
   The problem staggers their reason, and they are unable to leave it
   among the mysteries of faith. As yet they have not gained the
   confidence of Job, who denied that affliction cometh out of the dust,
   but attributed it to the Lord, saying, "He taketh away: who can hinder
   him?" Even some who love the Lord, and trust him, are somewhat of the
   mind of Mary and Martha when they said, "Lord, if thou hadst been here,
   my brother had not died"; while others who should know better would
   timidly conceal their belief in an overruling providence, lest the
   ribald world should scoff at them. Let them scoff, I say; for our God
   is none the less glorious because his ways are far above and out of our
   sight. It is an atheistical thought which would put God out of any
   place; if he be not everywhere, he is nowhere; omnipresence is an
   essential of Godhead. If his hand ruleth not over evil it is not
   omnipotent, and thus again it lacks another essential attribute of
   deity. It would be dreadful to suppose him to have a limited dominion:
   "His kingdom ruleth over all."

   We are not as those who believe in two co-existent forces, each
   supreme, one of whom shall create disasters, and the other shall
   distribute blessings. The prince of evil is, according to our faith,
   subordinate to the great Lord of all. Thus saith Jehovah, by the mouth
   of his servant Isaiah, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make
   peace, and I create evil: I the Lord do all these things." He reigneth
   in the calm summer's day, and gives us the precious fruits of harvest,
   but he is equally present and regnant in the hurricane which destroys,
   or the blight which desolates. His providence speeds the ship to its
   desired haven, but it is equally his providence which sinks the barque
   and its mariners to the bottom of the sea. It is his power which looses
   the bands of Orion and binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades; his
   are the lightnings as well as the sunbeams, the thunderbolts as well as
   the raindrops. He is able to make the heaven as iron and the earth as
   brass, so that our land shall not yield her increase; he can call for a
   famine and break the whole staff of bread; for famine, pestilence, and
   war are as rods in his hand. Everywhere is God, and in all things his
   hand is present: in the things which seem to us to be evil as well as
   in the events which appear to us to be good, God is at work. He doeth
   no wrong, for God is not tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man,
   but we speak of physical evil, which causeth sorrow, pain, and death
   among men, and we say that certainly God is there. If not a sparrow
   falleth to the ground without our Father, we are sure that no great
   calamity can befall us apart from him. He is not far from us in our
   deepest sorrow, and however we may trace a calamity to the carelessness
   or the mistake of men, these are but the second causes, and we see
   behind all mere detail the permit of the Lord. If it were not so,
   mourners would be deprived of the greatest reason for submission, and
   the surest source of consolation.

   Even where a terrible event is the result of crime God is not excluded.
   He shares not the guilt, but he overrules the act. Think of the
   crucifixion of our Lord, and remember that though the sin of it lay
   heavy upon those who perpetrated it, yet the grand design of it was
   God's. Read Peter's words in the Acts: "Him, being delivered by the
   determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by
   wicked hands have crucified and slain." Who shall deny that God was at
   Calvary, though sin there reached its culminating point?

   We freely admit that we do not understand this, and therefore we do not
   attempt to explain it; but we believe and adore. Happily, we need not
   attempt to justify the ways of God to man, for he asks no defense at
   our hands, and deigns not to give any account of his matters: this only
   is our resolve, "Though he slay me yet will I trust in him."

   Now, the question which has very naturally suggested itself to many is
   this,—If there be a providence, why does it permit these terrible
   evils? It is dreadful that human life should be lost on such a scale:
   God is omnipotent, nobody doubts that; why, then, does he not interfere
   to save? That shall suggest to us the first point of our discourse this
   morning, that miraculous interpositions in the affairs of this life are
   not to be expected, and we may not hope literally to use the words of
   our text and say," He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of
   many waters." Still, secondly, we shall note that, according to our
   text, providential interpositions of another kind are vouchsafed; and
   thirdly, and best of all, gracious interpositions are given for the
   salvation of men. What though the Lord doth not nowadays send from
   above, and take his servants, and draw them by miracle out of the
   waters of the river, yet doth he uplift us from the depths of trouble,
   and especially doth he upbear us from the deeps of sin to our eternal
   salvation, for thus saith the Lord, "I will bring again from Bashan, I
   will bring my people from the depths of the sea."

   I. First, then, MIRACULOUS INTERPOSITIONS IN THE CALAMITIES OF THIS
   LIFE ARE NOT TO BE EXPECTED. I am not standing here as an advocate for
   God to defend his character because he does not thus interpose, for to
   objecters his sole answer is, "Nay, but O man, who art thou that
   repliest against God?" If you will accuse your Maker he will not care
   to answer you. You who have forged the accusation may fashion an
   answer, if it seem good unto you. Yet there is a difficulty which none
   can deny, and that difficulty lies in a fact. Why is there any evil at
   all, seeing that the good God is almighty, and sits upon the throne?
   This is the old puzzle which none can answer. The negro put it in a
   very natural form when he asked the missionary, if God be so much
   stronger than the devil, why does he not kill the devil and make an end
   of his mischief? Just so: that is the top and bottom of the matter.
   There is the question, but who can answer it? A fool may raise in an
   hour more objections than the wisest man could remove in a century.
   Now, the cleverest theory will not alter facts. What you and I may
   think is a very small matter compared with what really is, and it is
   quite certain that there is moral evil in the world, and that there is
   also a God; that there is physical evil in the world, and yet love is
   supreme; and that the Almighty permits fire and water to destroy his
   creatures, and does not interpose to rescue them, and yet he is full of
   tenderness and pity. There be some of course who will dare to condemn
   their Maker, and call him by I know not what horrible names. I have
   even heard such a word as "monster" hissed from between proud lips.
   Again I say it is not worth our while to answer such objectors, because
   such persons are not pervious to explanation, nor willing to receive
   it; and then again, it is a small matter to the Most High what such
   persons may think of him. He doeth as he pleases and asks no leave from
   his creatures.

   But now just for a minute let us consider the question which we trust
   is modestly proposed. Suppose that every time a great danger threatened
   we might expect a miraculous interposition from heaven, what then? The
   supposition is not absurd, for there might be such an interposition: we
   must admit the possibility since God is almighty. The train is
   thundering along the iron way, it will dash into another, and many
   lives will be destroyed, but if the Lord willed it he could put his
   hand upon the engine and stay it in its full career. The vessel
   freighted with eight hundred lives is about to sink: but if the Lord
   willed it he could buoy it up in the hollow of his hand. Yet he does
   not move; the iron road is strewn with the dead, the river is gorged
   with corpses. We do not know all the reasons for this non-interference,
   but yet we think we can see a little, which little we will think upon.
   For, first, such interpositions would change the whole arrangement of
   the world: it would not be the same place at all. The Lord has made
   this world, and he governs it by certain fixed laws. If those laws were
   variable, and were continually being altered, it would be another form
   of creation altogether, and man had need to be another creature. His
   physical, moral, and even spiritual condition would be changed from top
   to bottom. It was the Lord's arrangement that he should put forth his
   power in certain ways which we call the laws of nature, and by that
   arrangement he abides. There is no such independent force as "nature,"
   as some are always dreaming; nor is there any energy in mere laws of
   nature apart from God's own power. You may write all the laws you like,
   but there is no power in laws, there must be a power in the king to
   carry out the laws. All power emanates from God, be it what it may; he
   is the source and fountain of all the forces which operate throughout
   creation; but he has been pleased from the beginning to determine that
   his power shall usually go forth in certain ways, and under fixed laws
   and regulations. He can suspend those laws when he pleases; he can
   quench the violence of fire, stop the mouths of lions, and make water
   to stand upright as a heap; but he has not often done so, and in these
   days he never does so. I think we can in a measure see why; for if such
   were the case continually, the whole plan and purpose with which he
   made the present world would have been abandoned, and another mode of
   power would have taken its place.

   Recollect, too, that whatever the plan of God is, it is now being
   carried out under the shadow of the Fall. There had been, I suppose,
   neither pain, nor sickness, nor sighing, nor death, had there been no
   sin. If had been possible for a race to have multiplied from the glades
   of Eden, and to have gone forth into a wider Paradise as pure and holy
   as Adam first came from his Maker's hands, I can believe that there
   would have been no famine, no war, no catastrophe of shipwreck by sea,
   nor of accident by land; but however multitudinous the human race might
   have become its records would have been all unstained with agonizing
   details such as those which blacken the broad-sheets of to-day. But,
   alas, man has fallen, and to a race in such a condition it would not be
   consistent that everything should be of sunlight and summer; there must
   now be heard the roar of the storm and the cry of death, as the fruit
   of sin. Render calamity impossible and what mark would there be of the
   divine displeasure for man's revolt? Wherein indeed would sin differ as
   to its consequences from obedience and holiness? Think for a little,
   and you will see reason for God's staying his hand from rescue.

   Furthermore, if interpositions were given to save the lives of godly
   men alone, as some would have it, then this world would became the
   place of judgment, which it is not intended to be. It still remains
   among many persons as a superstition that if there is an accident, and
   people suffer, there must have been some special sin in the victims of
   the disaster; and yet our Lord has told us that the men upon whom the
   tower of Siloam fell were not sinners above others, and the Galileans
   who were slain by Pilate were not sinners above other Galileans. I pray
   you dismiss from your minds the idea that a sudden death is necessarily
   a judgment. Never draw any inference from the destruction of a
   building, or the wreck of a ship, or an explosion, or aught of that
   nature, as to the character of the persons who perish, for if you do
   you will be guilty of cruel injustice. What if some gracious man be
   spared, ascribe the deliverance to providence, but do not suppose that
   those who perished were less gracious than he. You shall find that men
   of bad character sometimes escape where saints are left to die. Because
   I said the other day that providence had saved a certain godly woman,
   foolish persons drew the inference that I condemned those who perished.
   No sentiment could have been further from my mind. I ascribe to
   providence death as well as life, and draw no inference as to the
   character of the person. What if a man has found a watery grave in the
   Princess Alice, do not therefore imagine that God was angry with him,
   for he may now be in Paradise, and at any rate the same wreck carried
   down with it many of the Lord's beloved. Now, if God were to interpose
   and save his own people whenever they were in danger, this world would
   become the place of judicial separation, which it is not and is not
   meant to be: judgment is reserved for the world to come. When Christ
   shall descend from heaven with a shout, and sit upon his great white
   throne—then will he separate the tares from the wheat, but now they are
   to grow together. Then will he put the goats on the left and the sheep
   on the right, but for the time present they feed in the same pastures.
   One event happeneth to them all; as it happeneth to the fool so
   happeneth it to the wise. This is not the land of judgment, but of
   longsuffering; not the place wherein God giveth sentence, but waiteth
   patiently awhile. There is a judgment of nations in this world, but
   that of individuals, with rare exceptions, is reserved for the final
   account.

   Beloved, note once again that if God were to interpose in the case of
   all calamities it would involve many evils. For, observe, if next year
   the mass of farmers should refuse to sow the fields, if over whole
   nations the land should be left to produce only weeds, there would be
   great scarcity of corn. Suppose that in such cases God should interpose
   and cause harvests suddenly to grow by miracle, that our teeming
   millions might escape starvation, what would be the consequence? Why,
   it would encourage idleness everywhere; men would say, "The Lord is too
   good to let us starve, and therefore we may allow the plough to rust,
   and dance away the hours." Would that be well? Suppose again that when
   a contagious disease comes into a district the Lord miraculously
   prevented it from being fatal, although the carelessness of men may
   have left feverlairs in rotting, overcrowded houses enough to pollute
   the very air. Suppose, I say, that we all neglected sanitary laws, and
   then knew that a merciful God would not let the poor people die of
   fever, or of cholera, then the filthiness of our cities would increase
   till they became huge dunghills, and man who is great enough now at
   polluting rivers and defiling God's earth in every imaginable way,
   would go on to turn the whole earth into one monstrous globe of
   rottenness. But now even pests and plagues and fevers have their good
   side, they are watchmen to sound an alarm, prophets to give us warning.
   They arouse man to discover the laws of his being, and thus they
   benefit the race. Suppose again that whenever there is a likelihood of
   there being an accident God were to send an angel at once to interpose,
   and avert the collision or the wreck, what would happen? Why then, of
   course, every railway and steamboat company might go in for accidents
   in any quantity, seeing they would be harmless, and might even become
   attractive. There would be no reason for keeping a watch at the ship's
   bow, and no necessity for breaks or signals. There would be no longer
   any need to be careful about human life, but we might each one be as
   reckless as he pleased, and gratify himself with experiments which
   could not end fatally. Such a state of things would destroy many of the
   virtues, and render many vices harmless. I cannot suppose a world
   regulated upon such a system; I can imagine God divinely interposing
   and suspending his own laws now and then, as pleaseth him, for some
   great purpose of instruction; but it appears wise and good for all
   concerned that, having made man what he is, the Creator should rather
   leave him to take the consequence of violating the fixed laws of matter
   than make those laws variable and uncertain.

   Again, dear friends, divine interpositions of a miraculous sort would
   not be attended with the advantage to the ungodly which we might
   suppose, because if there were miracles of mercy on the behalf of God's
   people to snatch them from a watery grave, or from the devouring
   element of fire, or from the deadly consequences of a collision, then
   we might expect to have, and naturally should have, miracles of
   judgment, too. If you get into the wilderness, and manna falls from
   heaven, and water leaps from the rock, remember you have also entered a
   land where the earth opens to swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and
   where the very sand breeds fiery serpents to sting to death the rebels
   against God. You cannot have the mercy—wonder interposing without
   having the judgment—wonder side by side with it: and on the whole it is
   a more lenient mode of dealing on God's part to let sinners alone, and
   to let one event happen to all men for a while, because the
   longsuffering of God leadeth the sinner to repentance, and the sorrow
   that falleth upon the child of God is blessed to him. If all accidental
   deaths were punishments it would be a far more terrible state of things
   than that which is now before us; and therefore the matter is best as
   it is.

   If we had wonders of miraculous deliverance often before us they would
   not impress mankind as we imagine. If God were always suffering the
   wicked to drown or burn, and always snatching the righteous from the
   midst of every danger, men would not think much of it after all; they
   might be slightly impressed at first, but by-and-by they would harden
   their hearts. In Egypt there was light in the houses of the Israelites
   when all was dark with the Egyptians, and God smote Egypt heavily while
   he was blessing Israel; but this fact did not affect Pharaoh, for he
   only hardened his heart the more. When in the wilderness the
   Israelites, murmuring against God, saw some of their companions
   swallowed up and destroyed, it very little affected them; for soon
   after they began murmuring against Moses, and charged him with
   destroying the people of God. All things considered, the arrangement is
   best as it is, and the Lord knows it is so, and, therefore, continues
   the method of letting physical law take its course, although
   occasionally it may destroy hundreds of lives.

   Neither would it be so great a gain to the godly, as some imagine,
   always to have their lives spared in times of danger. We have to die
   some day, brothers and sisters, and we have nothing here below which
   might make us anxious to postpone the hour of our departure. It is as
   well to die one way as another: at least, there is small choice in the
   modes of death. If one were asked by what death he should glorify God,
   he might be long in the choosing, and probably would then choose that
   which would be most painful. Some are afraid to go to sea lest they
   should be drowned, and yet there is little reason for the fear. When a
   captain was asked whether he was not afraid to go to sea he said, "Not
   at all." "But your father was drowned, captain?" "Yes." "Your
   grandfather was drowned?" "Yes." "Your brothers have been drowned?"
   "Yes." "Are you not afraid to go to sea?" "No," said he, "not at all;
   for I may ask you the same question. Your father is dead?" "Yes."
   "Where did he die?" "In his bed." "And his father, where did he die?"
   "In his bed." "And his father?" "In his bed." "And your brothers, where
   have they died?" "In their beds." "Are you not, then, afraid to go to
   bed?" Certainly we must die somewhere or other, and we shall not die
   one single minute before the ordained period. I am a sufficient
   believer in predestination to feel sure that every bullet has its
   billet, and that no death can befall the man whom God ordains to live,
   God hath appointed all things, and his people are safe everywhere,
   whether they live or die. "Surely there is no enchantment against
   Jacob, nor divination against Israel;" the powers of darkness cannot
   harm us though they put forth all their craft and power. The Lord has
   declared that he who hath made God his refuge shall abide beneath his
   shadow, and therefore we may go where duty calls us without trembling,
   and we may die when God bids our spirit return without the slightest
   fear. We ask no immunity from death. Why should we be absolved from it?
   It is better to die than to live full often, inasmuch as it is better
   to be in heaven than to remain in banishment below. So there I leave
   that matter of the non-interposition of God to think very briefly of
   interpositions which do occur.

   II. PROVIDENTIAL INTERPOSITIONS ARE FREQUENT AMONG GOD'S PEOPLE: they
   can often say, "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many
   waters." Divine interpositions come in the way of deliverance from
   floods of trouble. Have you not experienced them? How strikingly has
   God delivered some of us! What remarkable preservations of life have we
   enjoyed; not miraculous, certainly, but full of wonder for all that. We
   have as much reason to praise God for our deliverances as if the laws
   of nature had been suspended, for we have been quite as completely
   preserved. What helps we have had in the hour of sorrow, when one after
   another our beloved have been taken from us, or when they have gone to
   the very edge of the grave, and yet have been spared to us. How often
   have we been helped in business troubles and saved from impending
   failure or serious loss! In times of slander, when our character has
   been belied, how graciously has God brought to light our innocence! I
   say again, not by miracle, but yet very marvellously has our God
   delivered us. In answer to prayer God worketh in his own way for the
   good of his people without stopping one single wheel of providence:
   without violating one single law of nature, God is able to work the
   same end as we sometimes wish he would work by a miracle. He will not
   quench the violence of the flame, but yet a precious life shall be
   snatched from a burning house. He will not prevent the water from
   drowning, and yet in how many cases in answer to prayer have vessels
   been saved and the lives of men preserved by unexpected incidents! He
   will not stop the ordinary run of business, nor alter the way in which
   the world goes on, and yet he knows how to help the poor, and to bless
   the struggling tradesman, and to bring up the righteous from deep
   distress. A miracle is a rough procedure after all, if I may dare say
   so, compared with the Lord's present methods. The grandest achievement
   of all is for the Lord God to work miraculous results without miracles,
   to produce by common means, in answer to the cry of his servants, that
   which appears to be impossible without a suspension of natural laws.
   See how the Lord allows all the forces of nature to drive on in their
   ordinary course, and yet the outcome of it all is that his servant is
   delivered and his prayers answered.

   God doth this by very varied ways. We have known some who have been
   brought out of deep waters by having health suddenly restored to them,
   or by having the health of those upon whom their maintenance depended
   renewed. This is God's mercy, and let him be praised for it. Sometimes
   circumstances have greatly changed; a man has been going down hill for
   years as to his business, but something quite unexpected has happened,
   and he has just as gradually risen to a position of comfort. My
   friends, believe in the unexpected. I was about to utter a paradox, and
   say expect the unexpectable. Believe that God will do for you something
   which you know nothing about. The Lord always has a plan in reserve.
   You think he has reached his last, and you will be left to perish; but
   it is not so. At the right moment he will bring forth some new and
   surprising stroke of wisdom, which he did but postpone to the
   particular moment, so that when he performs it, and draws his servant
   out of deep waters, the praise and the glory will the more fully
   redound to his name. We have known the Lord save his servants in the
   hour of trouble by touching the hearts of their enemies; those that
   were most unkind and cruel have suddenly become the most generous and
   thoughtful. At other times enemies have died or have been put to
   confusion, like the wicked Haman when he plotted the destruction of the
   Jews. The Lord has hanged up Haman that his chosen might be delivered.
   Mordecai has gone from the king's gate to the king's house, and Haman
   has ascended from the king's table to the king's gallows. I cannot
   instance all the ways in which the Lord makes clear the pathway of his
   people, but this I know that often in our lives some of us have had to
   pause and sing, "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many
   waters."

   Some will not see the hand of God, but I warrant you, brethren, those
   who have been delivered out of the deep waters will see it. Their
   experience teaches them that God is yet among us. Others may talk about
   "laws of nature," as if God were gone to sleep and had left the world
   wound up like a watch to go without him; but those who have been in
   sore affliction and tribulation, and have been brought out therefrom,
   will for ever bless and extol him who is a very present help in
   trouble. Yes, my brethren, the way by which we have come hitherto is as
   full of God as this city is full of men. There are deserts which the
   foot of man hath never trodden, but there is no wilderness where the
   foot of God hath not been. What say you, my beloved friends, you are
   not fanatics, neither has the enthusiasm of devotion carried you out of
   your minds; but are you not conscious of distinct providential
   deliverances? "Conscious of them," say you, "indeed, if we did not
   speak of them with joy and thankfulness, the very stones of the street
   would cry out against us for our wicked silence. Many and many a time
   hath he sent from above, and rescued us. We are, like Moses, drawn out
   of the waters, and like him we would be servants of the Lord."

   III. Now, thirdly, INTERPOSITIONS IN MATTERS OF GRACE ARE THE CHIEF OF
   ALL. As best I can I should like to conclude with a few words upon this
   subject. God does not, even to save the souls of his chosen, violate
   any of his laws. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." "Every
   transgression shall have its just punishment and reward." Yet the Lord
   would save his people. How should he make these two things agree,—how
   should he be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly? It is in the
   person of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ that we see how one law has
   been made to counteract and yet to honor another, to remove its direful
   consequence and yet to make it honorable. You recollect that the law of
   the Medes and Persians could not be altered; and there was a law made
   by Ahasuerus that on a certain day the people of all countries might
   gather themselves together and kill the Jews. Haman had promulgated
   this royal edict far and wide, and the king could not alter it. Mark
   the wise method by which the cruel law was met; they made another law,
   which was—that the Jews might defend themselves, might slay those who
   tried to kill them, and take all their property for a spoil. This met
   the case, though no edict was revoked. Now, God does not and never will
   alter his law that sin must be punished; but forth comes another law
   that, inasmuch as the first sin was committed by a representative man,
   a representative man should be permitted to come in and bear the
   penalty which was consequent thereon. This has been done; no law has
   been broken, and yet God's mercy has had free course.

   Now let us think a minute or two upon this great salvation and how it
   is described in the text. "He sent from above." Oh, blessed Lord, the
   whole race of man was sinking in the old vessel of the covenant of
   works which had been cut in pieces by the first sin; they were all
   going down en masse to destruction. Then thou didst send from above.
   But who was he that was sent? Not the brightest of the cherubim nor the
   chief of the angelic band, but HE came, the messenger of the covenant,
   whom we delight in, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Most High,
   the brightness of his Father's glory. He was the Messiah, the sent one,
   and he descended from above that he might work out our redemption.
   Brethren, let your hearts leap for joy as you behold the messenger of
   the covenant of grace, even Jesus Christ, the adorable and ever blessed
   Son of the Highest.

   Now, note the next word, "He took me." When we had lost all hold on God
   then did this blessed messenger take hold on us. He accepted us as the
   Father's gift to him, and accepted a charge as the great Shepherd of
   the sheep, that he would keep and preserve those whom his Father gave
   him, though they were ready to perish. Then what a hold he took on us.
   He took not up angels, but he took up the seed of Abraham, by becoming
   a man. Babe in Bethlehem, laborer at Nazareth, suffering man at
   Gethsemane, thou hast taken indeed a hold on us, such as thou wouldst
   not relax in life or death! "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
   us," and so being sent from above he took hold upon us.

   Then what a wondrous drawing took place after that grip had once been
   given, He drew us out of many waters, entering into them himself,
   plunging into the rivers of grief and infirmity, and then into the
   waters of the curse, being "made a curse for us": descending deep, as
   it were, into the very depths of hell to bring up the Lord's jewels,
   that they might be delivered from the pit. Oh, the matchless uplifting
   which he gave to us when he drew us out of many waters by his own
   suffering life and agonizing death. Fix your eyes, brethren, upon the
   work of Jesus. See the human race all sinking. Behold how hopeless and
   helpless it is; and see him descending, walking the waters, snatching
   with his own right hand sinking men and women from the billows of
   destruction, and landing them on the Rock of Ages, putting a new song
   into their mouths. As you feel that you are partakers of this
   deliverance, let each one of you say, "He sent from above, he took me,
   he drew me out of many waters."

   This was the great deed itself, but, just a minute, I ask you to
   remember the application of it to your own experience. Do you recollect
   when you felt everything sinking from beneath you? My own self-wreck
   will help me to describe your experience. I had sailed on gallantly in
   the good vessel of my own works, hearing music, and full of delight,
   never dreaming of danger; but suddenly the law of God came along,
   moving unswervingly in its terrible course, and it cut into the vessel
   of my works, as though it had been vanity itself. Down it began to
   sink, and I with it. I looked around for something I could lay hold
   upon, but nothing availed. The priest was there and offered me his
   inventions, but I knew him of old, and knew that he would sink as well
   as I. What, then, could he do for me? Ceremonials were there, but I
   knew that they prove bubbles to a man who trusts in them. Hopes of
   salvation by self-mortification were there, and the like, but they
   clearly could not bear the weight of such a sinner as I was. I sank, I
   sank, nor had I will or wish to be saved, nor did I struggle for life;
   yet Jesus came, whose will of grace precedes our will, whose purpose of
   love outruns our desire for salvation. "He took me": well do I
   recollect his grasp. He took me and made me more conscious of my danger
   than I had been before. He took me, by his Holy Spirit, and I knew that
   he had taken me, for I began to feel his grip tightening upon me. He
   drew me gradually to look at him, to trust him, and to leave myself and
   all my hopes entirely in his hand, then he drew me right out of the
   many waters and made my heart to sing for joy. Do you not recollect the
   time with yourself? As you look with wonder upon some friend who has
   been rescued from the great calamity of this week, I want you to feel
   that you may look with equal wonder upon yourself, for you have
   experienced a greater rescue. You have been delivered from sinking into
   the pit that hath no bottom, a sinking down in sin and into the lower
   depths of corruption. He came from heaven, he took you, he drew you out
   of many waters, therefore praise and bless his name! You were too
   anxious to hope, and yet he taught you to hope in his mercy. You were
   too despairing to struggle, but he made you exercise holy violence to
   enter the kingdom. You were too weary and despondent to trust, but he
   led you to faith. His divine Spirit wrought all your works in you, and
   here you are sitting in this house of prayer this morning to say, "He
   hath delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet
   from falling."

   Now, I should not wonder if since then you have been pretty nearly
   shipwrecked as to your spiritual hopes, and have a second and a third
   time been rescued. You have begun to grow somewhat cold, and you have
   wandered from the Lord, and you have, therefore, dreaded the total
   destruction of all true religion within your spirit. Then you have
   cried out in fear "I have been a hypocrite, or a mere formalist, and
   shall perish after all." But when you were ready to give all up under
   the temptation of the powers of darkness the Lord has again restored
   you. Has he not sent from above and taken you out of the deep yet
   again? Yes, blessed be his name, he has sought you and led you back to
   his ways. If I address a backslider who feels as if he were sinking
   deeper and deeper, I would pray for him that he may yet know how Christ
   can save a sinking Peter and bring a runaway Jonah to the shore again.

   Last of all, we shall soon come into the many waters of death: sooner,
   perhaps, than we think. To some the stream of death is very shallow. We
   have known certain of the saints go over dry-shod, singing all the way.
   They can hardly have been conscious of death, nor have known when they
   were last on earth and when they were first in heaven. But there are
   others who have to cross Jordan at a time when it overfloweth its
   banks, and, like Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress," they are up to
   their necks in the stream, and need words of comfort. You remember how
   one said, "Fear not, brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good." There
   is a rocky bottom all the way across. No slippery sand nor sucking mud,
   but sound rock from shore to shore, and however deep it is, it is never
   so deep as to drown a believer's hope, nor destroy his soul. Yet I can
   imagine the best of saints to be flooded with many troubles in their
   last hours—physical weakness, depression of spirit, temptations of
   Satan, family difficulties, all increase the swellings of Jordan. Do
   you know what will happen? He will send from above, he will take you,
   and he will draw you out of many waters, and you shall rise to glory.
   What a heaven of heavens above others will you feel when you go right
   up from the depths to the heights! To leap right away from de profundis
   to in excelsis, from the death-sweat and the expiring faintness to the
   ecstasy and the ineffable glory, how transcendent the bliss! What an
   exchange it will be, brethren, for those who have grown old and
   decrepit, or for those who could scarcely say even a word to testify
   their dying faith, to find themselves on a sudden rid of every ache and
   pain, and all their withering flesh, and to be disembodied in perfect
   liberty, charmed with the beatific vision of their Lord, from whom they
   are never to part again. Why, methinks, we might almost choose the
   death-road of the two. Some are very fond of expecting that their Lord
   will surely come in time to prevent their dying. Ah, well, you may be
   very thankful if it happens, but I do not think it is the way I shall
   go, nor can I say that I envy you the prospect in which you delight. In
   heaven you will come to us who die, and ask us—What was it to fall
   asleep in Jesus? What was the feeling of putting off the body? What was
   the joy of being made like our Covenant Head in death? I do not say
   that you will regret that you did not descend into the tomb, but of
   this I am sure, none of us who shall sleep will think that you had any
   preference over us.

   "Where should the dying members rest,
   But with their dying Head?"

   If the Master went that way, descending into the sepulcher, and so up
   by the hill of resurrection to the golden gate, we will not even envy
   Enoch and Elias, though they were permitted to take the reserved route,
   and enter the city by the postern gate. It shall be all well with us if
   we are resting in Jesus, for at the last he will send from above and
   take us, and draw us out of many waters. To his name be praises. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON— Psalm 18:1-31.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"—18, 296, 428.
     __________________________________________________________________

An Anxious Enquiry for a Beloved Son

   (No. 1433)

   Suggested by the loss of the "Princess Alice,"

   Delivered on Thursday Evening, September 5th, 1878, by

   C.H. SPURGEON,

   At the [2]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe?"— 2 Samuel 18:29.

   THIS WAS SAID by David after a great battle in which many had been
   slain, and the hosts led by Absalom had fallen to the number of twenty
   thousand; perishing not only by the sword, but among the thick oaks and
   tangled briers of the wood, which concealed fearful precipices and
   great caverns, into which the rebels plunged in their wild fright when
   the rout set in. His father's anxious question concerned his wicked but
   still well-beloved son, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" He does not
   appear to have asked, "How have we won the victory?" but "Is the young
   man Absalom safe?" Not "Is Joab, the captain of my host, alive, for
   upon him so much depends?" but "Is the young man Absalom safe?" Not
   "How many of our noble troops have fallen in the battle?" but "Is the
   young man Absalom safe?" It has been said that he showed here more of
   the father than of the king—more of affection than of wisdom; and that
   is, doubtless, a correct criticism upon the old man's absorbing
   fondness. David was no doubt, in this case, weak in his excessive
   tenderness. But, brethren, it is much more easy for us to blame a
   father under such circumstances than for us quite to understand his
   feelings; I may add, it would be wiser to sympathize, as far as we can,
   than to sit in judgment upon a case which has never been our own.
   Perhaps if we were placed in the same position we should find it
   impossible to feel otherwise than he did. How many there are at this
   present moment who have, no doubt, other very weighty businesses, but
   whose one only thought just now is, "Is the young man safe? Is my son
   safe? Is my father safe? Is my wife safe?" A vessel has gone down in
   the river with hundreds on board, and weeping friends are going hither
   and thither from place to place, hoping and yet fearing to identify the
   corpse of some beloved one; longing to find one who has not been heard
   of since the fatal hour, and trembling all the while lest they should
   find him or her among the bodies which have been drawn from the cold
   stream. The one thought uppermost with scores to-night is this one—"Is
   my beloved one safe?" Do you blame them? They are neglecting business,
   and forsaking their daily toil, but do yon blame them? A hundred
   weighty things are forgotten in the one eager enquiry: do you, can you,
   blame them? Assuredly not. It is natural, and it is therefore, I think,
   but right. Though, no doubt, David did afterwards show a measure of
   petulance and of rebellion against God, and is not altogether to be
   commended, yet who that has a father's heart within him would not
   rather undertake to justify than to censure the aged parent? When the
   old man asks concerning his son, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" and,
   finding that he is not, cries, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son
   Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" we
   would not, like Joab, go in to him and coarsely upbraid him, however
   much he might deserve it, but we would rather sit down and weep in
   sympathy with those that feel a kindred anxiety, and see if we may not
   learn something from their sorrow. If our own anxieties are free in
   that direction, let us turn them in some other direction which may be
   really useful, and tend to the glory of God.

   Let us first, to-night, consider for a little this question of anxiety,
   then think of occasions for its use, and then, thirdly, suggest answers
   which may be given to it.

   I. First, let us think of THIS QUESTION OF ANXIETY—"Is the young man
   Absalom safe?"

   And the first remark is, it is a question asked by a father concerning
   his son. "Is he safe?" The anxieties of parents are very great, and
   some young people do not sufficiently reflect upon them, or they would
   be more grateful, and would not so often increase them by their
   thoughtless conduct. I am persuaded that there are many sons and
   daughters who would not willingly cost their parents sorrow, who,
   nevertheless, do flood their lives with great grief. It cannot always
   be innocently that they do this: there must be a measure of wanton
   wrong about it in many cases where young people clearly foresee the
   result of their conduct upon their friends. There are some young men,
   especially, who in the indulgence of what they call their freedom
   trample on the tender feelings of her that bare them, and frequently
   cause sleepless nights and crushing troubles to both their parents.
   This is a crime to be answered for before the bar of God, who has given
   a special promise to dutiful children, and reserves a special curse for
   rebellious ones. All parents must have anxieties. There is never a babe
   dropped into a mother's bosom but it brings care, labor, grief, and
   anxiety with it. There is a joy in the parental relationship, but there
   must necessarily be a vast amount of anxious care with it throughout
   those tender years of infancy in which the frail cockle-shell boat of
   life seems likely to be swamped by a thousand waves which sweep
   harmlessly over stronger barques. The newly-lit candle is so readily
   blown out that mothers nurse and watch with a care which frequently
   saps the parental life. But our children, perhaps, do not give us most
   anxiety when they are infants, nor when we have them at school, when we
   can put them to bed and give them a good-night's kiss and feel that all
   is safe; the heavy care comes afterwards—afterwards when they have
   broken through our control, when they are running alone, and on their
   own account, when they are away from our home, when they are out of the
   reach of our rebuke, and do not now feel as once they did the power of
   our authority, and hardly of our love. It is then to many parents that
   the time of severe trial begins, and, doubtless, many a grey head has
   been brought with sorrow to the grave by having to cry, "I have
   nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me."
   Many a father and many a mother die, murdered, not with knife or
   poison, but by unkind words and cruel deeds of their own children. Many
   and many a grave may well be watered by the tears of sons and
   daughters, because they prematurely filled those graves by their
   ungrateful conduct. Let us all think, who still have parents spared to
   us, how much we owe to them, and let it be our joy, if we cannot
   recompense them, at any rate to give them so much of comfort by our
   conduct as shall show our gratitude. Let them have such joy in us that
   they may never regret the anxieties of past years, but may have their
   hearts made to rejoice that they brought into the world such sons and
   daughters. If we have had parents who did care for us, and anxiously
   said, "Are they safe?" let us be grateful to God, and let us never show
   that we undervalue his mercy by treating the boon with contempt.

   Secondly, this was a question asked about a son who had left his
   father's house. "Is the young man Absalom safe?" As I have already
   said, we have not so much anxiety about our children when they are at
   home and when the nursery holds them as we have afterwards when they
   are beyond our reach. They have formed their own attachments, and have
   commenced life entirely on their own account. Even if they are in the
   same town, we are concerned for their welfare; but if they are in
   another land, we have still more anxious thoughts. Possibly some of you
   have your sons and daughters far removed from you, and I do not doubt
   that, if it be so, you often start at night with the question, "How
   fares it with my boy? How is it with my son?" He is far away there, an
   emigrant, or a sailor at sea, or in some distant country town engaged
   in earning his livelihood, and you wonder whether he is alive and well.
   If you know him to be on shore, you would fain know whether he goes
   regularly to the house of God on the Sabbath-day. You wonder where he
   spends his evenings. You wonder into what sort of company he may have
   fallen, what sort of master or shopmates he lives with, and what are
   the influences of his home. I am quite sure that such anxious questions
   frequently plough deep furrows across your minds. There are some young
   men here to-night, in London, come to live in our great city, and I
   want kindly to remind them of the tender thoughts about them at
   home—how mother and father, perhaps at this very hour, are thinking of
   them and praying for them. They would be glad, probably, to know that
   their son is where he is, but they might have sorrow if they knew where
   sometimes he wastes his evenings, and where he has begun to spend a
   part of his Sabbath-day. They would be grieved to know that he is
   beginning to forget the habits formed at home—that now in the room
   where there are others sleeping he is afraid to bow his knee in
   prayer—that the Bible in which his mother wrote his name, and
   concerning which the promise was given that there should be a portion
   read every day has not been read, but some book of very doubtful
   character has taken its place. Young friend, some of us who are a
   little older know your experience of leaving home, and we trust you
   will know our experience of having been followed by the prayers and
   tears of parents who have lived to rejoice that their prayers for us
   were abundantly answered. May it be so in your case, for, if not, you
   will go from bad to worse and perish in your sin. Yet it is very hard
   for a young man to go down to hell, riding steeple-chase over a
   mother's prayers. It takes a great deal of energy to damn yourself when
   a father and a mother are pleading for your salvation, and yet there
   are some who accomplish it; and, when they come into the place of ruin
   and destruction, surely there shall be a heavier measure meted out to
   them than to those who were trained in the gutter and tutored in the
   street, and never knew what it was to be the subjects of parental
   prayer. O Lord Jesus, thou who didst raise the widow's dead son, save
   those sons who are dead in trespasses and in sins, who are even now
   being carried out to be buried in the tomb of vice and corruption.

   "Is the young man Absalom safe?" may very readily remind us of the
   anxieties of Christian parents about their sons and daughters when they
   are away from home.

   But there is a touching point about this. It is the question of a
   father about his rebellious son. Absalom—the young man Absalom—why
   should David be concerned about him? Was he not up in arms against him?
   Did he not thirst for his father's blood? Was he not at the head of a
   vast host, seeking anxiously to slay his father, that he might wear his
   crown, which he had already usurped. Why, methinks, he might have said,
   "Is the young man Absalom dead? for if he is out of the way there will
   be peace to my realm, and rest to my troubled life." But no, he is a
   father, and he must love his own offspring. It is a father that speaks,
   and a father's love can survive the enmity of a son. He can live on and
   love on even when his son seeks his heart's blood. What a noble passion
   is a mother's love or a father's love! It is an image in miniature of
   the love of God. How reverently ought we to treat it! How marvelously
   has God been pleased to endow, especially godly people, with the sacred
   instinct of affection towards their children, an instinct which God
   sanctifies to noblest ends. Our children may plunge into the worst of
   sins, but they are our children still. They may scoff at our God; they
   may tear our heart to pieces with their wickedness; we cannot take
   complacency in them, but at the same time we cannot unchild them, nor
   erase their image from our hearts. We do earnestly remember them still,
   and shall do so as long as these hearts of ours shall beat within our
   bosoms. I have now and then met with professing Christians who have
   said, "That girl shall never darken my door again." I do not believe in
   their Christianity. Whenever I have met with fathers who are
   irreconcilable to their children, I am convinced that they are
   unreconciled to God. It cannot be possible that there should exist in
   us a feeling of enmity to our own offspring after our hearts have been
   renewed; for if the Lord has forgiven us, and received us into his
   family, surely we can forgive the chief of those who have offended us;
   and when they are our own flesh and blood we are doubly bound to do so.
   To cast off our own children is unnatural, and that which is unnatural
   cannot be gracious. If even publicans and sinners forgive their
   children, much more must we. Let them go even to extremities of
   unheard-of sin, yet as the mercy of God endureth for ever, so must the
   love of a Christian parent still endure. If David says, "Is the young
   man Absalom safe?" we have none of us had a son that has acted one half
   so badly as Absalom; and we must, therefore, still forgive and feel a
   loving interest in those who grieve us.

   At this time I would address any young person who has heen a great
   grief to those at home? Do you treat this matter lightly? Do your
   parents' anxieties seem to you to be foolishness? Ah, let me remind you
   that though your course of life may be sport to you, it is death to
   those at home. You may dry up your heart towards your mother, but your
   mother's heart still overflows with love to you. You may even count it
   a joke that you have caused her tears; but those tears are sincere, and
   reveal her inward agony of soul. Can you ridicule such tender
   affection? I have known some young people who have fallen so low as to
   have made mockery of their parents' piety. It is a horrible thing to
   do, and woe unto those who have been guilty of it. Yet many Christian
   parents only return prayers and greater affection for such unkindness
   as this, and still go on to lay their children's case before God, and
   beseech him for his mercy's sake to have mercy upon them. Now, erring
   young man, since there is something human remaining in you, I appeal to
   your tenderer nature that you will not continue to offend against such
   marvellous love, and will not wantonly go on to trample on such patient
   forgiveness. Absalom, if he could have heard his father ask the
   question, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" was, I doubt not, bad enough
   still to have rebelled against him; but I hope it is not so with anyone
   here; nay, I trust that when the most wilful shall see the deep and
   true love of their parents' hearts they will hasten to be reconciled to
   them, and spend the rest of their lives in undoing the ill which they
   have done.

   The question of my text is the question of a parent concerning a son
   who, if he were not safe, but dead, was certainly in a very dreadful
   plight. "Is the young man Absalom safe?" said David, with all the
   deeper earnestness because he felt that if he was not alive he was in
   an evil case. He has died red-handed in rebellion against his
   father—into what shades must his guilty soul have descended? O beloved,
   that is a very serious question to ask about any departed person. Where
   is he? Is his soul safe? I could almost pray that, when any die by
   sudden death, they might be God's people, and that the sinners might
   escape till they have found Christ. We admire that Christian man who,
   finding himself with another at the bottom of a coal pit, was about to
   ascend in the cage. There was only a chance for one, for the basket
   would hold no more. He had taken his place, but he left it, and said to
   the other miner, "My soul is saved; I am a believer in Christ. You are
   not. If you die you are a lost man. Jump into the cage." Thus he
   allowed his unconverted companion to escape. and ventured his own life
   in his stead. If we are ourselves in Christ, it would be Christlike to
   be ready to die instead of the unsaved; then should we carry out
   David's wish—"Would God I had died for thee." To die—the bitterness of
   death is passed where there is a good hope through grace; but for those
   to die who have no hope, no Christ, no heaven—this is death indeed. I
   can very well imagine any of you asking very seriously about your sons
   and daughters, "Are they safe?" when you know that if they have been
   suddenly taken away they were altogether unprepared. If men and women
   are unconverted when they die they will die twice, and the second death
   is the most to be feared. Are not some of you, my hearers, in such
   danger? Dear friends, where would you be suppose at this moment the
   blast of death were to pass through this house and chill your very
   marrow? If, now, the secret arrow must find a target in some one bosom,
   where would you be if it should be ordained for you? Do ask yourself
   the question, and, if you have no hope in Christ, God help you to seek
   and find forgiveness by the precious blood of Jesus.

   Yet, once more, this was a question, alas! which was asked by a father
   about a son who was really dead at the time when the question was
   asked. It was late in the day to enquire for Absalom's safety; for it
   was all over with that rebellious son. The three darts of Joab had gone
   through the very heart of Absalom, and there, hanging by its hair in
   the oak, his body dangled between earth and heaven. He had already been
   justly executed for his crimes, and yet his father asked, "Is the young
   man Absalom safe?" It is too late to ask questions about our children
   when they are dead. I should think that David's heart must have been
   pierced with many sorrows at the thought of his own negligence of his
   children, for there are hints in his life which lead us to fear that,
   if not altogether an Eli, he was far too negligent in the matter of
   household management. We read of one son of his that his father had
   never denied him anything, and I can hardly imagine a man to be a good
   father of whom that could be said concerning any one of his sons. The
   practice of polygamy is altogether destructive of proper family
   discipline, and David had erred greatly in that respect; besides which
   he was so occupied with public affairs, that his sons were allowed too
   great a liberty. And now he is vainly asking "Is the young man Absalom
   safe?" The question is too late. It is of no use to wring your hands if
   your boy has grown up to be a debauchee and a drunkard: train him while
   he is yet young, and bring him with your prayers and tears to Christ
   while yet a child. Mother, it will little avail you to tear your hair
   because of a daughter's dishonor if you have permitted her to go into
   society where temptations abound. Let us do for our children what we
   can do for them while they are little ones. While the warm metal flows,
   as it were, soft and plastic, let us try to turn it into the right
   mould: for if it once grows cold, we may beat it in vain, it will not
   take the desired image and superscription, Oh that those of us who have
   little children about us may have grace to train them up in the way
   they should go, for when they are old they will not depart from it. You
   cannot bend the tree, but you can twist the sapling: look ye well to
   it. Snatch the opportunity while yet it is before you, lest, when your
   children have plunged into sin, or may even have plunged into the pit,
   you vex your souls in vain and cry, "Woe is me." I shall never forget
   the anguish of a poor illiterate woman whom I had been the means of
   leading to Christ. She was rejoicing in Christ when I had seen her
   before, but when I saw her next she was in great sorrow and bondage of
   spirit, and I said to her, "What aileth thee?" She replied, "My
   children! my children! They are all grown up, and they are all ungodly.
   My husband died and left me a widow with five or six of them. I worked
   hard morning and night, as you know I must have done, to find them
   clothes and food; and I brought them up as well as I could; but, woe's
   me, I never thought about their souls. How could I?" said she, "for I
   never thought about my own; and now I am saved, but they are all
   worldly and careless. and I cannot undo the mischief." She told me
   that, touched with a feeling of love to her children, she had resolved
   to go and speak to each of them about their eternal state; and she made
   her first visit to her eldest son, who had a family of children around
   him, and when she began to tell him about her conversion and her
   salvation and joy in the Lord, he so cruelly laughed her to scorn that
   it broke her heart. I did all I could to cheer and comfort her; but I
   can only say to younger persons, who are converted whilst still they
   have their little ones about them, never let the occasion go, lest you
   have to cry out at last, "O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God
   I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son! for thou hast fallen in thy
   iniquity, and it may be thy blood will be required at thy parent's
   hands." God grant that this question of anxiety may be asked in time by
   wise parents, and not left till its answer shall smite as doth a
   dagger.

   II. Secondly. You have had the question; we are now to speak upon SOME
   OCCASIONS WHEN THAT QUESTION WOULD VERY NATURALLY BE USED. "Is the
   young man Absalom safe?"

   The question would be used, of course, in times, like the present, in
   reference to this mortal life. When a fearful calamity has swept away
   hundreds at a stroke such an enquiry is on every lip. On Wednesday
   morning how many families must have looked down those fearful lists,
   having been up all night watching and waiting for some one who did not
   come home. What a dreadful night to spend in watching for son or
   father, or daughter or mother; and how awful the tidings of the
   morning! In the case of a family near my own house, the servant was
   left at home with one little babe, and all the rest of the family went
   out for a day's pleasure and health-seeking. Nobody has ever come home!
   Nobody has come to relieve the servant and embrace the child! You may
   imagine the anxiety of that servant with her little charge, to find
   master and mistress and the rest never coming home. There is also a
   case of a mother upstairs with a new-born little one at her side, and
   her husband and her other children, who had gone out, never returned.
   May we never know such sorrow! Then is the question asked in accents of
   terror, "Is the young man Absalom safe?"

   Times of disease, also, raise such enquiries. Well do I recollect some
   four-and-twenty years ago, when first I came to London, it was my
   painful duty to go, not only by day, but by night, from house to house
   where the cholera was raging; and almost every time I met the beloved
   friends at Park Street it was my sorrow to hear it said, "Mr. So-and-so
   is dead. Mistress A. or B. is gone," till I sickened myself from very
   grief. It was then most natural that each one should say concerning his
   relative at a little distance," Is he still alive? Is he still safe?"

   Now, if in any future day the shadow of a disaster should cross your
   path, and you should be in fear that your beloved ones are lost, I pray
   you, if you are Christian people, exercise faith at such a time, and
   stay yourselves upon God. Recollect, if you become so anxious as to
   lose your clearness of mind, you will not be fit for the emergency. It
   may be that by retaining calmness of soul you will be of service; but
   by giving up the very helm of your mind, and allowing yourself to drift
   before the torrent of anxiety, you will become useless and helpless. In
   patience possess your souls. The world is in God's hand after all. The
   young man Absalom will not die without the appointment of heaven. Your
   children are not out of the keeping of the Most High. However dear they
   are to you, and however great their peril, there is One that ruleth and
   overruleth; and quiet prayer has more power with him than impatient
   fretfulness. If your dear ones are dead you cannot restore them to life
   by your unbelief; and if they still survive, it will be a pity to be
   downcast and unbelieving when there is no occasion for it. "Your
   strength is to sit still." Remember that you are a Christian, and a
   Christian is expected to be more self-possessed than those who have no
   God to fly to. The holy self-composedness of faith is one of the things
   which recommend it to the outside world, and men who see Christian men
   and women calm, when others are beside themselves, are led to ask,
   "What is this?" and unconsciously to own, "This is the finger of God."
   So when you ask the painful question before us, ask it still with faith
   in God.

   But, dear friends, sometimes we have to ask this question about friends
   and children, with regard to their eternal life. hey are dead, and we
   are fearful that they did not die in Christ, and therefore we enquire,
   "Is the young man Absalom safe?" It is very painful to the Christian
   minister when that question is put to him, and it is not for him to
   answer it in most cases. As a rule he knows too little of the person to
   form a judgment. He may, perhaps, have paid a visit or two, and he may
   have been encouraged by a few hopeful words: but what can we judge from
   a dying-bed? It is very easy for a dying person to be deceived and to
   deceive others, and we had better leave judgments and decisions in the
   hand of God. Those who know all about the person's life, and have been
   in the chamber all the time of his sickness, and know more, how should
   they judge? I answer, where there has been no previous godly life,
   where the conversion must have been a very late one, and the signs and
   marks of it are feeble—judge hopefully, but judge honestly. You are
   allowed to hope, but still be honest, and avoid, above all things, the
   unwisdom I have seen in some people of holding up a son or a daughter
   or a friend for an example, when the individual has lived an ungodly
   life, and never showed the slightest sign of grace while in active
   life, but merely used a pious expression or two at the last. Hope if
   you dare, but be very careful of what you say. To parade the few last
   words as if they had more weight in them than a long life cast into the
   other scale is very unwise. It is most injurious to the rest of the
   family, and is apt to make them feel that they may live as they like,
   and yet be considered saints when they die. I rather admire, though I
   might not imitate, a father who, on the contrary, when his ungodly son
   died, said to his sons and daughters, "My dear children, much as I wish
   I could have any hope about your brother, his whole life was so
   inconsistent with anything like that of a Christian, that I fear he is
   lost for ever. I must warn you earnestly not to live as he lived, lest
   you should die as he died." There was honesty in such dealing, honesty
   to be admired. If you must judge and answer the question, "Is the young
   man Absalom safe?" be not so hopeful as to deceive yourselves and
   others, and be not so severe as to constitute yourselves judges upon a
   matter in which you can know, after all, but little, unless the whole
   life has been before you. In that case you may judge with some degree
   of certainty, for it is written, "By their fruits shall ye know them."

   "Is the young man Absalom safe? " is a more practical question when we
   put it about young people and old people, when they are still alive,
   and we are anxious about their spiritual condition. "Is the young man
   Absalom safe?" That is to say, is he really safe for the future?—for
   this world and for the world to come. We saw him in the enquiry-room,
   we heard him speak out his anxiety, and we marked his tears; but is he
   safe? Not if he stops there. We have seen him since then at the house
   of God amongst the most earnest hearers. He leans forward to catch
   every syllable: he is evidently in earnest; but is he safe? Not if he
   stops there. He is a seeker: there can be no doubt about it. He has now
   begun to read his Bible, and he endeavors to draw near to God in
   prayer. Is he safe? Not if he stops even there. He must come to faith
   in Jesus Christ and really cast himself upon the great atonement made
   by the redeeming blood, or else he is not safe. The question for you
   Sunday-school teachers to ask about your children is, Are they safe?
   Have they reached the point in which they turn from darkness to
   light—from the power of Satan to the power of Christ? "Is the young man
   Absalom safe?" Is he saved? That is the point.

   I believe there is a denomination of Christians who receive into
   membership those who desire to be saved. I will not judge such a plan,
   but I dare not follow it. To desire to be saved is a very simple
   matter, and means little. The point is to be saved. That is the
   question, and over it all our anxiety should be expended. "Is the young
   man Absalom"—not hopeful, not aroused or convicted, but is he "safe"?
   Is he saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation? Hear it all of
   you, and answer for yourselves.

   III. The third point is to be THE ANSWERS WHICH WE HAVE TO GIVE TO THIS
   QUESTION—"Is the young man Absalom safe?"

   This question has often been sent up by friends from the country about
   their lads who have come to London—"Is my boy Harry safe! Is my son
   John safe?" Answer, sometimes: "No, no. He is not safe. We are sorry to
   say that he is in great danger." I will tell you when we know he is not
   safe.

   He is not safe if, like Absalom, he is at enmity with his father. Oh,
   no. He may attend a place of worship, and he may profess to pray, and
   he may even take upon himself the name of a Christian; but he is not
   safe if he is at enmity with his parents. That will not do at all.
   Scripture saith, "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how
   can he love God whom he hath not seen?" The words are quite as forcible
   if we read father instead of brother. If a man love not his own parents
   on earth, how can he love his Father who is in heaven? No, no; he is
   not safe.

   "Is the young man safe?" Well, no. We have seen him lately in bad
   company. He has associated with other young men who are of loose
   morals. He prefers to spend his evenings where there may be bare
   decency in the songs and the conversation, but scarcely more. No, the
   young man Absalom is not safe there. He may be very moral himself, but
   he will not long remain pure if he goes into such society. If you sit
   among coals, if you do not burn yourself, you will blacken yourself. If
   you choose bad company, if you are not absolutely made to transgress as
   they do, yet you will damage your reputation. No, the young man Absalom
   is not safe.

   And he is not safe, because he has taken to indulge in expensive
   habits. "Absalom prepared him," it is said, "chariots and horses, and
   fifty men to run before him." This extravagance was a sign of evil. A
   youth who lavishes money upon needless luxuries is not safe. Certain
   young men of London, with small salaries, manage to cut a superb
   figure, and we fear that something wrong lies behind it. Their plain
   but honest and respected fathers certainly would not know them if they
   were to see them in full array. It is a bad sign when young men go in
   for dash and show beyond their position and means. Of course, every
   man's expenditure must be regarded with reference to his income and
   station in life. I am not touching upon the style of men of rank and
   fortune, though even there a vain-glorious appearance is the index of
   evil; but there are some young fellows scarcely out of their teens, or
   who have scarcely ended their apprenticeships, whose pocket-money must
   be easy to count, who nevertheless indulge themselves in all sorts of
   extravagances, and when I see them doing so I feel sure that the "young
   man Absalom" is not safe.

   Another thing. The young man Absalom is not safe, as you may see, if
   you look at his personal appearance. We read, "But in all Israel there
   was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole
   of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.
   And when he polled his head, (for it was at every year's end that he
   polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:)
   he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king's
   weight." When young people are taken up with their own persons, and are
   vain of their hair, their looks, and their dress, we are sure that they
   are not safe, for pride is always in danger. Let young men and women
   dress according to their stations; we are not condemning them for that.
   I recollect Mr. Jay saying, "If you ladies will tell me your income to
   a penny, I will tell you how many ribbons you may wear to a yard"; and
   I think that I might venture to say the same. But I do notice that when
   young people begin to be vain of their beauty and fond of dress they
   are in great peril from various kinds of temptations. There is a
   canker-worm somewhere in their brain or their heart that will eat up
   their good resolutions and fair characters. No, the young man with his
   boasted beauty is not safe.

   And we are sure the young man Absalom is not safe, when he has begun to
   be vicious. You recollect what Absalom did: I need not go into
   particulars. Now, many a young man, albeit he is not reckoned a bad
   fellow, has still gone astray in private life, and if all secrets were
   laid bare, he would be almost ashamed to sit among respectable people
   who now receive him into their society. No, he is not safe.

   "Is the young man Absalom safe?" No, David, he is not, for the last
   time we saw him he was in a battle, and the people were dying all
   around him, and therefore he is not safe. How can he be safe where
   others fall? Yes, and I saw the young man come out of a low place of
   amusement late one night, and I thought, "No, the young man Absalom is
   not safe," for many perish there. I heard of his betting at the races,
   and I thought, "The young man Absalom is not safe, for multitudes are
   ruined there." I saw him in loose company one evening, and I said, "No,
   the young man Absalom is not safe: he is surrounded by those who hunt
   for the precious life." It is never safe for us to be where other
   people fall; because if they perish, why should not we? The youth did
   not see this but answered me fiercely when I pointed out his danger. He
   said that he knew how to keep himself: it was not to be taken for
   granted, because he was going in for amusements, that he would become
   vicious. "Of course," said he, "there are young fellows who cannot take
   care of themselves, but I am quite able to look after myself. I can put
   on the drag whenever I please; I am gay, but I am not bad; I am free,
   but not vicious." Yes, but I wrote down, "The young man Absalom is not
   safe"—not half so safe as he thinks he is—and all the less safe,
   because he thinks so much of himself, and is so particularly sure that
   he can conquer where other people perish. No, the young man Absalom is
   not safe.

   Now, the young man is here to-night who will answer to the next
   description. He is a very nice young fellow. All of us who know him
   love him and are right glad to see him among us. He is a great hearer
   and lover of the gospel word, but he is not decided. He has never taken
   his stand with God's people, confessing Christ as his Lord. "Almost
   thou persuadest me to be a Christian," he has often said; but he is not
   quite persuaded yet. Is the young man safe? Oh, no. He is very hopeful,
   God bless him! We will pray him into safety if we can; but he is not
   safe yet. Those people who were almost saved from the wreck of the
   Princess Alice were drowned; and those persons who are almost saved
   from sin are still lost. If you are almost alive you are dead; if you
   are almost forgiven you are under condemnation; if you are almost
   regenerated you are unregenerate; if you are almost a Christian you are
   without God and without hope, and if you die almost saved you will be
   altogether lost.

   O my dear young brother, I wish that I could answer and say, "Yes, the
   young man Absalom is safe: he has taken the decisive step, he has
   resigned himself into the hands of Jesus, and Jesus will keep him to
   the end." May the Holy Ghost lead you to this.

   A pleasant task remains, I will now answer that question with a happy
   "Yes." Yes, the young man Absalom is safe.

   Why? Well, first, because he is a believer in Christ. He has cast
   himself upon Jesus. He knew that he could not save himself, and so he
   came to Christ that Christ might save him, and he has left himself
   entirely in the hands of Jesus to be his for ever and ever.

   The young man is saved, for he loves the gospel. He will not go to hear
   anything but the gospel. He sticks to the truth, he knows the
   unadulterated milk of the Word, and he cannot be deceived and led
   astray with false doctrine, for that he hates. He does not gad about to
   go and hear this and that, but he knows what has saved his soul, and he
   holds fast the form of sound words. The young man is safe.

   I know he is safe, for he is very humble. He is not perfect yet: he
   does not say that he is, nor boast of his attainments. He does not want
   to be the forehorse of the team, he is willing to be placed anywhere so
   that he can be useful. He often wonders that he is a Christian at all,
   and ascribes it all to divine grace. He is a lowly young man, and
   therefore he is safe enough, for such the Lord preserveth.

   Moreover, he is very diffident of himself. He is afraid sometimes to
   put one foot before another for fear he should take a wrong step. He is
   always going on his knees to ask for direction; he waits upon God for
   guidance, and does not dare to do anything without the direction of the
   word and the Spirit. He is a prayerful man, and therefore he is safe;
   for who can hurt the man who dwells at the mercy-seat? He is also a
   very careful man in his daily walk. He labors to be obedient to the
   will of God, he aims at being holy, and to be holy is to be safe.

   Worldlings say that he is a cant and a hypocrite, and thus they have
   set their stamp on him, and marked him as a follower of the despised
   Redeemer. He is a genuine character, or else they would not persecute
   him. The people of God love him, and he loves them, and he dwells among
   them, and says of the house of God,

   "Here my best friends, my kindred dwell, Here God my Savior reigns."

   Write home to his father and all his friends, and say, "The young man
   is safe." He is in Christ, and he is in Christ's church, and he is
   seeking to serve God. He is beginning to work for the Master, he is
   trying to bring souls to Jesus; the Holy Spirit is working in him and
   by him to the glory of God. Yes, he is safe enough, for he is "Safe in
   the arms of Jesus."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON— Psalm 90.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"—90, 566, and "Safe in the arms of Jesus"
   (25 "Flowers and Fruits.").
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus!

   (No. 1434)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 15 1878,

   BY C.H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And she shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS:
   for He shall save His people from their sins." Matthew 1:21.

   BERNARD has delightfully said that the name of Jesus is honey in the
   mouth, melody in the ear and joy in the heart. I rejoice in that
   expression on my own account, for it gives me my share of the delight
   and leads me to hope that while I am speaking, the sweetness of the
   precious name of Jesus may fill my own mouth. Here, also, is a portion
   for you who are listening--it is melody in the ears! If my voice should
   be harsh and my words discordant, you will yet have music of the
   choicest order, for the name itself is essential melody and my whole
   sermon will ring with its silver note! May both speaker and hearer join
   in the third word of Bernard's sentence and may we all find it to be
   joy in our hearts, a jubilee within our souls! Jesus is the Way to God,
   therefore will we preach Him! He is the Truth, therefore will we hear
   of Him! He is the Life, therefore shall our hearts rejoice in Him! So
   inexpressibly fragrant is the name of Jesus that it imparts a delicious
   perfume to everything which comes in connection with it.

   Our thoughts will turn, this morning, to the first use of the name in
   connection with our Lord, when the Child who was yet to be born was
   named Jesus. Here we find everything suggestive of comfort. The person
   to whom that name was first revealed was Joseph, a carpenter, a humble
   man, a working man, unknown and undistinguished except by the justice
   of his character. To the artisan of Nazareth was this name first
   imparted! It is not, therefore, a title to be monopolized by the ears
   of princes, sages, priests, warriors or men of wealth--it is a name to
   be made a household word among common people! He is the people's
   Christ, for of old it was said of Him, "I have exalted One chosen out
   of the people." Let every carpenter and every worker of every sort
   rejoice with all other sorts of men in the name of Jesus!

   There is consolation in the messenger who made known that name to
   Joseph, for it was the angel of the Lord who, in the visions of the
   night, whispered that charming name into his ear and, henceforth,
   angels are in league with men and gather to one standard, moved by the
   same watchword as ourselves--the name of Jesus! Did God send the name
   by an angel and did the angel delight to come with it? Then is there a
   bond of sympathy between us and angelic spirits and we are come, this
   day, not only "to the general assembly and church of the firstborn,"
   but "to an innumerable company of angels," by whom that name is
   regarded with reverent love!

   Nor is the condition of Joseph, when he heard this name, altogether
   without instruction. The angel spoke to him in a dream--that name is so
   soft and sweet that it breaks no man's rest but rather yields an
   unrivalled peace--the peace of God! With such a dream, Joseph's sleep
   was more blessed than his waking. The name has evermore this power,
   for, to those who know it, it unveils a glory brighter than dreams have
   ever imaged! Under its power young men see visions and old men dream
   dreams--and these do not mock them, but are prophecies faithful and
   true! The name of Jesus brings before our minds a vision of Glory in
   the latter days when Jesus shall reign from pole to pole--and yet
   another vision of Glory unutterable when His people shall be with Him
   where He is!

   The name of Jesus was sweet at the first because of the words with
   which it was accompanied--for they were meant to remove perplexity from
   Joseph's mind and some of them ran thus--"Fear not." Truly, no name can
   banish fear like the name of Jesus! It is the beginning of hope and the
   end of despair! Let but the sinner hear of "the Savior" and he forgets
   to die! He hopes to live! He rises out of the deadly lethargy of his
   hopelessness and, looking upward, he sees a reconciled God and no
   longer fears. Especially, Brothers and Sisters, this name is full of
   rare delights when we meditate upon the infinite preciousness of the
   Person to whom it was assigned. Ah, here is a Jonathan's wood dripping
   with honey

   from every bough and he that tastes it shall have his eyes enlightened!
   We have no common Savior, for neither earth nor Heaven could produce
   His equal!

   At the time when the name was given, His full Person had not been seen
   by mortal eyes, for He lay as yet concealed. But soon He came forth,
   having been born of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit! A matchless
   Man, He bears our nature, but not our corruption! He was made in the
   likeness of sinful flesh, but yet in His flesh there is no sin! This
   Holy One is the Son of God and yet He is the Son of man! This
   surpassing excellence of Nature makes His name most precious! I shall
   ask the exercise of your patience while I consider seven things in
   reference to this transporting name. It is as ointment poured forth and
   its scent is varied so as to contain the essence of all fragrances.
   These seven things will be seen very plainly by you if you continue to
   look at the text and its connection.

   I. First, we shall remark that THE NAME OF JESUS IS A NAME DIVINELY
   ORDERED AND EXPOUNDED. According to the text, the angel brought a
   message from the Lord and said, "You shall call His name Jesus." It is
   a name which, like He who bears it, has come down from Heaven. Our Lord
   has other names of office and relationship, but this is specially and
   peculiarly His own personal name and it is the Father who has thus
   named Him. Rest assured, therefore, that it is the best name that He
   could bear!

   God would not have given Him a name of secondary value, or about which
   there would be a trace of dishonor. The name is the highest, brightest
   and noblest of names--it is the glory of our Lord to be a Savior. To
   the best that was ever born of woman, God has given the best name that
   any son of man could bear. JESUS is the most appropriate name that our
   Lord could receive. Of this we are quite certain, for the Father knew
   all about Him and could name Him well. He knows much more about the
   Lord Christ than all saints and angels put together, for, "No man knows
   the Son but the

   Father."

   To perfection the Father knew Him and He names Him Jesus. We may be
   sure, then, that our Lord is, most of all, a Savior and is best
   described by that term. God, the Father, who knows Him best, sees this
   to be His grand characteristic, that He is a Savior and is best
   represented by the name, "Jesus." Since infinite wisdom has selected
   it, we may be sure that it is a name which must be true and must be
   verified by facts of no mean order. God, who cannot be mistaken, calls
   Him Jesus, a Savior and, therefore, Jesus, a Savior He must be upon a
   grand scale--continually, abundantly and in a most apparent manner!
   Neither will God refuse to accept the work which He has done, since by
   the gift of that name He has commissioned Him to save sinners. When we
   plead the name of Jesus before God, we bring Him back His own Word and
   appeal to Him by His own act and deed.

   Is not the name of Jesus to be viewed with reverential delight by each
   one of us when we remember from where it came? He is not a Savior of
   our own setting up, but God the everlasting Father has set Him forth
   for our Deliverer and Savior, saying, "You shall call His name Jesus."
   It is a name which the Holy Spirit explains, for He tells us the reason
   for the name of Jesus--"For He shall save His people from their sins."
   "Savior" is the meaning of the name, but it has a fuller sense hidden
   within, for in its Hebrew form it means, "the salvation of the Lord,"
   or, "the Lord of salvation," or "the Savior." The angel interprets it,
   "He shall save," and the word for, "He," is very emphatic.

   According to many scholars, the Divine name, the incommunicable title
   of the Most High is contained in "Joshua," the Hebrew form of Jesus, so
   that in full the word means, "Jehovah Savior," and in brief it
   signifies, "Savior." It is given to our Lord because "He saves"--not
   according to any temporary and common salvation, from enemies and
   troubles-- but He saves from spiritual enemies and specially from sins.
   Joshua of old was a savior, Gideon was a savior, David was a
   savior--but the title is given to our Lord above all others because He
   is a Savior in a sense in which no one else is or can be--He saves His
   people from their sins!

   The Jews were looking for a Savior--they expected one who would break
   the Roman yoke and save them from being under bondage to a foreign
   power! But our Divine Lord came not for such a purpose. He came to be a
   Savior of a more spiritual sort and to break quite another yoke by
   saving His people from their sins. The word, "save," is very rich in
   meaning--its full and exact force can hardly be given in English words.
   Jesus is salvation in the sense of deliverance and also in that of
   preservation. He gives health. He is all that is salutary to His
   people. In the fullest and broadest sense He saves His people.

   The original word means to preserve, to keep, to protect from danger
   and to secure. The grandest meanings generally dwell in the shortest
   words and in this case the word, "save," is a well where the plummet is
   long in finding a

   bottom! Jesus brings a great salvation, or as Paul says, "so great
   salvation," as if he felt that he could never estimate its greatness
   (Heb. 2:3). He also speaks of it as, "eternal salvation" (Heb. 5:9),
   even as Isaiah said, "Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an
   everlasting salvation." Glorious beyond measure is the name, "Jesus,"
   as it is Divinely expounded to us, for by that very exposition the
   eternal God guarantees the success of the Savior!

   He declares that He shall save His people and save His people He must.
   God Himself sets Him forth to us as--

   "Jesus, Savior, Son of God, Bearer of the sinner's load."

   Thus we have a name, dear Friends, which we have not to explain for
   ourselves. As we did not choose it, so we are not left to expound
   it--God who gave the text has preached us the sermon! He who appointed
   the name has given us the reason for it, so that we are not left in
   ignorance or uncertainty. We might have said, "Yes, His name is Jesus,
   but it refers to a salvation which was worked in the olden ages." But
   no, the Word of the Lord tells us, "You shall call His name Jesus, for
   He shall save His people from their sins"--and this is for all time
   since He always has a people and these people always need to be saved
   from their sins! Let us be glad that we have such a Savior and that the
   name of Jesus retains all the sweetness and power it ever had and shall
   retain it till all the chosen people are saved--and then forever and
   ever.

   Moreover, in addition to expounding this name, the Holy Spirit, by the
   Evangelist Matthew, has been pleased to refer us to the synonym of it
   and so to give us its meaning by comparison. Let me read you the next
   verses. "Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was
   spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be
   with Child and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name
   Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." If, when our Lord
   was born and named, "Jesus," the old prophecy which said that He should
   be called Emmanuel was fulfilled, it follows that the name, "Jesus,"
   bears a signification tantamount to that of "Emmanuel" and that its
   virtual meaning is "God with us."

   Indeed, Brothers and Sisters, He is Jesus, the Savior, because He is
   Emmanuel, God with us! And as soon as He was born and so became
   Emmanuel, the Incarnate God, He became by that very fact, Jesus, the
   Savior! By coming down from Heaven into this earth and taking upon
   Himself our Nature, He bridged the otherwise bridgeless gulf between
   God and man! By suffering in that human Nature and imparting, through
   His Divine Nature, an infinite efficacy to those sufferings, He removed
   that which would have destroyed us and brought us everlasting life and
   salvation! O Jesus, dearest of all names in earth or in Heaven, I love
   Your music all the better because it is in such sweet harmony with
   another which rings melodiously in my ears, the name Emmanuel, God with
   us! Our Savior is God and therefore able! He is God with us and
   therefore pitiful! He is Divine and therefore infinitely wise! But He
   is human and therefore full of compassion!

   This, then, is our first head--this charming name of Jesus is a jewel
   from the casket of Heaven. It comes to us as an apple of gold and it is
   attended by an exposition which places it in a basket of silver! The
   name is precious as the golden Mercy Seat and over it burns the light
   of the Divine Glory, so that we may not stumble at it, but may rejoice
   in the great light! It lets us know the very heart of God in reference
   to His Son--why He sent Him; what He meant Him to be and to do--and in
   what manner He would glorify Him. Salvation is the joyful sound which
   rings from the bells of our High Priest's garment as He comes forth to
   bless us! God, who spoke to our fathers by His Prophets, now speaks to
   us by His Son whose name is Salvation! Is there not a mint of joy in
   this?

   II. Secondly, although this name was thus chosen by God, OUR LORD WAS
   ACTUALLY CALLED BY THE

   NAME OF JESUS BY MAN. To this I call your special notice. "She (Mary)
   shall bring forth a son and you (Joseph) shall call His name Jesus."
   The God of Heaven by His angel appoints the child's name, but His
   reputed father must announce it! Both Joseph and Mary, according to the
   Divine command, united in calling the child by the appointed name. See,
   then, that the name which is chosen of God is fully accepted by
   instructed men. Those who are taught of God joyfully recognize that
   Christ is salvation and without a question give Him the well-beloved
   name of Jesus, the Savior.

   Here note that the name Jesus, Savior, was given to our Lord by two
   simple hearts as soon as ever He was revealed to them. They only needed
   to be told who He was and why He came, how He was born and what was the
   object of His Incarnation and they at once accepted the Divine message
   and named the Baby by the name of Jesus. And, Brethren, all of us to
   whom Christ is revealed at all, call Him Jesus the Savior! Many there
   are who think they know our Lord, but since

   they only speak of Him as a Prophet, a Teacher, or a Leader and care
   not for Him as a Savior, we are clear that they are in ignorance as to
   His chief Character.

   His first name, His personal name they know not. The Holy Spirit cannot
   have revealed Christ to any man if that man remains ignorant of His
   saving power! He who does not know Him as Jesus, the Savior, does not
   know Him at all! Certain anti-Christian Christians are craftily
   extolling Christ that they may smite Jesus--I mean that they cry up
   Jesus as Messiah, sent of God, to exhibit a grand example and supply a
   pure code of morals, but they cannot endure Jesus as a Savior,
   redeeming us by His blood and by His death delivering us from sin! I am
   not sure that they follow His example of holy living, but they are very
   loud in extolling it and all with the purpose of drawing off men's
   thoughts from the chief Character and main object of our Lord's sojourn
   among us, namely, the deliverance of His people from sin! If men knew
   our Lord they would call Him Jesus, the Savior, and regard Him not
   merely as a good Man, a great Teacher, a noble Exemplar, but as the
   Savior of sinners!

   Now, Joseph and Mary not only believed, so as to give the young Child
   the name in their own minds, but in due time they took Him up to the
   Temple and presented Him according to the Law and there publicly His
   name was called Jesus. All hearts to whom God commits His Christ should
   publicly acknowledge Him in the most solemn manner according to His
   ordinance and should desire in all proper places to confess Him as the
   Savior. The Infant Christ was committed to the care of Joseph and Mary
   to nurse and protect. Wonder of wonders, that HE should need a
   guardian, who is the Preserver of men and the Shepherd of His saints!
   In His feebleness as a Baby He needed parental care and in caring for
   Him, Joseph and Mary did not hesitate to avow their faith by giving Him
   a name which indicated His destiny! Nor did they refuse to declare His
   name in the Temple before the priests and the congregation.

   Now, in a certain sense Christ is committed to the keeping of all His
   people. This day we have a charge to keep--we are to preserve His
   Gospel in the world, to maintain His Truth and to publish His salvation
   and, therefore, we are bound to bear this testimony, that He is Jesus,
   the Savior of sinners! This we must make very prominent. Others shall
   say what they please about Him and if they speak well of His Character
   in any respect we will be glad that they shall do it, however little
   they may know. But this is our peculiar testimony, that our Lord saves
   from sin! Nothing is more prominent about a man than his name--we can
   hardly mention him without pronouncing his name--and so we feel that we
   cannot mention our Lord without speaking of salvation! If He is
   anything, He is Jesus, the Savior!

   We know Him best by that name! We preach unto men Jesus! We insist upon
   it first and foremost that He is the sinner's Savior! He is righteous
   and loves righteousness, but He is first known to men as the Friend of
   sinners. He is the faithful and true Witness, the Prince of the kings
   of the earth--but His first work is to save! After that He teaches and
   rules His saved ones. Sunken in sin, men need to be redeemed from that
   tremendous evil and the consequent wrath--and this awful need is met by
   Jesus, the Savior! So, Beloved, you see that the name chosen of God is
   given to Him by all those who know Him and to whom His Gospel is
   entrusted. And it is given heartily, zealously and boldly! Yes, all of
   us call Him Jesus if we know Him and we are resolved to publish His
   name abroad as long as we live!

   If He was Jesus in the cradle, what is He now that He is exalted in the
   heavens? As Emmanuel, God with us, His very Incarnation made Him Jesus,
   the Savior of men! But what shall I say of Him, now that beyond His
   Incarnation we have His Atonement? And above His Atonement His
   Resurrection? And beyond that His Ascension and, to crown all, His
   perpetual intercession? How grandly does the title befit Him, now that
   He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him,
   seeing He always lives to make intercession for them!

   If in the arms of the Virgin He is the Savior, what is He on the Throne
   of God? If wrapped in swaddling bands He is Jesus, what is He now that
   the heavens have received Him? If in the workshop of Nazareth and
   sitting in the Temple among the doctors, He was the Child Jesus, the
   Savior, what is He now that His Infancy and Childhood are over and He
   is exalted far above all principalities and powers? If He was Jesus
   when on the Cross, presenting Himself as an offering for His people,
   what is He now that He has, by one Sacrifice, perfected forever them
   that are set apart? What is He now that He sits at the right hand of
   God, waiting till His enemies are made His footstool?

   Let us all unite in calling our Lord by this tender human name of
   Jesus! Are we not His mother and sister and brother? Did He not call
   all Believers by these endearing titles? Then we, too, will call Him
   Jesus--"Jesus, name all names above! Jesus best and nearest! Jesus,
   fount of perfect love, holiest, most tender, dearest! Jesus, source of
   Divine Grace completed! Jesus holiest, sweetest! Jesus, Savior all
   Divine, Yours the name, and only Yours!

   III. THE NAME HAD BEEN TYPICALLY WORN BY ANOTHER, BUT IS NOW RESERVED
   FOR HIM

   ALONE. There had been a Jesus before our Jesus. I allude to Joshua and
   you know that in our version the name Jesus is twice used where Joshua
   is really meant. The first is Acts 7:4, 5, where we read of the fathers
   who entered in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles,
   evidently meaning Joshua. And the second in Hebrews 4:8, "If Jesus had
   given them rest." Joshua is the Hebrew form and Jesus the Greek form,
   but Jesus and Joshua are the same word.

   There was one, then, of old, who bore this famous name of Jesus, or
   Joshua, and was a type of our Jesus. What did Joshua do? When Moses
   could not lead the people into Canaan, Joshua did it. And so our Jesus
   accomplishes what the Law never could have done! Joshua overcame the
   enemies of God's people. Though they were very many and very strong and
   had cities walled to Heaven and chariots of iron, yet in the name of
   Jehovah, as captain of the Lord's host, Joshua smote them! Even so does
   our glorious Joshua smite our sins and all the powers of darkness! And
   He utterly destroys our spiritual enemies. Before Joshua, Amalek is
   smitten, Jericho falls and Canaanites are put to rout--while Jesus
   gives us triumphs in every place!

   Moreover, Joshua conquered an inheritance for Israel, took them across
   the Jordan, settled them in a land that flowed with milk and honey and
   gave to each tribe and to each man to stand in his lot which God had
   ordained for him. Precisely this is what our Jesus does, only our
   inheritance is more Divine and on each one of us it is more surely
   entailed. Though Joshua could not give to the people the heavenly
   Sabbatismos, or rest of the highest kind, yet he gave them rest most
   pleasant to them, so that every man sat under his own vine and fig
   tree, none making him afraid. But our glorious Joshua has given us
   infinite, eternal rest, for He is our peace and they that know Him have
   entered into rest!

   Joshua, the son of Nun, caused the people to serve the Lord all his
   days, but he could not save the nation from their sins, for after his
   death they grievously went astray. Our Joshua reserves to Himself a
   people zealous for good works, for He always lives and is able to keep
   them from falling. No more does Joshua lift sword or spear on behalf of
   Israel, but Jesus still rides forth, conquering and to conquer--and all
   His people have victory through His blood! Well is His name called
   Jesus! We read of another Jesus in the books of Ezra and Zechariah. The
   form which the word there takes is Jeshua or Joshua. He was the high
   priest who came at the head of the people on their return from Babylon.
   He is spoken of by the Prophet Zechariah in terms which make him a fit
   representative of each of us. But, behold, Jesus of Nazareth is now the
   only High Priest--and having presented His one Sacrifice forever, He
   remains a Priest according to the power of an endless life! He heads
   the march from Babylon and He leads His people back to Jerusalem!

   The name of Jesus was not at all uncommon among the Jews. Josephus
   mentions no less than 12 persons of the name of Jesus. Salvation of a
   certain kind was so longed for by the Jews that their eagerness was
   seen in their children's names. Their little ones were by their hopes
   named as saviors, but saviors they were not! How common are nominal
   saviors! "Lo here," they say, "here is a savior!" "Lo, there," they
   cry, "another savior!" These have the name but not the power and now,
   according to the text, Jesus Christ has engrossed the title for
   Himself! His name shall be called Jesus, for He, alone, is a Prince and
   a Savior and truly saves His people from their sins!

   Other saviors do but mock the hopes of mankind--they promise fairly,
   but they utterly deceive! This holy Child, this blessed, glorious God
   With Us, has truly brought us salvation and He says, "Look unto Me and
   be you saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God, and beside Me
   there is none else." This Jesus of Nazareth, the King of kings, is the
   one and only Savior! He, and none but He, shall save His people! He
   shall save by His own act and deed--He and not another! Singly and
   alone He shall save His people! Personally, and not by another! In His
   name and on His behalf He shall, by Himself, purge away sin!

   He shall do all the work and leave none undone--He shall begin it,
   carry it on and complete it--and therefore is His name called Jesus
   because He shall completely and perfectly save His people from their
   sins! The name has been, in a minor sense, applied to others, but now
   none else may wear it since there is no other Savior and none other
   name given under Heaven among men whereby we must be saved.

   IV. The fourth point grows out of the wording of the text. THIS NAME
   JESUS IDENTIFIES OUR LORD WITH HIS PEOPLE. "You shall call His name
   Jesus," for that name declares His relation to His people. It is to
   them that He is a Savior. He would not be Jesus if He had not a people!
   He could not be, for there could be no Savior if there were none to
   save! And there could be no Savior from sin if there were no sinners.
   Notice, dear Friends, the all-important

   connection here revealed between our Lord and His people since His very
   name hangs on it--His proper, personal name has no meaning apart from
   His people. "He shall save His people."

   It does not say God's people, for then it would have been understood as
   meaning only the Jews, or it would have been supposed to refer to some
   good and holy persons who belonged to God, apart from the Mediator. No,
   but, "He shall save His people"--those who are His own and personally
   belong to Him! These are evidently a very peculiar people, a people set
   apart as Christ's own treasure. They are a people that belong to God
   Incarnate--Emmanuel's people. These He saves. Who are they but His
   elect, whom His Father gave Him before the earth was? Who are they but
   those whose names are engraved on the palms of His hands and written on
   His heart? Who are they but those for whom He counted down the price of
   redemption? Who are they but those for whom He became a Surety, whose
   smart He has borne? Who are they but the numbered sheep that will be
   required at His hands by the great Father, that He should render them
   back by count and number, saying, "I have kept those whom You have
   given Me, for they are Yours"?

   Yes, the Lord knows them that are His and He preserves them unto His
   eternal kingdom and Glory. "He shall save His people." Do you not see
   that this name of Jesus is an election name, after all? It is a wide,
   far-reaching name to sinners dear, to sinners given--but still in the
   depths of its meaning it has a special bearing upon a chosen people--it
   has a ring of sovereignty about it and is all the sweeter because of
   this to those who see in their own salvation an exhibition of
   distinguishing Grace.

   Now the question arises, who are His people? We are eager to know who
   they are and we are glad to find that His people, be they who they may,
   need to be saved and shall be saved, for it is written, "He shall save
   His people." It is not said, "He shall reward His people for their
   righteousness." Nor is it promised that He shall, "save them from
   becoming sinners," but, "He shall save His people from their sins." Do
   you need saving, Brothers and Sisters? Has the Holy Spirit taught you
   that you need salvation? Let your hearts be encouraged! This is the
   character of all His people--He never had a chosen one who could do
   without washing in the Savior's blood! If you are righteous in
   yourself, you are not one of His people! If you were never sick in
   soul, you are none of the folk that the Great Physician has come to
   heal!

   If you were never guilty of sin, you are none of those whom He has come
   to deliver from sin. Jesus comes on no needless errand and undertakes
   no unnecessary work--if you feel yourselves to need saving, then cast
   yourselves upon Him--for such as you are He came to save! Notice, yet
   again, the very gracious but startling fact that our Lord's connection
   with His people lies in the direction of their sins. This is amazing
   condescension! He is called Savior in connection with His people, but
   it is in reference to their sins, because it is from their sins that
   they need to be saved! If they had never sinned they would never have
   required a Savior--and there would have been no name of Jesus known on
   earth! That is a wonderful text--did you ever meditate upon it?--"Who
   gave Himself for our sins according to the Scriptures."

   As Martin Luther says, He never gave Himself for our righteousness, but
   He did give Himself for our sins! Sin is a horrible evil, a deadly
   poison, yet it is this which gives Jesus His title when He overcomes
   it. What a wonder to think upon! The first link between my soul and
   Christ is not my goodness, but my badness! It is not my merit, but my
   misery! It is not my standing, but my falling! It is not my riches, but
   my need. He comes to visit His people, yet not to admire their
   beauties, but to remove their deformities! He comes not to reward their
   virtues, but to forgive their sins!

   O you sinners! I mean real sinners--not you that call yourselves so
   because you are told you are such--but you who feel yourselves to be
   guilty before God, here is good news for you! O you self-condemned
   sinners who feel that if you ever get salvation, Jesus must bring it to
   you and be the beginning and the end of it, I pray you rejoice in this
   dear, this precious, this blessed name, for Jesus has come to save you,
   even YOU! Go to Him as sinners! Call Him, "Jesus," and cry, "O Lord
   Jesus, be Jesus to me, for I need Your salvation!" Doubt not that He
   will fulfill His own name and exhibit His power in you! Only confess to
   Him your sin and He will save you from it! Only believe in Him and He
   will be your salvation!

   V. The fifth point is very clear and well worthy of note. THE NAME OF
   "JESUS" IS ONE WHICH INDICATES HIS MAIN WORK. "You shall call His name
   Jesus, for He shall save." He shall save from sin. Why do men write
   lives of Christ who know nothing about His main business and objective?
   Why do some preach about Christ who do not know the very essence and
   heart of Him? Think of knowing Milton, but not as a poet, and Bacon,
   but not as a philosopher!

   There is no knowing our Lord, if He is not known as a Savior, for He is
   that or nothing! Those who fall short of His salvation do not even know
   His name! How, then, should they know Him?

   His name is not called Jesus because He is our Exemplar though, indeed,
   He is Perfection, itself, and we long to walk in His footsteps. But His
   name is called Jesus because He has come to save that which is lost! He
   is Christ, too, or The Anointed, but then He is Christ Jesus, that is
   to say, it is as a Savior that He is anointed! He is nothing if He is
   not a Savior! He is anointed to this very end. His very name is a sham
   if He does not save His people from their sins! Now, Jesus does save
   His people from sin for, first, He does it by taking all the sins of
   His people upon Himself. Do you think that is a strong expression? It
   is warranted by the Scriptures. "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity
   of us all." Christ's shoulders bore the guilt of His people and because
   He took their load, His people are free and have henceforth no burden
   of sin to weigh them down.

   He saves His people through His personal Substitution--by standing in
   their stead and suffering in their place. There is no other way of
   salvation but by His vicarious sufferings and death! Then He saves them
   by bearing the penalty due to their sin. Where the sin lies, the
   penalty falls. "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with
   His stripes we are healed." "He was made a curse for us." "Christ also
   has suffered for us." He died, "the Just for the unjust, to bring us to
   God." He bore the wrath of God which was due to us. He has taken the
   sin and paid the penalty--and now liars come in and falsely say that we
   teach that a man is to believe the dogma of Atonement and then he is
   saved and may live as he likes!

   They know better! They know that they misrepresent us, for we always
   teach that this great work of Substitution and penalty-bearing by
   Christ works in the person who partakes in its benefits, love to God,
   gratitude to Christ and consequent hatred of all sin! And this change
   of heart is the very core and essence of salvation! This is how Christ
   saves His people from their sin--by rescuing them, by the force of His
   love--out of the power, tyranny and dominion of sins which before then
   had the mastery over them. I knew what it was to strive against sin as
   a moral person, seeking to overcome it. But I found myself mastered by
   sin, like Samson when his hair was lost, and the Philistines bound him.
   But since I have believed in Jesus, I find motives for being holy which
   are more influential with me than any I knew before! I find weapons
   with which to fight my sin that I never knew how to handle before and a
   new strength has been given me by the Holy Spirit.

   "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith." This is
   the power which drives out the vipers of sin from the soul--the
   precious blood of Jesus! He that has believed in Jesus as his expiation
   and atonement becomes, thereby, through the power of the Holy Spirit,
   renewed in heart! He has fresh objects set before him; fresh motives
   sway him--and thus Jesus saves His people from their sins! Beloved, if
   we had space at this time, I should like to speak about how completely
   Christ saves His people from their sins--how when He comes in He turns
   out the strong man armed with mighty force! How that strong armed man
   seeks to come back again and does, as far as he can, gain a partial
   entrance, but Jesus drives him out again! How all the damage and
   foulness that were left within the house by the old tenant are
   gradually cleared away by Jesus, till at last His people are fully
   sanctified as temples of the living God.

   His saints shall be without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing--and no
   sign that the devil ever dwelt within them shall remain upon them!
   Viewing each one of their risen bodies as a temple of God, you shall
   search those bodies through and not find a trace of the dominion of
   sin! You shall look into the heart, into the mind, into the
   understanding--but when Jesus has done His purging work there shall be
   no scar or speck to show that sin was ever there! So completely shall
   He save His people from their sins that they shall be fit to dwell with
   angels! Better--they shall be fit to dwell with God! May I say better
   than that? They shall be one with Jesus, one with Him throughout
   eternity! The fullness of Him that fills all in all. How glorious, how
   transcendent is the salvation which Jehovah Jesus has brought to us!

   VI. This NAME OF JESUS IS ONE WHICH IS COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED BY FACTS.
   It was given Him before

   He had done anything. While yet He was a Baby, or before His trembling
   feet had learned to tread the cottage floor at Nazareth, He was Jesus
   the Savior! But is the name well deserved? Many a child has had a grand
   name and his life has contradicted it. I remember a grave on which
   there is the name of a child, "Sacred to the memory of Methuselah
   Coney, who died aged six months." His parents were mightily mistaken
   when they called him Methuselah!

   Many other names are equally inappropriate and are proved to be so in
   the course of years. But this Jesus is a Savior, a true Jesus! He bears
   a name which He well deserves. Come to the Christ and see, there, the
   many that once rioted in sin

   and rolled in the mire--they are washed! They are sanctified and now
   they rejoice in holiness! Who purified them? Who but Jesus? He that
   saves His people from their sins has saved them! Go to deathbeds and
   hear saints telling of His love and speaking of the Heaven which is
   already dawning in their souls! Some of these once could sit on the
   ale-bench and use the swearer's oath, but Jesus has cleansed them!

   Climb up to Heaven and behold the snow-white host, glittering like the
   sun in spotless purity. I ask them from where they came? The reply is
   that they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
   the Lamb! It is most true that Jesus saves His people from their
   sins--the earth knows it, Hell howls at it and Heaven chants it! Time
   has seen it and eternity shall reveal it! There is none like Jesus in
   saving power! All glory be to Him! He shall come from Heaven with a
   shout and all His hosts shall be with Him. The day of the supper of the
   Lamb shall come and the bride has made herself ready. And she that is
   the queen all glorious within, wearing her raiment of worked gold shall
   sit down at the table of God with her glorious Husband--then shall it
   be seen that He has saved His Church, His people, from their sins!

   VII. Last of all, THIS NAME IS CHRIST'S PERSONAL NAME FOREVER. It is a
   home name. It is the name His Father gave Him! It is the name His
   mother gave Him--Jesus, the Child Jesus. We also belong to His family
   for he that believes in Him is His father, mother, sister and
   brother--and that most dear and familiar name by which He was known at
   home is always in our mouths! He is the Lord and we worship Him! But He
   is Jesus and we love Him! Jesus is also the heart name and is full of
   the music of love. They who loved Him best gave Him the name,
   especially His mother, who pondered everything about Him in her heart.
   It is the name which moves our affections and fires our souls--

   "Jesus, the very thought of you With sweetness fills my breast."

   Let your hearts go out towards Him in tender union. Jesus is His death
   name--"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," was written on His Cross.
   That is His resurrection name. That is His Gospel name which we preach.
   It is the name which Peter preached to the Gentiles when he said, "This
   is Jesus of Nazareth by whom is preached to you the remission of sins."
   And this, Beloved, is His Heaven name! They sing to Him there as Jesus!
   See how it concludes the Bible. Read Revelation! Read its songs and see
   how they worship Jesus, the Lamb of God! Let us go and tell of this
   name! Let us continually meditate upon it! Let us love it from this day
   and forever! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                        Adoption--The Spirit and the Cry

   A Sermon

   (No. 1435)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, April 14th, 1878, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son
   into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."--Galatians 4:6.

   WE do not find the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity set forth in
   Scripture in formal terms, such as those which are employed in the
   Athanasian creed; but the truth is continually taken for granted, as if
   it were a fact well known in the church of God. If not laid down very
   often, in so many words, it is everywhere held in solution, and it is
   mentioned incidentally, in connection with other truths in a way which
   renders it quite as distinct as if it were expressed in a set formula.
   In many passages it is brought before us so prominently that we must be
   wilfully blind if we do not note it. In the present chapter, for
   instance, we have distinct mention of each of the three divine Persons.
   "God," that is the Father, "sent forth the Spirit," that is the Holy
   Spirit; and he is here called "the Spirit of his Son." Nor have we the
   names alone, for each sacred person is mentioned as acting in the work
   of our salvation: see the fourth verse, "God sent forth his Son."; then
   note the fifth verse, which speaks of the Son as redeeming them that
   were under the law; and then the text itself reveals the Spirit as
   coming into the hearts of believers, and crying Abba, Father. Now,
   inasmuch, as you have not only the mention of the separate names, but
   also certain special operations ascribed to each, it is plain that you
   have here the distinct personality of each. Neither the Father, the
   Son, nor the Spirit can be an influence, or a mere form of existence,
   for each one acts in a divine manner, but with a special sphere and a
   distinct mode of operation. The error of regarding a certain divine
   person as a mere influence, or emanation, mainly assails the Holy
   Ghost; but its falseness is seen in the words--"crying, Abba, Father":
   an influence could not cry; the act requires a person to perform it.
   Though we may not understand the wonderful truth of the undivided
   Unity, and the distinct personality of the Triune Godhead, yet,
   nevertheless, we see the truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures: and,
   therefore, we accept it as a matter of faith.

   The divinity of each of these sacred persons is also to be gathered
   from the text and its connection. We do not doubt tee the loving union
   of all in the work of deliverance. We reverence the Father, without
   whom we had not been chosen or adopted: the Father who hath begotten us
   again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
   dead. We love and reverence the Son by whose most precious blood we
   have been redeemed, and with whom we are one in a mystic and
   everlasting union: and we adore and love the divine Spirit, for it is
   by him that we have been regenerated, illuminated, quickened,
   preserved, and sanctified; and it is through him that we receive the
   seal and witness within our hearts by which we are assured that we are
   indeed the sons of God. As God said of old, "Let us make man in our
   image, after our likeness, even so do the divine Persons take counsel
   together, and all unite in the new creation of the believer. We must
   not fail to bless, adore, and love each one of the exalted Persons, but
   we must diligently bow in lowliest reverence before the one
   God--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "Glory be to the Father, and to the
   Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and
   ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

   Having noted this most important fact, let us come to the text itself,
   hoping to enjoy the doctrine of the Trinity while we are discoursing
   upon our adoption, in which wonder of grace they each have a share.
   Under the teaching of the divine Spirit may we be drawn into sweet
   communion with the Father through his Son Jesus Christ, to his glory
   and to our benefit.

   Three things are very clearly set forth in my text: the first is the
   dignity of believers--"ye are sons;" the second is the consequent
   indwelling of the Holy Ghost--"because ye are sons, God hath sent forth
   the Spirit of his Son into your hearts;" and the third is the filial
   cry--crying, "Abba, Father."

   I. First, then, THE DIGNITY OF BELIEVERS. Adoption gives us the rights
   of children, regeneration gives us the nature of children: we are
   partakers of both of these, for we are sons.

   And let us here observe that this sonship is a gift of grace received
   by faith. We are not the sons of God by nature in the sense here meant.
   We are in a sense "the offspring God" by nature, but this is very
   different from the sonship here described, which is the peculiar
   privilege of those who are born again. The Jews claimed to be of the
   family of God, but as their privileges came to them by the way of their
   fleshly birth, they are likened to Ishmael, who was born after the
   flesh, but who was cast out as the son of the bondwoman, and compelled
   to give way to the son of the promise. We have a sonship which does not
   come to us by nature, for we are "born, not of blood, nor of the will
   of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Our sonship comes by
   promise, by the operation of God as a special gift to a peculiar seed,
   set apart unto the Lord by his own sovereign grace, as Isaac was. This
   honour and privilege come to us, according to the connection of our
   text, by faith. Note well the twenty-sixth verse of the preceding
   chapter (Gal. 3:26): "For ye are all the children of God by faith in
   Christ Jesus." As unbelievers we know nothing of adoption. While we are
   under the law as self-righteous we know something of servitude, but we
   know nothing of sonship. It is only after that faith has come that we
   cease to be under the schoolmaster, and rise out of our minority to
   take the privileges of the sons of God.

   Faith worketh in us the spirit of adoption, and our consciousness of
   sonship, in this wise: first, it brings us justification. Verse
   twenty-four of the previous chapter says, "The law was our schoolmaster
   to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." An
   unjustified man stands in the condition of a criminal, not of a child:
   his sin is laid to his charge, he is reckoned as unjust and
   unrighteous, as indeed he really is, and he is therefore a rebel
   against his king, and not a child enjoying his father's love. But when
   faith realizes the cleansing power of the blood of atonement, and lays
   hold upon the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, then the justified
   man becomes a son and a child. Justification and adoption always go
   together. "Whom he called them he also justified," and the calling is a
   call to the Father's house, and to a recognition of sonship. Believing
   brings forgiveness and justification through our Lord Jesus; it also
   brings adoption, for it is written, "But as many as received him, to
   them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
   on his name."

   Faith brings us into the realization of our adoption in the next place
   by setting us free from the bondage of the law. "After that faith is
   come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." When we groaned under a
   sense of sin, and were shut up by it as in a prison, we feared that the
   law would punish us for our iniquity, and our life was made bitter with
   fear. Moreover, we strove in our own blind self-sufficient manner to
   keep that law, and this brought us into yet another bondage, which
   became harder and harder as failure succeeded to failure: we sinned and
   stumbled more and more to our soul's confusion. But now that faith has
   come we see the law fulfilled in Christ, and ourselves justified and
   accepted in him: this changes the slave into a child, and duty into
   choice. Now we delight in the law, and by the power of the Spirit we
   walk in holiness to the glory of God. Thus it is that by believing in
   Christ Jesus we escape from Moses, the taskmaster, and come to Jesus,
   the Saviour; we cease to regard God as an angry Judge and view him as
   our loving Father. The system of merit and command, and punishment and
   fear, has given way to the rule of grace, gratitude, and love, and this
   new principle of government is one of the grand privileges of the
   children of God.

   Now, faith is the mark of sonship in all who have it, whoever they may
   be, for "ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus Gal.
   3:26). If you are believing in Jesus, whether you are Jew or Gentile,
   bond or free, you are a son of God. If you have only believed in Christ
   of late, and have but for the past few weeks been able to rest in his
   great salvation, yet, beloved, now are you a child of God. It is not an
   after privilege, granted to assurance or growth in grace; it is an
   early blessing, and belongs to him who has the smallest degree of
   faith, and is no more than a babe in grace. If a man be a believer in
   Jesus Christ his name is in the register-book of the great family
   above, "for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
   But if you have no faith, no matter what zeal, no matter what works, no
   matter what knowledge, no matter what pretensions to holiness you may
   possess, you are nothing, and your religion is vain. Without faith in
   Christ you are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, for without
   faith it is impossible to please God. Faith then, wherever it is found,
   is the infallible token of a child of God, and its absence is fatal to
   the claim.

   This according to the apostle is further illustrated by our baptism,
   for in baptism, if there be faith in the soul, there is an open putting
   on of the Lord Jesus Christ. Read the twenty-seventh verse: "For as
   many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ." In
   baptism you professed to be dead to the world and you were therefore
   buried into the name of Jesus: and the meaning of that burial, if it
   had any right meaning to you, was that you professed yourself
   henceforth to be dead to everything but Christ, and henceforth your
   life was to be in him, and you were to be as one raised from the dead
   to newness of life. Of course the outward form avails nothing to the
   unbeliever, but to the man who is in Christ it is a most instructive
   ordinance. The spirit and essence of the ordinance lie in the soul's
   entering into the symbol, in the man's knowing not alone the baptism
   into water, but the baptism into the Holy Ghost and into fire: and as
   many of you as know that inward mystic baptism into Christ know also
   that henceforth you have put on Christ and are covered by him as a man
   is by his garment. Henceforth you are one in Christ, you wear his name,
   you live in him, you are saved by him, you are altogether his. Now, if
   you are one with Christ, since he is a son, you are sons also. If you
   have put on Christ God seeth you not in yourself but in Christ, and
   that which belongeth unto Christ belongeth also unto you, for if you be
   Christ's then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the
   promise. As the Roman youth when he came of age put on the toga, and
   was admitted to the rights of citizenship, so the putting on of Christ
   is the token of our admission into the position of sons of God. Thus
   are we actually admitted to the enjoyment of our glorious heritage.
   Every blessing of the covenant of grace belongs to those who are
   Christ's, and every believer is in that list. Thus, then, according to
   the teaching of the passage, we receive adoption by faith as the gift
   of grace.

   Again, adoption comes to us by redemption. Read the passage which
   precedes the text: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God
   sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them
   that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."
   Beloved, prize redemption, and never listen to teaching which would
   destroy its meaning or lower its importance. Remember that ye were not
   redeemed with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ,
   as of a lamb without blemish. You were under the law, and subject to
   its curse, for you had broken it most grievously, and you were subject
   to its penalty, for it is written, "the soul that sinneth, it shall
   die"; and yet again, "cursed is everyone that continueth not in all
   things that are written in the book of the law to do them." You were
   also under the terror of the law, for you feared its wrath; and you
   were under its irritating power, for often when the commandment came,
   sin within you revived and you died. But now you are redeemed from all;
   as the Holy Ghost saith, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the
   law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one
   that hangeth on a tree." Now ye are not under the law, but under grace,
   and this because Christ came under the law and kept it both by his
   active and his passive obedience, fulfilling all its commands and
   bearing all its penalty on your behalf and in your room and stead.
   Henceforth you are the redeemed of the Lord, and enjoy a liberty which
   comes by no other way but that of the eternal ransom. Remember this;
   and whenever you feel most assured that you are a child of God, praise
   the redeeming blood; whenever your heart beats highest with love to
   your great Father, bless the "firstborn among many brethren," who for
   your sakes came under the law, was circumcised, kept the law in his
   life, and bowed his head to it in his death, honouring, and magnifying
   the law, and making the justice and righteousness of God to be more
   conspicuous by his life than it would have been by the holiness of all
   mankind, and his justice to be more fully vindicated by his death that
   it would have been if all the world of sinners had been cast into hell.
   Glory be to our redeeming Lord, by whom we have received the adoption!

   Again, we further learn from the passage that we now enjoy the
   privilege of sonship. According to the run of the passage the apostle
   means not only that we are children, but that we are full-grown sons.
   "Because ye are sons," means,--because the time appointed of the Father
   is come, and you are of age, and no longer under tutors and governors.
   In our minority we are under the schoolmaster, under the regimen of
   ceremonies, under types, figures, shadows, learning our A B C by being
   convinced of sin; but when faith is come we are no longer under the
   schoolmaster, but come to a more free condition. Till faith comes we
   are under tutors and governors, like mere boys, but after faith we take
   our rights as sons of God. The Jewish church of old was under the yoke
   of the law; its sacrifices were continual and its ceremonies endless;
   new moons and feasts must be kept; jubilees must be observed and
   pilgrimages made: in fact, the yoke was too heavy for feeble flesh to
   bear. The law followed the Israelite into every corner, and dealt with
   him upon every point: it had to do with his garments, his meat, his
   drink, his bed, his board, and everything about him: it treated him
   like a boy at school who has a rule for everything. Now that faith has
   come we are full grown sons, and therefore we are free from the rules
   which govern the school of the child. We are under law to Christ, even
   as the full-grown son is still under the discipline of his father's
   house; but this is a law of love and not of fear, of grace and not of
   bondage. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
   made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
   Return not to the beggarly elements of a merely outward religion, but
   keep close to the worship of God in spirit and in truth, for this is
   the liberty of the children of God.

   Now, by faith we are no more like to bond-servants. The apostle says
   that "the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a
   servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutor and governors
   till the time appointed of the father." But beloved, now are ye the
   sons of God, and ye have come to your majority: now are ye free to
   enjoy the honours and blessings of the Father's house. Rejoice that the
   free spirit dwells within you, and prompts you to holiness; this is a
   far superior power to the merely external command and the whip of
   threatening. Now no more are you in bondage to outward forms, and
   rites, and ceremonies; but the Spirit of God teacheth you all things,
   and leads you into the inner meaning and substance of the truth.

   Now, also, saith the apostle, we are heirs--"Wherefore thou art no more
   a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through
   Christ." No man living has ever realised to the full what this means.
   Believers are at this moment heirs, but what is the estate? It is God
   himself! We are heirs of God! Not only of the promises, of the covenant
   engagements, and of all the blessings which belong to the chosen seed,
   but heirs of God himself. "The Lord is my portion, saith my soul."
   "This God is our God for ever and ever." We are not only, heirs to God,
   to all that he gives to his firstborn, but heirs of God himself. David
   said, "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup." As
   he said to Abraham, "Fear not Abraham, I am thy shield and thine
   exceeding great reward," so saith he to every man that is born of the
   Spirit. These are his own words--"I will be to them a God, and they
   shall be to me a people." Why, then, believer, are you poor? All riches
   are yours. Why then are you sorrowful? The ever-blessed God is yours.
   Why do you tremble? Omnipotence waits to help you. Why do you distrust?
   His immutability will abide with you even to the end, and make his
   promise steadfast. All things are yours, for Christ is yours, and
   Christ is God's; and though there be some things which at present you
   cannot actually grasp in your hand, nor even see with your eye, to wit,
   the things which are laid up for you in heaven, yet still by faith you
   can enjoy even these, for "he hath raised us up together, and made us
   sit together in the heavenlies in Christ," "in whom also we have
   obtained an inheritance," so that "our citizenship is in heaven." We
   enjoy even now the pledge and earnest of heaven in the indwelling of
   the Holy Ghost. Oh what privileges belong to those who are the sons of
   God!

   Once more upon this point of the believer's dignity, we are already
   tasting one of the inevitable consequences of being the sons of God.
   What are they? One of them is the opposition of the children of the
   bondwoman. No sooner had the apostle Paul preached the liberty of the
   saints, than straightway there arose certain teachers who said, "This
   will never do; you must be circumcised, you must come under the law."
   Their opposition was to Paul a token that he was of the free woman, for
   behold the children of the bondwoman singled him out for their virulent
   opposition. You shall find, dear brother, that if you enjoy fellowship
   with God, if you live in the spirit of adoption, if you are brought
   near to the Most High, so as to be a member of the divine family,
   straightway all those who are under bondage to the law will quarrel
   with you. Thus saith the apostle, "As then he that was born after the
   flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is
   now." The child of Hagar was found by Sarah mocking Isaac, the child of
   promise. Ishmael would have been glad to have shown his enmity to the
   hated heir by blows and personal assault, but there was a superior
   power to check him, so that he could get no further than "mocking." So
   it is just now. There have been periods in which the enemies of the
   gospel have gone a great deal further than mocking, for they have been
   able to imprison and burn alive the lovers of the gospel; but now,
   thank God, we are under his special protection as to life and limb and
   liberty, and are as safe as Isaac was in Abraham's house. They can mock
   us, but they cannot go any further, or else some of us would be
   publicly gibbeted. But trials of cruel mockings are still to be
   endured, our words are twisted, our sentiments are misrepresented, and
   all sorts of horrible things are imputed to us, things which we know
   not, to all which we would reply with Paul, "Am I therefore become your
   enemy because I tell you the truth?" This is the old way of the
   Hagarenes, the child after the flesh is still doing his best to mock
   him that is born after the Spirit. Do not be astonished, neither be
   grieved in the least degree when this happens to any of you, but let
   this also turn to the establishment of your confidence and to the
   confirmation of your faith in Christ Jesus, for he told you of old, "If
   ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are
   not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
   world hateth you."

   II. Our second head is THE CONSEQUENT INDWELLING OF THE HOLY GHOST IN
   BELIEVERS;--"God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your
   hearts." Here is a divine act of the Father. The Holy Ghost proceedeth
   from the Father and the Son: and God hath sent him forth into your
   hearts. If he had only come knocking at your hearts and asked your
   leave to enter, he had never entered, but when Jehovah sent him he made
   his way, without violating your will, but yet with irresistible power.
   Where Jehovah sent him there he will abide, and go no more out for
   ever. Beloved, I have no time to dwell upon the words, but I want you
   to turn them over in your thoughts, for they contain a great depth. As
   surely as God sent his Son into the world to dwell among men, so that
   his saints beheld his glory, the "glory as of the only begotten of the
   Father, full of grace and truth," so surely hath God sent forth the
   Spirit to enter into men's hearts, there to take up his residence that
   in him also the glory of God may be revealed. Bless and adore the Lord
   who hath sent you such a visitor as this.

   Now, note the style and title under which the Holy Spirit comes to us:
   he comes as the Spirit of Jesus. The words are "the Spirit of his Son,"
   by which is not meant the character and disposition of Christ, though
   that were quite true, for God sends this unto his people, but it means
   the Holy Ghost. Why, then, is he called the Spirit of his Son, or the
   Spirit of Jesus? May we not give these reasons? It was by the Holy
   Ghost that the human nature of Christ was born of the Virgin. By the
   Spirit our Lord was attested at his baptism, when the Holy Spirit
   descended upon him like a dove, and abode upon him. In him the Holy
   Spirit dwelt without measure, anointing him for his great work, and by
   the Spirit he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows.
   The Spirit was also with him, attesting his ministry by signs and
   wonders. The Holy Ghost is our Lord's great gift to the church; it was
   after his ascension that he bestowed the gifts of Pentecost, and the
   Holy Spirit descended upon the church to abide with the people of God
   for ever. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Christ, because, also, he is
   Christ's witness here below; for "there are three that bear witness on
   earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." For these and many
   other reasons he is called "the Spirit of his Son," and it is he who
   comes to dwell in believers. I would urge you very solemnly and
   gratefully to consider the wondrous condescension which is here
   displayed. God himself the Holy Ghost, takes up his residence in
   believers. I never know which is the more wonderful, the incarnation of
   Christ or the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Jesus dwelt here for awhile
   in human flesh untainted by sin, holy, harmless, undefiled, and
   separate from sinners; but the Holy Ghost dwells continually in the
   hearts of all believers, though as yet they are imperfect and prone to
   evil. Year after year, century after century, he still abideth in the
   saints, and will do so till the elect are all in glory. While we adore
   the incarnate Son, let us adore also the indwelling Spirit whom the
   Father hath sent.

   Now notice the place wherein he takes up his residence.--"God hath sent
   forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." Note, that it does not
   say into your heads or your brains. The Spirit of God doubtless
   illuminates the intellect and guides the judgement, but this is not the
   commencement nor the main part of his work. He comes chiefly to the
   affections, he dwells with the heart, for with the heart man believeth
   unto righteousness, and "God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into
   your hearts." Now, the heart is the centre of our being, and therefore
   doth the Holy Ghost occupy this place of vantage. He comes into the
   central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, and thus takes
   possession of the whole. The heart is the vital part; we speak of it as
   the chief residence of life, and therefore the Holy Ghost enters it,
   and as the living God dwells in the living heart, taking possession of
   the very core and marrow of our being. It is from the heart and through
   the heart that life is diffused. The blood is sent even to the
   extremities of the body by the pulsings of the heart, and when the
   Spirit of God takes possession of the affections, he operates upon
   every power, and faculty, and member of our entire manhood. Out of the
   heart are the issues of life, and from the affections sanctified by the
   Holy Ghost all other faculties and powers receive renewal,
   illumination, sanctification, strengthening, and ultimate perfection.

   This wonderful blessing is ours "because we are sons;" and it is
   fraught with marvellous results. Sonship sealed by the indwelling
   Spirit brings us peace and joy; it leads to nearness to God and
   fellowship with him; it excites trust, love, and vehement desire, and
   creates in us reverence, obedience, and actual likeness to God. All
   this, and much more, because the Holy Ghost has come to dwell in us.
   Oh, matchless mystery! Had it not been revealed it had never been
   imagined, and now that it is revealed it would never have been believed
   if it had not become matter of actual experience to those who are in
   Christ Jesus. There are many professors who know nothing of this; they
   listen to us with bewilderment as if we told them an idle tale, for the
   carnal mind knoweth not the things that be of God; they are spiritual,
   and can only be spiritually discerned. Those who are not sons, or who
   only come in as sons under the law of nature, like Ishmael, know
   nothing of this indwelling Spirit, and are up in arms at us for daring
   to claim so great a blessing: yet it is ours, and none can deprive us
   of it.

   III. Now I come to the third portion of our text--THE FILIAL CRY. This
   is deeply interesting. I think it will be profitable if your minds
   enter into it. Where the Holy Ghost enters there is a cry. "God hath
   sent forth the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father.'" Now, notice,
   it is the Spirit of God that cries--a most remarkable fact. Some are
   inclined to view the expression as a Hebraism, and read it, he "makes
   us to cry;" but, beloved, the text saith not so, and we are not at
   liberty to alter it upon such a pretence. We are always right in
   keeping to what God says, and here we plainly read of the Spirit in our
   hearts that he is crying "Abba, Father." The apostle in Romans 8:15
   says, "Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
   Father," but here he describes the Spirit himself as crying "Abba,
   Father." We are certain that when he ascribed the cry of "Abba, Father"
   to us, he did not wish to exclude the Spirit's cry, because in the
   twenty-sixth verse of the famous eighth of Romans he says, "Likewise
   the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should
   pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
   with groanings which cannot be uttered." Thus he represents the Spirit
   himself as groaning with unutterable groanings within the child of God,
   so that when he wrote to the Romans he had on his mind the same thought
   which he here expressed to the Galatians,--that it is the Spirit itself
   which cries and groans in us "Abba, Father." How is this? Is it not
   ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The
   expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the
   cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is
   his cry because he suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it.
   We should never have cried thus if he had not first taught us the way.
   As a mother teaches her child to speak, so he puts this cry of "Abba,
   Father" into our mouths; yea, it is he who forms in our hearts the
   desire after our Father, God, and keeps it there. He is the Spirit of
   adoption, and the author of adoption's special and significant cry.

   Not only does he prompt us to cry but he works in us a sense of need
   which compels us to cry, and also that spirit of confidence which
   emboldens us to claim such relationship to the great God. Nor is this
   all, for he assists us in some mysterious manner so that we are able to
   pray aright; he puts his divine energy into us so that we cry "Abba,
   Father" in an acceptable manner. There are times when we cannot cry at
   all, and then he cries in us. There are seasons when doubts and fears
   abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise
   a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us,
   and makes intercession for us, crying in our name, and making
   intercession for us according to the will of God. Thus does the cry
   "Abba, Father" rise up in our hearts even when we feel as if we could
   not pray and dare not think ourselves children. Then we may each say,
   "I live, yet not I, but the Spirit that dwelleth in me." On the other
   hand, at times our soul gives such a sweet assent to the Spirit's cry
   that it becometh ours also, but then we more than ever own the work of
   the Spirit, and still ascribe to him the blessed cry, "Abba, Father."

   I want you now to notice a very sweet fact about this cry; namely, that
   it is literally the cry of the Son. God hath sent the Spirit of his Son
   into our hearts, and that Spirit cries in us exactly according to the
   cry of the Son. If you turn to the gospel of Mark, at the fourteenth
   chapter, thirty-sixth verse, you will find there what you will not
   discover in any other evangelist (for Mark is always the man for the
   striking points, and the memorable words), he records that our Lord
   prayed in the garden, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee;
   take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou
   wilt." So that this cry in us copies the cry of our Lord to the
   letter--"Abba, Father." Now, I dare say you have heard these words
   "Abba, Father" explained at considerable lengths at other times, and if
   so, you know that the first word is Syrian or Aramaic; or, roughly
   speaking, Abba is the Hebrew word for "father." The second word is in
   Greek, and is the Gentile word, "pates," or pater, which also signifies
   father. It is said that these two words are used to remind us that Jews
   and Gentiles are one before God. They do remind us of this, but this
   cannot have been the principal reason for their use. Do you think that
   when our Lord was in his agony in the garden that he said, "Abba,
   Father" because Jews and Gentiles are one? Why should he have thought
   of that doctrine, and why need he mention it in prayer to his Father?
   Some other reason must have suggested it to him. It seems to me that
   our Lord said "Abba" because it was his native tongue. When a Frenchman
   prays, if he has learned English he may ordinarily pray in English, but
   if ever he falls into an agony he will pray in French, as surely as he
   prays at all. Our Welsh brethren tell us that there is no language like
   Welsh--I suppose it is so to them: now they will talk English when
   about their ordinary business, and they can pray in English when
   everything goes comfortably with them, but I am sure that if a Welshman
   is in a great fervency of prayer, he flies to his Welsh tongue to find
   full expression. Our Lord in his agony used his native language, and as
   born of the seed of Abraham he cries in his own tongue, Abba. Even
   thus, my brethren, we are prompted by the spirit of adoption to use our
   own language, the language of the heart, and to speak to the Lord
   freely in our own tongue. Besides, to my mind, the word "Abba" is of
   all words in all languages the most natural word for father. I must try
   and pronounce it so that you see the natural childishness of it,
   "Ab--ba," "Ab--ba." Is it not just what your children say, ab, ab, ba,
   ba, as soon as they try to talk? It is the sort of word which any child
   would say, whether Hebrew, or Greek, or French, or English. Therefore,
   Abba is a word worthy of introduction into all languages. It is truly a
   child's word, and our Master felt, I have no doubt, in his agony, a
   love for child's words. Dr. Guthrie, when he was dying, said, "Sing a
   hymn," but he added, "Sing me one of the bairns' hymns." When a man
   comes to die he wants to be a child again, and longs for bairns' hymns
   and bairns' words. Our blessed Master in his agony used the bairns'
   word, "Abba," and it is equally becoming in the mouth of each one of
   us. I think this sweet word "Abba" was chosen to show us that we are to
   be very natural with God, and not stilted and formal. We are to be very
   affectionate, and come close to him, and not merely say "Pater," which
   is a cold Greek word, but say "Abba," which is a warm, natural, loving
   word, fit for one who is a little child with God, and makes bold to lie
   in his bosom, and look up into his face and talk with holy boldness.
   "Abba" is not a word, somehow, but a babe's lisping. Oh, how near we
   are to God when we can use such a speech! How dear he is to us and dear
   we are to him when we may thus address him, saying, like the great Son
   himself, "Abba, Father."

   This leads me to observe that this cry in our hearts is exceedingly
   near and familiar. In the sound of it I have shown you that it is
   childlike, but the tone and manner of the utterance are equally so.
   Note that it is a cry. If we obtain audience with a king we do not cry,
   we speak then in measured tones and set phrases; but the Spirit of God
   breaks down our measured tones, and takes away the formality which some
   hold in great admiration, and he leads us to cry, which is the very
   reverse of formality and stiffness. When we cry, we cry, "Abba": even
   our very cries are full of the spirit of adoption. A cry is a sound
   which we are not anxious that every passer-by should hear; yet what
   child minds his father hearing him cry? So when our heart is broken and
   subdued we do not feel as if we could talk fine language at all, but
   the Spirit in us sends forth cries and groans, and of these we are not
   ashamed, nor are we afraid to cry before God. I know some of you think
   that God will not hear your prayers, because you cannot pray grandly
   like such-and-such a minister. Oh, but the Spirit of his Son cries, and
   you cannot do better than cry too. Be satisfied to offer to God broken
   language, words salted with your griefs, wetted with your tears. Go to
   him with holy familiarity, and be not afraid to cry in his presence,
   "Abba, Father."

   But then how earnest it is: for a cry is an intense thing. The word
   implies fervency. A cry is not a flippant utterance, nor a mere thing
   of the lips, it comes up from the soul. Hath not the Lord taught us to
   cry to him in prayer with fervent importunity that will not take a
   denial? Hath he not brought us so near to him that sometimes we say, "I
   will not let thee go except thou bless me"? Hath he not taught us so to
   pray that his disciples might almost say of us as they did of one of
   old, "Send her away, for she crieth after us." We do cry after him, our
   heart and our flesh crieth out for God, for the living God, and this is
   the cry, "Abba, Father, I must know thee, I must taste thy love, I must
   dwell under thy wing, I must behold thy face, I must feel thy great
   fatherly heart overflowing and filling my heart with peace." We cry,
   "Abba, Father."

   I shall close when I notice this, that the most of this crying is kept
   within the heart, and does not come out at the lips. Like Moses, we cry
   when we say not a word. God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into
   our hearts, whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." You know what I mean: it is
   not alone in your little room, by the old arm-chair, that you cry to
   God, but you call him "Abba, Father," as you go about the streets or
   work in the shop. The Spirit of his Son is crying "Abba, Father," when
   you are in the crowd or at your table among the family. I see it is
   alleged as a very grave charge against me that I speak as if I were
   familiar with God. If it be so, I make bold to say that I speak only as
   I feel. Blessed be my heavenly Father's name, I know I am his child,
   and with whom should a child be familiar but with his father? ye
   strangers to the living God, be it known unto you that if this be vile,
   I purpose to be viler still, as he shall help me to walk more closely
   with him. We feel a deep reverence for our Father in heaven, which bows
   us to the very dust, but for all that we can say, "truly our fellowship
   is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ." No stranger can
   understand the nearness of the believer's soul to God in Christ Jesus,
   and because the world cannot understand it, it finds it convenient to
   sneer, but what of that? Abraham's tenderness to Isaac made Ishmael
   jealous, and caused him to laugh, but Isaac had no cause to be ashamed
   of being ridiculed, since the mocker could not rob him of the covenant
   blessing. Yes, beloved, the Spirit of God makes you cry "Abba, Father,"
   but the cry is mainly within your heart, and there it is so commonly
   uttered that it becomes the habit of your soul to be crying to your
   Heavenly Father. The text does not say that he had cried, but the
   expression is "crying"--it is a present participle, indicating that he
   cries every day "Abba, Father." Go home, my brethren, and live in the
   spirit of sonship. Wake up in the morning, and let your first thought
   be "My Father, my Father, be with me this day. Go out into business,
   and when things perplex you let that be your resort--"My Father, help
   me in this hour of need." When you go to your home, and there meet with
   domestic anxieties, let your cry sill be, "Help me, my Father." When
   alone you are not alone, because the Father is with you: and in the
   midst of the crowd you are not in danger, because the Father himself
   loveth you. What a blessed word is that,--"The Father himself loveth
   you"! Go, and live as his children. Take heed that ye reverence him,
   for if he be a father where is his fear? Go and obey him, for this is
   right. Be ye imitators of God as dear children. Honour him wherever you
   are, by adorning his doctrine in all things. Go and live upon him, for
   you shall soon live with him. Go and rejoice in him. Go and cast all
   your cares upon him. Go henceforth, and whatever men may see in you may
   they be compelled to own that you are the children of the Highest.
   "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of
   God." May you be such henceforth and evermore. Amen and amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Galatians 3:22-29; 4; 5:1-6.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--728, 468, 221.
     __________________________________________________________________

What The Church Should Be

   (No. 1436)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 29, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That you may know how you ought to beha ve yourself in the house of
   God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and basement of
   the Truth." 1 Timothy 3:15.

   PAUL'S design in this Epistle was to instruct young Timothy how he
   should behave himself in the Church of God, so as to discharge his
   office as minister, evangelist and pastor with honor to himself and
   profit to the people. He reminds him that the Church is the house of
   God and in God's own house a man ought to be upon his best behavior,
   for it is no light thing to draw near unto the Lord. A poor man who is
   called to visit a prince or king will anxiously enquire how he ought to
   act. We, poor creatures that we are, when we are admitted into the
   Church which is the house of God, should enquire what conduct will be
   decorous and comely in those who are admitted into the Presence of the
   great King and permitted to dwell within His palace gates.

   Especially should each of us endeavor to behave himself aright in the
   house of God if we know that we are looked up to and imitated. All who
   teach the young, all who are parents, all who are persons of age and
   experience, all who occupy influential positions and especially all
   deacons, elders and preachers should pray the Lord that they may know
   how they may behave themselves in the house of God, lest inadvertently
   their misbehavior should be injurious to the weaker sort. Such need to
   learn how they should behave to their brethren, to the Elder Brother
   and to the great Father of all. We need to learn the ways of the house,
   the customs of the palace.

   Part of the objective of the sermon this morning will be that those of
   us who are in the house of God may learn how we should behave in
   it--but special prominence will be given to steadfastness in the faith
   which makes a man not only a dweller in the Church but a pillar of it.
   I am not going to trouble you, this morning, with the various
   interpretations which have been given to the passage before us. It has
   been a sort of Plain of Esdraelon, where battles have been fought from
   time immemorial. Many suggestions have been made as to its
   interpretation, so as to avoid the sense given in our version because
   that sense has been perverted into a defense of the Romish church. It
   seems to me, however, looking at it as carefully as I am able to do,
   that our translation is about the best possible one and I feel sure
   that it has in it the mind

   of God.

   Probably the sense would never have been disputed if it had not been
   for the controversies which have arisen in which this verse has been
   misused and misrepresented. I am rather suspicious of interpretations
   which arise out of controversies. What have we to do with giving either
   a Protestant or a Catholic sense to Scripture? Is it not our duty to
   give the true sense, be it what it may? There can never be any
   justification for twisting Scripture in order to wrench it out of an
   enemy's hand. Nor is there any need in this case, even if it were
   allowable! In vain has the Romish church tried to gather from this
   verse that she is the great source of truth, for the passage can never
   apply to her, since she has utterly gone aside from the Truth of God
   and is described by the Apostle in the verses which follow the text as
   departing from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, forbidding
   to marry and so forth.

   Popery or no popery, let us take the Word of God in its natural and
   evident meaning, and we shall be instructed thereby. May God the Holy
   Spirit enable us to understand His own word.

   I. First, I shall at some length expound the text, and then try to
   enforce the lesson from it. In expounding it, I see three things to
   note, and the first is THE GLORIOUS NAME OF THE CHURCH--"The Church of
   the living God." First, it is called the Church. What is a church? It
   is an assembly--and a Christian Church is an assembly of faithful
   men--of men who know the Truth of God, believe it, acknowledge it
   boldly and adhere to it.

   The Greek word signifies an assembly summoned out of the whole
   population to exercise the right of citizenship. An ecclesia, or
   church, is not a mob, nor a disorderly gathering rushing together
   without end or purpose, but a regular

   assembly of persons called out by Grace and gathered together by the
   Holy Spirit. Those persons make up the assembly of the living God! In
   order to be a Christian Church, there must be a selection and a calling
   out--and that calling must come from God who alone can call
   effectually. Touching all the members of this select assembly there is
   an eternal purpose which is the original reason of their being
   called--and to each of them there is an effectual calling whereby they
   actually gather into the Church.

   Then, also, there is a hedging and fencing about of this Church, by
   which it is maintained as a separate body, distinct from all the rest
   of mankind. The command which calls them away from the world is very
   clear--"Come out from among them and be you separate, says the Lord,
   and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a
   Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord
   Almighty." The Church is not a number of unregenerate people coming
   together entirely of their own notion to defend such-and-such dogmas.
   Such persons may form a club, but they cannot make a Church! There must
   be a coming together of renewed men, in the name of Jesus, by the power
   of the Holy Spirit--and these must meet for purposes which God Himself
   ordains--and be joined together after His own fashion.

   Jesus must be the uniting cornerstone and His Spirit the indwelling
   power, as it is written, "In whom you also are built together for an
   habitation of God through the Spirit." But the title grows upon us when
   we read it as "the Church of God." There is a Synagogue of Satan and
   there is a Church of God. There are churches so-called which are not of
   God, though they take upon themselves His name. But what an honor it is
   to be one of the assembly of God, to be one of those whom God has
   chosen, whom God has called, whom God has quickened, whom God has
   sanctified, whom God loves and calls His own! How honored is that
   assembly in which He resides! The text speaks not of the church of a
   country, or of a city, nor of the church of king or prelate, but of the
   Church of God!

   Blessed be God, since Jesus Christ ascended up on high there has never
   ceased to be a Church of God in the earth, generally hidden and
   concealed, often persecuted and always despised, yet still living! This
   Church, like its Lord, has been more often found among the poor than
   among the rich, more frequently confessing at the stake than honored in
   the palace. Still has she been present bearing witness for the Truth of
   God even in the darkest times. There has been left to us a remnant,
   according to the election of Grace, in every age--I speak not, now, of
   this denomination nor of that--but of the truly spiritual people who
   have witnessed faithfully in the life and power of God to the Truth of
   God as it is in Jesus. This is the Church of God!

   The title is enhanced in its excellency by the word which is applied to
   God. It is, "The Church of the living God"-- not your congregation, O
   Diana, though they said of you that you did fall from Heaven, for you
   are a lifeless image! What was Diana of the Ephesians? What life or
   power was in that senseless block? Timothy knew that the assembly which
   gathered in the name of Diana was not called out by a living god.
   Brethren, it is a glorious fact that our God, the God of the Church,
   lives and reigns, and that He shows His life all around us! We see Him
   sustaining Nature, ruling Providence and reigning in the midst of His
   Church! And while we see Him we adore Him. Jehovah is the living God
   and the Divine Life is seen in each of the adorable Persons of the
   Godhead. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not to us a dead Christ--we love and
   bless Him because He once died upon the Cross--and we adore Him because
   He always lives to make intercession for us!

   We are bold to preach the Gospel because of His living power and we are
   earnest to observe His commands because we acknowledge His living
   government in the midst of the Church. The living God proves His life
   among us by the Holy Spirit, by the conversion of sinners, by
   comforting and instructing saints and by edifying the faithful into a
   building fitly framed together. Since, then, the Church belongs to the
   living God, what is a dead church? Is that the church of the living
   God? How can it be? Only as you and I possess the Spirit of God
   quickening us to a life of godliness may we dare to think ourselves a
   part of the Church of the living God! If you have never been quickened
   by the Spirit of God; if you are dead in trespasses and sins, what have
   you to do with the Church of the living God?

   O you dead and corrupt, how can you have communion with the living in
   Zion?! Only when you live unto God may you be built up as living stones
   into the living Temple of the living God! The thing most to be dreaded
   in any one Church is the decay of life. We may soon fall into formalism
   and even hold the Truth in the cold grip of spiritual death! Prayer may
   be neglected and the other offices of spiritual life may be disregarded
   and then all will languish. "You have the name

   that you live and are dead" is the dreadful sentence which must be
   written across the brow of a merely nominal church! Brethren, if we
   would be the Church of the living God, we must be thoroughly alive unto
   God!

   What an august body is this Church of the living God! Where do I see
   it? I say not that I see the whole of it, for as yet this bride of
   Christ is in the making. As Adam saw not Eve until she was perfected
   and, therefore, we cannot suppose that she saw herself, so we see no
   visible embodiment of the entire Church of Christ nor shall we see it
   until Christ shall come a second time and shall present her unto
   Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such
   thing. Today we must walk very much by faith as to the Church of
   Christ, for her members are yet being fashioned and are best discerned
   by spiritual men. Happy are we if we are members of that Church, yes,
   members of Christ Himself by the living faith which unites us to the
   living God!

   Never let us speak disrespectfully of the Church of God, nor think of
   her with other than love and with intense devotion to her interests,
   for she belongs to God! Let us pray for her peace and prosperity, since
   she is the City of the great King. Let us ask the Lord daily to make
   His own Church more and more visible and powerful in the midst of
   mankind, that she may come forth "fair as the moon, clear as the sun
   and terrible as an army with banners."

   II. Now, secondly we will consider HER DESIGN IN REFERENCE TO GOD. The
   Apostle speaks of the Church of the living God as the house of God.
   This is a very beautiful and instructive figure. "The Most High dwells
   not in temples made with hands," whether they are called cathedrals,
   churches, or meeting houses. Today there is no consecrated shrine, no
   appointed building where we must resort if we would meet with God, for
   behold the Lord is to be found everywhere by those who worship Him in
   spirit and in truth! True hearts view the entire universe as a temple
   wherein everyone speaks of the Glory of God. Yet there is a shrine and
   a temple, but it is living and spiritual--the called-out assembly-- the
   Church of the living God is the special abode of Deity.

   I suppose we are to understand, first, by the Church being God's house,
   that it is the place of His worship. As of old the temple was the holy
   place to which the children of Israel went up in pilgrimage, the point
   towards which they opened their windows when they prayed and the place
   of the one altar and the one sacrifice. So now the Church of God is the
   only place of God's true worship. He is spiritually worshipped nowhere
   else. They who were never called and never quickened by Him may pretend
   to worship Him, but what is dead worship to the living God? They may
   profess to serve Him with gorgeous ceremonies, smoking incense and
   harmonious music--but what is this to Him who is a Spirit and must be
   worshipped in spirit and in truth?

   It is only where men are spiritual that there can be spiritual worship!
   It is only with their love, their trust and joy in the name of Jesus
   and with their prayers and praises presented by the power of the Holy
   Spirit that God is to be worshipped at all! Do not dream, you ungodly,
   that you can worship the living God! The first essential to your
   acceptance is that you accept His salvation. Be first reconciled to Him
   by the death of His Son--for how shall His enemies present to Him
   acceptable praises? You must become a part of the living Church by
   being born again, or else you cannot worship the Lord at all!

   But I like better, still, to get away from the somewhat ceremonious
   idea of a temple to the more familiar thought of a house or home. The
   Lord makes the Church the place of His indwelling. The thought, itself,
   is charming. It is that old prophecy fulfilled, "I will dwell in them
   and walk in them." God calls His Church a house in the sense of His
   residing there! He is everywhere, but His special resort, the place of
   His feet, the home of His heart, is His called-out congregation, His
   elect, redeemed, regenerated, sanctified Church! Does not this invest
   Believers with a wondrous dignity, that God should dwell in them? "Know
   you not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit?" God
   dwells in you! If you are, indeed, quickened of the Spirit, the Spirit
   abides in you and shall be with you forever!

   Of the Church we read, "God is in the midst of her, she shall not be
   moved." In his own house, a man not only dwells, for he might do that
   in any inn--but there he feels himself to be at home and, therefore, it
   is the place of his manifestation. You do not see the real man on the
   bench, for there you see a judge--nor on business, for there you see a
   trader--but at home with the children! As one of them, you see the man,
   the father, the husband! You see his heart and soul. And God is not
   seen in all the universe with anything like the degree of clearness
   that He is beheld in the midst of His people! The Lord God is more
   gloriously manifested in His people than in all the works of creation.

   First, in the Person of His Son He has revealed Himself right
   gloriously! And then in all those who are united to His Son, He
   manifests Himself to us as He does not unto the world. Oh, what
   unbending of Divine majesty have we seen!

   What unveilings of the incomprehensible! What revelations of the
   infinite has the Lord caused to pass before His Church! "I sat down
   under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet unto my
   taste." "He brought me into the banqueting house and His banner over me
   was love." It is in the midst of His Church that we see our Lord and
   are glad! A man's house is, also, the place of his paternal rule. In
   the Church we are under the present rule of our heavenly Father.

   In the Church of God you will sometimes see this very remarkably. I
   believe that when Paul said, concerning certain offenses in the Church,
   "For this cause some are sickly among you and many sleep," he gave us a
   hint of the remarkable discipline which the great Head of the house
   exerts over Church members. I do not say over members of all churches,
   but I say that among members of pure churches there is a solemn
   discipline going on, for the Lord is jealous over His house and He will
   be sanctified in them that come near unto Him. Therefore "be you clean
   that bear the vessels of the Lord."

   If a man is a father, he expects that his word should rule his
   household. In the blessed household of God our Father, our Lord is the
   only ruler! In God's house we know no Law but God's Law and we
   acknowledge no legislator but Jesus, who said, "One is your Master,
   even Christ, and all you are brethren." Blessed is that rule and
   blessed are they who submit to it, obeying His commandments, listening
   to the voice of His Word! God grant us Grace to stand up for the crown
   rights of King Jesus and the paternal authority of God in His own
   Church! And never may we idolize any merely human authority in the
   Church, however long the usurpation may have continued. If any come
   among us and speak not according to His Word, let us judge that they
   have no light in them and let us give no place for subjection to
   them--no, not for an hour!

   Once again, it is for his own house that a man works and spends his
   strength. It is the object of his choicest purposes. If a man shall
   compass sea and land to gain gold, it is for his house. If he rises up
   early and sits up late and eats the bread of carefulness, it is still
   for his house. And so the great Householder rules all things for His
   chosen family and the end and the design of all Providence, if we were
   to trace it to its ultimate objective, is the good of them that love
   God and are the called according to His purpose! The Lord's people are
   His portion and His inheritance. Dwelling in them, He regards them as
   His palace--He looks upon the Church as the eye of the universe, the
   joy of the earth, the crown of all His works! Towards her His thoughts
   of love go forth and for her are His Words of Truth and acts of power!

   We will not leave this point without observing how holy, then, should
   all members of Christian Churches be! "Holiness becomes your house." An
   unholy member of a Church of the living God?! What shall I say? Let
   that black stone be wet with tears of penitence this very day and then
   may it be washed in the blood of Jesus! O members of the Church, is
   your conduct inconsistent with your profession? Judge yourself and be
   zealous and repent! All of us may well humble ourselves in the sight of
   God and ask Him to cleanse us that we may be fit for Him to dwell in.
   How obedient, also, should we be--for if we are a part of the house of
   God, let it be our joy to submit ourselves to the Master.

   When we were children in the home of a loving father, his rule was not
   irksome to us--and with such a Father as our God we admit that His
   Commandments are not grievous. Let us obey carefully and joyfully, each
   one of us. How struck with awe ought every Church member to be to think
   that he is built into God's house! Truly, as I enter among the people
   of God, I feel bound to cry with Jacob, "How dreadful is this place! It
   is none other than the house of God!" Take not lightly upon yourselves
   a profession of Christianity! And when you have been baptized into the
   name of Christ and are united with His Church, see that you walk
   circumspectly and that you adorn the doctrines of God, your Savior, in
   all things.

   At the same time, how full of love ought we to be, for God is Love! A
   house is no home if love is absent and a Church of the living God is
   unchurchly if there is division among the Brethren. Is it not written,
   "The Father Himself loves you"? "Little children, love one another"?
   "God is love and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in Him"?
   Thus have we spoken upon the design of the Church in reference to
   God--the tug of war comes in the third place.

   III. THE DESIGN OF THE CHURCH IN REFERENCE TO THE TRUTH. Paul compares
   it to a pillar and its

   pedestal or basement, for that, I think, would be a fair translation.
   The temple of Diana, at Ephesus, was adorned with more than a hundred
   columns of stupendous size. They were mostly of Parian marble and were
   either furnished by the various cities of Asia as offerings to the
   goddess, or were contributed by wealthy men and princes. These pillars
   are said to have been immense monoliths--single stones of 60 feet in
   height--and they were set upon a basement which was elevated ten steps
   above the surrounding area.

   Diana had her pillar and her basement, but she had no pillar or
   basement of the Truth of God--hers was all imposture throughout. Now,
   Paul calls the Church of God the basement and pillar of the Truth. What
   does He mean? Notice, that she is not the creator of the Truth, nor the
   inventor and fashioner of doctrine. You would think from the talk of
   certain divines, nowadays, that the Church of God must surely be a
   manufactory of notions, a school of inventions where clever men think
   out new gospels for new times, or, like spiders, spin out of themselves
   fresh webs as the old ones are broken!

   Our admiration is solicited for those who are "abreast of the times"
   and who keep pace with the wonderful advance of the 19th Century. Now,
   the Church of God is not the inventor of the Truth of God--she is the
   pillar and basement of it! Let it be remembered, also, that the figure
   must not be pushed beyond what it was meant to teach. In a certain
   sense the Church cannot be the pillar and basement of the Truth. Truth
   is true of itself and owes its origin to God Himself and the nature of
   things. The Church is not here described as the deepest foundation of
   the Truth, for the basement of the pillar of the Truth of God rests on
   a Rock and the Church rests on God, the Rock of Ages.

   But the Truth of God, in itself, is one thing, as truth as existing in
   the world is another thing! You often hear it said at public meetings
   that truth is mighty and will prevail. I dare say the proverb is true,
   but if you put a truth away on the shelf and no man mentions it for
   ages, it will not prevail! Truth never prevails till some living mind
   believes it, vindicates it and proclaims it abroad. The person who thus
   takes up a grand Truth of God, declares it, fights for it and makes it
   known, may be very properly called the pillar and the basis of the
   cause, for the spread of the principle depends upon him. We may say of
   the Reformation, Luther was its pillar and basement--or of Methodism
   the same might be said of Wesley.

   Note how, in another place, Paul says that James and Cephas and John
   seemed to be pillars--that is to say, they held up the good cause.
   There are men alive at this day of whom we may say, "They are the
   pillars of the cause," and in the same sense the Church of God is the
   pillar and the basement of the Truth of God among mankind. Notice that
   the text speaks of, "The Church of God," meaning all the people of God
   and not the clergy, alone. There is a very grave lesson here. We
   frequently hear it said, "So-and-So is gone into the church." Now
   remember that everybody who has gone into Christ Jesus has gone into
   the Church, but no one else! The clergy are not the Church! It would be
   a great pity if they were.

   In all Churches of the living God it is a great fault if the whole of
   the people are not recognized in the work of the Lord, in the affairs
   of His house and especially in the maintenance of His Truth. As fish
   are said to stink first at the head, so will you find that the first
   people to depart from the Truth are those who ought to be the very
   last, namely, the professed teachers of it! If the people could but
   speak so as to be heard, we should not have one-half the heresy which
   now defiles the house of God! The people are very often put on one
   side, as if they were not at all to be considered, but were to be
   managed and catered to by their spiritual lords! Then, alas, these
   great ones betray the cause and sell Christ as cheaply as Judas did!
   They mix up the teaching of the Spirit with the conceit of the flesh
   and become so wise that they refuse to know Christ and Him crucified.

   They will not keep to the Scriptures, but dive down into their own
   thoughts and imaginations till they stir the mud at the bottom of their
   subjects and do not, themselves, know where they are, nor can any man
   tell them! Most of the false doctrine in the world has been suggested
   by those whose very office it is to preach the Truth! Hence the Truth
   of God is not trusted to the ministry--it is based and pillared upon
   the whole Church! The poor old bed-ridden Sister who sings of Jesus'
   everlasting love is quite as much a defender of the faith as an
   archbishop--perhaps more! The unlettered peasant who knows the
   doctrines of Grace by deep experience and, therefore, will never let
   them go, is as true a guardian of the Gospel treasure as the most
   profound scholar! And perhaps far more so. The whole of you who really
   love God are set for the maintenance of the Truth of God in the world!
   Under God the Holy Spirit, the cause of Truth depends upon you-- you
   are its pillar and its basement!

   What does the expression mean--the pillar and basement? I think it
   means, first, that in the Church, the Truth should abide. In the Church
   of the living God it always does abide, even as a pillar stirs not from
   its place. In the confession of the Church, made by each one of her
   members; in the teaching of her ministers and in the witness of the
   whole body, the Truth of God will be found at all times. The Church of
   God is not the quicksand of the Truth, but the pillar and pedestal of
   it--she is not the floating island of the Truth, but the eternal column
   of it. The Church stands

   steadfast and unmovable as a pillar of Truth fixed on its base. If you
   find not the Truth of God anywhere else, you will find it in the Church
   of the living God, which is Truth's castle and stronghold.

   "In which church?" you ask. I said in the Church of the living God! I
   did not say in the Church of England, nor in the Church of Scotland,
   nor in the Wesleyan Church, nor in the Baptist Church, nor even in the
   assembly of Exclusive Brethren! But I did say that the Truth of God is
   as a treasure in the Church of the living God and it is never removed
   from her keeping! Therefore, if the Truth of God is not maintained by
   any so-called church, it is not the Church of God! When the Truth of
   God is given up, everything is given up! The very idea of a Church
   involves the retaining of the Truth with constant steadfastness and if
   this is neglected, the so-called church has nothing left in it but the
   name! As a pillar and its base are always in one place, so will the
   Church be a fixed, permanent and unalterable column of Gospel Truth--
   and woe to her if she is not!

   Secondly, "the pillar and basement," means that in the true Church the
   Truth of God is lifted up as upon a pillar. Truth not only rests there
   as on a pedestal, but it stands upright as a pillar! It is the duty and
   the privilege of the Church of God to exalt the Truth into the open
   view of all mankind. Possibly you may have seen the column of Trajan,
   or the column in the Place Vendome in Paris--these may serve as
   illustrations. Around these shafts you see the victories of the
   conqueror pictured in relief and lifted into the air, that all may see
   them.

   Now, the Church of God is a pillar which lifts up and publishes, far
   and wide, the achievements of our conquering Lord! It says to all
   mankind, "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen
   of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world,
   received up into Glory." I may give an illustration of a pillar being
   said to speak from our own column commemorating the great fire of
   London which is popularly called the Monument. It used to bear an
   inscription to the effect that the papists burned the city, a charge
   which no one now believes. The poet Pope said of it--

   "Where London's column, pointing to the skies, Like a tall bully lifts
   its head and lies." Now I shall venture to alter the lines, and say--

   "See Christ's own Church, still pointing to the sky Like a tall
   champion, lifts His Truth on high."

   Our Lord never taught us to hide the Gospel in little rooms down back
   alleys--He would have us come to the front as much as we can! The
   Church is not a cellar to conceal the Truth of God, but a pillar to
   display it! "A city set on a hill cannot be hid." What is there to be
   ashamed of? We may, ourselves, remain unknown, but we must make the
   Truth known at all costs. The Church should be like a lighthouse, which
   is often built as a tall pillar to bear the light at its summit and,
   like a memorial column which bears a statue upon the top of it, she
   should lift up the Truth of God before the gaze of all men!

   Again, a Church is intended by God to set forth the Truth with beauty,
   for in a temple, pillars and columns are meant for ornaments as well as
   for service. The fluted and richly carved pillars of Diana's temple
   were the admiration of all who saw them and, in later days they were so
   esteemed that they were carried to other lands to adorn other
   edifices-- the dome of Santa Sophia, in Constantinople, now rises from
   columns of green jasper originally placed in the temple of Diana! The
   Church should adorn the doctrine of God her Savior in all things. His
   Truth should be emblazoned upon her like an inscription upon a column,
   so stately as to secure attention and command respect. A living
   Christian is the best ornament of Christianity--God's service should be
   performed in the beauty of holiness.

   Once more, it is the Church's business to maintain the Truth of God
   with all her might. She is set as a bronze wall and an iron pillar
   against all error. However men may cringe or bow, there stands the
   column fast and firm, fixed on its pedestal, set on its base. So should
   the Church in all ages stand fast to Truth and yield to no error, nor
   concealment of doctrine, nor change of ordinance! The Church of the
   Apostles is the model of the Church of today. The pattern of the Church
   of Christ is not to be found in the popish synagogues of the middle
   ages, but in the first age when Jesus Christ spoke and said, "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."

   The business of the Church is to uphold, defend, maintain, and
   propagate the pure doctrines of Christ and His Apostles--and if she
   fails in this--if in her midst the Truth is not prized, if it is not
   adorned, if it is not vindicated and proclaimed, the church, so-called,
   is no longer the pillar of the Truth, but a bowing wall and a tottering
   fence! Now, I

   must occupy your time a little longer while I try to enforce a Truth
   which lies very near my own heart. And I pray God it may lie near the
   hearts of all His people at this perilous hour.

   The Truths of God which may be derived from the text are of one order.
   The first is that the whole Church is to maintain the Truth. Dear
   Brothers and Sisters, be very zealous for the Gospel, the old, old
   Gospel of the Grace of God! Be very zealous of the doctrine of
   Justification by Faith and forgiveness by the Atonement. I speak to you
   who know the Truth, for you, alone, make up the Church of God. Do not,
   I beseech you, allow in yourselves an ignorance of God's Word, but
   study it and seek to know more and more of it. And what you do know, by
   the teachings of God's Spirit, bind about yourselves as a belt never to
   be loosened!

   There are seducing spirits abroad that would deceive, if it were
   possible, the very elect! Therefore I entreat you to not be beguiled by
   their exceeding craftiness. Turn not aside from your steadfastness, but
   abide in the faith! They will tell you that you are bigoted. Never mind
   them, for in their mouths bigotry is another name for decision of
   character! The Gospel of salvation is the hope of men, therefore do all
   you can to make it known! Do not cast in your lot with those who are
   given to change, but stand in the old paths. It may happen that the
   wealthier people of the town are in error and it may be for your
   temporal advantage to join their community--but make no confederacy
   with false doctrine! Better go to the meanest conventicle and help to
   maintain the Truth of God than attend the wealthiest congregation where
   the Gospel is thrown into the background!

   I charge you by the living God, in these evil days, to keep yourselves
   pure from error! A true Church is appointed of God for the conservation
   of His Truth--and before the Lord, at the foot of the Cross, in the
   power of the eternal Spirit--we would pray that even unto death we may
   be faithful to our charge! Next, remember that a church is unchurched
   which is not faithful to the Truth of God. The church of Rome, when she
   forbade to marry and commanded to abstain from meats, set up also the
   "mass" in the place of the Sacrifice of Christ and her priests in the
   place of the one Great High Priest. Then she taught and encouraged
   idolatry in the worship of images, relics and the like. By all this she
   unchurched herself and is now described in Scripture, not as the bride
   of Christ, but as the harlot of Babylon!

   She is not the pillar of the Truth, but the grave of it! She was moved
   by error. She fell from her uprightness. She lies prone in utter ruin,
   never to be restored. Alas, any church may thus perish! The apostasy of
   Rome should be a warning to all other Churches of the living God, lest
   they, also, by little and little become defiled and cease to answer to
   the Divine design and are cast away forever! Next, remember that any
   Church fails in her design as being the pillar and basement of the
   Truth of God in proportion as she departs from the Truth of God. I
   therefore do, with all my soul, condemn what I see around me everywhere
   of disregard to the Truth of God!

   It is not merely that men change their views, but that they are
   becoming indifferent to Truth altogether and seem to think they do God
   a service when they unsettle the youthful minds of our day! First, we
   deplore all tampering with Inspiration. The Sacred Volume is scarcely
   admitted to be Inspired at all, or at best it is said to be inspired in
   some such moderated sense as Milton or Shakespeare may have been
   inspired! Then this Book is torn away from Scripture and then the
   other--and some who ought to know better say, "That portion of the
   Bible is written for the Jews, but not for us." And so, by degrees, all
   the precious Volume is torn from us.

   Could the saints in Heaven, who used to feed on the Word of God, return
   to this lower world, they would be surprised to find that our wise men
   have questioned almost every Prophet, Evangelist, Psalm and Epistle!
   Every portion of the Word of God is challenged and the whole of
   Scripture is assailed--and that by men who continue in what professes
   to be a Church of the living God! We still hold that the Bible, and the
   Bible, alone, is the religion of the Christian--and we intend to hold
   to it all the more because others fall from their steadfastness! Alas,
   the grand old doctrines of the Gospel are also despoiled! Do you
   notice, nowadays, how all the great Truths of God are being spirited
   away? Men use the words, but they mock the ears, for they reject the
   sense--they hand us nuts--we crack them and we find that the worm of
   modern thought has eaten out the meat!

   The doctrine of the Atonement has, in some cases, been the chief object
   of assault. Take that away and what is left?! For what purpose is there
   a Church at all if the Atonement of Jesus Christ is not to be
   proclaimed by it? Let her die! Why should she live if she has no
   testimony to bear! If she has no Divine, Infallible message of pardon
   for the guilty and rest for the weary, let her perish! Listen to the
   detestable talk of modern ecclesiastics and you will hear them say,
   "Brethren,

   your own thoughts are your best guide! The enlightened consciousness of
   this age will best instruct you. The Bible is our sacred book, but cut
   out whatever you like, alter whatever you please.

   "We will yield anything sooner than be in opposition to the
   philosophers! Our illiterate predecessors, the fishermen, together with
   Paul and others, were raw hands at teaching and very unwisely thrust
   themselves into conflict with the best thought and culture of the
   period--so that their teaching was to the Jews a stumbling block and to
   the Greeks foolishness--but we know a great deal better! We adapt
   ourselves to the times and entertain great sympathy for honest doubt.
   We also know on which side our bread is buttered and we are ready to
   alter and amend to please the fashion of the hour!" Where this is the
   talk, there remains no longer a Church of the living God! It is nothing
   but the name of a church when the doctrines of God's Infallible Word
   are trod in the dust!

   A church ceases to be a Church of Christ in proportion, also, as she
   alters the ordinances of God. These must be practiced as they were
   delivered. When a church rejects the ancient ordinances of Believers'
   Baptism and the Lord's Supper, her next step is to make new ones! Thus
   forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meat are brought in.
   The first is much vaunted as a means for the production of purity, but
   how much the priests and monks and nuns have done for purity I leave
   history to record! Believers' Baptism was thrown to the winds and then
   baptismal regeneration must be brought in. The Lord's Supper was by far
   too common and so the "unbloody sacrifice of the 'mass'" was devised! O
   Church of God, when will you come back to the Law and to the Testimony
   and follow the mind of Christ and the doings of His Apostles?

   Churches also get wrong when they neglect discipline; when they admit
   into their membership persons who do not even profess to be converted
   and, I add, when, because of pleasing men, they tolerate in their midst
   ministers whose teaching is corrupt and full of infidelity! There are
   preachers, nowadays, who are studiously undermining the faith once
   delivered to the saints! The Church should separate itself both from
   wicked persons and from false teachers. She should no more tolerate
   evil teachers in her pulpits than you would allow a poisoner in your
   nursery, or a wolf in your sheepfold. God grant that our Churches may
   rise to their duty, however painful it may be! Yes, may they keep close
   to the faith, for otherwise they cannot be the pillar and basement of
   the Truth of God! An unholy, unregenerated church can never be the
   pillar of the Truth of God. If there is a failure in vital godliness;
   if humble walking with God is neglected, the Church cannot long remain
   a healthy Church of God.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, you see how each one of you ought to behave
   in the Church of God. One part of your behavior is that you abide firm
   as a pillar. Stand fast! Be strong! You ought to be pillars, especially
   you who have known the Lord 30 or 40 years. You should stand fast to
   the Truth of God and I pray that you may. May the Church in Scotland,
   which of old witnessed to the Gospel, be kept steadfast. Her
   Covenanting fathers loved the Truth of God and shed their blood for it.
   May the Lord help their sons to be strong in the Lord and in the power
   of His might. May the Churches of our own England also be recovered
   from their declension and then maintained by the Spirit of God in stern
   fidelity to the Gospel.

   I cannot finish my sermon better than by commending to you the verse
   which was sung just now by your 5,000 voices--

   "Should all the forms that men devise Assault my faith with treacherous
   art,

   I'll call them vanity and lies, And bind the Gospel to my heart."
     __________________________________________________________________

Others To Be Gathered In

   (No. 1437)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 6, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet will I
   gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him." Isaiah
   56:8.

   GOD'S work flow is that of gathering. There was a time when it was
   scattering. Man built the tower of Babel which was intended to be the
   center of unity, the armory of power and the seat of dominion from
   where some mighty Nimrod might sway his scepter over all the human
   race. But the Lord would not have it so. Infinite wisdom baffled finite
   ambition! Man's center is not God's center and, therefore, He
   confounded their language and scattered them into nations by which the
   whole earth has been inhabited.

   Now the Lord is gathering together in one the children of God which are
   scattered abroad. His Son Jesus Christ has descended and dwelt among
   us, working out our redemption and now, exalted in the highest heavens,
   He is God's appointed Center of His people! As Jacob said of old, "Unto
   Him shall the gathering of the people be." The Lord has made Him to
   "stand for an ensign of the people, to Him shall the Gentiles seek and
   His rest shall be glorious." The great promise given by the mouth of
   Isaiah is to be fulfilled under the Gospel dispensation--"I will gather
   all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My Glory."

   Jesus has made both Jew and Gentile one, breaking down every wall of
   partition, so that there is neither barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,
   but Christ is all and in all. The power and Grace of God are
   continually drawing men from all nations and kindred and tongues to the
   common hope, even the Atonement made by the death of our Lord Jesus,
   and to the common service, even to service under the one and only Lord
   of whom it is written, "One is your Master, even Christ; and all you
   are brethren." This ingathering process is going on every day by the
   testimony of the Word of God and it is to be continued until the end of
   time!

   I trust it will be carried on in our midst today. May the Lord put the
   magnet down among us and draw towards the loadstone of Jesus' love all
   hearts made ready to feel its influence! It is my earnest hope that
   some who have never thought of being gathered to Christ may find
   themselves drawn towards Him today! May the mystic current of Divine
   Grace carry many of you away with its gentle force and bear you first
   to Jesus, who is Israel's Prince, and then to His Church, which is the
   true Israel of God!

   I. Under our first head we shall notice a point of considerable
   encouragement to those who seek the Lord. Note well THE INSTANCES
   MENTIONED--instances of gathering by the hand of the Lord who is
   described as, "The Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel."
   Outcasts have been gathered and this is the token that others shall be
   gathered. I suppose Isaiah first alludes to the banished who had been
   carried away captive to Babylon and to all parts of the East, but who
   were at different times restored to their land.

   The Israelites had been subject to many captivities. One tyrant after
   another invaded the country and carried them far away. But the Lord
   promised to gather them together and He did. The names of Ezra,
   Nehemiah and the like will remind you of the returning home from
   distant lands of various contingents of God's host who marched through
   the deserts and passed through hostile nations till they reached the
   city of their God. Very marvelous were these restorations, for kings
   that knew not God were used by Him to accomplish His designs--even as
   He said of Cyrus--"I have raised him up in righteousness and I will
   direct all his ways: he shall build My city, and he shall let My
   captives go, not for price nor reward, says the Lord of Hosts."

   Now, God who brought His people out of Babylon can bring men out of
   sin! He who loosed captives from bondage can liberate spirits from
   despair! He who made the mighty tyrant relax his grip can cause Satan
   to loose his hold! And He who led His people by a way that they knew
   not till they came back to their land can lead the poor seeking sinner

   through all the devious paths of doubt and fear--and bring him to rest
   in Jesus Christ. Let Israelites returning from Babylon preach the
   Gospel to us this morning! Let them proclaim to us the word of
   hope--"If we who were carried captive far off from Zion are brought
   back, so also will the Lord devise means that His banished be not
   expelled from

   Him."

   But I prefer to use the text in reference to our Divine Lord and
   Master, seeing that to Him shall the gathering of the people be! When
   He was here below He gathered the outcasts of Israel by His ministry.
   Look at the group around Him and mark carefully those who press nearest
   to Him. You need not notice those scribes and Pharisees in the outer
   circle-- they would gladly entrap Him in His speech--let us leave them
   to themselves and only notice those who stand so quietly, who listen so
   eagerly, whose tears flow so freely and whose hearts are so deeply
   touched! Who are these?

   It is written, "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners
   for to hear Him." His enemies said it in scorn, but we tell it to His
   honor--"This Man receives sinners and eats with them." All through His
   progress in the Holy Land He was seeking "the lost sheep of the house
   of Israel." Not merely silly, defenseless sheep, but lost
   sheep--wanderers in sin--"for the Son of Man is come to seek and to
   save that which was lost." His eyes were always most ready to spy out
   the fallen and His glance was always kindest for those who were most
   erring, for, said He, "The whole have no need of the physician, but
   they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
   repentance." O blessed Master, "holy, harmless, undefiled and separate
   from sinners," the sinners came to You and coming to You found You to
   be Jesus, the sinner's Friend!

   Moreover, our Lord did not merely gather outcasts to His ministry, but
   He gathered them by forgiving their sins. This brought them nearer,
   still, and held them there. You know who it was that washed His feet
   with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head--that woman whose
   memorial shall never die out of the Church! She who loved Him much
   because much had been forgiven her! She was a sinner, a city sinner, a
   shameful sinner--but she came to Him for cleansing and it was granted
   her! I should not wonder if she had heard Him tell about the lost piece
   of money and the lost sheep and the lost son--and perhaps the parable,
   itself, and the way in which Jesus spoke it, touched her heart and made
   her hope and long to be sought and found. With her much sin she came to
   Him who had much Grace and her black sins were blotted out by His dear
   love and henceforth she, above all women, loved Him, for much had been
   forgiven her!

   I suppose she was but a specimen of many others who clung to Him,
   because in Him they had found what an awakened heart needs above
   everything else, namely, forgiveness for transgression! At this present
   moment, in Jesus' name, I would set that woman before you and say as He
   did, "See you this woman?" Then learn that as Jesus received her, so
   also will He receive you if you come to Him, for He has said it, and He
   cannot lie, "Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise cast out." Come
   unto Him, then, all you that labor and are heavy laden and He will give
   you rest! Let the one poor outcast, who wept at His feet, set the
   example and imitate her at once!

   You know how, in the pursuit of game, men use decoys that they may
   attract the birds by one of themselves? So I would, this morning, use
   this woman as a decoy--if there are others like she, guilty of the very
   same sin, let them come to Jesus for pardon as she did! Others should
   come, also, who may not be guilty of the same form of evil and yet feel
   equally condemned in the sight of the Lord. If consciousness of guilt
   humbles you to that poor woman's level, come and accept her Savior!
   Jesus gathers together the outcasts of Israel! Dear Hearts, why should
   He not gather you? Why should not the glance of love which fell on the
   sinner of old fall, also, upon you? Why should not you also feel the
   same love and exhibit it in acts of penitence and deeds of humility?
   Jesus is ready to have His feet washed again by such as you!

   Nor, indeed, was this all, for our Lord gathered some, yes many, by
   graciously helping them. He met with some whose great trial was sore
   affliction, temptation and sorrow. Magdalene is a chief
   instance--beloved name in the Christian Church! Magdalene, out of whom
   He cast seven devils! It was not her fault so much as her grief that
   seven devils had entered her. She struggled with those demons but they
   would not leave her. But when Jesus came, they fled at His rebuke and
   henceforth Mary of Magdala was foremost among the holy women who follow
   the Blessed One! Now, just as our Lord delivered Mary of Magdalene from
   seven devils, so can He deliver any of you who are sore beset by
   temptation!

   Do the devils within you arise from habit? Such spirits are very
   powerful, but Jesus is more than a match for them! Habit becomes second
   nature to a man, but Jesus is greater than either first or second
   nature. Habits began to bind us as with spiders' webs, but they thicken
   and harden into meshes of iron--our Lord can, with a breath, remove the
   iron net and set the prisoner free! Or are you tempted by
   constitutional sin--some evil which has entrenched itself within the

   peculiarities of your being--finding, as it were, a rest within the
   special texture of your mind and fashion of your body? Jesus can
   dislodge the subtle foe and make this body of yours which has been a
   cage of unclean birds, to become a temple of the Holy Spirit!

   Or are your surroundings very unfavorable? Does the devil molest you
   through the place where you dwell and the people among whom you reside?
   Jesus can help you there and make you fair as the curtains of Solomon,
   even while you dwell in the tents of Kedar! Or is your case of another
   kind? Are you beset with doubts and innumerable infidelities? Do you
   question this and question that? Has your mind a skeptical bias? My
   Master can gather you, also, and make you stronger in faith than your
   Brethren, even as Thomas, who doubted, became a firm and adoring
   Believer. Unbelief is a very tormenting spirit and causes much distress
   of soul--but the Lord can gather unbelievers and misbelievers and bring
   them to the true faith--and to the peace which comes of it. Since He
   gathered to Himself a woman out of whom He cast seven devils and a man
   from whom a whole legion were made to flee, why should He not deliver
   those of you who are under bondage now?

   He gathered them, also, so as to enroll them under His banner. It was a
   marvelous moment for Levi, when he sat at the receipt of custom and
   Jesus called him! He had changed his name and tried to be a Gentile,
   calling himself Matthew, and there he sat, careful only for the coin.
   But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me," and he obeyed the voice! He was no
   longer a gatherer of taxes, but a gatherer of souls! He enlisted
   beneath the banner of Christ and no longer engaged in the service of
   the Romans. Yes, and my Master can gather just such as he. You busy men
   who have almost brought your pens behind your ears into the house of
   God this morning--you, who as you take up your hymnbooks almost wish
   you had your day-books and your ledgers with you! He can say to you,
   "Follow Me."

   He can make you use the pen of a ready writer in His cause! You shall
   do business in the most precious commodities and make many rich. Rising
   from the receipt of custom, you shall yield yourself to Jesus and
   become henceforth His steward! Those gathered by our Lord, when He was
   here among the sons of men, are specimens to allure your hope and to
   excite your desires that you, also, may be gathered into His Church and
   unto Himself. I will give one other specimen and then we will leave
   this point. You will, perhaps, think that my Master's gathering power
   lay in His being here Himself. It is true there was a matchless charm
   about Him and yet, to let us know that we must know Him no longer after
   the flesh, there was not even in the charms of Christ's most blessed
   Person enough of power to prevent the people crying, "Crucify Him,
   crucify Him!"

   His power is spiritual--the power of His own Spirit and, therefore, it
   is exercised now though His bodily Presence is removed. It fell on a
   day when our Lord had gone home to His Father that His servants were
   all met together in one place with one accord for His worship and
   suddenly the Spirit burst in upon them as a rushing mighty wind and, in
   cloven tongues of fire, sat on each of them! Then they stood up and
   preached in His name and declared that Jesus, who had been crucified,
   was now the Savior! On that same day He gathered, for He was there by
   His Spirit, though not in Person--He gathered, I say, unto His Church,
   3,000 souls. Jesus can gather, indeed! The people flock unto Him! It is
   still true, "I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men unto Me."

   Though He is not here, yet if we preach Him--if we tell of His love;,
   if we speak of His death and of His atoning blood--His name is as
   ointment poured forth and the virgins will come together to enjoy the
   perfume! There is no name like His for gathering the people! He will
   gather others beside those which have been gathered to Him.

   II. I now pass on to my second head, which is this, THE PROMISE
   UTTERED. "The Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet
   will I gather others to Him, beside those that are gathered unto Him."
   It is evident that this promise is very wide. It means, in the first
   place, that the Gentiles should be called to know the Lord. "Yet will I
   gather others to Him." Not other Jews, but those others whom they
   called "Gentile dogs!" It was a bright day when, first of all, the
   centurion of Caesarea sent men to Joppa and received a visit from Peter
   and was baptized by him! Fair, also was the day when the Ethiopian
   eunuch was baptized by Philip. Then was the Lord "gathering others unto
   Him."

   How strange it must have seemed, at first, to the Apostles, who were
   all Jews and very strongly Jewish, too, especially Peter, to see the
   Gentiles gathered! One marvels that Paul was not more narrow in heart,
   considering his birth and education, but he had vanquished his old
   notions and gloried in being the Apostle of the Gentiles. It is
   delightful to my mind to think of men of different colors coming to
   Christ and in the best possible manner proving the unity of our

   race. What would the 12 have thought if they could have foreseen that
   the Gospel which they preached would bind in one brotherhood all races
   of men?

   Jesus has gathered not merely Romans and Greeks and Jews, but the
   descendants of those barbarous people who lived in the white-cliffed
   island beyond Gaul which men called Britain! He has gathered those
   savage people unto Him! And now how pleasing to see the Red Indian
   bowing with the pale-face at Jesus' name--to see China, once
   hermetically sealed, now open to the Gospel, and Japan inviting our
   missionaries to instruct her! Also to see the dwellers in the South
   Seas and the black races of Africa stretching out their hands to God!
   Strange and uncouth in appearance and in tongue are many of the tribes
   of mankind, but they shall be gathered as surely as the more civilized!
   There scarcely remains any nation out of which the Lord has not
   gathered some to His Church and our faith is that before long the
   Gospel shall be preached throughout all lands!

   It has not come yet. We heard the other night of nations which have
   never yet received a Christian minister. There is Tibet, for instance,
   lying with its millions without a word of Christ ever having been
   spoken among them! To millions upon millions of people, the name of
   Jesus is as yet an unknown sound--yet they shall be gathered out of all
   nations, kindred, peoples, tongues and shall unite in one great family!
   The Gospel of Jesus is cosmopolitan. It suits so well with our own
   latitude that one would think that our Lord was born an Englishman--but
   the same is true in reference to every land! His name was fitly
   mentioned by the Jordan, but it loses none of its music by the Thames,
   the Ganges, or the Orinoco!

   Jesus belongs to all lands, whether they are scorched by tropical suns
   or frozen by the long winters of the poles. Jesus is a Man and a man is
   a noble name, nobler than Jew, or Briton, or Roman! He is "the Man,"
   the Man of men, man's Man, the Man for men! Let all men worship Him,
   for He is the Hope of our race, the Restorer of our ruin, the Gatherer
   of the new people and He shall gather others beside those that have
   been gathered unto Him. "God has made of one blood all nations of men
   that dwell upon the face of the earth" and that one blood also has, at
   the back of it, another blood still more precious by which one blood He
   has redeemed from among men a multitude which no man can number!

   Now, let us look at the text and note that the promise is continuous
   "Yet will I gather others." That was true when Isaiah stated it. It
   would have been true if Peter had quoted it on the morning of
   Pentecost. It was quite true when Carey acted upon it and started on
   what men thought his mad enterprise--to go as a consecrated cobbler to
   convert the learned Brahmins of India and to lay the foundation of
   Messiah's kingdom there! It was true then and it is quite as true now!
   If the promise had been written this morning and the ink were not yet
   dry it would be no more true than it is now-- "Yet will I gather others
   to Him."

   It will be true, whoever stands in this pulpit, when we are dead and
   gone and until the earth shall have completed the cycle of
   long-suffering. And when the Lord shall descend from Heaven with a
   shout it shall still be true--"Yet will I gather others to Him." "Other
   sheep have I," said Christ, "that are not yet of this fold. Them, also,
   I must bring in." There are many yet who are unsaved, unregenerate,
   uncalled--who must be brought to Jesus--"Yet will I gather others to
   Him, that have not been gathered unto Him." To him, that is to Israel
   or to the Church, and so to Him who is the head of Israel and the head
   of His Church, even unto Christ must others be gathered! While the
   promise is wide and continual, I cannot help remarking upon its being
   most graciously encouraging, because it evidently applies very
   pointedly to outcasts.

   "The Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet will I
   gather others." Other outcasts are evidently intended! Does my voice
   reach anyone at this time who reckons himself an outcast? Has there
   strayed into this House of Prayer an outcast from society? Listen to
   this word--"Yet will I gather others to Him." But if not an outcast
   from society, it may be you are an outcast in your own esteem. You
   judge that you have sinned beyond all hope; you consider yourself to be
   an unreasonable offender, an out-of-the-way rebel. Blessed be our great
   High Priest, He can "have compassion on the ignorant and on those that
   are out of the way"! That text meets your case, does it not? I hear you
   cry, "Oh, but there is no hope for me."

   Listen, "He gathers together the outcasts of Israel and yet will He
   gather others"--why, then, is there no hope for you? There is every
   hope for you! True, you have written your own condemnation and you have
   signed and sealed it and, therefore, you have made a covenant with
   Death, a league with Hell and given yourselves up to Satan--but your
   covenant with Death shall be broken and your league with Hell shall be
   disannulled! By God's eternal Grace, far off as

   you are, you shall find God's arm of mercy long enough to reach you!
   And although weighed down with sin as you are, you shall find His hand
   of love strong enough to lift you up, for He will gather others such as
   He did gather of old-- more Magdalenes, more Matthews, more publicans
   and sinners, more of those who have a special claim to the name of
   "sinner"! He will gather more of such, I know He will, blessed be His
   name, for so has He promised in His Word! How sweetly encouraging this
   should be to all of you that are sick of yourselves and sick of your
   sins! There is no hope elsewhere, but there is hope in Jesus, for He is
   mighty to deliver and "able to save to the uttermost." Trust in His
   name!

   I admire greatly in my text the fact that the promise is absolute--"The
   Lord God which gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet will I gather
   others to Him, beside those that are gathered unto Him." He speaks like
   a king! This is the kind of language which only an Omnipotent Being can
   use as to men's minds. "Yet will I gather others." But they are free
   agents! "I will gather them," He says. But suppose they will not come?
   "Yet will I gather others unto Him." Certain of my Brethren are much
   taken up with the fact of man's free agency. I believe that he is a
   free agent, but it is by his free agency that he is lost! For salvation
   we must look only to Free Grace, for there, only, is man's hope!

   God has a way and an art, without violating the free agency of man, of
   nevertheless accomplishing the purposes of His Grace without hindrance.
   He says, "Yet will I gather," as if He knew Himself to be the master of
   the situation and able to effect His resolve. There may be some in this
   house who have never even thought of believing in the Lord Jesus up to
   this moment, yet He knows how to bring even these. Perhaps some have
   even said in defiance, "I will not come." Have you not heard of one who
   said, "I will not," but afterwards repented and went? Grace can turn
   you in the same manner and make you act as you never dreamed of doing!
   Does this annoy you? Do you put your teeth together and say, "No, I
   will never alter! I will never be a religious man"?

   I advise you to be less obstinate, for you know not how soon you will
   yield and find yourself weeping over those hard speeches. Were you
   never subdued by human love? Did your mother never conquer you, young
   man--not with a threat, but just with a look and a tear? Did your wife
   never vanquish you in the same fashion? You were a free agent, but yet
   you were a complete captive and you could not help yourself! If my
   Master and Lord is but seen by you in all His love and loveliness,
   adorned not only with His tears of pity but with His wounds with which,
   in love, He redeemed mankind, I guarantee you your obstinacy will find
   itself dissolved! Oh, if you knew Him! Would to God He would manifest
   Himself to you now, and you would say--

   "I yield, by mighty love subdued, Who can resist its charms?"

   This is why the Lord talks so positively, because He knows His own
   power and means to put it forth. "Yet will I gather others unto Him."
   So shall it be with you, dear Hearer. With your full consent, against
   your own wicked will, the Lord will lead you to Jesus and there shall
   you be found rejoicing to be united to Him and to His people! May the
   promise thus Divinely uttered be fulfilled in you who sit or stand
   before the preacher this day--and on those who shall read those words
   in days to come.

   III. I desire for a little time, in the third place, to mention THE
   FACTS WHICH SUSTAIN OUR FAITH IN THIS

   PROMISE. We believe it, whether or not, fact or no fact to back it
   up--God's Word is sure! But still this will help some of you who have
   but slender confidence. The facts which sustain our faith in the text
   are many--here is just a handful of them. The first is the perpetuity
   of the Gospel. Still is the Good News preached among you, dear Hearers.
   Still are we bid to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to
   every creature. Now, we feel certain that if all God's people were
   already saved, our Master would say, "You need not go any further,
   there are no more to be gathered in."

   Suppose when the King came in to see the guests, every seat at the
   banquet was full? Then He would not say to the servants, "Go out into
   the highways and hedges and compel them to come in," but because our
   commission runs on, "Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to
   every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he
   that believes not shall be damned," and "Lo, I am with you always, even
   unto the end of the world," we feel sure that there are more to be
   saved! If we are bid to preach the Gospel till the end of the world, it
   must be because to the very end of the world there are other souls to
   be called by Divine Grace! There are still to be harvests, for we are
   still sent to sow! There are still some fish to be caught, for we are
   still bid to cast the net!

   The next fact which helps our faith is this--I will give it to you in
   verse and you will recognize it, none the less, distinctly--

   "Dear dying Lamb,

   Your precious blood

   Shall never lose its power,

   'Till all the ransomed Church of God

   Is saved to sin no more."

   The blood of Atonement has not lost its power and therefore all the
   ransomed Church of God is not yet saved. There are more to be washed,
   for the Fountain is still open. There are more to be healed, for the
   Balm of Gilead is still set before us. There are more to be liberated,
   for the redemption price has not exhausted its value. Our Lord Jesus
   has redeemed so great a multitude from among men and His precious blood
   is of such an infinite value that we know beyond all doubt that there
   must remain myriads more to be gathered into His Church! Do you think
   that He bought a miserable handful of men? Is your little Bethel a fold
   large enough to hold all the ransomed? No! A number that no man can
   number shall be the fruit of His travail and He has not as yet seen
   such a number following at His feet.

   There is still power to save in the Atonement and a wondrous mint of
   merit in the righteousness of our Lord! Therefore its issues are not
   yet fully seen--much more must come of it. We are sure that our Lord's
   sacred passion must have a grander result than we have yet seen and He
   will gather others besides those that have been gathered unto Him. My
   Brothers and Sisters, can your eyes look beyond the firmament and see
   the invisible? If so, mark that hard by the blazing Throne of the
   Eternal there stands a Man who is more than a man--

   "Adoringsaints around Him stand, And thrones and powers before Him
   fall! The God shines gracious through the Mian, And sheds sweet glories
   on them all." But how is this glorious One occupied? He is making
   intercession and pleading for His redeemed! "He is able, therefore, to
   save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever
   lives to make intercession for them." So long as there is an
   Intercessor at the Throne of God, there must be more sinners to be
   saved! If all were brought in He would cease His pleading! But while
   there is still a soul ignorant or out of the way, the great High Priest
   will continue to urge His suit before the Eternal Majesty. More souls
   must be brought in, for Jesus lives to plead for that end!

   Nor is this all, for we are sure that these purposes of Grace are not
   yet fully accomplished because the Spirit of God is still with us. He
   abides in the Church and He has come to convict men of sin--there must
   be more souls to be convicted. He has come to quicken men and abides
   here and, therefore, there must be more dead sinners to be quickened,
   or else His mission would be ended. There must be more to whom the
   things of Christ are to be revealed, or else the Spirit would not
   linger here as our Illuminator. The Spirit has not gone away--in many
   of us He abides and we feel His power--the Presence of the Spirit is a
   sure token that the promise is not spent. It is still full of meaning
   and others must yet be gathered beside those that are gathered unto
   Him.

   Nor is this all. The glory and majesty of the Gospel, or rather the
   greatness of the Glory of God in the Gospel, demands that many more
   should be gathered than have as yet been enfolded in the Church. At the
   largest computation, the Christian Church of the present day is a poor
   minority of mankind and we do not believe it to be consistent with the
   majestic purposes of Grace that at the winding up of affairs there
   should be a handful of saved ones against an awful multitude of the
   lost. No, in all things Jesus shall have the pre-eminence and He will
   have it in this, also--that His saved ones shall exceed the lost--this
   is our hope and confidence! Multitudes, multitudes, multitudes beyond
   all conception are yet to be brought to Messiah's feet! They shall fly
   as a cloud;, they shall hasten as doves to their dovecotes; they shall
   advance in strength like waves of the sea and they shall cover the
   earth, being as the sand on the seashore, innumerable!

   One other argument I put last, though it is not so strong as it might
   be. It may seem to be an anti-climax to finish with the weakest reason,
   but then it is one that needs to be made stronger. And because I want
   each Believer here to strengthen it, I place it last, that it may not
   be forgotten. I know there must be many more souls to be gathered in
   because of the longings of the saints. They are not satisfied unless
   they see conversions! They are anxious to hear the cry of penitents! I
   wish they had far stronger longings and more intense anxieties. I know
   some Christians who are far too comfortable--inhumanly insensible I
   call it--though even their own children are not converted! True saints
   are hungry and thirsty after souls! Till men are saved they cannot
   rest.

   No, it has come to be with some of us far more than a longing or a
   thirsting--it has sharpened and deepened down into the very pangs of
   birth for souls! Many saints travail for souls--their hearts are in
   anguish until Christ is formed in others, the hope of Glory. Beloved,
   you know that when Zion travails, she brings forth children--this,
   therefore, is a token for good--there are more souls to be gathered,
   for God must hear prayer and many are praying! Do not His elect cry day
   and night unto Him? Will He not hear them? Are there not multitudes of
   ministers, teachers and all sorts of workers hunting for souls with
   heavenly ardor and giving God no rest day nor night till He bring in
   the outcasts? There must, therefore, be many more souls to be gathered!

   One thing I know, the Church needs more conversions. We never prosper
   as a Church unless we have a fresh stream of young blood running into
   us. Mark an old Church with no converts and see how diseased it is. It
   generally sours down into a crotchety, ill-tempered, bigoted little
   clique of very little use in the world, needing, rather, a pair of
   crutches with which to totter about its own floor than a sword with
   which to fight the foe. The Church of the living God needs young blood
   in its veins! Our strength for holding the faith may lie in experienced
   saints, but our zeal for propagating it must be found in the young! We
   greatly need new converts added to us and, therefore, because we need
   it and we feel confident that our God will supply all our need, we feel
   sure that He will increase us with men as with a flock!

   To keep His Church alive and vigorous, He will lay hold upon Sauls and
   make Pauls of them! May this Church be set on fire by the burning love
   of new-born souls! Though we have enjoyed a constant increase for
   nearly 25 years, may the Lord give us a far larger addition! It is His
   promise, let us plead it! Others besides those that have been gathered
   unto Him we will ask Him to give us and, just in proportion, my beloved
   Brothers and Sisters, as you and I begin to trouble about this, groan
   about it, pray about it and cry about it, the Lord will fulfill His
   gracious promise and others shall be gathered beside those that are
   gathered to Him!

   IV. I finish, therefore, with the fourth head, which is THE CONDUCT
   CONSISTENT WITH THIS PROMISE. Let

   us view this question with reference to God's people. I have already
   trenched upon that topic. The conduct congruous to the promise is to
   believe it and then to pray about it. Let us at once get together in
   little knots of twos and threes and seek to have the Word of God
   fulfilled. This very afternoon enter into your chambers alone, or
   gather your families and hold little Prayer Meetings with them.
   Remember this promise and speak with the Lord concerning it. Perhaps
   you have not noticed its gracious utterances before, but now that it
   has come before your eyes, be sure you make use of it!

   If a man finds that a check has been lying by him for a good while and
   he comes upon it while turning over his letters, what will he do
   tomorrow morning? Why, he will go and get it cashed! Now, here is one
   of my Master's bills which you have not yet turned into actual money.
   Go and take it to the Lord! Take it today, for the Bank of Heaven is
   open at this moment--when is it closed? Go and get the Word fulfilled
   unto you by praying, "Lord, You have said, 'Yet will I gather others
   that have not been gathered,' therefore fulfill this Word unto Your
   servant." Having done this, you will have lifted up your hands to the
   Lord and you cannot go back. If you pray, you must work, for prayer
   without endeavor is hypocrisy!

   The next thing after prayer is to go and gather in the others by
   speaking to them concerning Jesus and the way of salvation by faith in
   His precious blood. Go and use the grand Gospel means and then, because
   God has promised it, expect to see others gathered in! Do not be
   thunderstruck when you hear of many being converted on a certain Sunday
   through your speaking of Jesus Christ! Expect it--wonder that it does
   not happen more often--and be on the look out for coming souls! Look
   out for them this morning! My Master has gathered some while I have
   been speaking, I feel sure of it! These new converts will feel quite
   lonely before long unless you speak to them. They are like little
   children that are just born and they need tender nursing--find them out
   and nurse them for the Lord and He will give you your wages!

   Try and speak a word of encouragement to those who for the first time
   are found hovering near the Gospel. Do not drive them away, but cheer
   them on. "Oh, but I am afraid I shall not find them." If you speak so
   you will not find them-- but if you are hopeful and believing, you will
   find them fast enough, for they abound in these parts! Has not the Lord
   said that He will gather? Then be sure He will! You have asked Him to
   fulfill His Word, have you not? Then He will do it beyond any doubt!
   Find out the hopeful ones; hear their troubles and help them in their
   difficulties. I am anxious that now, and for many months to come, all
   of you who are in Christ should be dwelling hourly on this Word and be
   continually saying, "Where are these others?"

   The Lord said, "Yet will I gather others to Him, beside those that are
   gathered." Where are these others? Perhaps at this time they have not
   come to this Tabernacle at all--they may be at some other House of
   Prayer. Bless the Lord when other Churches have their full share of
   increase and souls are gathered into their ranks! But perhaps those
   whom the Lord will gather in are not at this time in any place of
   worship--go and find them in their homes and haunts! There are others
   to be gathered in--look for the others! The first question of a saved
   man should be, "What can I do for my Lord?" And the next should be,
   "What can I do for others?" The more he knows Christ--the greater his
   love, the higher his enjoyment--the more should he cry, "Where are the
   others? What can I do for the others?"

   I am sure if you were all starving and ready to perish with famine and
   I were to come with a good store of bread and call out half-a-dozen of
   you and give you a good meal in the vestry, as soon as ever you had
   been fed you would cry, "Pray think of others! Thousands out there are
   starving, even as we were. Pray give us bread for them as well as for
   ourselves." How pleased you would be, each one, to go out and say,
   "There is a meal for all of you. There is no stint, you may eat to the
   full--come along." If they rejected your message you would feel very
   grieved and you would plead with them--"Look at us, we have been fed!
   Do not die here, but come and be fed also."

   Someone would reply, "It is not good meat," and you would answer,
   "Taste and see." If one of you had a wife and she was hungry, but would
   not believe you and come to the feast, you would plead with her even
   unto tears and fear that she was insane! If you had children that would
   not come and were dying with hunger, I think I know how their mothers
   would weep over them; how they would seek with loving entreaties to
   turn them from their infatuation and be induced to feed upon the bread
   so lovingly provided. We would not let them die if love could persuade
   them to be wise. The case is much the same spiritually--let us show the
   same earnestness!

   As to what conduct is consistent with this text on the part of those
   who have not yet been gathered, it will be clear that they should be
   encouraged to hope. If I were a thief and I read of the dying thief who
   rejoiced to see the Fountain of atoning blood in his day, I would
   rejoice, too, and say, "If one thief was cleansed, why not another? Why
   not I? In the Bible are cases of very great sinners who nevertheless
   were washed from all their sins. I am like them in their sins, why
   should not I be as they were? More outcasts have to be gathered, then
   why not I among them? What should shut me out? I will go and try."

   In earthly things men seek promotion even when the hope is small. In
   the case of a vacancy in the Civil Service, I have heard of 800
   applying for one job! This was a poor chance and yet many go in for it.
   But here we know that others are to be gathered and those others not
   ones nor twos but thousands--why, then, should not a seeking soul put
   in for it? There never was one that did seek the Lord by faith who was
   refused! Never a single soul! He who comes to Jesus by a simple faith
   has never yet been refused! Come, my Friend! Come now to Jesus! If He
   should cast you away, you will be number one upon the black list. We
   will place you here in the Tabernacle in a conspicuous seat and we will
   show you as the first sinner that our Lord Jesus could not save! See,
   we will say, "Here is the first man that came to Jesus and Jesus
   rejected

   him."

   I shall alter all my preaching, for when I preach, I shall say, "Jesus
   will in no wise cast out any that come to Him, except one and that one
   man sits in the Tabernacle." I shall tell them, when I am preaching at
   Leeds during this week, that Jesus Christ receives all sinners except
   one man who was cast out at the Tabernacle last Sunday. I guarantee you
   I will make your name ring round the world! The saints shall know it in
   Heaven and the devils will soon know it in Hell-- and they will triumph
   over the defeated Savior! Why, man, you would be the first proof that
   God was not true, that Christ was not gracious and His blood is not
   Omnipotent!

   Shall this ever be? You know better! Come along and try the Savior now!
   Rejected you shall never be! Oh that you would, this morning, yield to
   the gentle drawing of His almighty love! May you, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, be among those who shall say, "It is true, it is true that He
   gathers other outcasts, for He has gathered me into His fold and I
   bless His Sovereign Grace, His irresistible love and will bless Him
   forever and ever." Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Hope Laid Up In Heaven

   (No. 1438)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 13, 1878,

   BY C.H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For the hope which is laid up for you in Heaven, of which you heard
   before in the Word of the Truth of the Gospel." Colossians 1:5.

   THREE Divine Graces should be always conspicuous in Christians--faith,
   love and hope. They are each mentioned by Paul in the opening verses of
   the Epistle from which our text is taken. These lovely Graces should be
   so conspicuous in every Believer as to be spoken of and, consequently,
   heard of even by those who have never seen us. These flowers should
   yield so sweet a perfume that their fragrance may be perceived by those
   who have never gazed upon them. So was it with the saints at Colosse.
   Paul says, "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ
   Jesus and of the love which you have to all the saints, for the hope
   which is laid up for you in Heaven."

   May our characters be such as can be reported of without causing us to
   blush--but that can never be the case if these essential virtues are
   absent. If these things are in us and abound, we shall not be barren or
   unfruitful. But if they are lacking, we are as withered branches. We
   should, therefore, be rich in faith, which is the root of every Grace
   and, to this end, we should daily pray, "Lord, increase our faith." We
   should strive to be full even to overflowing with love, which is of God
   and makes us like unto God. And we should also abound in hope, even
   that heavenly hope which causes a man to purify himself in readiness
   for the inheritance above. See to it that neither of these three Divine
   Sisters are strangers to your souls, but let Faith, Hope and Love take
   up their abode in your hearts!

   Note, however, the special character of each of these Graces as it
   exists in the Christian. It is not every faith and love and hope that
   will serve our turn, for of all precious things there are counterfeits!
   There is a kind of faith in all men, but ours is faith in Christ Jesus,
   faith in Him whom the world rejects, whose Cross is a stumbling block
   and whose doctrine is an offense. We have faith in the Man of Nazareth
   who is also the Son of God. We have faith in Him who, having made
   atonement by His own blood once and for all, is now exalted at His
   Father's right hand. Our confidence is not placed in ourselves, nor in
   any human priest nor in the traditions of our fathers, nor in the
   teachings of human wisdom, but ONLY in Christ Jesus. This is the faith
   of God's elect.

   The love of Christians, too, is also special, for while a Christian man
   is moved by universal benevolence and desires to do good unto all men,
   yet he has a special love unto all the saints and these the world loves
   not because it loves not their Lord. The true Believer loves the
   persecuted, the misrepresented and despised people of God for Christ's
   sake. He loves them all, even though he may think some of them to be
   mistaken in minor matters. He has love to the babies in Grace as well
   as to the grown saints--and love even to those saints whose infirmities
   are more manifest than their virtues! He loves them not for their
   station, or for their natural amiability, but because Jesus loves them
   and because they love Jesus. You see the faith is in Christ Jesus, but
   the love extends beyond Christ, Himself, to all those who are in union
   with Him.

   Hope takes a still wider sweep and includes the eternal future in its
   circuit. Thus do our Graces increase in range as well as in number. Our
   hope, too, upon which we are to speak this morning, is special, because
   it is a hope which is laid up for us in Heaven. It is a hope,
   therefore, which the worldling cares not one whit about! He hopes that
   tomorrow may be as this day and yet more abundant, but he cares nothing
   for the land where time has ceased to flow. He hopes for riches or he
   hopes for fame--he hopes for long life and prosperity--he hopes for
   pleasure and domestic peace. The whole range of his hope is within the
   compass of his eyes!

   But our hope has passed beyond the sphere of sight, according to the
   word of the Apostle, "What a man sees, why does he yet hope for? But if
   we hope for what we see not, then do we, with patience, wait for it."
   Ours is a hope which demands nothing of time or earth, but seeks its
   all in the world to come! It is of this hope that we are about to
   speak. May

   the Holy Spirit lead us into a profitable meditation upon it. The
   connection of our text seems to be this--the Apostle so much rejoiced
   when he saw the saints at Colosse possessing faith, love and hope, that
   he thanked God and prayed about them. He saw these seals of God upon
   them--these three tokens that they were a really converted people--and
   his heart was glad!

   All the faithful ministers of Christ rejoice to see their people
   adorned with the jewels of faith, love and hope, for these are their
   ornaments for the present and their preparation for the future. This I
   believe to be the connection, but yet from the form of the language it
   is clear that the Apostle intended to state that their love to the
   saints was very much produced in them by the hope which was laid up in
   Heaven. You notice the word, "for," which stands there--"The love which
   you have to all the saints for," or on account of, or because of, "the
   hope which is laid up for you in Heaven." There can be no doubt that
   the hope of Heaven tends greatly to foster love to all the saints of
   God! We have a common hope--let us have a common affection! We are on
   our way to God--let us march in loving company! We are to be one in
   Heaven--let us be one on earth! One is our Master, one is our service,
   one is our way and one is our end--let us be knit together as one man!

   We all expect to see our Well-Beloved face to face and to be like He.
   Why should we not, even now, love all those in whom there is anything
   of Christ? Brethren, we are to live together forever in Heaven--it is a
   pity we should quarrel! We are forever to be with Jesus Christ,
   partakers of the same joy, of the same glory and of the same love--why
   should we be scant in our love to each other? On the way to Canaan we
   have to fight the same enemy, to publish the same testimony, to bear
   the same trials, and to fly to the same Helper--therefore let us love
   one another! It were not difficult to show that the hope which is laid
   up in Heaven should be productive of love among the saints on earth.

   This connection of my text with the clause immediately before it does
   not at all prevent its being regarded in the sense which I first
   mentioned, namely, that it was a subject for joy with the Apostle that
   the Colossians had faith, love and hope, for he would rejoice, none the
   less, because their faith was fostered by their hope. It commends these
   sweet Graces, that they are so wonderfully intertwisted with each other
   and dependent upon one another. There would be no love to the saints if
   there were not faith in Christ Jesus! And if there were not faith in
   Christ Jesus there would be no hope laid up in Heaven! If we had no
   love, it would be certain that we had no true faith. And if we had no
   hope, faith would be assuredly absent.

   If we entertain one of the Graces we must receive her sisters, for they
   cannot be separated. Here are three brilliants set in the same golden
   setting and none must break the precious jewel. "Now abides faith, hope
   and love, these three," and blessed is he who has them abiding in his
   own heart! Now we will let faith and love stand by for a little while
   and we will talk about hope, the hope mentioned in our text; the hope
   which is laid up for you in Heaven. First, it is a very marvelous hope.
   Secondly, it is a very secure hope. And thirdly, it is a very
   powerfully influential hope. May the Holy Spirit bless these three
   thoughts to us all.

   I. First, then, we speak of our hope which is laid up for us in Heaven
   as A VERY MARVELOUS HOPE and it is so if we only consider that it is a
   great act of Grace that sinners should have a hope at all! That when
   man had broken his Maker's Law there should remain a hope for him is a
   thought which should make our hearts leap with gratitude! Do you not
   recollect when you felt it to be so? When sin lay heavily upon your
   conscience, Satan came and wrote over the lintel of your door, "NO
   HOPE," and the grim sentence would have stood there to this day had not
   a loving hand taken the hyssop and, by a sprinkling of precious blood,
   removed the black inscription. "Remember that at that time you were
   without Christ, having no hope and without God in the world."

   That was our condition once and it is a marvelous thing that it should
   be thoroughly changed and that assurance should have taken the place of
   despair! In our carnal estate many false hopes, like will-o'-the-wisps,
   danced before us, deceived us and led us into bogs of presumption and
   error--we had no hope. This is a dreadful condition for a man to be in!
   It is, indeed, the very worst of all. Never is the storm so terrible as
   when in the howling of the winds the man distinctly hears the words,
   "No hope." Yet into the thick darkness of NO HOPE we once steered our
   course and each time we tried to rely upon good works, outward
   ceremonies and good resolutions, we were disappointed anew and the
   words rung into our souls with dread monotony, "No hope, no hope,"
   until we wished we could lie down and die!

   Now, though we are sinners, we have a hope! Ever since by faith we
   looked to Jesus on the Cross, a hope full of glory has taken possession
   of our hearts! Is not this a marvelous thing? More marvelous still, is
   it that our hope should venture

   to be associated with Heaven! Can there be Heaven for such as we are?
   It seems almost presumptuous for a sinner who so richly deserves Hell
   even to lift up his eyes towards Heaven. He might have some hope of
   "purgatory" if there were such a region, but a hope of Heaven--is not
   that too much? Yet, Brothers and Sisters, we have no fear of Hell or of
   "purgatory" now--we expect to taste the joys laid up in Heaven! There
   is no "purgatory" for anyone and there is no Hell for saints--Heaven
   awaits all believers in Jesus. Our hope is full of glory, for it has to
   do with the Glory of Christ, whom we hope to behold. Do you expect
   then, you who were black with lust, that you shall sit among the
   angels? "Yes, that we do," says the Believer, "and nearer to the Throne
   than they!"

   And you who have plunged into every form of uncleanness, do you expect
   to see God, for none but the pure in heart can behold Him? "Yes, that
   we do," say they, "and not only to see Him, but to be like His Son,
   when we see Him as He is." What a Divine hope is this! Not that we
   shall sit down on Heaven's doorsteps and hear stray notes of the songs
   within, but that we shall sing with the happy choir! Not that we shall
   have an occasional glance within the gates of pearl and feel our hearts
   hankering after the unutterable joys within the sacred enclosure, but
   we shall actually and personally enter into the halls of the palace and
   see the King in His beauty in the land which is very far off! This is a
   brave hope, is it not? Why, she aspires to all that the best of saints
   have received! She looks for the same vision of Glory, the same ecstasy
   of delight--she even aspires to sit upon the Throne of Christ,
   according to the promise, "To him that overcomes will I grant to sit
   with Me on my Throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my
   Father on His Throne."

   Hope reckons to be among the overcomers and to partake in their
   enthronement! This is marvelous hope for a struggling Believer to
   entertain! Yet it is not presumption, but confidence warranted by the
   Word of God! Is it not a miracle of love that such poor creatures as
   ourselves should be enabled thus to hope in God? This hope is the more
   marvelous because it is so substantial. In our text the Apostle
   scarcely seems to be speaking of the Grace of hope, since that can
   hardly be said to be laid up in Heaven, but dwells in our bosoms. He
   rather speaks of the objective of hope and yet it is clear that in his
   mind the Grace of hope as well as the objective must have been
   intended, because that which is laid up in Heaven is not a hope except
   to those who hope for it! It is clear that no man has a hope laid up in
   Heaven unless he has hope within himself.

   The truth is that the two things--the Grace of hope and its
   objective--are here mentioned under one term, which may be intended to
   teach us that when hope is worked in the heart by the Holy Spirit, it
   is the thing hoped for, even as faith is the thing believed, because it
   realizes and secures it. Just as faith is the substance of things hoped
   for and the evidence of things not seen, so is hope the substance of
   the thing it expects and the evidence of the thing it cannot see. Paul,
   in this case, as in many others, uses language rather according to the
   theological sense which he would convey than according to the classical
   usage of the Greek tongue. The words of a heathen people must be
   somewhat strained from their former use if they are to express Divine
   Truth and Paul does thus stretch them to their utmost length in this
   case.

   The hope of the true Believer is so substantial that Paul even speaks
   of it as though it were the thing itself and were laid up in Heaven!
   Many a man has a hope of wealth, but that hope is a different thing
   from being wealthy. There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,
   says the old proverb, and how true it is! A man may have a hope of old
   age, yet he may never reach even middle life, and thus it is clear that
   the hope of long life is not, in itself, longevity. But he that has the
   Divine hope which grows out of faith and love has a hope which shall
   never be disappointed, so that the Apostle speaks of it as being
   identical with the thing hoped for and describes it as laid up in
   Heaven! What a marvelous hope is this which long before its realization
   is treated as a matter of actual attainment and spoken of as a treasure
   reserved in the coffers of Heaven!

   One marvelous point about our hope is this--it is the subject of Divine
   Revelation. No one could ever have invented this hope--it is so
   glorious as to baffle imagination! The prince of dreamers could never
   have dreamed it, nor the master of the art of logic have inferred it by
   reason. Imagination and understanding are both left on the ground,
   while the Bible idea of Heaven soars upward like a strong-winged angel.
   The eternal hope had to be revealed to us--we should never have known
   it, otherwise, for the Apostle says, "Of which you heard before in the
   Word of the Truth of the Gospel." That a sinful man should have a hope
   of enjoying the perfect bliss of Paradise is a thing not to be thought
   of, were it not that the Lord has promised it!

   I say again, imagination's utmost stretch could never had reached to
   this and neither could we have had the presumption to suppose that such
   a bliss could be in store for men so unworthy and undeserving had we
   not been assured

   thereof by the Word of God! But now the Word of God has opened a window
   in Heaven and bid us look therein and hope for the time when we shall
   drink of its living fountains of waters and go no more out forever.
   This is marvelous and it is even more marvelous to think that this hope
   came to us simply by hearing. "Of which you heard before in the Word of
   the truth of the Gospel." "Faith comes by hearing" and hope comes by
   faith--and so the Divine hope of being in Heaven came to us by
   hearing--not by working, not by deserving, not by penance and
   sacrifice, but simply by listening diligently unto the Divine Word and
   believing unto life!

   We heard that the pierced hands of Jesus had opened the kingdom of
   Heaven to all Believers and we believed and saw a way of entrance into
   the holiest by His blood! We heard that God had prepared, for them that
   love Him, joys indescribable and we believed the message, trusting in
   His Son. Our confidence is in the Word which we have heard, for it is
   written, "Hear and your soul shall live." And we find that by hearing,
   our confidence is strengthened and our heart filled with inward
   assurance and joyful expectation--therefore do we love the Word of God
   more and more! Will we not prize to the uttermost that sacred Word
   which has brought us such a hope? Yes, that we will--till we exchange
   hearing for seeing--and the message of Jesus for Jesus, Himself! We
   will always lend a willing ear to the testimony of Jesus!

   This hope is marvelous, once more, because the substance of it is most
   extraordinary. Brothers and Sisters, what is the hope which is laid up
   for us in Heaven? It would need many a sermon to bring out all the
   phases of delight which belong to that hope! It is the hope of victory,
   for we shall overcome every foe and Satan shall be trod under our feet.
   A palm of victory is prepared for our hands and a crown for our heads.
   Our life struggle shall not end in defeat, but in complete and eternal
   triumph, for we shall overcome through the blood of the Lamb! Nor do we
   hope for only victory-- but in our own persons we shall possess
   perfection. We shall one day cast off the slough of sin and shall be
   seen in the beauty of our new-born life. Truly, "it does not yet appear
   what we shall be," but when we think of the matchless Character of our
   Lord Jesus, we are overjoyed by the assurance that "we shall be like
   He."

   What an honor and a bliss for the younger Brethren to be like the
   Firstborn! To what higher honor could God Himself exalt us? I know not
   of anything which could surpass this! Oh, matchless joy to be as holy,
   harmless and undefiled as our own beloved Lord! How delightful to have
   no propensity to sin remaining in us nor trace of its ever having been
   there! How blissful to perceive that our holy desires and aspirations
   have no weakness or defect remaining in them! Our nature will be
   perfect and fully developed in all its sinless excellence! We shall
   love God as we do now, but oh how much more intensely! We shall rejoice
   in God as we do now, but oh what depth there will be in that joy! We
   shall delight to serve Him as we do now, but there will, then, be no
   coldness of heart, no languor of spirit, no temptation to turn aside.

   Our service will be as perfect as that of angels! Then shall we say to
   ourselves without fear of any inward failure, "Bless the Lord, O my
   soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name." There will be no
   recreant affection then! No erring judgment, no straying passion, no
   rebellious lust! There will remain nothing which can defile, or weaken,
   or distract! We shall be perfect, altogether perfect. This is our
   hope--victory over evil and perfection in all that is good! If this
   were all our hope it would be marvelous, but there is more to be
   unfolded. We expect to enjoy security, also, from every danger. As
   there will be no evil in us, so there will be none around us or about
   us to cause us alarm. No temporal evil such as pain, bereavement,
   sorrow, labor, or reproach shall come near us!

   All will be security, peace, rest, and enjoyment. No mental evil will
   intrude upon us in Heaven. No doubts, no staggering difficulties, no
   fears, no bewilderments will cause us distress. Here we see through a
   glass darkly and we know in part--but there we shall see face to face
   and know even as we are known! Oh, to be free from mental trouble! What
   a relief will this be to many a doubting Thomas! This is a marvelous
   hope! And then no spiritual enemy will assail us. No world, no flesh,
   no devil will mar our rest above. What will you make out of it, you
   tried ones? Your Sabbaths are very sweet now on earth, but when they
   are over, you have to return to yon cold world again. But there your
   Sabbath shall never end and your separation from the wicked will be
   complete!

   It will be a strange sensation for you to find no Monday morning, no
   care to be renewed, no toil to be encountered, no harness to be buckled
   on afresh! But above all, no sin to be dreaded, no temptation to be
   escaped! Heaven is so peaceful that the storms of earth are unknown
   there. The stirrings of the flesh are never felt and the howls of the
   dogs of Hell are never heard. All is peace and purity there--perfection
   and security forever! With this security will come perfect rest--"Yes,
   says the Spirit, for they rest from their labors." Heavenly rest is
   quite consistent with continual service, for,

   like the angels, we shall rest on the wing and find it rest to serve
   God day and night. But there you shall not toil till the sweat dampens
   your face, neither shall the sun burn you, nor any heat! No weary limb
   nor fevered brain shall follow upon the blessed service of Heaven.

   Heaven is a paradise of pleasure and a palace of glory! It is a garden
   of supreme delights and a mansion of abiding love! It is an everlasting
   Sabbatismos, a rest which never can be broken, which evermore remains
   for the people of God! It is a kingdom where all are kings, an
   inheritance where all are heirs! My soul pants for it! Is not this a
   charming hope? Did I not say well when I declared it to be marvelous?
   Nor is this all, Brothers and Sisters, for we expect to enjoy in Heaven
   a happiness beyond compare! Eye has not seen it, nor ear heard it, nor
   has the heart conceived it--it surpasses all carnal joy! We know a
   little of it, for the Lord has revealed it unto us by the Spirit, who
   searches all things, even the deep things of God. Yet what we know is
   but a mere taste of the marriage feast--enough to make us long for
   more, but by no means sufficient to give us a complete idea of the
   whole banquet!

   If it is so sweet to preach about Christ, what must it be to see Him
   and be with Him? If it is so delightful to be ravished by the music of
   His name, what must it be to lie in His bosom? Why, if these few
   clusters of Eshcol which are, now and then, brought to us are so sweet,
   what will it be to abide in the vineyard where all the clusters grow?
   If that one bucketful from the well of Bethlehem tasted so sweetly that
   we scarcely dared to drink it, but poured it out before the Lord as a
   thank-offering, what a joy will it be to drink at the wellhead without
   stint forever! O to be eternally at the right hand of God where there
   are pleasures forevermore! This is our hope and yet there is more, for
   we have the hope of everlasting fellowship with Christ! I would give
   10,000 worlds, if I had them, to have one glimpse of that dear face
   which was marred with sorrow for my sake!

   But to sit at my Lord's feet and look up into His countenance and hear
   His voice, and never, never grieve Him, but to participate in all His
   triumphs and glories forever and forever--what a Heaven will this be!
   Then shall we have fellowship with all His saints in whom He is
   glorified and by whom His image is reflected. And thus shall we behold
   fresh displays of His power and beams of His love. Is not this
   surpassing bliss? Said I not well when I declared that ours is a
   marvelous hope? Had I eloquence and could pile on good words--and could
   a poet assist me with his sweetest song--to tell of the bliss and joy
   of the eternal world, yet must preacher and poet both confess their
   inability to describe the Glory to be revealed in us! The noblest
   intellect and the sweetest speech could not convey to you so much as a
   thousandth part of the bliss of Heaven!

   There I leave the first head. It is a very marvelous hope!

   II. Secondly, let us remark that IT IS A MOST SECURE HOPE. It is so
   according to the text, because it is laid up or secured. The recent
   calamities which have occurred in connection with the Glasgow City Bank
   will make businessmen very careful where they lay up their treasures,
   but no one can entertain any fear of the safety of that which God
   Himself takes under His charge! If your hope is laid up with Him it
   becomes sinful to doubt its security. It is "laid up," the text says,
   and this means that it is hidden in a safe place like a treasure which
   is well secured.

   We find it hard to lay up our valuables safely in this world because
   thieves break through and steal. The iron safe, the strong room and all
   sorts of inventions are employed to preserve them from felonious grips,
   but when God becomes the Guardian of our treasure, He lays it up where
   none can touch it and neither man nor devil can steal it. Our hope is
   laid up just as crowns and wreaths were laid up at the Grecian games
   for those who won them--no one could snatch them away from their
   rightful owners. The rewards were safely retained for the winners, to
   be distributed when the contest was over. You see not as yet your hope,
   Beloved, but it is laid up--it is hidden with Christ in God and made as
   safe as the Throne of God Himself.

   Notice the next word, it is laid up, "for you." It is something to have
   your hope laid up, but it is much better to have it laid up for
   yourself. "Laid up for you." That is, for you whose faith is in Christ
   Jesus and who have love to all the saints. There is a crown in Heaven
   which will never be worn by any head but yours! There is a harp in
   Glory that will never be touched by any fingers but yours. Make no
   mistake about it, it is laid up for you in Heaven! It is "reserved in
   Heaven for you who are kept by the power of God, through faith unto
   salvation." "For you"-- "Fear not, little flock; for it is your
   Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Lay the stress there
   and get honey out of it. "Laid up for

   you."

   Where is it laid up? The next word tells us. "Laid up for you in
   Heaven," "where," says the Savior as though He were expounding the
   text, "neither moth nor rust does corrupt." This means that no process
   of decay will cause your treasure to become stale and worn out! No
   secret moth will eat the garments of Heaven's courtiers and no rust
   will tarnish the brightness of their crowns. Our Lord adds, "Nor do
   thieves break through nor steal." We cannot imagine a burglar's
   breaking through the walls of Heaven! We could not imagine Satan
   himself undermining the bastions of the New Jerusalem, or leaping over
   the bulwarks which guard the city of the Great King! If your hope is
   laid up in Heaven it must be perfectly safe.

   If your hope lies in the bank, it may break--if it lies in an empire,
   it may melt away. If it lies in an estate, the title-deeds may be
   questioned; if it lies in any human creature, death may bereave you. If
   it lies in yourself, it is altogether deceitful! But if your hope is
   laid up in Heaven, how secure it is! Be glad and bless the Lord. To
   show how secure is our hope, the Apostle tells us that we have an
   indisputable certificate and guarantee for it. He says, "We heard of it
   in the Word of the Truth of the Gospel." Notice these three emphatic
   words--"In the Word of the Truth of the Gospel." First, "In the Word."
   What word is that? Man's word? Man's words are so much wind! But this
   is God's Word, the same Word that made Heaven and earth! A Word of
   power which cannot fail and of Truth which cannot lie.

   You first hear of this blessed hope through the Word of God and that
   Word is the best of evidence. You know how a person will say, "My word
   for it"?--Here you have God's Word for it! We take a good man's word
   freely and will we not take God's Word much more readily? You have the
   Word of God for the sure hope that believers in Christ Jesus shall be
   blessed forever--is not this security enough? Our text goes on to say,
   "the Word of the Truth." So, then, it is not a word of guess,
   conjecture, or of probable inference, but of Infallible Truth! My
   Brothers of the modern school, my wise Brothers, have a word of
   excogitation, outcome and development--but the word the Apostle
   preached was "the Word of the Truth"--something positive, dogmatic and
   certain!

   Ugly as the word may sound, the Lord grant that we may never be ashamed
   of the thing called dogmatism, nowadays, which is none other than faith
   in God's Truth! We believe the Word of God not only to be true, but to
   be "the Word of the Truth." "Let God be true and every man a liar."
   There may be other true things in the world, but God's Word is the
   essence of Truth, the Truth beyond all things else that may be true,
   for He has said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall
   never pass away." The Apostle says in another place, "All flesh is as
   grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass
   withers, and the flower thereof falls away; but the Word of the Lord
   endures forever. And this is the Word which by the Gospel is preached
   unto you."

   Note the next word, "The Word of the Truth of the Gospel," or of the
   Good News. That is to say, the sum and substance of the Good News is to
   be found in this glorious hope! If you extract the essence of the
   Gospel and get the Truth of God, which is the central germ of the glad
   tidings, you come at that blessed hope most sure and steadfast which
   enters into that within the veil. Now, then, before your God-created
   hope can fail, the Word of God will have to be broken! But the Word of
   God cannot be broken! The Truth of God will have to fail, but the Truth
   of God abides forever and is by force of its own Nature eternal! And
   the Gospel will have to be disproved, but that cannot be, since the
   Glory of God is made to hang upon it!

   You have heard it, then, "in the Word of the Truth of the Gospel." What
   better assurance do you need? Hold to it and rejoice in it and you
   shall never be ashamed of your hope!

   III. I close by saying that IT IS A MOST POWERFULLY INFLUENTIAL HOPE.
   Brothers and Sisters, I have

   already said to you that this hope is the parent and nurse of love
   because the text says, "The love which you have to all the saints for
   the hope which is laid up for you in Heaven." Now, that is no trifling
   fountain of action which leads believing hearts to love, since love is
   always a working Grace! Oh, for more love in this distracted world!
   Whatever in this world promotes Christian love is to be admired and,
   since the hope that we shall be forever together before the Throne of
   God lifts us above the little disagreements of society and makes us
   affectionate to each other, it is a thing to cultivate with care.

   Love is one part of the powerful operation of hope upon ourselves, but
   hopefulness affects others, also. Where the hopefulness of saints is
   conspicuous, it leads ministers and gracious people to give thanks to
   God. Paul says, "We give thanks to God and the Father, praying always
   for you since we heard of your hope." I do not know a greater delight
   that a minister can have than the thought of all his people entering
   the bliss of Heaven and of his meeting them all there! We

   hardly have time to know each other here below. We have loved each
   other in the Lord and we have strived together in the service of
   God--and some of us are old fellow-soldiers. Now, after many years of
   Christian warfare, how pleasant it will be to dwell together above the
   world without end!

   Some have gone home whom we dearly loved and would almost have detained
   if we could. And there are others among us who in the order of Nature
   will soon be translated--happy are we because we cannot long be
   separated! The age of some among us prophesies their speedy departure
   and foreshadows that they will soon go over to the majority-- but it is
   a most blessed reflection that all of us who are in Christ shall meet
   together above. We shall have ample room and space enough for
   fellowship when we have reached eternity--and what will our joy be
   then! Perhaps some of you will say to me when we converse in heavenly
   language-- "You remember talking to us concerning the blessed hope on
   that fine Lord's-Day morning, but you did not know much about it! We
   said then, 'The half has not been told us,' but now we perceive you did
   not tell us the one-hundredth part! Still we were glad to share in the
   joy of what little we did know and in the blessed hope of knowing so
   much more." Oh yes, dear Friends, because the hope of Heaven in us
   helps to make other people thank God on our account, it is a sweet
   Grace and mightily influential--and the more we have of it the better!

   Moreover, hearing of their hope led the Apostle to pray and, if you
   will follow me in reading the words which succeed the text, you will
   see what he desired for his friends at Colosse. In the ninth verse you
   will see what he prayed for. He says, "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." Having believed in Jesus and loving His
   people, you are going to Heaven and so Paul says, "I desire that you be
   filled with the knowledge of His will," and well may he so desire,
   since to do that will is the joy and business of Heaven! Is not our
   prayer, "Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven"? Brethren, let
   us learn the will of the Lord now and so be educated for the skies!

   Here we are to go through our apprenticeship that we may be able to
   take up our freedom as citizens of the New Jerusalem. Here we are at
   school, preparing to take our degree above, among the instructed saints
   of God! Are we to enter Heaven ignorant of what the will of the Lord
   is? Surely we ought to know something of the ways of the place and
   something of the rules of the court! This part of our life below is
   intended to be a prelude to our life above--a preparation for
   perfection! Here below we undergo the tuning of the instruments. It is
   not meet that there should be discordant scrapings and screwing of
   strings in Heaven! No, let us do all that here! Let us have our harps
   tuned below so that when we reach the orchestra of the skies we may
   take our right place and drop into the right note directly. A good hope
   should make you eager to know the will of the Lord! It should purify
   you even as Christ is pure and make you anxious to begin the perfect
   service of Heaven while yet you linger below!

   Then the Apostle prays, "that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto
   all pleasing." Is it not fit that you who are to rise to Enoch's Heaven
   should walk as he did and have this testimony that you please God? You
   are going to dwell at God's right hand where there are pleasures
   forevermore--would you not wish to do all you can to please your Lord
   before you see Him? You are a son or daughter of a King! You have not
   put on your glittering array as yet--your crown is not yet on your
   head--but surely you wish to behave yourself as becomes one who is
   foreordained for so much honor and glory! If a son is in a distant
   country and is coming home, he begins to think, "What can I take home?
   What can I do to please the beloved father whom I am soon to see?"
   Begin, Beloved, to see what you can do to please God because you are so
   soon to enter into His pleasure and dwell with those that wear white
   robes, "for they are worthy"!

   Next he says, "Being fruitful in every good work." Why, if there is to
   be such a rich reward of Grace, let us bear all the gracious fruit we
   can! And if the time of working is so soon to be over, let us be
   instant in every holy labor while yet the season is with us! Who wants
   to go into Heaven empty-handed? Who wishes to spend the time of his
   sojourning here in idleness? Oh no! Let us seek to be fruitful to the
   Glory of God that so we may have an abundant entrance into the kingdom!
   The Apostle further adds, "Increasing in the knowledge of God." If I am
   going to dwell with God, let me know something of Him. Let me search
   His Word and see how He has revealed Himself. Let me endeavor to have
   fellowship with Him and His Son, Jesus, that I may know Him. How can I
   enter Heaven as a total stranger to Him who is the King of it? Is not
   the knowledge of God as necessary as it is desirable?

   Those who have a good hope of Heaven will not rest without knowing the
   Lord, from the least even to the greatest of them. If anyone were to
   make you a present of a great estate, no matter in what country it
   might be situated, you

   would feel an interest in the land and its neighborhood--and before
   nightfall you would be found enquiring about the place! No matter how
   rustic the neighborhood or remote the locality, you would set your
   thoughts towards it if you knew the estate to be yours. As a usual
   thing, one of the driest documents in all the world is a rich man's
   will. If you have ever heard one read you will know how it proses on
   and on in that rigmarole fashion dear to lawyers! But if you are
   present when it is read to the family, please notice how, "my son
   John's" eyes clear up when it comes to the clause which concerns
   himself and how even the aged countenance of "my faithful servant Jane"
   brightens when her small legacy is mentioned! Everyone is on the alert
   when his own interests are affected. Even so, he that has a hope in
   Heaven and an interest in Christ's great Testament will, at once, take
   an interest in Divine things and will desire to increase in the
   knowledge of God.

   Once again, the Apostle says, "strengthened with all might, according
   to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with
   joyfulness." A hope of Heaven is a mighty strengthener for bearing the
   ills of life and the persecutions of the adversary. "It will soon be
   over," says a man who looks for Heaven and, therefore, he is not
   overweighted with grief. "It is an ill lodging," said the traveler,
   "but I shall be away in the morning." Well may we be strengthened with
   all might by the hope of Heaven! It is but reason that the exceeding
   weight of Heaven should cast into the shade this light affliction which
   is but for a moment! You will say, "But have you not worked this part
   of the chapter into your subject without any guarantee?"

   No. Here is my guarantee in the next verse--"Giving thanks unto the
   Father which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the
   saints in light." I have been following the evident track of the
   Apostle's thoughts. The Lord gives us a hope of glory and then He gives
   us a meetness for it and that meetness is largely worked in us by the
   Holy Spirit through the instrumentality of our hope. Cultivate, then,
   your hope, dear Brothers and Sisters! Make it to shine so plainly in
   you that your minister may hear of your hopefulness and joy! Cause
   observers to take note of it because you speak of Heaven and act as
   though you really expected to go there! Make the world know that you
   have a hope of Heaven! Make worldlings feel that you are a believer in
   eternal Glory and that you hope to be where Jesus is!

   Often surprise them as they see what they call your simplicity, but
   what is, in truth, only your sincerity while you treat as matter of
   fact the hope laid up for you in Heaven! The Lord grant it for Jesus
   Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Receiving the Kingdom of God as a Little Child

   (No. 1439)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 20, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Verily I say unto you, Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as
   a little child shall by no means enter it." Luke 18:17.

   WHEN our Lord blessed the little children He was making His last
   journey to Jerusalem. It was thus a farewell blessing which He gave to
   the little ones and it reminds us of the fact that among His parting
   words to His disciples, before He was taken up, we find the tender
   charge, "Feed My lambs." The ruling passion was strong upon the great
   Shepherd of Israel, "who gathers the lambs with His arms and carries
   them in His bosom." And it was fitting that while He was making His
   farewell journey He should bestow His gracious benediction upon the
   children. Beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ is not here among us in
   Person, but we know where He is and we know that He is clothed with all
   power in Heaven and in earth with which to bless His people.

   Let us, then, draw near to Him this day. Let us seek His touch in the
   form of fellowship and ask the aid of His intercession. Let us include
   others in our prayers and among these let us give our children and,
   indeed, all children, a leading place. We know more of Jesus than the
   women of Palestine did! Let us, therefore, be even more eager than they
   were to bring our children to Him that He may bless them and that they
   may be accepted in Him, even as we are. Jesus waits to bless! He is not
   changed in Character, or impoverished in Grace--as He still receives
   sinners, so does He still bless children--and let none of us be
   content, whether we are parents or teachers, until He has received our
   children and has so blessed them that we are sure that they have
   entered the kingdom of God!

   Our Savior, when He saw that His disciples were not only backward to
   admit the children to Him, but even rebuked those who brought them, was
   much displeased and called them to Him that He might teach them better.
   He then informed them that instead of the children being regarded as
   intruders, they were most welcome to Himself and, instead of being
   interlopers, they had full right of access, for of children and of
   childlike persons His kingdom was composed. Moreover, He declared that
   none could enter that kingdom except in the same manner as children
   enter. He spoke with Divine certainty, using His own expressive,
   "verily," and He spoke with the weight of His own personal authority,
   "I say unto you."

   These prefatory expressions are intended to secure our reverent
   attention to the fact that so far from the admission of children into
   the kingdom being unusual or strange, no one can find entrance there
   unless they receive the Gospel as a little child receives it. It is
   this statement of the Master which affords us a subject for this
   morning, which, may the Divine Spirit open up to us and impress upon
   our hearts. I shall speak upon three matters. First, upon the secret
   thought of the disciples which the Master refuted by the language of
   the text. Secondly, upon the open declaration of our Lord in the text.
   And, thirdly, upon the encouragement which He thus gives to us.

   I. To begin with, let us deal with THE SECRET THOUGHT OF THE
   DISCIPLES--expressed by their actions though not spoken in words. And,
   first, it is pretty clear that the disciples thought the children were
   too insignificant for the Lord's time to be taken up by them. If it had
   been a prince who wished to come to Jesus, no doubt Peter and the rest
   of them would have diligently secured him an introduction. But, you
   see, these were only poor women with babies and small children. If it
   had been an ordinary person like themselves, they would not have
   repelled him with rebukes. But mere children! Sucklings and little
   children! It was too bad for these to be intruded upon the great
   Teacher!

   A word is used about the youthful applicants which may signify children
   of any age, from sucklings up to 12 years-- surely Jesus had worry
   enough without the intrusion of these juveniles. He had higher subjects
   for thought and graver objects of care. The children were so very
   little they were quite beneath His notice--so the disciples thought in
   their hearts. But, Brothers and Sisters, if it comes to a matter of
   insignificance, who among us can hope to win the Divine

   attention? If we think that children must be little in His sight, what
   are we? He takes up the isles as a very little thing. To Him the
   inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers! Yes, we are all as things
   of nothing! If we were humble, we should exclaim, "Lord, what is man,
   that You are mindful of him? And the son of man, that You visit him?"

   If we dream that the Lord will not notice the little and insignificant,
   what think we of such a text as this--"Are not two sparrows sold for a
   farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your
   Father." Does God care for sparrows and shall He not care for little
   children? The idea of insignificance must be set aside at once. "Though
   the Lord is high, yet has He respect unto the lowly." But are little
   children so insignificant? Do they not people Heaven? Is it not your
   conviction? It is mine--that they make up a very considerable part of
   the population of the skies! Multitudes of infant feet are treading the
   streets of the New Jerusalem! Snatched from the breast before they had
   committed actual sin--delivered from the toilsome pilgrimage of
   life--they always behold the face of our Father which is in Heaven. Of
   such is the kingdom of God."

   Do you call these insignificant? Do you dare despise children who are
   the most numerous company in the army of the elect? I might turn the
   tables and call the adults insignificant, among whom there can be found
   no more than a small remnant who serve the Lord. Besides, many children
   are spared to grow up to man's estate and, therefore, we must not think
   a child insignificant. He is the father of the man. In him are great
   possibilities and capacities. His manhood is as yet undeveloped, but it
   is there and he that trifles with it mars the man. He who tempts the
   mind of a boy may destroy the soul of a man! A little error injected
   into the ear of a youth may become deadly in the man when the slow
   poison shall at last have touched a vital part. Weeds sown in the
   furrows of childhood will grow with the young man's growth, ripen in
   his prime and only decay into a sad corruption when he himself
   declines.

   On the other hand, a Truth of God dropped into a child's heart will
   there fructify and his manhood shall see the fruit of it. Your child
   listening in the class to his teacher's gentle voice may develop into a
   Luther and shake the world with his vehement proclamation of the Truth
   of God! Who among us can tell? At any rate, with the Truth in his
   heart, the child shall grow up to honor and fear the Lord and thus
   shall he help to keep alive a godly seed in these evil days. Therefore
   let no man despise the young or think them insignificant! I claim a
   front place for them. I ask that if others are kept back, at any rate
   their feebleness may make room for the little ones! They are the
   world's future! The past has been and we cannot alter it--even the
   present is gone while we gaze on it. Our hope lies in the
   future--therefore by your leave, Sirs, room for the children, room for
   the boys and girls!

   Again, I suppose that these grown-up Apostles thought that the
   children's minds were too trifling. They are at their play and their
   childish mirth--they will regard it only as a pastime to be folded in
   Jesus' arms--it will be mirth to them and they will have no idea of the
   solemnity of their position. Well, well! Trifling is it? Children are
   said to be guilty of trifling! Oh, Sirs, and are you not also triflers!
   If it comes to an examination upon the matter of trifling, who are the
   greatest triflers--children or full-grown men and women? What is
   greater trifling than for a man to live for the enjoyment of sensual
   pleasures, or for a woman to live to dress herself and waste her time
   in company? No, more--what is the accumulation of wealth for the sake
   of it but miserable trifling? Child's play without the amusement!

   Most men are triflers on a larger scale than children and that is the
   main difference. Children, when they trifle, play with little
   things--their toys so breakable--are they not made on purpose to be
   trifled with and broken? The child with his trifles is but doing as he
   should. Alas, I know men and women who trifle with their souls and with
   Heaven and Hell and eternity! They trifle with God's Word, trifle with
   God's Son, trifle with God Himself! Charge not children with being
   frivolous, for their little games often have as much of earnestness
   about them and are as useful as the pursuits of men! Half the councils
   of our senators and the debates of our Parliaments are worse than
   child's play! The game of war is a far greater folly than the most
   frolicsome of boyish tricks!

   Big children are worse triflers than the little ones can ever be.
   Despise not children for trifling when the whole world is given to
   folly! "Yes," they say, "but if we should let the children come to
   Christ and if He should bless them, they will soon forget it. No matter
   how loving his look and how spiritual his words, they will go back to
   their play and their weak memories will preserve no trace of it at
   all." This objection we meet in the same manner as the others. Do not
   men forget? What a forgetful generation do most preachers address!
   Verily, this is a generation like that of which Isaiah said, "Precept
   must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon
   line; here a little, and there a little."

   Alas, many of our hearers must have the Gospel preached to them again
   and again and again till the preacher is well-near weary with his
   hopeless task! They are like men who see their natural faces in a glass
   and go their way to forget what manner of men they are. They still live
   in sin. The Word has no abiding place in their hearts. Forgetfulness?
   Charge not children with it lest the accusation is proven against
   yourselves! But do the little ones forget? I suppose the events which
   we best remember in advanced age are the things which happened to us in
   our earliest days. At any rate, I have shaken hands with gray-headed
   men who have forgotten nearly all the events which have intervened
   between their old age and the time of their childhood--but little
   matters which transpired at home, hymns learned at their mother's knee
   and words spoken by their father or sister have lingered with them!

   The voices of childhood echo throughout life. The first learned is
   generally the last forgotten. The young children who heard our Lord's
   blessing would not forget it. They would have His countenance
   photographed upon their hearts and never forget His kind and tender
   smile. Peter, James and John and the rest of you are all mistaken and,
   therefore, you must suffer the children to come to Jesus! Perhaps, too,
   they thought that children had not sufficient capacity. Jesus Christ
   said such wonderful things that the children could not be supposed to
   have the capacity to receive them. Yet, indeed, this is a great error,
   for children readily enter into our Lord's teaching. They never learn
   to read so quickly from any book as from the New Testament.

   The words of Jesus are so childlike and so fitted for children that
   they drink them in better than the words of any other man, however
   simple he may try to be. Children readily understand the Child Jesus.
   What is this matter of capacity? What capacity is needed? Capacity to
   believe? I tell you children have more of that than grown-up persons. I
   am not now speaking of the spiritual part of faith, but as far as the
   mental faculty is concerned, there is any quantity of the capacity for
   faith in the heart of a child. His believing faculty has not yet been
   overloaded by superstition, or perverted by falsehood, or maimed by
   wicked unbelief. Only let the Holy Spirit consecrate the faculty and
   there is enough of it for the production of abundant faith in God!

   In what respect are children deficient of capacity? Do they lack
   capacity for repentance? Assuredly not! Have I not seen a girl weep
   herself ill because she has done wrong? A tender conscience in many a
   little boy has made him unutterably miserable when he has been
   conscious of a fault. Do not some of us remember the keen arrows of
   conviction which rankled in our hearts when we were yet children? I
   distinctly remember the time when I could not rest because of sin and
   sought the Lord, while yet a child, with bitter anguish! Children are
   capable enough of repentance, God the Holy Spirit working it in them.
   This is not conjecture, for we, ourselves, are living witnesses.

   What, then, do children need in the matter of capacity? "Why, they have
   not sufficient understanding," says one. Understanding of what? If the
   religion of Jesus were that of modern thought; if it were such sublime
   nonsense that none but the so-called "cultured" class could make heads
   or tails of it, then children might be incapable of its comprehension.
   But if it is, indeed, the Gospel of the poor man's Bible, then there
   are shallows in it where the tiniest lamb in Jesus' fold may wade
   without fear of being carried off its feet! It is true that in the
   Scriptures there are great mysteries where your leviathans may dive and
   find no bottom--but the knowledge of these deep things is not essential
   to salvation, or else few of us would be saved!

   The things that are essential to salvation are so exceedingly simple
   that no child need sit down in despair of understanding the things
   which make for his peace. Christ crucified is not a riddle for sages,
   but a plain Truth of God for plain people. True, it is meat for men,
   but it is also milk for babes! Did you say that children could not
   love? That, after all, is one of the grandest parts of the education of
   a Christian--did you dream that children could not attain to it? No,
   you did not say that, nor dared you think it, for the capacity for love
   is great in a child! Would God it were always as great in ourselves!

   To put the thought of the Apostle into one or two words--they thought
   that the children must not come to Christ because they were not like
   themselves--they were not men and women. A child not big enough, tall
   enough, grown enough, great enough to be blessed by Jesus? So they half
   thought! The child must not come to the Master because he is not like
   the man. How the blessed Savior turns the tables and says, "Say not,
   the child may not come till he is like a man, but know that you cannot
   come till you are like he! It is no difficulty in the child's way that
   he is not like you--the difficulty is with you--that you are not like
   the child." Instead of the child needing to wait until he grows up and

   becomes a man, it is the man who must grow down and become like a
   child! "Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child
   shall by no means enter it."

   Our Lord's words are a complete and all-sufficient answer to the
   thought of His disciples and we may, each one, as we read them, learn
   wisdom. Let us not say, "Would to God my child were grown up like
   myself that he might come to Christ." No, but rather may we almost wish
   that we were little children again, could forget much that we now know,
   could be washed clean from habit and prejudice and could begin again
   with a child's freshness, simplicity and eagerness! As we pray for
   spiritual childhood, Scripture sets its seal upon the prayer, for it is
   written, "Except a man be born again He cannot see the kingdom of God."
   And again, "Except you are converted and become as little children, you
   shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven." Thus much upon the secret
   thought of the disciples.

   Now, I wonder whether any of you have such a thought as theirs
   lingering in your brain or heart this morning? I wonder whether you
   ever think in this fashion? I should not be surprised if you do. I hope
   it is not quite so common as it used to be, but I used to see, in
   certain quarters among old folks, a deep suspicion of youthful piety.
   The seniors shook their heads at the idea of receiving children into
   the Church of the living God. Some even ventured to speak of converts
   as "only a lot of girls and boys"--as if they were the worse for that!
   Many, if they hear of a child-convert, are very dubious, unless he dies
   very soon and then they believe all about him! If the child lives, they
   sharpen their axes to have a swing at him by way of examination. He
   must know all the doctrines, certainly--and he must be supernaturally
   grave!

   It is not every grown-up person who knows the higher doctrines of the
   Word of God, but if the young person should not know them he is set
   aside. Some people expect almost Infinite Wisdom in a child before they
   can believe him to be the subject of Divine Grace. This is monstrous!
   Then, again, if a believing child should act like a child, some of the
   fathers of the last generation judged that he could not be converted,
   as if conversion to Christ added 20 years to our age! Of course, the
   young convert must not play any more, nor talk in his own childish
   fashion or the seniors would be shocked, for it was a sort of
   understood thing that as soon as ever a child was converted, he was to
   turn into an old man! I never could see anything in Scripture to
   support this theory, but then, Scripture was not so much cared for as
   the judgment of the deep-experienced people and the general opinion
   that it was well to summer and winter all converts before admitting
   them into the sacred enclosures of the Church.

   Now, if any of you still have an idea in your head hostile to the
   conversion of children, try and get rid of it, for it is as wrong as
   wrong can be. If there were two enquirers before me now--a child and a
   man--and I received from each the same testimony, I should have no more
   right to distrust the child than to suspect the man! In fact, if
   suspicions must come in anywhere, it ought rather to be exercised
   towards the adult than in reference to the child who is far less likely
   to be guilty of hypocrisy than the man and far less likely to have
   borrowed his words and phrases! At any rate, learn from the Master's
   words that you are not to try and make the child like yourself, but you
   are to be transformed till you yourself are like the child.

   II. Now we pass on to our second head, namely, THE OPEN DECLARATION OF
   OUR LORD wherein He sets

   forth His mind upon this matter. Looking at it carefully, we observe,
   first, that He tells the disciples that the Gospel sets up a kingdom.
   Was there ever a kingdom which had no children in it? How, then, could
   it grow? Jesus tells us that children are admitted into the kingdom.
   No, not only that some few are here and there admitted into it, but,
   "of such is the kingdom of God." I am not inclined to get away from the
   plain sense of that expression, nor to suggest that He merely means
   that the kingdom consists of those who are like children. It is clear
   that He intended such children as those who were before Him--babies and
   young children--"of such is the kingdom of God."

   There are children in all kingdoms and there are children in Christ's
   kingdom. I am not certain that John Newton was not right when he said
   that the majority of persons who are now in the kingdom of God are
   children. When I think of all the multitudes of babies that have died,
   who are now swarming in the streets of Heaven, it does seem to me to be
   a blessed thought that albeit generation after generation of adults
   have passed away in unbelief and rebellion, yet enormous multitudes of
   children have gone streaming up to Heaven, saved by the Grace of God,
   through the death of Christ, to sing the high praises of the Lord
   forever before the Eternal Throne! "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
   They give tone and character to the kingdom! It is rather a kingdom of
   children than of men.

   Next, our Lord tells us that the way of entering the kingdom is by
   receiving. "Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
   child shall by no means enter it." We do not enter into the kingdom of
   God by working out some deep

   problem and arriving at its solution or by fetching something out of
   ourselves, but by receiving a secret something into us. We come into
   the kingdom by the kingdom's coming into us. It receives us by our
   receiving it. Now, if this entrance into the kingdom depended upon
   something to be fetched out of the human mind by study and deep
   thought, then very few children could ever enter it! But it depends
   upon something to be received and, therefore, children may enter. Those
   children who are of sufficient years to sin and to be saved by faith,
   have to listen to the Gospel and to receive it by faith-- and they can
   do this, God the Holy Spirit helping them.

   There is no doubt about it, because great numbers have done it. I will
   not say at what age children are first capable of receiving the
   knowledge of Christ, but it is much earlier than some fancy. We have
   seen and known children who have given abundant evidence that they have
   received Christ and have believed in Him at a very early age. Some of
   them have died triumphantly and others of them have lived
   graciously--and some are here now, grown up to be men and women who are
   honorable members of the Church. Oh, Sirs, you who would wish to be
   considered "cultured" and thoughtful and, therefore, able to fetch a
   Gospel out of the deep well of your own consciousness--you will never
   be saved by that process! It is not that which comes out of you which
   will save you, but that which goes into you! Inventions and discoveries
   will not enable you to enter the kingdom--you must be receivers. You
   must sit at Jesus' feet and believe what He reveals. You must let your
   artful questions and your curious suppositions lie still and you must
   become a scholar-- for the proud spirit which scorns discipleship will
   shut you out of the kingdom of God unless you crucify it! We enter the
   kingdom by receiving and, therefore, children can enter!

   The next thing in the text is that if we receive this kingdom and so
   enter into it, we must receive it as children receive it. How do
   children receive the kingdom of God? The answer must be twofold, seeing
   there are two sorts of children-- those who are mere babies and
   incapable of actual sin--and those who are quite capable both of
   sinning and believing. I shut out neither from the text because I
   honestly think they are both there. In one Gospel our version reads,
   "infants," and in the one before us, "little children." We know that
   infants enter the kingdom, for we are convinced that all of our race
   who die in infancy are included in the election of Grace and partake in
   the redemption worked out by our Lord Jesus. Whatever some may think,
   we believe that the whole spirit and tone of the Word of God, as well
   as the Nature of God, Himself, lead us to believe that all who leave
   this world as babies are saved.

   Now, how do they receive the kingdom, for in the same way must we
   receive it! Certainly children do not receive it by birth or blood, for
   we are expressly told in John's Gospel that the children of God are
   born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh! All privilege of
   descent is now abolished and no baby enters into Heaven because it was
   born of a pious father or mother--neither shall any be shut out because
   his progenitors were atheists or idolaters! My solemn persuasion is
   that the child of a Muslim, or a Papist, or a Buddhist, or a cannibal
   dying in infancy is as surely saved as the child of the Christian!
   Salvation by blood or birth there can be none, for the Gospel
   dispensation does not admit of it. If saved, as we assuredly believe
   they are, infants must be saved simply according to the will and good
   pleasure of God because He has made them to be His own!

   Neither are infants saved as the result of any ceremony. There is no
   mention in the passage of infant baptism and yet if there had been,
   such an ordinance as this appears to be a natural time for announcing
   it. Not so much as a word or a hint upon that practice can be found
   here and, therefore, I will not waste words upon a question quite
   foreign to my text. It is clear that our Lord is speaking of children,
   as such, and not as the subjects of a ceremony. Children dying in
   infancy in China and Japan are as truly saved as those dying in England
   or Scotland. Their need of (so-called) baptism cannot affect them one
   jot. Babes of swarthy mothers; infants born in the kraal of the
   Hottentot or the wigwam of the Red Indian are alike saved and,
   therefore, not saved by any outward rite, or by the mystic power of a
   priesthood. They are raised to the kingdom of Heaven by the Free and
   Sovereign Grace of God!

   How are they saved then? By works? No, for they have never worked! By
   their natural innocence? No, for if that innocence could have admitted
   them to Heaven, it must also have sufficed to save them from pain and
   death. If sin is not upon them in some form, how is it that they
   suffer? The imputed sin which makes them die prevents our believing
   that they claim Heaven by right of innocence! They die because of
   Adam's fall. Sad consequence of their being born of fallen parents.
   Mark their appealing looks as the dear little ones look up in their
   sufferings, as if they would ask why they must endure so much pain! We
   look at them with all the deeper grief because we cannot help them and
   are made to reflect upon the mysterious union of the race in its fall
   and sorrow.

   The anguish of the dying little one is a proof of Adam's fall and of
   its participation in the result. The dear babies live again, however,
   because Jesus died and rose again and they are in Him! They perish, as
   far as this life is concerned, for a sin which they did not commit--but
   they also live eternally through a righteousness in which they had no
   hand--even the righteousness of Jesus Christ who has redeemed them! We
   know little of the matter, but we suppose them to undergo regeneration
   before they enter Heaven, for that which is born of the flesh is flesh,
   and to enter the spiritual world they must be born of the Spirit. But
   whatever is worked in them, it is clear that they do not enter the
   kingdom by the force of intellect, or will, or merit--but as a matter
   of Free Grace--having no reference to anything that they have done or
   have

   felt!

   In that same manner you, O man or woman, must pass into the kingdom,
   entirely through Free Grace and not at all by any power or merit of
   your own! You will enter Heaven as fully by Grace as if you had never
   lived a godly life, nor had practiced a single virtue. I said, the
   other evening, to an esteemed member of this Church who lies dying,
   "Dear Brother, you have been a good soldier of Jesus Christ." He
   replied, "You say so, but I think nothing of what I have done. I am
   looking to Christ, alone." Just so. That is the ground of salvation!
   There cannot be any reason for the salvation of that dear baby which
   has just passed the portals of the skies--it was born of a fallen
   race--except the Grace of God! And that Grace of God which saves the
   baby must save you and me. I have nothing else to rest upon but the
   baby's Savior and no hope except the belief that the Headship of Christ
   comprehends me within itself, even as it comprehends the little one.

   Now we have to think of another sort of children--those who outlive the
   time of infancy and become children capable of actual sin and of
   knowing Christ and being converted. Many of these, by faith, enter the
   kingdom. Now, as these children receive the kingdom of Heaven, so must
   we receive it. How do the children receive it? I answer, a child
   receives the Gospel with humility, with simple faith and with
   unworldliness. Children are not held up to us as an example in all
   things, for they have faults which we ought to avoid. But they are here
   praised in this point--the way in which they receive the kingdom. How
   does a child receive it? We have said first, with humility. He is
   humble enough to be without prejudice. Take a little child and tell him
   about Christ Jesus the Savior and if God blesses the telling of the
   story of the Cross and he believes it, he receives it without having
   any wrong views and notions to battle with.

   Many a man goes to hear the Gospel with the idea that Christ is merely
   human. He cannot get rid of that prejudice from his mind and,
   therefore, he does not receive Christ Jesus the Lord. Another comes to
   hear the Word with the recollection of all that he has heard and read
   of infidelity, heresy and profanity--how can he profit till this is
   removed? Another comes with his mind stuffed with proud
   self-righteousness, with a belief in priestcraft, or with a reliance
   upon some form or ceremony. If we could get this lumber out of the soul
   there would be some hope--but all this is a hindrance. Now the dear
   child, as he listens to the story of the love of God in Christ Jesus,
   has none of these prejudices to spoil his hearing! Very likely He does
   not even know that such evils have been invented by man and he is
   blessed in his ignorance. He will find out the evil soon enough, but
   for the present he humbly drinks in the Word, and prays--

   "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look on me, a little child; Pity my
   simplicity; Suffer me to come to Thee."

   Now, this deliverance from preconceived notions is what we greatly
   need! My highly cultured and learned hearer over yonder, you must come
   to Jesus as if you knew nothing! You must begin de novo, with a clean
   page, on which Jesus must write what you are to believe. Just as your
   little boy or your little girl must believe, even so must you. There is
   only ONE way for the shepherd and the sage, the philosopher and the
   peasant. The little child receives Christ humbly, for he never dreams
   of merit or purchase. I do not recollect ever having met with a child
   who had to battle with self-righteousness in coming to Christ. A child
   cannot say, "Lord, I have been a constant attendant at Church or at the
   Meeting House for years. I have taken the sacrament regularly for
   half-a-century!" Neither can he say with the Pharisee, "I fast twice in
   the week. I give tithes of all that I possess."

   Now, when a little one believes in the Lord Jesus, it is always with a
   heart clear of boasting and with a soul which sings--

   "In my hand no price I bring, Simply to Your Cross I cling."

   That is how you will have to come to Jesus, my fine grown-up! You must
   doff those feathers of pride and strip off that finery of
   self-righteousness or you will find Heaven's gate too low and too
   narrow for you! A little child is free from the pride of knowledge--it
   has no "culture" and research to heap up before the Cross. Certain men
   will not come to Jesus because they know too much. Their self-conceit
   will be their ruin. They have read and they have thought and they have
   studied and, therefore, they know better than Inspiration, better than
   Apostles and Prophets! But my big brother, you must be diminished and
   brought down from the chair of the critic to the stool of the scholar
   if ever you are to be saved. Saving truth enters the heart--it is not
   developed from within--and it will have to come into you as it comes
   into the child, simply by believing what Jesus says, or else you will
   be a castaway. There is no other way of your entering into the kingdom
   of God but by the door which admits a child!

   A second point about a little child is that it is generally teachable.
   You do not find your children in the Sunday school, when the Lord
   blesses them, raising difficulties. They do not enquire how is the good
   news from Heaven consistent with reason? And how is this statement of
   Scripture to be reconciled with the spirit of the age? No, there is the
   bread of Heaven before the child and he eats it, though he does not yet
   know how the wheat was made into bread. That is how we must receive the
   kingdom--we must lay aside all hope of solving difficulties and simply
   believe upon the authority of God. Nothing short of this is faith!
   Children receive the Gospel without proposing amendments in it. "I
   should like your Gospel," says one, "if you would alter it here and
   amend it there." There is a clique abroad nowadays who are always for
   unsettling our faith in the old Truth of God, but a child receiving the
   Gospel knows nothing of such designs--he takes it from the Word of God
   just as he sees it there. In the same manner must we receive the
   kingdom of Heaven.

   A child receives it, too, with a wondering realization of it. When you
   tell a believing child the promises of the Word of God, how he opens
   his little eyes! How fully he believes the Word of God! How ready he is
   to ask for the blessing and to receive it and act upon it! It is, to
   him, a matter of undoubted fact! I have seen people who profess to be
   Christians smiling at the matter-of-fact way in which a child has
   believed the Word of God--and yet we ought to believe it in the same
   way--and we shall never enter into the enjoyment of it till we do! In
   the child's simple, honest, hearty way, we must believe the Word to
   mean what it says and to be a reality and a truth--and only then shall
   we know the marrow and fatness of the Gospel!

   Once again, the child receives the Gospel in an unworldly manner. He
   has not to think of how he shall meet those heavy bills tomorrow, nor
   even of how he shall provide for his daily bread. He has not much to
   think of at all except that which he is taught. It is a grand thing to
   give all one's mind to the teaching of Jesus, for then we are sure to
   learn! It is beautiful to see how contented children are. A child of a
   poor man is just as happy as a young prince--with a few bits of platter
   to play with, he is just as much at ease as if he could handle diamonds
   and rubies. The child has no ambition for great things. Why should boys
   and girls care for stars? They are satisfied with their lot--they crave
   not for thrones and kingdoms! Give them enough dirt to make a pie and
   they will be as merry as the birds in spring and much more satisfied
   than a millionaire if he could obtain sole possession of the Bank of
   England! In this respect children have an advantage over us because
   when they receive the kingdom of God they are not already full with the
   thoughts of the world and the cares of riches.

   If you notice, our Savior has placed this incident just before that of
   the rich young man who went away sorrowful, as much as if He would set
   before us the man with his possessions who loses the kingdom in
   contrast with the child with none--and thinking about none--who
   receives the kingdom! Oh that you who are unsaved would let your
   business alone awhile and give your whole minds to seeking Christ! He
   is your main need! Oh that you would forget your worldly concerns a
   little and go into your chamber and cry, "Great God, I will seek after
   nothing else but You until I find You. I must have Christ or die! Lord,
   I cast all else aside and resolve to wait upon You till I am washed
   from sin and admitted into Your kingdom."

   Now, I think I hear someone murmur, "If this is true, what is the use
   of the exercise of private judgment?" The highest result of the
   exercise of judgment is that you resolve to sit at Jesus' feet! You do
   not resign yourself to any pope, preacher, or human leader--but since
   Jesus is God, you feel quite safe in accepting His Infallible Word as
   your guide and, like a child, you sit at His feet! "Well," asks
   another, "but what is the use of our obtaining learning and knowledge?"
   Here is one of the uses of it--it is not your learned man who rejects
   Christ--it is your man who has a

   smattering of learning and boasts of it! He that has an honest heart
   and is deeply learned always feels it sweet to be a child in the
   Presence of his God. The most gigantic minds in the world are the most
   childlike. Learn as much as ever you can and investigate as far as ever
   you please! But if God sanctifies your learning, it will help to make
   you more childlike so that you will all the more readily learn of
   Jesus!

   "But then, what is the use of experience?" This is the best use of
   experience! What little I have ever had of experience has taught me
   that I cannot trust myself at all. It has taught me that I can neither
   think a good thought nor do a right act apart from my Master! My
   experience teaches me to be sure of nothing unless I have it from my
   Lord's mouth and I think the more experience any man obtains the more
   will he be of that mind. "Still," says one, "surely we must advance in
   capacity and in attainments and become men?" I admit that very freely,
   but when in knowledge you are men, then in teachableness you will be
   quite sure to be children, for the greater a man becomes in the kingdom
   of God, the more a child he becomes! Yes, the greatest among us, who
   sat as high above us as the heavens are above the earth, is One who was
   called, "The Holy Child Jesus." When we see Him sitting in the midst of
   children who cluster all round Him while He clasps one and another to
   His bosom, we perceive that He is wonderfully much at home! We see He
   is just a holy, tender, lovely Man-Child, Himself, loving and being
   loved! Let us try to be such!

   Do you not all love a man who is childlike in the frankness and
   loveableness of his nature? Do you not all wish that you could grow
   into children in simplicity and live a child's life in freedom from
   care? That is the use of increased capacity, that you may be more
   capable of being children--that you may have more capacity to receive
   the Truth from God because you are more conscious of your ignorance and
   emptiness. He is the best receiver who feels himself to be thoroughly
   empty and is, at the same time, as willing to be taught as a little
   child.

   III. My time has gone before I noticed it and I must only say two or
   three words upon the last head, namely, THE GREAT ENCOURAGEMENT given
   by our Lord in the text. I cannot expatiate, but I pray you consider
   it, each one for himself. First, to all parents and teachers. Let us
   rejoice in the conviction that our children may be brought to Christ
   and let us labor earnestly to bring them, however little they may be! I
   hope we prayed about them while they yet knew nothing of our prayers
   and I hope we shall continue to pray for them till we see them safe in
   the arms of Jesus.

   Next, what an encouragement this is to children! I am always glad to
   see the little ones so desirous to come to the Tabernacle service. I
   hope they can understand a good deal of what is said. Yes, I am sure
   they do, for I see their beaming faces! Dear little children, come to
   Jesus! Do not wait till you grow up, but seek the Lord early, for His
   promise is, "They that seek Me early shall find Me." And then what
   encouragement this is to all who are childlike! You feel that you do
   not know much; you mourn your lack of capacity for grasping the lofty
   Truths of the Word. You feel willing to be anything or nothing so that
   you may but be saved--surely the reception of the children will
   encourage you in the belief that Jesus will accept you!

   And last of all, to my mind it is a sweet comfort concerning our race
   over which we have such cause to mourn. After all, when we think of
   infants being saved and of the Lord saying, "Of such is the kingdom of
   Heaven," we shall hope that out of all kindreds, nations and tongues
   there will be a number that no man can number in whom Christ shall see
   of the travail of His soul! Millions of infant souls compose the family
   above! If you have lost infants, you will rejoice when you remember
   that you will go to them though they will not return to you!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Great Emancipator

   (No. 1440)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And you shall say unto Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is My son,
   even My firstborn: and I say unto you, Let My son go, that he may serve
   Me." Exodus 4:22,23.

   "Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shall you see what I will do to
   Pharaoh."

   Exodus 6:1.

   GOD had a people in Egypt. They were His own, the people of His choice.
   Although they had been grievously oppressed and had sunk into
   ignominious slavery, His interest in their welfare had in no degree
   lessened. The Lord's purpose in sending Moses down into Egypt was that
   He might fetch out that people from among the nations to make them a
   separate people to Himself that He might give them an inheritance, even
   the land which flowed with milk and honey and that they might dwell
   there as witnesses of His Covenant and keep His Testimonies. Now
   precisely what God was doing towards His people, Israel, in the land of
   Ham, He is doing towards His own chosen ones throughout the whole
   world.

   From one point of view the object of the Gospel is to gather out from
   among the nations a people whom He did foreknow, whom He did
   predestinate, whom He has redeemed unto Himself to be His peculiar
   heritage. These are to be fetched out from among others. They are to be
   made a separate people to be brought into a distinct position and to
   have a distinct experience. "The people shall dwell alone; they shall
   not be reckoned among the nations" and they are ultimately to be
   brought to a prepared place for which they are to be especially
   prepared that they may abide there and that the Lord may verify the
   thing that He has predicted of them, "They shall be Mine in that day
   when I make up My jewels."

   The work of rescuing perishing sinners out of the present evil world is
   as worthy of God as the work of delivering Israel out of Egypt. The
   same right hand of Jehovah, glorious in power, which released the sons
   of Jacob from the thralldom of Pharaoh, is now stretched out to ransom
   us from the dominion of Satan! The song of praise to Jesus Christ our
   Redeemer shall be more exultant than that which Miriam and the
   daughters of Israel lifted up by the Red Sea when they said, "Come let
   us sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously." Indeed, we
   shall sing at the last, the song of Moses, the servant of God and the
   song of the Lamb, clearly indicating that the redemption out of Egypt
   was always meant to be a leading type of the redemption of God's people
   from out of the midst of the world, for Christ has a people whom He has
   redeemed from among men, and there is a Church of which it is written,
   "Christ loved His Church and gave Himself for it."

   Now, in the process of bringing out these people of God from among the
   mass of mankind, God sometimes uses instrumentality just as He did in
   the former case. He may employ an instrument that is apparently as
   little adapted for the work as Moses felt himself to be. Yet the work
   is done and to God belongs the honor of accomplishing it. As for those
   of us whom He uses, we are more than content to yield the honor to Him.
   We rejoice in His excellency while we feel that we cannot take to
   ourselves any credit whatever--for we are less than nothing in His
   sight--and even in our own sight we are weak and worthless, so that
   unto God, alone, shall the glory redound when redemption's work is
   finished and complete!

   I invite you to think, first of all, upon the voice of God. According
   to our text, it is, "Thus says the Lord, Israel is My son, even My
   firstborn: and I say unto you, Let My son go, that he may serve Me."
   When we have dilated a little upon that, we shall need to have a few
   words upon the voice of man. This was to be the voice of man, "You
   shall say unto Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord." What God had spoken was to
   be repeated by His servant, Moses. Then we shall close by

   noticing, in the third place, the power which was to go with this voice
   of man. "I will be with your mouth and you shall see what I will do to
   Pharaoh."

   I. Let us endeavor, then, at the outset, to fix our thoughts upon THE
   VOICE OF GOD which was a real power to bring up His people out of
   Egypt. That voice was threefold--asserting His proprietorship in them,
   demanding their freedom and ordaining their destiny. With imperial
   authority He claims the people as His own. "Thus says the Lord, Israel
   is My son, even My firstborn." The Lord knows them that are His and the
   Lord declared them to be His own with a jealousy of His inalienable
   right to their allegiance and an assertion of His unfailing interest in
   their welfare. The children of Israel were, at that time, in a very
   sordid condition. They were up to their necks in clay, making bricks.
   They were a band of slaves, degraded, brought down to the lowest
   condition. They were so spiritless that they submitted to any exaction
   of the tyrant and when the day of deliverance dawned on them, they
   could not think emancipation possible, or welcome the joyful change in
   their prospects.

   They had, as a nation, lost the very thought of liberty! It was trodden
   out. The people seemed as if they must lose their nationality or only
   retain it as a nation of slaves. Yet all begrimed and beslaved as they
   came to be, they were still beloved. The Lord loved them! He said,
   "Israel is My son, even My firstborn." Surely Pharaoh might have said
   in his heart, "This is a fine son! What must the God be who says of
   these brick makers, this abject race, 'This is My son'?" Yes, and these
   ill-conditioned, unkempt serfs--these debased men and women, He says of
   them--"Even My firstborn, My son and heir." A man is naturally proud of
   his son and heir, yet here is the mighty God speaking after the
   language of mortal men, acknowledging these cheerless, crestfallen,
   despised and dispirited people and saying, "Israel is My son, even My
   firstborn."

   He was acknowledging them, too, in the teeth of proud Pharaoh, whose
   firstborn was saluted as a prince of the blood royal when he rode
   through the land, before whom every knee bowed and to whom, as the son
   of the great king, homage was constantly rendered. "Israel is My son,"
   says God, "even My firstborn." He is not ashamed of His people! He
   acknowledged His great love with which He loved us, even when we were
   dead in trespasses and sin, just as He loved His people Israel when
   they were still in bondage and in degradation. "He loved my soul out of
   the Pit," said one of old. He loved us when we were lying in our blood
   like an infant cast out unswaddled and unwashed. When no eye pitied us
   in the day of our nativity and we were cast out in the open field, He
   passed by and it was a time of love. And He said unto us, "Live." Oh,
   wondrous Grace of God, that He acknowledges His son when that son is
   still an Egyptian slave!

   Moreover, God acknowledged His people when they did not acknowledge
   Him, for His name, "Jehovah," was scarcely known to them. Although
   Moses presented himself to them with evident credentials, they were
   ready enough to reject him. We are informed in other parts of the
   Scripture that they had gone aside to false gods. During their sojourn
   in Egypt the Israelites fell into the prevailing superstition of the
   country and they forsook the Lord. Some little light still lingered
   among them. Some traditions were treasured and transmitted from sire to
   son in solemn trust. Doubtless there was a remnant of pious souls,
   faithful to the God of Abraham. The bones of Joseph, preserved in
   Goshen as a memorial of the oath that he took of their tribes,
   subsequently were carried through all their devious wanderings in the
   wilderness and ultimately buried in Sechem, as you read in the last
   chapter of the book of Joshua and they, I say, vouch for a fidelity we
   cannot wantonly forget.

   But the bulk of the people had fallen into the snares which surrounded
   them and conformed to the fashions of those among whom their fortunes
   were cast--whose many gods and lords were superstitiously served in
   secret. They were not a people who could have scraped together so much
   as a molehill of merit if they had tried! They were a vain and vicious
   people, prone to supplant, yet utterly supplanted. They were especially
   sinful because their marked proclivities which might have developed on
   the side of virtue were perverted into stains and stigmas on their
   reputation. Yet Jehovah says, "Israel is My son, even My firstborn."
   And does the Lord acknowledge His people when they know Him not? Ah,
   blessed be His name, He does, or else they would never come to know
   Him! We love Him, now, because He first loved us and if there had not
   been that antecedent knowledge of us--and love towards us--we had not
   now been what we now are.

   Oh, the freeness and spontaneity of the Grace of God that He should
   know His people and call them His own even when, as yet, they know Him
   not! He acknowledged this people by affirming His Covenant. "Israel is
   My son." He was referring to the Covenant which He had made with
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of old. And the Lord knows His people and
   shows favor to them, not because of anything personal to recommend
   them, for there is no superiority in their

   nature, no brightness in their intellect, no beauty in their
   disposition that can be pleasing in His sight! The only title to Grace
   in His eyes is that ancient Covenant ordered in all things and sure
   which He has made, not with Abraham, but with our Lord Jesus, who
   stands as our Covenant Head!

   We do not sufficiently reflect upon the Covenant as the great deep that
   lies under the fountain of many waters out of which all the wells of
   salvation continue to be filled with the living waters of Grace--

   "Never had you felt the guilt of sin,

   Or sweets of pardoning love,

   Unless your worthless name had been

   Enrolled to life above."

   If you had not an interest in that Covenant which He made in the
   eternal council chamber long before the earth was most assuredly in
   hapless, hopeless obscurity, you would have lived and died! This was
   the reason why He called Israel His son! An ancient Covenant had made
   Israel to be so regarded. How sweet it is that He does not merely speak
   about the people as being His people, but He says, "Israel is My son."
   There is a love between father and son which cannot be found elsewhere.
   Blood is thicker than water. Relationship has ties that cannot be
   relaxed.

   "Yes, but," says one, "Does God ever call His people, in any place, His
   sons before they are regenerate?" Well, there is a text that says,
   "Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into
   your hearts, whereby you cry, Abba, Father." It is because, in the
   purpose of God, His people are really His sons before they know
   anything at all about it, that in due time He sends the Spirit of His
   Son to give them the nature of children that they may enjoy the
   adoption of children and say, "Abba, Father." O Beloved, it is
   delightful to think that the Lord should look upon us before we are
   born--before we are born again--with a love that cannot be measured and
   cannot be broken! The gist of this affirming was thus--"Israel is My
   son. You, Pharaoh, may call him your slave, but he is My child. He was
   Mine before he was yours. Israel is My son. You say, 'No, he is my
   serf.' I say, though he has fallen under your yoke, I will maintain My
   right to him as My firstborn. He is a prince and to that estate he
   shall be raised."

   The Lord has a claim upon His people--a claim which all the claims of
   Law and all the clamors of sin and death and Hell shall never be able
   to deny. And though they basely submit to the claims of the Wicked One
   and make a covenant with Death and a league with Hell, yet shall
   Jehovah's claim upon them stand, for thus says the Lord, "Your league
   with Death is broken and your covenant with Hell is disannulled." The
   Lord Jesus will not suffer those whom He has made to be His own people
   and ransomed by the bloody purchase upon the Cross to remain the slaves
   of sin and Satan! They are His. His Father gave them to Him. They are
   His! He bought them. They are His! Their names are written on His hands
   and engraved on His side. They are His! He will not suffer so much as
   one of them to remain in bondage to the adversary.

   By thus acknowledging His people, He puts in a positive claim which
   puts all other claims on one side. With the bare assertion of absolute
   right He demands their unconditional freedom. "Thus says the Lord,
   Israel is My son, even My firstborn: and I say unto you, let My son
   go." What a grand verse that is! What an imperial edict it contains! As
   in the narrative of the Cosmos, God said, "Light be, and light was," so
   in the history of the exodus, short words are launched with Sovereign
   force--"Let My son go." Well might the proud heart of Pharaoh have
   quailed before the Almighty, whose lips asserted a right which His arm
   was instantly able to enforce. How aptly those tones apply to our
   deliverance from under the Law! The Law includes all mankind under its
   curse--the god of this world claims the whole human race as his
   subjects. In due time our Redeemer appears.

   The Lord Jesus comes, identifies Himself with the enslaved family,
   bears the curse, fulfils the Law and then on the ground of simple
   justice demands for them full and perfect liberty, having fulfilled for
   them the precept and for them endured the penalty! "Let My son go." On
   what pretext could the Law, unless it were lawless and unjust, put in a
   claim which has been discharged, or urge a right which has already been
   fulfilled? No, from under the Law the people of God go free and their
   joy is that they are not under the Law but under Grace! And how
   gloriously do those tones sound when they come with force and power to
   rescue us from the tyranny of sin and Satan! The Prince of the power of
   the air holds men in subjection. He prejudices them and so stops their
   ears against the Gospel. He seals their eyes against the Eternal Light,
   but thus says the Lord, "Let My son go," and immediately the prejudice
   vanishes, the ears are opened, Eternal Truth shines into the heart,
   scales drop from the eyes and the soul beholds the Heaven-born Light
   and begins to rejoice!

   Satan will tie a soul down, sometimes, in very heavy bondage. I have
   known him fasten a soul down with steel chains of despair such as could
   not be snapped. The man has said, "There is no hope," and he has given
   up all thought of pardon

   and eternal life. But, "Thus says the Lord, let My son go." The iron
   bands have snapped in a moment and the man has risen to hope and
   liberty, for the Lord's voice breaks the chains! Fast bound by fearful
   habits which seemed impossible to give up--having plunged into one sin
   after another--the man has been shut in by one iron gate and then by
   another and another and was enclosed in the innermost ward of the
   prison. But at midnight he has been struck on the side when he was
   asleep in his senseless carelessness.

   Around him has shone a great light--the Covenant Angel has come to him
   and led him through gate after gate! The iron gates have opened of
   their own accord and the man has found himself free and scarcely knew
   whether it was true or not! He knew not that it was true, but thought
   he saw a vision. The thing has been scarcely done before he has found
   himself to be alive and delivered from the bonds of sin, filled with
   astonishment at himself and saying, "How can this be?" His tongue has
   been filled with singing and his mouth with laughter and he has said,
   "The Lord has done great things for me, of which I am glad."

   Well, Beloved, the tones of that august voice which said, "Let My son
   go" will continue to echo as long as you and I are here below! We shall
   continue to be let go! This glorious liberty shall be made more
   manifest to us daily. Are we not as creatures made subject to vanity
   and compassed with infirmity? By-and-by we shall be liberated from the
   bondage of the flesh! Our bodies shall go down into the grave and lie
   there for a while in the prison of the tomb, but that voice which
   quickened us into spiritual life will resuscitate our bodies and cause
   them to enter into the resurrection-life of Christ! Through the dark,
   dismal vaults will sound the loud, cheerful voice "Let My son go," and
   there shall not a bone of a Believer be left.

   As it was said of old, "not a hoof shall be left behind," so nothing
   that belongs to redeemed man shall be left in the grave. "Of all that
   You have given Me I have lost nothing," says Christ, and truly, of
   person and of things--of all the people and of all that shall belong to
   the people to make up their manhood--there shall nothing be lost--the
   Lord shall have His own and His Grace shall triumph! This voice of God
   is an acknowledgment of His people and a claim for their
   deliverance--but no less is it an ordaining of their destiny. "Let My
   son go, that he may serve Me." Oh yes, Beloved, we are no sooner set
   free from serving Pharaoh than we begin to serve Jehovah! "Let My son
   go, that he may serve Me."

   And in what capacity did Israel serve God? It was in the loftiest
   capacity possible! Israel became Jehovah's priest. It was in Israel
   that the sacrifice was offered. In Israel the incense was burnt. From
   Israel went up the sacred Psalm. Israel stood before the Lord in that
   high position of sacred privilege. So, likewise, is it that as soon as
   a man is brought out of the bondage of sin, he presents unto the Lord
   the sacrifice of Christ by faith and afterwards goes on to present
   himself a living sacrifice. Thus his thanksgivings and his broken and
   contrite heart are perpetual oblations and offerings of a sweet
   smelling savor, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Israel became the
   servant of God by way of preserving the Testimony. His were the
   Oracles. Israel kept the knowledge of the one God. Israel kept the
   Revelation of the Most High. While all the world outside was dark,
   Israel preserved the Light.

   To this end, in like manner, Brothers and Sisters, you and I are called
   of God. If He has brought us up out of the Egypt of sin, we are to
   present daily sacrifice. We are to bear daily testimony to the Truth of
   God. And oh, if we do not--should we begin to stagger through unbelief,
   or speak with bated breath of the Truth that has been surely made known
   to us. Should the fear of man, or the fashion of the age so beguile our
   hearts, becloud our eyes, belie our good profession and utterly befool
   our common sense that we shall blush to bear our testimony--what shame
   must cover us! What confusion must take hold upon us! But, blessed be
   His name, He will keep His own true to His Word. If it were possible,
   the free-thinkers and the false teachers in these days would deceive
   the very elect--but that is out of the question--it is beyond the range
   of possibility!

   All God's children shall be taught of the Lord and they shall hold His
   Truth and bear witness to it, even to the world's end! Israel was to be
   God's servant to serve Him by walking by faith. What a wonderful 40
   years' walk that was in the wilderness! They did not live up to it but
   still, the spirit of that march of mystery was very wonderful. Without
   sowing or reaping they were fed! They were supplied with water without
   fountain, reservoir, or watercourse. They were guided without a compass
   and without one sign of track way over shifting sand! Yet they were
   always well-fed, well-housed and, what was still more marvelous, their
   camps were well shaded by day and well lit by night! They had a choice
   experience of having nothing and yet possessing everything! With no
   fertile fields or fruitful trees, yet Israel was made to

   live upon the fat of the kidneys of wheat and to ride upon the high
   places of the earth. She had all things and she abounded. The Lord was
   her Shepherd and she did not want!

   We are often called upon to serve God and that very conspicuously,
   though we may be little conscious of it when we are required to walk by
   faith. This is the work of God, the grandest work a man can do--to
   believe on Him whom He has sent. The godlike work, the work of works is
   this--to walk by faith, living upon the unseen God! Israel was to be
   God's servant by continually dwelling in happy fellowship with God and
   waiting upon Him with holy worship. Nowhere else, in all the world, was
   a Passover or a feast of tabernacles kept to do Him homage--and nowhere
   else was the Sabbath hallowed and observed. With them, alone, Jehovah
   dwelt and among them Jehovah shone forth. And so, Beloved, if you and I
   have been called out of bondage, it is that we may serve the Lord!

   Are we all alive to our obligation? Are we faithful to our higher
   calling? Are we doing our sworn, sacred duty? If anyone here is rescued
   this night from the grip of the Destroyer, delivered from the bondage
   of this evil world, saved from the damning power of sin--know that when
   you leave one corps, you must enlist into another corps! You come in
   fresh from the enemy's camp, not to be treated as a prisoner, but as a
   recruit! You must enlist to assail the powers and passions you once
   defended. God would have you become His servant that you may serve Him
   with joy and gladness all your days. Thus, then, I have opened up the
   voice of God as far as my time or strength or knowledge has permitted.

   II. Now, secondly, here was THE VOICE OF MAN. What a comedown it seems
   to be. "You shall say unto Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Let My son go."
   Why did not the Lord say it Himself? Why did He need to pick up a Moses
   and send him to say it? Well, dear Friends, had the Lord said it
   Himself to Pharaoh, it would have been very startling and Pharaoh must
   have yielded ultimately to the Divine fiat--but don't you see the
   deeper marvel in the milder proceeding--when Jehovah, as it were, hides
   His power and cloaks it in weakness?

   Instead of appealing to Pharaoh with that Voice which breaks the cedars
   of Lebanon and makes the hinds to calve, He speaks to him by one who
   was slow of speech and of a stammering tongue! Now, if God's voice can
   vanquish Pharaoh when it masks itself behind the feebleness of a
   stuttering, stammering Moses, it will be more glorious than it would
   have been if it had used no instrumentality whatever! Why does not the
   Lord speak to every sinner directly and bring him out and save him?
   Well--He might do so. He might do it if He would--but when He
   condescends, instead, to take us poor mortals who have tasted of His
   love and says to us, "Now you go and be My voice: you go and speak for
   Me," oh, then His Grace and power are not less conspicuous, but they
   are far more admirable! In using such ill-adapted tools for the
   accomplishment of His great designs, He shows His own transcendent
   power!

   That famous well-cover at Antwerp, just opposite the cathedral--one of
   the finest pieces of worked iron that was ever known--is said to have
   been made by Quintyn Matsys with nothing but a hammer and a file, his
   fellow workmen having taken away his tools. If it is so, the more
   praise is due to his consummate skill. All the works of God redound to
   His Glory--but when the tools He uses appear to be totally inadequate
   to the results He achieves--our reverence is excited, while our reason
   is abashed and we marvel at a power we cannot understand! This comes
   home to some of us very closely. Let us put it to ourselves. Does the
   Lord take you, my Brother, or has He taken me--and does He speak words
   of eternal power through our poor little tongues--through these unruly
   members that are prone to do so much mischief?

   If He really wins souls through them, or pulls down the pride of
   Pharaoh through them, then shall it ring through eternity that the Lord
   has done marvelous things! He has taken the worm and made him to be a
   sharp thrashing instrument, having teeth--and made him to thrash the
   mountains! He has chosen the weak things of the world to confuse the
   things which are mighty! Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings has He
   ordained strength because of His enemies, that He might still the enemy
   and the avenger. Unto His name be Glory forever and ever!

   The feebleness of the human voice has never appeared more palpable than
   when it has attempted to repeat the sentences which have been uttered
   by the mouth of the Lord. Moses seems to think that there must be some
   mistake! Can it be that God means to bring Israel out of Egypt by him?
   Whenever God designs to make His servants eminently useful, He lets
   them know their frailty. The more treasure there is in the vessel, the
   less will its comeliness be vaunted. It is mere common ware, an earthen
   vessel that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us!
   But when Moses found that he really was employed of God, how fearless
   he was of ridicule! He went in unto Pharaoh and delivered his Master's
   message.

   The interview with Moses and Aaron must have seemed supremely
   ridiculous to Pharaoh. It put him into a great rage. These two
   Israelites, wretched slaves, coming to tell the great king of Egypt
   that he must let Israel go! How absurd! Even to the Israelites it must
   have appeared preposterous, for two persons such as these to go in
   before the king. Why, with a word he could have said, "Take off the
   dogs' heads," and so have ended all the business directly! Yet they
   went and bearded him in his royal palace and delivered what he might
   think a vain menace, but what they knew to be a veritable message from
   God! Insignificant as we, of ourselves, may be, the very fact that God
   instructs us to speak might suffice to quell our fears. We must go and
   speak the Lord's message and must not be afraid of being thought
   infatuated.

   When I have sometimes bid a sinner live and believe in Christ, I have
   heard a mutter, "What is the good of telling a dead man to live?" Some
   wise Brother has said, "You might as well shake a pocket handkerchief
   over a grave." Yes, Brother, it is true--quite true. So might Moses as
   well have shaken a pocket handkerchief outside Pharaoh's palace but,
   when God bid him to go and tell Pharaoh to let His people go, he went
   and did it. And when the Lord bids any of us go to a sinner and say,
   "Believe," we cannot make the sinner believe--neither can he make
   himself believe--but the preacher sent of God is an echo of God's
   voice! God speaks through him! With authority he is commissioned to say
   to the sinner, "Turn you, turn you; why will you die? Repent and be
   baptized, every one of you."

   We are bid to speak peremptorily, as ambassadors of the King--not
   because of any prerogative we assume--but as we commend ourselves to
   every man's conscience, there is power in our message. The voice that
   speaks by stammering Moses is Divine, notwithstanding the ridicule that
   may be heaped upon it. Moses, having such a command to go and speak,
   must be undeterred by refusal. "I know not the Lord," said Pharaoh,
   "neither will I let His people go." Now, dear Brother, you cannot win
   souls unless you are prepared to meet with strong rebuffs. Yes, but
   some are heartbroken if any resistance is offered them! You may expect
   it. Old human nature does not know the Lord.

   You remember how Melancthon thought he was going to convert any number
   of people when he began to preach, but when he found out his mistake,
   he said, "Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon." So he is. You
   will come across a bit of grit every now and then which will break your
   knife. Be not dismayed, the Lord will sharpen you and make you stronger
   and stronger yet, for even that Pharaoh who said, "I will not let the
   people go," will be down on his knees presently begging the people to
   depart! We must be prepared for opposition and neither flinch nor
   quail, but brace ourselves up for the struggle.

   So, too, the man whom God sends ought to be assured of success. I am
   persuaded that Moses, after he got over his first little difficulties
   with the people and recovered from his own diffidence, parleyed not
   with doubt, but was strong in faith. There he stood with the wondrous
   rod, turning waters into blood and slaying all their fish; covering the
   heavens with blackness; turning the dust into living creatures;
   bringing hail and grievous murrain and doing it all as calmly and
   quietly as he should do who feels that he is the voice of God! How
   steadily he kept at his work! With what diligence he persevered in it,
   till at last the 10th plague found Moses unmoved, ready to conduct the
   people away to the Red Sea and to bring them out into the wilderness!

   O servants of God, be calm and confident! Go on preaching the Gospel!
   Go on teaching in the Sunday school! Go on giving away tracts! Go on
   with steady perseverance! Be sure of this--you shall not labor in vain
   or spend your strength for nothing! Do you still stutter? Are you still
   slow of speech? Nevertheless, go on! Have you been rebuked and
   rebuffed? Have you had little else but defeat? This is the way to
   success! You shall pave the road with the rough flints of your failure!
   Toil on and believe on! Be steadfast in your confidence, for with an
   high hand and an outstretched arm the Lord will fetch out His elect and
   He will fetch some of them out by jou! Only trust in the Lord and hold
   on the even tenor of your way!

   III. Our last word is upon THE POWER OF GOD. Without the power of God
   the voice of man would have been an utter failure. What effect was
   produced by the voice of Moses? Went there not forth with it a power
   which plagued Pharaoh? It filled the sinful land of Egypt with plagues!
   So men that preach God's Gospel with God's power fill the world with
   plagues. "I know that," a man says. "I wish I had never listened to
   that fellow. I could not sleep last night." No, the frogs were his
   bedchamber! The true preacher finds his hearer sometimes saying, "I
   will never go again. Wherever I am, I seem to be haunted and tormented
   with the Truth of God that man has spoken so badly and so boldly. The
   commands he enforces run counter to the prejudices I cherish! They
   alarm my conscience and worry me incessantly."

   Yes, he has made a simple sermon bring forth all manner of
   flies--thoughts that will sting a man wherever he goes and he cannot
   escape from them! He still kicks and strives against the Gospel--rebels
   against it, won't have it--gets angry; goes to the theater one night;
   joins in a little social revelry another night, but to no purpose. He
   does not enjoy anything! He scarcely knows why. Soon a thick darkness
   comes over the whole scene of life, as the darkness came over all the
   land of Egypt. All that was beautiful and brilliant is now obscured.
   All that was pleasant and joyous is now eclipsed. The man finds that he
   does not even enjoy the ordinary comforts of life! He does not know
   why. He does not intend to yield to the Gospel, yet his very bread
   seems sour and the water he draws from the well is brackish and bitter.

   His troubles multiply and follow one another in quick succession. Now a
   hail storm that leaves desolation behind! Then a grievous disease among
   the cattle. The hand of the Lord is not confined to the farm. It will
   visit your home. His terrible judgment reaches your family, your
   fondest love, your firstborn son. As of old there was a cry going up in
   the land of Egypt so that it was intolerable to stay there, so God lays
   bare His arm in the exceedingly great plagues which His terrible Law
   brings upon a man! When He means to fetch him out and bring him to
   Himself, God's servants become the harbingers of plagues! Jesus Himself
   said, "I came not to send peace on the earth, but a sword."

   That sword is unsheathed and families are divided against each other
   with the grand intent that Israel should be brought out and peace
   established by the Redemption which Jehovah has provided. What will
   occur, by-and-by? Why, the oppressor will be glad to part with his
   bondmen. It sometimes happens that the ungodly become very glad to get
   rid of God's chosen people whom they are prone to persecute. "Their
   melancholy ill agrees with our liveliness," so they say. They did all
   they could to invite them to their parties and get them into their
   frivolities again--they laid traps for them to keep them away from
   hearing the Gospel--but now the Lord has begun to deal with them!

   Their old companions say, "Now we must leave him." "I have tried all I
   could to get our old comrade back to our old parties," says one, "but,
   really, he said such things that he quite poisoned all our pleasures.
   We could not enjoy ourselves! I say, let us get rid of him. Do not let
   him be in our company any more." Yes, it is a grand thing when the
   preaching of the Gospel makes the ungodly want to keep the converts
   away from their cliques--when they say, "Oh, go off to the Tabernacle!
   We do not want you here. You have pestered us enough with your
   religion, your prayers, your crying, your tears, your talk about being
   lost and your needing to find a Savior! You are bad company and you had
   better be gone."

   A lady who joined this Church some years ago, moving in the higher
   circles of society, said to me, "I was quite willing to continue my
   acquaintance with my friends, but I found they gave me the cold
   shoulder and did not want me." Just so. It is a great mercy when the
   Egyptians say, "Get you gone," and when they are ready to give you
   jewels of silver and jewels of gold to get rid of you! The Lord wants
   His people to come right out and to be separate! He knows how to, by
   the simple utterance of the Gospel, put such a division between His
   people and those who are not His people, that even the ungodly shall
   begin to say, "Get you gone! We want to have nothing further to do with
   you!" Glory be to God when such a thing as that happens!

   And the Lord knows how to make all opposition cease, for it is written
   that when Israel came out of Egypt, not so much as a dog moved his
   tongue against the children of Israel. Before, they were such slaves
   that if a cur barked at them they dared not turn against it, for fear
   it should be the dog of an Egyptian who would be surely down upon them
   for meddling with his dog. How dare a slave do that? Everybody was
   against them. But when the Lord brought them out, there was not a dog
   that dared bark that night! The Egyptians were all anxious that they
   should be gone and willing that they should go. And Pharaoh, too, must
   have astonished his subjects with his sudden zeal to see this strange
   people gone. Do you know what that means?

   Oh, what fights and battles; what wars and strife there were in my soul
   when I was trying to find Christ! My old sins came up against me! My
   memory unearthed buried trespasses--faults and failings gathered in
   force like a flood and threatened to overwhelm me. Everything in my
   constant studies and in my daily experiences seemed to drive me back
   from Christ. But on that memorable Sabbath morning when I heard the
   word, "Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth," I
   did look and lo, against me not a dog did move his tongue! My sins did
   not complain! They were drowned in the Red Sea of Jesus' blood! My old
   corruptions--I did not know at the time that I had any--they were so
   very quiet! Temptations ceased to trouble me!

   For that little while, at any rate, the warrior seemed to sheathe his
   sword and the brick maker laid down his clay to go out of Egypt with
   jewels of silver and jewels of gold! I could sing unto the Lord, for He
   had triumphed gloriously! I have met some of these old Egyptians since
   then--a good number of them--and I have had some hard dealings with
   them. But, at that time, all was still and quiet, happy and blessed--

   "Happy day, happy day,

   When Jesus washed my sins away!" With the Paschal Lamb in our mouths
   nobody dares to challenge us. The blood on the door is an unanswerable
   answer to every accuser, caviler, or adversary! Glory be to God, then,
   who thus can fetch out His people and deliver them from their sins,
   their lusts, their habits, their passions--deliver them from
   death--deliver them from going down into the Pit and so deliver them
   that none shall lay anything to their charge, since God has justified
   them and Christ has absolved them!

   May the Lord grant us Grace to be used as His instruments as Moses was.
   And may we, each one of us, cry unto the Lord if we are in bondage,
   just as Israel did in Egypt! May the Lord in mercy send forth
   concerning every poor sinner here just such a message as He sent
   concerning His people in the house of bondage--"Thus says the Lord, Let
   My son go, that he may serve Me." If He will thus work among us as in
   the olden times, to Him shall be the glory now at this present, yes,
   and forevermore. Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Prosperous Man's Reminder

   (No. 1441)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According
   to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their
   heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten Me. Therefore I wiil
   be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I
   will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend
   the cage of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the
   wild beast shall tear them." Hosea 13:5-8.

   OUR text will lead me at this time to speak upon the perils of
   prosperity and, as those who are prospering in worldly circumstances
   make up a comparatively slender portion of any congregation, the sermon
   must mainly aim at a small class. Still, it is my duty to speak to
   these, for every word of Scriptural warning should have its tongue in a
   complete ministry and every condition of soul must be duly met by a
   watchful pastor. May the Holy Spirit enable me to make full proof of my
   ministry by declaring the whole counsel of God to all characters.
   Suffer me, however, to observe that if the subject should seem to take
   a narrow range, it is in your power to alter it very rapidly, for,
   while those who are prospering will kindly take note of the voice of
   God's Word to themselves, those of you who are not prospering may be
   profited by becoming the more contented with your lowly lot since it
   will be plain to you that had you succeeded in life you might have
   fallen into the sins denounced in our text.

   It may be that you would never have known the holy joy and sacred peace
   which you now possess if you had been allowed to climb to those heights
   of wealth which you have longed to reach. God, who knows your frame
   knew that you were not able to bear the trial of prosperity and,
   therefore, He has kept you where you are--more safe and more happy,
   though less enriched. Another class of persons may have enjoyed fair
   weather in times past, but now a cloud has come over them and they are
   troubled. Possibly they may be taught by our discourse to say, each one
   to himself, "God has taken me not so much out of the sunlight as out of
   the furnace. He saw that evils were generated by my success which would
   have caused me solemn injury and so He has removed me out of their
   reach. He has transplanted me out of the glare of the sunlight and set
   me in a place more shaded but more suited to my spiritual growth."

   There may also be some present who are eagerly aspiring after great
   things and these may learn a lesson of sobriety. A desire to rise is
   laudable, but the winged horse needs to be well bitted and reined lest
   it fly away with its rider. Some spirits are dissatisfied with moderate
   success--they pine to reach the front ranks and to climb to the high
   places of the earth. Ambition has become the star of their
   life--perhaps I had better say the will-o'-the-wisp of their folly! Let
   them learn from this morning's Word of God that all is not gold that
   glitters, that outward prosperity does not make men truly prosper and
   that there is a way of growing rich without being rich towards God.

   Another word remains to be said before I proceed further--Hosea speaks
   of Ephraim, or Israel, the kingdom of the 10 tribes--we may profitably
   view that people as a type of ourselves. Israel represents the Church
   and yet not altogether the true spiritual Church of God. They were not
   all Israel that were of Israel, for they were a seed according to the
   flesh and, therefore, they were a mixed multitude and represent,
   rather, the professing Christian world than the elect Christian Church.
   Now, I must take the text as I find it and use it for those to whom it
   can fairly be applied, namely, general Christendom, the nominal people
   of God. For this reason the lines of distinction, this morning, between
   God's regenerated people and mere professors will be but faintly drawn
   in my address. It must be so, for I shall be speaking upon a Truth of
   God which relates to a mixed people--and you must be the more
   careful--in self-examination, so that each one may take home that which
   belongs to him.

   I speak to all Israel this morning, whether they are of Israel in
   spirit or not--I speak to all the professing people of God, to all who
   meet with them at any time for public worship, or are numbered with
   them by general repute. "He that has ears to hear, let him hear," and
   may the Holy Spirit bless the hearing! And now to our discourse.

   I. The first subject suggested by the text is MEMORIES OF ADVERSITY.
   The Lord says to many of us, "I knew you in the wilderness, in the land
   of great drought." Carefully consider this by taking a review of the
   past. Have you risen in the world? Have your circumstances changed?
   Have you been raised up from a sick bed, or delivered from depths of
   anxiety? Are your circumstances now happily abounding in good things
   and blessed with the temporal favor of God? I ask you to look back upon
   the way by which the Lord's hand has led you. Look back upon your early
   trials and the mercy which sustained you under them.

   To some of the prosperous their early difficulties were very severe,
   comparable even to the great drought of the wilderness. They were so
   unhappy and so bereft of all comfort that it may be said of them that
   they sought water and there was none and their tongue failed for
   thirst. Thirst is one of the most terrible ills that can happen to men
   and such were the needs and anxieties of many a man's early days. They
   rendered existence misery and life itself a perpetual death! The
   children of Israel went three days without water--they came to wells
   where they expected to drink and found them brackish so that they could
   not drink of them. Do not many of the Lord's people remember when
   things were very scant with them--when even the necessities of life
   were scarcely to be had--when they sought friends for help but were
   disappointed?

   They were driven to their wits' end, their little store began to run
   out and they counted out their last few pence almost as men sell their
   lives. Ah, those were wilderness days, indeed! So, also, were those
   weeks which we spent upon a bed of sickness, when at night we cried,
   "Would God it were morning," and when daylight came the garish sun
   fatigued us and we wished it were evening that we might sleep again!
   Perhaps neither of these were our particular trial, but we were
   distracted with many cares and knew not on whom to depend for advice.
   We could not see our way; the thread of our life was tangled thread and
   we were sorely perplexed in the attempt to unravel it. Often we held
   our poor head with both our hands and felt as if we should lose our
   reason if fresh distractions assailed us. It was a land of great
   drought, a wilderness infested with serpents and scorpions.

   Do not let us forget that we traversed that desert road. Surely it is
   not difficult for us to refresh our memories upon that subject, for we
   usually retain a vivid recollection of our sorrows and that vivid
   recollection I would now make use of to cause the past to live again
   before you. The good point about those times was the fact that you did
   think of God. Why, then you went to Him for every meal and depended
   upon Him from hour to hour as much as the Israelites depended upon Him
   for the daily manna! The crust was hard but it was sweet, for the Lord
   gave it to you. Do you not remember when everything in business seemed
   as if it must go to pieces--one large house failed on the one side and
   another firm tottered at the other? Your own case was hazardous; it
   seemed the turn of a hair whether you would be bankrupt or not. Ah, you
   remember it, now, and you acknowledge that you then turned to God in
   real earnest, for you had nowhere else to turn! What times of prayer
   you had then! How sweet was that passage of Scripture which came like a
   prophecy to your heart! How you prized the prayers of God's people who
   cried to the Lord for you!

   Or was it sickness which tried you? Ah, then you remember how you
   turned your face to the wall and, like Hezekiah, you sought the Lord
   with tears, pleading to be raised up again. The bitterness of pain made
   you cry, "My Father, help, strengthen and relieve me." Those were the
   times when you felt that you could not live without God. If there had
   been no God to go to, you would have been driven to desperation! So,
   though you did not know Him as you would wish to know Him, yet there
   was a God for you just as there was a God for Israel when the chosen
   tribes went through the wilderness and saw His glorious marches in the
   pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by might! God was
   manifest to your spirit then, yes, and what is better, He knew you! How
   beautiful are the words, "I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of
   great drought."

   He was not ashamed to acknowledge you, then, and to have dealings with
   you. Those poor prayers of yours, which you would not have prayed at
   all if it had not been for your stern necessity, were, nevertheless,
   answered by Him and He heard you and comforted you in a very wonderful
   way! Looking back, you can see how He delivered you. It is true no
   manna dropped from Heaven, yet your daily bread was given and you were
   amazed and felt as thankful as if it had fallen from the skies! It is
   true no rock of flint gave forth a stream for you to drink, yet help
   came from people from whom you

   expected it as little as you would hope to see a fountain leap from a
   flinty rock! Somehow, by the hand of the Lord, you were sustained in
   trouble and ultimately delivered out of it. The scene is marvelous in
   retrospect and unless you believed that God's hand was in it, it would
   remain to you a perfect riddle--you feel that the only way of
   explaining your life is to believe in the everlasting hand of the
   Almighty.

   He helped you and your losses turned to gains. The burden which you
   thought would crush you was readily carried! The draught which was
   thought to be deadly turned out to be medicinal! You have now left the
   famine of the wilderness for plenty and ease--you have all that your
   heart can wish and your mouth is satisfied with good things! Do not,
   however, forget for a moment how the Lord knew you in the wilderness,
   in the land of great drought. Looking back upon that time, you see
   nothing that you can now boast of, because it was not so much that you
   knew God as that He knew you! You prayed and believed after a sort, but
   it was very poor praying and very weak believing--yet the mercy of the
   Lord was great and He knew you.

   He knew your whereabouts, He knew your temptations, He knew your
   weaknesses, He knew your needs, yes, and He knew how to meet the time
   of your need to the very tick of the clock. If He had waited five
   minutes later in relieving you, it would have been too late, but He was
   punctual in His tenderness! He never is before His time--He never is
   too late. He helped you marvelously, though you were ready to faint at
   one time and at other times were full of worldliness, murmuring and
   rebellion! In looking back, you feel compelled to say, "He knew me in
   the land of drought, but as for me, even then I walked not faithfully
   before Him, but there were wanderings of my heart, even as in the case
   of Israel, who made a calf at Horeb and bowed before it, defiling even
   that holy place, the mountain of the Lord, where Jehovah had revealed
   Himself." The Lord knew us, blessed be His name, when we were in a
   desert land, in the howling wilderness and His knowledge showed itself
   in practical help!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, have you forgotten the loving kindness of
   the Lord in the cloudy and dark day? If you have, He has not. Often in
   Scripture the Lord speaks of Israel's early days. He says, "I remember
   you, the love of your espousals when you went after Me into the
   wilderness," as much as to say, "I remember you when you were a young
   Christian and how you were willing to suffer the loss of all things for
   My name's sake. I remember when you were poor and blessed My name for
   every morsel of bread which I gave you. I remember when you lived in
   the poor little cottage in the back street and how you cried unto Me
   for help in your deep poverty and praised Me with tears standing in
   your eyes when your bread and your water were handed out to you." The
   Lord remembers a thousand things which we forget.

   The receiver seldom remembers the gift as long as the giver does.
   Ingratitude is a grievous fault, but it is sadly common and
   forgetfulness grows out of it. Yet it seems inevitable that the doer of
   kindness has a better memory than the receiver of it! Our children
   forget what we did for them when they were little, but the mother
   cannot fail to remember all she suffered for her baby--neither does she
   forget the anxiety and care with which, in her tenderness, she brought
   her child through its varied sicknesses. The Lord remembers all that He
   has done for us and He now, by the Word of His servant, recalls it to
   our thoughts, saying, "I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of
   great drought."

   Now, therefore, let us remember it also. Assuredly to have received
   special mercy from God in time of sorrow should bind us with cords of
   gratitude! Do we not feel the force of the obligation? I will not delay
   you with even a word upon that subject because your pure minds need but
   to be stirred up by way of remembrance and you will be filled with
   thankfulness to the Lord who helped you so graciously. Should it not
   also lead us to great humility when we remember what we were? How dare
   we be proud--we whom God lifted from the dunghill? He made David a
   king, and He reminded him of the time when he followed the ewes great
   with young, to pick up their lambs like any other common shepherd boy!
   What if he did become great in Israel, yet once the sum total of his
   possessions was a staff, a wallet and a sling.

   Some of us had no more when we began life. This should make us humble
   and it will be well to mingle the humility and the gratitude together
   and sing like Hannah of old--"The Lord makes poor and makes rich: He
   brings low and lifts up. He raises up the poor out of the dust and
   lifts up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and
   to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth
   are the Lord's and He has set the world upon them." All this I bring
   before you now, my Brothers and Sisters, and I wish that, as with the
   wand of a magician, I could make the past march before your very eyes!
   Then were the days of scanty bread but abundant thankfulness; of few
   changes of raiment but many cries unto the Lord; of little gold but
   much Grace, of small incomes but large cries of praise and zeal!

   Then you drank not the wine of indulgence, nor anointed yourselves with
   the oil of luxury, but yet the Lord knew you and made your spirit glad.
   Necessity often drove you to your knees in prayer and prompt answers
   turned your hearts to praise and your soul was refreshed! Let it not
   now be said, "Of the rock that begat you, you are unmindful and have
   forgotten God that formed you."

   II. We must now enter upon a sadder subject and, with the memories of
   adversity fresh upon us, consider THE TENDENCIES OF PROSPERITY. I hope,
   beloved Friends, that many of you have, through Divine Grace, proved
   superior to these tendencies and have been able to swim against the
   stream. If so, you will, beyond all others, be aware that such
   tendencies exist, for you have had to resist them with no small effort.
   I fear, on the other hand, that I should be a flatterer if I professed
   to hope that all of you have so escaped. In so large a number of
   professed Christians as we have here, we dare not hope that all have
   escaped unhurt from the furnace of worldly prosperity. At least the
   smell of the fire lingers upon some of us. Let us, with much searching
   of heart, look to the text and then judge ourselves. And the more so if
   Providence has dealt bountifully with us.

   We read in our text, "According to their pasture, so were they filled,"
   that is to say, the Israelites became earthly-minded. They were filled
   according to their pasture and not according to their God. They
   satisfied themselves with temporal goods and asked for nothing more.
   They lived upon their possessions, not above them. They made a god of
   their goods--they filled their desires and their affections with the
   good things of this life and knew nothing of the fullness of God. They
   entered into Canaan where they ate the fat and drank the sweet and
   there they settled down, content without the higher blessings of Divine
   Grace. They did not need their God, for now they were neither dependent
   on the manna nor on the stream which leaped from the Rock. If God had
   been their pasture, it would have been well to have been filled
   according to their pasture--but foolishly they tried to live on bread
   alone and the Word of God was despised.

   Alas, this is an evil into which many fall! They increase in riches and
   they set their hearts upon the riches instead of the Giver of the
   riches. Permit me, dear Friends, to recall your hearts to your first
   love and to the highest and best things. Know you not that God usually
   gives the most of earthly wealth to those for whom He has no love?
   Those who are masters of earth's treasures are seldom the favorites of
   Heaven! It is a wonder when an Ethiopian treasurer is baptized, or a
   Joseph of Arimathea confesses himself a disciple of Jesus! Gold and the
   Gospel usually go different ways. Those who roll in wealth seldom rest
   in God. How many among the princes of the earth are also heirs of
   Heaven?

   Is it not true that not many of the great men after the flesh are
   chosen? Worldly possessions are evidently lightly esteemed of God, for
   He gives little of them to His children--and the most of them He casts
   out at the feet of worldlings as men cast husks into the trough for
   swine! Do not, therefore, set a high price on that which the Lord
   lightly esteems! Your Lord and Master had none of the world's goods.
   Jesus had not where to lay His head! Do not, therefore, covet what He
   despised. Remember, again, that the quality of earthly things is very
   inferior and altogether unworthy of the love of an immortal soul. What
   is there in broad acres to satisfy the heart? What is there in bonds,
   mortgages, debentures, gold and silver to stay a soul when it faints,
   or to make a spirit rejoice when it is heavy?

   Earthly gear has its uses, advantages and benefits, otherwise we could
   not ask you to be thankful for it. Wealth is a thing to be grateful
   for, since it may be turned to admirable account for God's Glory, but
   the tendency will be for you to think too much of it and if you do, I
   would remind you that you are coming down from the position which a
   Christian ought to occupy and are acting like a man of the world who
   has his portion in this life. A child of God should continually say,
   "Whom have I in Heaven but You? There is none upon earth that I desire
   beside You." It will never do for you to dote upon your property. What?
   Are you going to dethrone your God and set up wealth in His place? Then
   in what do you differ from the Israelites who bowed before a calf of
   gold and said, "These are your gods, O Israel"? Far be it from us to
   sin in that fashion, but let us love the Lord for His mercies--and the
   more we have of them the more let us be devoted to His fear!

   Remember, again, that earthly things ought not to be too highly
   esteemed, for they may vanish from our sight. How many instances of
   this have happened around us of late! The Lord have pity upon the many
   who have had grievously to suffer by the misconduct of others. Truly in
   their case riches have taken to themselves wings and those who ought to
   have held the birds have been among the first to cause their flight!
   Hundreds were, yesterday, in comfortable circumstances and are today
   deprived of all and know not where the matter will end. You, perhaps,
   say, "The same could not happen to

   me. I have no shares in a bank. My liabilities are all limited--I
   cannot lose my property." How do you know? No man, till his last hour,
   is beyond the reach of those calamities which are common to men! There
   was never a garment which moth could not eat, or time devour--nor is
   there gold or silver in human coffers which the thief could not steal
   somehow or other--in spite of iron safes, legal documents, sound
   investments and experienced prudence! Riches are but as the mist of the
   morning, or the smoke from the chimney. They will certainly perish in
   the using--take care that you do not perish with them!

   Once more, remember that even if wealth does not fly away, you may soon
   lose all power to enjoy it. What is the value of a thousand a year to a
   man who is paralyzed? To one who lies upon his back from morning till
   night, of what use is the park and the estate which he cannot see? To
   one who has to be confined to his chamber, of what use is it that he
   has the means of traveling round the world? The Lord can take away from
   a man his taste and of what use are his dainties, then? His eyesight,
   and of what value are his works of art? His hearing, and of what use
   are the daughters of music? The Lord can leave us the apparent blessing
   and yet the soul of it may have gone with the power to enjoy it!
   Moreover, how soon must you leave these temporal comforts! The day must
   come when you must bid farewell to house and garden, children and
   friends and all that you possess--and, "Earth to earth, dust to dust,
   ashes to ashes," must be the end of you as well as of the poorest man
   that ever begged his bread! Do not, therefore, set your heart upon
   these toys, nor let your mind be filled by them, for if you do, you
   have already met with one of the most serious of the evils which haunt
   a successful life.

   The next peril is that of greediness, for, according to the text, these
   people were filled twice. "According to their pasture, so were they
   filled; they were filled." Their fullness is mentioned twice. They were
   not satisfied with being filled--they must be filled again. What
   numbers of persons there are who, when they were in their low estate,
   thought if they could ever amass a certain sum they would be perfectly
   satisfied? But when they reached that point, they laughed at their own
   folly! "Oh," they said, "if I might double, or triple, or multiply it
   ten-fold, then I should reckon that I had enough of this world and I
   would begin to think of eternal matters." But even when they reach that
   ten-fold height they are not one whit more content--they still long for
   something more.

   They are like men who drink sea water to quench their thirst--they
   become still more thirsty. The danger of worldly wealth lies in this,
   that a man at last gets to be nothing better than an ox yoked to the
   plow clogged with thick clay. Like a horse harnessed to a chariot, the
   more there is attached to such a man, the heavier his toil. Instead of
   gaining greater enjoyment, many a rich man only accumulates heavier
   care as his fortune increases. In the case of those in the text, they
   cared only for themselves--"they were filled--they were filled." They
   never thought of consecrating their substance to God. No, it was
   retained for filling themselves. They thought not of blessing the name
   of God for enabling them to get wealth, nor of making every mercy to be
   a wing upon which the grateful soul would soar on high.

   No, their whole mind was given to filling and being filled again. There
   was no living above it all. They lived for it; they lived by it and
   lived under it like moles burrowing in the earth. "They were filled,
   they were filled." Alas for those who can be filled with this poor
   earth! They will have no portion in the world to come, for they have
   received their good things and their turn will come to dwell with that
   rich man of whom our Lord spoke who went from faring sumptuously to
   suffering eternally!

   What came next? They were filled and their heart was exalted. This is
   that of which the Lord warned His people in Deuteronomy 8:12- 14. "Lest
   when you have eaten and are full, and have built good houses, and dwelt
   therein; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver
   and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; then
   your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, which
   brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."
   As for those in our text, they were rich and felt that they were
   somebodies. When they were in the wilderness, in the land of drought,
   their God was everything--but now they were filled and they were
   swollen with self-importance! Their bags were full, their barns were
   bursting, their lands were far-reaching and, therefore, they thought
   highly of themselves as if a man could be measured by the acre, or
   reckoned up in pounds, shillings and pence.

   "A man's a man for a' that," said the homely poet, when he sang of
   those who have neither rank nor money. Many men are swollen by the meat
   they feed on and poisoned by their mercies till they are bloated with
   arrogance and begin to despise their fellows. Children of God whom they
   were once pleased to associate with, are now, "so very vulgar." They
   despise those who are much better than themselves--more prayerful and
   more holy--and they leave their company to go

   into society as if the children of God were not the best society under
   Heaven! Alas, some professors choose their company not by rules of
   Grace, but of wealth! The saints have not so much corn and wine and
   oil, nor can they ride so high a horse as the prosperous sinners and,
   therefore, the base-born professor turns his back on them. Poor
   Lazarus, whom once they would have honored, now lies at their gate full
   of sores for dogs to lick! They value not the people of God for their
   character, but because they are poor, they speak lightly of them.

   When the deceitfulness of riches works its way, there is no longer any
   walking humbly with God, nor simple dependence upon Him. There is
   little or no prizing of Grace and seeking after it as for hidden
   treasure--are not the barns full--and is that not enough? And now the
   spiritual worship of God becomes too plain and commonplace and
   something more pleasing to the eye and to the flesh must be sought
   after. The Israelite only saw the Temple on certain days of the year
   and then the main sight was a sacrifice--and so the great ones asked
   for something more pompous, more impressive to the eyes--hence came the
   oxen set up at Dan and Bethel with services most pompous and
   performances most abundant!

   Today, also, the simple worshippers of the unseen God carry on a
   worship which is too bare and unadorned! There is nothing aesthetic
   about it and, therefore, the great ones must go off to the national
   religion even as Ephraim did in the days of Jeroboam--for there they
   can have dainty dresses, fine music, the smell of incense and all that
   can charm the tastes! Besides, do not all the rest of the wealthy of
   the land go that way? Hence we see men forsake their former associates,
   having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. Their hearts
   are exalted by their prosperity and God and His people and His Truth
   may all go. Better far that riches had never come near them! Examples
   are close at hand.

   And what next? It is further written, "They have forgotten Me." Their
   God was forgotten, even Him to whom they owed all things! Ah, they
   would talk much about Him in their humble days, when they met with
   those that thought upon His name! But now there is not a word for God.
   Then they spoke often, one to another. But now God is seldom mentioned,
   for He is not much known in fashionable society! The Lord Jesus is
   seldom spoken of, for how should the carpenter's Son be the theme of
   polite conversation? I am not saying that this is the case with anyone
   here present, but as this is the tendency of prosperity, I should not
   wonder if some of you are yielding to it!

   Therefore, awaken yourselves to escape the evil--to forget that only
   God is fullness and that outward possessions are emptiness apart from
   Him! The tendency of the outward possession is to make us forget that
   it is only the shell and God must be the kernel of all true comfort and
   delight. Prosperous men are apt to forget that they will find out, very
   soon, how much they need the Lord. While the prosperous man is looking
   over his accounts and storing up his gold, he may dare to forget God,
   but when he comes to himself and repents of his worldliness, he will
   have to creep to Jesus' feet like the poorest servant on his farm! If
   saved from his idolatry of money, he will have to cry unto the Lord to
   manifest Himself to him even as He did when he could scarcely find
   himself with bread from day to day!

   It will not do, my Brothers and Sisters, for us to exalt ourselves and
   act as if we were independent of God, for our very being rests on His
   will and we are nothings and nobodies! It would not do for the
   successful preacher to pride himself upon the number of his
   congregation or upon the power which he wields over men's minds, for,
   after all, he is nothing but a poor sinner spared through the
   compassion of God and pardoned through Jesus Christ, even as others!
   Humble gratitude is the only safe and right and happy condition of the
   mind in prosperity. Now, have you not seen, even if you have not felt
   it in yourself, that many persons who prosper in the world forsake
   religion altogether? While they were in humble circumstances, one had
   hope for them, but now they seem quite out of reach of sanctifying
   influences.

   Have you not seen others grow cold and worldly? I will not ask if you
   have felt this declension in yourselves, but have you not noticed it in
   others? They used to be at every Prayer Meeting, but now they cannot
   find time! They worked hard in the Sunday school, but now their
   energies are overtaxed with doing nothing! Now that they have much more
   opportunity of serving God and more to serve Him with than they ever
   had before, they do less than in their humbler times! Do you not know
   some--may it not be so with yourselves--who do not walk so near to God,
   now, as they used to do? Barefooted they kept the way of the Lord--but
   in velvet slippers they go astray! Richer times have come for them, but
   they are not happier because they are further off from God! Is not this
   very grievous and will it not provoke the

   Lord?

   I will ask you one question. Can you find in the Word of God one
   instance of a man of God who was injured by his troubles? Do they not
   all, like Job, come out of the furnace of affliction much profited? Let
   me then ask another question. Is it not almost a rule with us, though
   it ought not to be, that our prosperity is our loss? David, when hunted
   like a partridge on the mountains, glorified the Lord his God! But
   David, when he lived in a palace, sinned again and again, so that the
   Holy Spirit draws a distinction between his earlier and his latter
   life, for it is written of Jehoshaphat that he walked before the Lord
   in the first ways of his father, David. Solomon, the wisest man that
   ever lived, was not proof against prosperity. He had all he could
   desire and then his earthly loves stole away his heart.

   Take one case which will give both sides of the matter. See Hezekiah
   with Sennacherib's letter, spreading it before the Lord in faith--he
   is, then, an example in history--a man of God to be envied for his
   prayers of faith. He is far fallen when his realm is at peace and his
   riches are multiplied, for he becomes vainglorious and displays to the
   Babylonian ambassadors all his treasures and provokes the Lord his God!
   Brothers and Sisters, I wish you great prosperity, but far more do I
   wish you great Grace that you may carry a full cup with a steady hand!
   There is need to pray for men who are going up hill lest they fall upon
   their high places. In our low estate Grace will surely be given, for
   the Lord pities us! But when we are rising, we have double need to
   pray, for God resists the proud!

   III. Under the third head we must consider VISITATIONS OF RETRIBUTION.
   Ingratitude to God, of the kind I have described, is sure to bring with
   it, in the case of the Believer, heavy chastisements and in the case of
   the unbeliever, sure and overwhelming punishments! Now please notice
   what the Lord says, "Therefore I will be unto them as a lion; as a
   leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that
   is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the cage of their heart, and
   there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them."

   In the case of men who have prospered in this world and turned aside
   from God, it often happens that fierce trials come upon them such as
   are here described under the figure of a lion, a leopard, a bear and a
   wild beast. In the case of the Israelite nation, this prophecy was
   singularly fulfilled, for, according to the seventh chapter of the book
   of Daniel, nations comparable to the lion, the leopard, the bear and
   the wild beast, namely the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, and the
   Roman empires all dealt with the Jews and brought them into subjection.
   I do not lay any stress upon that, as though I were interpreting
   prophecy, but it is very amazing that those four beasts mentioned here
   should be the very four afterwards mentioned in the visions of Daniel!

   I prefer to take the metaphorical meaning. We are here taught that as
   God visited His people, Israel, with stroke upon stroke and made His
   great wrath to be known, so has He often done against backsliding
   believers. God is a shepherd to His people to guard them from the lion,
   but when His people depart from Him, He Himself becomes as a lion to
   them! I have seen rich professors with God against them. I have seen
   the man multiplying wealth and multiplying sorrow! His sons have grown
   up to vice and profligacy, using their father's wealth to indulge their
   passions, till the old man has been ready to tear his hair in anguish.
   His own children have been as lions to him! Have we never known such
   persons, too, living entirely to themselves? They have become the
   victims of wretched manias which have made them believe themselves to
   be poor while surrounded with luxury!

   Such despondencies are worse than a bear robbed of her whelps. Have we
   not known millionaires haunted with the dread of sudden disaster as
   though God would leap upon them like a leopard? Men have been struck
   down with depression of spirit so that they could not rejoice in
   anything--they seemed to be torn by their own thoughts, as by wild
   beasts--and yet they had more than heart could wish! When the Lord had
   multiplied mercies around them they had not used them for His Glory,
   but only filled themselves with them and, therefore, the Lord visited
   them in anger for their selfish ingratitude. It is often a great mercy
   when God sends these heavy trials, for if they befall His own children,
   it is by such trials that He drives them home to Himself! The lions
   roar them back to Christ and the leopards and the bears drive them home
   to their old standing so that they return unto their Savior and Jesus
   is again precious to them.

   But sometimes these wild beasts are of a spiritual character. Doubts,
   fears, horrors come forth from the Lord against the backsliders in
   heart. The Lord, who was all gentleness, kindness and love to them, now
   seems to have become their enemy! This is sadly the case with any of us
   when we forget God. We turn to His Word and it threatens us! We get to
   our knees and we cannot pray! Thoughts of our past sins haunt us. We
   have no peace with God, no rest day nor night! God lets loose all the
   wild beasts upon us and we cannot escape, they tear and maul us. Ah, He
   knew us in the land of drought

   and then He multiplied our mercies--but we went away from Him and
   became cold of heart and it is, therefore, no wonder that now He
   withdraws His consolations and sends furious convictions to hunt us
   down.

   It is God's way of saving us, making our very destructions to be the
   means of our salvation, by driving us out of ourselves. Our God will
   not suffer His people to build their nests here. You may be sure of
   that! We are not of the earth, neither will our heavenly Father suffer
   us to be filled with the earth. If He has ordained us to eternal life
   by Christ Jesus, He will drive us out of the haunts of deadly
   selfishness by lions, by bears, by leopards, by wild beasts, or by some
   means or other and He will fetch us to Himself. Did you notice one
   passage here in this threat where the Lord speaks of the trouble as
   coming terribly home to His people's hearts? "I will rend the cage of
   their heart." That is to say, He will tear that which encloses and
   shuts up their heart. When a man loves the world it shuts up his heart,
   blocks it all round and leaves no room for God. It is a great blessing
   when God rends the cage of a man's heart and opens it once again to the
   entrance of the Truth of God. It is a sweet thing to have the heart
   opened as Lydia's was, by the sacred key of love--but when we forget
   God and backslide--the keyhole is stuffed up and the key will not work.

   The heart suffers from fatty degeneration until it might almost be said
   of the children of God even as of worldlings, "Their heart is as fat as
   grease." There is no getting at them, no making them feel--they have
   but little life, little love, little zeal for God and, therefore, the
   Lord sends these lions, leopards and bears and they rage and rend until
   at last they tear the cage of the heart. Then the man undergoes a death
   of despair--but what a mercy it is that the Lord raises him up,
   by-and-by, to the life of hope, even as a little further down in this
   chapter we read those precious Words of God, "I will ransom them from
   the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death." The Lord brings
   up His poor dead child, again, and gives him life and joy and then he
   truly lives in the service of his Lord.

   Now, Sinners, if, after God has been very gracious to you, you will not
   learn the lesson of His love, but refuse Christ, you will be given up
   to destruction! And as for lions, leopards, bears, or worms that never
   die and fires that never can be quenched, these are only faint emblems
   of the woe which will come upon you because you have refused the Lord!
   As for you who are Believers, He will not utterly destroy you, but if
   you turn aside from Him you will make a rod for yourselves and let
   loose bears and lions which the Lord would have kept caged if you had
   walked near to Him. "When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes his
   enemies to be at peace with him" so that the beasts of the field and
   the stones of the field are at league with the man that is living near
   to God. But if you walk contrary to Him, He will walk contrary to you
   and He will call for His lions and beasts of prey, that they may
   trouble and molest you! He will give you water that you die not for
   thirst, but it shall be the water of bitterness! And He will give you
   bread to eat, that you faint not, but it shall be mingled with ashes
   till your soul shall abhor its ingratitude and turn unto the Lord.

   If I had time I would have spoken upon a fourth head, but I can do no
   more than say that close upon the text there are --INTIMATIONS OF
   MERCY. See what intimations of mercy there are in the next verse. "O
   Israel, you have destroyed yourself, but in Me is your help." There is
   help for the wanderer and help for the man who has grieved His God!
   Read also these Words of God, with which the next chapter opens, and
   may the Holy Spirit help you to carry them out, "O Israel, return unto
   the Lord your God; for you have fallen by your iniquity. Take with you
   words and turn to the Lord: say unto Him, Take away all our iniquity
   and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. I
   will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for My anger is
   turned away from him."

   The Lord fulfill those Words for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Sorrow at the Cross Turned into Joy

   (No. 1442)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING NOVEMBER 3, 1878,

   BY C.H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE NEWINGTON.

   "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that you shall weep and lament, but
   the world shall rejoice: and you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow
   shall be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in travail, has sorrow,
   because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child,
   she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the
   world. And you now, therefore, have sorrow: but I will see you again,
   and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man will take from you."
   John 16:20-22.

   WE were singing, just now a hymn in which the first verse started a
   difficult question--

   "'It is finished.' Shall we raise

   Songs of sorrow, or of praise?

   Mourn to see the Savior die,

   Or proclaim His victory?" The case is very well argued in the second
   and third verses--

   "If of Calvary we tell,

   How can songs of triumph swell?

   If of man redeemed from woe,

   How shall notes of mourning flow?

   Ours the guilt which pierced His side,

   Ours the sin for which He died;

   But the blood which flowed that day

   Washed our sin and guilt away." The conclusion at which we arrived in
   the concluding verse seems to me to be the right one--

   "Lamb of God! Your death has given

   Pardon, peace and hope of Heaven:

   'It is finished.'Let us raise

   Songs of thankfulness and praise!" The chief thought connected with the
   Redeemer's death should be that of grateful praise! That our Lord Jesus
   Christ died upon the Cross is a very natural cause for sorrow and well
   may they who pierced Him--and we are all among the number--look unto
   Him and mourn for their sin and be in bitterness for Him as one that is
   in bitterness for his firstborn.

   Before we know that we are pardoned, our grief may well be exceedingly
   heavy, for till sin is put away we stand guilty of the Savior's blood!
   While our souls are only conscious of our guilty share in the
   Redeemer's blood, we may well stand aghast at the sight of the accursed
   tree, but the case is altered when, by faith, we discern the glorious
   fruit of our Lord's sufferings and know that on the Cross He saved us
   and triumphed in the deed. The feeling of sorrow at the sight of the
   crucified Savior is one to be cultivated up to a certain point,
   especially if we take care to avoid mere sentiment and turn our grief
   into repentance--then it is "godly sorrow" which works after a godly
   sort--and it is likely to create in us an intense horror of sin and a
   strong determination to purge ourselves from all fellowship with the
   works of darkness.

   We do not, therefore, condemn those who frequently preach upon the
   sufferings of our Lord with the view of exciting emotions of grief in
   the hearts of their hearers, for such emotions have a softening and
   sanctifying influence if attended by faith and directed by sound
   wisdom. There is, however, a middle path in everything, and this needs
   to be followed, for we believe that such preaching may be carried too
   far. It is most remarkable and instructive that the

   Apostles do not appear in their sermons or Epistles to have spoken of
   the death of our Lord with any kind of regret. The Gospels mention
   their distress during the actual occurrence of the Crucifixion, but
   after the Resurrection and especially after Pentecost, we hear of no
   such grief. If I confine myself to the sayings and writings of the
   Apostles, I can scarcely find a passage from which I could preach a
   sermon upon sorrow on account of the death of Jesus.

   On the contrary, there are many expressions which treat of the
   Crucifixion in the spirit of exulting joy. Remember the well-known
   exclamation of Paul--"God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross
   of our Lord Jesus Christ." He had, no doubt, as vivid an idea of the
   agonies of our Lord as any of us have ever attained and yet, instead of
   saying, "God forbid that I should cease to weep at the sight of my
   crucified Master," he declares that he glories in His Cross. The death
   of Jesus was to him a thing to rejoice in and even to glory in! He kept
   no black fasts to commemorate the world's redemption! Note well the
   exalted key in which he speaks of our Lord's death in the Epistle to
   the Colossians--"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was
   against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way,
   nailing it to His Cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers,
   He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it."

   When you turn to John's Epistles, where most of all pathos and
   tenderness would naturally abound, you hear no weeping and wailing, but
   he speaks of the cleansing blood which is the very center of the great
   Sacrifice, in a calm, quiet, happy manner, which is far removed from
   bursting grief and flowing tears. He says, "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." This allusion to the
   blood of Atonement rather suggests joy and peace than woe and agony!
   "This is He," says John, "that came by water and blood, even Jesus
   Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood." And it is evidently
   to John a theme of congratulation and delight rather than a cause for
   sorrow that Jesus came by blood as well as by water.

   Peter, also, when he mentions the death of his Lord and Master, speaks
   of "the precious blood of Christ," but not in words of sadness. And he
   describes our Lord's bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, but
   not in the language of lament. He says of those who suffered for the
   Gospel, "Rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers in Christ's
   sufferings." Now, if he finds joy in those sufferings of ours which are
   in fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, much more, I gather, did
   he find ground for rejoicing in the sufferings of Christ, Himself! I do
   not believe that the "three hours' agony," the darkened church, the
   altar in mourning, the tolling of a bell and all the other mock
   funereal rites of superstition derive even the least encouragement from
   the spirit and language of the Apostles! Those practical charades in
   which the Crucifixion is mimicked in many churches on Good Friday are
   more worthy of the heathen women weeping for Thammuz, or of Baal's
   priests crying and cutting themselves with knives, than of a Christian
   assembly who know that the Lord is not here, for He is risen!

   Let us mourn, by all means, for Jesus died. But by no means let us make
   mourning the prominent thought in connection with His death if we have
   obtained, thereby, the pardon of our sins! The language of our text
   allowed and yet forbade sorrow! It gave permission to weep, but only
   for a little while, and then it forbade all further weeping by the
   promise to turn the sorrow into joy. "You shall weep and lament," that
   is, His disciples, while He was dying and dead and buried, would be
   sorely distressed. "And you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall
   be turned into joy"--their grief would end when they saw Him risen from
   the dead! And so it did, for we read, "Then were the disciples glad
   when they saw the Lord." The sight of the Cross to their unbelief was
   sadness, and sadness only--but now, to the eye offaith, it is the most
   gladsome sight that ever the human eye can rest upon!

   The Cross is as the light of the morning which ends the long and dreary
   darkness which covered the nations. Oh wounds of Jesus, you are as
   stars breaking the night of man's despair! Oh spear, you have opened
   the fountain of healing for mortal woe! Oh crown of thorns, you are a
   constellation of promises! Eyes that were red with weeping sparkle with
   hope at the sight of You, O bleeding Lord! As for Your tortured body, O
   Emmanuel, the blood which dropped, cried from the ground and proclaimed
   peace, pardon and Paradise to all Believers! Though laid in the grave
   by Your weeping friends, Your body, O Divine Savior, is no longer in
   Joseph's tomb, for You are risen from the dead and we find in the songs
   of Resurrection and Ascension an abundant solace for the griefs of Your
   death! Like a woman to whom a son is born, we forget the travail for
   the joy of the glorious birth which the Church and the world may now
   gaze upon with the utmost delight as they behold in Jesus, "the
   Firstborn from the dead."

   The subject for this morning, then, you will readily guess, is how far
   we should sorrow for the death of Jesus and how much further we are
   permitted to rejoice. The first point will be the death of our Lord was
   and still is a theme for

   sorrow. But secondly, that sorrow is transmuted into joy. When we have
   meditated upon these two points we shall for a little space notice a
   general principle which underlies all holy sorrow as well as this
   particular form of it.

   I. First, then, THE DEATH OF OUR LORD WAS AND IS A TIME FOR SORROW. I
   make a point of saying it was so because during the three days of the
   Savior's burial there was more cause for distress than there can be now
   that He is risen. To the disciples, first of all, the death of Jesus
   was the loss of His personal Presence. It was a great delight to that
   little family to have the Lord always among them as their Father and
   their Teacher and it was a great grief to think that they should no
   more hear His loving voice or catch the smile of His Countenance. It
   brought untold comforts to them to be able to go to Him with all their
   questions; to fly to Him in every moment of difficulty; to resort to
   Him in every hour of sorrow. Happy, happy disciples to have such a
   Master always in their midst communing with them in love, guiding them
   by His perfect example, animating them by His glorious Presence,
   relieving all their needs and guarding them from all ills.

   Do you wonder that their hearts were heavy at the prospect of His going
   away from them? They felt that they would be sheep without a
   shepherd--orphan children bereft of their best friend and helper. Do
   you wonder, I say, that they wept and lamented when the Rock of their
   confidence, the Delight of their eyes, the Hope of their souls was
   taken from them? What would you think if your best earthly friend was
   hurried away from you by a shameful death? They sorrowed not only
   because of their own personal loss by His removal, but because He,
   Himself, was very dear to them. They could not bear that He should be
   gone in whom their hearts centered all their affection! Their sorrow
   showed that their hearts were loyal to their Beloved and would never
   receive another occupant to sit upon the throne of their affections.

   They wept and they lamented because their bosom's Lord was gone and His
   seat was empty. They could not endure the absence of their best
   Beloved. As pines the dove for its mate, so mourned they for Him whom
   their soul loved. Whom had they in Heaven if Jesus were gone? Certainly
   there was none upon earth that they could desire beside Him. They were
   widowed and they wept and refused to be comforted. Nothing could
   compensate them for Jesus' absence, for He was their All in All. For
   His sake they had left all and followed Him and now they cannot bear
   that they should lose Him and so lose more than all!

   You who have been bereaved of those whom you have dearly loved and
   deeply revered, will be able to guess what kind of sorrow filled the
   hearts of the disciples when their Beloved said that He was about to go
   from them and that they would not see Him for a while. This mourning
   was natural and it is natural that we, also, should feel some regret
   that our Lord is away from us now as to His bodily Presence, though I
   trust we have, by this time, learned to see the expediency of His
   absence and are so satisfied with it that we patiently wait and quietly
   hope until His next appearing. It added greatly to the disciples'
   sorrow that the world would be rejoicing because their Lord was gone.
   "The world shall rejoice."

   His eager enemies would hasten Him off to Pilate's judgment seat and
   triumph when they forced an unwilling sentence from that time-serving
   ruler. They would rejoice when they saw Him bearing His Cross along the
   way of dolorous. They would stand around the Cross and mock Him with
   their cruel gazes and with their ribald speeches--and when He was dead
   they would say, "This deceiver can speak no more! We have triumphed
   over Him who set our pretensions at nothing and exposed us before the
   people." They thought that they had quenched the light which had proved
   painful to their darkened eyes and, therefore, they were glad--and by
   their gladness swelled the torrent of the disciples' sorrow.

   Brothers and Sisters, you know when you are in pain or in sorrow
   yourselves, how very bitter is the coarse laugh of an adversary who
   exults over your misery and extracts mirth from your tears. This made
   the disciples smart at their Lord's death. Why should the wicked
   rejoice over Him? Why should the scornful Pharisee and priests shout
   insults over His dead body? This rubbed salt into the wounds of the
   downcast disciples and infused a double gall and wormwood into the cup
   which was already bitter enough. You do not wonder, therefore, that
   they wept and lamented when their Lord was put to death by wicked
   hands. Magdalene weeping at the sepulcher acted as her gracious nature
   prompted her and she was a fair sample of all the rest.

   They had this, also, to make them sorrowful, that His death was, for a
   time, the disappointment of all their hopes. They at first had fondly
   looked for a kingdom--a temporal kingdom, such as their brother Jews
   expected. Even when our Lord had moderated their expectations and
   enlightened their views so that they did not quite so much look for an
   actual

   temporal sovereignty, yet that thought that, "this was He that would
   have restored the kingdom to Israel," lingered with them. If any of
   them were so enlightened as to believe in a spiritual kingdom, as
   perhaps some of them were in a measure, yet by Jesus' death it must
   have seemed that all their hopes were shattered. Without a leader, how
   could they succeed? How could a kingdom be set up when the King,
   Himself, was slain? He who has been betrayed by coward hands, how can
   He reign? He that was to be the King has been spat upon and mocked and
   nailed up like a felon to the gallows of wood--where is His dominion?

   He is cut off out of the land of the living--who will now serve Him?
   Clay cold His body lies in Joseph's tomb and a seal is set upon the
   stone which shuts up the sepulcher--is this not the end of holy
   hopes--the final close to all holy ambitions? How can they be happy who
   have seen an end of their fairest dream? Poor followers of the dead
   Monarch, how can they have hope for His cause and crown? Doubtless in
   their unbelief they sorrowed deeply because their hope seemed blasted
   and their faith overturned. They knew so little of the meaning of the
   present and guessed so little of what the future would be that sorrow
   filled their hearts and they were ready to perish! You must remember
   that added to this was the sight which many of them had of their
   beloved Master in His agonies. Who would not grieve to see Him hurried
   away at dead of night from holy retirement to be falsely accused? Might
   not angels wish to weep in sympathy with Him?

   Who can keep from sorrowing when Jesus stands insulted by menials,
   reviled by abjects, forsaken by His friends, blasphemed by His foes? It
   was enough to make a man's heart break to see the Lamb of God so
   roughly handled! Who can endure to see the innocent Savior nailed up
   there in the midst of a scornful crew? Who could endure to see His
   pangs as they were mirrored in His Countenance, or to hear His sorrows
   as they expressed themselves in His painful cries of, "I thirst"? And
   in the still sharper agonizing exclamation, "My God, My God, why have
   You forsaken Me?"

   It is little marvel that it was said of the Virgin that the sword
   pierced through her heart, for surely there was never sorrow like unto
   Jesus' sorrow, nor grief which could be likened unto His grief! His
   heavy woes must have pierced through the heart of all right-minded men
   who beheld His unexampled miseries and especially must all personal
   lovers of Christ have felt ready to die, themselves, when they saw Him
   thus put to death! Oh deeps of sorrow which my Lord has suffered--shall
   there be no deeps to answer to You? When all God's waves and billows go
   over You, O Jesus, shall not we, also, be plunged into sorrow? Yes,
   verily, we will drink of Your cup and be baptized with Your Baptism. We
   will now sit down before Your Cross and watch with You one hour while
   love and grief conjointly occupy our souls. Now, at the remembrance of
   what our Lord endured, every Christian feels sympathy with Him. You
   cannot read the four stories of the Evangelists and weave them into one
   by imagination and affection without feeling that the minor key befits
   your voice at such a time, if you at all attempt to sing. There must
   be--it is natural that there should be--sorrow because Christ has died.

   One of the sharpest points about our sorrow at Jesus' death is
   this--that we were the cause of it. We virtually crucified the Lord,
   seeing it was because we were sinners that He must be made a Sacrifice.
   Had none of us gone astray like lost sheep, then our wanderings would
   not have been gathered up and laid upon the Shepherd's head. The sword
   which pierced His heart through and through was forged by our
   offenses--the vengeance was due for sins which we had committed and
   Justice exacted its rights at His hands. What loving disciple will
   refuse to sorrow when he sees that he, himself, has put his Lord to
   death? Now, putting all these things together, I think I see abundant
   reason why the disciples should be sorrowful and why they should even
   express their sorrow by weeping and lamenting. They sorrowed as those
   do who attend a funeral--for weeping and lamenting abound at eastern
   funerals.

   Orientals are much more demonstrative than we are and, therefore, at
   the deaths of relatives they make a far greater show of grief by loud
   cries and flowing tears. The disciples are represented as using the
   same forcible expressions to set forth their woe--"You shall weep and
   lament"--a woe worthy of the buried One whom they mourned. "You shall
   weep and lament"--there was a double vent for a double sorrow--eyes
   wept and voices lamented. Christ's death was a true funeral to His
   followers and caused a crushing sorrow as much as if they had, each
   one, been bereft of all his house! Who marvels that it was so? "Sorrow
   has filled your hearts," says Christ. They had no room to think of
   anything else but His death. Their heart was full to bursting with
   grief because He was taken from them and that grief was so sharp as to
   be likened to one of the keenest pangs which Nature is capable of
   bearing--the pangs of a travailing woman--pangs which seem as if they
   must bring death with them, but compared with which death, itself,
   might be a relief!

   The sharpness of their anguish in the hour of their trial was all that
   they could bear; more would have destroyed them! All this they felt and
   it is no wonder if we feel, in degree, as they did when we take a
   retrospect of what the Savior endured on our behalf. So far we are
   bound to concede that the death of our Lord works sorrow, but there is
   a moderation even in the most justifiable mourning--and we are not to
   indulge excessive grief even at the foot of the Cross, lest it
   degenerate into folly.

   II. Now, secondly, the Truth of God expressly taught in the text is
   that THIS SORROW IS CHANGED INTO JOY. "Your sorrow shall be turned into
   joy." Not exchanged for joy, but actually transmuted so that the grief
   becomes joy-- the cause of sorrow becomes the source of rejoicing!
   Begin with what I said was a very sharp point of this sorrow and you
   will see at once how it is turned into joy. That Jesus Christ died for
   our sins is a sharp sorrow--we lament that our crimes became the nails
   and our unbelief the spear--and yet, my Brothers and Sisters, this is
   the greatest joy of all! If each one of us can say, "He loved me and
   gave Himself for me," we are truly happy. If you know by personal faith
   that Jesus took your sins and suffered for them on the Cross so that
   now your debt is paid and your transgression is blotted out forever by
   His precious blood, you do not need half-a-dozen words from me to
   indicate that this which was the center of your grief is also the
   essence of your joy!

   What were it to us if He had saved all the rest of mankind if He had
   not redeemed us unto God by His blood? We might have been glad from
   sheer humanity that others should be benefited, but what would have
   been our deep regret to be, ourselves, excluded from the Grace? Blessed
   be the Savior's name, we are not left out! In proportion as we
   repentantly upbraid ourselves for Jesus' death, in that same measure
   may we believingly exult in the fact that His Sacrifice has forever put
   away our sins and, therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace
   with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Because God has condemned sin
   in the flesh of Jesus Christ, therefore He will no more condemn us--we
   are henceforth free--that the righteousness of the Law may be fulfilled
   in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit! Heartily do we
   lament our sin, but we do not lament that Christ has put it away nor
   lament the death by which He put it away! Rather do our hearts rejoice
   in all His atoning agonies and glory at every mention of that death by
   which He has reconciled us unto God. 'Tis a sad thought that we
   committed the sin which burdened our Lord, but it is a joy to think
   that He has taken on Himself our personal sins and carried them away!

   The next point of joy is that Jesus Christ has now suffered all that
   was required of Him. That He should suffer was cause for grief, but
   that He has now suffered all is equal cause for joy. When a champion
   returns from the wars bearing the scars of conflict by which he gained
   his honors, does anyone lament over his campaigns? When he left the
   castle, his wife hung about his neck and mourned that her lord must go
   to the wars to bleed and perhaps to die. But when he returns with
   sounding trumpet and banner held aloft, bringing his trophies with
   him--honored and exalted by reason of his victories in many lands--do
   his dearest friends regret his toils and suffering? Do they keep fast
   correspondent to the days in which he was covered with the sweat and
   dust of battle? Do they toll a bell on the anniversary of his conflict?
   Do they weep over the scars which are still upon him? Do they not glory
   in them as honorable memorials of his valor? They reckon that the marks
   the hero bears in his flesh are the noblest insignia of his glory and
   the best tokens of his prowess!

   So let us not grieve, today, that Jesus' hands were pierced! Behold,
   they are now "as gold rings set with the beryl." Let us not lament that
   His feet were nailed to the tree, for His legs are now to us "pillars
   of marble set upon sockets of fine gold." The face more marred than
   that of any man is now the more lovely for its marring and He, Himself,
   despite His agonies, is now endowed with a beauty which even the
   ravished spouse in the Song could only describe as "altogether lovely."
   The mighty love which enabled Him to endure His mighty passion has
   impressed upon Him charms altogether inconceivable in their sweetness!
   Let us not mourn, then, for the agony is all over and He is none the
   worse for having endured it. There is no Cross for Him now, except in
   the sense that the Cross honors and glorifies Him! There remains for
   Him no cruel spear nor crown of thorns, except that from these He
   derives a revenue of honor and titles always new which exult Him higher
   and yet higher in the love of His saints.

   Glory be unto God, Christ has not left a pang unsuffered of all His
   substitutionary sorrows! Of our dread ransom price He has paid the
   utmost farthing! The atoning griefs have all been endured! The cup of
   wrath is drunk quite dry and because of this, we, with all the hosts
   above, will rejoice forever and ever! We are glad not only that the
   hour of travail is over, but that our Lord has survived His pains. He
   died a real death, but now He lives a real life! He lay in the tomb and
   it was no fiction that the breath had departed from Him--it is equally
   no fiction that our Redeemer lives! The Lord is

   risen, indeed! He has survived the death struggle and the agony and He
   lives unhurt! He has come out of the furnace without so much as the
   smell of fire upon Him! He is not injured in any faculty, whether human
   or Divine. He is not robbed of any glory, but His name is now
   surrounded with brighter luster than ever! He has lost no dominion, He
   claims superior rights and rules over a new empire. He is a gainer by
   His losses! He has risen by His descent.

   All along the line He is victorious at every point. Never yet was there
   a victory won but what it was in some respects a loss as well as a
   gain--but our Lord's triumph is unmingled glory--to Himself a gain as
   well as to us who share in it. Shall we not, then, rejoice? What? Would
   you sit and weep by a mother as she exultingly shows her new-born
   child? Would you call together a company of mourners to lament and to
   bewail when the heir is born into the household? This were to mock the
   mother's gladness! And so, today, should we use dreary music and sing
   dolorous hymns when the Lord is risen and is not only unhurt, unharmed
   and unconquered, but is far more glorified and exalted than before His
   death? He has gone into Glory because all His work is done! Shall not
   your sorrow be turned into joy in the most emphatic sense?

   And there is this to add to it, that the grand end which His death was
   meant to accomplish is all attained. What was that end? I may divide it
   into three parts. It was the putting away of sin by the Sacrifice of
   Himself and that is complete. He has finished transgression. He has
   made an end of sin! He has taken the whole load of the sin of His elect
   and hurled it into the bottomless abyss! If it is searched for, it
   shall not be found--no, it shall not be--says the Lord! He has put away
   our sin as far from us as the east is from the west and He has risen,
   again, to prove that all for whom He died are justified in Him.

   A second purpose was the salvation of His chosen and that salvation is
   secured. When He died and rose again the salvation of all that were in
   Him was placed beyond all hazard. He has redeemed us unto God by His
   blood by an effectual redemption. None shall be enslaved who were by
   Him redeemed; none shall be left in sin or cast into Hell whose names
   are engraved on the palms of His hands. He has gone into Glory,
   carrying their names upon His heart and He stands pleading there for
   them and, therefore, He is able to save them to the uttermost. "I
   will," He says, "that they whom You have given Me be with Me where I
   am, that they may behold My Glory," and that effectual plea secures
   their being with Him and like He when the end shall be.

   The grand objective, however, of His death was the Glory of God and,
   truly, God is glorified in the death of His Son beyond anything that
   was known before or since! Here the very heart of God is laid open to
   the inspection of all believing eyes--His justice and His love, His
   stern severity which will not pass by sin without atonement and His
   boundless love that gives His best, His darling from His bosom, that He
   may bleed and die in our place--

   "Here depths of wisdom shine, Which angels cannot trace The highest
   rank of cherubim Still lost in wonder gaze."

   Yes, O Christ of God, "it is finished." You have done all You intended
   to do! The whole of Your design is achieved--not one purpose has
   failed, nor even one part of it fallen through--and, therefore, shall
   we not rejoice? The child is born, shall we not be glad? The travail
   would have been a subject for great grief had the mother died, or had
   the child perished in the birth--but now that all is over and all is
   well--why should we remember any more the anguish?

   Jesus lives and His great salvation makes glad the sons of men! Why
   should we tune the mournful string and mourn like doves? No! Ring out
   the clarion, for the battle is fought and the victory is won forever!
   Victory, VICTORY, VICTORY! His own right hand and His holy arm has
   gotten Him the victory! Though the Champion died in the conflict, yet
   in His death He slew Death and destroyed him that had the power of
   death, that is, Satan! Our glorious Champion has risen from His fall,
   for He could not be held by the bands of death! He has smitten His
   enemies, but, as for Himself, He has come up from the grave; He has
   risen as from the heart of the sea! Let us exult like Israel at the Red
   Sea when Pharaoh was overthrown! With timbrel and dance let the
   daughters of Israel go forth to sing unto the Lord, for He has
   triumphed gloriously and utterly destroyed all our adversaries.

   We have not yet completed this work of changing sorrow into joy till we
   notice that now the greatest possible blessings accrue to us because He
   was made a curse for us. Through His death come pardon, reconciliation,
   access, acceptance--His blood "speaks better things than that of Abel"
   and invokes all Heaven's blessings upon our heads! But Jesus is not
   dead! He is risen and that resurrection brings justification and the
   safeguard of His perpetual plea in Heaven!

   It brings us His representative Presence in Glory and the making of all
   things ready for us in the many mansions! It brings us a share in that
   "all power which is given unto Him in Heaven and in earth," in the
   strength of which He bids us go and teach all nations, baptizing them
   into His sacred name.

   Beloved, Pentecost comes to us because Jesus went away from us! The
   gifts of the Holy Spirit--illuminating, comforting, quickening, the
   power to proclaim the Word and the might which attends that Word--all
   have come to us because He is no longer with us, but through the
   regions of the dead has passed to reach His crown! And now, today, we
   have this great joy, again, that because He died there is a kingdom set
   up in the world, a kingdom which never can be moved, a kingdom whose
   power lies in weakness and yet it is irresistible! It is a kingdom
   whose glory lies in suffering and yet it cannot be crushed! It is a
   kingdom of love, a kingdom of unselfishness, a kingdom of kindness,
   truth, purity, holiness and happiness! Jesus wears the imperial purple
   of a kingdom in which God loves men and men love God! Having proved
   Himself the Prince of self-sacrificing love, He is justly exalted to
   the throne amid the acclamations of all His saints!

   His kingdoms, shapeless as it looks to carnal eyes, like a stone cut
   out of a mountain without hands, will, nevertheless, break all the
   kingdoms of this world to shivers in due time and fill the whole earth!
   His kingdom will grow and extend, till, from a handful of corn upon the
   top of the mountains its fruit shall so increase that it shall shake
   like Lebanon! It is a kingdom which shall comprehend all ranks and
   conditions of men, men of all colors, of all lands and nations,
   encircling all even as the ocean surrounds many lands. The unsuffering
   kingdom of the suffering Shepherd, inaugurated by His death,
   established by His Resurrection, extended by the Pentecostal descent of
   the Holy Spirit and secured by the Eternal Covenant is hastening on.
   Every winged hour brings it nearer to its perfect manifestation. Yes,
   the kingdom comes! The kingdom whose foundation was laid in the blood
   of its King at Calvary!

   Happy are they who are helping it on, for when the Lord shall be
   revealed, they, also, shall be manifested with Him. The Chief among
   10,000 and the 10,000 who were with Him shall stand side by side in the
   day of victory, even as they stood side by side in the hour of strife.
   Then, indeed, our sorrow shall be turned into joy! There we must leave
   the subject, only noticing this one fact, that that joy is right hearty
   joy. "Your hearts shall rejoice," said the Savior. Ours is no
   superficial mirth, but heart-deep bliss! That joy is also abiding joy.
   "Your joy no man takes from you." No, nor devil, either! Nor time nor
   eternity can rob us of it. At the foot of the Cross there wells up a
   flashing, sparkling fountain of joy which can never be dried up, but
   must flow on forever! In summer and in winter shall it be and none
   shall be able to keep us back from the living flood, but we shall drink
   to the full forever and ever!

   III. And, now, my last point is THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE INVOLVED IN THIS
   ONE PARTICULAR

   INSTANCE. The general principle is this, that in connection with Christ
   you must expect to have sorrow. "You shall weep and lament, but the
   world shall rejoice." But whatever sorrow you feel in connection with
   Jesus, there is this consolation--the pangs are all birth-pangs--they
   are all the necessary preliminaries of an ever-increasing, abounding
   joy! Brothers and Sisters, since you have come to know Christ, you have
   felt a smarter grief on account of sin. Let it continue with you, for
   it is working holiness in you and holiness is happiness.

   You have felt, of late, a keener sensibility on account of the sins of
   those around you. Do not wish to be deprived of it--it will be the
   means of your loving them more, praying more for them and seeking more
   their good--and you will be the better qualified to do them real
   service and to lead them to your Lord. Perhaps you have had to bear a
   little persecution, hard words and the cold shoulder. Do not fret, for
   all this is necessary to make you have fellowship with Christ's
   sufferings that you may know more of Him and may become more like He.
   You sometimes see the cause of Christ as it were dead and you are
   grieved about it, as well you might be. The enemy triumphs; false
   doctrine is advanced; Jesus seems to be crucified afresh, or hidden
   away in the grave, forgotten, as a dead man out of mind. It is well
   that you should feel this, but in that very feeling there should be the
   full persuasion that the Truth of Christ cannot long be buried, but
   waits to rise again with power!

   Never did the Gospel lie in the grave more than its three days. Never
   did a lion roar upon it but what it turned and tore the enemy and found
   honey in its carcass in later days. Whenever the Truth of God seems to
   be repulsed, she does but draw back to take a more wondrous leap
   forward! As when the tide ebbs out very far, we expect it to return
   again in the fullness of its strength, so is it with the Church. If we
   see a small fall in the tide we know that it will not rise very far,
   but when we see the stream sinking right away and leaving the river-bed
   almost dry, we expect to see it roll in at flood tide

   till the banks overflow! Always look for the triumph of Christianity
   when others tell you it is defeated! Expect to find in the very quarter
   where it is covered with most disgrace and shame, that there it will
   win its most glorious laurels! The Truth's superlative victories follow
   upon its worst defeats.

   Have faith in God. You tell me you have that. "Then," says your Master,
   "you believe in God, believe also in Me." Believe in Christ! Trust in
   Him! Rest in Him! Fight for Him! Labor for Him! Suffer for Him, for He
   must conquer! Even now does He sit as King upon the hill of Zion and
   soon the heathen shall become His inheritance and the uttermost parts
   of the earth shall be His possession! Your sorrow shall be turned into
   joy in all these cases. Whenever your sorrow is the result of your
   belonging to Christ, always congratulate yourself upon it, since as the
   spring begets the summer, so does sorrow in connection with Christ
   bring forth joy to us in the Lord! By-and-by will come your last
   sorrow--unless the Lord should suddenly appear, you will die. But be
   content to die! Look forward to it without the slightest alarm! Death
   is the gate of endless joy and shall we dread to enter there? No, Jesus
   being with you, meet death joyfully, for to die is to burst the bonds
   of this death which everywhere surrounds us and to enter into the true
   life of liberty and bliss. Even to the end, sorrow shall be to you the
   birth-pang of your joy! Carry that thought with you and be always glad.

   With one remark I finish. I will not dwell upon it, but leave it to
   abide in the memories of those whom it concerns. I present it to the
   minds of all those who are not believers in Christ. Did you notice that
   the Lord said, "You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice:
   you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." Now,
   what is implied there to complete the sentence? Why, that the world's
   joy shall be turned into sorrow! Even so shall it be. There is not a
   pleasure which the ungodly man enjoys when he is indulging in sin but
   what will curdle into grief and be his sorrow forever. Depend upon it
   that the wine of transgression will sour into the gripping vinegar of
   remorse which shall dissolve the rebel's soul! The sparks which now
   delight you shall kindle the flames of your eternal misery! Every sin,
   though sweet when it is like a green fig, is bitterness itself when it
   comes to its ripeness.

   Woe unto you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep! Woe unto you
   that now rejoice in sin, for you shall gnash your teeth and weep and
   wail because of that very Christ whom you now reject! All things will
   soon be turned upside down. Blessed are you that mourn now, for you
   shall be comforted. But woe unto you that are full this day, for you
   shall hunger! The sun will soon be set for you that rejoice in sin.
   Sadness, like a thick cloud, is now descending to surround you
   eternally in its horrible gloom! Out of that cloud shall leap the
   flashes of eternal Justice and from it shall peal the thunderclaps of
   righteous condemnation!

   "Upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone and an
   horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup." The Lord
   deliver you from such a doom by leading you, now, to yield to Jesus and
   to believe in His name. May He grant this prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Clear Conscience

   (No. 1443)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I ha ve respect unto all Your
   commandments." Psalm 119:6.

   ANY attempt to keep the Law of God with the view of being saved thereby
   is sure to end in failure. So contrary is it to the express warnings of
   the Divine Lawgiver and so much does it run counter to the whole
   Gospel, that he who ventures to seek justification by his own merits
   ought to be ashamed of his presumption. When God tells us that
   salvation is not by the works of the Law, are you not ashamed of trying
   to procure it by your obedience to its precepts? When He declares that
   by the works of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight,
   are you not ashamed to go and seek after justification where He tells
   you it never can be found? When He, over and over again, declares that
   salvation is by faith and that it is a matter of Grace to be received,
   do you not blush for yourself that you should give the lie to God and
   propound a righteousness of your own conceit in which you have vainly
   tried to keep up a respectable appearance, screening the palpable
   delinquencies of your life under a thin veil of piety toward God and
   charity toward men?

   Eternal life is not to be earned by any trade you can carry on in works
   of the flesh because, however estimable in the opinion of men, they are
   simply vile in the sight of God! If a man seeks to keep the
   Commandments of God in order that he may attain eternal life, he will
   be ashamed and confounded. He had better at once renounce the folly of
   attempting so insane, so futile, so impossible a task as that of
   defending his own cause and justifying his own soul! But when a man is
   converted; when he has believed in Christ Jesus to the salvation of his
   soul; when he is justified by faith and his sin is blotted out--when he
   has obtained mercy, found Grace in the eyes of the Lord and entered
   into the rest of faith because he knows that he is a saved man--then in
   keeping the precepts of the Law he will gratify a strong inclination.
   In fact, it henceforth becomes his highest ambition to be obedient--and
   the great delight of his soul is to run in the ways of God's
   Commandments out of gratitude for the great benefits he has received.

   And let it never be imagined that because Christ has redeemed us from
   the curse of the Law, there is, therefore, a complete removal of all
   moral constraints and restraints from Christian men! We are not under
   the Law, but under Grace, yet are we not lawless and libertine since we
   have become servants of God and followers of Christ. No, but we are
   under another Law--a Law of another sort which works upon us after
   another fashion. What if a man says, "I am free from the police, the
   magistrate, the judge and the executioner"? Does it, therefore, follow
   that he is free from the rules of his father's house? Assuredly not!
   The child may be quite clear of the police court, but there is a rod at
   home. There is a father's smile; there is a father's frown. And though
   Christians shall never be so punished for their sins that they can come
   under condemnation, seeing they are delivered from that evil calamity
   by Christ, yet being children of God they come under another
   discipline--the discipline of His house and home--a discipline of
   chastisements not at all of a legal caste, for, however bitter the
   suffering it often entails, though He cause grief, He will have
   compassion.

   The rebukes are sharp, but the retribution is not vindictive and the
   Lord is known to smile with approbation, to speak with commendation and
   to bestow His compensations with liberal hands on those who seek His
   face, listen to His voice and do His bidding. When He has committed to
   us some service which He only could qualify us to discharge, He has
   often caused us to partake of the fruits in abundant joy. Now, I shall
   endeavor to bring out this principle while I am speaking upon our text.
   Those who are children of God should seek after universal obedience to
   the Divine Commands. They should have respect unto all the Lord's
   Commandments. If they do so, they will have a full requital and this is
   the reward. "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all
   Your commandments." Two things, then, claim our attention--the
   universality of believing obedience and the excellence of its result.

   I. THE UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEVING OBEDIENCE is here highly commended.
   The esteem in which we hold and the tribute we pay to all God's
   Commandments is spoken of. Not some of His Commandments, but all of
   them. Not picking and choosing--paying attention to this because it
   pleases me and omitting that because it is not equally

   pleasurable--but the careful, earnest respecting of all the statutes of
   God and the anxious endeavor to keep them all! This it is which
   challenges attention and therein is great blessedness. Turn to the
   Psalm, itself, which is far preferable to any reflections we could
   offer, inasmuch as the Word of God must ever excel the word of man.
   There David says, " Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in
   the Law of the Lord."

   Comes this blessedness simply on those who are in the way, irrespective
   of their walk and conversation? No, but let them take heed lest they
   step aside and put their foot into the puddle and stain their garments.
   The persons who are truly blessed are the undefiled who so watch their
   walk that they endeavor, in everything, to adorn the doctrine of God,
   their Savior, and in nothing to grieve the Spirit of God! There lies
   the blessedness, not in partial obedience, but in perfect obedience as
   far as it can be attained! Not now and then, but ever and always! Not
   in some things, but in all things, as far as we are taught of the
   living God. The only way to avoid defilement is to have respect and pay
   deference to all the Commandments of the Lord.

   Whether we observe it or not, there is never an omission of duty or a
   commission of fault that does not cast a stain upon the purity of
   conscience and the integrity of character. Would you wish to be spotted
   from head to foot, Believer? I know you would not! If you would be
   blest, you must be undefiled--and if you would be undefiled, there must
   be a universality about your obedience--walking in all the Commandments
   of the Lord. To enjoy this beatitude, a holy walking must become
   habitual. This sacred exercise is very different from sluggish piety.
   "Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the Law of the Lord."
   A man may sit down in the road without soiling his skin or fouling his
   apparel, but that is not enough. There must be progress--practical
   action in the Christian life! And in order to blessedness we must be
   doing something for the Master!

   Slothfulness is not the way to blessedness! Nor can we serve the Lord
   in this active work unless we labor in all things to mind His will and
   walk according to His way. God is to be sought diligently by sincere
   souls. "Blessed are they that keep His testimonies and that seek Him
   with the whole heart." Now, you cannot keep the testimonies and know
   the doctrine unless you have the will in full force and vigorous
   energy. It seems to be almost as inevitable as a Law of Nature that a
   man who is not sound in his life cannot be sound in his judgment.
   Wisdom will not long hold a seat in the head of that man who has
   yielded up his heart to folly. A pure theology and a loose morality
   will never blend. We have known men who thought themselves mightily
   orthodox, indulge in many unseemly and profligate habits. In fact, they
   have made light of their own sins--and that boasted orthodoxy of theirs
   presently develops into some pernicious fallacy!

   Be assured of it, you cannot claim the promises unless you are willing
   to keep the precepts. Vaunt as you may your knowledge of the letter of
   the Scriptures, you shall fail to be owned of God as His witnesses
   unless there is the witness of the life as well as the witness of the
   lips! And how can the witness of the life be sincere unless we strive
   in all things to keep the statutes of the Lord? How can we be said to
   serve Him with our whole heart if part of our heart goes after
   vanity--if we hug some favorite sin or if we leave some known duty in
   abeyance, saying--"When we have a more convenient season we will attend
   to that." No, the blessedness is to the undefiled! The blessedness is
   to the walkers in the way! The blessedness is to the keepers of the
   Divine Laws. The blessedness is to those that seek the Lord with their
   whole heart.

   So, you see, you must take care to have respect unto all the
   Commandments if you are to get the blessedness of the Christian life.
   If you will carefully notice the fourth verse of this Psalm, you will
   see that this keeping of all the Commandments is, itself, a positive
   command of God--"You have commanded us to keep Your precepts
   diligently." That is enough guarantee for a Christian--"You have
   commanded." Now, the command of God to His people is not, "You shall
   keep some of My commands and walk in a measure according to My mind and
   after My will." What father is there who will say to his children, "You
   must sometimes obey me. The rule of my house is that you may use your
   own discretion and follow your own inclination as to which of my
   injunctions you obey and which you neglect. You can have your own way
   at times if you will but occasionally yield to me in a few things"?

   Such a father would be quite unworthy to be at the head of any
   household! Certainly our heavenly Father is not thus lax in His
   discipline. He has spoken to His children in tones of love. The Law of
   His mouth has been given as a light to illuminate our path and as a
   lamp to guide our feet. So palpable, then, is the Divine Benevolence,
   that the more imperious His voice, the more interested we must be in
   heeding it. Does He say--"You shall keep My statutes and observe My
   ordinances"?--doubt not for an instant that there is much profit in
   following the instructions closely and great peril in disregarding
   them! And inasmuch as the authority of God goes with each command--with
   one precept as

   well as another--therefore should it be the objective of the Christian
   that he should keep all the commands! He should make no choice, or
   selection, as to the words of the Lord, but take them all and pray the
   Lord to bring him into conformity with every one of them.

   That this is a meet and proper subject of prayer becomes very obvious,
   for in the next verse the Psalmist exclaims, "Oh that my ways were
   directed to keep Your statutes!" Now, no man, I think, ever prayed God
   to grant him partial obedience. Did he ever pray--dare he ever pray, "O
   Lord, help me to overcome some of my sins, but not all! This day
   preserve me from some temptations, but allow me to indulge some of my
   propensities"? Did you ever pray, "O Lord, keep me, I pray You, from
   great and open sins, but permit me, in Your infinite mercy, to enjoy
   certain private sins that I am exceedingly fond of? Such a prayer were
   worthier of a worshipper of Satan than of a worshipper of God! No, our
   heart renewed by Grace craves to be perfectly set free from sin! We
   have not obtained it--we are pressing on towards it--but this, even
   now, is our desire and our prayer. Hence you cannot wonder that in the
   text the believing man is spoken of as having respect unto all God's
   Commandments, since, if it is a matter of prayer, it cannot be in
   respect to some of God's Commandments, but he must pray that he may
   have respect to every one of them.

   Now, I want to come a little closer to details. What do we mean by
   having respect to all God's Commandments? I reply that whatever there
   is that the Lord has spoken in any part of His Word, we desire to hold
   in devout esteem and to have respect to every utterance of His will.
   The Law, as He gave it to Moses, is no longer, to us, the way of
   obtaining life, but it is still, in the hands of Christ, a most blessed
   rule of living. It is divided into two tablets and our prayer is that
   we should keep them both and reverently observe them, that towards God
   our life should always be obedient, truthful, adoring. We pray that we
   should have respect unto Him in all our ways; that we should lean upon
   Him; that we should depend upon Him; that we should serve Him and
   devote ourselves wholly to Him. To seek His Glory, first and foremost,
   is the chief end of our being. We must not forget this.

   But then there follow six Commandments upon the other stone which
   relate to men--and we must mind them--for it were a poor thing to say,
   "I am devout towards God, but I care not to be just towards men." A
   devout thief would be a strange anomaly! An adoring murderer were a
   singular incongruity! A disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ indulging in
   covetousness is a self-evident contradiction! No, he that loves God
   must love his neighbor as himself and I trust our desire is that we may
   not fail in obedience to either of these tablets, but may, by the work
   of the Holy Spirit in us, be worked into an uprightness of conversation
   and character, both towards God and towards men. Some commands of God
   are highly spiritual, while others may be described rather as moral.
   Surely, to trust God is one of the grand commands. "Believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ and you shall be saved" is a precept which we would never
   wittingly neglect.

   "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own
   understanding." "Cast your care on Him." "Draw near unto Him." All such
   spiritual exhortations as these relate to the life of the quickened
   Believer. God has forbidden us to disregard, to despise, or to
   disparage any of them. Oh that we may abound in all the Graces of the
   Spirit and be diligent in all the acts of our spiritual life! But we
   must not, therefore, forget or be negligent concerning morals, which
   some have accounted to be minor obligations! They pretend to abound in
   prayer, but are positively slothful in business. They are content to
   wait, but not to work. They say that they are serving at the altar, but
   we see that they are indolent enough in the shop. Christian men who
   stand up for the Truth of God should take care not to be lax in their
   conduct when they are so wonderfully strict in their creed.

   Do not trifle with truth in speaking to your fellow man while you
   insist on respecting the Truth of God. Can anything be more despicable
   than the priests who prate much about the faithfulness of God's
   promises but are not very particular about keeping their own promises?
   They say that they will let you have an article home on Friday night
   and you do not get it till the following Wednesday--that is telling a
   falsehood. If you saw yourselves as others see you, though you might
   account yourselves spiritually true, you would know for certain that
   you were morally false! Little duties are almost too insignificant for
   such high-flying spiritual professors. They are such that can pray at a
   Prayer Meeting, therefore they need not do an honest day's work for an
   honest day's wage!

   On the other hand, they can oppress the laborer in his wages because
   they mean to give a donation to the hospital! It will not do! In vain
   you pretend to be spiritual and attend to spiritual duties, while you
   ignore the commonplace morals! Depend upon it--if you are not moral,
   you are not a disciple of Christ! It is all nonsense about your
   experience. If you occasionally get drunk, or if you now and then let
   out an oath, or if, in your business you would make twice two into five

   or three, according as your profit happens to run--why, man, do not
   talk about being a Christian! Christ has nothing to do with you--at
   least no more to do with you than He had to do with Judas Iscariot! You
   are very much in the same position. "Without holiness no man shall see
   the Lord." If without holiness, then much more without morality can no
   man expect to see the face of God with acceptance!

   But, as true Believers in our Lord, we hope that He will enable us to
   have respect unto all God's Commandments. Some Commandments specially
   concern the Church. Every Christian should endeavor to discharge his
   duties towards his fellow Christians. There are also duties connected
   with the family and every Christian should see that he does not let one
   of these kill the other. I once knew a man--I cannot tell you whether
   he is alive at this present moment--I knew him well. He used to go out
   into the villages with all the local preachers. He was a constant
   attendant at Prayer Meetings-- in fact, you never went to a public
   service connected with the Church without seeing him--and he was out at
   tract society and missionary anniversaries and every gathering of the
   sort. The only place where you never found him was at home with his
   boys.

   I had the misery to teach one of his boys. That boy died in drunkenness
   before he had reached the age of manhood. Others of his sons were the
   pests of the town in which he lived. That man was eminently good in
   certain respects--doing a great deal for other people's families--but
   nothing for his own. Now, that will not do, Brothers and Sisters. That
   will never do! We must never bring to God, as a sacrifice, a duty
   smeared with the blood of another duty! That were an abomination! There
   is a balance and a proportion to be observed. "Then shall I not be
   ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments." The works of
   the Christian life may be divided, if you like, into public and
   private. How zealous some individuals are in the discharge of public
   work! Anything that will be seen of men shall have their closest
   attention!

   But how about private work? We attend the Prayer Meeting, but do we
   forsake the closet? We hear sermons, but do we read our Bibles alone?
   We attend public meetings, but do we have private communion with God? O
   Beloved, there are two sets of duties--the outward and the inward.
   What, though to outward observation we walk uprightly before God and
   there is nothing about us that the human eye can detect as wrong, yet
   if the heart is not pure--if though the outside of the platter is
   washed, the inside is full of filthiness, how far we are from
   perfection! These reflections ought to cause a world of
   self-examination while I press home the crucial words--"Then shall I
   not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments"--those
   Divine injunctions which concern the secret inward life as well as
   those which have to do with our more outward and public carriage. We
   sometimes divide Christian duties into greater and smaller. Of course
   they are all great--none are small except in their bearing upon others
   even though some things appear to have less relative magnitude.

   Now, some people are remiss and careless about what they call petty,
   trivial matters, but the genuine lover of the Lord will show his love
   to his Master in bestowing much care upon little things. I know it is
   in a family the little things that bring discomfort and the little
   things that give pleasure. And I believe in the family of God those who
   give diligent heed to the little things of the Word usually bring much
   comfort to their fellow Christians and great glory to God. At the same
   time, there were Pharisees of old who strained out gnats from their
   drink, but swallowed camels by their immoralities. There were those who
   tithed mint and anise and cumin and yet neglected the weightier matters
   of the Law. This must never occur with us. We must endeavor to have
   such a careful walk that we would not go an inch astray--and yet it is
   idle to talk about going an inch astray when we give ourselves license
   for a mile or two of wandering every now and then! God grant we may
   have Grace to avoid small faults, while we strive to keep clear of
   great transgressions!

   One other word I would like to say here. In the full sweep of our text
   there must be taken in duties unknown as well as known. "Then shall I
   not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments." There
   may be some of God's commands that you do not know. Study the Word of
   God in order that you may know them. "Well," says one, "but I am
   excused if I do not know them." Do you really think so? Because, if so,
   the more ignorant a man is, the safer he is from coming into
   condemnation, for, knowing little, he is under little obligation,
   according to such an estimation. But our understanding and knowledge
   are not the measure of our duty. The command of God is our sole
   standard! Conscience, itself, is not a trustworthy rule. If a man's
   conscience is unenlightened, he may be sinning and reaping the ill
   consequences of his sin--not less surely because he is not conscious
   that his misfortunes are due to his folly rather than his fate! His
   conscience cannot be the standard. The standard is the Law of God.

   Brothers and Sisters, I would not have you live in daily neglect of a
   Divine command which I am persuaded you would obey if you knew it. Hide
   not yourself behind a pillar, but come into the light and take the Word
   of God and read it and always ask that God would be pleased to open
   your eyes to anything there you have not seen before. You know you can
   wink very hard, sometimes, when you are reading the Bible. I should say
   that our friends in the Southern states of America, when they kept
   slaves, must have winked dreadfully hard when they were reading such a
   passage as this--"As you would that men should do to you, do you also
   unto them likewise." And I could mention some other matters that
   concern English people that would require a frequent putting of the
   finger in the eye for fear too much light should come in. But be you
   not such! Seek to let the Word photograph itself upon your
   understanding and then, straightway, when you know the Divine will,
   labor to carry it out in all particulars.

   Thus have I tried to show the range of this text. But now notice that
   what is aimed at here is that the soul should pay respect unto all
   God's Commandments--pay respect to them--love them, study them, value
   them and thus pay respect to them all. I do not know whether you catch
   my thought, for I am afraid that I am putting it rather awkwardly. The
   commands of God are proportionate to one another. When an architect is
   about to erect a large edifice, say a cathedral, he has to make the
   height of the various proportions relative to each other. He grasps an
   idea of what the general effect is to be, so he does not throw out all
   his strength upon the nave, or the transept, or the chancel, or the
   spire, but he tries to make each part of the magnificent pile assist
   and contribute to the general harmony of the entire structure.

   Now, it ought to be so, also, with the Christian life. "Then shall I
   not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments"--to the
   foundation commandments, striving to dig deep. To the high soaring
   commandments-- seeking to rise into the utmost fellowship with God. To
   those commandments that need stern labor, like the rugged walls upon
   which much toil must be spent and upon those which are a delight and a
   beauty, like the golden light windows that require fine taste and
   delicate skill. One would wish to do it all, to realize it all, to aim
   after a completeness of character so that we may be like the Lord Jesus
   Christ! Oh that we were enamored of this perfection and were seeking
   after it! It becomes us, dear Friends, who are believers in Christ, to
   set before us as our standard a perfect character and we should aim to
   reach it, looking to have the mind and will of God for that model.

   That I may in all things do what God requires of me and abstain from
   everything which He forbids me should be the great objective of my
   life. Be it my firm resolve and my daily and hourly desire, that, by
   the power of His Spirit, I may attain this conformity to the Divine
   purpose. I should endeavor with constant maintained persistency to get
   nearer and nearer to this obedience to every Divine Commandment. Every
   failure should cost me sorrow. Every mistake should lead me to chasten
   myself with penitence. Every time I err I should go back to the blood
   and ask to be washed, that no defilement may remain upon me.

   II. Having thus spoken upon this universal obedience, only a few
   minutes can be afforded for the reward, to wit-- THE EXCELLENCY OF ITS
   RESULT, "Then shall I not be ashamed." I suppose that means, first,
   that as sin is removed, shame is removed. Sin and shame came into this
   world together. Our first parents were naked and were not ashamed, but
   when, in another sense, they became naked, then they were ashamed. They
   had no sooner sinned against God than they were told that they were
   naked and they hid themselves from the Presence of the Most High.
   Unless sin gets to a high head, which it will not do in the Believer,
   shame is always sure to go with sin. Excessive sin or habitual
   transgression at last kills shame and gives a harlot's forehead so that
   the hardened culprit knows not how to blush.

   It is an awful thing when a man is no longer conscious of shame, but a
   still more awful thing when he comes to glory in his shame--for then
   his damnation is not far off! But as sin is cast out of the Believer,
   shame is cast out of him in proportion and it, therefore, comes to pass
   that courage rises with a consciousness of rectitude. The man that has
   respect unto God's commands is no longer ashamed of men. He is not
   abashed by their scorn, or disconcerted by their ridicule. Let them
   say, "Oh, you are too precise," we would be very foolish to take that
   as a reproach. I remember a man once contemptuously calling me John
   Bunyan as I went down the street. I took off my hat to him and felt
   rather flattered. I only wished I had been more like he! If anybody
   says to you, "Oh, you are a Methodist," take the imputation kindly. It
   is a most respectable name. Some of the grandest men that ever lived
   were Methodists.

   "Ah," but they will say, "you are one of the Presbyterians." Do not
   frown at the charge, but bow courteously, for some grand witnesses for
   Christ have belonged to that good fellowship. "Ah," says the world,
   "you are one of those Puritans--you are one of those religious people."
   Yes, but you are not ashamed of that! They might as well have said,

   "You are a man worth £50,000 a year." Would you blush to admit it? I
   dare say you would like it to be true! When anybody says, "Ah, there is
   one of the saints," ask him to prove his words! Tell him you only hope
   you will try to prove them yourself. There is nothing to be ashamed of
   in keeping God's commands! Then, again, before men we shall not be
   ashamed of our profession. Well may some Christians be inclined to put
   their Christianity into the shade when they remember how little credit
   they do to it--but when a man has respect unto all God's commands, he
   is not ashamed to say, "I am a Christian. Look me up and down and
   examine my conduct. I do not boast of it, but I know that I have sought
   honestly and sincerely to walk before God in righteousness."

   Or, when a false accusation is brought against you, meet it in the same
   spirit. Perhaps somebody will libel you. I will defy you to avoid it!
   If you were to live the life of the most irreproachable man of God you
   would not be safe from calumny! Was not God Himself slandered, even in
   Paradise, by the serpent? But you need not be ashamed when you can
   appeal to God and feel that in all things you have endeavored to keep
   His commands. Thrice is he armed that has his conscience clear. No
   armor of steel or mail can so well protect a man as to know that before
   God he has walked in guileless, blameless uprightness and sought to do
   before the Lord that which is well-pleasing in His sight. "Then shall I
   not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments."

   This may likewise refer to that inward shame we sometimes feel when we
   examine ourselves and pass our own conduct in review. Don't you ever,
   when reading a promise, look upon it as a very sweet promise made to
   God's children, though you hardly dare appropriate it to yourself? You
   feel ashamed. In fact, there are many gracious promises you never have
   been able to accept as your own. You have been afraid to take them.
   They were too rich, too ripe, too luscious fruit for you to adventure
   upon tasting! You thought they were intended for the favored children,
   not for poor strangers like you. Now call to remembrance my text--"Then
   shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your
   commandments." There are some delightful privileges of the Christian
   that you have never yet ventured to seek--some high doctrines that you
   have scarcely been able to believe. Dear Friend, have respect unto ALL
   His commandments, for, perhaps, your fear, your doubt, your hesitancy,
   your need of assurance may have arisen from your lack of a careful walk
   before God and when the Holy Spirit has enabled you to be holy, He will
   enable you, by full assurance, to grasp the rich things of the
   Covenant.

   Now, may I not be speaking to some who have been ashamed of attempting
   their obvious duty? It is your duty to tell your experience, sometimes,
   to others, but have you not blushed at the very thought? I know why. It
   was because you thought of some inconsistency which, if they knew,
   would disparage your testimony and make you appear very faulty in their
   eyes. Ah, "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all
   Your commandments." You have not dared to address even the smallest
   congregation though you can speak very well upon secular topics. Why is
   that? Is it because your walk is not as close with God as it should be?
   "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your
   commandments."

   Perhaps, my Brother, you may be a minister and yet you may almost
   falter in stating some grand doctrinal Truth of God. Why is that,
   Brother? Is there something at the back that I cannot guess--that I
   would not mention if I could-- which weakens your testimony? Yet you
   will not be ashamed when you have respect unto all God's commandments!
   How can we stand to admonish the unrighteous if we are not living
   righteous lives? How can we be able, like Nathan, to say, "You are the
   man," if we are conscious that the person rebuked could turn round and
   point at our lives and say, "See what you do!" No, Brothers, the
   servants of God that are to have courage in doing duty for their Master
   must pray to be the undefiled in the way. They must walk in the Law of
   the Lord and though, at the very best, should they reach the highest
   point, they will still lie low before God and be humble in His
   Presence--yet they will not be ashamed when they can feel that they
   have, in all integrity, walked before the Lord and can say, like the
   Prophet of old, "Whose ox have I taken? Or whose ass have I taken? Or
   whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or of whose hand have I
   received any bribe to blind my eyes? And I will restore it to you.
   Witness against me before the Lord and before His anointed."

   But if they could not impugn him, it gives the man Grace not to be
   ashamed. So will it be in the time of trial, too. I admire Job,
   notwithstanding the testiness he seemed to have, and I wonder who would
   not be testy when he was covered with boils from head to foot--yet it
   was a grand thing to be able to say, "O God, You know I am not
   wicked"--and he could appeal to the Eternal as his Vindicator because
   the charges brought against him were not true. He had not sinned
   against his God in the way in which they said. Though he was not
   perfect in his nature, yet he was pure in heart. He was

   sincere in his disposition and blameless in his outward carriage so
   that he could defy them to prove any of the insinuations that they
   hurled at his integrity. This helped him to triumph! It was the very
   backbone of his patience.

   And what satisfaction will it supply when our course is reaching its
   close and we face the hour of our departure if no dark clouds hang over
   our retrospect of life! Let God's Grace enable you and me to live godly
   lives--we shall find, then, our evidences clear! Though we shall not
   always rely upon any works of righteousness that we have achieved, or
   any character of holiness that we have acquired, but shall ever rest as
   much in Christ as we did when at first we cast our sinful souls on Him
   for mercy, yet it will be sweet to look back upon a life that has been
   spent in the service of God and to exchange this service below for the
   nobler service of His courts above!

   And when our course is finished and we are gathered to our fathers, do
   you not think it will be well to leave an unclouded reputation behind?
   Did you ever notice the painful contrast between the record concerning
   one and another of the good kings of Judah? Take, for example, Amaziah
   and Hezekiah. Of Amaziah it is said, "He did that which was right in
   the sight of the Lord, yet not like David, his father. Howbeit the high
   places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt
   incense on the high places." There was no such qualification to the
   tribute offered to Hezekiah's memory. "He did that which was right in
   the sight of the Lord, according to all that David, his father, did. He
   removed the high places and broke the images, and cut down the groves,
   and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made: for unto
   those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called
   it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him
   was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were
   before him." So, Brothers and Sisters, I pray it may be with each and
   all of us, though we may not hold any such exalted position as the
   kings of Judah! Yet let it be our desire and our aim to be "sincere and
   without offense till the day of Christ."

   Once more, and I have done. "Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have
   respect unto all Your commandments." "Then I shall not be ashamed
   before God." There is such a thing as a child of God being very much
   ashamed in the presence of his father. He does not doubt that he is a
   child, but he feels ashamed. Is it not so with your own children? They
   know that they are your children and they know that you love them, but,
   still, they are ashamed because they have been doing something which
   grieves you and so they do not seek your company. They get away from
   father. Father has looked very angrily at them. And yet you never say,
   "Oh, you are not your father's child because you have done wrong and
   your father will turn you out of the family."

   They are never apprehensive of your casting them off. Oh no! They are
   Calvinistic enough to know that they are not threatened with such a
   punishment! But at the same time they are fully aware--and it is enough
   to distress them--that their father is vexed and that he frowns, so
   they keep out of his way. Now, remember, if we walk in the light as He
   is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and, "the blood of
   Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." But we must walk in the
   light, or else we shall not have fellowship with God. Sin will mar and
   break up that fellowship. Sin will make you leave off communing, or
   else communing will make you leave off sinning! The two things are not
   consistent with each other. I, of course, do not mean, by sinning,
   those sins of infirmity which we commit unconsciously, but I mean a
   general habit of sinning to which our willfulness or our negligence
   contribute.

   No rebellion or remissness can be tolerated in those who are living
   with God. Have you ever noticed two boys that want some indulgence and
   one of them says, "Ask Father for such-and-such. Ask Father to let us
   have a holiday." The other says, "John, you ask him." "No," says John,
   "I cannot ask him. You ask him." "Why should the younger one ask?"
   "Well," John says, "you know I have offended Father and though, of
   course, he loves me, yet I do not think it is quite the time for me to
   go and ask him for any great favor. You go and ask for us both." Have
   you not felt, sometimes, like that when engaged in prayer when you have
   not been walking with God as you should? You could pray for
   forgiveness; you could pray for common mercies; but as for any great
   favor or special mercy you have felt ashamed, at such times, to ask,
   and you have been glad for some Brother to open his mouth a little
   wider than you dared and ask for the Church and you some great
   blessing.

   O Lord, Your servant knows what it is to draw near to Your Mercy Seat,
   but he feels as if he were not on such terms with You as usual and that
   he cannot offer prayers and intercessions with that sense of liberty he
   has often enjoyed. There are other times when God meets us with the
   kisses of His love and says, "Ask what you will, and it shall be given
   to you." It is grand praying with us then! "Then shall I not be
   ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments." I shall not
   plead my obedience before You. No, verily, but I shall plead the blood
   and righteousness of Christ--and this I

   shall do with all the greater boldness because my heart is sprinkled
   from an evil conscience--and that same Spirit which has worked
   obedience in me will work in me the spirit of adoption! And He that
   taught me to listen to Your voice will teach me so to speak that You
   will listen to my voice and an answer of peace shall come to me!

   May God bless you, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good
   word and work for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Moral of a Miracle

   (No. 1444)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Jesus answering said unto them, Have faith in God." Mark 11:22.

   THIS exhortation stands in connection with the miracle of the withering
   of the fig tree that was clad with leaves but bore no fruit. The
   peculiarity of the parable calls for a few words of explanation, before
   we proceed, to enforce the moral appended to it. To many readers it
   seems strange and inconsistent that as it was not the time for figs,
   our Lord should have expected to find figs upon the tree at all. They
   wonder how it was that He should blame the fig tree for not having figs
   when the time of figs was not yet come. But it is because we do not
   live in the land of fig trees that we do not understand this, for,
   according to the natural order of production, the fig fruit precedes
   the foliage. The fig tree, first of all, puts forth its figs at the end
   of the shoots--the little knobs beginning to form in the early spring
   and the figs becoming very fairly developed before any leaves
   appear--so that if a fig tree has leaves upon it, it ought to have figs
   in a considerable state of ripeness.

   This fig tree, at a time when no figs were expected and far less any
   leaves, seemed to have outstripped all its fellow fig trees. It seemed
   to have gone far ahead of them--to have been in advance of its own
   responsibilities as a fig tree. It seemed to have exceeded all the
   demands of the season and to have reached a state of supernatural
   fruit-bearing which no other fig tree had dreamed of reaching. There
   were leaves. The Savior went up and, finding the leaves which ought to
   have denoted figs in a considerable state of ripeness, He glanced
   around, but finding no single fig to justify the large pretense, He
   said, "Henceforth let no fruit grow on you forever."

   You know that occasionally trees do leaf at abnormal times. There is a
   famous oak in the New Forest which usually has well-developed leaves
   upon it about Christmas when winter reigns on every side and, "dead the
   vegetable kingdom lies." There is a pretty superstition about it, as
   though the tree thrust forth its sudden honors at the birth of the
   great Lord. I have seen the tree and it seems very strange that it
   should take to leaf-bearing when there is not a leaf throughout the
   forest anywhere else. This fig tree, in like manner, for some reason or
   other, had got into leaf at a time when it ought not. If it did get
   into leaf, it ought to have figs, but it had leaves and no figs.

   As such it becomes a fit and proper emblem of such a man as we
   sometimes meet with who vaunts a righteousness he cannot verify--he
   seems more conspicuously pious in his character than he could
   reasonably have been expected to be. He makes a show of piety that is
   altogether premature--he gives signs of maturity before the season. He
   professes much though he yields nothing to corroborate it--a prodigy of
   self-conceit. He does not say he is absolutely perfect, but it needs
   very fine optics to distinguish the line. He outstrips all his fellows.
   His talk is something marvelous. His creed is more sound, his
   conscience more sensitive, his conduct more sanctimonious and his
   standard in estimating others more censorious than the rest of the
   community.

   You are amazed at it till you come near to him and then you find it is
   all talk, tinsel and trumpery. "Nothing but leaves"--no real virtue,
   but a verdant show. Yes, I have known decent morality outraged by such
   monstrous duplicity! All the leaves and foliage of a godly life--and
   all the death and corruption of a graceless libertinism! Those round
   about him were ashamed to find themselves so inferior in their
   attainments, till presently the suddenness with which he withered
   astounded them more than the rapidity of his growth! There was nothing
   in it. The old proverb has it, "Great cry and little wool." Great cry,
   indeed, for holier voices are silenced by it and no wool at all to
   repay the shearer! "Nothing but leaves." If any man is withered, it is
   such a man as that!

   One thing I have noticed in watching over a large Church is that some
   who have seemed too good to live, have turned out much too bad for us
   to want them to live very long. Such have been so pure, so white, so
   spotless, so stainless, so precise, so exact, so velvet-mouthed, so
   oily, so full of sugar, so hyper-holy in their hypocrisy that it seemed
   cruel to feel inward qualms when you were near them. Yet under a thin
   layer of this hollow pretension they have been so deficient in

   all spiritual life and reality and sincerity, that when we found them
   out, we could not help feeling a burning indignation in our own soul
   that men could go so far in lying unto the Holy Spirit! One does not
   wonder that Ananias and Sapphira fell dead, or that the fig tree was
   blasted that had so many leaves and no fruit!

   We have seen the same thing happen to men and we have not been amazed.
   We have only thought how righteously God has unmasked them and exposed
   their hideous vices to the denunciation, even, of the world, which,
   though it lies in the Wicked One, has yet some sense of scorn at a
   religious lie! Now, our Savior performed this miracle by way of
   parable, not that He cared for figs, or was angry because there were
   none, but that it furnished Him with an opportunity of instructing His
   disciples. This was an object lesson. We never learn so well as from
   something we can actually see with our eyes. Jesus did this that they
   might see and that their minds might be impressed with what they saw.
   The main impression upon the mind of Peter and the others seems to have
   been the extraordinary power of Christ.

   One morning their Lord said, "Henceforth let no fruit grow on you
   forever," and the next day when they passed that way they found the fig
   tree withered, even from the roots--not simply all its shoots gone,
   but, according to Mark, in the 20th verse, they saw the fig tree dried
   up from the roots, or totally destroyed. It stood a wreck of a tree,
   the precise opposite of what it had seemed to be some 24 hours before!
   They were struck with the power of Christ's word--at the simple fiat of
   His mouth the doom had fallen on the tree! He had not touched the tree
   that we know of--He simply spoke and its bloom was past, its doom had
   come.

   Now, our Lord did not go on to open up the parable to them, but
   perceiving the impression it made on their minds in one direction He
   aimed at still further engraving on their souls the moral which had
   been conveyed to their senses-- and so He went on to speak about the
   great power of God that they were wondering at and to tell them that
   they could have that power--that they could wield it and that they
   might exert it as He did! And He practically told them how they could
   get that power and go forth girded with it.

   I. Our first observation, in order to bring out this vein of thought,
   shall be that IT IS GOOD FOR US TO OBSERVE THE POWER OF GOD. These
   disciples saw the power of Christ, which is the power of God, in the
   withering of a fig tree. We do not see miracles now. We do not look for
   signs and wonders to supply the credentials and the seal of faith. The
   works of God in Nature are, if rightly understood, testimonies to the
   eternal power and Godhead at once simple and sublime. Perhaps, under
   some aspects, they convey higher lessons than miracles. We ought, I
   think, to have our eyes constantly open to see the power of God in
   renewing the face of the earth.

   I like to observe it in the seasons. What a wonderful power was that
   which, all of a sudden, called up all sleeping bulbs and flowers from
   their graves and caused that which had been black soil to suddenly
   blossom into a golden garden, or to bloom into beds sparkling with many
   colors! Have you not seen lone places in the forests and nooks among
   the trees so glorious in color that it seemed as though the Lord had
   torn pieces of the robe of the sky and flung them down among the trees
   in the forest? We have seen the hyacinths all of a sudden in their
   deepest blue standing where all before had been black mold or sere
   leaf. We see it every year, but it is a marvelous thing and we might
   stand and say, "How soon has the winter passed away! How speedily has
   earth put on her youth again!"

   Do you not see the power of God in all this? These creations and
   resurrections of spring--are they nothing? And now, at this season of
   the year when the leaves are falling all around us, though the trees
   are not withering away, how rapidly they are undergoing their wonderful
   process of disrobing! You passed by a tree the other day which was
   green and you delighted to be beneath its foliage--and now, in the
   setting sun of this afternoon it seemed as though it were blazing with
   golden fire--every leaf had turned yellow by the touch of autumn! How
   has God worked all this? Silently and quietly, without sound of
   trumpet, from year to year these miracles of Nature proceed, of which I
   am speaking very roughly now--but he that looks into them and studies
   them shall be filled with amazement at the extraordinary power

   of God!

   This world has been going round the sun making its revolutions. Who
   could hold it to its pathway but the Most High? Each day it revolves
   and gives us the delightful vicissitude of day and night--it is the
   Lord that keeps the world on its axis. We do not think adequately at
   all of the mighty power of God which is continually going forth. The
   creation of blood out of water by the plague of Egypt astonishes us a
   great deal more than does the revolution of the world and yet this is,
   by far, the more amazing thing of the two! It does us good, beloved
   Friends, to stand, sometimes, at night and

   look up to the starry heavens and think what a God He is that calls all
   of them by name, leads them out in marching order so that not one of
   them fails and sustains each one of those celestial orbs in its place
   throughout the ages!

   Marvelous are the works of God in Nature! Can you read about Vesuvius
   beginning to pour forth its fires, or of earthquakes in different
   places shaking the mountains to their bases and making the strongest
   works of men to rock and reel, without a sense of reverential awe? Can
   you be in a storm at sea; can you tremble while each timber starts as
   the waves beat upon the vessel, without feeling that this is a great
   God whom we serve? I invite you to think of the greatness, the majestic
   grandeur of God in Nature, because the God of Nature is the God of
   Grace--and the God that rules on high and thunders according to His
   pleasure is the God whom we call Father--and who has taken us into His
   family that we may be His sons and daughters! Though we do not see fig
   trees withered away, yet often ought we to stand in holy wonder and
   say, "Great God, how wonderful are Your works!"

   Now, if you turn your eyes from Nature to Providence, which I invite
   you to do, you will observe stupendous examples of the great power of
   God. This withering of the fig tree has been repeated 10,000 times on a
   grand scale. I will only remind you of what has happened in our own
   day. A few years ago slavery seemed to have struck its roots into the
   soil of the Southern States in America. Its branches ran over the
   wall--the Northern States were bound to return a fugitive slave. How
   quickly has that fig tree withered away! Slavery has gone, blessed be
   God, forever. And there treads not now on American soil a man of any
   color who is a slave.

   Across yonder channel frowned the great empire of Napoleon. It looked
   as if it were very mighty. It spread itself like a green bay tree. It
   was the main support of the papacy, but how quickly has that fig tree
   withered away! Over yonder, in Italy, there were a number of petty
   principalities with paltry tyrants crushing down the people. God raised
   up an honest man who came forward as the champion of the oppressed and
   how speedily did those little fig leaves fall! There stood the man of
   sin with his temporal power. He was master of his own domains and
   chiefly of the city of Rome, but how soon has that fig tree withered
   away! One after another revolutions have occurred and events have
   transpired in our own day which prove that the Lord is very great in
   power!

   All through history the ages bear record that whenever an institution
   has sprung up that has brought forth no good fruit just at the very
   time when it was full of leaves, when everybody said, "Now we may
   expect fruit from it," and when it was supposed to be impossible that
   it should pass away--just then has the Lord spoken and its hour of doom
   has come! One word from Him and how speedily has this fig tree withered
   away! All Providence is full of it! He that reads history looking for
   Providences needs not turn two pages over without finding instances. He
   shall see the hand of God here and there and there and there again,
   permitting, for a while, the growth of evil, but then speedily sweeping
   it away! So shall every system which defies His Laws prove that its
   prosperity is the precursor of its utter destruction. It flowers and
   flourishes but to droop and die--to die just in its prime. While we
   stand trembling and astonished at its spread, so thick its leaves, so
   palpable its vitality--at that very moment we hear the powerful voice
   of Christ and see the inevitable result in the withering away of that
   which was in the prime of vigor!

   Now, as we have opportunity to watch the power of God, let us always be
   ready to observe it. Not, however, with vacant wonderment, nor with
   idle gossip to exclaim to one another, "How extraordinary!" Although
   the works of God are meet subjects for adoring wonder, yet when we
   remember who He is and what He is, there is a sense in which we may
   well cease to wonder or to be startled, as if our poor philosophy must
   forever reckon as strange phenomena the tokens of His Presence, the
   proofs of His agency and the impress of His hands! You know the story
   of the good woman who, on being told of some answers to prayer which
   had been received, was asked, "Is it not wonderful?" and she simply
   replied, "No, not at all. It is just like Him. That is the way of Him."

   And so, when God puts away withered fig trees and when He shows His
   power in other ways in His divine Providence, it is amazing for us to
   contemplate and yet it is not amazing for Him to perform! He breaks the
   bow and cuts the spear in sunder. He burns the chariot in the fire and
   He bids us be still and know that He is God. He will be exalted in the
   earth! It has been the way of Him from the first and it will be the way
   of Him still. We ought to watch these works of power that we may feel
   that this power is altogether engaged upon our side. If we are, indeed,
   on the side of God; if His Grace has reconciled us to Him; if we live
   to promote His Glory; if we are under His keeping and the guardian care
   of the Lord Jesus, then all the power that makes an earthquake will be
   put forth to shake Heaven and earth sooner than we shall perish!

   All the power that shows itself in Providence shall be put forth to
   deliver us sooner than we shall famish! Our place of defense shall be
   the munitions of rocks! Our bread shall be given us and our water shall
   be sure. The mighty God, Jehovah is His name, has pledged His
   Omnipotence for the advance and the victory of His people--and stand
   they shall and win the day! That is my first point for our evening's
   meditation--it is good to observe the power of God.

   II. God has called His people to WORKS WHICH NEED ALL THAT POWER. Our
   Lord Jesus Christ practically tells us this when He says, "Have faith
   in God, for verily I say unto you, that whoever shall say unto this
   mountain, Be you removed, and be you cast into the sea; and shall not
   doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he says
   shall come to pass; he shall have whatever he says." A Christian is a
   miracle. He is a mass of miracles! When he gets to Heaven he will be a
   miracle of miracles! His story in the telling thereof will fill all
   Heaven with enthusiasm, so marvelous is the work of God in the heirs of
   salvation!

   It is no small thing to be a soldier of the Cross--a follower of the
   Lamb. Now, tonight, dear Souls, if the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit
   should call any of you to come to Him, you would, perhaps, feel
   immediately the deepest anxiety in your heart. I think I hear you say,
   " If I come and trust Him, yet how shall I be saved, for see the
   difficulties that lie in my way? I see before me the vast mountain of
   my past sin. How can I come to Christ? Surely this Alp of transgression
   must hide Him from me." Have faith in God, dear Friend, and God's power
   will be put forth to move this mountain, yes, Christ has moved it by
   His precious death.

   "Yes," says the poor heart, "but I feel such a mountain of despair, I
   cannot hope. I think I have sinned beyond Grace." Have faith in God and
   you shall see this mountain of doubt and despair all swept away and you
   shall joy in Him that blots out your sin like a cloud and your
   transgressions like a thick cloud. "Ah," says the soul, "but I seem so
   cold, so heavy, so dead. I do not feel as earnest and eager as I
   should. There is nothing in me that is good." Have faith in God's power
   to help you in this and you shall find your lethargy and languor give
   place to energy and vigor--and your cold heart shall be thawed in the
   rivers of repentance!

   "Oh," says one, "but I need everything. I am far off from God, as far
   as I can be. There are impassable barriers between me and God." Yes,
   but have faith in God. Do but believe in His fatherly love and Grace,
   His goodness and faithfulness. Do but trust Christ and rely on the
   great Father's love in Jesus Christ and you shall find that the
   mountains which stop you will melt away and no longer impede you. I
   know what has happened to you. Your fig tree has been withered down to
   the roots. How full of leaves it used to be! You were once a fine
   fellow. If you did not bring forth any fruit to God, yet what fair
   promises you did make--what grand resolutions! What a fine
   self-righteousness you had! But the power of God's will has already
   withered it down to the roots!

   Now, the same power of His Gospel by the Spirit will take up all the
   mountains that stand between you and God and cast them into the depths
   of the sea! And you shall rejoice in Him! God calls the coming sinner,
   then, to duties and obligations so far beyond his own natural capacity
   that it requires all the power of God to enable him to fulfill them!
   Even when bid to repent and believe and come to Christ, it needs the
   Godhead to help him do that, but the Godhead will enable him and so he
   shall receive Grace for obedience to the faith. Have faith in God,
   then, and faint not by reason of discouragements.

   But after we have come to Christ we still find it no easy task to
   continue pressing on to God. You that have believed in Him and are
   saved, do you not often cry out, "O weak and erring mortal that I am!
   How shall I ever reach to perfection? How can I get rid of sin that
   haunts my imagination and vexes my heart? What Heaven of bliss can I
   know unless my soul is purified from every stain?" Most true it is that
   there can be no such thing as perfect happiness until there is perfect
   holiness and yet by faith the Believer looks for both. "But," do I hear
   you say, "first, my ignorance is in the way"? Have faith in God and you
   shall be taught of Him--and that mountain of darkness shall disappear.

   "Oh, but then there is my old corruption in the way and that comes in
   between me and every advance in Grace." Have faith in God and you shall
   find He will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and fill you
   with virtue and vitality through believing. "Oh, but the trials and
   temptations of each day, how shall I stand against them?" You cannot
   stand against them alone. They are far too much for you, but have faith
   in God and then, fierce as those temptations may be, you shall be able
   to resist, for His power is able to hold you up! Though a legion of
   devils at once should tempt you, have faith in God and they shall be
   put to the rout. You shall have sufficient Grace to bear you through.

   "Yes, but," says another, "you do not know my trials." No, my dear
   Friend, and you do not know mine, but both you and I may know that He
   who measured out the trial--for they are all measured and weighed to
   the last pennyweight--knows how to strengthen us so that we can bear
   them. We shall be able to say to the mountains of trial, "Depart," as
   truly as we bade the fruitless fig tree, "be dried up." Rise, worm
   Jacob, and thresh the mountains and beat them small! Yes, turn them
   into chaff and winnow them--and the wind shall carry them away. Only
   trust in the eternal power and Godhead and there is nothing between
   here and Heaven that need give you any fear!

   If we are without God we shall stumble at a straw, but if God is with
   us, who can be against us? Even if our life should be protracted to an
   advanced old age; should our bones be full of pain and our flesh
   infected with a thousand painful infirmities; even though we should
   spend years upon a weary bed with poverty as well as pain to afflict
   us--he that has faith in God shall sing aloud upon his bed and praise
   the Lord because the power of God rests upon him! You are not called to
   be parade soldiers to exhibit your regimentals and your fine feathers.
   You are called to fight! You must fight if you would reign! Do not be
   mistaken--you are called to work miracles--moral miracles, spiritual
   miracles! You are called to do great wonders between here and Heaven.
   You see your calling, Brothers and Sisters, and you will see, if you
   see aright, that nothing but a Divine power can help you to accomplish
   it.

   Now, if this is true in respect to our own spiritual life, I am sure it
   is so in trying to win the souls of others to Christ. The man who
   brings a soul to Christ achieves a result which no genius or skill of
   the creature could compass. The power which God puts upon a man to make
   him the means of turning a sinner from darkness to light has no
   parallel! If a man could tell me that he stopped Niagara at a word, I
   would not envy him his power if God will only allow me to stop a sinner
   in his mad career of sin! If a creature could put his finger on
   Vesuvius and quench its flame, I would not at all regret that I had no
   such power if I might but be the means of staying a blasphemer and
   teaching him to pray!

   This spiritual power is the greatest power imaginable and the most to
   be desired. If any of us aims to be useful, we cannot succeed unless we
   have this Divine power, for without Omnipotent spiritual help we can
   produce no spiritual results! You can read a sermon or preach a sermon,
   or hear your children read in your Sunday school class without any help
   from God, but nothing will come of it. If there is to be living
   preaching and living teaching that really brings souls to Jesus Christ,
   the work must all be worked in the power of the Holy Spirit from first
   to last! You see your calling, then, Brothers. You must have that power
   which speaks to fig trees and they wither--yes, a power sufficient to
   speak to a mountain and pluck it up by its roots--for nothing short of
   this will fit you for your work.

   Take the larger scale for a minute and think of it. We are all called
   to try and extend the Redeemer's kingdom and as Christians we are
   greatly concerned for the progress of the Church and the Truth of God.
   I am sure in these evil days there is not one of us that can look upon
   the signs of the times without considerable sorrow. I hope it is not
   because I am growing older that I take a gloomier view of things than I
   did some years ago--it is not my eyes, but I actually see superstition
   much more rampant than it was. That particularly sweet fig tree of
   ritualism has spread its boughs amazingly!

   And then there is the very specious fig tree of skepticism that seems
   to overshadow a considerable portion of the professing Church of
   Christ. Well, now, what is to be done? Nothing is to be done except as
   the text tells us--"Have faith in God." And when we have faith in God
   we must speak with fidelity and with authority, too. We must show our
   faith by the testimony we bear--and the Word of God that comes out of
   faithful lips shall roll like thunder, flash like lightning and strike
   with electric force! And so the old effect it always had on these leafy
   fruitless fig trees will be repeated--it shall make them wither away.

   If you have ever read the history of skeptical thought in Germany--not
   that I recommend you to do so, for it is a sore labor and a weariness
   of spirit--but if you have ever waded through any of these histories of
   philosophy as I have, myself, you will doubtless have observed a
   thought rising up like a cloud full of portents and covering the
   Fatherland with its fantastic shadows till the people are led to see
   everything in a new light or under a fresh coloring. They give the
   poet, the essayist and the critic of the new cloud region credit for
   inspiration! And all who abide under that shadow are written down as
   infallible! But how insecure the reign of human wisdom! In about 25
   years you could buy all the books of that day at the price of waste
   paper--for a new philosophy has sprung up--a fresh system which has
   rendered obsolete all that preceded it.

   The scholars are in ecstasy! They shout, "Eureka!" and sneer
   contemptuously at all who refrain from echoing their cry. Wait a little
   while and another meteor will attract their gaze; another ephemeral
   glowworm will glimmer in the darkness! I have read of a gourd "which
   came up in a night and perished in a night," but the cedars of Lebanon
   grow slowly and endure longer. "How soon has this fig tree withered
   away!" Thus have I thought and so have I said, as I have read one after
   another, the various systems of nonsense that they call philosophy and
   metaphysics. "How soon has this fig tree withered away!"

   Now, in the lives of even some of the younger folks here, you might
   have seen, in England, different systems of unbelief coming up in
   different quarters under which the thinkers of the age, (as they call
   themselves), or the triflers of the hour, (as we might better style
   them), have sought shelter. At one time we were all wrong because of
   some wonderful discovery of old bones. Geology had upset us! Then some
   other science was brought to the front. One has lived to see a number
   of little scares. The fig trees have come up with a vast show of
   foliage without any fruit. In looking back at them we can say, "How
   soon has this fig tree vanished." And, as to the present pretensions,
   whatever they may be, we have only to wait a little while, with
   confidence in God, and we shall see these fruitless fig trees also
   wither away!

   Yes, and if there are systems in the world which seem more enduring,
   colossal as the Alps, with foundations deep as Hell, we have still but
   to exercise faith enough and cry to God loudly enough and fling
   ourselves upon Omnipotence boldly enough--and then to speak--and in the
   speaking of the everlasting Gospel we shall see these mountain systems
   plucked up by the roots and cast into the midst of the sea! There is
   the point--we must have Divine strength to do it.

   III. Now, our Savior shows us the CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN THE DIVINE
   POWER AND OUR WORK.

   How are we to acquire this power? We believe that God can do all
   things--we have seen something of the greatness of His power--how can
   we be girded with it? Here is the answer--"Have faith in God." It is to
   be by faith, that is, trust, reliance, belief. It must be in God. Our
   faith must not be partly in God and partly in something else, but faith
   in God. And it is, literally, "Have the faith of God"--the faith which
   is worked in us by God and sustained by God, for that is the only faith
   that is worth having. Have the faith of God.

   "Oh, but this is a very small thing," says one. It is. It is a child's
   instinct to trust his father, but it is the rarest Grace in the world
   to trust our Father who is in Heaven. "When the Son of man comes shall
   He find faith on the earth?" If anybody could find it, He could. He
   knows where it is, for He is the Author, the Giver and the Nourisher of
   faith. Yet there is so little of it in culture that if He, Himself,
   searched for it, He would not find many fields in which it grows, or
   many hearts in which it thrives. Why, some of us have faith in Him
   whereby we are saved from this present evil world, but how shocked at
   ourselves we have reason to be in respect to the little faith we have
   in Him for the furtherance of His own work and how our heart sinks
   under our own daily trials!

   He has given us justifying faith, but our faith is still a faith, the
   weakness of which should make us humble ourselves before Him. Doubt
   God? How monstrous it sounds! How foolish it appears! How impossible it
   seems! To an experienced Christian, at first sight, it really seems
   incredible that any disciple of Jesus should doubt God. You, my dear
   Brother, that have been fed and nourished all your life by singular
   Providences--you whose life is so remarkable that if its incidents were
   all written, people would look on them as a romance! You who have seen
   His arm made bare on your behalf many times--you who have often been
   compelled to say, "Still has my life new wonders seen"--do you doubt
   Him? How can it be?

   Alas! Alas! Is not this the fault, the grievous, crying sin of many of
   the children of God? Hence our Lord puts it thus. He not only speaks of
   the faith of God, but He says, "Have it; have it. Have faith in God.
   Have it handy. Have it about you. Have it for daily use. Carry it with
   you." Some of you have got a good anchor somewhere, but you left it at
   home when the storm came. You have faith somewhere, but you do not seem
   to exercise it just at the time when faith is required. "Have faith in
   God." He does not tell you how much. There is no need to prescribe any
   limit. Have unlimited faith in God! Have daily faith in God! Have
   continual, perpetual, abounding faith in God! "Have faith in God."

   This is the connecting link between our weakness and the Divine
   strength by which we are made strong. Have faith in God about every
   purpose and every peril that may arise. You saw how the fig tree
   withered away. Have faith about that. You have seen it. Now, have faith
   about mountains. Do not think that God's power is limited to withering
   fig trees! Have faith about things of magnitude and things minute, but
   more particularly about the things that at this moment

   distress you. When you feel that you could believe God about everything
   but one particular matter that just now frets your mind and breaks your
   peace, you evidently misjudge your own capacity for faith!

   You ought to measure its strength by the influence it exerts upon you
   under your present trial. O my Sister, have faith in God about that
   sick little infant at home! Your heart is sad that the Lord's will in
   this must be done, but He will strengthen you to bear it! Have faith,
   too, about those simple family matters which are causing you so much
   irritation. You have been praying about them--now commit your cause to
   God and have faith that He will grant your request. "Oh, but there is a
   matter of deep moment harassing my very soul which I should not like to
   mention to anybody," you say. Have faith about it and mention it to
   your Lord. Do not go about and make mischief by talking of it, but have
   faith about it.

   "Yes, but I am out of employment," says a poor man over yonder, "and I
   am getting hardly pressed." Dear Brother, are you a true Believer? Have
   faith about that, now. I know you will say to me that I do not know
   your trial. No, I do not. But you do not know some troubles I have had!
   And if you were to tell me to have faith in God about them, I would
   thank you for the exhortation, for that is the only way I have of
   getting over them. And, dear Brother, it is the only way you will find
   of being extricated from your dilemmas! What a mass of troubles are
   represented by this assembled multitude! If we could empty them out,
   what a heap they would be! And yet, if the living God is trusted, how
   the heap all vanishes! What does it matter? The burden is all gone when
   you have once left it to Him! May the Lord the Holy Spirit help each
   one of us to have faith in God about the present difficulty, whether it
   is a fig tree or whether it is a mountain.

   I do not know what some of you do who have no God to trust--some of you
   who are very poor and have to suffer a good deal in this life--and yet
   have no hope of the world to come. Ah, poor Souls, the Lord have mercy
   upon you! Some of you seem to go through fire and water here and yet
   you have no Heaven in prospect, no hope in the world to come! Oh, see
   to it! May God grant you to have faith in Christ so there shall be no
   mountain between you and God, but you shall be with Him where He is
   when your time comes to depart.

   IV. Now, I conclude with my fourth point, which is THE CONNECTING LINK
   BETWEEN THE DIVINE

   POWER AND OURSELVES. To use a very simple figure, you remember how
   Franklin, when he knew there was an electric fluid in the cloud, sped
   his kite and brought down the lightning? Well now, there is the
   everlasting power of God up yonder and I must learn to let my faith get
   up into the clouds to bring down the Divine power to me! If I have
   faith enough I can have any quantity of power. "According to your faith
   be it unto you." If you are weak it is because your faith is not a good
   conductor between you and the eternal strength. If you had stronger
   faith, is it possible to judge how strong you might be? There is no
   telling what a man might be able to accomplish if his faith were to
   increase with the occasion.

   In Samson we see what physical strength came to in a man who had
   confidence in God, for that man Samson, though faulty in almost every
   point, had such confidence in God as hardly anybody ever had. There
   were a thousand Philistines and they shouted against him, but what did
   that matter to that great big child, Samson, when the Spirit of the
   Lord came mightily on Him? He said, "With the jawbone of an ass, heaps
   upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men." O
   glorious faith! And so ought we to feel, "I am nothing. I am nobody,
   yet God is with me and on I go, dauntless and undismayed." If earth is
   all in arms abroad, it matters not if God is with us. When there is a
   minority of one and that one is God, we are in the majority, directly,
   for God is all and all the people in the world are nothing before

   Him!

   The Lord gives us some hints of how to use our faith. First, we must
   use it to expel every remaining doubt. "Whoever shall say unto this
   mountain, Be you removed, and be you cast into the sea; and shall not
   doubt in his heart, but believe that those things which he says shall
   come to pass; he shall have whatever he says." God will not bless the
   speaking of that man who is full of doubts! Get rid of the doubts. The
   Gospel of this present half of the 19th Century is, "Doubt." It does
   not say, "And you shall be saved," because it sees no immediate need of
   being saved! The Gospel preached in numbers of our places of worship
   is--"Doubt, doubt! Do not be as those nearly extinct Puritans that
   believe in the Inspiration of the Bible and hold to old-fashioned,
   exploded doctrines! Be a man and doubt."

   They will doubt themselves into a pretty scrape before long. Some of
   them are doubting till their chapels are empty! They are scaring their
   people away from them as naturally they would, for doubt is a ghastly
   apparition. But, dear Brothers and Sisters, you and I have to do the
   very opposite of this. We have to find out every lingering doubt and
   draw

   it out and drive it away. Doubt? When a man is about to strike a blow
   in faith it is a doubt which paralyses him! Doubt? Why even a little
   doubt is like a small stone in a traveler's shoe--it lames him. It is a
   very little thing, but he had better spend a week in picking it out
   than go on with it there.

   Believer, you must get doubt right out of you, for until you believe
   you will never travel well to Heaven, or be strong in the Lord. Only
   fancy Martin Luther agitated with doubts as he rode into Worms! Not
   quite sure about justification by faith when answering for his life?
   Agitated with doubts when he was carrying his life in his hands to
   confront the powers of the world in the name of God? Doubt would have
   ruined him! Let us chase the spirit of unbelief away. The Lord help us
   to do so and to be filled with faith.

   The next hint the Savior gives us is to be much in prayer, because it
   is by prayer that faith exercises itself unto God. "What things soever
   you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall
   have them." Much prayer, but of a believing sort, should be offered by
   simple, trustful disciples, for the cry of faith which is true prayer
   touches the heart of the great Father and He is prompt to grant His
   children their desires. But one other hint. That is, we must see to it
   that we are purged of what would effectually prevent prayer being
   heard. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my
   prayer."

   Would you have the power of God to gird you, you must get rid of all
   malice from your heart. You must forgive your brother. All selfishness
   and uncharitableness must be eradicated from your breast or else the
   Lord cannot trust you with power. If you had despotic power linked with
   a pitiless disposition you would not only curse a leafless fig tree,
   but you would get to cursing anything and everything that was contrary
   to your own likes. If you were endued with all manner of power, it
   would be no mercy to you but an infinite misery unless you were also
   partakers of the mind of Christ! Unless you have His heart of infinite
   purity and inimitable benevolence, power would be a most dangerous
   thing to trust you with.

   The Lord will only trust His children with power in proportion as they
   know His will and strive to do it. When they become completely like He,
   their very prayers which were sown in weakness shall be raised in
   power! But sin is awfully debilitating--it weakens, depletes and
   utterly prostrates a man--any kind of sin tolerated in the will If we
   think that power when acquired may be used for our own pleasure,
   profit, or honor--the power will not come--it cannot possibly be
   conferred on such terms. You shall move no mountain from its place
   till, first of all, the mountain of your selfishness is cast into the
   sea!

   O Lord, purge Your vessels and then fill them! Cleanse the instruments
   from rust and then use them! Here we are now before You! Blessed be
   Your name, You have saved us! Now make us fit to be serviceable in Your
   cause and kingdom, poor unworthy things as we are, and You shall have
   honor of us and by us forever! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFOOE SERMON--Mark 11. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--67E, 523.
     __________________________________________________________________

Wake Up! Wake Up!

   (No. 1445)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
   sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." Romans
   13:11.

   THIS exhortation, as you will readily perceive, is not addressed to the
   ungodly. These words are not spoken to those who are dead in sin, but
   to those who are alive unto God, though somewhat given to slumber.
   There are many expostulations and admonitions which appeal to the
   willful and wicked, to the indifferent and unbelieving, to those who
   err and are out of the way, but this is not one of them. Here we have a
   special charge to disciples of Jesus who know the time and also know
   that their salvation draws near. They are represented as being asleep
   and needing to awake from their present sluggishness. But they are not
   described as those who had ceased to be Christians, or whose salvation
   was in jeopardy. Though it is admitted that it is high time for them to
   awake out of sleep, their salvation is never questioned, but on the
   contrary they are reminded that now it is nearer than when they
   believed.

   The tone and tenor of this call to circumspection suggest to us that
   when we address the Lord's people and find occasion to rebuke and
   reprove them, we should never insinuate that they are likely to be
   banished from the household of faith, or to be cast away from the
   Presence of God, or to be treated as reprobates. Even if we feel
   convinced that they are asleep and that they must be awakened, we ought
   not to denounce them with railing accusations or threaten them with the
   wailings of the lost and the doom of unquenchable fire. You would not
   be pleased if anyone should touch your child with a horsewhip--nor will
   the Lord allow us to strike His chosen with the rod of the wicked.
   Legal thunders are not intended for justified saints--

   "The terrors of Law and of God With us can ha ve nothing to do. Our
   Savior's obedience and blood Hide all our transgressions from view.'

   Even if the saints' hearts are dull, their eyes heavy and they are
   evidently fast asleep, we are not warranted in raising a false alarm.
   It is not for us to tell the heirs of salvation to awake because they
   are in danger of the wrath to come, for they are in no such
   danger--that is past and gone. Rather let us remind them that their
   salvation is nearer than when they believed and so stir them up to
   watchfulness and activity by appropriate motives. The whip is for the
   slave, not for the child. The dread of punishment is for the condemned,
   not for the justified. The fear of wrath is not for those who are
   "accepted in the Beloved," but for those who reject the Savior and put
   from them the eternal mercy of God.

   While, then, I endeavor to speak frankly and faithfully to the Lord's
   people, I shall try to avoid anything like a legal tone. I would gladly
   talk to God's children as their Father in Heaven would have them talked
   to, somewhat sharply, perhaps, but still without a trace of the threats
   which belongs to the ungodly, but not to those who are saved in the
   Lord. From the connection it appears to me that Paul had in his
   mind's-eye a kind of sleepy state into which God's people may fall with
   regard to others--and upon that state of slumber we shall speak
   tonight.

   I. Looking at the text in its true bearings, this is the lesson--SOME
   PROFESSING CHRISTIANS SEEM TO BE ALTOGETHER IN A DEAD SLEEP WITH REGARD
   TO OTHERS. It is all very well to take a passage of Scripture, isolate
   it from the context, and use it as the slogan of a sermon. But it is
   evidently not the natural and fair way of treating the Word of God. You
   may do so, for the most part, with tolerable safety, for God's Truth,
   even when it is broken up into little pieces, still retains its purity
   and perfection like certain crystals, which, however much they may be
   subdivided, always bear the same crystalline form. So true in every
   particle and detail is the Revelation of God that though you should
   take it up and dash it to pieces, yet every little fragment will bear
   the original impression.

   But this is no excuse for treating the Scriptures in an unjustifiable
   manner instead of expounding them according to the rules of common
   sense. Texts ought always to be handled with a reverential deference to
   the mind of the Divine Spirit who wrote them. When we attempt to rivet
   your attention on a verse or the fraction of a verse of the Bible, we
   desire you, also, to be scrupulously attentive to the affinities in
   which it stands. If any of my published sermons should in any instance
   appear to violate this rule, you will bear me witness that it has been
   my constant habit throughout all my ministry among you to read and open
   up, as best I could, the whole chapter from which I have selected a few
   words as the emphasis of my discourse. I have honestly endeavored to
   give you the special mind of the Spirit either in the exposition or in
   the sermon.

   Now, you will see that the connection here is this. Paul has been
   bidding us to pay attention to relative duties. As citizens, he bids us
   render honor to magistrates, to those who are in authority and to pay
   all lawful dues and customs, and the like, telling us that we are to
   owe no man anything except to "love one another." And then he shows us
   that the Law of Love is the abstract and the essence of that great
   table of the Law which concerns a man's relation to His neighbors. He
   goes on to exhort us to keep that Law of Love, to manifest love more
   and more and, when he has done so, he interjects this sentence, "And
   that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
   sleep."

   Now, I gather that he means that many Christians are in a sleepy state
   with reference to the Law of Love with reference to their obligations
   to others. Beloved Friends, true godliness makes a man look to himself.
   It commences by convincing him of his own sin and by leading him,
   personally, to lay hold on Christ, by faith, that in His blood he may
   find salvation. It then makes the man feel his personal obligations and
   his individual responsibilities. It sets him free from many of the
   yokes with which his fellow men would load him and bids him obey his
   own conscience before his God, to be a law unto himself and to stand
   and walk as before the Most High, judging righteous judgment as to the
   Lord's will and not basely bending to evil at the advice and persuasion
   of other men.

   I would to God we could get some Christians, some professed Christians,
   to be a little more independent! But so many of them are like the
   rotten houses of which we have not a few in this neighborhood--they
   could not stand alone-- they must keep together, for they prop one
   another up! If you were to pull down one of the houses in some of our
   streets, they would all fall! And so there are sets of Christian
   professors that lean one, upon another, upon the custom of their set
   and sect, and Church and community. They have never dared to study
   Scripture for themselves and follow it, nor have they ever tried to
   form their own personal conscientious convictions!

   One of the first works of the Holy Spirit is to make a man look at home
   and to consider the condition of his own soul. When the Spirit of God
   has made a man thus to stand on his own footing before God and to feel
   his personality, there springs up a danger that such a man may say, "I
   shall henceforth keep myself to myself. My chief business will be
   indoor work, to see after the rightness of my own spirit and to keep
   myself prospering before the Lord. Other people must see to themselves
   and I must see to myself." The principle of individuality might be thus
   pushed to an extreme till what, at first, was necessary grit in the
   spiritual constitution, making the man truly a man, may be so unduly
   increased that he becomes, at last, an unkind, ungenerous, cruel,
   selfish thing deprived of the best part of his humanity.

   Thus, we are brought back to this, that albeit every man must give an
   account of himself before God and must personally be born again and
   personally be reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, yet, "no man lives to
   himself," nor was he ever meant to do so. No man can compass the ends
   of life by drawing a little line around himself upon the ground. No man
   can fulfill his calling as a Christian by seeking the welfare of his
   wife and family only, for these are only a sort of greater self. There
   are outgoing lines of life that bind us not only with some men, but, in
   fact, with all humanity, so that if we did but know it, the thought of
   one brain, the utterance of one mouth, the movement of one pair of
   hands does, in its measure, influence the whole human race to some
   degree and will do so till time shall be no more. We are placed,
   therefore, in a most solemn position and it is with regard to this that
   it is high time that we should awake out of sleep.

   Into what a deep slumber some professing Christians have fallen! How
   utterly insensible they are to the sins and sorrows of those around
   them. They believe God has a people and they are very glad He has, as
   far as they are capable of being glad of anything that does not concern
   themselves. But, "the world lies in the Wicked One," and multitudes are
   perishing! They are sorry it is so, that is to say, they go the length
   of saying they are sorry. It does not cause them any sleepless nights;
   it does not disturb their digestion; it in no way interferes with their
   comfort, for they do not seem to think that it has anything to do with
   them.

   I know some that are in such a sleep who drug themselves with almost as
   much regularity as they feed themselves! They take that great and
   precious Truth of God of the Divine Sovereignty and turn it to a most
   detestable use--for they say, "What is to be will be and the Lord's
   purpose will be fulfilled. There will be some saved and others lost."
   All this is said as coolly as if they were talking of a wasp's nest! As
   for those that are lost, they dare not injure their logic by indulging
   a little mournful emotion. Were their minister to weep over the lost,
   as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, they would say he was unsound--a
   duty-faith man, certainly and, probably, an Arminian! And they would
   straightway quit him and think that he could not have really received
   the mind of the Spirit of God.

   Yet, in the judgment of all who think aright, one of the finest traits
   in a Christian's character is the deep sorrow which he feels over souls
   that are being lost and the great longing of his own soul that men
   would turn unto God and find peace through Jesus Christ. O Sirs, I fear
   there are many professors in a deep sleep as to whether others are
   going to Heaven or to Hell! They look upon, as a matter of course, the
   drunkenness that is around them! The blasphemy which greets their ears
   does not chill their blood--they say it is very usual and very
   shocking! The Sabbath-breaking they take to be a kind of necessary
   evil! The rejection of Christ by men, they look upon as no sin at all
   and they even quarrel and quibble with those who think that sinners are
   blameworthy in rejecting the Son of God, the Savior of sinners!

   I trust that many of these are God's people and, if they are, it is
   high time that they should awake out of such a sleep as that--so unlike
   Christ, so alien to the spirit of love, so contrary to the mind--which
   God would have His Spirit work in all His people. Alas, that they
   should have sunk into so dead a sleep! There are others, dear Friends,
   who are prone to be overtaken with an oft-recurring sleep. I know a
   Brother who often takes forty winks in the daytime--you may nudge him
   and he will wake and listen to you, but he goes to sleep again in a few
   minutes if you leave him alone. He will attend to you with much
   pleasure if you pull his coat again, but he soon returns to his dozing.

   Who can blame the sleeper when it is a question of infirmity or sheer
   exhaustion? I never like to blame people too hastily when they go to
   sleep in a place of worship, for I remember thinking rather harshly of
   a Brother who went to sleep one Sunday morning under my sermon--when I
   found that he had been sitting up two nights with a sick wife and had
   been doing a full day's work besides, then I was sorry enough to have
   thought a harsh thought of a worthy man. I rather wondered, when I
   understood the case, whether I should have been able to come to worship
   at all. Well, without blaming any of you, then, for the weakness of the
   flesh, I take this sleepy habit to be a fit illustration of the state
   in which some Christians are to be found. They go to sleep and then
   they wake up for a little. They have fits and starts of wakefulness and
   then off to sleep again they drop.

   Does this describe you, dear Friend? At that missionary meeting you
   woke up when you heard the cry of the perishing heathen. You wanted to
   get out into the street at once and tell poor sinners about Christ--and
   you emptied your pockets into the plate before you left the building!
   Have you cared much about China or India since then, though you know
   that there are millions of people--millions dying for lack of
   knowledge? They have not troubled you much, have they, since that
   missionary meeting? Perhaps tonight I shall pull your coattail a little
   and you will be awake, again, and you will be very much concerned.
   Perhaps you will pray earnestly for your neighbors and your ungodly
   friends. But, I fear, you will soon go to sleep again.

   You have gone back to your slumbers so many times before that now it is
   "sleeping made easy." Could not your ministers lodge a grievous
   complaint against you for this? You get on fire with love for souls
   when the discourse is specially arousing, but then, after the sermon is
   over and the week of special services has ended, you go to sleep again!
   There are many Sunday school teachers of that kind. They sometimes talk
   to their children about their souls with tears in their eyes and then,
   again, their ardor evaporates and they get through their duties in
   little better form than merely reading the Scriptures and explaining
   them in a dry, dull fashion.

   My slumbering Brothers, you could be awake! You might be awake! For
   sometimes you are! There are times when your whole soul seems on fire!
   If anybody had spoken of you, then, they would have said, "What a fine
   man that is! What love he has for Christ! What concern for the souls of
   men! He ought to be sent forth as a missionary at once." Wait till you
   see him asleep! He can sleep very soundly! In fact, he is as great at
   sleeping as at waking! He can descend into depths of stupidity and
   indifference as naturally as he just now rose into heights of fervor
   and enthusiasm! Yes, there are many such, and I would say to any
   Brothers and Sisters who are conscious of a propensity in that
   direction--is it not high time that you, that I, that any, that ALL OF
   US should awake out of sleep?

   There are those, again, who fall into a kind of somnambulistic state.
   They are doing a good deal for their Lord and Master, but they are
   asleep. If judged by their outward actions, we should think they were
   wide awake and they do what they do very well. But have you ever seen a
   person who has a habit of walking in his sleep? It is a strange sight!
   Persons have been known to walk along giddy heights safely enough when
   they have been fast asleep where they would not have thought of
   venturing if they had been wide awake! And we have known, sometimes,
   professors going on very safely, carefully, exactly in positions where
   others have fallen--and we have admired their prudence and discretion
   and attributed it to the Grace of God--whereas in part it has been
   attributable to the fact that they were spiritually asleep all the
   time!

   It is very possible to walk long and far and yet remain asleep! It is
   very possible to appear very devout when, indeed, you are very sleepy!
   It is very possible to sing hymns when you are not awake to the sense!
   Yes, and it is very probable that you will betray your absence of mind
   by sitting down at the last verse, although there is going to be a
   chorus afterwards. You know it is coming, but your part of the worship
   is performed so mechanically that you dropped down in your pews as a
   mere matter of habit--and then were all in a flurry to be up again! I
   have detected many of you doing it. I have felt convinced that you were
   virtually asleep at the time--not really drinking in the spirit of the
   hymn, or else it would not have happened. It is very easy to hear
   sermons and to be asleep all the while--at least with one ear open and
   one eye--but the major part of the faculties of the soul still steeped
   in slumber.

   And you can keep on teaching in the Sunday school, pay your religious
   contributions punctually, maintain the habit of family prayer and even
   your private devotions may not be wholly neglected, and yet you may be
   walking in your sleep! All these duties may be done with a sort of
   sleep-walking life and action and not at all with the life of a
   thoroughly wakeful man. Oh, I would like to hear a man speak about
   Heaven who was altogether awake to it! I would like to hear a man
   preach about Hell who was awakened to the true pitch! It would make
   your very hair stand on end as you should hear how he told of the
   terrors of the wrath to come! It would make every drop of blood dance
   in your veins to hear a man speak of Christ who is all on fire with
   Divine love and all awake with Divine delight in Him!

   But that slumber is apt to come over the most lively minister. Who will
   not confess it? Oh, if you have ever read a chapter of the Bible when
   your soul has been all awake, how the promises have glowed and burned!
   How bright have they been like "the terrible crystal." But too often we
   have nodded over the Bible; nodded over the promises; nodded over the
   precepts till there seemed neither life nor power in them. The life was
   there, but we were asleep!

   Well, dear Friends, I must add and then I shall have said enough about
   sleep, that a very large number of us are half asleep. Whether there is
   one man alive that is spiritually awake all over, I do not know. Such a
   man as Rutherford, who loved his Lord so that he scarcely ever thought
   of anything but Jesus--that was a man all awake! Such a man as Mr.
   Whitefield--preaching his very heart out morning, noon and night with a
   seraphic eloquence--that was a man wide awake! There have been many
   such; I trust there is a remnant of such now. But the most of us are
   painfully conscious that we are waking and need greatly to be more
   awake still.

   O God, make us feel the solemn weight of those eternal things in which
   we believe! You have saved us--make us awake to feel from what You have
   saved us and by Whom You have saved us! Awaken us to realize to what
   you have saved us and what the privileges are which belong to us now
   that we are saved! Oh, when I think how trivial are the things of time
   and how all-important are the unseen realities of eternity, I cannot
   but again conclude that most of us are nothing more than about half
   awake as to the things of God! And if it is so, it is high time that we
   awake out of sleep!

   II. Now, in the second place, I want to occupy a few minutes by saying
   that whereas many Believers are asleep IT IS HIGH TIME THAT THEY SHOULD
   AWAKE. And why high time that they should be awake? Why, first, because
   what right have we who are Believers to be asleep at all? The Lord has
   saved us--saved us from death--saved us from the sleep which is the
   first cousin to death. He has saved us from indifference, from
   unbelief, from hardheartedness. He has saved us from carelessness.
   Well, now, if the Lord has done this for us, what business have we to
   be in a sleepy state?

   When the five wise virgins went out to meet the bridegroom and took
   their lamps with them, what right had they to be asleep? I can very
   well understand those sleeping who had no oil in the vessels with their
   lamps, because when their lamps went out they would be in the dark and
   darkness suggests sleep. But those who had their lamps well trimmed,
   should they go asleep in the light? Those that had the oil, should they
   go to sleep while the oil was illuminating them? They needed to be
   awake to put the oil into the lamp. Besides, they had come out to meet
   the bridegroom! Could they

   meet him asleep? When he should come, would it be fit that he should
   find those who attended his wedding all asleep in a row, insulting his
   dignity and treating his glory with scorn?

   Child of God, you are expecting Christ to come soon? He may come
   tonight, or He may, if He pleases, delay His coming, but why, oh why,
   do you think of sleeping? What is there congruous to your
   character--what is there suitable to your expectations--in your sleep?
   If, then, you have caught yourself having a sinful nap, bestir yourself
   and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken you, for since you have no right to
   sleep at all, it is high time that you should awake out of sleep! It is
   high time because a great many opportunities have already slipped away!
   I address myself to some of you who have been converted, say these 10
   years. And what have you done for Christ? You are saved--we are not
   going to question that--and your glorious salvation is nearer than when
   you believed.

   But what have you done during these many years? You have been eating
   the fat and drinking the sweet, but have you fed the hungry? Have you
   brought in the wandering? You have enjoyed the means of Grace, you tell
   me. And is this all you were created for--to enjoy, yes, even to enjoy
   good things? Have you not asked yourself the question, "What shall I
   render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?" Dear Friend, if you
   have been saved a week and you have done nothing for Christ during that
   week, you have already wasted more than enough time in having lived
   through seven fruitless days! Let the time past suffice you to have
   suffered opportunities to pass before your door unwelcomed.

   But some professors are growing old; gray hairs are upon them! How long
   have you been a Christian? Have you loved the Lord these 30 years and
   done so little? Or what, if though you are an old man and yet only a
   baby in Grace? That is worse still, is it not? As to all the past, is
   your account grievously unprofitable?--A wilderness where there might
   have been a garden--a desert where there might have been a fruitful
   field? Can you endure the painful retrospect? Oh, when I look back, one
   of the joys of my life is to have been converted to God while yet a
   child and to have begun to preach the name of Jesus when still a youth!
   And yet though that is a subject for joy, I find abundant reason for
   accusing myself of wasting opportunities of service!

   If it is so with me, though for years I have lived unto the Lord--I am
   sure it must be so with many of my Master's servants. So let me say to
   them, by all those wasted opportunities it must be high time for you to
   awake out of sleep! Time is hastening on, my Brothers and Sisters! Each
   flying moment holds another by the heel. Life rushes on as a rapid
   stream! It bears us along swiftly and silently. If you are going to do
   something, it must be done very soon, young man! You are not a child
   now. Your sun has not quite reached its zenith, but it is rising high.
   It may go down before it is noon. If something is to be accomplished
   before you die, get at it, Man, get at it, or your life will be a
   failure!

   And you of middle life. Well, you are in the very strength and prime of
   your days. If God is to be glorified by you and souls brought to Christ
   by you, I urge you, in the name of all that is reasonable, get at it
   and lay to, for if you do not work now, when will you? When the days of
   weakness come and those that look out of the windows are darkened, you
   will say, "I am too old." Oh, now, let the prime of your days be the
   Lord's! Or, has the evening of life descended upon you? Are the shadows
   lengthening and does strength fail? Brother, Sister, you are saved! You
   would not like to go to Heaven, would you, without glorifying Christ
   here below? Then do it now! All hand, all heart, all mind, all thought
   must be given to the present pressing duty. You have such a little
   while before you--so scanty an evening is left you-- surely it should
   be all spent with the utmost diligence in the Master's service.
   "Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep."

   Do you not see that it is high time to awake out of sleep because there
   were so many people that had a claim upon us who are beyond our power,
   now, even if we do wake? Have you ever felt the sadness of neglecting
   to visit a person who was ill until you heard that he was dead? You
   said to yourself, "Why did I not go and speak at least one word of
   warning before that soul was gone into eternity?" Death is sweeping
   away multitudes of our neighbors and friends! And it is high time that
   we were diligent in seeking those that remain, if we are to do them any
   good, for when that knell is tolling and that grave is closing, our
   regrets will be useless to the departed and, at the same time, very
   bitter to ourselves.

   Many are passing away from us and from the sphere of our influence in
   the common course of Providence. Your children, for instance. They were
   little. Some of you still have little children. Well, they will not be
   little long! Already, Mother, that boy is beginning to show a good deal
   of independence of spirit! He will not even listen to you now as he
   once did and you feel a little grieved at it. It will be more so soon!
   If you do not bend the twig when it is a twig, you will not do much
   with it when it gets to be a tree! We let our children slip from under
   our fingers while they are plastic. We

   forget to mold them and then they get into manhood and become less
   amenable to our counsels and our cautions--and we grieve that we did
   not do something more to train them up in the way they should go.

   Now is your time, Mother, God helping you. Now is your time, Father!
   Parents, avail yourselves of your opportunities and remember that good
   is done by constant watching and by small degrees. And your servants,
   too. Cannot you remember some servants that lived with you and you
   always meant to talk to them about their souls and to pray with them?
   But they left you and they were gone before you had commenced to bless
   them. They are very worldly now. Perhaps if you were to trace them out,
   you would find they were Christless and you would hear them say that
   they once lived with a religious mistress, with a pious master and they
   hoped they would never do so again, for it was the most miserable time
   they ever had--"and whatever religion Master might have had, he kept it
   all pretty well to himself, for we never heard much of it." "Oh," you
   say, "I hope they do not say that!" I hope so, too, but I have known
   such things said. And it is very possible that men and women may be so
   asleep about the souls of those round them that opportunities which
   were in their way may be sliding away never to return.

   I believe that if we were awake we might often avail ourselves of
   opportunities to speak to men who otherwise hold themselves aloof from
   any religious conversation. There is a time with almost every man, when
   conscience is awake. Perhaps he is saddened by affliction or cowed by
   adversity--then he will respect as friendly what he might otherwise
   resent as insulting. The most hardened, at some season or other, become
   amenable to reproof, or exhortation, or direction. If you are ready,
   take a shot at him and you will have him. But, if not at that moment,
   you may never have another occasion of getting the Truth of God where
   the man will feel it! We ought to be ready in a minute. Those who would
   shoot the running deer have to be very, very clever in taking sight and
   seizing the moment while it is running by. And those that would take
   running souls--and the most of our fellow countrymen are just
   such--must be sharp-sighted and quick-witted. They run by us and we
   must have them in a minute or else they will have gone beyond our
   reach. We cannot do this unless we are awakened out of our sleep. God
   grant we may be so awakened!

   Meanwhile, dear Friends, there is this reason why we should be
   awake--we have plenty of enemies that are awake if we are not. You may
   sleep, but you cannot induce the devil to close his eyes. Protestantism
   may slumber, but I will guarantee you Catholicism never does! You may
   see evangelicals asleep, but you will not find ritualists slumbering.
   The Prince of the power of the air keeps his servants well up to their
   work. Is it not a strange thing that the servants of Satan serve him so
   enthusiastically while the servants of the Lord often serve Him at a
   poor, cold, dead-alive rate? Oh, may the Lord quicken us! If we could,
   with a glance, see the activities of the servants of Satan, we should
   be astonished at our own sluggishness! It is while men sleep that the
   enemy comes and sows tares among the wheat and it is because men sleep
   that the tares are sown in the Lord's field. If we were more awake, the
   adversary would not have the opportunity of scattering his evil grain.

   It is high time that we awake out of sleep, for it is daylight. The sun
   has risen! Will you sleep now? We are getting far into the Gospel
   dispensation. Can you still sleep? It is time that we were awake, for
   our Lord was awake! What wakefulness He exhibited! How did His eyes
   stream with tears over perishing Jerusalem! He was all heart. The zeal
   of God's house consumed Him. Ought it not to consume us? We ought to be
   awake, for our own day may be over within an hour or two! The preacher
   may be delivering his last sermon. You may go home tonight to offer the
   last prayer at the family altar which you will ever utter on earth! You
   may open shop, tomorrow morning, for the last time. Should not these
   possibilities bestir you? How near, how very near, is the ultimatum of
   every man here present! Have you fixed upon a grand purpose, Brother?
   Fulfill it! You have scarcely time to get through it, therefore waste
   not an hour.

   Have you been planning? Leave off planning and get to executing your
   work! You have been speaking about being generous. Be generous! You
   have been talking about being spiritually minded. Leave off talk and
   get at it, man! You have intended to be consecrated to God. Come, do
   not squabble about consecration and about perfectionism, but be
   consecrated and be perfect. Go in for the highest possible form of
   devotion and service! We have lived long enough at this poor
   half-and-half rate. If there is any higher platform, may the Lord lift
   us up to it! If there is a way of living--spirit, soul and
   body--wholly, unreservedly devoted every moment to the Lord, oh may His
   Spirit conduct us into such a state!

   This is our ambition! We aspire to this! We dare not say, as some do,
   that we have gained it, for if we did we believe that we should give
   evidence that we knew not what it was, or else we should not talk so
   loftily. But Brothers and Sisters,

   while the Master's personal coming may be so near and while His coming
   to us by death may be nearer, still, it is high time that we awoke out
   of our sleep!

   III. I close with a third remark. IT IS WORTH WHILE WAKING, FOR THERE
   IS SOMETHING WORTH

   WAKING FOR. Paul says that it is high time that we wake out of sleep,
   for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. As I already
   remarked, he does not say, "for if you do not wake you will be lost."
   Neither does he say, "You Christian people, if you remain in this dull
   state, will perish without hope." No, that is the threat of the Law and
   suits the tongue of Moses, but Jesus does not talk so. No, no! He sets
   His servant speaking to us in a Gospel tone, "Now is your salvation
   nearer than when you believed."

   Undoubtedly, dear Brothers and Sisters, it is nearer in order of time.
   How long is it since you believed? Ten years? You are 10 years nearer
   Heaven, then. Your salvation, that is, your ultimate, complete
   salvation--the display and manifestation of your complete deliverance
   from evil, from sin, from death, from Hell--is nearer by so many years
   than when you believed. Some of us are 25 years nearer Heaven than we
   were. Ought we not to be more awake? The farther we are off from
   Heaven, the less we may feel its influence--but we are getting so much
   nearer that we ought to be increasingly sensitive to its mysterious
   spell. Oh, to feel more of its power!

   We shall soon be in Heaven, Brothers! We shall soon be there, Sisters!
   Do not let us go to sleep, now, with the golden gate right before us
   and Jesus waiting to admit us! Nearer Glory! Is it not a good argument
   for being more alive unto God? Some of you are 60 years nearer to
   Heaven than you were! You have been in Christ now more than half a
   century. Well, well, Brothers and Sisters, are you not glad of it?
   Would you like to live those 60 years over again? Would you like to go
   back and tread that weary road a second time, clambering again Hill
   Difficulty and sliding, down again, into the Valley of Humiliation?
   Would you wish to march a second time through the Valley of the Shadow
   of Death and into Giant Despair's castle?

   "No," you say, and you need not fear the return journey, for you shall
   not go back again! Rejoice that you are so much nearer Heaven in the
   matter of time. Therefore, stay wide awake and looking out for it. When
   little children have been taken from their inland homes to the sea,
   they have been very eager to see the ocean and yet they have been ready
   to go to sleep as they approached the end of the journey. They have
   never seen the sea before, and Mother says, "Wake up, children, you are
   coming near the sea." Soul, Soul, Soul, we have never seen Heaven but
   we are getting nearer! Let us stay awake! Jerusalem, my happy home,
   shall I enter your sacred precincts sleeping? Shall I come to the last
   hill, from which I am to take a view of your glittering lanes and
   golden streets, and shall I be half asleep within view of them? Come,
   my heart! No, no, no! Wake up, my heart! Heart, wake up! You are
   getting nearer Home. "A day's march nearer Home" you have come even
   this day--be ashamed to slumber!

   And, if we are getting nearer in point of time, I hope we are getting
   nearer in point of preparation. Christ is preparing Heaven for us and
   His Sprit is preparing us for Heaven! Well, then, if we are getting
   more ready for Heaven, we ought to be more awake, for sleepiness is not
   the state of heavenly spirits! Heaven is the home of activity, not the
   dormitory of unconsciousness! When our bodies shall have been raised
   from the dead, they shall enjoy life and energy and be forever free
   from fatigue and sluggishness. Let us, as we are getting ready for
   celestial company, be fuller of life and fuller of energy! More ready
   for Heaven, then reap, reap, reap with stronger arms. Do another man's
   work, if you can, as well as your own!

   You have nearly accomplished your life's labor, therefore throw all
   your strength into that little which remains. So near Heaven? Then
   pluck another brand out of the burning! If you are more fit for Heaven,
   you have more love, more Grace, more pity--then reach out both hands to
   bring another poor soul to Christ! If the golden gate shall soon be
   open to you and you shall be shut in forever in the blest place of
   rest, be sure to show others the way to that gate, that you enter not
   alone! Your salvation is nearer than when you believed, therefore do
   something more to prove that you are ready for it.

   And, lastly, as your salvation is nearer than when you believed, let us
   hope your realization of it is more clear. Have you tried to realize
   the Glory to be revealed? Within a short time you will be with Jesus!--

   "Far from this world of grief and sin, With God eternally shut in."

   Your head will wear a crown, your hand shall grasp the palm of victory!
   You, even you, shall walk the golden streets and see that Face which is
   brighter than the sun! It may be that tonight you will be made free in
   the New Jerusalem--tonight you may leave that narrow room and that hard
   bed, the abode of poverty and care--and you may be away up where they
   keep eternal Sabbaths and the congregations never break up. You will be
   there, Brother and Sister, even you! There is a crown in Glory which no
   head can wear but yours. You will be there!

   Well, now, it seems to me that if I can realize that in so short a time
   my eternal salvation shall be consummated and I, even I, shall be among
   the blood-washed throng and see my Savior's face, I cannot any longer
   neglect a single opportunity of serving Him! I cannot any longer let
   poor souls go down to Hell without endeavoring to save them! I cannot
   any longer neglect prayer--neglect opportunities of usefulness--or live
   otherwise than as a man should live who has his foot upon the doorstep
   of Heaven and his finger on the latch! What manner of persons ought you
   to be to whom Heaven is guaranteed by promise and to whom it has been
   sealed by blood to be your special heritage--the portion of a people
   whom every moment brings nearer to eternal joy? What manner of persons
   ought you to be? May the Spirit of God make you to be just that, now,
   and He shall have praise forever. Amen.

   I have said nothing to the unconverted because I have been admonishing
   you Believers to say something to them. If you will catch the spirit of
   my text, you will, each one, feel for them and begin to speak. But if I
   were to wrench the text from its connection and apply it to the
   unconverted, what a sledge hammer it would be! Shall I read the text as
   I should have to read it if it spoke to the unregenerate? It runs to
   the Christian, "Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed."
   But oh, you unconverted men and women, must I read the text as it would
   have to run if it were written to you?

   "It is high time that you should awake out of sleep, for now is your
   damnation nearer than when you first heard the Gospel and rejected it."
   Take heed, take heed! God grant you Grace to take heed and to believe
   in Christ. Amen and Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

                                The Best Beloved

   A Sermon

   (No. 1446)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Yea, he is altogether lovely."--Solomons Song 5:16.

   NO WORDS can ever express the gratitude we owe to Him who loved us even
   when we were dead in trespasses and sins: the love of Jesus is
   unutterably precious and worthy of daily praise. No songs can ever
   fitly celebrate the triumphs of that salvation which he wrought
   singlehanded on our behalf: the work of Jesus is glorious beyond
   compare, and all the harps of angels fall short of its worthy honour.
   Yet I do believe, and my heart prompts me to say so, that the highest
   praise of every ransomed soul and of the entire Christian church should
   be offered to the blessed person of Jesus Christ, our adorable Lord.
   The love of his heart is excelled by the heart which gave forth that
   love, and the wonders of his hand are outdone by the hand itself, which
   wrought those godlike miracles of grace. We ought to bless him for what
   he has done for us as Mediator in the place of humble service under the
   law, and for what he suffered for us as Substitute on the altar of
   sacrifice from before the foundation of the world; and for what he is
   doing for us as Advocate in the place of highest honour at the right
   hand of the Majesty on high: but still the best thing about Christ is
   Christ himself. We prize his, but we worship him. His gifts are valued,
   but he himself is adored. While we contemplate, with mingled feelings
   of awe, admiration, and thankfulness, his atonement, his resurrection,
   his glory in heaven, and his second coming, still it is Christ himself,
   stupendous in his dignity as the Son of God, and superbly beautiful as
   the Son of man, who sheds an incomparable charm on all those wonderful
   achievements, wherein his might and his merit, his goodness and his
   grace appear so conspicuous. For him let our choicest spices be
   reserved, and to him let our sweetest anthems be raised. Our choicest
   ointment must be poured upon his head, and for his own self alone our
   most costly alabaster boxes must be broken.

   "He is altogether lovely." Not only is his teaching attractive, his
   doctrine persuasive, his life irreproachable, his character enchanting,
   and his work a self-denying labour for the common good of all his
   people, but he himself is altogether lovely. I suppose at first we
   shall always begin to love him because he first loved us, and even to
   the last his love to us will always be the strongest motive of our
   affection towards him; still there ought to be added to this another
   reason less connected with ourselves, and more entirely arising out of
   his own superlative excellence; we ought to love him because he is
   lovely and deserves to be loved. The time should come, and with some of
   us it has come, when we can heartily say "we love him because we cannot
   help it, for his all-conquering loveliness has quite ravished our
   hearts." Surely it is but an unripe fruit to love him merely for the
   benefits which we have received at his hand. It is a fruit of grace,
   but it is not of the ripest flavour; at least, there are other fruits,
   both new and old, which we have laid up for thee, O our beloved, and
   some of them have a daintier taste. There is a sweet and mellow fruit
   which can only be brought forth by the summer sun of fellowship--love
   because of the Redeemer's intrinsic goodness and personal sweetness. Oh
   that we might love our Lord for his own sake, love him because he is so
   supremely beautiful that a glimpse of him has won our hearts, and made
   him dearer to our eyes than light. Oh that all true and faithful
   disciples of our beloved Lord would press forward towards that state of
   affection, and never rest till they reach it! If any of you have not
   reached it, you need not therefore doubt your own safety, for whatever
   the reason why you love Jesus, if you love him at all, it is a sure
   pledge and token that he loves you, and that you are saved in him with
   an everlasting salvation. Still covet earnestly the best gifts, and
   rise to the highest degree of devotion,. Love as the purest of the
   saints have loved; love as John the apostle loved, for still your Lord
   exceeds all the loving homage you can pay to him. Love his person, love
   himself; for he is better than all that he has done or given; and as
   from himself all blessings flow, so back to himself should all love
   return.

   Our text tells us that Christ is altogether lovely. What a wealth of
   thought and feeling is contained in that exclamation! I am embarrassed
   to know how to preach on such a subject, and half inclined to wish it
   had not been laid so much upon my heart. What, I pray you, what is
   loveliness? To discern it is one thing, but it is quite another thing
   to describe it. There is not one amongst us but knows how to appreciate
   beauty, and to be enamoured of its attractions, but how many here could
   tell us what it is? Stand up, my brother, and define it. Perhaps while
   you were sitting down you thought you could easily tell the tale, but
   now you are on your feet you find that it is not quite so easy to
   clothe in words the thoughts which floated through your brain. What is
   beauty? Cold-blooded word-mongers answer, fitness. And certainly there
   is fitness in all loveliness. But do not tell me that beauty is mere
   fitness, for I have seen a world of fitness in this world which,
   nevertheless, seemed to me to be inexpressibly ugly and unlovable. A
   wise man tells me that beauty is proportion; but neither is this a full
   description by many a league. No doubt it is desirable that the
   features should be well balanced; the eyes should be fitly set, no one
   feature should be exaggerated, and none should be dwarfed.

   "In nature what affects our hearts,

   Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;

   'Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,

   But the joint force and full result of all."

   Harmony is beauty. Yet I have seen the chiselled marble, fashioned with
   skilful art into a well-nigh perfect form, which did not, could not,
   impress me with a sense of loveliness. There stands in one of the halls
   of the Vatican a statue of Antinous. Every feature in that statue is
   perfect in itself, and in complete harmony with all the rest. You could
   not find the slightest fault with eye or nose or mouth. It is indeed as
   much the ideal of male beauty as the Venus is of female charms, yet no
   one could ever have been enchanted with the statue, or have felt
   affection to the form which it represents. There is no expression
   whatever in the features. Everything is so adjusted and proportioned
   that you want a divergence to relieve you. The materialism is so
   carefully measured out that there needs a stir, a break in the harmony
   to give at least some semblance of a soul. Beauty, then, consists not
   in mere harmony, nor in balancing the features.

   Loveliness surely is attractiveness. Yes, but that is another way of
   saying you do not know what it is. It is a something that attracts you,
   and constrains you to exclaim, "Nought under heaven so strongly doth
   allure." We feel its power, we become its slaves; but we cannot write
   with pen of cold steel, nor could we write even with a pen of
   lightning, a description of what it is. How, then, can I--enamoured,
   entranced, enraptured as I am with him whom my soul loveth--how can I
   speak of him? He is altogether lovely? Where shall I find words, terms,
   expressions that shall fitly set him forth? Unless the Eternal Spirit
   shall upraise me out of myself I must for ever be incapable of setting
   forth the Well-beloved.

   Besides, were I baffled by nothing else, there is this, that the beauty
   of Christ is mysterious. It surpasses all the comeliness of human form.
   He may have had great beauty according to the flesh. That I cannot
   tell, but I should imagine that such a perfect soul as his must have
   inhabited a perfectly molded body. Never yet did you or I gaze with
   satisfaction upon the work of any painter who has tried to picture our
   Lord Jesus Christ. We have not blamed the great masters, but we have
   felt that the effort surpassed their powers. How could they photograph
   the sun? The loftiest conceptions of great artists in this case fall
   far short of the mark. When the brightness of the Father's glory is the
   subject the canvas glows in vain. Art sits at her easel and produces
   diligently many a draught of the sacred features; but they are all
   failures, and they must be. Who shall ever depict Immanuel,
   God-with-us? I suppose that, by-and-by, when our Lord had entered upon
   his active life, and encountered its struggles, his youthful beauty was
   marred with lines of sadness and sorrow. Still his courage so
   overshadowed his cares, the mercy he showed so surpassed the misery he
   shared, and the grace he dispensed so exceeded the griefs that he
   carried, that a halo of real glory must ever have shone around his
   brow. His countenance must still have been lovely even when surrounded
   with the clouds of care and grief. How can we describe even the marred
   visage? It is a great mystery, but a sure fact, that in our Lord's
   marred countenance his beauty is best seen. Anguish gave him a
   loveliness which else he had not reached. His passion put the finishing
   touch upon his unrivalled loveliness.

   But, brethren, I am not about to speak of Christ's loveliness after the
   flesh, for now after the flesh know we him no more. It is his moral and
   spiritual beauty, of which the spouse in the song most sweetly says,
   "Yea, he is altogether lovely." The loveliness which the eye dotes on
   is mere varnish when compared with that which dwells in virtue and
   holiness; the worm will devour the loveliness of skin and flesh, but a
   lovely character will endure for ever.

   I. THIS IS RARE PRAISE. Let that be our first head. This is rare
   praise. What if I say it is unique? For of no other being could it be
   said, "Yea, he is altogether lovely."

   It means, first, that all that is in him is lovely, perfectly lovely.
   There is no point in our Lord Jesus that you could improve. To paint
   the rose were to spoil its ruddy hue. To tint the lily, for he is lily
   as well as rose, were to mar its whiteness. Each virtue in our Lord is
   there in a state of absolute perfection: it could not be more fully
   developed. If you were able to conceive of each virtue at its ripest
   stage it would be found in him. In the matter of transparent
   ingenuousness and sterling honesty, did ever man speak or act so
   truthfully as he? Ask, on the other hand, for sympathizing tenderness
   and love, was ever any so gentle as Jesus? Do you want reverence to
   God? how he bows before the Father. Do you want boldness before men?
   how he beards the Pharisees. You could not better anything which you
   find in Jesus. Wherever you shall cast your eye it may rest with
   satisfaction, for the best of the best of the best is to be seen in
   him. He is altogether lovely at every separate point, so that the
   spouse, when she began with his head, descended to his feet, and then
   lifting her eyes upward again upon a return voyage of delight, she
   looked into his countenance and summed up all that she had seen in this
   one sentence, "He is altogether lovely." This is rare praise.

   And he is all that is lovely. In each one of his people you will find
   something that is lovely,--in one there is faith, in another abounding
   love; in one tenderness, in another courage, but you do not find all
   good things in any one saint--at least not all of them in full
   perfection; but you find all virtues in Jesus, and each one of them at
   its best. If you would take the best quality of one saint, and the best
   quality of another--yea, the best out of each and all the myriads of
   his people, you would find no grace or goodness among them all which
   Jesus does not possess in the fullest degree and in the highest
   perfection. He combines all the virtues, and gives them all a sweetness
   over and beyond themselves. In flowers you have a separate beauty
   belonging to each; no one flower is just like another, but each one
   blushes with its own loveliness: but in our Lord these separate and
   distinct beauties are found united in one. Christ is the posy in which
   all the beauties of the garden of perfection are bound up. Each gem has
   its own radiance: the diamond is not like the ruby, nor the ruby like
   the emerald; but Christ is that ring in which you have sapphire, ruby,
   diamond, emerald, set in choice order, so that each one heightens the
   other's brilliance. Look not for anything lovely out of Jesus, for he
   has all the loveliness. All perfections are in him making up one
   consummate perfection; and all the loveliness which is to be seen
   elsewhere is but a reflection of his own unrivalled charms.

   In Jesus Christ--this, moreover, is rare praise again--there is nothing
   that is unlovely. You have a friend whom you greatly admire and fondly
   esteem, of whom, nevertheless, I doubt not you have often said to
   yourself in undertone, "I wish I could take away a little of the rough
   edge of his manners here and there." You never thought that of Christ.
   You have observed of one man that he is so bold as to be sometimes
   rude; and of another that he is so bland and amiable that he is apt to
   be effeminate. You have said, "That sweetness of his is exceedingly
   good, but I wish that it were qualified with sterner virtues." But
   there is nothing to tone down or alter in our divine Lord. He is
   altogether lovely. Have you not sometimes in describing a friend been
   obliged to forget, or omit, some rather prominent characteristic when
   you wished to make a favourable impression? You have had to paint him
   as the artist once painted Oliver Cromwell; the great wart over the
   eyebrow was purposely left out of the portrait. Cromwell, you know,
   said, "Paint me as I am, or not at all." We have, however, often felt
   that it was kind to leave out the warts when we were talking of those
   we esteemed, and to whom we would pay a graceful tribute. But there is
   nothing to leave out in Christ, nothing to hold back, or to guard, or
   to extenuate. In him is nothing redundant, nothing overgrown. He is
   altogether lovely. You never need put the finger over the scar in his
   case, as Apelles did when he painted his hero. No; tell it all out:
   reveal the details of his private life and secret thoughts, they need
   no concealment. Lay bare the very heart of Christ, for that is the
   essence of love and loveliness. Speak of his death-wounds, for in his
   scars there is more beauty than in the uninjured comeliness of another:
   and even when he lies dead in the tomb he is more comely than the
   immortal angels of God at their best estate. Nothing about our Lord
   needs to be concealed; even his cross at which his enemies stumble, is
   to be daily proclaimed, and it will be seen to be one of his choicest
   beauties.

   Frequently, too, in commending a friend whom you highly appreciated,
   you have been prone to ask for consideration of his position, and to
   make excuse for blemishes which you would fain persuade us are less
   actual than apparent. You have remarked how admirable he acts
   considering his surroundings. Conscious that someone would hint at an
   imperfection, you have anticipated the current of conversation by
   alluding to the circumstances which rendered it so hard for your friend
   to act commendably. You have felt the need of showing that others
   influenced him, or that infirmity restrained him. Did you ever feel
   inclined to apologize for Christ? Did he not always stand unbending
   beneath life's pressure, upright and unmoved amidst the storms and
   tempests of an evil world? The vilest calumnies have been uttered
   against him, in the age just past which produced creatures similar to
   Thomas Paine, but they never required an answer; and as for the more
   refined attacks of our modern skepticism, they are for the most part
   unworthy even of contempt. They fall beneath the glance of truth,
   withered by the glance of the eye of honesty. We never feel concerned
   to vindicate the character of Jesus; we know it to be safe against all
   comers. No man has been able to conjure up an accusation against Jesus.
   They seek false witnesses, but their testimony agrees not together. The
   sharp arrows of slander fall blunted from the shield of his
   perfectness. Oh, no; he is altogether lovely in this sense--that there
   is nothing whatever in him that is not lovely. You may look, and look,
   and look again, but there is nothing in him that will not bear scrutiny
   world without end. Taking the lord Jesus Christ as a whole--this is
   what our text intends to tell us--he is inexpressibly
   lovely--altogether lovely. The words are packed as tightly as they can
   be, but the meaning is greater than the words. Some translate the
   passage "He is all desires," and it is a good translation too, and
   contains a grand truth. Christ is so lovely that all you can desire of
   loveliness is in him; and even if you were to sit down and task your
   imagination and burden your understanding to contrive, to invent, to
   fashion the ideal of something that should be inimitable--ay (to utter
   a paradox) if you could labour to conceive something which should be
   inconceivably lovely, yet still you would not reach to the perfection
   of Christ Jesus. He is above, not only all we think, but all we dream
   of.

   Do you all believe this? Dear hearers, do you think of Jesus in this
   fashion? We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen. But
   no man among you will receive our witness until he can say, "I also
   have seen him, and having seen him, I set to my seal that he is
   altogether lovely."

   II. And now, secondly, as this is rare praise, so likewise IT IS
   PERPETUAL PRAISE. You may say of Christ whenever you look at him, "Yea,
   he is altogether lovely." He always was so. As God over all, he is
   blessed for ever, Amen. When in addition to his godhead, he assumed our
   mortal clay, was he not inimitably lovely then? The babe in Bethlehem
   was the most beautiful sight that ever the world beheld. No fairer
   flower ever bloomed in the garden of creation than the mind of that
   youth of Nazareth gradually unfolding, as he "grew, and waxed strong in
   spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him." All the
   while he lived on earth, what moral perfections, what noble qualities,
   what spiritual charms were about his sacred person! His life among men
   is a succession of charming pictures. And he was lovely in his bitter
   passion, when as the thick darkness overshadowed his soul he prayed, in
   an agony of desire, "Not my will, but thine, be done." The bloody sweat
   did not disfigure, but adorn him. And oh, was he not lovely when he
   died? Without resentment he interceded for his murderers. His patience,
   his self-possession, his piety, as "the faithful martyr," have fixed as
   the meridian of time the hour when he said, "It is finished," and
   "bowed his head," and "cried with a loud voice, Father, into thy hands
   I commend my spirit." He is lovely in his resurrection from the dead;
   beyond description lovely. Not a word of accusation did he utter
   against his cruel persecutors, though he had risen clothed with all
   power in heaven and in earth. With such tender sympathy did he make
   himself known to his sorrowing disciples, that despite the waywardness
   of their unbelief their hearts' instinct told them it was the same
   Jesus." He is altogether lovely.

   He will be lovely when he comes with solemn pomp, and sound of trumpet,
   and escort of mighty angels, and brings all his saints who have
   departed with him, and calls up those that are alive and remain on the
   earth till his advent, to meet him in the air. Oh, how lovely he will
   appear to the two throngs who will presently join in one company! How
   admirable will his appearance be! How eyes, ears, hearts and voices
   will greet him! With what unanimity the host redeemed by blood will
   account their highest acclamations as a trivial tribute to his honour
   and glory! "He is altogether lovely." Yea, and he shall be lovely for
   ever and ever when your eyes and mine shall eternally find their heaven
   in beholding him. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for
   ever," is always worthy of this word of praise--"altogether lovely."

   Let us retrace our steps for a minute. The more we study the four
   gospels, the more charmed we are with the gospel; for as a modern
   author has well said, "The gospels, like the gospel, are most divine
   because they are most human." As followers of Jesus, rank yourselves
   with those men who companied with him all the time that he went in and
   out among them; and you shall find him lovely in all conditions. Lovely
   when he talks to a leper, and touches and heals him; lovely by the
   bedside when he takes the fever-stricken patient by the hand and heals
   her; lovely by the wayside, when he greets the blind beggar, puts his
   finger on his eyes and bids him see; lovely when he stands on the
   sinking vessel and rebukes the waves; lovely when he meets the bier and
   rekindles the life that had expired; lovely when he visits the
   mourners, goes with the sisters of Bethany to the new-made grave, and
   weeps, and groans, and--majestically lovely--bids the dead come forth.
   Lovely is he when he rides through the streets of Jerusalem upon a
   colt, the foal of an ass. Oh, had we been there, we would have plucked
   the palm branches, and we would have taken off our garments to strew
   the way. Hosannah, lovely Prince of Peace! But he was just as lovely
   when he came from the garden with his face all besmeared with bloody
   sweat; just as lovely when they said, "Crucify him, crucify him;" just
   as lovely, and if possible more so, when down those sacred cheeks there
   dripped the cursed spittle from the rough soldiers' mouths; ay, and
   loveliest, to my eyes loveliest of all, when mangled, wounded,
   fainting, bruised, dying, he said, "My God, my God, why hast thou
   forsaken me?" uttering a plaintive cry of utmost grief from the felon's
   gibbet whereon he died. Yea, view him where you will, in any place
   soever, is he not--I speak to you who know him, and not to those who
   never saw him with the eye of faith--is he not, in the night and in the
   day, on the sea and on the land, on earth and in heaven, altogether
   lovely?

   He is lovely in all his offices. What an entrancing sight to see the
   king in his beauty, with his diadem upon his head, as he now sits in
   yonder world of brightness! How charming to view him as a priest, with
   the Urim and Thummin, wearing the names of his people bejewelled on his
   breastplate! And what a vision of simple beauty, to see him as a
   prophet teaching his people in touching parables of homely interest, of
   whom they said, "Never man spake like this man"! The very tones of his
   voice, and the glance of his eyes, made his eloquence so supreme that
   it enthralled men's hearts. Yes, he is lovely, altogether lovely in any
   and every character. We know not which best beseems him, the highest or
   the lowliest positions. Let him be what he may--Lamb or Shepherd,
   Brother or King, Saviour or Master, Foot-washer or Lord--in every
   relation he is altogether lovely.

   Get a view of him, my brethren, from any point and see whether he is
   not lovely. Do you recollect the first sight you ever had of him? It
   was on a day when your eyes were red with weeping over sin, and you
   expected to see the Lord dressed in anger coming forth to destroy you.
   Oh, it was the happiest sight I ever saw when I beheld my sins rolling
   into his sepulchre and when looking up I beheld him my substitute
   bleeding on the tree. Altogether lovely was he that day. Since then
   providence has given us a varied experience and taken us to different
   points of view that we might look at Christ, and see him under many
   aspects. We look at statues from several standpoints if we would
   criticize them. A great many in London are hideous from all points of
   view--others are very well if you look at them this way, but if you go
   over yonder and look from another point the artist appears to have
   utterly failed. Now, beloved, look at Jesus from any point you like,
   and he is at his best from each and every corner. You have been in
   prosperity: God multiplied your children and blessed your basket and
   your store,--was Jesus lovely then? Assuredly he was the light of your
   delights. Nothing he had given you vied with himself. He rose in your
   hearts superior to his own best gifts. But you tell me that you have
   been very sick, and you have lost one after another of your dear ones;
   your means have been reduced; you have come down in the world: say,
   then, is Jesus lovely now? I know that you will reply "Yes, more than
   ever is Christ delightful in mine eyes." Well, you have had very happy
   times, and you have been on the mount of hallowed friendship. The other
   Sunday morning many of us were up there, and thought like Peter that we
   should like to stay there for ever; and is not Jesus lovely when he is
   transfigured and we are with him? Yes, but at another time you are down
   in the depths with Jonah, at the bottom of the sea. Is not Christ
   lovely then? Yes, even there he hears our prayer out of his holy
   temple, and brings us again from the deep abyss. We shall soon lie
   dying. Oh, my brethren, what brave talk God's people have often given
   us about their Lord when they have been on the edge of the grave! That
   seems to be a time when the Well-beloved takes the veil off his face
   altogether and sits by the bedside, and lets his children look into his
   face, and see him as he is. I warrant you the saints forget the
   ghastliness of death when their hearts are ravished with the loveliness
   of Christ.

   Yes, hitherto, up to this point Jesus has been lovely; and now let us
   add that he will always be so. You know there are persons whom you
   account beautiful when you are young, but when you grow older in years,
   riper in judgment, and more refined in taste, you meet with others who
   look far more beautiful. Now, what think you of your Lord? Have you met
   with anyone in fact or in fable more beautiful than he? You thought him
   charming when you were but a babe in grace. What think you of him now?
   Taste, you know, grows, and develops with education: an article of
   virtue which fascinated you years ago has no longer any charms for you
   because your taste is raised. Has your spiritual taste outgrown your
   Lord's beauties? Come, brothers, does Christ go down as you learn truth
   more exactly and acquaint yourself more fully with him? Oh no. You
   prize him a thousand times more to-day than you did when the first
   impression of his goodness was formed in your mind. Some things which
   look very lovely at a distance lose their loveliness when you get near
   to them: but is it not true (I am sure it is) that the nearer you get
   to Christ the lovelier he is? Some things are only beautiful in your
   eyes for their novelty: you admire them when you have seen them once;
   if you were to see them a dozen times you would not care much about
   hem. What say you about my Master? Is it not true that the oftener you
   see him, the more you know him, and the more familiar your intercourse
   with him, the more he rises in your esteem? I know it is so; and well,
   therefore, did the spouse say, "He is altogether lovely."

   Christ is altogether lovely in this respect--that, when men reproach
   him and rail at him, he is often all the lovelier in his people's eyes.
   I warrant you Christ has been better known by the burn-side in Scotland
   by his covenanting people than ever he has been seen under the fretted
   roof of cathedral architecture. Away there in lonely glens, amid the
   mosses and the hills, where Covenanters met for fear of Claverhouse and
   his dragoons, the Lord Jesus has shone forth like the sun in his
   strength. We have nowadays to be satisfied with his moonlight face, but
   in persecuting days his children have seen his sun face, and oh! how
   glad they have been. Hear how the saints sing in prison! Listen to
   their charming notes, even on the rack, when the glory of his presence
   fills their souls with heaven on earth, and makes them defy the
   torments of the flesh. The Lord Jesus is more lovely to the soul that
   can bear reproach for him than he is to any other. Put the cross on his
   back if you will, but we love him all the better for that. Nail up his
   hands, but we love him all the better for that. Now fasten his feet;
   ay, but our soul melteth with love to him, and she feels new reasons
   for loving him when she beholds the nails. Now stand ye around the
   cross, ye worldlings, and mock him if ye will. Taunt and jest, and jeer
   and jibe--these do but make us love the better the great and glorious
   one, who "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of
   a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and
   became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

   Beloved, you shall keep on looking at Christ from all these points of
   view till you get to heaven, and each time you shall be more enamoured
   of him. When you reach the celestial city and see him face to face,
   then shall you say, "The half has not been told us," but even here
   below Christ is altogether lovely to his people.

   III. I leave that head just to notice, in the third place, that though
   this praise is rare praise and perpetual praise, yet also IT IS TOTALLY
   INSUFFICIENT PRAISE.

   Say ye that he is altogether lovely? It is not enough. It is not a
   thousandth part enough. No tongue of man, no tongue of angel, can ever
   set forth his unutterable beauties. "Oh," say you, "but it is a great
   word, though short; very full of meaning though soon spoken--altogether
   lovely." I tell you it is a poor word. It is a word of despair. It is a
   word which the spouse uttered, because she had been trying to describe
   her Lord and she could not do it, and so she put this down in very
   desperation: as much as to say, "There, the task is too great for me. I
   will end it. This is all I can say. Yea, he is altogether lovely.'" I
   am sure John Berridge was right when he said--

   Living tongues are dumb at best,

   We must die to speak of Christ.

   Brethren, the praise of the text is insufficient praise, I know,
   because it is praise given by one who had never seen him in his glory.
   It is Old Testament praise this, that he is altogether lovely: praise
   uttered upon report rather than upon actual view of him. Truly I know
   not how to bring better, but I shall know one day. Till then I will
   speak his praise as best I can, though it fall far short of his
   infinite excellence. Our text is cloth of gold, but it is not fit for
   our Beloved to put the sole of his foot upon. He deserves better than
   this, for this is only the praise of a church that had not seen him
   die, and had not seen him rise, and had not seen him in the splendour
   at the divine right hand. "Well," say you, "try if you can do better."
   No, I will not, because if I did praise him better, the style would not
   last long, for he is coming quickly, and the best thing the best
   speaker could ever say of him will be put out of date by the majesty of
   his appearing. His chariot is waiting at his door now, and he may soon
   come forth from his secret chambers and be among us, and oh! the
   glory--oh! the glory! Paul, you know, stole a glance through the
   lattices one day when he was caught up into the third heaven. Somebody
   said to me, "I wonder Paul did not tell us what he saw." Ay, but what
   he saw he might not tell, and the words he heard were words which it
   were not lawful for a man to utter, and yet to live among this evil
   generation. We shall hear those words ourselves soon, and see those
   sights not many days hence, so let it stand as it does, "He is
   altogether lovely." But when you have thus summed up all that our poor
   tongues can express, you must not say, "Now we have described him." Oh
   no, sirs, ye have but held a candle to this glorious sun, for he is
   such an one as thoughts cannot compass, much less language describe.

   I leave this point with the reflection, that God intends to describe
   him and set him forth one day. He is waiting patiently, for
   longsuffering is part of Christ's character; and God is setting forth
   the longsuffering of Christ in the patient waiting of these eighteen
   hundred years. But the day shall presently dawn and usher in the
   everlasting age when Christ shall be better seen, for every eye shall
   see him, and every tongue confess that he is Lord. The whole earth will
   one day be sweet with the praise of Jesus. Earth, did I say? This
   alabaster box of Christ's sweetness has too much fragrance in it for
   the world to keep it all to itself; the sweetness of our Lord's person
   will rise above the stars, and perfume worlds unknown. It will fill
   heaven itself. Eternity shall be occupied with declaring the praises of
   Jesus. Seraphs shall sing of it; angels shall harp it; the redeemed
   shall declare it. He is altogether lovely. The cycles of eternity as
   they revolve shall only confirm the statement of the blood-redeemed
   that he is altogether lovely. O that the day were come when we shall
   bow with them and sing with them! Wait a little while and be not weary,
   and you shall be at home, and then you shall know that I spoke the
   truth when I said that this was insufficient praise. Earth is too
   narrow to contain him, heaven is too little to hold him, eternity
   itself too short for the utterance of all his praises.

   IV. So I close with this last thought, which may God bless, for
   practical uses. This praise is VERY SUGGESTIVE.

   If Christ be altogether lovely it suggests a question. suppose I never
   saw his loveliness. Suppose that in this house there should be souls
   that never saw anything in Christ to make them love him. If you were to
   go to some remote island where beauty consisted in having one eye and a
   twisted mouth, and a sea-green complexion, you would say, "Those people
   are strange beings." Such are the people of this world. spiritual
   beauty is not appreciated by them. This world appreciates the man who
   makes money, however reckless he may be of the welfare of others while
   scheming to heap up riches for himself. As for the man who slays his
   fellow-creatures by thousands, they mount him on a bronze horse, put
   him on an arch, or they pile up a column, and set him as near heaven as
   they can. He slew his thousands: he died blood-red: he was an emperor,
   a tyrant, a conqueror: the world feels his power and pays its homage.
   As for this Jesus, he only gave his life for men, he was only pure and
   perfect, the mirror of disinterested love. The vain world cannot see in
   him a virtue to admire. It is a blind world, a fool world, a world that
   lieth in the wicked one. Not to discern the beauties of Jesus is an
   evidence of terrible depravity. Have you, my dear friend, frankly to
   confess that you were never enamoured of him who was holy, harmless,
   and undefiled, and went about doing good? Then let this come home to
   you--that the question is not as to whether Christ is lovely or not,
   the mistake is here--that you have not a spiritually enlightened eye, a
   fine moral perception, nor even a well-regulated conscience, or you
   would see his loveliness at once. You are dark and blind. God help you
   to feel this.

   Do you not love Christ? Then let me ask you why you do not? There was
   never a man yet that knew Christ that could give a reason for not
   loving him, neither is there such a reason to be discovered. He is
   altogether lovely. In nothing is he unlovable. Oh I wish that the good
   Spirit of God would whisper in your heart, and incline you to say, "I
   will see about this Christ. I will read of him. I will look at the four
   portraits of him painted by the evangelists, and if he be indeed thus
   lovely, no doubt he will win my heart as he appears to have won the
   hearts of others." I pray he may. But do not, I pray you, continue to
   deny Christ your love. It is all you can give him. It is a poor thing,
   but he values it. He would sooner have your heart than all the gold in
   Europe. He would sooner have the heart of a poor servant girl or of a
   poor humble labourer upon the soil than the queen's diadem. He loveth
   love. Love is his gem--his jewel. He delights to win it, and if he be
   indeed altogether lovely, let him have it. You have known people, I
   dare say, whom you could not help loving. they never had to say to you,
   "Love me," for you were captivated at once by the very sight of them.
   In like manner many and many have only received one beam of light from
   the Holy Spirit, and have thereby seen who Jesus was, and they have at
   once said of him, "Thou hast ravished my heart with one look of thine
   eyes," and so it has been that all their life long they have loved
   their Lord. Now, the praise is suggestive still further. "Is Christ
   altogether lovely? Then do I love him? As a child of God, do I love him
   as much as I ought? I do love him. Yes, blessed be his name, I do love
   him. But what a poor, cold, chill love it is. How few are the
   sacrifices I make for him. How few are the offerings that I present to
   him. How little is the fellowship that I maintain with him." Brother,
   is there a rival in your heart? Do you allow anyone to come in between
   you and the "altogether lovely." If so, chase out the intruder. Christ
   must have all your heart, and let me tell you the more we love him the
   more bliss we shall have. A soul that is altogether given up to the
   love of Christ lives above care and sorrow. It has care and sorrow, but
   the love of Christ kills all the bitterness by its inexpressible
   sweetness. I cannot tell you how near a man may live to heaven, but I
   am persuaded that a very large proportion of the bliss of heaven may be
   enjoyed before we come there. There is one conduit pipe through which
   heavenly joy will flow, and if you draw from it you may have as much as
   you will. "Abide in me" says Christ; and if you do abide in his love
   you shall have his joy fulfilled in yourselves that your joy may be
   full. You will have more capacious vessels in heaven, but even now the
   little vessel that you have can be filled up to the brim by knowing the
   inexpressible loveliness of Jesus and surrendering your hearts to it.

   Oh that I could rise to something better than myself. I often feel like
   a chick in the egg; I am picking my way out, and I cannot get clear of
   my prison. Fain would I chip the shell, come forth to freedom, develop
   wings, and soar heavenward, singing on the road. Would God that were
   our portion. If anything can help us to get out of the shell, and to
   begin to rise and sing, it must be a full and clear perception that
   Jesus is altogether lovely. Come, let us be married to him afresh
   to-night. Come, believing hearts, yield again to his charms; again
   surrender yourselves to the supremacy of his affection. Let us have the
   love of our espousals renewed. As you come to his table bethink you of
   the lips of Christ, of which the spouse had been speaking before she
   uttered my text,--"His mouth is most sweet." There are three things
   about Christ's mouth that are very sweet. The first is his word: you
   have heart that. The second is his breath. Come, Holy Spirit, make thy
   people feel that. And the third is his kiss. May every believing soul
   have that sweet token of his eternal love.

   Forgive my ramblings. May God bless to all his people the word that has
   been spoken. May some that never knew my Master ask to know him
   to-night. Go home and seek him. Read the word to find him. Cry to him
   in prayer and he will be found of you. He is so lovely that I should
   not live without loving him; and I shall deeply regret if any one of
   you shall spend another four-and-twenty hours without having had a
   sight of his divine face by faith.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--1 John 3.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--782, 793, 785.
     __________________________________________________________________

Three Crosses

   (No. 1447)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord
   Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the
   world." Galatians 6:14.

   WHENEVER we rebuke other people we should be prepared to clear
   ourselves of their offense. The Apostle had been rebuking those who
   wished to glory in the flesh. In denouncing false teachers and
   upbraiding their weak-minded followers, he used sharp language while he
   appealed to plain facts and maintained his ground with strong
   arguments. And this he did without fear of being met by a flank
   movement and being charged with doing the same things himself. Very
   fitly, therefore, does he contrast his own determined purpose with
   their plausible falseness. They were for making a fair show in the
   flesh, but he shrunk not from the deepest shame of the Christian
   profession. So far from shrinking, he even counted it honor to be
   scorned for Christ's sake, exclaiming, "God forbid that I should glory,
   save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   The Galatians and all others to whom his name was familiar, well knew
   how truly he spoke, for the manner of his life as well as the matter of
   his teaching had supplied evidence of this assertion, which none of his
   enemies could deny. There had not been in all his ministry any doctrine
   that he extolled more highly than that of "Christ crucified." Nor any
   experience that he touched on more tenderly than this "fellowship with
   Christ in His sufferings." Nor any rule of conduct that he counted more
   safe than following in the footsteps of Him who "endured the Cross,
   despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Throne of
   God." His example accorded with his precept. God grant, of His Grace,
   that there may always be with us the same transparent consistency.

   Sometimes when we notice an evil and protest as boldly and
   conscientiously as we can against it, we feel that our protest is too
   obscure to have much influence. It will then be our very best resource
   to resolutely abstain from the evil, ourselves, and so, at least in one
   person, to overthrow its power. If you cannot convert a man from his
   error by an argument, you can at least prove the sincerity of your
   reasoning by your own behavior. And thus, if no fortress is captured,
   you will at least "hold the fort" and you may do more--your
   faithfulness may win more than your zeal could have! Vow faithfully
   within your own heart and say frankly to your neighbor, "You may do
   what you will, but as for me, God forbid that I should remove the old
   landmarks, or seek out new paths, however inviting, or turn aside from
   that which I know to be the good old way."

   A determined resolution of that sort, fully adhered to, will often
   carry more weight and exert more influence on the mind of an
   individual, especially of a waverer, than a host of arguments. Your
   actions will speak more loudly than your words. The Apostle in the
   present case warms with emotion at the thought of anybody presuming to
   set a carnal ordinance in front of the Cross by wishing to glory in
   circumcision or any other outward institution. The idea of a ceremony
   claiming to be made more of than faith in Jesus provoked him till his
   heart presently grew hot with indignation and he thundered forth the
   words, "God forbid!" He never used the sacred name with lightness, but
   when the fire was hot within him, he called God to witness that he did
   not and could not glory in anything but the Cross.

   Indeed, there is, to every true-hearted Believer, something shocking
   and revolting in the putting of anything before Jesus Christ, be it
   what it may, whether it is an idol of superstition or a toy of
   skepticism--whether it is the fruit of tradition or the flower of
   philosophy! Do you need new Scriptures to supplement the true sayings
   of God? Do you need a new Savior who can surpass Him whom the Father
   has sent? Do you need a new sacrifice that can save you from sins which
   His atoning blood could not expiate? Do you need a modern song to
   supersede the new song of, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain"? "O
   foolish Galatians!" said Paul.

   O silly Protestants, I am inclined to say! We might go on, in these
   times, to speak warmly to many of the parties around us--the doting
   Ritualists, the puffed-up Rationalists and the self-exalting school of
   modern thought. I marvel

   not at Paul's warmth. I only wish that some who think so little of
   doctrinal discrepancies, as they call them, could but sympathize a
   little with his holy indignation when he saw the first symptoms of
   departure from godly simplicity and sincerity. Do you not notice that a
   little dissembling of a dear Brother made him withstand him to his
   face? When a whole company turned the cold shoulder to the Cross of
   Christ it made him burn with indignation! He could not stand it. The
   Cross was the center of his hopes--around it his affections
   curled--there he had found peace for his troubled conscience.

   God forbid that he should allow it to be trampled on! Besides, it was
   the theme of his ministry. "Christ crucified" had already proven the
   power of God to salvation to every soul who had believed the
   life-giving message as he proclaimed it in every city. Would any of
   you, he asks, cast a slur on the Cross--you who have been
   converted--you before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set
   forth crucified among you? How his eyes flash! How his lips quiver! How
   his heart grows hot within him! With what vehemence he protests--"God
   forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus
   Christ." He spreads his eagle wings and rises into eloquence at once,
   while still his keen eyes look fiercely upon every enemy of the Cross
   whom he leaves far beneath.

   Oftentimes in his Epistles you observe this. He burns, he glows, he
   mounts, he soars, he is carried clean away as soon as his thoughts are
   in fellowship with his Lord Jesus, that meek and patient Sufferer who
   offered Himself a Sacrifice for our sins. When his tongue begins to
   speak of the glorious work which the Christ of God has done for the
   sons of men, it finds a sudden liberty and he becomes as "a hind let
   loose; he gives good words." May we have something of that glow within
   our breasts, tonight, and whenever we think of our Lord. God forbid
   that we should be cold-hearted when we come near to Jesus! God forbid
   that we should ever view with heartless eyes and a lethargic soul the
   sweet wonders of that Cross on which our Savior loved and died!

   Let us, then, in that spirit, approach our text--and we notice, at
   once, three crucifixions. These are the summary of the text. "God
   forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus
   Christ." That is, Christ crucified. "By whom," or, "by which," (read it
   whichever way you like), "the world is crucified unto me." That is, a
   crucified world. "And I unto the world." That is, Paul, himself, or the
   Believer, crucified with Christ. I see, again, Calvary before me with
   its three crosses--Christ in the center and on either side of Him a
   crucified person--one who dies to feel the second death and the other
   who dies to be with Him in Paradise! At these three crosses let us
   proceed to look.

   I. First, then, the main part of our subject lies in CHRIST CRUCIFIED,
   in whom Paul gloried. I call your attention to the language--"God
   forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross." Some popular authors
   and public speakers, when they have to state a Truth of God, count it
   necessary to clothe it in very delicate language. They, perhaps, do not
   quite intend to conceal its point and edge but, at any rate, they do
   not want the projecting angles and bare surfaces of the Truth to be too
   observable and, therefore, they cast a cloak around it--they are
   careful to scabbard the Sword of the Spirit.

   The Apostle Paul might have done so, here, if he had chosen, but he
   disdains the artifice. He presents the Truth of God "in the worst
   possible form," as his opponents say--"in all its naked hideousness,"
   as the Jew would have it--for he does not say, "God forbid that I
   should glory, save in the death of Christ," but in the Cross. You do
   not realize, I think--we cannot do so in these days--how the use of
   that word, "cross," would grate on ears refined in Galatia and
   elsewhere. In those days it meant the felon's tree, the hangman's
   gallows--and the Apostle, therefore, does not hesitate to put it just
   so--"Save in that gallows on which my Master died." We have become so
   accustomed to associate the name of, "the Cross," with other sentiments
   that it does not convey to us that sense of disgrace which it would
   inflict upon those who heard Paul speak.

   A family sensitively shrinks if one of its members has been hanged and
   much the same would be the natural feeling of one who was told that his
   leader was crucified. Paul puts it thus baldly; he lets it jar thus
   harshly though it may prove to some a stumbling block and to others
   foolishness. But he will not cloak it. He glories in "the Cross!" On
   the other hand, I earnestly entreat you to observe how he seems to
   contrast the Glory of the Person with the shame of the suffering, for
   it is not simply the death of Christ, nor of Jesus, nor of Jesus
   Christ, nor of the Lord Jesus Christ, but of, "our Lord Jesus Christ."
   Every word tends to set forth the excellence of His Person, the majesty
   of His Character and the interest which all the saints have in Him. It
   was a cross, but it was the Cross of our Lord--let us worship Him!

   It was the Cross of our Lord Jesus, the Savior--let us love Him! It was
   the Cross of our Jesus Christ the anointed Messiah--let us reverence
   Him! Let us sit at His feet and learn of Him! Each one may say, "It was
   the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ," but it sweetens the whole matter
   and gives a largeness to it when we say, "It was the Cross of our Lord
   Jesus Christ." Oh yes, we delight to think of the contrast between the
   precious Christ and the painful Cross--the Son of God and the shameful
   gallows! He was Immanuel, God With Us--yet did He die the felon's death
   upon the accursed tree! Paul brings out the shame with great sharpness
   and the glory with great plainness. He does not hesitate in either
   case, whether he would declare the sufferings of Christ or the glory
   which should follow.

   What did he mean, however, by the Cross? Of course he cared nothing for
   the particular piece of wood to which those blessed hands and feet were
   nailed, for that was mere materialism and has perished out of mind. He
   means the glorious doctrine of Justification--free
   justification--through the atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ! This is
   what he means by the Cross--the expiation for sin which our Lord Jesus
   Christ made by His death--and the gift of eternal life freely bestowed
   on all those who, by Grace, are led to trust in Him. To Paul the Cross
   meant just what the bronze serpent meant to Moses. As the bronze
   serpent in the wilderness was the hope of the sin-bitten and all that
   Moses had to do was to bid them look and live--so today the Cross of
   Christ--the Atonement of Jesus Christ, is the hope of mankind and our
   mission is continually to cry, "Look and live! Look and live!"

   It is this doctrine, this Gospel of Christ crucified, at which the
   present age, with all its vaunted culture and all its vain
   philosophies, sneers so broadly--it is this doctrine wherein we glory!
   We are not ashamed to put it very definitely--we glory in Substitution,
   in the vicarious Sacrifice of Jesus in our place. He was "made sin for
   us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in
   Him." "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to
   His own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
   "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a Curse
   for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree."

   We believe in the imputation of sin to the innocent Person of our
   covenant Head and Representative, in the bearing of the penalty by that
   substituted One and the clearing by faith of those for whom He bore the
   punishment of sin. Now we glory in this! We glory in it, not as men
   sometimes boast in a creed which they have received by tradition from
   their forefathers, for we have learned this Truth of God, each one for
   himself, by the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit and therefore it is
   very dear to us. We glory in it with no empty boast, but to the inward
   satisfaction of our own hearts we prove that satisfaction by the devout
   consecration of our lives to make it known.

   We have trusted our souls to its truth. If it is a fable, our hopes are
   forever shipwrecked because our all is embarked in that venture. We are
   quite prepared to run that risk, content to perish if this salvation
   should fail us. We live upon this faith. It is our meat and our drink.
   Take this away and there is nothing left us in the Bible worth having.
   It has become to us the head and front of our confidence, our hope, our
   rest, our joy. Instead of being ashamed to preach it, we wish that we
   could stand somewhere where all the inhabitants of the earth could hear
   us and we would thunder it out day and night! So far from being ashamed
   of acknowledging it, we count it to be our highest honor and our
   greatest delight to proclaim it, as we have opportunity, among the sons
   of men!

   But why do we rejoice in it? Why do we glory in it? The answer is so
   large that I cannot do more than glance at its manifold claims on our
   gratitude. We glory in it for a thousand reasons! We fail to see
   anything in the doctrine of Atonement that we should not glory in. We
   have heard a great many dogs bark against it, but dogs will bay the
   moon in her brightness and, therefore, we mind not their howling. Their
   noise has sometimes disturbed, though never yet has it frightened us.
   We have not yet heard a quibble against our Lord or an argument against
   His atoning blood which has affected our faith the turn of a hair. The
   Scriptures affirm it, the Holy Spirit bears witness to it and its
   effect upon our inner life assures us of it.

   The analogy between Jewish fasts and festivals and our Christian faith
   endorses it. There is a chasm that no man yet has been able to bridge
   without it. It lightens our conscience, gladdens our hearts, inspires
   our devotion and elevates our aspirations. We are wed to it and daily
   glory in it. In the Cross of Christ we glory because we regard it as a
   matchless exhibition of the attributes of God. We see there the love of
   God desiring a way by which He might save mankind, aided by His wisdom,
   so that a plan is perfected by which the deed can be done without
   violation of truth and justice. In the Cross we see a strange
   conjunction of what once appeared to be two opposite qualities--justice
   and mercy. We see how God is supremely just--as just as if He had no
   mercy--and yet infinitely merciful in the gift of His Son.

   Mercy and justice, in fact, become counsel upon the same side and
   irresistibly plead for the acquittal of the believing sinner. We can
   never tell which of the attributes of God shines most glorious in the
   Sacrifice of Christ--they each one find a glorious high throne in the
   Person and work of the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the
   world! Since it has become, as it were, the mirror which reflects the
   Character and perfections of God, it is meet that we should glory in
   the Cross of Christ and none shall stop us of our boasting! We glory in
   it, next, as the manifestation of the love of Jesus. He was loving
   inasmuch as He came to earth at all--loving in feeding the hungry, in
   healing the sick, in raising the dead. He was loving in His whole
   life--He was embodied charity, the Prince of philanthropists, the King
   of kindly souls!

   But oh, His death!--His cruel and shameful death-bearing, as we believe
   He did bear the wrath due to sin, subjecting Himself to the curse,
   though in Him was no sin--this shows the love of Christ at its highest
   altitude and, therefore, do we glory in it and will never be ashamed to
   do so! We glory in the Cross, moreover, because it is the putting away
   of sin. There was no other way of making an end of sin and making
   reconciliation for iniquity. To forgive the transgressions without
   exacting the penalty would have been contrary to all the threats of
   God! It would not have appeased the claims of justice, nor satisfied
   the conscience of the sinner.

   No peace of mind can be enjoyed without pardon and conscience declares
   that no pardon can be obtained without an atonement. We would have
   distracted ourselves with the fear that it was only a reprieve and not
   a remission even if the most comforting promises had been given
   unsealed with the atoning blood. The instincts of Nature have convinced
   men of this truth, for all the world over religion has been associated
   with sacrifice. Almost every kind of worship that has ever sprung up
   among the sons of men has had sacrifice for its most prominent
   feature--crime must be avenged, evil and sin cry from the ground--and a
   victim is sought to avert the vengeance. The heart craves for something
   that can calm the conscience--that craving is a relic of the ancient
   Truth of God learned by man in primeval ages.

   Now, Christ made His soul an offering for sin when He bore our sins in
   His own body on the tree. With His expiring breath He said, "It is
   finished!" Oh, wondrous Grace! Pardon is now freely published among the
   sons of men, pardon of which we see the justice and validity! As far as
   the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions
   from us by the death of Christ! This, and this, only, will put away
   sin! Therefore in this Cross of Christ we glory! Yes, and in it, alone,
   will we glory evermore! It has put away our sins, blessed be God, so
   that this load and burden no more weigh us down!

   We do not speak at random, now. It has breathed hope and peace and joy
   into our spirits. I am sure that no one knows how to glory in the Cross
   unless He has had an experimental acquaintance with its peace-breathing
   power. I speak what I know and testify what I have felt. The burden of
   my sin laid so heavy upon me that I would sooner have died than have
   lived. Many a day and many a night I felt the flames of Hell in the
   anguish of my heart because I knew my guilt and saw no way of righteous
   forgiveness. Yet in a moment the load went from me and I felt
   overflowing love to my Savior! I fell at His feet awe-stricken that He
   should have taken away my sin and made an end of it. That matchless
   deed of love won my heart to Jesus! He changed my nature and renewed my
   soul in that same hour.

   And oh, the joy I had! Those who have sunk to the very depths of
   despair and risen, in a moment, to the heights of peace and unspeakable
   joy, can tell you that they must glory in the Cross and its power to
   save. Why, Sirs, we must believe according to our own conscience! We
   cannot belie that inward witness. We only wish that others had been as
   deeply convinced of sin and as truly led to the Cross to feel their
   burden roll from off their shoulders as we have been! And then they,
   too, would glory in the Cross of Christ. Since then we have gone with
   this remedy in our hands to souls that have been near despair and we
   have never found the medicine fail. Many and many a time have I spoken
   to people so depressed in spirit that they seemed not far from the
   madhouse, so heavy was their sense of sin! Yet I have never known the
   matchless music of Jesus' name in any case fail to charm the soul out
   of its despondency.

   "They looked unto Him and were lightened: and their faces were not
   ashamed." Men who, because they thought there was no hope for them,
   would have desperately continued in sin, have read that word, "hope,"
   written in crimson lines upon the Savior's dying body and they have
   sprung up into confidence, have entered into peace and from that moment
   have begun to lead a new life! We glory in the Cross because of the
   peace it brings to every troubled conscience which receives it by
   faith--our own case has proved to our own souls its efficacy--and what
   we have seen in others has confirmed our confidence.

   Yet we would not glory so much in the Cross were we not convinced that
   it is the greatest moral power in all the world. We glory in the Cross
   because it gets at men's hearts when nothing else can reach them. The
   story of the dying Savior's love has often impressed those whom all the
   moral lectures in the world could never have moved. Judged and
   condemned by the unanswerable reasoning of their own consciences, they
   have not had enough control over their passions to shake off the
   captivity in which they were held by the temptations that assailed them
   at every turn till they have drawn near to the Cross of Jesus! Then
   from pardon they have gathered hope and from hope have gained strength
   to master sin! When they have seen their sin laid on Jesus, they have
   loved Him and hated the sin that made Him to suffer so grievously as
   their Substitute.

   Then the Holy Spirit has come upon them and they have resolved, with
   Divine strength, to drive out the sin for which the Savior died. They
   have begun a new life, yes, and they have continued in it, sustained by
   that same sacred power which first constrained them--and now they look
   forward to be perfected by it through the power of God! Where are the
   triumphs of infidelity in rescuing men from sin? Where are the trophies
   of philosophy in conquering human pride? Will you bring us harlots that
   have been made chaste; thieves that have been reclaimed; angry men of
   bear-like temper who have become harmless as lambs through scientific
   lectures? Let our amateur philanthropists who suggest so much and do so
   little, produce some instances of the moral transformations that have
   been worked by their sophistries!

   No, they curl their lips and leave the lower orders to the City
   Missionary and the Bible Woman! It is the Cross that humbles the
   haughty, lifts up the fallen, refines the polluted and gives a fresh
   start to those who are forlorn and desperate! Nothing else can do it!
   The world sinks lower and lower into the bog of its own selfishness and
   sin. Only this wondrous lever of the Atonement, symbolized by the Cross
   of Christ, can lift our abject race to the place of virtue and honor
   which it ought to occupy! We glory in the Cross for so many reasons
   that I cannot hope to enumerate them all. While it ennobles our life,
   it invigorates us with hope in our death.

   Death is now deprived of its terrors to us, for Christ has died. We,
   like He, can say, "Father, into Your hands we commend our spirit." His
   burial has perfumed the grave! His Resurrection has paved the road to
   immortality! He rose and left a lamp behind which shows an outlet from
   the gloom of the sepulcher. The Paradise He immediately predicted for
   Himself and for the penitent who hung by His side has shown us how
   quick the transition is from mortal pains to immortal joys! "Absent
   from the body, present with the Lord," is the cheering prospect! Glory
   be to Christ forever and forever that we have this doctrine of "Christ
   crucified" to preach!

   II. The second cross exhibits THE WORLD CRUCIFIED. The Apostle says
   that the world was crucified to him. What does he mean by this? He
   regarded the world as nailed up like a felon and hanged upon a cross to
   die. Well, I suppose he means that its character was condemned. He
   looked out upon the world which thought so much of itself and said, "I
   do not think much of you, poor World! You are like a doomed
   malefactor." He knew that the world had crucified its Savior--crucified
   its God! It had gone to such a length of sin that it had hounded
   perfect Innocence through the streets. Infinite Benevolence it had
   scoffed at and maligned. Eternal Truth it had rejected and preferred a
   lie--and the Son of God, who was Love incarnate, it had put to the
   death on the Cross.

   "Now," says Paul, "I know your character, O World! I know you! And I
   hold you in no more esteem than the wretch abhorred for his crimes who
   is condemned to hang upon the gallows and so end his detested life."
   This led Paul, since he condemned its character, utterly to despise its
   judgment. The world said, "This Paul is a fool! His Gospel is
   foolishness and he, himself is a mere babbler." "Yes," thought Paul, "a
   deal you know of it!" In this we unite with him. What is your judgment
   worth? You did not know the Son of God, poor blind World! We are sure
   that He was perfect and yet you hunted Him to death! Your judgment is a
   poor thing, O World! You are crucified to us.

   Now, there are a great many people who could hardly endure to live if
   they should happen to be misjudged by the world or what is called
   "society." Oh yes, we must be respectable! We must have every man's
   good word, or we are ready to faint! Paul was of another mind. What
   cared he for anything the world might say? How could he wish to please
   a world so abominable that it had put his Lord to death? He would
   sooner have its bad opinion than its good. It were better to be frowned
   at than to be smiled upon by a world that crucified Christ! Certainly,
   its condemnation is more worth having than its approbation, if it can
   put Christ to death! So Paul utterly despised its judgment and it was
   crucified to him.

   Now, we are told to think a great deal about "public opinion," "popular
   belief," "the growing feeling of the age," "the sentiment of the
   period" and "the spirit of the age." I should like Paul to read some of
   our religious newspapers! And yet I could not wish the good man so
   distasteful a task, for I dare say he would sooner pine in the
   Mammertine prison than do so. But, still, I should like to see how he
   would look after he had read some of those expressions about the
   necessity of keeping ourselves abreast with the sentiment of the
   period. "What?" he would exclaim, "the sentiment of the world! It is
   crucified to me! What can it matter what its opinion is? We are of God,
   little children, and the whole world lies in the Wicked One! Would you
   heed what the world, that is lying in the Wicked One, thinks of you or
   of the Truth of your Lord? Are you going to smooth your tongue and
   soften your speech to please the world that lies in the Wicked

   One?"

   Paul would be indignant with such a proposition. He said, "the world is
   crucified to me." Hence he looked upon all the world's pleasures as so
   much rottenness, a carcass nailed to a cross. Can you fancy Paul being
   taken to the Coliseum at Rome? I try to imagine him made to sit on one
   of those benches to watch a combat of gladiators. There is the
   emperor--there are all the great peers of Rome and the senators. And
   there are those cruel eyes all gazing down upon men who shed each
   others' blood! Can you picture how Paul would have felt if he had been
   forced to occupy a seat at that spectacle? It would have been martyrdom
   to him! He would have closed his eyes and ears against the sight of
   what Rome thought to be the choicest pleasure of the day!

   They thronged the imperial city--they poured in mighty streams into the
   theater each day to see poor beasts tortured, or men murdering one
   another--that was the world of Paul's day and he rightly judged it to
   be a crucified felon. If he was compelled to see the popular pleasures
   of today, upon which I will say but little, would he not be well-near
   as sick of them as he would have been of the amusements of the
   amphitheatre at Rome? To Paul, too, all the honors of the age must have
   been crucified in the same manner. Suppose that Paul settled his mind
   to think of the wretches who were reigning as emperors in his day! I
   use the word advisedly, for I would not speak evil of dignitaries, but
   really, I speak too well of them when I call them wretches! They seem
   to have been inhuman monsters--"tyrants whose capricious folly violated
   every law of Nature and decency," to whom every kind of lust was a
   daily habit and who even sought out new inventions of sensuality,
   calling them new pleasures.

   As Paul thought of the iniquities of Napoli and all the great towns to
   which the Romans went on their holidays-- Pompeii and the like--oh, how
   he loathed them! And I doubt not that if the Apostle were to come here
   now, if he knew how often rank and title are apt to sink all true
   dignity in shameful dissipation and what flagrant profligacy is to be
   found in high quarters, he might as justly consider all the pomp and
   dignity and honor of the world that now is, to be as little worth as a
   putrid carcass hanging on a tree and rotting in the sun. He says, "The
   world is crucified to me--it is hanging on the gallows, I think so
   little of its pleasures and of its pomp." Alike contemptuously did Paul
   judge of all the treasures of the world.

   Paul never spent as much time as it would take to wink his eye in
   thinking of how much money he was worth. Having food and raiment, he
   was content. Sometimes he had scarcely that. He casually thanks the
   Philippians for ministering to his necessities, but he never sought to
   hoard up anything, nor did he live with even half a thought of
   aggrandizing himself with gold and silver. "No," he said, "this will
   all perish with the using," and so he treated the world as a thing
   crucified to him. Now, Christian, can you say as much as this--that the
   world, in its mercantile aspect as well as in its motley vices and its
   manifold frivolities, is a crucified thing to you? Hear what the world
   says. "Make money, young Man, make money! Honestly, if you can, but by
   all means make money! Look about you, for if you are not sharp, you
   will not succeed. Keep your own counsel and rather play the double than
   be the dupe. Your character will rise with the credit you get."

   Now, suppose that you get the money, what is the result? The net
   result, as I often find it, is a paragraph in one of the newspapers to
   say that Esquire So-and-So's will was proved in the Probate Court under
   so many thousands. Then follows a grand squabble among all his
   relatives which shall eat him up. That is the consummation of a life of
   toil and care and scheming. He has lived for lucre and he has to leave
   it behind! That is the end of that folly. I have sometimes thought of
   the contrast between the poor man's funeral and the rich man's funeral.
   When the poor man dies, there are his sons and daughters weeping with
   real distress, for the death of the father brings sadness and sympathy
   into that house. The poor man is to be buried, but it can only be
   managed by the united self-denials of all his sons and daughters.

   There is Mary at the service. She, perhaps, contributes more than the
   others towards the funeral, for she has no family of her own. The elder
   son and the younger brothers all pinch themselves to pay a little and
   the tears that are shed that evening when they come home from the grave
   are very genuine. They suffer and they prove their sorrow by rivaling
   one another in the respect they pay to their parent. Now you shall see
   the rich man die. Of course everybody laments the sad loss--it is the
   proper thing. Empty carriages swell the procession to the grave by way
   of empty compliment. The mourners return and there is the reading of
   that blessed document, the will. When that is read, the time for tears
   is over in almost every case.

   Few are pleased. The one whom fortune favors is the envy of all the
   rest. Sad thoughts and sullen looks float on the surface, not in
   respect to the man's departure, but concerning the means he has left
   and the mode in which he has disposed of them. Oh, it is a poor thing
   to live for--the making of money and the hoarding of it! But still, the
   genius of rightly getting money can be consecrated to the glory of God.
   You can use the wealth of this world in the service of the Master. To
   gain is not wrong. It is only wrong when grasping becomes the main
   object of life and grudging grows into covetousness which is idolatry!
   To every Christian, that and every other form of worldliness ought to
   be crucified so that we can say, "For me to live is not myself, but it
   is Christ! I live that I may honor and glorify Him."

   When the Apostle said that the world was crucified to him, He meant
   just this--"I am not enslaved by any of its pursuits. I care nothing
   for its maxims. I am not governed by its spirit. I do not court its
   smiles. I do not fear its threats. It is not my master, nor am I its
   slave. By God's Grace the whole world cannot force me to lie, or to sin
   and I will tell the world the Truth of God, come what may." You
   remember the words of Palissy, the potter, when the king of France said
   to him that if he did not change his religion and cease to be a
   Huguenot, he was afraid that he should have to deliver him up to his
   enemies? "Sire," said the potter, "I am sorry to hear you say, 'I am
   afraid,' for all the men in the world could not make Palissy talk like
   that. I am afraid of nobody and I must do nothing but what is right."

   Oh, yes, the man that fears God and loves the Cross has a moral
   backbone which enables him to stand and snap his fingers at the world.
   "Dead felon!" he says. "Dead felon! Crucifier of Christ! Cosmos you
   call yourself. By comely names you wish to be greeted. Paul is nothing
   in your esteem, but Paul is a match for you, for he thinks as much of
   you as you do of him, and no more." Hear him as he cries, "The world is
   crucified unto me, and I unto the world." To live to serve men is one
   thing, to live to bless them is another, and this we will do, God
   helping us, making sacrifices for their good. But to fear men, to ask
   their leave to think--to ask their instructions as to what we shall
   speak and how we shall say it-- that is a baseness we cannot tolerate!
   By the Grace of God, we have not so degraded ourselves and never shall.
   "The world is crucified to me," says the Apostle, "by the Cross of
   Christ."

   III. Then he finishes up with the third crucifixion, which is, I AM
   CRUCIFIED TO THE WORLD. We shall soon see the evidence of this
   crucifixion if we notice how they poured contempt upon him. Once Saul
   was a great rabbi, a man profoundly versed in Hebrew lore, a Pharisee
   of the Pharisees and much admired. He was also a classic scholar and a
   philosophic thinker, a man of great mental powers and fit to take the
   lead in learned circles. But when Paul began to preach Christ
   crucified--"Bah," they said, "he is an utter fool! Don't listen to
   him!" Or else they said, "Down with him! He is an apostate!"

   They cursed him. His name brought wrath into the face of all Jews that
   mentioned it and all intelligent Greeks likewise. "Paul? He is nobody!"
   He was everybody when he thought their way--he is nobody now that he
   thinks in God's way. And then they put him to open shame by suspecting
   all his motives and by misrepresenting all his actions. It did not
   matter what Paul did, they were quite certain that he was
   self-seeking--that he was endeavoring to make a fine thing of it for
   himself. When he acted so that they were forced to admit that he was
   right, they put it in such a light that they made it out to be wrong.
   There were some who denied his Apostleship and said that he was never
   sent of God. Others questioned his ability to preach the Gospel.

   So they crucified poor Paul one way and another to the fullest. They
   went further, still. They despised and they shunned him. His old
   friends forsook him. Some got out of the way, others pointed the finger
   of scorn at him in the streets. His persecutors showed their rancor
   against him, now stoning him illegally, other times, with a semblance
   of legality, dragging him before the magistrates. Paul was crucified to
   them. As for his teaching, they decried him as a babbler--a
   setter-forth of strange gods. I dare say they often sneered at the
   Cross of Christ which he preached as a nine-days' wonder, an almost
   exploded doctrine, and said, "If you do but shut the mouths of such men
   as Paul, it will soon be

   forgotten." I have heard them say in modern times to lesser men, "Your
   old-fashioned Puritanism is nearly dead! Before long it will be utterly
   extinct!" But we preach Christ crucified--the same old doctrine as the
   Apostles preached and for this, by the contempt of the worldly wise, we
   are crucified!

   Now, dear Christian Friends, if you keep to the Cross of Christ, you
   must expect to have this for your portion. The world will be crucified
   to you and you will be crucified to the world. You will get the cold
   shoulder. Old friends will become open foes. They will begin to hate
   you more than they loved you before. At home your foes will be the men
   and women of your own household. You will hardly be able to do anything
   right. When you joined in their revels you were a fine fellow--when you
   would drink and sing a lascivious song, you were a jolly good
   fellow--but now they rate you as a fool! They tell all you are a
   hypocrite and they slanderously blacken your character. Let their
   dislike be a badge of your discipleship and say, "Now, also, the world
   is crucified to me and I unto the world. Whatever the world says
   against me for Christ's sake is the maundering of a doomed malefactor
   and what do I care for that? And, on the other hand, if I am rejected
   and despised, I am only taking what I always expected--my
   crucifixion--in my poor, humble way, after the manner of Christ
   Himself, who was despised and rejected of men."

   The moral and the lesson of it all is this--whatever comes of it, still
   glory in Christ! Go in for this, dear Friends, that whether you are in
   honor or in dishonor, in good report or in evil report--whether God
   multiplies your substance and makes you rich, or diminishes it and
   makes you poor--you will still glory in the Cross of Christ! If you
   have health and strength and vigor to work for Him, or if you have to
   lie upon a bed of languishing and bear in patience all your heavenly
   Father's will, resolve that you will still glory in the Cross! Let this
   be the point of your glorying throughout your lives! Go down the steeps
   of Jordan and go through Jordan, itself, still glorying in the Cross,
   for in the Heaven of Glory you will find that the blood-bought hosts
   celebrate the Cross as the trophy of their redemption!

   Are you trusting in the Cross? Are you resting in Jesus? If not, may
   the Lord teach you this blessed privilege! There is no joy like it!
   There is no strength like it! There is no life like it! There is no
   peace like it! At the Cross we find our Heaven! While upon the Cross we
   gaze all heavenly and holy things abound within our hearts! If you have
   never been there, may the Lord lead you there at this very hour--and so
   shall you be pardoned, accepted and blest forever! The Lord grant that
   you all may be partakers of this Grace for Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             Forgiveness Made Easy

   A Sermon

   (No. 1448)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
   you."--Ephesians 4:82.

   THE HEATHEN moralists, when they wished to teach virtue, could not
   point to the example of their gods, for, according to their
   mythologists, the gods were a compound of every imaginable, and, I had
   almost said, unimaginable vice. Many of the classic deities surpassed
   the worst of men in their crimes: they were as much greater in iniquity
   as they were supposed to be superior in power. It is an ill day for a
   people when their gods are worse than themselves. The blessed purity of
   our holy faith is conspicuous, not only in its precepts, but in the
   character of the God whom it reveals. There is no excellency which we
   can propose but we can see it brightly shining in the Lord our God:
   there is no line of conduct in which a believer should excel but we can
   point to Christ Jesus our Lord and Master as the pattern of it. In the
   highest places of the Christian faith you have the highest virtue, and
   unto God our Father and the Lord Jesus be the highest praise. We can
   urge you to the tenderest spirit of forgiveness by pointing to God who
   for Christ's sake has forgiven you. What nobler motive can you require
   for forgiving one another? With such high examples, brethren, what
   manner of people ought we to he? We have sometimes heard of men who
   were better than their religion, but that is quite impossible with us:
   we can never, in spirit or in act, rise to the sublime elevation of our
   divine religion. We should constantly be rising above ourselves, and
   above the most gracious of our fellow Christians, and yet above us we
   shall still behold our God and Saviour. We may go from strength to
   strength in thoughts of goodness and duties of piety, but Jesus is
   higher still, and evermore we must be looking up to him as we climb the
   sacred hill of grace.

   At this time we wish to speak a little concerning the duties of love
   and forgiveness; and here we note, at once, that the apostle sets
   before us the example of God himself. Upon that bright example we shall
   spend most of our time, but I hope not quite so much as to forget the
   practical part, which is so much needed in these days by certain
   Unforgiving spirits who nevertheless assume the Christian name. The
   theme of God's forgiving love is so fascinating that we may linger
   awhile, and a long while too, upon that bright example of forgiveness
   which God has set before us, but from it all I hope we shall be
   gathering grace by which to forgive others even to seventy times seven.

   We shall take the text word by word, and so we shall obtain the
   clearest divisions.

   I. The first word to think about is "FOR CHRIST'S SAKE." We use these
   words very often; but probably we have never thought of their Three,
   and even at this time we cannot bring forth the whole of their meaning.
   Let us touch thereon with thoughtfulness, praying the good Spirit to
   instruct us. "For Christ's sake;" all the good things which God has
   bestowed upon us have come to us "for Christ's sake," but especially
   the forgiveness of our sins has come "for Christ's sake." This is the
   plain assertion of the text. What does it mean? It means. surely,
   first, for the sake of the great atonement which Christ has offered.
   The great God can, as a just Lawgiver and King, readily pass by out'
   offences because of the expiation for sin which Christ has offered. If
   sin were merely a personal affront toward God, we have abundant
   evidence that he would be ready enough to pass it by without exacting
   vengeance; but it is a great deal more than that. Those who view it as
   a mere personal affront against God are but very shallow thinkers. Sin
   is an attack upon the moral government of God; it undermines the
   foundations of society, and were it permitted to have its way it would
   reduce everything to anarchy, and even destroy the governing power and
   the Ruler himself. God hath a great realm to govern, not merely of men
   that dwell on the face of the earth, but beneath his sway there are
   angels, and principalities, and powers, and we do not know how many
   worlds of intelligent beings. It would certainly be a monstrous thing
   to suppose that God has made yonder myriads of worlds that we see
   sparkling in the sky at night without having placed some living
   creatures in them; it is far more reasonable to suppose that this earth
   is an altogether insignificant speck in the divine dominion, a mere
   province in the boundless empire of the King of kings. Now, this world
   having rebelled against God high-handedly, as it has done, unless there
   were a satisfaction demanded for its rebellion it would be a tolerated
   assault upon the dominion of the great Judge of all, and a lowering of
   his royal influence over all his domain. If sin in man's case were left
   unpunished it would soon be known through myriads of worlds, and in
   fact by ten thousand times ten thousand races of creatures, that they
   might sin with impunity; if one race had done so, why not all the rest?
   This would be a proclamation of universal license to rebel. It would
   probably be the worst calamity that could happen--that any sin should
   go unpunished by the supreme Judge. Sometimes in a state, unless the
   lawgiver executes the law against the murderer, life will be in peril,
   and everything will become insecure, and therefore it becomes mercy to
   write the death-warrant: so is it with God in reference to this world
   of sinners. It is his very love as well as his holiness and his justice
   which, if I may use such a term, compels him to severity of judgment,
   so that sin cannot and must not be blotted out till atonement has been
   presented. There must first of all be a sacrifice for sin, which, mark
   you, the great Father, to show his love, himself supplies, for it is
   his own Son who is given to die, and so the Father himself supplies the
   ransom through his Son, that Son being also one with himself by bonds
   of essential unity, mysterious but most intense. If God demands the
   penalty in justice, he himself supplies it in love. "Tis a wondrous
   mystery, this mystery of the way of salvation by an atoning sacrifice;
   but this much is clear, that now God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
   us, because satisfaction has been made to the injured honour of the
   divine government, and justice is satisfied. I want you to consider for
   a moment how readily God may now blot out sin since Christ hath died.
   The blotting out of sin seems hard till we see the cross, and then it
   appears easy enough. I have looked at sin till it seemed to blind me
   with its horror, and I said in myself, "This damned spot can never be
   washed out; no fuller's soap can change its hue; sooner might the
   Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots. sin, thou deep,
   eternal evil, what can remove thee?" And then I have seen the Son of
   God dying on the cross, and read the anguish of his soul, and heard the
   cries which showed the torment of his spirit when God his Father had
   forsaken him, and it has seemed to me as if the blotting out of sin
   were the easiest thing under heaven. When I have seen Jesus die I have
   not been able to understand how any sin could be difficult to remove.
   Let a man stand on Calvary and look on him whom he hath pierced, and
   believe and accept the atonement made, and it becomes the simplest
   thing possible that his debt should be discharged now that it is paid,
   that his freedom should be given now that the ransom is found, and that
   he should be no longer under condemnation, since the guilt that
   condemned him has been carried away by his great Substitute and Lord.
   It is then because of what Jesus Christ has suffered in our stead that
   God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us,

   The second rendering of the text would be this, that God has forgiven
   us because of the representative character of Christ. It should never
   be forgotten that we originally fell by a representative. Adam stood
   for us, and he was our federal head. We did not fall personally at the
   first, but in our representative. Had he kept the conditions of the
   covenant we had stood through him, but, inasmuch as he fell, we fell in
   him. I pray you cavil not at the arrangement, because there lay the
   hope of our lace. The angels probably fell individually, one by one,
   and hence they fell irretrievably,--there was no restoring them: but as
   we fell in one Adam, there remained the possibility of our rising in
   another Adam; and therefore in the fulness of time God sent forth his
   Son Jesus Christ, born of a woman, made under the law to become the
   second Adam. He undertook to remove our burdens and to fulfil the
   conditions of our restoration. According to covenant he must appear in
   our nature, and that nature in the fulness of time he assumed. He must
   bear the penalty: that he hath done in his personal suffering and
   death. He must obey the law: that he has done to the utmost. And now
   Christ Jesus, having borne penalty and fulfilled law, is himself
   justified before God, and stands forth before God as the representative
   of all that are in him. God for Christ's sake has accepted us in him,
   has forgiven us in him, and looks upon us with love infinite and
   changeless in him. This is how all our blessings come to us--in and
   through Christ Jesus; and if we are indeed in him, the Lord doth not
   only forgive us our sin, but he bestows upon us the boundless riches of
   his grace in him: in fact, he treats us as he would treat his Son, he
   deals with us as he would deal with Jesus. Oh, how pleasant to think
   that when the just God looks upon us it is through the reconciling
   medium, he views us through the Mediator. We sometimes sing a hymn
   which says--

   "Him and then the sinner see,

   Look through Jesus' wounds on me,"

   and this is just what the Lord doth. He counts us just for the sake of
   our Saviour's atonement, and because of his representative character.

   Now go a little further. When we read "for Christ's sake" it surely
   means for the deep love which the Father bears him. My brethren, can
   you guess a little of the love which the Father hath toward the
   Only-begotten? We cannot pry into the wondrous mystery of the eternal
   filiation of the Son of God lest we be blinded by excess of tight; but
   this we know, that they are one God,--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and
   the union which exists between them is intense beyond conception. "The
   Father loveth the Son," was always true, and is true now; but how
   deeply, how intensely he loves the Son no mind can conceive. Now,
   brethren, the Lord will do great things for the sake of a Son whom he
   loves as he loveth Jesus, for in addition to the fact of his eternally
   loving him, as being one with him by nature and essence, there is now
   the superadded cause of love arising out of what the Lord Jesus hath
   done as the servant of the Father. Remember that our Lord Jesus has
   been obedient to his Father's will--obedient to death, even to the
   death of the cross, wherefore God hath highly exalted hi in and given
   him a name that is above every name. One of the sweetest thoughts, to
   my mind, which I sometimes suck at when I am alone, is this--that God
   the Father will do anything for Christ. Here is also another piece of a
   honeycomb--when I can plead Christ's name I am sure to win my suit of
   him. "For Christ's sake" is a plea that always touches the heart of the
   great God. Show that for you to receive such and such a blessing will
   glorify Christ, and the Father cannot withhold it, for it is his
   delight to honour Jesus. We speak after the manner of men, of course,
   and on such a theme as this we must be careful, but still we can only
   speak as men, being only men. It is the joy of the Father to express
   his love to his Son. Throughout all ages they have had fellowship one
   with another: they have always been one in all their designs, they have
   never differed upon any points and cannot differ; and you notice when
   our Lord says, "Father, glorify thy Son," he is so knit with the Father
   that he adds, "that thy Son also may glorify thee." Their mutual love
   is inconceivably great, and, therefore, brethren, God will do anything
   for Jesus. God will forgive us for Christ's sake; yea, he has done so
   in the case of thousands around me. And thou, big black sinner, if thou
   wilt go to God at this moment and say, "Lord, I cannot ask thee to
   forgive me for my own sake, but do it out of love for thy dear Son," he
   will do it, for he will do anything for the sake of Jesus. If thou art
   at this time conscious of sin so as to despair of thyself, it is well
   that thou shouldest be so, for self-despair is only common-sense, since
   there is nothing in thyself upon which thou canst rely. But do catch at
   this hope--it is not a straw, it is a good substantial life-buoy--if
   thou canst ask forgiveness for the sake of Jesus, God will do anything
   for Jesus, and he will do anything for thee for his dear sake.

   So we read our text once more in the light of a truth which grows out
   of the love of God; namely, that God does forgive sin for the sake of
   glorifying Christ. Christ took the shame that he might magnify his
   Father, and now his Father delights to magnify him by blotting out the
   sin. If von can prove that any gift to you would reflect glory upon
   Christ, you may depend upon it you will have it. If there is anything
   under heaven. that would make Christ more illustrious the Father would
   not spare it for a moment. If thou seest that for thee to have thy sin
   forgiven would raise the fame of the Saviour, go and plead that
   argument with God, and thou shalt surely prevail. Will it not make
   Christ glad if he saves such a sinner as thou art? Then go with this
   argument in thy mouth, "Father, glorify thy Son by exalting him as a
   glorious Saviour in saving me." I find this often a great lever at a
   dead lift,--to say unto the Lord, "Lord, thou knowest the straits I am
   in; thou knowest how undeserving I am; thou knowest what a poor, undone
   creature I am before thee; but if thy dear Son shall help and save me
   the very angels will stand and wonder at his mighty grace, and so it
   will bring glory to him, therefore I entreat thee be gracious unto me."
   Be sure thou art certain to prevail if thou canst plead that it will
   glorify Christ, and surely thou wouldest not wish to have a thing that
   would not glorify him. Thy prayer shall always be prevalent, if thy
   heart be in such a state that thou art willing to have or not to have,
   according as it will honour thy Lord: if it will not glorify Christ, be
   thou more than content to do without the choicest earthly good; but be
   thou doubly grateful when the boon that is granted tends to bring
   honour to the ever dear and worshipful name of Jesus. "For Christ's
   sake." It is a precious word; dwell upon it, and lay up this sentence
   in the archives of thy memory--the Father will do anything for the sake
   of Jesus Christ his Son.

   II. Now, secondly, we pass on to observe what it is which we are told
   in the text has been done for us, and to us, for Christ's sake. "God
   for Christ's sake HATH FORGIVEN YOU."

   First notice, that he has done this certainly. The apostle does not say
   he hopes so, but he says, "God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."
   Are you in the number of the forgiven, my dear hearer? Hast thou
   believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Then, as sure as you have believed,
   God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Have you put your trust in the
   atoning sacrifice? Then God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. You
   have not begun to be a Christian, I hope, with the idea that one day,
   at some future period, you may obtain forgiveness. No. "God for
   Christ's sake hath forgiven you." Pardon is not a prize to be run for,
   but a blessing received at the first step of the race. If you have
   believed in Jesus your sin has all gone--all gone; all your sin has
   been erased from the records of the past, never to be mentioned against
   you for ever. The moment a sinner looks to Christ, the burden of his
   sin rolls from off his shoulders never to return. If Christ hath washed
   thee, (and be has if thou hast believed in him,) then thou art clean
   every whit, and before the Lord thou standest delivered from every
   trace of guilt. Pardon is not a matter of hope, but a matter of fact.
   Expectation looks for many a blessing, but pardon is a realized favour
   which faith holds in her hand even now. If Christ took thy load, thy
   load cannot remain on thine own back: if Christ paid thy debts, then
   they do not stand in God's books against thee. How can they? It stands
   to reason that if thy Substitute has taken thy sin and put it away, thy
   sin lies no more on thee. God for Christ's sake hath forgiven thee. Get
   hold of that grand truth, and hold it, though all the devils in hell
   roar at thee. Grasp it as with a hand of steel; grip it as for life:
   "God for Christ's sake hath forgiven me,"--may each one of us be able
   to say that. We shall not feel the divine sweetness and force of the
   text unless we can make a personal matter of it by the Holy Ghost.

   Then notice that God has forgiven us continuously. He not only forgave
   us at the first all our sins, but he continues daily to forgive, for
   the act of forgiveness is a continuous one. I have sometimes heard it
   said that we were so forgiven when we first believed that there is no
   need to ask for further forgiveness; to which I reply--We were so
   completely forgiven when we first believed that we ought continually to
   ask for the perpetuity of that one far-reaching act, that the Lord may
   continue to exert towards us that fulness of forgiving grace which
   absolved us perfectly at the first, that we may continue to walk before
   him with a sense of that complete forgiveness, clear and unquestioned.
   I know I was forgiven when first I believed in Christ; and I am equally
   sure of it now: the one absolution continues to ring in my ears like
   joy-bells which never cease. Pardon once given continues to be given.
   When through doubt and anxiety I was not sure of my pardon, yet it was
   still true; for he that believeth on him is not condemned, even though
   he may write bitter things against himself. Beloved friend, catch hold
   of that, and do not let it go. Divine pardon is a continuous act.

   And this forgiveness on God's part was most free. We did nothing to
   obtain it by merit, and we brought nothing wherewith to purchase it. He
   forgave us for Christ's sake, not for aught that we had done. True, we
   did repent, and did believe, but repentance and faith he gave us, so
   that he did not forgive us for the sake of them, but purely of his own
   dear love, because he delighteth in mercy, and is never more like
   himself than when he passeth by transgression, iniquity, and sin.

   Remember, also, that he forgave us fully. It was not here and there a
   sin that he blotted out, but the whole horrible list and catalogue of
   our offences he destroyed at once. The substitution of our Lord has
   finished that matter even to perfection:--

   "Because the sinless Saviour died,

   My sinful soul is counted free;

   For God, the Just, is satisfied

   To look on him and pardon me."

   All our transgressions are swept away at once, carried off as by a
   flood, and so completely removed from us that no guilty trace of them
   remains They are all gone! O ye believers, think of this, for the all
   is no little thing: sins against a holy God, sins against his loving
   Son, sins against gospel as well as against law, sins against man as
   well as against God, sins of the body as well as sins of the mind, sins
   as numerous as the sands on the sea shore, and as great as the sea
   itself: all, all are removed from us as far as the east is from the
   west. All this evil was rolled into one great mass, and laid upon
   Jesus, and having borne it all he has made an end of it for ever. When
   the Lord forgave us he forgave us the whole debt. He did not take the
   bill and say, "I strike out this item and that," but the pen went
   through it all;--PAID. It was a receipt in full of all demands, Jesus
   took the handwriting which was against us and nailed it to his cross,
   to show before the entire universe that its power to condemn us had
   ceased for ever. We have in him a full forgiveness.

   And let it be remembered that this forgiveness which God has given us
   for Christ's sake is an eternal forgiveness. He will never rake up our
   past offences and a second time impute them, lie will not find us on an
   evil day, and say, "I have had great patience with you, but now will I
   deal with you after your sins." Far otherwise; he that believeth in
   Jesus hath everlasting life, and shall never come into condemnation.
   Irreversible is the pardon of heaven. "The gifts and calling of God are
   without repentance." He never repents what he has given, or forgiven.
   "Tis done, "tis done for ever: Jehovah absolves and the sentence stands
   fast for ever. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which
   are in Christ Jesus." "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
   elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?" Blessed
   be God for eternal pardon!

   And since I could not find a word to finish with but this one, I will
   use it: he hath divinely pardoned us. There is such a truth, reality,
   and emphasis in the pardon of God as you can never find in the pardon
   of man; for though a man should forgive all you have done against him,
   if you have treated him very badly, yet it is more than you could
   expect that he should quite forget it, but the Lord says, "Their sins
   and iniquities will I remember no more for ever." If a man has played
   you false, although you have forgiven him, you are not likely to trust
   him again. It is an old proverb, "Never ride a broken-knee'd horse,"
   and it is not a bad proverb either. But see how the Lord deals with his
   people. When Peter was set on his legs again he was a broken-knee'd
   horse enough, and yet see how gloriously the Lord rode that charger on
   the day of Pentecost. Did he not go forth conquering and to conquer?
   The Lord lets bygones be bygones so completely that he trusts pardoned
   souls with his secrets, for "the secret of the Lord is with them that
   fear him"; and he entrusts some of us with his choicest treasures, for
   Paul said, "He hath put me in trust with the gospel, though I was a
   blasphemer." He commits to our keeping that priceless casket which
   encloses the best hope of men, namely, the gospel of Jesus. "We have
   this treasure in earthen vessels." This shows how perfect is our
   forgiveness,--nay, I must put it, how divine is the forgiveness which
   we have received. Let us rejoice in that grand promise which comes to
   us by the mouth of Jeremiah of old, "In those days, and in that time,
   saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there
   shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for
   I will pardon them whom I reserve." Here is annihilation--the only
   annihilation I know of--the absolute annihilation of sin through the
   pardon which the Lord gives to his people. Let us sing it as though it
   were a choice hymn--"The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and
   there shall be none."

   III. Now, if you have drank into the spirit of our subject you will be
   strengthened to bear what I have to say to you upon a point of
   practice. "FORGIVING ONE ANOTHER, even as God for Christ's sake hath
   forgiven you." Let me say, at the commencement, that I do not know of
   anyone here present who has fallen out with anybody else, and therefore
   I shall make no personal allusions. If I did know of quarrels and
   bickerings it is very likely that I should say about the same, but I do
   not happen to know of any, and if therefore, my remarks should come
   home, I would earnestly beg each one so affected to believe that what I
   say is intended for him, and to receive it as a pointed, personal
   message from God.

   "Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
   you." Now observe how the apostle puts it. Does he say "forgiving
   another"? No, that is not the text, if you look at it. It is
   "forgiving, one another." One another! Ah, then that means that if you
   have to forgive to-day, it is very likely that you will yourself need
   to be forgiven to-morrow for it is "forgiving one another." It is turn
   and turn about, a mutual operation, a co-operative service. In fact, it
   is a joint-stock business of mutual forgiveness, and members of
   Christian churches should take large shares in this concern. "Forgiving
   one another." You forgive me, and I forgive you, and we forgive them,
   and they forgive us, and so a circle of unlimited forbearance and love
   goes round the world. There is something wrong about me that needs to
   be forgiven by my brother, but there is also something wrong about my
   brother which needs to be forgiven by me, and this is what the apostle
   means--that we are all of us mutually to be exercising the sacred art
   and mystery of forgiving one another. If we always did this we should
   not endure those who have a special faculty for spying out faults.
   There are some who, whatever church they are in, always bring an ill
   report of it. I have heard this sort of thing from many--"There is no
   love among Christians at all." I will tell you the character of the
   gentleman who makes that observation; he is both unloving and unlovely,
   and so he is out of the track of the pilgrims of love. Another cries,
   "There is no sincerity in the world now." That man is a hypocrite: be
   you quite sure of that. Judge a bird by its song, and a man by his
   utterance. The censorious measure our corn, but they use their own
   bushels. You may know very well what a man is by what he says of
   others. It is a gauge of character which very seldom will deceive you,
   to judge other men by their own judgment of their fellows. Their speech
   betrays their heart. Show me your tongue, sir! Now I know whether you
   are sick or well. He that speaketh with an ill tongue of his neighbour
   hath an ill heart; rest assured of that. Let us begin our Christian
   career with the full assurance that we shall have a great deal to
   forgive in other people, but that there will be a great deal more to be
   forgiven in ourselves, and let us set our account upon having to
   exercise gentleness, and needing its exercise from others, "Forgiving
   one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

   Note again. When we forgive, it is a poor and humble business compared
   with God's forgiving us, because we are only forgiving one another,
   that is, forgiving fellow-servants; whereas when God forgives us it is
   the Judge of all the earth forgiving, not his fellows, but his rebel
   subjects, guilty of treason against his majesty. For God to forgive is
   something great; for us to forgive, though some think it great, should
   be regarded as a very small matter.

   Then reflect upon the matter to be forgiven. Our Lord in his parable
   tells us that the fellow-servant owed a few pence, but the servant
   himself was debtor to his master many talents. What we owe to God is
   infinite, but what our fellow creature owes to us is a very small sum.
   What did he do which has so much offended you? "He said a very shameful
   thing about me." It was very bad of him, no doubt. "Then he played me a
   very nasty trick, and acted very ungraciously; in fact, he behaved
   scandalously, and if you hear the story you will be quite indignant."
   Well, I am indignant. He is a bad fellow, there is no doubt about it;
   and so are you. So were you certainly when you first came to God; bad
   as he is to you, you have been much worse to the Lord. I will warrant
   that his blacks towards you are whites compared with your blacks in the
   presence of God. "Oh, but you would not believe how basely he acted."
   No, and I dare say I should hardly believe it if I heard how base you
   have been to the Lord; at any rate, it should make our eyes fill with
   tears to think bow we have grieved our God, and vexed his Spirit. Some
   of us have had so much manifest forgiveness, so much outward sin
   forgiven, that for us to forgive ought to be us natural as to open our
   hands. After such forgiveness as the Lord has bestowed on some of us,
   we should be wicked servants indeed if we were to take our brother by
   the throat and say, "Pay me what thou owest." We should deserve to be
   given over to the tormentors by our angry Master if we did not count it
   joy to pass by a brother's fault.

   If anyone here who is a Christian finds a difficulty in forgiveness, I
   am going to give him three words which will help him wonderfully. I
   would put them into the good man's mouth. I gave them to you just now,
   and prayed you to get the sweetness of them; here they are again! "For
   Christ's sake." Cannot you forgive an offender on that ground? Ah, the
   girl has acted very shamefully, and you, her father, have said some
   strong things, but I beg you to forgive her for Christ's sake. Cannot
   you do it with that motive? It is true your son has behaved very
   wrongly, and nothing hurts a father's heart more than the wicked
   conduct of a son. You did in a fit of anger say a very stern thing, and
   deny him your house for ever. I entreat you to eat your words up for
   Christ's sake. Sometimes when I have been pleading a case like that,
   the person I have been persuading has kindly said, "I will do it for
   you, sir." I have said, "I will thank you if you will do it at all, but
   I would rather you would have said you would do it for my Master, for
   what a blessed Master he has been to you! Do it for his sake." I may be
   speaking very plainly home to some of you. I hope I am. If there be any
   of you who have got into a bad state of heart and have said you never
   will forgive a rebellious son, do not say so again till you have looked
   at the matter, for Christ's sake. Not for the boy's sake, not for your
   neighbour's sake who has offended you, not for any other reason do I
   urge you to mercy, but for Christ's sake. Come, you two brothers, who
   have fallen out, love each other for Christ's sake; come, you two
   sisters, come you two friends who have been alienated, get together
   directly, and end all your ill feeling for Christ's sake. You must not
   keep a drop of malice in your soul, for Christ's sake. Oh charming
   word, how it melts us, and as it melts it seems to leave no trace of
   anger behind it: for Christ's sake our love suffers long and never
   fails.

   I do not know how to put this next word I am going to say. It is a
   paradox. You must forgive or you cannot be saved; at the same time you
   must not do it from compulsion; you must do it freely. There is a way
   of carrying this into practice, though I cannot explain it in words.
   You must forgive, not because you are forced to, but because you
   heartily do it. Remember, it is of no use for you to put your money
   into that offering box as you go out unless you remember first to
   forgive your brother. God will not accept the gifts, prayers, or
   praises of an unrelenting heart. Though you leave all your substance to
   his cause, he will not accept a penny of it if you die in an
   unforgiving temper. There is no grace where there is no willingness to
   overlook faults. John saith, "He that loveth not his brother whom he
   hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" The very prayer
   that teaches you to ask for mercy bids you say "forgive us, as we
   forgive our debtors." Unless you have forgiven others you read your own
   death-warrant when you repeat the Lord's prayer.

   Finally, I want to say to you all, brethren, that, as brothers and
   sisters in Christ Jesus, if we are to forgive one another, there must
   be some other things which we ought to do. And the first is, do not let
   us provoke each other to offend. If I know that a man does not like a
   certain thing, I will not thrust it in his way. Do not say, "Well, but
   if he is short tempered, I cannot help it; he should not be so ready to
   take offence. I cannot be always paying deference to his absurd
   sensitiveness." No; but, brother, your friend is very ready to take
   offence, and you know that he is; have respect, then, to his infirmity
   of temper, such as you would have if he were afflicted in body. If you
   have rheumatism or gout, your friends do not go stamping across the
   room and saying, "He ought not to mind that; he ought not to feel it."
   Kind-hearted people step across the floor with a light step, for fear
   they should hurt the poor suffering limb. If a man has a diseased mind
   and is very irritable, treat him gently, pity his infirmity, and do not
   irritate him. A friend wrote me a short while ago a letter of serious
   complaint against a brother who had been very angry with him, and had
   spoken very sharply while excited to passion. I felt bound to hear the
   other side of the story, and I was obliged to say, "Now, you two
   brothers are both wrong. You, my brother, lost your temper; but you, my
   other brother, irritated him, so that I do not wonder he did lose his
   temper. And when you saw he had lost his temper why did you not go
   away, or do something to quiet him? No, but you remained to increase
   the wrath, and then wrote to expose him." I blame the wood for burning,
   but what shall I say of the bellows? It was wrong to blaze, but was it
   right to fan the flame? Very often when a man is angry he may not be
   the only one to blame. Therefore, brothers and sisters, if we are to
   forgive each other, do not let us provoke each other to offend.

   In the next place, do not make offences. Oftentimes a man has been
   offended at another for no reason at all. One person has said of
   another as he passed him in the street, "He will not even nod to me.
   lie is too proud to own me, because I am a poor man." Now, that beloved
   friend who was thus blamed could not see much further than his hand,
   for he was shortsighted. Another has been censured for not hearing,
   though he was deaf, and another for not shaking hands when Ii is arm
   was crippled. Do not imagine offences where they are not intended.

   Next, do not take offences where they are intended. It is a splendid
   thing if you will not be offended. Nothing makes a man feel so small as
   when you accept what he intended for an insult as if it were a
   compliment, and thank him for it. Can you master yourself to that
   point? Remember, when you have conquered yourself you have conquered
   the world. You have overcome everybody when you have so fully overcome
   your own spirit that you remain content with that which naturally would
   excite your wrath.

   Then, if you must be offended, dear brother, do not exaggerate an
   offence. Some good women, I was about to say, and men also, when they
   come as tale-bearers with a charge, make a great many flourishes and
   additions. They go a long way round, and they bring innumerable
   beliefs, and suggestions, and hints, and hearsays into the business,
   until a midge's egg becomes as huge as ever was laid by an ostrich. I
   begin coolly to strip off the feathers and the paint, and I say, "Now,
   I do not see what that point had to do with it, or what that remark has
   in it all I can see when I come to look at the bare fact is so-and-so,
   and that was not much, was it?" "Oh, but there was more intended." Do
   hot believe that, dear brother, dear sister. If there must be something
   wrong, let it be as little as you can. If you have a telescope, look
   through the large hole and minify instead of magnifying, or, better
   still, do not look at it at all. A blind eye is often the best eye a
   man can have, and a deaf ear is better by far than one which hears too
   much. "Also take no heed," says Solomon, "unto all words that are
   spoken, lest thou hear thy servant curse thee." Something you have done
   may irritate a servant, and he may make remarks which are unbecoming
   and impertinent. Don't hear what he is muttering. Keep out of hearing,
   lie will be sorry to-morrow, and if he thinks you did not hear him he
   will continue in your service and be faithful to you. What would you do
   if your master picked you up for every word, and if he caught up every
   sentence that you uttered? How would you live at all if he reckoned
   sharply with you? No, dear friends, as you have to forgive one another,
   do not take offence, and when offence is given do not exaggerate it,
   and, if you can, do not even observe it.

   Then, again, do not publish offences. There has been something very
   offensive said. What then? Do not repeat it. Do not go first to one,
   and then to another, and say, "Now this is quite private, and mind you
   keep it a secret; So-and-so has spoken shamefully." Better that you
   should let your heart break than go up and down with a fire-brand in
   this fashion. If a brother has done wrong why should you do wrong? You
   will be doing wrong if you publish his fault. Remember how the curse
   came upon Noah's son for exposing his father; and how much better it is
   for us all when there is anything wrong to go backward and cover it,
   without even looking at it ourselves, if we can help it. Cover it up:
   cover it up. Charity covereth a multitude of sins. Not only one, two,
   three sins will charity cover, but she carries a cloak which covereth a
   whole host of faults.

   Above all, my brethren, and with this I close, never in any way,
   directly or indirectly, avenge yourselves. For any fault that is ever
   done to you, the Master says unto you,--resist not evil. In all things
   bend, bow, yield, submit. "If you tread on a worm it will turn," says
   somebody. And is a worm your example? Christ shall be mine. It is a
   shocking thing when a Christian man forgets his Lord to find an excuse
   for himself among the poor creatures under his feet. But if it must be
   so, what does a worm do when it turns? When you have trodden on a worm,
   does it bite? Does the worm hurt any one? Ah, no. It has turned, but it
   has turned in its agony and writhed before you, that is all. You may do
   that, if you must. Brother, the most splendid vengeance you can ever
   have is to do good to them that do you evil, and to speak well of them
   that speak ill of you. They will be ashamed to look at you; they will
   never hurt you again if they see that you cannot be provoked except it
   be to greater love and larger kindness. This ought to be the mark of
   Christians; not "I will have the law of you," or "I will avenge
   myself," but "I will bear and forbear even to the end." "Vengeance is
   mine. I will repay it, saith the Lord." Do not take that into your hand
   which God says belongs to him, but as he for Christ's sake has forgiven
   you, so also forgive all those who do you wrong. "How long am I to do
   that?" says one. "I would not mind doing it three or four times." There
   was one of old who would go the length of six or seven, but Jesus
   Christ said "unto seventy times seven. That is a very considerable
   number. You may count whether you have yet reached that amount, and if
   you have you will now be glad to begin again, still forgiving, even as
   God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. God help us to be patient to
   the end. Though I have not just now been preaching Christ Jesus as the
   object of the sinner's trust, yet remember that he must also be the
   object of our imitation. This is the kind of doctrine which Christ
   himself preached, and therefore, since he preached continually this
   love to our neighbour, and forgiveness of our enemies, we ought both to
   preach and to practise it. Go ye and believe in him, and be imitators
   of him, remembering that he forgave his murderers upon the cross
   whereon he wrought out our redemption. May his Spirit rest upon you
   evermore. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Ephesians 4.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--621, 566, 559.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Vile Weed and a Fair Flower

   (No. 1449)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Let your con versation be without co vetousness; and be content with
   such things as you ha ve: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I
   will not fear what man shall do to me." Hebrews 13:5, 6.

   IS it not deeply humiliating, beloved Friends, that the best of
   Christians should need to be cautioned against the worst of sins? May
   the consecrated become covetous? Is it possible that the regenerate may
   drivel into misers? Alas, what perils surround us, what tendencies are
   within us! Although a man may be a sincere Believer in the
   self-sacrificing Jesus, yet it is necessary to say to him, "Let your
   conversation be without covetousness." Covetousness is a vice of a very
   degrading kind and it is, therefore the more surprising that those who
   have a renewed nature and in whom the Spirit of God dwells should
   require to be warned against bowing down their souls before it. But
   such is the necessity that once and again the saints are warned against
   "covetousness, which is idolatry."

   As long as Israel is in the wilderness, she is not out of danger from
   the golden calf. There would be no superfluous text in the Bible had
   there been no peril; there would have been no precept but, alas, the
   best of saints may be betrayed into the most base sins. Moreover, the
   common talk of the people with whom we daily mingle in business is so
   much about buying and selling and getting gain that we are apt to be
   entangled in their nets and find ourselves in the meshes of their craft
   before we are aware of it. It is hard to live where greed grasps all
   and not to try to save a little for ourselves out of the wreck. "Take
   heed and beware of covetousness," is a necessary caution for these
   latitudes.

   It appears from our text that the children of God need, also, to be
   exhorted to cherish that most simple and natural of
   virtues--contentment. One would think that at least, in some instances,
   they would have this good thing as a matter of course. Among our
   villagers we have met with persons so well satisfied with their lowly
   lot that they would not cross the sea to gain an empire! Yet their
   contentment has sprung up wild as the daisies and buttercups of their
   own meadows, for they have not been acquainted with the Truth of God as
   it is in Jesus, or the blessed hope which makes trials light to bear!
   Do Christians, then, need to be admonished with precepts and stimulated
   with promises to make them yield the commonplace virtues of life? Do
   their fields refuse to grow "the herb called heartsease," which simple
   folk have gathered unsown from their little garden plots?

   Must Believers be exhorted with earnestness if you would have them
   content? It is even so! Against the worst of vices they need to be
   warned and towards the humblest of virtues they need to be exhorted. O
   Lord, You know us better than we know ourselves, for You understand
   what poor, faulty things even Your own children are! The best of men
   are men at best. Unless the Grace of God had engaged to keep them every
   moment and to defend them from the temptations of their many foes, they
   would long ago have utterly perished from the way! Great need have they
   to say, "The Lord is my helper," for if He is not, they will fall prey
   to covetousness and discontent!

   At this time I have to address you, not upon some high and lofty theme,
   but upon a simple matter of every-day life. Here in this sublime
   Epistle which tells us of the Person of Christ--the glory of His
   Sonship and the grandeur of His Priesthood--here in this storehouse of
   interpretation which opens up the most cherished statutes and
   ordinances of the Old Testament only to show how they fade and vanish
   before the excellence of the New Covenant, here, I say, in this Epistle
   to the Hebrews, we find ourselves charged to avoid a vice which reason,
   itself, should cause us to abhor! And it challenges us to exhibit a
   virtue which Nature, itself, should commend to us!

   Plain is the sailing; the rock is conspicuous--shun covetousness! The
   haven is open--anchor in content! Yet we need, even here, the teaching
   of the Holy Spirit, that we may shun covetousness and cultivate
   contentment. Plain and pointed are the words, "Let your conversation be
   without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have." May
   our lives as plainly show these commands written out in act and deed by
   the Holy Spirit. Our discourse, therefore,

   like the text which dictates it, must run out in three distinct
   branches. There is a covetousness to be eschewed, a contentment to be
   entertained and a confidence to be established--this last is referred
   to in the words--"So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and
   I will not fear what man shall do to me."

   I. First, I shall have to say a little about COVETOUSNESS. We are told
   that our conversation is to be "without covetousness." The term,
   "conversation," includes, as you know, the whole of our lives. It is
   true that we are not to talk covetously, but conversation means far
   more than speech. It includes thoughts, words and actions--in fact, the
   whole of life. Taking the first meaning of conversation, namely, talk,
   we ought not in our words to be on the side of those who grip for
   wealth or growl for wage--who grasp for power or grind the poor. We
   ought not, in our talk, to take part with the churl and the bigoted.

   If we hear of a mean transaction and it is called a sharp stroke of
   business and commended as something clever, we are not to sanction it
   even with a smile, but make our looks and our language, alike,
   discountenance over-reaching and oppression. The skinning of flints and
   driving of screws are practiced by many people as if they were
   positively meritorious and there are those who, while they would shrink
   from doing anything so questionable, themselves, will smile at the
   crooked policy of others, perhaps feebly blaming the fraud, but all the
   while admiring the cuteness which carried it out and pocketed the
   result.

   With satiric praise, instead of severe censure, they will say,
   "Wonderful man that! Nobody can ever get on the blind side of his head.
   He can get blood out of turnips and profit out of losses." Those who
   praise sharpers are the patrons of thieves! Never think that dexterity
   will condone deceit, or cleverness excuse a lie. Let your conversation
   savor of Grace and generosity and of kindness altogether unselfish. And
   never let it flatter the successful trickster or the greedy grinder of
   the needy. Never let your language be such as might help to sharpen the
   cunning of a Laban or sanction the churlishness of a Nabal. May this be
   far from you! "Let your conversation be without covetousness."

   But our conversation has to do with our actions as well as our words.
   The sugar of words is sickening if it is not attended with the honey of
   deeds. Let our whole life, in our dealings with our fellow men, be
   moved by liberal principles and enriched with a generous spirit. Let us
   be full of kindness, full of thoughtfulness, full of a desire that
   others may live as well as ourselves--that our coming into a country
   may not be like the coming of the Tartar's horse of which it is said
   that no grass will grow where once it sets its foot. The miser is a
   creature too hungry, too greedy, too ravenous to allow any other cattle
   to feed after him. He makes the land barren by gnawing the very roots
   out of the ground. There are some whose whole life is the use of the
   rake to scrape everything to themselves and these men leave nothing for
   others, however honest and industrious they may be. This is not
   Christ-like, nor will Christ acknowledge one who thus lives to himself.
   Let your actions, then, in trade and labor, as well as your words, be
   without covetousness.

   But this will not do unless the word, "conversation," takes in our
   desires, our projects, our plans, our thoughts. We must be without
   covetousness within, for if that vice reigns in the soul, it is sure to
   rule in the life. Our prayer should be that of David, "Incline my heart
   unto Your testimonies, and not to covetousness." Why is a man miserly
   in his actions? Why, because he is miserable in his thoughts. If the
   inner man were right, the outer man could not be wrong. Beloved, may
   God cleanse our ways, both in private and in public, from anything like
   greed, that we may be obedient to the text, "Let your conversation be
   without covetousness."

   It is so very easy a thing to be covetous that no class of society is
   free from it. A man may be very poor and still covetous and a man may
   be exceedingly rich and still may think that he is not half rich
   enough. It is not possible to satisfy the greedy. If God gave them one
   whole world to themselves, they would cry for another and, if it were
   possible for them to possess Heaven as they now are, they would feel
   themselves in Hell, because others were in Heaven, too--for their greed
   is such that they must have everything or else they have nothing!
   Unless they can call all things theirs, they are as miserable as Haman,
   who, although all Shushan bowed before him, was not content--because
   one poor Jew who sat at the gate would not pay him homage.

   A covetous spirit can enter anywhere and can live anywhere. It is
   necessary that we search ourselves, lest the wretched lust of greed
   should fix itself upon us, for, remember, it can live in one room in a
   back street, but it can also live in the most sumptuous mansion of
   Belgravia. It can starve itself to save a shilling and it can indulge
   itself in all manner of extravagance to grasp a fortune. Covetousness
   has many ways of manifesting itself and the text does not warn us
   against

   one of those ways, but against them all. "Let your conversation be
   without covetousness." I have said that covetousness has many ways of
   showing itself. Let me mention some of them.

   In some it is most seen in repining and complaining against their lot.
   God has so circumstanced them that they scarcely ever have more than
   barely enough. They have struggled to rise, but they have never
   succeeded, probably because they have not the capacity for doing so.
   There must be people in the world to take the rough side of it and
   these men are evidently of the number, for although they are anxious to
   make headway in the world, they never rise an inch. Now, if we know our
   lot, it is idle to refuse it. If we do so, our conversation is not
   without covetousness--we are not satisfied with the things that we
   have. We are not satisfied with our heavenly Father's will, nor willing
   that He should be Father and that we should be children. We have not
   learned to say, "Not as I will, but as You will."

   Here is the neglected part of our education and we must go to the
   school, again, of the Holy Spirit. There are some complaining ones who
   would be no happier if their lot were changed. If they were lifted from
   a cottage to a palace they would still repine, for repining is far more
   a matter of the heart than of the condition. And a mind that has not
   bowed to the will of God in one place would be rebellious in another,
   also. There are some who have all that heart could wish who still
   murmur and still think that God deals harshly with them. This disease
   is born and bred in our very bones and it needs the Grace of God to get
   it out of us!

   It is ill when it shows itself in a perpetual fault-finding with all
   that Providence appoints--in always grumbling that we are left out in
   the cold as if in every distribution of Divine love we came in for the
   last portion and the least share and were doomed to be the forgotten
   ones of the family. Shake off that spirit, Beloved! God help us all to
   get rid of every particle of it, for it savors not of Grace, but it is
   earthly, sensual, devilish. In some others this covetous principle
   shows itself in envying others. If others are better off, or more
   esteemed, they straightway seem to regard them as enemies, cannot think
   well of them, cannot wish them well, would almost rejoice to see them
   dragged down! I have known some rich persons that were very proud. I
   have known some poor people who were still prouder and their envying of
   those who were better off has developed in them a pride of an almost
   ferocious character akin to the fury of savages! Wrath is cruel and
   anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy?

   Now, if I envy a man, I am clearly guilty of covetousness, for I wish
   that something which he has were not his but mine. And that may happen
   to you when you do not think about his property. You may be covetous of
   his gifts. Somebody in the little school to which you belong can
   address the children better than you--do you ever catch yourself
   feeling jealous of him? Go before God and weep over it and pray the
   feeling down! Possibly you are a minister and alas, even with us this
   wretched feeling will come in. Some star outshines ours and we are
   likely to be eclipsed and straightway we are covetous of our honor. We
   do not like it, Brothers, but if we were right at heart with God as we
   ought to be, we would glory in being excelled by our fellow servants!
   We would be glad for our heavenly Father to be better served than we
   can serve Him and for the Church of God to have more valued servants in
   it than we are ever likely to be.

   This is not easy, because envy--that compound of meanness and
   malice--that vilest reptile of the old serpent's brood preys upon us!
   This ill-natured vice shows itself generally in finding fault. Of
   course our Brothers are not perfect, but why should we take delight in
   pointing out their peculiarities, their eccentricities, or their
   shortcomings? If they win a great many to Christ, the question is
   skeptically mooted, "But how will their converts wear?" What makes us
   raise the question? Is it brotherly love? If throngs gather around
   them, we say, "Ah, they are a nine days' wonder--that little excitement
   will soon pass off." Is it Grace or envy which makes us hope so?

   Perhaps we complain that they are very young. This, I suppose, they
   cannot help--we were once young, ourselves-- and would like to be so
   still! Or else we say, on the other hand, they have passed their
   meridian and if they flourish for a little while, their sun is setting
   and it is not much they will ever achieve. Ah, greed of honor, what is
   there which you will not say? Would God that Christians would cease
   from tearing one another! Let your conversation be without that
   covetousness which shows itself in envy. If the Lord has given you one
   talent, use it! But do not waste your time in finding fault with him
   who has five talents. If your Master makes you a hewer of wood, throw
   your strength into your felling and cleaving--do not throw the axe at
   your fellow servant! And if He makes you a drawer of water, do not
   empty your buckets on your neighbor, but do your own service well and
   bring what you have done and lay it at your Master's feet. This will be
   thankworthy. This will be Christ like. You will then be obeying the
   injunction, "Let your conversation be without covetousness."

   And covetousness may show itself in another way, namely, by perpetually
   craving and desiring that which we have not. The old moralists used to
   say that the man who would be truly rich had better retrench his
   appetites than increase his fortune. Some men seem as if they never
   could fix their thoughts on what they have, but they are always in the
   other tense and mood--thinking of what they could, would, or should
   have! They have swallowed the two daughters of Solomon's horseleech and
   these continually cry, "Give! Give!" They must have something
   more--their desires are boundless--the sea is not more ready to swallow
   up all that it can come at. A little more, they told us some years ago,
   would content them--and a great deal more has been added to their
   stores--but still, they need a little more. Let your conversation be
   without covetousness in that respect and be content with such things as
   you have.

   In many, perhaps in the most numerous class, this anxiety for
   acquisition betrays itself in fretful fears about the future. And I
   must, in all honesty, grant that this form of the vice has sometimes
   the appearance of being the most excusable of the whole. "What shall I
   do," we are apt to say, "in case I should be laid aside and a
   precarious income should suddenly come to an end? It is not for myself,
   alone--it is for my wife and numerous family that I am chiefly
   concerned--how would they be provided for?" Many a man lies awake at
   night desiring to increase his income, not because he is ambitious to
   be rich, but because he is haunted with the fear of being poor. Gifted,
   perhaps, for the present with competency, he is still scared with dire
   forebodings--"What will become of my family if I die?" "Or should
   such-and-such a source of income be dried up--and it is very
   precarious--what, then, will become of my household? What

   then?"

   Full many are not content with such things as they have because the
   dread of a distant season of trial is constantly harassing them. They
   cannot be happy in the present sunshine because they think, perhaps, a
   storm is brewing out of sight. They cannot lie down in peace because
   they want to lay up against a rainy day. In vain their table is
   bountifully spread unless they have a store in hand against every
   contingency that may happen! Do you notice how precious is that promise
   which provides for all possible casualties that may befall you? "He has
   said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you." The censure, therefore,
   falls where this sacred pledge is unheeded--and he is accounted
   covetous who walks after the cravings of the flesh rather than after
   the counsel of the Spirit of God!

   If God would have you live by the day, why do you want to gather enough
   for seven days at once? If your Father bids you trust Him, why do you
   distrust His paternal care? Use prudent thrift by all means! Do not
   waste what He gives, nor heedlessly forget that you will have needs
   tomorrow as well as today--but abstain from fretfulness, murmuring and
   abhor every tendency to unbelief, lest you provoke Him to anger--

   "Commit all your griefs And ways unto His hands. To His sure Word, and
   tender care, Who earth and Heaven commands."

   He would not have you careful about those earthly things after which
   the Gentiles seek. "Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of
   these things." "Let your conversation be without covetousness." This
   covetousness is a great and crying evil! It is expressly forbidden in
   the Law--it has a commandment all to itself--"You shall not covet."

   O Brothers and Sisters, would you wish to fly into an evil which the
   Lord, Himself, accounts so gross that He has branded it across the brow
   with one of the Ten Commands of the Decalogue--"You shall not covet"?
   Covetous people, I have often observed, are classed in Scripture with
   the worst of criminals. How revolting to be included in such bad
   company! Here in this very chapter we read, "Whoremongers and
   adulterers God will judge. Let your conversation be without
   covetousness." Thus covetousness is classed with the very filthiest of
   vices of the flesh! In another place the Apostle says, "covetousness,
   which is idolatry"--and thus it is identified with a loathsome impurity
   of the spirit. Let the Christian dread it!

   God is not selfish, God is love--God hoards not, He gives liberally! He
   refuses not the poor, He delights in mercy. He spreads abroad in the
   midst of His creatures the good things which belong to Him and He bids
   them freely gather what He freely gives! Even thus would He have us
   distribute generously and disperse freely without covetousness.
   Covetousness is an evil thing! It leads to all sorts of evil and it is
   especially evil in times of persecution. The Apostle knew that men who
   loved the world and hugged it were not the men to stand fast for God in
   the day of trial. Those who had the greatest fondness for worldly
   wealth were the first to turn aside and forsake the Savior when they
   had to undergo losses and crosses for His name's sake. Covetousness is
   a deadly poison, destructive of all virtue. It dries up the milk of

   human kindness in a man's breast and makes him hard, callous,
   indifferent towards the needs of his fellow creatures. How much infamy
   it fosters!

   The man whose heart is set on covetousness will do anything for
   gold--he will venture to stain his hands with blood, itself, if he may
   but gain it. I scarcely know any other vice which can more effectually
   damn its victim and I speak the more earnestly about it because
   covetousness can readily enter into a man's heart and he may not know
   it. St. Francis de Sales said that many came to him to confess all
   manner of sins and many of them of a glaring nature. But he said that
   all his life long he never knew anybody acknowledge covetousness. Do
   you exclaim, "I wonder why this is?" Well, it is because a man does not
   like to think that he can be covetous! He cannot bring himself to
   acknowledge that he has quite gone to that length!

   When his avarice is the most heartless, he generally calls it by a
   prettier name, such as prudence, thrift, or carefulness, so as to make
   it look more respectable. There is a great propensity about gold and
   silver and houses and lands to stick to one's heart and blind the
   judgment. It is difficult for those who have much to do with wealth to
   be quite clear of self. Some men, by Divine Grace, get much and give
   much--they use the world and do not abuse it--but it is of the earth,
   earthy after all, and when it comes into contact with these hearts of
   ours it will corrupt and corrode. He that has this world's goods has
   need to watch himself lest his possessions should injure him!

   And he that has them not had need to watch himself, too, lest his
   indigence should injure him. There is an evil that comes by either the
   having or the not having. And let each man, therefore, be on his guard
   against it while he listens to the warning voice of the Apostle, "Let
   your conversation be without covetousness."

   II. Secondly, as there is a vice to be shunned so there is a virtue to
   be sought. The theme is more pleasing now that we speak upon
   CONTENTMENT. "Be content with such things as you have." It is, after
   all, no very great virtue if we should attain it--the more pity,
   therefore--if we should miss it! The old moralists constantly remind us
   that we may have the necessities of life upon very easy terms, whereas
   we put ourselves to great pains for its luxuries. There have been
   contented persons whose heads have been clear, their hearts simple and
   their habits temperate, though they have not known the Grace of our
   Lord Jesus Christ.

   We ought to surely, then, rise to that low average of sanctity in which
   our moderation shall be known unto all men! To be content with such
   things as we have should be specially easy to us because we have so
   much to be thankful for! We have such constant communications from the
   great Benefactor and so certain an assurance that He will withhold no
   good thing from those that walk uprightly! I am not speaking, now, of
   those who have houses and land and goods in abundance, for their
   repinings are discord, indeed, but I speak of all Christians. This
   world is ours and worlds to come. Earth is our lodge and Heaven our
   home! It ought to be easy for us to be contented since all things are
   ordered for our good.

   Arranged by our own dear Father's hand, His appointments ought not to
   be difficult for a loving child to approve. The trial of our faith will
   soon be over--a long life of affliction is but a pin's point of time.
   Be it ever so painful, we ought to be willing to bear the light
   affliction which is but for a moment. We know that God loves us, for we
   feel His love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Should not
   contentment be easy under such circumstances? They say, "There is
   nothing ill that is well taken," and that is the testimony of a
   heathen--but that no harm can come of that which our God means for our
   good is quite certain. With His sorest chastisements often come to us
   His sweetest caresses.

   Beyond this lower sky when this brief day is over, we shall be rich to
   all the intents of bliss. We have a heritage which will require
   everlasting ages to unfold! We have a treasure laid up which fancy
   cannot paint, of which it would sound fabulous to tell. Do we grope
   just now in darkness? Yet are we children of the day! In reversion now,
   in possession soon are the things that are to be revealed to us--and
   they are far more real than anything we have ever seen with these
   mortal eyes! It ought not to be a difficult thing for us to be content
   here for this brief hour.

   "What does it matter?" says a traveler, "I shall only stay here one
   night. I shall be up and away in the morning." And what does it matter
   to us, Brothers and Sisters? Till the day breaks and the shadows flee
   away, we may put up with a few hard things, for we may be where our
   Lord is in His Glory within the twinkling of an eye! True contentment
   is absolutely essential to happiness. There is a plant called
   selfishness and if you will pull it up by its roots you will find that
   it grows in the soil of misery! Were self completely renounced and
   Christ fully received as All in All, sorrow would be so sweetly
   accepted by us that the sting of it would be taken away. We must be
   satisfied with what God appoints or

   else we shall be constantly the prey of discomfort and the victims of
   disappointment. O Christian men and women, will you not seek to be
   content with such things as you have?

   I believe that contentment depends very much upon taking right views of
   things. There is, to wit, a short view. To live by the day is the way
   to be cheerful. If you try to live by the month, you will bring home a
   month's troubles to eat up a day's meat. God has not constructed His
   people to live by the month--their souls, like their bodies--are
   fashioned to live by the day. His supplies, His promises--the very
   prayers He puts into our mouths, all deal with days--"Give us this day
   our daily bread." "As your days so shall your strength be." Live by the
   day, then, and you will be content. But also take long views as well as
   short views. Take the view which says, "It will be all the same a
   hundred years hence." Take the view which says, "We shall soon laugh at
   this present little vexation."

   Take that distant view which says, "When I get to Heaven, this great
   trial will seem very small. When I look from the hilltops of Glory at
   my present dilemma, it will probably cause me many a smile to think
   that I should have been so vexed and tormented by it." Take this view
   of things--that a man's life consists not in the abundance of the
   things that he possesses. Full often the more your goods increase the
   more your cares multiply--the care to keep is often greater than the
   care to win--while, after all, the care rightly to use ought to be the
   most weighty care of all! If your God has loaded a neighbor with 10,000
   pounds a year, thank God that He has not burdened you in that way! Be
   glad if He has given you as much as you can easily carry and no more.

   When I go for a walk, I like a staff--just one, but I should not like
   to be compelled to carry a hundred! Some men appear to me to have a
   hundred times as much as they can possibly need and so they are
   hampered with what might, in moderation, have been their help. Be not
   eager for great riches, nor seek after large domains in this world lest
   you wallow in wealth, stick in it as in a bog and drown your soul! Why
   load yourself with more clay, when you have as much to carry, now, as
   you can get along with? Be not surprised, therefore, any of you, but
   rather be thankful if God does, sometimes, lighten your load a little
   to quicken your pace in the heavenly journey. The secret of true
   contentment and the way to get at it is admirably expressed in these
   words, "Be content with such things as you have, for He has said, I
   will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   Some of the most easy-going people in the world are those who have a
   government pension of so much a month. It is little, but it is sure. If
   all the banks break, they will get it. They have no trouble as to how
   the markets fluctuate, or how different stocks rise and fall in
   value--or what dividends they might derive from investments. It is not
   a large income that falls to their lot, 'tis true, but then it is all
   they require and it is always sure. You say to such a person, "You may
   set your heart at rest because your supplies come from a sure source."
   Now, then, that is exactly where the child of God stands for we know
   Who has said--"Your bread shall be given you, and your water shall be
   sure." Between now and Heaven I do not know who may starve, but I never
   shall, because the Lord is my Shepherd and I shall not want!

   Those clever lawyers, those sharp-teethed schemers, those greedy
   oppressors, those young lions may lack and suffer hunger, but they that
   fear the Lord shall not want any good thing. The Christian man's
   fortune is made! "Oh, but he may be in great straits." Yes, but he
   shall be supplied in due time. All that he needs in this time state his
   heavenly Father will give him. He needs but faith to believe this and
   he shall find it to be really so--"For He has said, I will never leave
   you, nor forsake you." God's Word ought to be taken as the Truth of
   God, itself, because it is! A promise from the mouth of God is better
   than a bond signed and sealed by the wealthiest of men! No negotiable
   securities can be comparable in value to this declaration of the Lord,
   "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   It is put very strongly. In the original there are five negatives, as
   in the verse you sang just now--

   "The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, He will not, He will
   not, desert to his foes! That soul, though all Hell should endeavor to
   shake, He'll never, no never, no never forsake." The five negatives in
   the last line of that verse correspond with the five placed in this
   text--"I will never leave you, nor forsake you." It means that in no
   one single instance will the Lord leave you, nor in any one particular
   will He leave you, nor for any reason will He leave you. If you have
   cast yourself upon His infinite power and Grace, He will carry you to
   the end. Not only will He not desert you altogether, but He will not
   leave you even for a little while! He may seem, for a small moment, to
   hide His face from you, but He will still love you and still supply
   your needs. Behind the wall He will pour oil upon the flame if in the
   front of the wall He permits Satan to throw water upon it.

   He will feed you somehow--by the back door, if not by the front--by the
   ravens if not by the doves. If the brook Cherith fails, He will find a
   widow woman, even in a distant land who, in all her straits shall,
   nevertheless, feed the servant of God. "I will never leave you, nor
   forsake you." Surely we cannot fail to be content if we do but get fast
   hold of this promise! Are you not always in the Divine Presence? Doe He
   not say, "I will never leave you"? No carpet on the floor, no paper on
   the walls? No pictures, no furniture, room mean and unsightly? Yes, but
   suppose God is there--what does it matter?

   Buckingham Palace has not a drawing room to compare with that little
   room upstairs against the thatch, or with that attic where you cannot
   stand upright, where the stars peep in at night between the tiles. If
   God is there, I would sooner live in the worst cottage's worst room, on
   the pittance of the parish, than where the floor was paved with marble
   and the richest hangings adorned the ample chambers but the Divine
   Glory was unknown! If God is there--("I will never leave you")--then
   wherever the child of God is cast, there is a Glory round about him
   which makes him sublime in the midst of his poverty. "I will not
   forsake you," by which I understand that, as He will not withdraw His
   Presence, so will He not withhold His help. "I need," you say. "I need,
   I need." Go on with the list. "I need a thousand things." "I will not
   forsake you," He says.

   "I will see you through the trial. I will carry you over the
   difficulty. I will bear you on. I will lift you over. I will bring you
   out. I will abide with you to the end. I will not leave you nor forsake
   you." Is not that enough for your faith to feed on? What more do you
   need? Suppose He had said, "I will send my angels with you," or, "I
   will move all mankind to help you"? It would still not come to so much
   in its real meaning as this--"I will never leave you, nor forsake you."
   But when did God originally say this? Well, you cannot find the exact
   words in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but He did say the same,
   in effect, to Jacob at Bethel and to Joshua before he went to the
   invasion of Canaan.

   David said it, in the Lord's name, to Solomon and Isaiah said the same
   to the whole people of God. Whatever God says to one saint, He says,
   virtually, to all saints who have the same faith. This renders the
   Bible such a rich storehouse of comfort to us! No Scripture is of
   private interpretation, but all Scripture is given for our personal
   appropriation! No promise is hedged about as the exclusive property of
   the one man who received it. If you are of like character and in like
   case, you may, O Believer, take the Lord's Words to others as being
   spoken to yourself! You may plead a promise which God made to Joshua or
   to Jacob with just as much confidence as if He had made it especially
   to you. Remember this and be content with such things as you have.

   III. Our last point, upon which our time will only admit a word or two,
   is the CONFIDENCE with which we may encourage ourselves and bid
   defiance to a frowning world. "So that we may boldly say, The Lord is
   my helper, and I will not fear what man can do to me." This promise of
   the Lord is fitted to nerve us with courage as well as to solace us
   with contentment. Chicken-hearts and cowardly fears ill become the
   disciples of Christ! If we are oppressed, or if we have to encounter
   opposition, we may just go straight ahead in the strength of our text,
   and say, "What can man do to me?" If God is our helper, dear Brothers
   and Sisters, why should we shrink or falter? Why should we droop or
   look dismayed? Why should we hold our peace or speak with bated breath?

   Are there any of you who are afraid to confess my Lord's name before
   men, to enlist in His service, to buckle on His armor, to admit
   yourselves His followers? Parley no longer, I beseech you, with such
   ungracious fears! Great thoughts have stirred within your breasts while
   we have presented the consoling word and the Spirit of God has rested
   upon it. Be great in act as you have been in thought! Since He has
   said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you," why are you ashamed to
   come and acknowledge Him? "I am afraid I might dishonor His name," you
   say. But He has said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." "I am
   very weak," you say. He has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake
   you." "I might bring dishonor upon the Church to which I should unite
   myself." Very likely you would if He left you, but He has said, "I will
   never leave you, nor forsake you."

   It is always safe to do what God bids. There can be no sound policy in
   neglecting a Divine precept. So come forward and say boldly, "The Lord
   is my helper." Possibly some of you have been persecuted. Hard names
   have been hurled at you--I hope you did not cry because of that. Poor
   child of God, your strength is very small if you are afraid of an ugly
   name! We have had a good many in our time--they have not broken any of
   our bones, nor will they injure you. "Oh, but you do not know what the
   chaff of the shop is." No, but give them some of your wheat in return.
   Let them see how a

   Christian can bear and forbear when their fun grows foul--how he can
   endure reproach for righteousness' sake! You will be master of the
   situation, yet.

   "Alas, Sir, but I am threatened with the loss of my job unless I will
   go contrary to Divine commands." Then do not flinch, but tell your
   heavenly Father all about it. Commit your cause to Him! Let not 50 jobs
   or 500 people make you swerve from the course that faith dictates and
   duty demands! Appeal to God and He will provide for you. Any temporary
   loss you may sustain will be much more than made up in the prosperity
   He awards you--or if not in that way, in the peace He promises you and
   the honor He confers on you in suffering for Christ's sake! Oh that
   this very night the veil might be taken off many faces, the burden
   unloaded from many shoulders and fear dispelled from many hearts!

   If you have cast off your grievous disquietudes while I have been
   talking, do not put them on again when you get outside! I have known
   many a poor tried child of God forget his trouble when he was sitting
   here, but he looked it up before he reached his home and so he returned
   to his old condition. "Cast your burden upon the Lord and He shall
   sustain you. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved." You have
   been looking too far ahead, dear Brother, dear Sister!

   Cure that fault by looking still further! Remember the coming of our
   Lord and the joy of His appearing and you may ease your pains in the
   present. Oh to live exempt from care by the energy of prayer! Oh, to
   believe implicitly in God, to rest calmly in Him, to trust steadfastly
   in Christ and to take His yoke upon us cheerfully--then we shall find
   rest to our souls by learning of Him! The Lord help us all to do so,
   for His name's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Immovability of the Believer

   (No. 1450)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 22, 1878,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be
   removed, but abides forever." Psalm 125:1.

   THIS is the first verse of one of the Songs of degrees. These Songs
   were probably sung by the pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem, when
   they halted at the various stations or passed certain places of
   interest. It is very possible that this Psalm burst forth from joyful
   lips at the moment when Zion first came into sight and the worshippers
   gazed upon the city of their solemnities. Happy pilgrims! They had left
   behind them many a dreary glen and dangerous wood and now they saw in
   their full view their journey's end and, therefore, they sang with all
   the gathered joy of days gone by. They could not have so exulted if
   they had not previously sorrowed. The same truth may be learned from
   the use of the term, "Song of degrees"--it warns us that this Psalm
   rises out of that which preceded it, as one step of a staircase rises
   above its fellow.

   David had not sung the 125th Psalm if he had not first learned to sing
   the one hundred and twenty-fourth. If he had not been where men
   threatened to swallow him up quickly and found in such a case that the
   Lord was on his side, he could not have been quite so sure that, "they
   that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be
   removed." Our experiences are our instructors even concerning
   themselves--they shed light upon each other and we learn enough from
   one trial to begin to unfold the mysteries of another. The 124th Psalm
   must first, to some extent, be passed through so that we see that all
   our help lies in the Lord, or we shall never reach to the grand
   positiveness of this 125th and sing, "They that trust in the Lord shall
   be as Mount Zion."

   We have heard some of the brave expressions of Christian heroes and we
   have thought, "I wish I could speak with that man's faith." Brothers
   and Sisters, to possess such faith you must take with it, its owner's
   trials! You may rest assured that God never gave a penny's worth of
   faith to any man that it might be hoarded in a cupboard--faith is sure
   to be used and what is more, great faith is not possessed by those who
   are untrained in its need and use. It is a sword which is not girt upon
   a man till he has come to years and strength to use it.

   I do greatly joy in that utterance of Luther when going to Worms. Some
   of his friends told him that he would be burned to powder, as Huss had
   been before him, but he laughed and said he had no fear. "If," said he,
   "they shall build a fire between Wittenberg and Worms that should reach
   to Heaven, in the Lord's name I would appear and step into behemoth's
   mouth, between his great teeth and confess Christ and let him do his
   pleasure." His joy at that time seems to have been overflowing, though
   his danger was manifest to all.

   Now, this holy boasting sounds well, but it is not to be imitated by
   every baby in Grace--this man had passed through a preparatory process
   which brought his mind into a triumphant state, in which he was a king
   of men, a lion among a pack of dogs! It is not to be forgotten that
   there was a subsequent sinking of his soul, as in the case of Elijah,
   to prevent his being exalted above measure at the recollection of his
   own courage. For this, also, he who would have a right royal faith must
   stand prepared. They that do business in great waters must sail in
   ships fitted for stormy seas. You and I, perhaps, paddle around the
   shores of a quiet lake where our little boat is large enough for most
   purposes. We are not tested by great storms, neither is our boat held
   by great anchors. Our needs are not of the greatest and, therefore, our
   supplies are not like those of the larger craft which sail upon greater
   waters.

   Still, one would wish to be among the Lord's most useful servants and
   to that end would cheerfully accept the great risk. We would not wish
   to remain babies, but we desire to become full-grown men and surely
   David is one who has drank up the 124th Psalm as a somewhat bitter cup
   and then feels that he can dine upon the 125th and rise to bless the
   Lord who makes His people to "be as Mount Zion, which cannot be
   removed, but abides forever." Note that the

   metaphor which is used in the text was drawn by the pilgrims from the
   hill before them, or, if the Psalm does not belong to pilgrims, to all
   Israel. They took the comparison from that mountain with which they
   were best acquainted.

   If they might not all see Lebanon, which lay at the northern extremity
   of the land--if they might not all behold the excellency of Carmel, or
   gaze upon the heights of Hermon--yet once in the year they must all
   look upon Zion, "where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto
   the testimony of Israel." The emblem was, therefore, a familiar one and
   I wish, sometimes, that we were more apt at sanctifying to holy uses
   the common objects which are round about us--these streets and houses,
   our own country and our own home. I am afraid our eyes are open when we
   seek emblems of sadness and we find them on every hedge and in any
   garden-plot--but we should also look at home when we need metaphors of
   thanksgiving with which to set forth our security and our comfort in
   the Lord.

   To have a house at all is something. Cold blows the wind, but warm is
   our own fireside. And even so, "Lord, You have been our dwelling place
   in all generations." All you who love your homes may see in them the
   figure and representation of your dwelling in God in peace forever.
   Believing Englishmen, you may especially bless God that your country
   gives you an admirable picture of your own security! You dwell alone,
   separated by the floods from all other nations--this is the security of
   our beloved isle--

   "He bade the ocean round you flow, Not bars of brass could guard you
   so." They that trust in the Lord shall be as these happy islands which
   shall not know the rod of the oppressor, for the Lord has guarded them
   with a better defense than walls or bulwarks. Hebrew comparisons were
   most fit for Hebrew believers--let us make English figures out of our
   own circumstances and surroundings--thus will it appear as if our faith
   were less a tradition and more truly a present-day reality!

   Thus, also, will true religion wear a more real and homely aspect and
   will strike others with greater force. Faith, when she is active and
   observant, finds illustrations of her own blessedness all around. Amid
   the descending snows of this cheerless wintry day, she says, "Did He
   not say that cold and heat and summer and winter should never cease?"
   Have we not His Covenant with the earth still fulfilled before our eyes
   and may we not rest certain, therefore, that the Covenant with His
   people will not fail? Are not these snowflakes tokens of His Word which
   comes not forth in vain? Does not this bitter chill assure us of His
   Omnipotence of whom we read, "He casts forth His ice like morsels: who
   can stand before His cold?" Open your eyes, my Brothers and Sisters,
   and look about and as the believing Israelite saw Zion and began to
   sing about it, so shall you, also, "go out with joy, and be led forth
   with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you
   into singing."

   Now, to come to the text--I have merely touched its angles in this
   rough preface. We have in the verse before us, first of all, a lowly
   people--"They that trust in the Lord." One talks a good deal about
   them, yet they are of no reputation among men. Secondly, a singular
   stability in them--"they shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be
   removed, but abides forever." And then, thirdly, we shall for a while
   consider the evident reason for this stability of theirs.

   I. First, here we read of A LOWLY PEOPLE. That which is said of them is
   nothing very great in the judgment of human reason--they are merely
   said to "trust in the Lord." This is a very simple thing to do. God
   gives promises and they believe them. God is at work in Providence and
   they trust Him. God invites them to the Mercy Seat and they approach
   it. God gives them His Son as their salvation and they believe in Him.
   God grants His Holy Spirit as their teacher and they learn of Him and
   obey Him. To sum up all in one, they "trust in the Lord."

   "That is a small matter," cries one, "any fool can do that!" Just so.
   Perhaps more would do so if the most of men were not foolishly wise.
   Any child can trust and more would trust in the Lord if more men were
   childlike. "Trust in the Lord." It needs no effort of intellect to
   trust and it needs no laborious education to learn the way. Trusting in
   the Lord is simply depending where there is unquestionable reason for
   reliance, believing what is assuredly true and acting upon it. Trusting
   in the Lord is taking at His Word, One who cannot lie, or change, or
   fail. And certainly this is no great feat if we look at it from the
   carnal man's own point of view.

   These trusters in the Lord cannot plume themselves upon the feat they
   have performed, for to trust in the Lord would naturally seem to be one
   of the commonplaces of human thought. Should not a being trust its
   Creator? Strange that any creature should think it difficult! It is a
   sure sign of the depravity of our race that we not only think it
   difficult, but find it so! It is a sure evidence of how much Satan has
   bewitched the human mind that simple faith has even become

   impossible to unrenewed hearts, though it is, in itself, the easiest
   exercise of the mind. Men cannot even understand what trusting in the
   Lord means till God, the Holy Spirit, opens their understandings--and
   then He must both beget and nourish their faith or they will have none
   of it!

   To trust in the Lord we have admitted to be a very simple matter, but
   at the same time it is very right, is it not? Poor simpletons that we
   are, we can even appeal to the wise ones of the earth and let them be
   judges in this matter. Should not a man trust in his own Creator? Is it
   possible for us to discover a being more worthy of confidence than our
   own God? Does He not deserve to be trusted? In what one respect has He
   ever played us false? Is there a single instance in which the Word of
   the Lord, once given, has been found to fail? When have thirsty mouths
   resorted to this Fountain and found it dry? If there is anything
   against the veracity of God, let us hear it. Evidence is invited! The
   Lord Himself bids any testify against Him who have anything to declare.

   Lo, these thousands of years have rolled along and Jehovah has
   challenged men to bring forth their strong arguments against Him if
   they could, but they have found no cause why He should be distrusted
   and His Word dishonored. If, then, there is new evidence, O
   unbelievers, you are here to declare it! Let us hear it. There is none!
   You know that there is none! Surely it is a matter of clear honesty and
   right to any man to trust Him till He has deceived us or afforded us
   cause for suspicion. We always say we will trust the bridge that has
   carried us safely over. Has not the Lord been faithful to those who
   have trusted Him?

   What say the trusters of former times, or of this present? Lives there
   one who will come forward and say, "I have trusted in the Lord and have
   been confounded. I have stayed myself upon the Eternal and I have found
   Him false"? No, Hell itself contains not one adversary of God who dares
   to utter such a calumny against His Divine faithfulness! Well, Brothers
   and Sisters, if we are told that our trust is simple, we will be
   reconciled to the statement by the equally manifest fact that it is
   right. Moreover, is it not wise? What can be wiser? Those of us who
   have tried trusting in God have never found Him fail, whereas when we
   have trusted in men we have been disappointed! You who have been
   self-reliant must have found self-reliance to be, at certain times, a
   terrible mistake! But those who are God-reliant have never found an
   instance in which their rest in the Lord has been a questionable
   policy.

   Would it not be an awfully grand fact if a man should make a failure of
   his life and could then turn round and truly say, "Oh God, the cause of
   my failure was that I trusted alone in You and You could not, or would
   not help me"? As there is a terrible grandeur in the infamous
   wickedness of Milton's Satan, so much of grandeur that sometimes the
   reader has been made forgetful of the vileness of the fiend in the
   greatness of the rebel, so there would be a sort of appalling splendor
   about a being who should have implicitly lived to God, depended upon
   Him and then should have failed. The idea is next door to blasphemous
   and tremblingly I let it pass before you that you may perceive that it
   can have no real existence! Borrowing a poetic license, I have shadowed
   it, but I know it to be utterly impossible.

   See, then, how certain of success is the Believer! How impossible it is
   that he should make shipwreck! The mere notion of it has passed before
   you and you have rejected it as worse than absurd. It must be wise to
   link yourself to Him whose name is Love. To get that little boat of
   yours in tow with the Infinite must be wise! To gain some kind of
   connection between yourself, the creature of an hour, and the Eternal
   who spoke the world into existence and whose glance will return it to
   nothing must be wise! It must be a grandly wise thing to be joined unto
   the Lord God and there is no link that can, at first, be cast between
   God and sinful man but that of simple confidence--be that link ours at
   this moment and forever!

   Blessed are they that by the Holy Spirit have been led to trust in God
   through our Lord Jesus Christ! Let us speak further about these simple
   people--these half fools, as the world thinks them to be. They came to
   trust in God as a matter of necessity, they could not do otherwise. Why
   is it that numbers of people deal with their friends on trust? It is
   because no other way is open to them. Matthew Henry says, "All that
   deal with God must deal upon trust and He will give comfort to those
   only that give credit to Him." We cannot bring the Lord our merits, but
   let us give Him our confidence. Because we are poor, let us appeal to
   His riches! Because we cannot help ourselves, let us cast ourselves
   upon His power!

   What else can we do? God is to be trusted--let us trust Him with all
   our hearts. Do other trusts invite us? Let us reject them, for we
   remember the past heartbreaks which they have caused us. Lord, we trust
   in You and come to cast ourselves upon You! To whom else can we go? You
   have the words of eternal life! Oftentimes trust is, to a Believer, his

   only path, he is shut up to faith--he must believe or die. He is pushed
   into a corner; he is bewildered; he can scarcely pray; he cannot
   comprehend himself, nor lift a finger. And then trusting is the resort
   of his desperation--it is not his choice, but the fruit of compulsion.

   Brethren, I feel it a sweet thing to faint away into faith! Did you
   ever do that? Were you ever so far gone that at last you have melted
   right away from yourself and sunk into God? I believe that this
   swooning faintness is the door of faith to multitudes of souls! They
   enter into peace, not by strength, but by sheer weakness! They do not
   run into the arms of God, but they fall there! There are doubtless some
   who run to Christ, for we read of one who came running to Him, but
   there are others who must be dropped down before Him upon a bed. It
   matters not how they come to Jesus, so long as they come to Him! Yet it
   is worthy of note that faith, in many cases, is a child of weakness.

   On its human side it is a Jabez, borne with sorrow, the birth of self's
   expiring pang. Yet faith which thus arises out of very weakness, like
   the phoenix from its own ashes, has a great side to it. It is, in some
   respects, the most sublime effort of the human mind. If ever the bright
   spirits which stand before the Truth of God test their own faculties
   upon the mysteries of Providence, foreknowledge, predestination and the
   free will of man--if they ever enquire where the agency of the created
   ends and where the Divine is found--if ever, I say, they try the edge
   of their intellect upon themes like these, they make an end by
   declaring, "We are lost! Our spirits cannot comprehend the infinite,
   but we believe in God and are sure that He orders all things aright."
   They doff their coronets before the Throne of their superior King in
   reverent confidence in His eternal goodness--this is their grandest
   worship, their truest adoration--they believe!

   Brothers and Sisters, faith is not of earth alone, but saints and
   angels in Heaven believe in the Eternal God! It were a crime to suspect
   them of the contrary. The mystery of Jehovah's dealings still manifests
   their faith--they remember His unfulfilled promises and they look for
   their accomplishment--for they have not as yet seen the Bridegroom
   coming to His bride, nor the earth subdued unto His sway, nor the full
   manifestation of the creation when the sons of God shall be revealed
   and the creature, itself, shall cease from its groaning. Trust is the
   simplicity of a baby, but it is the glory of a genius! It is grand in
   seraph or in saint--and while it befits a child, it is worthy of an
   archangel! Poor fools are these trusters, yet they are near akin to
   nobler beings!

   Now, can you tell me why is it that if a man trusts in God he is
   generally despised by his fellows? If a person were to say, "As for my
   getting on in the world, I am trusting to a friend of mine who is
   influential with the government," or if another said, "My father was
   born before me and he will see me provided for," nobody would condemn
   either of such persons as an idiot, but would treat his confidence as
   quite legitimate! But if any one of us were to say, "Our confidence, as
   for our future in this world is resting in our heavenly Father," there
   would be a shrugging of the shoulders, a knowing look of the eyes and
   when they got far enough away, our critics would say, "That man is a
   fool, or a cant!" Alas, God is nobody to the bulk of mankind and it
   seems a ridiculous thing to them to trust in Him!

   To trust in God is to the worldly man the next thing to building
   castles in the air! The unbelieving laugh because they cannot
   understand us--but what is the reason they become angry with us? Why do
   they turn, again, and rend us? Other simpletons they let alone, but
   those who trust in God become objects of scorn! The Believer finds that
   a jest is made upon his faith and mirth is excited by his confidence!
   What he says is widely laughed at and more than a little distorted--
   and he is looked upon as little better than a natural fool! This was
   always so and always will be so till the Lord comes. He that is born
   after the flesh persecutes him that is born after the Spirit! The man
   who walks by sight cannot understand the man who walks by faith--how
   could he? And if we get to trust in God and that trust becomes the
   great motive power of our life, as I earnestly hope it may be with each
   one of us, then the worldly man will not know how to make heads or
   tails of our conduct and he will, first of all, ridicule and then
   oppose. Care nothing for the opposition--he who is right has conquered!

   Before we proceed further, let us notice how the text includes all who
   truly trust in the Lord, both small and great, for it says, "They that
   trust in the Lord." It does not say, "They that trust in the Lord with
   a highly intelligent faith." It is a good thing to understand much and
   to trust in the Lord with growing knowledge, but, dear Soul, if you do
   not know much, yet if you are trusting in the Lord, you shall be as
   Mount Zion which cannot be removed! The text does not limit the
   blessing to only those who have great faith. The stronger your faith
   the better--the more faith you can have the richer and happier your
   life will be--but the assurance of our text is for those who have any
   faith, even a mustard seed of faith! They that trust in the Lord shall
   be as Mount Zion.

   And note it does not say, "those who have had faith for many years." It
   is a great thing to have had faith for a long time--it ripens and
   sweetens--but this promise is made to the youngest as well as to the
   oldest; to those who have believed in the Master's Word for a few
   years, or months, or days, as well as to the veterans. They that trust
   in the Lord, though it was only yesterday that they began to trust,
   shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed! Neither does the text
   demand a loftiness and heroism of trust--it simply speaks of the trust
   itself. Your faith may not be like that of Samson, which slays a
   thousand men, but it may be a humble, teachable faith, which sits like
   Mary at the Master's feet at home. Well, you shall be as Mount Zion
   that cannot be removed. Only have real trust in God and you shall have
   the steadfastness of the sacred hill of the Lord.

   Some of you may have been so sweetly taught to trust in the Lord that
   you can say, "Yes, blessed be His name, I do trust Him, altogether,
   unreservedly and without a suspicion." Be you abundantly sure that the
   text is your portion this day! I hope there are some of us who can now
   trust our Lord in any case. If we do but see the Lord's Word in any
   teaching, however mysterious or obnoxious to flesh and blood, our
   questions are at an end. We accept unhesitatingly the hard and the deep
   things of God. If we see any attribute, or promise, or half a promise
   of our Lord to be on our side, we feel more than safe.

   A good old saint who lately lay dying told her pastor that she was
   resting upon the justice of God. The good pastor thought that she had
   chosen a strange point of the Divine Character to rest on, but it was
   not at all so, for she explained herself. "I rest in His justice to my
   great Surety and Substitute, that He would not let Him die for me in
   vain." Thus hard, stern Justice becomes a blessed pillow for our
   confidence and none can be softer for a dying head! Though Justice is
   as a stone, yet he that can use it as Jacob used the stone at Bethel
   shall see the ladder which reached to Heaven and angels trooping upon
   its rungs! Awkward Providences, too, like stern attributes, we have
   learned to use for helps in our trusting. It happened that Rabbi Joshua
   was walking up Mount Zion one day with his brother, Rabbi Eliezer, and
   as they walked along they startled a fox, which ran out from among the
   rubbish.

   "Alas, my Brother," said Joshua, "this is a sad sign. Does it not show
   us the anger of the Lord against Israel? He has given Zion to be a
   desolation and the foxes walk about her." Eliezer replied, "True, my
   Brother, but does it not also prove the faithfulness of Jehovah towards
   Zion, for inasmuch as He said that the foxes should go about her when
   she sinned, has He not also said that He will build her walls again? If
   He is thus faithful to His threats, will He not, in due time, fulfill
   His promises?"

   Brothers and Sisters, you must trust the Lord wholly and entirely in
   everything and concerning everything. "Trust in Him at all times." You
   must trust the dark side of Him. You must trust in the shadow of His
   wings as well as in the light of His Countenance. Some of you have only
   learned to trust to the smile of His face--you must learn to trust in
   the blows of His fists. God bring us to that! "No," you say, "we can
   never come to that!" Surely we can, for did not one of old say, "Though
   He slay me yet will I trust in Him"? That is precisely what we mean!

   II. Under our second head we shall consider the grand privilege of the
   text, THE SECURITY OF BELIEVERS-- "They that trust in the Lord shall be
   as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abides forever." Mount Zion
   had, in David's day, undergone a great many changes and it has seen
   many more since, but it has never been removed. There it was when the
   Jebusite defied David; there it was when Araunah threshed his wheat;
   there it was when the Temple gleamed in the sun; there it was when the
   Roman soldier cast the firebrand into the holy place and it is there
   now--it has never been removed and it never will be!

   God's children undergo a variety of experiences. Today their hearts are
   a place of sacrifice and tomorrow a battlefield. By turns their soul is
   a temple and a threshing floor--but whatever their ups and downs may
   be, they shall never be removed from their ordained and appointed
   place--by the Grace of God they are where they are and where they shall
   be. They shall never be effectually removed from that place before the
   Lord in which infinite love has fixed them. Where, then, are Believers?
   We answer first, they are in the place of justification. As soon as
   they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, they were justified by faith.
   How many years have passed since then? Never mind--"there is therefore
   now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

   They have not fallen into the place of condemnation--they have not been
   driven from the honorable position of justified men, for, "the gifts
   and calling of God are without repentance." The Lord has covered them
   with the righteousness of Christ and cast all their sins into the
   depths of the sea and, therefore, they must and they shall stand in

   His favor as long as Zion's famous rock abides in its place. "He that
   believes on the Son has everlasting life." "He that believes on Him is
   not condemned." The sheep of Christ shall never perish, neither shall
   any pluck them out of His hands! The Believer is also in the place of
   regeneration and out of that condition he shall never be removed. He
   was born again-- prove that fact and there is no reversing it! He that
   is born again is born again. You cannot take from a man his first birth
   and neither can you take from a man his second birth--the thought is
   ridiculous, the fact is impossible!

   Are you a child of God? You are a child of God and you can never be
   other than a child of God, either in time or in eternity. Have you a
   child? You may disown him, but he is yours none the less. Your child
   may be rebellious and his character may make you sorrowful, but he is
   your child for all that. You cannot "unchild" him. Even so, if God is
   my Father, which I know He is, since He has taught me to trust in Him,
   then I may not question the perpetuity of my sonship since it is an
   abiding thing and I shall no more be removed from it than Mount Zion
   from its ancient seat! Where is the Believer? He is in the place of the
   gracious purpose--"for whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate
   to be conformed to the image of His Son."

   Being called, my Brothers and Sisters, you are a Believer, for that is
   the mark of the heavenly calling! Therefore you can be sure that you
   were foreknown and predestinated, and you can be equally certain that
   from this predestination you shall no more be removed than the
   mountains shall be torn from their sockets and thrown into the depths
   of the sea! You are also in the place of Divine Love, dear to the heart
   of God, for the Father Himself loves you and nothing shall make Him
   cease to love you! He did not love you because of anything good in
   you--when He chose you He knew what you would be--you will never
   surprise Him, whatever evil you fall into, for He has foreseen and
   provided for it all. And He has said, "I have loved you with an
   everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you; for
   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 that has mercy on you."

   Beloved, if you are, indeed, trusting in God, you are in the stronghold
   of the Covenant--God has entered into bonds with you to bless you! By
   oath and promise, by two immutable things in which it is impossible for
   Him to lie, He has given you strong consolation concerning everlasting
   salvation in Christ Jesus and you are like Mount Zion--you shall never
   be removed from your place in the Covenant. Although your house is not
   so with God as you might desire, yet has He made with you an
   Everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure. What is your
   position? Why, you are in Christ! You are one with your Lord and Head,
   a living member of His body! You are a part of the mystical Christ and
   none shall dismember the Only-Begotten or rend in pieces the Lord of
   All! It can never be that He shall lose a single limb of His own august
   body!

   Till Mount Zion shall be torn from its eternal base none who are in
   Christ shall ever be torn away from Him! In this Truth of God there is
   something to feed upon. Here is a downy couch of precious consolation
   to lie upon when you are sick--and a garden of delights to walk in when
   health returns. Here is meat for men in the strength of which we may do
   and dare and die for our Lord! "They that trust in the Lord shall be as
   Mount Zion, which can never be removed, but which abides forever." This
   shall not only be a matter of fact as to the Believer's actual position
   with God, but, to a large extent, this shall be true in his own
   consciousness as he advances in the life and walk of faith.

   Believers are too often tossed about in their minds and suffer great
   shakings and moving of heart because they do not trust in the Lord as
   they should. These things ought not to be, for we ought to be steadfast
   and immovable. But by reason of infirmity and immaturity many are
   tossed to and fro as in a tempest. Still, even in these, deep in their
   soul their faith is earnestly keeping its hold and does not permit them
   altogether to drift. At the back of a great deal of grievous unbelief,
   when we are in a depressed condition, there lives a faith which is not
   moved, but in secret takes hold as for dear life, biding its time till
   better days shall come.

   I remember another story of Martin Luther which may fitly be told in
   this place. Great-souled Martin Luther could believe and doubt as much
   any man of his time! In believing he could excel the angels and in
   horrible thoughts of doubting he could almost match the devils!
   Great-hearted men are subject to horrible fits of faintness and despair
   unknown to minds of smaller caliber. One day he fell so low in spirit
   that his friends were frightened at what he might say or do. Things
   were going ill with the great cause and the Reformer might, in his
   dreadful condition, have upset everything. So his friends got him out
   of the way, saying to themselves, "The man must be alone. His brain is
   overworked. He must be quiet."

   He rested a bit, and came back, looking as sour and gloomy as ever.
   Rest and seclusion had not stilled the winds nor lulled the waves!
   Luther was still in a storm and judged that the good cause was
   shipwrecked. I will now give you my own version of the method adopted
   for the great man's cure. He went home, but when he came to the door
   nobody welcomed him. He entered their best room and there sat
   Catherine, his wife, all dressed in black, weeping as from a death in
   the house. By her side lay a mourning cloak, such as ladies wear at
   funerals. "Ah," says he, "Kate, what is the matter? Is the child dead?"
   She shook her head and said the little ones were alive, but something
   much worse than that had happened. Luther cried "Oh, what has befallen
   us? Tell me quick! I am sad enough as it is. Tell me quick!"

   "Good man," said she, "have you not heard? Is it possible that the
   terrible news has not reached you?" This made the Reformer the more
   inquisitive and ardent and he pressed to be immediately told of the
   cause of sorrow. "Why," said Kate, "have you not been told that our
   heavenly Father is dead and His cause in the world is therefore
   overturned?" Martin stood and looked at her, and at last burst into
   such a laugh that he could not possibly contain himself, but cried,
   "Kate, I read your riddle--what a fool I am! God is not dead, He always
   lives, but I have acted as if He were! You have taught me a good
   lesson."

   It is only by realizing the everlasting abiding love of God that they
   that trust in the Lord shall come to feel steadfast as Mount Zion which
   shall never be removed. The man of God may know that he is safe and yet
   there may be such a rush and tumult in his experience that he may not
   be able to understand himself or realize his true position. This may
   happen even to more advanced Christians. But as we grow in Divine
   Grace, the tendency is to reach a more even and equable condition.
   Experienced Believers are not to be put about by every puff of wind.
   No, they come, at last, to hold on their way in the teeth of all ill
   weathers and, like hardy mariners, make small account of the lesser
   storms of life. It is grand to gaze into the face of a Patriarch who
   wears written on his placid brow the words, "He shall not be moved
   forever. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord."

   Such men are the pillars of society and help poor trembling, doubting
   hearts to hope that there is yet something stable. Let it be our
   objective and desire to grow into such confirmed and established
   Believers. The promise of God deserves unwavering faith and why should
   we not render it and thus become fixed in our repose of soul? Once
   more, while it is delightful to consider the actual immovability of the
   Believer and most profitable to seek after a growing establishment of
   faith, there is one point of which we have already and can never allow
   a question to be raised about. As to the Gospel which we believe and
   teach, we are once and for all fixed and settled about it--our creed is
   not a variable quantity, or a shifting cloud. We know whom we have
   believed and are as fixed as Mount Zion as to the eternal verities upon
   which our hopes are built.

   Since we have trusted in the Lord we have, at times, felt that we did
   not just then derive the support and the comfort that we expected from
   it, but what then? Shall we leave it and look elsewhere? God forbid! We
   are at a pass with all the world of doubters, thinkers, philosophizers
   and scientific dreamers! We know enough of the Truth of the Gospel to
   be resolved to hold it against legions of their order! We defy, alike,
   the council of infidels and the Hell of devils--we never will depart
   from the grand old Gospel which we have received! No, my Brothers and
   Sisters, at the very worst, our Gospel is better than their modern
   thought at the best! I would sooner drink the dregs of the wine vat of
   Christ when the berries are sour than I would quaff the sweetest wines
   on the lees well-refined which come of the vintage of unbelief!

   We are sure and positive in our faith in God and in His Infallible
   Word. O unbelievers, we are in no degree moved from the certainty of
   our confidence by the depression of our spirits! You may catch us,
   sometimes, in the dumps and say, "Now you find the Gospel does not
   cheer you as you thought it would." But our answer is ready for you--we
   believe the Gospel whether it is yielding us present comfort or not. We
   would sooner be God's dogs than the devil's darlings! And we would
   sooner feed on the husks of the Gospel, if such there are, than on the
   finest of your wheat! Having learned to trust in the Lord, we are as
   Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but which abides forever. As to
   the essential Truth of the Gospel, we defy the world in arms!

   III. Now I have to finish. In the third place, let us consider THE
   EVIDENT REASON for all this. Why is it that they that trust in the Lord
   shall not be moved? Why, first, because they are trusting in the Truth
   of God! They have not believed a lie and, therefore, they shall not be
   swept from their foundation. They are trusting in One who will not
   deceive them and cannot fail them. They have laid their foundation on
   the Rock, have they not? If they had trusted to man, man

   would fail or change, but, lo, they are trusting to One who is Truth,
   Power, Immutability, Holiness, Justice--why should they be moved? I
   cannot imagine a reason! I ask again, why should they be moved?

   They are trusting where their reliance is observed and welcomed. God
   loves to have many dependents about Him. It is His way of revealing
   Himself and manifesting His Glory. In these later ages, do you not know
   what the Lord has been doing? He dwelt up yonder a self-contained
   God--Father, Son, Holy Spirit--within His own supreme Person,
   self-sufficient. He needed nothing more and if He willed anything
   beyond, it was that there might be creatures that could trust Him, love
   Him, hang upon Him, depend upon Him. He went about in creation and in
   Providence and in Grace to make dependents!

   A great nobleman with a big house in a wide country is not content to
   be all alone, he needs servants and tenants and if he is of a generous
   spirit, he seeks the poor. He needs poor neighbors to help and he says,
   "This Christmas time I must give something away--is there anybody
   needing a round of beef? Is there anybody needing their chimney set
   alight with a slab of beef? Is there anybody needing a blanket in this
   cold season?" Thus God must have dependents. He must have those about
   Him who need Him. He loves dependents and I do not see why He should
   cast them away. Why should He? If this is what He desires--if He seeks
   such to worship Him who believe that He is and that He is the Rewarder
   of them that diligently seek Him--why should He reject them?

   It is not the Nature of God to cast away any who rely upon Him. On the
   contrary, He is very careful that Faith should never have less than she
   has expected. He respects the courage of Faith--He never confounds her.
   If you open your back door and a robin comes bravely in out of the
   cold, do you drive it out? No, you are pleased with his assurance and
   give him a hearty welcome! Even so does God deal with poor trembling
   souls when they come to Him. We read of Charles V., the German Emperor,
   that when a pair of birds had built their nest among the poles and
   lines of his pavilion, he would not allow it to be removed though the
   time was come for the camp to be on the march. The birds had trusted to
   him and they would not be disappointed! The same zealous care does the
   Lord exhibit towards the trembling hopes and feeble confidences of poor
   souls that trust in Him! There is, therefore, no reason why they should
   be removed, since it is not like the Lord to cast them away.

   Once more, for a true Believer to be suffered to perish would be
   violation of all the promises of God. He has said to such "I will never
   leave you, nor forsake you." His own Word is, "the righteous shall hold
   on his way," "He that believes in Him shall not be ashamed nor
   confounded world without end." Now then, if these promises could fail,
   the child of God could be removed--but it is not possible so long as
   God is God, that he who trusts in the Lord shall ever be removed. As
   long as there is a God in Heaven, every Believer is safe! Let him go
   and rejoice in this--because it brings glory to God to save him, but
   for him to be lost would put a slur upon the name of the Most High! The
   Lord bring us to a simple faith in Jesus and keep us fixed there. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [3]4:9   [4]35:1

   Exodus

   [5]2:24   [6]4:22   [7]4:23   [8]6:1   [9]12:2

   Deuteronomy

   [10]5:14   [11]6:20   [12]6:21   [13]7   [14]8:12   [15]15:15
   [16]24:17   [17]33:27

   2 Samuel

   [18]7:27   [19]18:29

   1 Chronicles

   [20]4:23   [21]28:2   [22]28:3

   Job

   [23]34:7   [24]36:2

   Psalms

   [25]18:1-31   [26]28:7   [27]63:1   [28]63:2   [29]69:1-21   [30]90
   [31]118:22-25   [32]119:6   [33]125:1

   Proverbs

   [34]4:13

   Song of Solomon

   [35]5:16

   Isaiah

   [36]28:16   [37]30:19   [38]48:10   [39]56:8

   Ezekiel

   [40]3:13   [41]3:17

   Hosea

   [42]6:1   [43]6:2   [44]13:5-8

   Amos

   [45]3:6

   Malachi

   [46]2:17   [47]3:18

   Matthew

   [48]1:21   [49]5:45   [50]6:13   [51]8:7   [52]8:13   [53]11:6
   [54]13:45   [55]13:46   [56]27:61

   Mark

   [57]3:13-15   [58]11:22

   Luke

   [59]1:18   [60]1:34   [61]2:28-30   [62]13:10-13   [63]18:17

   John

   [64]3   [65]9:21   [66]12:28   [67]14:17   [68]16:20-22   [69]17
   [70]19:28

   Acts

   [71]7:4   [72]7:5

   Romans

   [73]6:14   [74]6:17   [75]6:18   [76]8:15   [77]9:1-5   [78]13:11

   1 Corinthians

   [79]4:7

   2 Corinthians

   [80]5:14   [81]6:2

   Galatians

   [82]3:26   [83]3:26   [84]4:6   [85]6:14

   Ephesians

   [86]2:11   [87]2:12   [88]2:13   [89]4:82

   Philippians

   [90]4:7

   Colossians

   [91]1:5

   1 Timothy

   [92]1:15   [93]3:15

   Hebrews

   [94]2:3   [95]4:8   [96]5:2   [97]5:9   [98]11:21   [99]11:23
   [100]13:5   [101]13:6

   James

   [102]4:7-10

   1 Peter

   [103]2:6

   1 John

   [104]5:10
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [105]4:9   [106]35:1

   Exodus

   [107]4:22-23

   Deuteronomy

   [108]15:15   [109]33:27

   2 Samuel

   [110]7:27   [111]18:29

   1 Chronicles

   [112]4:23

   Job

   [113]36:2

   Psalms

   [114]18:16   [115]28:7   [116]63:1-2   [117]118:22-25   [118]119:6
   [119]125:1

   Proverbs

   [120]4:13

   Song of Solomon

   [121]5:16

   Isaiah

   [122]30:19   [123]48:10   [124]56:8

   Ezekiel

   [125]3:17

   Hosea

   [126]6:1-2   [127]13:5-8

   Malachi

   [128]2:17

   Matthew

   [129]1:21   [130]5:45   [131]6:13   [132]8:7   [133]11:6
   [134]13:45-46   [135]27:61

   Mark

   [136]11:22

   Luke

   [137]1:18   [138]2:28-30   [139]13:10-13   [140]18:17

   John

   [141]9:21   [142]12:28   [143]16:20-22   [144]19:28

   Romans

   [145]6:14   [146]9:1-5   [147]13:11

   1 Corinthians

   [148]4:7

   2 Corinthians

   [149]5:14   [150]6:2

   Galatians

   [151]4:6   [152]6:14

   Ephesians

   [153]4:82

   Philippians

   [154]4:7

   Colossians

   [155]1:5

   1 Timothy

   [156]1:15   [157]3:15

   Hebrews

   [158]5:2   [159]11:21   [160]11:23   [161]13:5-6

   James

   [162]4:7-10

   1 Peter

   [163]2:6

   1 John

   [164]5:10
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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