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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 34: 1888
   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 Little Sanctuary

   A Sermon

   (No. 2001)

   Intended for Reading on Lord's-day, January 8th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [1]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; Although I have cast them far
   off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the
   countries, yet will I be to them, as a little sanctuary in the
   countries where they shall come."Ezekiel 11:16.

   THE TEXT BEGINS WITH "therefore." There was a reason for God's speaking
   in this way. It is profitable to trace the why and the wherefore of the
   gracious words of the Lord. The way by which a promise comes usually
   shines with a trail of light. Upon reading the connection we observe
   that those who had been carried captive were insulted by those who
   tarried at Jerusalem. They spoke in a very cruel manner to those with
   whom they should have sympathized. How often do prosperous brothers
   look with scorn on the unfortunate! Did not Job of old complain, "He
   that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the
   thought of him that is at ease"?

   The Lord hears the unkind speeches of the prosperous when they speak
   bitterly of those who are plunged in adversity. Read the context'"Son
   of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred, and
   all the house of Israel wholly, are they unto whom the inhabitants of
   Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the Lord: unto us is this land
   given in possession." This unbrotherly language moved the Lord to send
   the prophet Ezekiel with good and profitable words to the children of
   the captivity. Many a time the cruel word of man has been the cause of
   a tender word from God. Because of the unkindness of these people,
   therefore God, in lovingkindness, addressed in words of tender grace
   those whom they despised. As, in our Saviour's days, the opposition of
   the Pharisees acted upon the Saviour like a steel to the flint, and
   fetched bright sparks of truth out of him, so the wickedness of man has
   often been the cause why the grace of God has been more fully revealed.
   This is some solace when under the severe chastisement of human
   tongues.

   Personally, I am glad of this comfort. I would gladly be at peace with
   all men: I would not unnecessarily utter a word of provocation; but it
   is a world in which you cannot live at peace unless you are willing to
   be unfaithful to your conscience. Offences, therefore, will come. But
   why should we fret unduly under this trial when we perceive that out of
   opposition to the cause of God occasions arise for the grandest
   displays of God's love and power? If from the showers we gain our
   harvests, we will not mourn when the heavens gather blackness, and the
   rain pours down. If the wrath of man is made to praise the Lord, then
   let man be wrathful if he wills. Brethren, let us brace ourselves to
   bear the bruises of slanderous tongues! Let us take all sharp speeches
   and cutting criticisms to God. It may be that he will hear what the
   enemy has said, and that he will be very pitiful to us. Because of the
   bitterness of the oppressor he will bring home to our heart by the
   Spirit, with greater tenderness and power, some sweet word of his which
   has lain hidden from us in his Book. Be not dismayed, but go to him who
   is the God of all comfort, who comforteth all those that are bowed
   down, and he will give you a word which shall heal your wounds, and
   breathe peace into your spirit.

   Now to proceed at once to our text, seeing that the occasion of it is a
   sufficient preface. Let us notice, first, where God's people may be,
   and yet be God's people. They may be by God's own hand "scattered among
   the countries, and cast far off among the heathen." And, secondly, what
   God will be to them when they are is such circumstances. "Yet will I be
   to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come."
   May the Holy Spirit, who spake by Ezekiel, speak through these words to
   our hearts!

   I. First, then, WHERE GOD'S PEOPLE MAY BE.

   If you ask where they may be, the answer to the question is, first,
   they may be under chastisment.

   If you will remember, in the Book of Deuteronomy, God threatened Israel
   that if they, as a nation, sinned against him, they should be scattered
   among the nations, and cast far off among the heathen. Many a time they
   so sinned. I need not recapitulate the story of their continued
   transgressions and multiplied backslidings. The Lord was slow to fulfil
   his utmost threatenings, but put forth his utmost patience, till there
   was no more room for long-suffering. At last the threatened
   chastisement fell upon them, and fierce nations carried them away in
   bonds to the far-off lands of their dread. They were not utterly
   destroyed: their being scattered among the people showed that they
   still existed. Though they were a people scattered and peeled, yet they
   were a people, even as Israel is to this day. For all that tyrants and
   persecutors have ever done, yet the Jew is still extant among us, even
   as the bush burned with fire, but was not consumed. Israel is still to
   the front, and will be to the world's end. The Lord hath not cast away
   his people, even though he has cast them far off among the heathen. He
   has scattered them among the countries, but they are not absorbed into
   those countries; they still remain a people separated unto the living
   God, in whom he will yet be glorified.

   But, assuredly, the chosen seed came under chastisement. When, by the
   rivers of Babylon, they sat down and wept, yea, they wept when they
   remembered Zion, then were they under the Lord's heavy hand. The
   instructed among them knew that their being in exile was the fruit of
   the transgressions of their fathers, and the result of their own
   offences against God. And yet, though they were under chastisement, God
   loved them, and had a choice word for them, which I will by-and-by
   endeavour to explain to you; for the Lord said, "Although I have cast
   them far off among the heathen, yet will I be to them as a little
   sanctuary." Beloved, you and I may lie under the rod of God, and we may
   smart sorely because of our iniquities, even as David did; and yet we
   may be the children of God towards whom he has thoughts of grace. Our
   moisture may be turned into the drought of summer, while day and night
   the Lord's hand is heavy upon us; we may be in sore temporal trouble,
   and may be compelled by an enlightened conscience to trace our sorrow
   to our own folly. We may be in great spiritual darkness, and may be
   compelled to confess that our own sins have procured this unto
   ourselves. And yet, for all that, the Lord may have sent the
   chastisement in love, and in nothing else but love; and he may intend
   by it, not our destruction, but the destruction of the flesh; not our
   rejection, but our refining, not our curse, but our cleansing. Let us
   take comfort, seeing that God has a word to say to his mourners and to
   his afflicted, and that word in the text is a "yet" which serves to
   show that there is a clear limit to his anger. He smites, but it is
   with an "although" and a "yet": he scatters them to a distance, but he
   sends a promise after them, and says, "I will be to them as a little
   sanctuary." In the Lord's hand towards his chosen there may be a rod,
   but not a sword. It is a heavy rod, but it is not a rod of iron. It is
   a rod that bruises, but it is not a rod that batters to pieces. God
   tempers our afflictions, severe though they may seem to be; and though,
   apparently, he strikes us with the blows of a cruel one, yet there is a
   depth unutterable of infinite love in every stroke of his hand. His
   anger endureth but for a night: he hastens to display his favour.
   Listen to his own words of overflowing faithfulness: "For a small
   moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
   In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with
   everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy
   Redeemer." However, it is clear that God's own people may be under
   chastisement.

   But, secondly, wherever they are, whether they are under chastisement
   or not, they are where the Lord has put them. Read the text carefully:
   "Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I
   have scattered them among the countries." The Lord's hand was in their
   banishment and dispersion: Jehovah himself inflicted the chastisement
   for sin. You say to me, "Why, it was Nebuchadnezzar who carried them
   away: the Babylonians and the Chaldeans took them captive." Yes, I know
   it was so; but the Lord regards these as instruments in his hand, and
   he says, "I have done it," just as Job, when the Chaldeans and the
   Sabeans had swept away his property, and his children had been
   destroyed through the agency of Satan, yet said, "The Lord gave, and
   the Lord hath taken away." The Lord was as truly in the taking away as
   he was in the giving. It is well to look beyond all second causes and
   instrumentalities. Do not get angry with those who are the nearer
   agents, but look to the First Cause. Do not get fretting about the
   Chaldeans and Sabeans. Let them alone, and Satan too. What have you to
   do with them? Your business is with God. See his hand, and bow before
   it. Say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." Come to that,
   for then you will be able to say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."
   Though your trials be peculiar, and your way be hedged up, yet the hand
   of the Lord is still in everything; and it behoves you to recognize it
   for your strengthening and consolation.

   Note, next, that the people of God may dwell in places of great
   discomfort. The Jews were not in those days like the English, who
   colonize and find a home in the Far West, or even dwell at ease beneath
   sultry skies. An ancient Hebrew out of his own country was a fish out
   of water: out of his proper element. He was not like the Tyrian, whose
   ship went to Tarshish, and passed the Gates of Hercules, seeking the
   Ultima Thule. The Jew tarried at home. " I dwell among mine own
   people," said a noble woman of that nation; and she did but speak the
   mind of a home-loving people who settled each one upon his own patch of
   ground, and sat down under his vine and fig-tree, none making him
   afraid. Their Lord had driven them into a distant land, to rivers whose
   waters were bitter to their lips, even to the Tigris and the Euphrates.
   They were in a foreign country, where everything was different from
   their ways'where all the customs of the people were strange and
   singular. They would be a marked and despised people, nobody would
   fraternize with them, but all would pass them by in scorn. The Jews
   excited much prejudice, for, as their great adversary, the wicked
   Haman, said, "their laws were diverse from all people," and their
   customs had a peculiarity about them which kept them a distinct race.
   It must have been a great discomfort to God's people to dwell among
   idolaters, and to be forced to witness obscene rites and revolting
   practices. God's own favoured ones in these days may be living where
   they are as much out of place as lambs among wolves, or doves among
   hawks. Do not imagine that God makes a nest of down for all his
   eaglets. Why, they would never take to flying if he did not put thorns
   under them, and stir up their nest that they may take to their wings,
   and learn the heavenward flight to which they are predestinated!
   Perfect comfort on earth is no more to be expected than constant calm
   on the sea. Sleep in the midst of a battle, and ease when on the march,
   would be more in place than absolute rest in this present state. God
   meaneth not his children to take up their inheritance on this side
   Jordan. "This is not your rest: because it is polluted." And so he
   often puts us where we are very uncomfortable. Is there any Christian
   man who can say that he would, if he might, take up his lot for ever in
   this life? No, no. There is an irksomeness about our condition,
   disguise it as we may. In one way or another we are made to remember
   that we are in banishment. We have not yet come unto our rest. That
   rest "remaineth for the people of God," but as yet we have not come
   into the land which the Lord our God has given to us to be our place of
   rest. Some of God's servants feel this in a very peculiar manner, for
   their soul is among lions, and they dwell among those whose tongues are
   set on fire of hell. Abel was hated by Cain, Isaac was mocked by
   Ishmael, Joseph was among envious brethren, Moses was at first rejected
   by Israel, David was pursued by Saul, Elijah was hunted by Jezebel,
   Mordecai was hated by Haman; and yet these men were wisely placed, and
   the Lord was eminently with them. I mention this in order that tried
   believers may still know that, however uncomfortable their position, it
   is nevertheless true that God has put them there for some good end.

   The beloved of God may yet be in a place of great barrenness as to all
   spiritual good. "I have cast them far off among the heathen"'far off
   from my temple'far off from the place of my worship'far off from the
   shrine of my glory. "I have scattered them among the countries," where
   they will learn no good'where, on the contrary, they will see every
   abominable thing, and often feel like Lot, who was vexed with the
   filthy conversation of the people among whom he dwelt. We are not kept
   apart from the wicked by high walls, or guards of heavenly soldiery.
   Even our Lord did not pray that we should be taken out of the world.
   Grace builds neither monasteries nor nunneries. "Woe is me," is
   frequently the cry of God's chosen, "that I sojourn in Mesech, that I
   dwell in the tents of Kedar!" David knew what it was to be cut off from
   the assemblies of the Lord's house, and to be in the cave or in the
   wilderness. It may be so with you, and yet you may be a child of God.
   You may not be out of your place, for the dear path to his abode may go
   straight through this barren land. You may have to pass for many a day
   through this great and terrible wilderness, this land of fiery
   serpents, and of great drought, on your way to the land that floweth
   with milk and honey. To make heaven the sweeter we may find our exile
   made bitter. Our education for eternity may necessitate spiritual
   tribulation, and bereavement from visible comforts. To be weaned from
   all reliance on outward means may be for our good, that we may be
   driven in upon the Lord, and made to know that he is all in all.
   Doubtless the jeers of Babylon endeared the quiet of Zion to the
   banished: they loved the courts of the Lord's house all the more for
   having sighed in the halls of the proud monarch.

   Worse still, the Lord's chosen may be under oppression through
   surrounding ungodliness and sin. The captive Israelites found Babylonia
   and Chaldea to be a land of grievous oppression. They ridiculed them,
   and bade them sing them one of the songs of Zion. They required of them
   mirth when their hearts were heavy. On the festivals of their false
   gods they demanded that the worshippers of the Eternal One should help
   in their choirs, and tune their harps to heathenish minstrelsy. Even
   Daniel, in his high position under the Persian monarch, found that he
   was not without adversaries, who rested not till they had cast him into
   a den of lions. Those who were far away, whether in Babylonia or in
   Persia, found themselves the constant subjects of assault from the
   triumphant foe. They were crushed down, until they cried by reason of
   their oppression. It was not the first time that the people of God had
   been in the iron furnace. Did they not come forth from the house of
   bondage at the first, even from Egypt? Neither was Babylon the last
   place of trial for saints; for until the end of time the seed of the
   serpent will war with the seed of the woman. Is it not still true of
   us, as well as of our Saviour, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son"?
   Expect still to meet with opposition and oppression while you are
   passing to the land where the seed shall possess the heritage. Those of
   us who bear public testimony may have to bear the brunt of the battle,
   and suffer much from angry tongues. Nevertheless, to us it shall be an
   evident token of the Lord's favour, inasmuch as he counts us worthy to
   suffer for his name's sake.

   But enough of that. I am making a very long story about the grievous
   routes through which we wend our way to the Celestial City. We climb on
   hands and knees up the Hill Difficulty; we tremblingly descend the
   steep of Humiliation. We feel our way through the tremendous pass of
   the Shadow of Death, and hasten through Vanity Fair, and walk warily
   across the Enchanted Ground. Not much of the way could one fall in love
   with. Perhaps the only part of it is that Valley of Humiliation, where
   the shepherd boy sat down and sang his ditty among the wild flowers and
   the lambs. One might wish to be always there; but fierce adversaries
   invade even these tranquil meadows, for hard-by where the shepherd sang
   his happy pastoral Christian met Apollyon, and had to struggle hard for
   his life. Do you not remember the spot where

   "The man so bravely played the man,

   He made the fiend to fly"?

   You see where God's people may be, and yet may be none the less, but
   all the more, under the divine protection. Are you in difficult places?
   Be not dismayed, for this way runs the road to glory. Sigh not for the
   dove's wing to hurry to your rest, but take the appointed path: the
   footsteps of your Lord are there.

   II. So, now, I hasten at once into the sweet part of the subject, which
   consists of this: WHAT GOD WILL BE TO HIS PEOPLE WHEN THEY GET INTO
   THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. "Yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in
   the countries where they shall come."

   Brethren, the great sanctuary stood on Mount Sion, "beautiful for
   situation, the joy of the whole earth." That glorious place which
   Solomon had builded was the shrine to which the Hebrew turned his eye:
   he prayed with his window open toward Jerusalem. Alas! when the tribes
   were carried away captive, they could not carry the holy and beautiful
   house with them, neither could they set up its like within the brazen
   gates of the haughty city. "Now," says the Lord God in infinite
   condescension, "I will be a travelling temple to them. I will be as a
   little sanctuary to each one of them. They shall carry my temple about
   with them. Wherever they are, I will be, as it were a holy place to
   them." In using the word "little," the gracious God would seem to say,
   "I will condescend to them, and I will be as they are. I will bow down
   to their littleness, and I will be to each little one of them a little
   sanctuary." Even the temple which Solomon builded was not a fit
   habitation for the infinite Jehovah, and so the Lord will stoop a
   little further, and be unto his people, not as the sanctuary
   "exceedingly magnifical," but as a little temple suitable for the most
   humble individual, rather than as a great temple in which vast
   multitudes could gather. "I will be to them as a little sanctuary" is a
   greatly condescending promise, implying an infinite stoop of love.
   There is a good deal more in my text than I shall be able to bring out,
   and I may seem, in making the attempt, to give you the same thought
   twice over. Please bear with me. Let me begin at the beginning.

   A sanctuary was a place of refuge. You know how Joab fled to the horns
   of the altar to escape from Solomon's armed men: he ran to the temple
   hoping to find sanctuary there. In past ages, churches and abbeys and
   altars have been used as places of sanctuary to which men have fled
   when in danger of their lives. Take that sense, and couple it with the
   cities of refuge which were set up throughout all Israel, to which the
   man who killed another by misadventure might flee to hide himself from
   the manslayer. Now, beloved fellow-believer, wherever you are, wherever
   you dwell, God will be to you a constant place of refuge. You shall
   flee from sin to God in Christ Jesus. You shall flee from an accusing
   conscience to his pardoning love. You shall flee from daily cares to
   him who careth for you. You shall flee from the accusations of Satan to
   the advocacy of Jesus. You shall flee even from yourselves to your
   Lord, and he will be to you in all senses a place of refuge. This is
   the happy harbour of all saints in all weathers. Hither come all
   weather-beaten barques, and cast anchor in placid waters.

   "God is our refuge, tried and proved,

   Amid a stormy world:

   We will not fear though earth be moved,

   And hills in ocean hurled,"

   O my hearer, make the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy
   habitation, and then shalt thou know the truth of this text: "God is
   our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Wherever thou
   art cast, God will be to thee a suitable refuge, a little haven for thy
   little boat: not little in the sense that he cannot well protect thee;
   not little in the sense that his word is a small truth, or a small
   comfort, or a small protection, but little in this respect'that it
   shall be near thee, accessible to thee, adapted to thee. It is as
   though the refuge were portable in all our wanderings, a protection to
   be carried and kept in hand in all weathers. Thou shalt carry it about
   with thee wherever thou art, this "little sanctuary." Thy God, and thy
   thoughts of thy God, and thy faith in thy God, shall be to thee a
   daily, perpetual, available, present refuge. Oh, it is a delightful
   thought to my mind, that from every danger and every storm God will be
   to us an immediate refuge, which we carry about with us, so that we
   abide under the shadow of the Almighty!

   Next, a sanctuary signifies also a place of worship. It is a place
   where the divine presence is peculiarly manifested'a holy place. It
   usually means a place where God dwells, a place where God has promised
   to meet with his people, a place of acceptance where prayers, and
   praises, and offerings come up with acceptance on his altar. Now,
   notice, God says to his people, when they are far away from the temple
   and Jerusalem, "I will be to them as a little sanctuary." Not, "I have
   loved the people, and I will build them a synagogue, or I will lead
   others to build for them a meeting-place; but I myself will be to them
   as a little sanctuary." The Lord Jesus Christ himself is the true place
   of worship for saved souls. "There is no chapel in the place where I
   live," says one. I am sorry to hear it, but chapels are not absolutely
   essential to worship, surely. Another cries, "There is no place of
   public worship of any sort where the gospel is fully and faithfully
   preached." This is a great want, certainly, but still, do not say, "I
   am far away from a place of worship." That is a mistake. No godly man
   is far away from a holy place. What is a place of worship? I hope that
   our bed-chambers are constantly places of worship. Place of worship?
   Why, it is one's garden where he walks and meditates. A place of
   worship? It is the field, the barn, the street, when one has the heart
   to pray. God will meet us by a well, a stone, a bush, a brook, a tree.
   He has great range of trysting-places when men's hearts are right.

   "Where'er we seek him he is found,

   And every place is hallowed ground."

   When a man lives near to God, and abides in him, he should shake off
   the folly of superstition, and talk no more of holy places. God
   himself, his own presence makes a place of worship. Do you not catch
   the fulness of the thought? Yonder is Jacob. He lies down to sleep in a
   desert place with a stone for his pillow. No bishop had ever been upon
   the spot to consecrate it, no service had been held in the place by way
   of dedication, and yet when he awoke in the morning, he said, "How
   dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and
   this is the gate of heaven." God had been to his servant a little
   sanctuary in that instance, as he has been oftentimes since. Whenever
   you go to sea, God in your cabin shall be to you a little sanctuary.
   When you travel by railway, the carriage shall, through the Lord's
   presence, be a little sanctuary. God's presence, seen in a bit of moss,
   made in the desert for Mungo Park a little sanctuary. How often have
   the streets of London been to some of us as the golden pavements of the
   New Jerusalem, for God has been there! The Lord himself is the temple
   of saints in heaven, and he is their temple on earth. When God draws
   near to us, we worship and rejoice. Whenever we are abroad, and cannot
   come to the visible sanctuary where multitudes worship, let us ask the
   Lord to be to us as "a little sanctuary." Have not your hearts cried
   out as you have thought of this house when you have been far
   away'"Ziona, Ziona, the place of our solemn assemblies, when shall we
   return to thee? O sacred spot, where we have worshipped God, and God
   has met with us, and made the place of his feet glorious, when shall we
   again behold thee"? I shall not contend with the feeling; but I would
   supplant it with this higher thought: the Lord himself is our
   dwelling-place, and our holy temple. Hath he not said, "I will be to
   them as a little sanctuary"?

   Now, go a little farther. Our God is to us a place of stillness. What
   was the sanctuary of old? The sanctuary was the most holy place, the
   third court, the innermost of all within the veil. It was the stillest
   place that ever was on earth: a closet of absolute silence. You must
   not think of the tabernacle in the wilderness as being a huge building.
   It was a small affair, and the innermost room of all was of narrow
   dimensions. The Holy of Holies was great for holiness, but not for
   space. There was this peculiarity about it, that it was the shrine of
   unbroken quiet. Was ever a voice heard in it? Once in the year the
   high-priest went in, and filled it full of the smoke of incense as he
   waved his censor in the mystic presence; but otherwise it was a chamber
   in which there was no footfall of living thing, or voice of mortal man.
   Here was the home of absolute quiet and silence. The stillness within
   the Holy of Holies of the temple must have reached the intensity of
   awe. What repose one might enjoy who could dwell in the secret place of
   the Most High! How one sighs for stillness! We cannot get it to the
   full anywhere in this country: even to the loneliest hill-top the
   scream of the railway-engine rises to the ear. Utter and entire
   stillness, one of the richest joys on this side heaven, one cannot
   readily obtain. Those who live in the wear and tear of this city
   life'and it is an awful wear and tear'might well pay down untold gold
   to be still for a while. What would we not give for quiet, absolute
   quiet, when everything should be still, and the whirring wheels of care
   should cease to revolve for at least a little while?

   I sometimes propose to myself to wait upon God and be still. Alas!
   There is the bell! Who is this? Somebody that will chatter for a
   quarter of an hour about nothing! Well, that intruder has gone; let us
   pray. We are on our knees. What is this? A telegram! One is half
   frightened at the very sight of it: it is opened, and it calls you away
   to matters which are the reverse of quieting. Where is stillness to be
   had? The only prescription I can give is this promise: "I will be to
   them as a little sanctuary." If you can get with God, you will then
   escape from men, even though you have to live among them. If you can
   baptize your spirit into the great deeps of Godhead, if you can take a
   plunge into the fathomless love of the covenant, if you can rise to
   commune with God, and speak with him as a man speaketh with his friend,
   then will he be unto you as a little sanctuary, and you shall enjoy
   that solemn silence of the soul which hath music in it like the eternal
   harmonies. The presence of the Lord will be as a calm hand for that
   fevered brow, and a pillow for that burdened head. Use your God in this
   way, for so he presents himself to you.

   The sanctuary was a place of mercy. When the high-priest entered within
   the veil, he passed into the throne-room of mercy. The blood had been
   sprinkled there, and man might draw near to the God of mercy. A light
   was shining'a light of love and mercy, between the wings of the
   cherubim. Those angelic forms were ministers of mercy, attendants upon
   the Lord of grace. Before the high-priest stood the mercy-seat. That
   was the name of the cover of the sacred ark of the covenant. On that
   mercy-seat there was the shechinah, which symbolized the presence of a
   merciful God. Of that mercy-seat the Lord had said, "There will I meet
   with you." The holy place was a house of mercy. God was not there in
   power to destroy, nor in subtle wisdom to discover folly: he was there
   in mercy, waiting to forgive. Now, dear friends, God says, "I will be
   to them as a little sanctuary," that is to say, an accessible throne of
   mercy, an accessible place of mercy. When men have no mercy on you, go
   to God. When you have no mercy on yourself'and sometimes you have
   not'run away to God. Draw near to him, and he will be to you as a
   little sanctuary.

   The sanctuary was the house of mercy, and hence, a place of
   condescension"a little sanctuary." Brethren, to suit our needs the
   blessings of grace must be given in little forms. What are we great in
   at all except in sin? We hear of "great men." O friends, a great man!
   Does not the term make you laugh? Did you ever hear of a great ant, or
   a great emmet, or a great nothing? And that is all that the greatest of
   us can ever be. Our degrees and ranks are only shades of littleness;
   that is all. When the Lord communes with the greatest of men, he must
   become little to speak with him.

   I cannot convey to you quite what I see to be the meaning of this
   little sanctuary, laying the stress upon the adjective "little." If you
   are talking of anything that is very dear, the tendency is always to
   call it "little." The affectionate terms of language are frequently
   diminutives. One never says, "My dear great wife," but we are apt to
   say, "My dear little wife." We speak thus of things which are not
   "little" really, but we use the word as a term of affection. To speak
   very simply, there is a cosiness about a little thing which we miss in
   that which is on a large scale. We say, "Well, I did so enjoy that
   little prayer-meeting; but when it grew so much in numbers I seemed
   lost in it." It is to me so marvellous that I hardly dare to say what I
   mean; but when the Lord brings himself down to our capacity he is
   greatly dear to us, and he would have us feel at home with him,
   comfortable with him. When he becomes to us "as a little sanctuary,"
   and we are able to compass his mercy to ourselves, and perceive its
   adaptation to our little trials and little difficulties, then we feel
   ourselves at home with him, and he is most dear to us. O thou blessed
   God, thou art so great, that thou must, as it were, belittle thyself to
   manifest thyself to me; how I love and adore thee that thou wilt deign
   to do this! Glory be to thy great name, though the heaven of heavens
   cannot contain thee, yet thou dwellest in the temple of my poor heart!

   Dear brethren, the sanctuary was only a little place. But then, if it
   had been ever so great'if it had been as spacious as this whole island,
   and had been shut in to be the house of God'would it have been a house
   fitted to contain the infinite God? If you take the arch of heaven as a
   roof, and floor it with the sea, or if you soar into still more
   boundless space, is that a house fit for him who filleth all immensity?
   When Jehovah makes himself little enough to be in the least
   comprehended by us, the descent is immeasurable. It is nothing more to
   him to come down to count the hairs of our head than to bow in the
   infinity of his mercy to take an interest in our littlenesses.

   Go a stage further. That sanctuary, of which we read in the Old
   Testament, was not only a place of great stillness, great mercy, and
   great condescension but it was a place of great holiness. "Holiness
   becometh thy house." This applied to the whole temple, but the inner
   shrine was called "sanctum sanctorum"'the Holy of Holies, for so the
   Hebrews make a superlative. It was the holiest place that could be. The
   world is an unholy place, and at times it is most grievously so. You
   mix up with people who defile you; how can you help it? Your daily
   business calls you to see and hear many things which are defiling. When
   these things are more than ordinarily glaring, you say to yourself,
   "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, that I might get away from
   the very sight of men!" I was with a mountain-climbing friend some time
   ago, and being thirsty, I drank some water from a fountain by the
   roadside. when I held the cup to my companion, he refused it, saying,
   "I don't drink that." I said, "Why don't you drink it?" He answered, "I
   wait till I have climbed up into the mountains, where mortal men never
   pollute the streams, and then I drink. I like drinking of fountains at
   which none but birds sip: where the stream pours forth from God's hand
   pure as crystal." Alas! I cannot climb with my Alpine friend as to
   material things; but what a blessed thing it is to get right away from
   man, and drink of the river of God which is full of water, and know the
   joys of his own right hand, which are for evermore! What bliss to enter
   into the Holy of Holies! Now, you cannot do that by getting into a
   cell, or by shutting yourselves up in your room; but you can enter the
   most holy place by communion with God. Here is the promise; the text
   means this'" I will be to them as a little sanctuary'a little Holy of
   Holies. I will put them into myself as into the most holy place, and
   there will I hide them. In the secret of my tabernacle will I hide
   them. I will set them up upon a rock." Away from the unholiness of your
   own hearts, and the unholiness of those about you, get to your God, and
   hide yourselves in him.

   Again, we may regard the sanctuary as a place of cleansing. That may be
   gathered from the other rendering of my text. "I will be unto them a
   little sanctification." God is the sanctification of his people he
   cleanses them from daily defilements, and is himself their
   righteousness. Those that come to God shall find in him sanctification
   for the daily acts of life, cleansing from ordinary as well as
   extraordinary transgression. We want not only the great blood-washing,
   but also the lesser washing of the feet with water; and the Lord
   himself will give us this blessing. Did not Jesus take a towel, and
   gird himself for this very purpose?

   Lastly, God will be to us a place of communion and of revelation. In
   the Holy of Holies God spoke with man, on that one day in the year, in
   a wondrous manner; and he that had been there, and came forth alive,
   came out to bless the congregation. Every day of the year the teaching
   of the sanctuary was that in God there was everything his people
   wanted. In the holy place was the shechinah light, and "God is light,
   and in him is no darkness at all." "The Lord is my light and my
   salvation." In the holy place were the cherubim: God has legions of
   angels at his bidding, waiting to bless his people. In the holy place
   was the ark: God is to us the ark of the covenant. He has entered into
   covenant with men, towards us he has a throne of grace, and there he
   meets us, even in Christ Jesus, who is our propitiation.

   Within that ark there were three things: the rod of Aaron, that divine
   work of Christ which always buds; the pot of manna, the emblem and
   token of the living bread whereon his people feed; and the tablets of
   the law unbroken, in all their splendour, whereby the saints are
   justified. O brethren, if you want anything, if you want everything, go
   to God for it! He will be to you as a little sanctuary; that is to say,
   he will bring to you everything which was inside that holy place.
   Though but one piece of furniture, yet that ark of the covenant did
   really contain in itself, and round about it, all that the heirs of God
   can ever need while in this wilderness. Let this be a joy to you this
   day. Do not rely upon the creature. "All men are liars," said David;
   and he was not far out. Broken cisterns abound on all sides; why waste
   your time on them? Get you straight away to your Creator, and find your
   all in him. If this day you are wrapped up in the things that are seen
   and temporal, may God deliver you therefrom, for all these things will
   melt as you hold them in your hand! The joys of this life are like the
   ice palace of Montreal, which is fair to look upon while the winter
   lasts, but it all dissolves as the spring comes on. All things round
   about us here are myths and dreams. This is the land of fancies and of
   shadows. Pray God to get you our of them, and that you may find in him
   your sanctuary, and indeed all that you want.

   If at this time you have lost many of the comforts of this life, and
   seem bereaved of friends, then find in God your "little sanctuary." Go
   home to your chamber with holy faith and humble love, and take him to
   be your all in all, and he will be all in all to you. Pray after this
   fashion'"O Lord, so work in me by thy Spirit that I may find thee in
   all things, and all things in thee!"

   The Lord has ways of weaning us from the visible and the tangible, and
   bringing us to live upon the invisible and the real, in order to
   prepare us for that next stage, that better life, that higher place,
   where we shall really deal with eternal things only. God blows out our
   candles, and makes us find our light in him, to prepare us for that
   place in which they need no candle, for the glory of God is their
   light; and where, strange to tell, they have no temple, for the Lord
   God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. The holy leads to the
   holiest: living upon God here leads to living with God hereafter. Oh,
   that God would gradually lift us up above all the outward, above all
   the visible, and bring as more and more into the inward and unseen! If
   you do not know anything about this, ask the Lord to teach you this
   riddle; and if you do know it, ask him to keep you to the life and walk
   of faith, and never may you be tempted to quit it for the way of sight
   and feeling. For Christ's sake we ask it. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Ezekiel 11.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'196, 198, 708.
     __________________________________________________________________

Young Man, Is This For You?

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JANUARY 15, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And it came to pass the day after, that He went into a city called
   Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him and much people. Now when
   He came near to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man
   carried out, the only son of his mother and she was a widow: and much
   people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He had
   compassion on her and said unto her, Weep not. And He came and touched
   the bier: and they that bare him stood stiil. And He said, Young man I
   say unto you, Arise. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak.
   And He delivered him to his mother. And there came a fear on all: and
   they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us;
   and, That God has visited His people. And this rumor of Him went forth
   throughout all Judea and throughout all the region round about." Luke
   7:11-17.

   BEHOLD, dear Brethren, the overflowing, ever-flowing power of our Lord
   Jesus Christ! He had worked a great work upon the centurion's servant,
   and now, only a day after, he raises the dead. "It came to pass the day
   after, that He went into a city called Nain." Day unto day utters
   speech concerning His deeds of goodness. Did He save your friend
   yesterday? His fullness is the same. If you seek Him, His love and
   grace will flow to you today. He blesses this day and He blesses the
   day after. Never is our Divine Lord compelled to pause until He has
   recruited His resources. Virtue goes out of Him forever. These
   thousands of years have not diminished the greatness of His power to
   bless.

   Behold, also, the readiness and naturalness of the outgoings of His
   life-giving power. Our Savior was journeying and He works miracles
   while on the road--"He went into a city called Nain." It was
   incidentally, (some would say accidentally), that He met the funeral
   procession. But at once He restored to life this dead young man. Our
   blessed Lord was not standing still, as one professionally called
   in--He does not seem to have come to Nain at anyone's request for the
   display of His love. But He was passing through the gate into the city
   for some reason which is not recorded.

   See, my Brethren, how the Lord Jesus is always ready to save! He healed
   the woman who touched him in the throng when He was on the road to
   quite another person's house. The mere spilling and droppings of the
   Lord's cup of grace are marvelous. Here He gives life to the dead when
   He is en route. He scatters His mercy by the roadside and anywhere and
   everywhere His paths drop fatness. No time, no place can find Jesus
   unwilling or unable. When Baal is on a journey, or sleeps, his deluded
   worshippers cannot hope for his help. But when Jesus journeys or
   sleeps, a word will find Him ready to conquer death, or quell the
   tempest.

   It was a remarkable incident, this meeting of the two processions at
   the gates of Nain. If someone with a fine imagination could picture it,
   what an opportunity he would have for developing his poetical genius! I
   venture on no such effort. Yonder a procession descends from the city.
   Our spiritual eyes see death upon the pale horse coming forth from the
   city gate with great exultation. He has taken another captive. Upon
   that bier behold the spoils of the dread conqueror! Mourners, by their
   tears, confess the victory of death. Like a general riding in triumph
   to the Roman capitol, death bears his spoils to the tomb. What shall
   hinder him?

   Suddenly the procession is arrested by another--a company of disciples
   and much people are coming up the hill. We need not look at the company
   but we may fix our eyes upon One who stands in the center, a Man in
   whom lowliness was always evident and yet majesty was never wanting. It
   is the living Lord, even He who only has immortality and in Him death
   has now met his destroyer. The battle is short and decisive--no blows
   are struck--for death has already done his

   utmost. With a linger the chariot of death is arrested--with a word the
   spoil is taken from the mighty and the lawful captive is delivered.

   Death flies defeated from the gates of the city, while Tabor and
   Hermon, which both looked down upon the scene, rejoice in the name of
   the Lord. This was a rehearsal upon a small scale of that which shall
   happen by-and-by, when those who are in their graves shall hear the
   voice of the Son of God and live--then shall the last enemy be
   destroyed. Only let death come into contact with Him who is our life
   and it is compelled to relax its hold. Whatever may be the spoil which
   it has captured, soon shall our Lord come in His glory and then before
   the gates of the New Jerusalem we shall see the miracle at the gates of
   Nain multiplied a myriad times.

   Thus, you see, our subject would naturally conduct us to the doctrine
   of the resurrection of the dead, which is one of the foundation stones
   of our most holy faith. That grand Truth of God I have often declared
   to you and will do so again and again. But at this time I have selected
   my text for a very practical purpose. It concerns the souls of some for
   whom I am greatly anxious. The narrative before us records a fact, a
   literal fact--but the record may be used for spiritual instruction. All
   our Lord's miracles were intended to be parables--they were intended to
   instruct as well as to impress-- they are sermons to the eyes, just as
   His spoken discourses were sermons to the ears. We see here how Jesus
   can deal with spiritual death. And how He can impart spiritual life at
   His pleasure. Oh, that we may see this done this morning in the midst
   of this great assembly!

   I. I shall ask you first, dear Friends, to reflect that THE SPIRITUALLY
   DEAD CAUSE GREAT GRIEF TO THEIR GRACIOUS FRIENDS. If an ungodly man is
   favored to have Christian relatives, he causes them much anxiety. As a
   natural fact, this dead young man, who was being carried out to his
   burial, caused his mother's heart to burst with grief. She showed by
   her tears that her heart was overflowing with sorrow. The Savior said
   to her, "Weep not," because He saw how deeply she was troubled. Many of
   my dear young friends may be deeply thankful that they have friends who
   are grieving over them. It is a sad thing that your conduct should
   grieve them--but it is a hopeful circumstance for you that you have
   those around you who do thus grieve.

   If all approved of your evil ways, you would, no doubt, continue in
   them and go speedily to destruction. But it is a blessing that
   arresting voices do at least a little hinder you. Besides, it may yet
   be that our Lord will listen to the silent oratory of your mother's
   tears and that this morning He may bless you for her sake. See how the
   Evangelist puts it-- "When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her
   and said unto her, Weep not." And then He said to the young man,

   "Arise."

   Many young persons who are in some respects amiable and hopeful,
   nevertheless, being spiritually dead, are causing great sorrow to those
   who love them most. It would perhaps be honest to say that they do not
   intend to inflict all this sorrow. Indeed, they think it quite
   unnecessary. Yet they are a daily burden to those whom they love. Their
   conduct is such that when it is thought over in the silence of their
   mother's chamber, she cannot help but weep. Her son went with her to
   the House of God when he was a boy, but now he finds his pleasure in a
   very different quarter.

   Being beyond all control now, the young man does not choose to go with
   his mother. She would not wish to deprive him of his liberty, but she
   laments that he exercises that liberty so unwisely. She mourns that he
   has not the inclination to hear the Word of the Lord and become a
   servant of his mother's God. She had hoped that he would follow in his
   father's footsteps and unite with the people of God. But he takes quite
   the opposite course. She has seen a good deal about him lately which
   has deepened her anxiety--he is forming companionships and other
   connections which are sadly harmful to him. He has a distaste for the
   quietude of home and he has been exhibiting to his mother a spirit
   which wounds her.

   It may be that what he has said and done is not meant to be unkind. But
   it is very grievous to the heart which watches over him so tenderly.
   She sees a growing indifference to everything that is good and an
   unconcealed intention to see the vicious side of life. She knows a
   little and fears more as to his present state and she dreads that he
   will go from one sin to another till he ruins himself for this life and
   the next. O Friends, it is to a gracious heart a very great grief to
   have an unconverted child. And yet more so if that child is a mother's
   boy, her only boy, and she a desolate woman, from whom her husband has
   been snatched away.

   To see spiritual death rampant in one so dear is a sore sorrow which
   causes many a mother to mourn in secret and pour out her soul before
   God. Many a Hannah has become a woman of a sorrowful spirit through her
   own child. How sad that he who should have made her the most glad among
   women has filled her life with bitterness! Many a mother has

   had to grieve over her son as almost to cry, "Would God he had never
   been born!" It is so in thousands of cases. If it is so in your case,
   dear Friend, take home my words to yourself and reflect upon them.

   The cause of grief lies here--we mourn that they should be in such a
   case. In the story before us the mother wept because her son was dead.
   And we sorrow because our young friends are spiritually dead. There is
   a life infinitely higher than the life which quickens our material
   bodies. And oh, that all of you knew it! You who are unrenewed do not
   know anything about this true life. Oh, how we wish you did! It seems
   to us a dreadful thing that you should be dead to God, dead to Christ,
   dead to the Holy Spirit. It is sad, indeed, that you should be dead to
   those Divine Truths which are the delight and strength of our
   souls--dead to those holy motives which keep us back from evil and spur
   us on to virtue.

   Dead to those sacred joys which often bring us very near the gates of
   Heaven. We cannot look at a dead man and feel joy in him, whoever he
   may be--a corpse, however delicately dressed, is a sad sight. We cannot
   look upon you, you poor dead souls, without crying out, "O God, shall
   it always be so? Shall not these dry bones live? Will You not quicken
   them?" The Apostle speaks of one who lived in pleasure and he said of
   her, "She is dead while she lives." Numbers of persons are dead in
   reference to all that is true and noble and most Divine. And yet in
   other respects they are full of life and activity. Oh, to think that
   they should be dead to God and yet so full of happiness and energy!
   Marvel not that we grieve about them.

   We also mourn because we lose the help and comfort which they ought to
   bring us. This widowed mother no doubt mourned her boy not only because
   he was dead but because in him she had lost her earthly stay. She must
   have regarded him as the staff of her age and the comfort of her
   loneliness. "She was a widow"--I question if anybody but a widow
   understands the full sorrow of that word. We may put ourselves by
   sympathy into the position of one who has lost her other self, the
   partner of her life. But the most tender sympathy cannot fully realize
   the actual cleavage of bereavement and the desolation of love's loss.
   "She was a widow"--the sentence sounds like a knell.

   Still, if the sun of her life was gone, there was a star shining. She
   had a boy, a dear boy, who promised her great comfort. He would, no
   doubt, supply her necessities and cheer her loneliness and in him her
   husband would live again and his name would remain among the living in
   Israel. She could lean on him as she went to the synagogue. She would
   have him to come home from his work at evening and keep the little home
   together and cheer her hearth. Alas, that star is swallowed up in the
   darkness. He is dead and today he is carried to the cemetery.

   It is the same spiritually with us in reference to our unconverted
   friends. With regard to you that are dead in sin we feel that we miss
   the aid and comfort which we ought to receive from you in our service
   of the living God. We want fresh laborers in all sorts of places--in
   our Sunday school work, our mission among the masses and in all manner
   of service for the Lord we love! Ours is a gigantic burden and we long
   for our sons to put their shoulders to it. We looked forward to seeing
   you grow up in the fear of God and stand side by side with us in the
   great warfare against evil and in holy labor for the Lord Jesus.

   But you cannot help us, for you are yourselves on the wrong side. Alas,
   alas, you hinder us by causing the world to say, "See how those young
   men are acting!" We have to spend thought and prayer and effort over
   you which might usefully have gone forth for others. Our care for
   yonder great dark world which lies all around us is very pressing but
   you do not share it with us--men are perishing from lack of knowledge
   and you do not help us in endeavoring to enlighten them.

   A further grief is that we can have no fellowship with them. The mother
   at Nain could have no communion with her dear son now that he was dead,
   for the dead know not anything. He can never speak to her, nor she to
   him, for he is on the bier, "a dead man carried out." O my Friends,
   certain of you have dear ones whom you love and they love you. But they
   cannot hold any spiritual communion with you, nor you with them. You
   never bow the knee together in private prayer, nor mingle heart with
   heart in the appeal of faith to God as to the cares which prowl around
   your home. O young man, when your mother's heart leaps for joy because
   of the love of Christ shed abroad in her soul, you cannot understand
   her joy. Her feelings are a mystery to you.

   If you are a dutiful son, you do not say anything disrespectful about
   her religion. But yet you cannot sympathize in its sorrows or its joys.
   Between your mother and you there is upon the best things a gulf as
   wide as if you were actually dead on the bier and she stood weeping
   over your corpse. I remember, in the hour of overwhelming anguish when
   I feared that my beloved wife was about to be taken from me, how I was
   comforted by the loving prayers of my two dear sons--we had commun-

   ion not only in our grief but in our confidence in the living God. We
   knelt together and poured out our hearts unto God and we were
   comforted.

   How I blessed God that I had in my children such sweet support! But
   suppose they had been ungodly young men? I should have looked in vain
   for holy fellowship and for aid at the Throne of Grace. Alas, in many a
   household the mother cannot have communion with her own son or daughter
   on that point which is most vital and enduring because they are
   spiritually dead-- while she has been quickened into newness of life by
   the Holy Spirit.

   Moreover, spiritual death soon produces manifest causes for sorrow. In
   the narrative before us the time had come when her son's body must be
   buried. She could not wish to have that dead form longer in the home
   with her. It is a token to us of the terrible power of death that it
   conquers love with regard to the body. Abraham loved his Sarah. But
   after a while he had to say to the sons of Heth, "Give me a possession
   of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight."
   It happens in some mournful cases that character becomes so bad that no
   comfort in life can be enjoyed while the erring one is within the home
   circle.

   We have known parents who have felt that they could not have their son
   at home so drunken, so debauched had he become. Not always wisely, yet
   sometimes almost of necessity, the plan has been tried of sending the
   incorrigible youth to a distant colony in the hope that when removed
   from pernicious influences he might do better. How seldom so deplorable
   an experiment succeeds! I have known mothers who could not think of
   their sons without feeling pangs far more bitter than those they
   endured at their birth. Woe, woe to him who causes such heartbreak!
   What an awful thing it is when love's best hopes gradually die down
   into despair and loving desires at last put on mourning and turn from
   prayers of hope to tears of regret!

   Words of admonition call forth such passion and blasphemy that prudence
   almost silences them. Then have we before us the dead young man carried
   out to his grave. A sorrowful voice sobs out, "He is given unto idols,
   let him alone." Am I addressing one whose life is now preying upon the
   tender heart of her that brought him forth? Do I speak to one whose
   outward conduct has at last become so avowedly wicked that he is a
   daily death to those who gave him life? O young man, can you bear to
   think of this? Are you turned to stone? I cannot yet believe that you
   contemplate your parents' heartbreak without bitter feelings. God
   forbid that you should!

   We also mourn because of the future of men dead in sin. This mother,
   whose son had already gone so far in death that he must be buried out
   of sight, had the further knowledge that something worse would befall
   him in the sepulcher to which he was being carried. It was impossible
   for her to think calmly of the corruption which surely follows at the
   heels of death. When we think of what will become of you who refuse the
   Lord Christ we are appalled. "After death the judgment." We could more
   readily go into details as to a putrid corpse than we could survey the
   state of a soul lost forever. We dare not linger at the mouth of Hell.
   But we are forced to remind you that there is a place, "where their
   worm dies not and the fire is not quenched."

   There is a place where those must abide who are driven from the
   presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power. It is an
   unendurable thought that you should be, "cast into the lake of fire,
   which is the second death." I do not wonder that those who are not
   honest with you are afraid to tell you so and that you try yourself to
   doubt it. But with the Bible in your hand and a conscience in your
   bosom you cannot but fear the worst if you remain apart from Jesus and
   the life He freely gives. If you continue as you are and persevere in
   your sin and unbelief to the end of life, there is no help for you but
   that you must be condemned in the Day of Judgment.

   The most solemn declarations of the Word of God assure you that, "he
   that believes not shall be damned." It is heartbreaking work to think
   that this should be the case with any of you. You prattled at your
   mother's knee and kissed her cheek with rapturous love--why, then, will
   you be divided from her forever? Your father hoped that you would take
   his place in the Church of God--how is it that you do not even care to
   follow him to Heaven? Remember, the day comes when, "one shall be
   taken, and the other left." Do you renounce all hope of being with your
   wife, your sister, your mother at the right hand of God? You cannot
   wish them to go down to Hell with you--have you no desire to go to
   Heaven with them?

   "Come, you blessed," will be the voice of Jesus to those who imitated
   their gracious Savior. And "Depart from Me, you cursed, into
   everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," must be the
   sentence upon all who refuse to be made like the Lord. Why will you
   take your part and lot with accursed ones? I do not know whether you
   find it easy to hear me this morning. I find it very hard to speak to
   you because my lips are not able to express my heart's feelings. Oh
   that I had the forceful utterance of an Isaiah, or the passionate
   lamentations of a Jeremiah with which to arouse your affections and
   your fears! Still, the Holy Spirit can use even me, and I beseech Him
   so to do. But I have said enough on this point. I am sure you see that
   the spiritually dead cause great grief to those of their family who are
   spiritually alive.

   II. Now let me cheer you while I introduce the second head of my
   discourse, which is this--FOR SUCH GRIEF THERE IS ONLY ONE HELPER--BUT
   THERE IS A HELPER.

   This young man is taken out to be buried. But our Lord Jesus Christ met
   the funeral procession. Carefully note the "coincidences," as skeptics
   call them but as we call them--"Providences"--of Scripture. This is a
   fine subject for another time. Take this one case. How came it that the
   young man died just then? How came it that this exact hour was selected
   for his burial? Perhaps because it was evening. But even that might not
   fix the precise moment. Why did the Savior that day arrange to travel
   five-and-twenty miles, so as to arrive at Nain in the evening? How came
   it to pass that He happened just then to be coming from a quarter which
   naturally led Him to enter at that particular gate from which the dead
   would be carried?

   See, He ascends the hill to the little city at the same moment when the
   head of the procession is coming out of the gate! He meets the dead man
   before the place of sepulture is reached. A little later and he would
   have been buried. A little earlier and he would have been at home lying
   in the darkened room and no one might have called the Lord's attention
   to him. The Lord knows how to arrange all things--His forecasts are
   true to the tick of the clock. I hope some great purpose is to be
   fulfilled this morning. I do not know why you, my Friend, came in here
   on a day when I am discoursing on this particular subject. You did not
   think to come, perhaps, but here you are. And Jesus has come here, too.
   He has come here on purpose to meet you and quicken you to newness of
   life. There is no chance about it--eternal decrees have arranged it all
   and we shall soon see that it is so. You spiritually dead are being met
   by Him in whom is life eternal.

   The blessed Savior saw all at a glance. Out of that procession He
   singled out the chief mourner and read her inmost heart. He was always
   tender to mothers. He fixed His eye on that widow. For He knew that she
   was such, without being informed of the fact. The dead man is her only
   son--He perceives all the details and nothing is hid from His infinite
   mind. O young man, Jesus knows all about you. Jesus, who is invisibly
   present this morning, fixes His eyes on you at this moment. He has seen
   the tears of those who have wept for you. He sees that some of them
   despair of you, and are in their great grief acting like mourners at
   your funeral.

   Jesus saw it all and, what was more, entered into it all. Oh, how we
   ought to love our Lord that He takes such notice of our griefs and
   especially our spiritual griefs about the souls of others! You, dear
   Teacher, want your class saved--Jesus sympathizes with you. You, dear
   Friend, have been very earnest to win souls, Know that in all this you
   are workers together with God. Jesus knows all about our travail of
   soul and He is at one with us therein. Our travail is only His own
   travail rehearsed in us, according to our humble measure. When Jesus
   enters into our work it cannot fail. Enter, O Lord, into my work at
   this hour, I pray You, and bless this feeble word to my hearers! I know
   that hundreds of Believers are saying, "Amen." How this cheers me!

   Our Lord proved how He entered into the sorrowful state of things by
   first saying to the widow, "Weep not." At this moment He says to you
   who are praying and agonizing for souls, "Do not despair! Sorrow not as
   those who are without hope! I mean to bless you. You shall yet rejoice
   over life given to the dead." Let us take heart and dismiss all
   unbelieving fear. Our Lord then went to the bier and just laid His
   finger upon it and they that carried it stood still of their own
   accord. Our Lord has a way of making bearers stand still without a
   word. Perhaps, today, yonder young man is being carried further into
   sin by the four bearers of his natural passions, his infidelity, his
   bad company, and his love of strong drink. It may be that pleasure and
   pride, willfulness and wickedness are bearing the four corners of the
   bier. But our Lord can, by His mysterious power, make the bearers stand
   still. Evil influences have become powerless, the man knows not how.

   When they stood quite still, there was a hush. The disciples stood
   around the Lord, the mourners surrounded the widow and the two crowds
   faced each other. There was a little space and Jesus and the dead man
   were in the center. The widow pushed away her veil and gazing through
   her tears wondered what was going on. The Jews who came out of the city
   halted as the bearers had done. Hush! Hush! What will HE do? In that
   deep silence the Lord heard the unspoken prayers of that widow woman. I
   doubt not that her soul began to whisper, half in hope and half in
   fear--"Oh, that He would raise my son!"

   At any rate, Jesus heard the flutter of the wings of desire if not of
   faith. Surely her eyes were speaking as she gazed on Jesus, who had so
   suddenly appeared. Here let us be as quiet as the scene before us. Let
   us be hushed for a minute and pray God to raise dead souls at this
   time. [Here followed a pause, much silent prayer and many tears.]

   III. That hush was not long, for speedily the Great Quickener entered
   upon His gracious work. This is our third point-- JESUS IS ABLE TO WORK
   THE MIRACLE OF LIFE-GIVING.

   Jesus Christ has life in Himself and He quickens whom He will (John
   5:21). Such life is there in Him that "he that lives and believes in
   Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Our blessed Lord
   immediately went up to the bier. What lay before Him? It was a corpse.
   He could derive no aid from that lifeless form. The spectators were
   sure that he was dead, for they were

   carrying him out to bury him. No deception was possible, for his own
   mother believed him dead and you may be sure that if there had been a
   spark of life in him she would not have given him up to the jaws of the
   grave. There was then no hope--no hope from the dead man, no hope from
   anyone in the crowd either of bearers or of disciples. They were all
   powerless alike.

   Even so, you, O Sinner, cannot save yourself--neither can any of us--or
   can any of us save you. There is no help for you, dead Sinner, beneath
   yon skies. No help in yourself or in those who love you most. But, lo,
   the Lord has laid help on One that is mighty. If Jesus wants the least
   help, you cannot render it, for you are dead in sins. There you lie,
   dead on the bier and nothing but the sovereign power of Divine
   omnipotence can put heavenly life into you. Your help must come from
   above.

   While the bier stood still, Jesus spoke to the dead young man, spoke to
   him personally--"Young man, I say unto you, Arise." O Master,
   personally speak to some young man this morning. Or, if You will, speak
   to the old, or speak to a woman. But speak the Word home to them. We
   mind not where the Lord's voice may fall. Oh that it would now call
   those around me, for I feel that there are dead ones all over the
   building! I stand with biers all about me and dead ones on them. Lord
   Jesus, are You not here? What is wanted is Your personal call. Speak,
   Lord, we beseech You!

   "Young man," said He, "Arise." And He spoke as if the man had been
   alive. This is the Gospel way. He did not wait till He saw signs of
   life before He bade him rise. But to the dead man He said, "Arise."
   This is the model of Gospel preaching--in the name of the Lord Jesus,
   His commissioned servants speak to the dead as if they were alive. Some
   of my Brethren laugh at this and say that it is inconsistent and
   foolish. But all through the New Testament it is even so. There we
   read, "Arise from the dead and Christ shall give you light." I do not
   attempt to justify it. It is more than enough for me that so I read the
   Word of God. We are to bid men believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, even
   though we know that they are dead in sin and that faith is the work of
   the Spirit of God.

   Our faith enables us, in God's name, to command dead men to live and
   they do live. We bid unbelieving man believe in Jesus and power goes
   with the Word and God's elect do believe. It is by this Word of faith
   which we preach that the voice of Jesus sounds out to men. The young
   man who could not rise, for he was dead, nevertheless did rise when
   Jesus bade him. Even so, when the Lord speaks by His servants the
   Gospel command, "Believe and live," it is obeyed and men live.

   But the Savior, you observe, spoke with His own authority--"Young man,
   I say unto you, Arise." Neither Elijah nor El-isha could thus have
   spoken. But He who spoke thus was very God of very God. Though veiled
   in human flesh and clothed in lowliness, He was that same God who said,
   "Let there be light" and there was light. If any of us are able by
   faith to say, "Young man, Arise," we can only say it in His name--we
   have no authority but what we derive from Him. Young man, the voice of
   Jesus can do what your mother cannot. How often has her sweet voice
   wooed you to come to Jesus but wooed in vain? Oh, that the Lord Jesus
   would inwardly speak to you! Oh, that He would say, "Young man, Arise."

   I trust that while I am speaking, the Lord is silently speaking in your
   hearts by His Holy Spirit. I feel sure that it is even so. If so,
   within you a gentle movement of the Spirit is inclining you to repent
   and yield your heart to Jesus. This shall be a blessed day to the
   spiritually dead young man, if now he accepts his Savior, and yields
   himself up to be renewed by Divine Grace! No, my poor Brother, they
   shall not bury you! I know you have been very bad and they may well
   despair of you. But while Jesus lives we cannot give you up.

   The miracle was worked straightway--for this young man, to the
   astonishment of all about him, sat up. His was a desperate case but
   death was conquered, for he sat up. He had been called back from the
   innermost dungeon of death, even from the grave's mouth. But he sat up
   when Jesus called him. It did not take a month, nor a week, nor an
   hour--no, not even five minutes. Jesus said, "Young man, Arise. And he
   that was dead sat up, and began to speak." In an instant the Lord can
   save a sinner. Before the words I speak can have more than entered your
   ear, the Divine flash which gives you eternal life can have penetrated
   your breast and you shall be a new creature in Jesus Christ, beginning
   to live in newness of life from this hour--no more to feel spiritually
   dead--or to return to your old corruption.

   New life, new feeling, new love, new hopes, new company shall be yours,
   because you have passed from death unto life. Pray God that it may be
   so, for He will hear us.

   IV. Our time has gone and although we have a wide subject we may not
   linger. I must close by noticing that THIS WILL PRODUCE VERY GREAT
   RESULTS. To give life to the dead is no little matter.

   The great result was manifest, first, in the young man. Would you like
   to see him as he was? Might I venture to draw back the sheet from his
   face? See there what death has done? He was a fine young man. To his
   mother's eye he was the mirror of manhood! What a pallor is on that
   face! How sunken are the eyes! You are feeling sad. I see you cannot
   bear the sight. Come, look into this grave where corruption has gone
   further in its work. Cover him up! We cannot bear to look at the
   decaying body! But when Jesus Christ has said, "Arise," what a change
   takes place!

   Now you may look at him. His blue eyes have the light of Heaven in
   them. His lips are coral red with life. His brow is fair and full of
   thought. Look at his healthy complexion, in which the rose and the lily
   sweetly contend for mastery! What a fresh look there is about him, as
   of the dew of the morning! He has been dead but he lives, and no trace
   of death is on him. While you are looking at him he begins to speak.
   What music for his mother's ear! What did he say? Why, that I cannot
   tell you. Speak yourself as a newly-quickened one and then I shall hear
   what you say.

   I know what I said. I think the first word I said when I was quickened
   was, "Hallelujah." Afterwards, I went home to my mother and told her
   that the Lord had met with me. No words are given here. It does not
   quite matter what those words are, for any words proved him to be
   alive. If you know the Lord, I believe you will speak of heavenly
   things. I do not believe that our Lord Jesus has a dumb child in His
   house--they all speak to Him and most of them speak of Him. The new
   birth reveals itself in confession of Christ and praise of Christ. I
   warrant you that his mother, when she heard him speak, did not
   criticize what he said. She did not say, "That sentence is
   ungrammatical."

   She was too glad to hear him speak at all, that she did not examine all
   the expressions which he used. Newly-saved souls often talk in a way
   which after years and experience will not justify. You often hear it
   said of a revival meeting that there was a good deal of excitement and
   certain young converts talked absurdly. That is very likely--but if
   genuine grace was in their souls and they bore witness to the Lord
   Jesus, I, for one, would not criticize them very severely. Be glad if
   you can see any proof that they are born again and mark well their
   future lives. To the young man himself a new life had begun--life from
   among the dead.

   A new life also had begun in reference to his mother. What a great
   result for her was the raising of her dead son! Henceforth he would be
   doubly dear. Jesus helped him down from the bier and delivered him to
   his mother. We have not the words He used. But we are sure that He made
   the presentation most gracefully, giving back the son to the mother as
   one presents a choice gift. With a majestic delight which always goes
   with His condescending benevolence, He looked on that happy woman and
   His glance was brighter to her than the light of the morning, as He
   said to her, "Receive your son."

   The thrill of her heart was such as she would never forget. Observe
   carefully that our Lord, when He puts the new life into young men, does
   not want to take them away with Him from the home where their first
   duty lies. Here and there one is called away to be an Apostle or a
   missionary--but usually He wants them to go home to their friends and
   bless their parents and make their families happy and holy. He does not
   present the young man to the priest but He delivers him to his mother.
   Do not say, "I am converted and therefore I cannot go to business any
   more, or try to support my mother by my trade." That would prove that
   you were not converted at all.

   You may go for a missionary in a year or two's time if you are fitted
   for it. But you must not make a dash at a matter for which you are not
   prepared. For the present, go home to your mother and make your home
   happy and charm your father's heart and be a blessing to your brothers
   and sisters and let them rejoice because, "he was dead and is alive
   again. He was lost and is found."

   What was the next result? Well, all the neighbors feared and glorified
   God. If yonder young man who last night was at the music-hall and a few
   nights ago came home very nearly drunk. If that young man is born
   again, all around him will wonder at it. If that young man who has got
   himself out of a situation by gambling, or some other wrong-doing, is
   saved, we shall all feel that God is very near us. If that young man
   who has begun to associate with evil women and to fall into other
   evils, is brought to be pure-minded and gracious, it will strike awe
   into those round about him. He has led many others astray and if the
   Lord now leads him back it will make a great hubbub and men will
   enquire as to the reason of the change and will see that there is a
   power in religion alter all.

   Conversions are miracles which never cease. These prodigies of power in
   the moral world are quite as remarkable as prodigies in the material
   world. We want conversion, so practical, so real, so Divine--that those
   who doubt will not be able to doubt--because they see in them the hand
   of God.

   Finally, note that it not only surprised the neighbors and impressed
   them but the rumor of it went everywhere. Who can tell? If a convert is
   made this morning, the result of that conversion may be felt for
   thousands of years, if the world stands so long. Yes, it shall be felt
   when a thousand, thousand years have passed away, even throughout
   eternity. Tremblingly have I dropped a smooth stone into the lake this
   morning. It has fallen from a feeble hand and from an earnest heart.
   Your tears have shown that the waters are stirred. I perceive the first
   circlet upon the surface.

   Other and wider circles will follow as the sermon is spoken of and
   read. When you go home and tell what God has done for your soul, there
   will be a wider ring. And if it should happen that the Lord should open
   the mouth of one of this morning's converts to preach His Word, then no
   one can tell how wide the circle will become. Ring upon ring will the
   Word spread itself,

   until the shoreless ocean of eternity shall feel the influence of this
   morning's Word. No, I am not dreaming. According to our faith so shall
   it be. Grace this day bestowed by the Lord upon one single soul may
   affect the whole mass of humanity.

   God grant His blessing, even life forevermore. Pray much for a
   Blessing, my dear Friends, I beseech you, for Jesus Christ's sake. And
   pray much for me. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Lover of God's Law Filled With Peace

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JANUARY 22, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Great peace have they which love Your Law: and nothing shall offend
   them." Psalm 119:165.

   THIS forms part of a devotional passage. It is not merely a statement
   that great peace comes to those who love the Law of God, but it is
   uttered as part of a hymn of praise unto the Lord. We cannot praise God
   better than by stating facts concerning Him and His Word. If you desire
   to praise God, you must speak of Him as He is. If you would pour out an
   acceptable libation before Him, you must fill the vessel from Himself,
   as the wellhead of all excellence. Our Te Deums are simply declarations
   of what God is--there can be no higher praise. His praises can only be
   the reflection of His own light. All glory is already in Him, none can
   be added to Him.

   And so, when we are adoring Him for His Law and blessing Him for giving
   us His Word, we cannot do better than observe how that Law operates
   upon the heart and praise Him because it so works. We have no need to
   heap up flattering titles as men do with their kings. We have no need
   to invent exaggerated expressions. We have but to speak the simple
   Truth concerning our God and we have praised Him. By the word, "Law,"
   here is intended, not only the Law of the Ten Commandments but the
   whole of Divine Revelation, as it was in David's time and as it is now.
   Whatever God has revealed is loved by saintly men.

   This sacred Book, which we commonly call the Bible, contains the mind
   of God so far as He has seen fit to reveal it to men. It is the Law of
   holiness as the guide of our actions and the Law of faith by which we
   receive of His Divine Grace. Here we have the Law of the kingdom of
   Heaven, the Law of life in Christ Jesus. As a Law of works, this holy
   Book convicts us of sin. As a Law of love it leads us to Jesus, to find
   forgiveness through His blood. In David's day the Law was a smaller
   Book than ours but he found great peace in the reading of it--it was
   even then competent for the highest spiritual ends. We have that Book
   at greater length but it is one and the same.

   The same Gospel is in Genesis as in Matthew. The Old Testament was
   perfect in itself as the Law of the Lord and the New Testament is but
   an expansion of the same Truth which the Old contains. We rejoice to
   find that our larger edition of the Word of God contains nothing which
   lessens that great peace which the earlier Scriptures were able to
   produce. As the light is clearer, the joy is brighter and the reasons
   for great peace are more clearly seen.

   God's Law comprises all His precepts and in keeping these we have peace
   of conscience. It contains all His promises and these are our great
   peace in the hour of need. And it comprehends all those great doctrines
   which surround the Cross of Christ and the Covenant of Grace and each
   one of these is a fountain of peace to our hearts. We take this Book as
   a whole and in this way we have peace. We dare not rend it, we would
   not leave out any part of it lest we miss the blessed effect which, as
   a whole, it is calculated to produce. Sitting as learners at the feet
   of Jesus our Master, submitting our hearts and minds to the infallible
   teaching of the Holy Spirit who leads us into all Truth, we find that
   the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keeps our hearts and
   minds by Christ Jesus.

   Three things in the text are worthy of earnest attention. May the
   Spirit of God bless all we say! First, here is a spiritual
   character--"they which love Your Law." Secondly, here is a special
   possession--"great peace have they." And thirdly, here is a singular
   preservation--"nothing shall offend them"--or nothing shall be a
   stumbling block to them. Oh, that we may know our text experimentally!

   I. First, here is A SPIRITUAL CHARACTER--"they which love Your Law."
   Love lies deep--it is in the heart--it is not a thing of the surface,
   it is of the man's own self. As a man loves so is he. To love God's Law
   is to have the very nature and essence of our manhood in a right
   condition. To love the Word is something more than to read it, even
   though we should study it day and night. It is more even than to
   understand it. For the cold light of the intellect is of little worth

   compared with the warm sunlight of love. Many, no doubt, perceive the
   Truths which are taught in God's Word and so become orthodox in their
   professed creed.

   But without love their faith is dead. You cannot learn the Law of God
   as you learn the laws of nature. Your heart must be affected by it and
   you must obey it in your life or you do not truly know it. Only he who
   does the will of God can know of the doctrine. Mere knowledge brings no
   peace to the man. The Truth must go from the head to the heart before
   its power is known. Some even try to keep the Law of the Lord so far as
   to make the outward life conformable to morality and religion. But this
   falls far short of the love of the heart. To stand in slavish fear and
   dread of God is better than to be utterly indifferent but it is a poor
   thing compared with love.

   Slaves obey their masters because of the lash and so do many outwardly
   follow the Word because of the spirit of bondage which will not permit
   them to rebel. But there is something lacking--nothing in religion is
   sound till the heart goes with it. God says, "My son, give Me your
   heart," and He cannot be satisfied with anything short of it. Search,
   then, my Hearers and see if you really love the Law of the Lord.

   He who loves the Word would not wish to have it altered, enlarged, or
   diminished--it reveals enough for him and no more. For he is content
   with what God chooses to teach him. If he finds any want of conformity
   in his own thoughts to God's thoughts, he throws his own thoughts away
   and sets up the Divine thoughts in their place. As he is reconciled to
   God in Christ Jesus, so is his mind reconciled to the teaching against
   which he at first rebelled. He loves the Law of the Lord just as he
   finds it. And instead of judging it and daring to set himself up as a
   dictator of what it ought to be, he is humble and docile and cries,
   "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears."

   He loves every Truth which the Lord declares--yes, and the very style
   and method of the declaration. Every word of God's Book has in it music
   for his ears, beauty for his eyes, honey for his mouth and food for his
   soul. The teachings of God's Word are to the instructed Believer not
   only articles of faith but matters of life. Our faith has imbibed them
   and our experience has assimilated them. We could part with everything
   except what we have learned out of the Sacred Book by the teaching of
   the Holy Spirit. For that flows through our souls like the blood
   through our body and it is intermixed with every vital part of our
   being.

   Like wool which has been made to lie long in scarlet we are dyed
   ingrain. As certain insects take their color from the leaves they feed
   upon, so have we become tinctured to the core of our nature with the
   living and incorruptible Word. It has proved its own inspiration by
   inspiring us with its Spirit. Now we live in the Word as the fish in
   the stream. It is the element of our spiritual life. This may suffice
   to set before you the sort of people who obtain great peace from the
   Law of the Lord, because, in the truest sense, they love it.

   This inward and spiritual love to God's Word includes many other good
   things. Permit me to use the connection in order to help myself as to
   order and to help you as to memory. Read the first verse of this
   octave--the 161st verse-- "Princes have persecuted me without a cause:
   but my heart stands in awe of Your Word." The love of God's Law
   includes a deep reverence for it. That man is blessed who trembles at
   God's Word. This Book is not to be compared with other books. It is not
   of the same class and order. It is inspired in a sense in which they
   are not.

   It stands alone and is not one among other books. As towers an Alp
   above the molehills of the meadow, so Holy Scripture rises above the
   purest, truest and holiest literature of man's composing. Even if all
   those other books are purged of error and are corrected to the highest
   degree of human knowledge, yet would they no more reach to the degree
   of the Book of God than man can become God. It is supreme and of
   another quality from all the rest of them. Other writings we feel free
   to criticize but, "My heart stands in awe of Your Word." The man who
   loves God's Word does not trifle with it. It is far too sacred to be
   toyed with. He does not mock it. For he believes it to be God's Word.

   With a docility which comes of true sonship, it is enough for him that
   his Father says so. His one anxiety is, as far as possible, to know the
   meaning of his Father's Words--and, that known, all debate is out of
   the question. "Thus says the Lord," is to every true child of God the
   end of the matter. I have often told you, my dear Friends, that I view
   the difficulties of Holy Scriptures as so many prayer-stools upon which
   I kneel and worship the glorious Lord. What we cannot comprehend by our
   understanding, we apprehend by our affections. Awe of God's Word is a
   main element in that love of God's Law which brings great peace.

   This advances to rejoicing in it. Read verse 162--"I rejoice at Your
   Word, as one that finds great spoil." As a conqueror in the glad hour
   of victory shouts over the dividing of the prey, so do Believers
   rejoice in God's Word. I can recollect as a youth the great joy I had
   when the doctrines of Divine Grace were gradually opened up to me by
   the Spirit of Truth. I did not

   at first perceive the whole chain of precious Truth. I knew that Jesus
   had suffered in my place and that by believing in Him I had found
   peace. But the deep things of the Covenant of Grace came to me one by
   one, even as at night you first see one star and then another and
   by-and-by the whole heavens are studded with them.

   When it first became clear to me that salvation was all of grace, what
   a revelation it was! I saw that God had made me to differ from
   others--I ascribed my salvation wholly to His free favor. I perceived
   that, at the back of the grace which I had received, there must have
   been a purpose to give that grace and then the glorious fact of an
   election of grace flowed in upon my soul in a torrent of delight. I saw
   that the love of God to His own was without beginning--a boundless,
   fathomless, infinite, endless love--which carries every chosen vessel
   ofmercy from grace to glory. What a God is the God of Sovereign Grace!
   How did my soul rejoice as I saw the God of love in His sovereignty,
   immutability, faithfulness and omnipotence!

   "Among the gods there is none like unto You." So will any young convert
   here rejoice if he so loves the Law of the Lord as to continue studying
   it and receiving the illumination of the Holy Spirit concerning it. As
   the child of God sees into the deep things of God he will be ready to
   clap his hands for joy. It is a delightful sensation to feel that you
   are growing. Trees, I suppose, do not know when they grow, but men and
   women do--when the growth is spiritual. We seem to pass into a new
   Heaven and a new earth as we discover God's Truth. A new guest has come
   to live within our mind and He has brought with Him banquets such as we
   never tasted before.

   Oh how happy is that man to whose loving mind Holy Scripture is opening
   up its priceless treasures! We know that we love God's Word when we can
   rejoice in it. We wish that we could gather up every crumb of Scripture
   and find food in its smallest fragments. Even its bitter rebukes are
   sweet to us. I would kiss the very feet of Scripture and wash them with
   my tears! Alas, that I should sin against it by a thought, much more by
   a word! If it is but God's Word, though some may call it non-essential,
   we dare not think it so. The little things of God are more precious
   than the great things of man. The Truth of God is no trifle to one who
   has fought his way to it and learned it in the school of affliction. "O
   my Soul, you have trod down strength!" And that which you have gained
   in the battle is your joyful spoil.

   Further than this, we receive Holy Scripture with emotion. David says,
   "I hate and abhor lying: but Your Law do I love." He regards all that
   is opposed to the Law of the Lord as hateful lying. Those are hard
   words, David! Surely you are sinning against the charity of our
   cultured age! Yes, but when a man feels strongly, he cannot help
   speaking strongly. "I hate," says he and that is not enough. He says,
   "I hate and abhor lying." His whole being revolts at it. He means not
   only that lying with which in common life men would deceive their
   fellows--that is hateful enough. But he refers especially to that kind
   of teaching which gives the lie to the Law of the Lord. For he adds,
   "But your Law do I love."

   A good man's hate of falsehood is as intense as his love of the Truth
   of God. It must necessarily be so. He who worships the true God detests
   and loathes idols. In these days there are many men to whom the Truths
   of Scripture are like a pack of cards to be shuffled as occasion suits.
   To them peace and quietness are jewels and the Truth of God is as the
   mire of the streets. It does not matter to them what this man preaches
   and what that man writes. Hold your tongue--it will be all the same a
   hundred years from now--and really, nobody can be quite sure of
   anything!

   To the man that is loyal to his Lord and faithful to his convictions,
   it can never be so. He hates the teaching which belies his God. He that
   has never felt his blood boil against an error which robs God of His
   glory does not love the Law, nor will he know that great peace which
   comes by having the Law enshrined in the heart.

   One other virtue is included in the love of the Word. According to the
   context, great gratitude to God for His Word is formed in the believing
   heart. "Seven times a day do I praise You because of Your righteous
   judgments." God's judgments written in His Word are matters of praise--

   "This is the judge that ends the strife Where wit and reason fail."

   God's judgments actively going on in the world which tally with those
   predicted in His Word are also matters for adoring praise. The God of
   the Word is the God of the deed. What He says He does and every day and
   all the day we praise Him for it.

   Beloved, God may do what He wills and we will praise Him. He may say
   what He wills and we will praise Him. We read in His Word stern things,
   words of wrath and deeds of vengeance. Shall we try to soften them, or
   invent apologies for them? By no means. Jehovah our God is a consuming
   fire. We love Him, not as He is improved upon by "modern thought," but
   as He reveals Himself in Scripture. The God of Abraham, of Isaac and of
   Jacob--"this God is our God forever and ever--He will be our Guide,
   even unto death." Even when He is robed in the terror of His judgments,
   we sing praises unto His name. Even as they did at the Red Sea, when
   they saw Pharaoh and his host swallowed up in the mighty waters--"Sing
   unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider
   has He thrown into the sea."

   Our hallelujahs are "to Him that slew mighty kings; for His mercy
   endures forever." It is not mine to improve upon the character of
   Jehovah but to reverence and adore Him as He manifests Himself, either
   in judgment or in Divine Grace. I, who am less than nothing, and
   vanity, dare not scan His work, nor bring Him to my bar, lest I hear a
   voice saying, "No, but O man, who are you that replies against God?"
   What am I that I should be the ultimate judge of truth, or of justice,
   or of wisdom? Whatever God may be, or speak, or do--that is right--it
   is not mine to arraign my Maker but to adore Him.

   Extenuations, explanations and apologies may be produced from the best
   of motives. But too often they suggest to oppos-ers that it is admitted
   that God's most Holy Word contains something in it which is doubtful,
   or weak, or antiquated. It looks as though it needed to be defended by
   human wisdom. Brethren, the Word of the Lord can stand alone, without
   the propping which many are giving it. These props come down and then
   our adversaries think that the Book is down, too. The Word of God can
   take care of itself and will do so if we preach it and cease defending
   it. See that lion? They have caged him for his preservation--shut him
   up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes!

   See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion.
   What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men
   are intent upon defending a lion. O fools and slow of heart! Open that
   door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to
   encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure
   Gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty and it will soon clear its
   own way and ease itself of its adversaries. Yes, without attempting to
   apologize even for the severer Truths of Revelation, seven times a day
   do we praise the Lord for giving us His judgments, so righteous and so
   sure.

   I have shown you now, dear Friends, how this love lies deep in the
   heart and how it includes much of honor and reverence. Let me further
   remark that this love is productive of many good things. They that love
   God's Word will meditate on it and make it the man of their right hand.
   What a companion the Bible is! It talks with us by the way, it communes
   with us upon our beds--it knows us altogether and has a suitable word
   for every condition of life. Hence we cannot be long without listening
   to our Beloved's voice in this Book of books. I hope we realize the
   character described in the first Psalm--"His delight is in the Law of
   the Lord. And in His Law does he meditate day and night. And he shall
   be like a tree planted by the rivers of water."

   Love to the Word of God creates great courage in the defense of it. It
   is wonderful how the most timid creatures will defend their young, how
   even a hen becomes a terrible bird when she has to take care of her
   chicks--even so, quiet men and women contend earnestly for the faith
   once delivered to the saints and will not tamely submit to see the
   Truth of God torn in pieces by the hounds of error and hypocrisy.

   The love of the Law of God breeds penitence for having sinned against
   it and perseverance in obedience to it. It also begets patience under
   suffering, for it leads the man to submit himself to the will of God
   whom he loves so much. He says, "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems
   good to Him." The Word of God begets and fosters holiness. Jesus said,
   "Sanctify them through Your Truth; Your Word is Truth." You cannot
   study the Scriptures diligently and love them heartily without having
   your thoughts and acts savored and sweetened by them. A gentleness and
   kindness will be infused into your spirit by the very tone of the Word.
   A sacred delicacy and carefulness of conduct will surround your daily
   life in proportion as you steep your mind in Scripture.

   Let me commend to you, my beloved Friends, that you live with the Law
   of the Lord till even men of the world perceive that you keep choice
   company. The trashy lives of most people are the fit outcome of the
   trash which they read. A life fed on fiction is a life of fiction. A
   life fed on Divine fact will become a life of Divine fact. I have no
   time in which to show you all the sweet uses of the Law of the Lord--it
   does much for the formation of a perfect character. No molding force is
   so much to be desired as that of the Word of the Lord in the love of
   it.

   This much, however, I must add--if in any of us there is a love of the
   Law of the Lord, this is a work of the Holy Spirit. Nature does not
   love God and hence it does not love God's Law. Human nature is in open
   and active rebellion to everything that is commanded or commended by
   the thrice-holy God. If, then, you love God and His holy Law, the Holy
   Spirit has been at work in you. And by this new love it is proven that
   you are a new creature. The old nature delights itself in everything
   which is of the earth earthy. It is only the new and heavenly life
   which can appreciate and love heavenly things. My Brothers and Sisters,
   let your love of the Law be to you a proof of your regeneration--you
   have passed from darkness into marvelous light--for you love light. Let
   this be to you the evidence of your election--you had never loved God
   and His Law if He had not loved you first.

   What can your love to God be but a reflection of His love to you? Hear
   Him say, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." See, also, in
   this love of God's Law the prophecy of your ultimate perfection. We do
   not keep the Law as we would. But if we desire to keep it, that which
   holds the will is the real Law of our life. If there is in us a strong
   and passionate desire to

   accept and obey God's Word in everything and to be conformed to it in
   thought and life, that desire will ultimately get the victory. Use well
   the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God--and by the force of
   your love give sin sharp and heavy thrusts and you shall conquer until
   every thought is brought into captivity to the Law of Christ.

   II. We have spent too long a time upon our first point and shall have
   to be brief upon the other heads. Our second division is a very sweet
   part of the text. Here is A SPECIAL POSSESSION, "great peace have they
   which love Your Law."

   When Orientals meet each other their usual salutation is
   "Shalom"--"Peace be to you." The word does not mean merely quiet and
   rest but happiness or prosperity. Great peace means great prosperity.
   Those who love God's Law have great blessedness in this life as well as
   in that which is to come. In loving the Law of God we have intense
   enjoyment and real success in

   life.

   Let us, however, take the text as we have it in our Bibles. By peace
   here is not meant that a man who loves God's Law will have great peace
   with everybody, for that is not at all true. If David penned this
   sentence, he certainly was not an instance of great peace with men
   flowing out of his love to the Lord's Law. He was a man of war from his
   youth. He had peace as a shepherd boy but even then he had to kill
   lions and bears and soon after he had to meet a giant in single combat.
   Neither in his family nor in Saul's court was he at peace. He was
   hunted like a partridge upon the mountains and had to run for it from
   day to day. He had not much earthly peace.

   When he had done with Saul, the Philistines invaded the land. If it is
   possible, we are to live peaceably with all men. But He who has put
   enmity between the serpent and the woman never meant that we should
   enjoy the friendship of the world. The great peace which they have who
   love God's Law refers to a peace which can exist when strife rages all
   around us. Does not it mean this--first, great restfulness of the
   intellect? If we love God's Law in the sense in which we have explained
   it, so as to stand in awe of it and rejoice over it, the result will be
   great peace of mind.

   Everybody must find infallibility somewhere. Some think it is with the
   Pope at Rome, others dream that it is in themselves--the second theory
   is no more true than the first. Others of us believe that infallibility
   lies in the Word of God--this Book is to us the final court of appeal.
   When God's Holy Spirit leads us into the Truth which He has revealed in
   this Book, we feel a full assurance that we know the Truth of God and
   we speak from experience when we say that the loving belief of the Word
   brings us great intellectual repose. I care nothing what supposed
   philosophers may discover--they cannot discover anything true which is
   contrary to God's Word. I know that I am speaking that which is best
   for my fellow men in the highest and best sense, when I am not venting
   a theory but setting forth a Revelation from Heaven.

   He who gave us the infallible Book has all the responsibility for its
   contents. If I believe what God tells me and do what He bids me, the
   results are with Him and not with me. He is the ruler of the universe
   and not I. And if there are any terrible mysteries, He must explain
   them--not I--if they ought to be explained. I am like a servant who is
   sent to the door with a message. If I deliver the message which my
   Master gives me as I receive it, you must not be angry with me, for I
   did not invent the message, I only repeated it to you. Be angry with my
   Master, not with me.

   That is how I feel when I have done preaching. If I have honestly
   preached what I believe to be in God's Word, I am free from all
   responsibility for my ministry. My responsibility lies in endeavoring
   to interpret the Word as clearly as I can. I am not accountable for its
   teaching. I have not before me the unbearable burden of composing a
   Gospel. I remember well a minister, whom I much respect, saying to me,
   "I wish I could feel as you do. You have certain fixed principles about
   which you are sure and you have only to state them and enforce them.
   But I am in a formative state. I make my theology fresh every week."

   Dear me, I thought, what a hopeless state for progress and
   establishment! If the student of mathematics had no fixed law as to the
   value of numbers but made a new multiplication table every week, he
   would not make many calculations. If a baker were to say to me, "Sir, I
   am always altering the ingredients of my bread--I make a different
   bread every week," I should be afraid the fellow would poison me one of
   these days. I would rather go to a man whose bread I had found good and
   nourishing. I cannot afford to experiment in the Bread of Life.
   Besides, there is an intellectual unrest in all this kind of thing
   which is escaped from when we come to love the Word of the Lord as we
   love our lives. Oh, the rest of knowing within your very soul that the
   Truth of God you rest upon is a sure foundation!

   Those who love God's Word have also a great peace which comes of a
   pacified conscience. Conscience is as a terrible wild beast when
   aroused and irritated by a sense of sin. Nothing will quiet conscience
   effectually and properly but the great doctrine of the Substitutionary
   sacrifice of Christ. When we see that God has laid on His only begotten
   Son all our iniquities and that the chastisement of our peace was
   exacted of Him as our Substitute, then conscience smiles upon us. If
   God is satisfied with regard to our sins, we are satisfied, too. We see
   in the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ that which must satisfy
   Divine

   justice and therefore our conscience receives a safe and holy quiet and
   we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we
   have received the atonement.

   And the same conscience also brings great peace when it bears testimony
   to renewal of heart and life. When a man knows in his own soul that he
   seeks to do that which is right in the sight of God, and that he is
   aspiring after a pure, gracious, useful life, he has great peace even
   when others ridicule him. If you have taken your own way and acted
   dishonestly for gain, peace will not visit your heart. But if you have
   loved God's Law and kept to the way of strict integrity, you will have
   within your own bosom an angel of peace to strengthen you in the hour
   of sorrow. "The testimony of a good conscience is like the song of the
   angels to the shepherds at Bethlehem."

   Beloved, what a peace the love of the Word brings to the heart! All
   hearts require an object of love. How many hearts have been broken
   because the thing beloved has disappointed them and proved false to
   their hopes? But when you love God's Word, your love is not wasted upon
   an unworthy object. It introduces you to Christ and you love Him
   intensely, and however much you yield your heart to Him, you are always
   safe. Jesus is never a Judas to His friends. Jesus cannot be loved too
   well and hence the heart has great peace when it comes to Him.

   To love God's Word gives great peace as to our desires. You will not be
   grasping after wealth when the Word is better to you than the most fine
   gold. You will not be ambitious to shine among men when to you the Word
   of the Lord is a kingdom large enough. Your desires will be regulated
   by true wisdom when your heart is garrisoned by the Word of the Lord
   which dwells in you richly. When Christ Himself is our All in All, we
   are harbored in the haven of peace. When our desires find their
   pasturage around the Great Shepherd's feet, our ambitions cease to roam
   and we abide at home in peace. Content with a dinner of herbs in our
   Lord's company, we no longer pine for the stalled ox of the wicked who
   prospers in his way. To love the Law is to cease from covetousness and
   to cease from covetousness is great peace.

   When we love God's Law, we reach forward to the peace of resignation to
   God, acquiescence in His will and conformity to it. It is of no use to
   quarrel with God. Let me say more--it is disgraceful, ungrateful and
   wicked--for a child of God to do so. When we perfectly yield to God our
   heart's sorrow is at an end. The sting of affliction lies in the tail
   of our rebellion against the Divine will. When we love God's Word
   intensely, we take pleasure in persecutions, tribulations and
   infirmities, since they instruct us in the Divine promises and open up
   to us the hidden meanings of the Spirit. Our mind is so near to God and
   so pleased with all that pleases Him, that we do not desire to suffer
   less, or to be less weak, or less tried, than the will of God ordains.
   To love the Law and the Lawgiver goes a great way towards loving all
   that He appoints and decrees. And this is a garden of peace to all who
   know it.

   Besides, the love of the Word breeds a happy confidence in God as to
   all things in the past, the present and the future. Whatsoever the Lord
   does or permits must be right, or works right. "We know that all things
   work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the
   called according to His purpose." This is a very peace-breathing
   belief. When we love God's Word, we see God at the beginning of
   everything, God at the end of everything and God in the middle of
   everything. And as we see Him present whom we love, we cease from
   anxious thought. "My soul is even as a weaned child." Of such a man is
   it written, "His soul shall dwell at ease." The Lord whom he takes to
   be his Shepherd makes him to lie down in green pastures and he asks no
   more.

   III. I am cramped by want of time. I must, therefore, in a very few
   words sum up what deserves to be spoken at length upon the third point.
   Here is A SINGULAR PRESERVATION--"Nothing shall offend them." There
   shall be no stumbling block in their way.

   Intellectual stumbling blocks are gone. One asks me, "Do you mean to
   say that you read the Bible and do not find difficulties in it?" I
   regard the Word of God as being infallibly inspired and therefore if I
   find difficulties in it, which I must do from the very nature of
   things, I accept what God says about those difficulties and pass on.
   The Word of God does not profess to explain all mysteries--it leaves
   them mysteries and my faith accepts them as such. When out in a yacht
   in the Clyde we came opposite the great rock called the Rock of Arran.
   Our captain did not steam right ahead and rush at the rock--no, he did
   what was much wiser--he cast anchor for the night in the bay at the
   foot of it, so that we were sheltered from the wind by the vast
   headland.

   I remember looking up through the darkness of the night and admiring
   its great sheltering wing. A difficulty it was--it became a shelter.
   Every now and then in Scripture you come before a vast Truth. Will you
   steam against it and wreck your soul? Will you not, with truer wisdom,
   cast anchor under the lee of it? Do we need to understand everything?
   Are we to be all brain and no heart? What should we be the better if we
   understood all mysteries? I believe God. I bow before His Word. Is not
   this better for us than the conceit of knowing and understanding? We
   are as yet mere children. We know in part.

   Of course, we are blessed, in this enlightened age, with some
   wonderfully great men who understand more than the ancients and either
   know the unknowable, or think they do. In a sentence I will give you
   the result of my observation upon men and things--"No man knows
   everything except a fool and he knows nothing." I have not yet met with
   any exception to this rule--no, not even among the superior persons who
   prefer culture to Scripture. If you love the Word of God, you will see
   no difficulties which will in the least cause you to stumble. Love to
   the Word is the abolition of difficulties. Things hard to be understood
   become steppingstones on which to rise and not stumbling blocks over
   which to fall.

   "Nothing shall offend them." Does not this also mean that no moral duty
   shall be a cross to them which shall cause them to turn aside? They
   will not turn away from Jesus because a sin has to be abandoned, a lust
   denied, or a pleasure given up. The man who has counted the cost will
   not be offended by his Lord's requirements. Does Jesus say, "Do this"?
   He does it without demur. Does Jesus say, "Cease from that"? He
   withdraws his hand at once. When a man once loves the Law of God,
   albeit it involves self-denial, humiliation, loss--he shrinks not at
   the cost. Self-denial ceases to be self-denial when love commands it.
   The Cross of Christ is an easy yoke and soon ceases to be a burden. A
   duty which for a little season is irksome, becomes pleasurable before
   long to a lover of the Law of the Lord.

   Moreover, the man who loves God's Law is not offended if he has to
   stand alone. To some persons it is impossible to traverse a lonesome
   way but he that truly loves God's Law resolves that if all men forsake
   him he will cleave to the Lord and His Truth. Can you not stand alone?
   Does solitude offend you? As for me, I am resolved, by God's grace, not
   to follow a multitude to do evil. I will keep to the old faith and the
   old way if I never find a comrade between here and the celestial gates.
   I do not think a man loves God's Word thoroughly till it breeds in him
   a self-contained peace so that he is satisfied from himself and drinks
   water out of the cistern of his own experience.

   Paul was not offended though at his first answer no man stood by him.
   What have we to do with other men as supporters of our faith? To their
   own master they stand or fall. As for our Master in Heaven, let us
   follow Him through life and unto death. For to whom else could we go?
   He only has the words of Eternal Life.

   Neither will such persons ever be so offended as to despair of God's
   great cause. The night grows darker and darker but the man who loves
   the Divine Law expects the sun to rise at its appointed hour. Oh, that
   the Lord would hasten it in His own time! If He delays we will not,
   therefore, doubt. Divine Grace has produced, in past ages, men who were
   confident as to the triumph of the Truth of God when others feared for
   it. Look at the dauntless courage of Luther, who, when everybody else
   despaired of the Gospel, trusted his God and cheered his people and
   would not hear of drawing back. He could not pronounce the word
   "despair." "Luther, can you shake Rome? The harlot sits enthroned upon
   her seven hills, can you hope to dislodge her, or loose the captive
   nations from her bonds? Can you do this?"

   "No," said Luther, "but God can." Luther brought his God into the
   quarrel and you know which way the conflict turned. Not today, nor
   tomorrow, nor in twenty years, may God's Truth win--but the Lord can
   afford to wait--His lifetime is eternity. O Struggler for the Truth,
   make sure that you are with God and with the Truth and then be sure
   that God is with you in Truth and will deliver you. "Nothing shall
   offend them."

   It is wonderful, if you love God's Word, how things which are stumbling
   blocks to others cease to be injurious to you. Suppose you enjoy
   prosperity--if you love God's Law you will not be puffed up by
   deceitful riches or honors. You will be humble when all men admire you
   and all comforts flow in upon you. The Lord's Word in your heart will
   be as a salt to your estate so that it breeds in you neither
   worldliness, nor forgetfulness of God, nor pride. Your goods shall be
   your good, if you learn to use them for God's glory.

   The same will be true of adversity. He that can stand on the hilltop
   can stand in the valley. If you love God's Law you are the man to be
   poor, to be sickly, to be slandered. For you can bear it all because
   you have meat to eat that the world knows not of. Your love to God's
   Law will furnish you with a ceaseless stream of consolation. Nothing
   will dampen the flame of your spirit because the Lord feeds it secretly
   with a golden oil. O Servants of God, let us be glad together in this
   day of rebuke! The thunder is heard but it is mere noise. The sea roars
   but it is only roaring. Let us laugh at those who would silence
   faithful testimony. For the Lord God omnipotent reigns and great is the
   peace which He gives to the lovers of His Law.

   As for you who love not God's Law, who know nothing of Jesus, because
   you have never submitted to the Law of faith-- there is no "great
   peace" for you. There may be the deceptive cry of, "Peace, peace, when
   there is no peace." But may the Lord save you from it! Soul, there is
   no hope for you, you can not rest till you are at one with God. As
   surely as God made you, you must yield to your Maker and accept your
   Redeemer and be renewed by His Holy Spirit, or you are lost forever.

   I pray God the Holy Spirit lead you to accept what God has revealed and
   bow yourself to the supreme majesty of His Word--especially to the
   power and grace of the Incarnate Word, the Lord Christ Jesus. Then will
   you have great peace for this world and the next. God bless you,
   Beloved, for Christ's sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Hairs of Your Head Numbered

   PREACHED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Matthew 10:30.

   IT is most delightful to see how familiarly our Lord Jesus talked with
   His disciples. He was very great and yet He was among them as one that
   serves. He was very wise but He was gentle as a nurse with her
   children. He was very holy and far above their sinful infirmities but
   He condescended to men of low estate. He was their Master and Lord and
   yet their friend and servant. He talked with them, not as a superior
   who domineers but as a brother full of tenderness and sympathy.

   You know how sweetly He once said to them, "If it were not so, I would
   have told you." And thus He proved that He had hidden nothing from them
   that was profitable to them. He laid bare His very heart to them--His
   secret was with them. He loved them to the uttermost and caused the
   full river of His life to flow for their behalf.

   Now, in this chapter, if you read it at home, you will see how wisely
   the Lord Jesus deals with their fears. He is afraid lest they should be
   afraid, anxious that they should not be anxious--so He talks to them as
   a very tender friend would talk to some very nervous person--some
   weak-minded brother or sister. And He speaks in such a way that if they
   were not comforted, surely they must have willfully resolved to put
   comfort from them. He says to them, "Fear not them which kill the body
   but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to
   destroy both soul and body in Hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a
   farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your
   Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear you not,
   therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows."

   Brethren, admire the tenderness of our Lord Jesus and imitate it. Let
   us try to be equally kind to our fellow-Christians. Let us never
   attempt to show off, or to make ourselves somebody, or to exhibit our
   strength of faith--for that will grieve the tender little ones and make
   them shrink into self-doubts. Let us consider their weakness and the
   help that we can render them, their sorrow and the comfort that we can
   afford them. Jesus was Himself a Comforter, or He could not have spoken
   of "another Comforter." And so let us be comforters in our measure,
   treading in His steps.

   This reminds me, also, to say how very homely the Savior's talk became
   with His disciples in consequence of this desire to cheer their hearts.
   Why, He talks, I have often thought, just in the way in which anyone of
   us would have talked to our children when desirous to encourage them!
   There is nothing about the Savior's language which makes you say to
   yourself, "What a grand speech! What a rhetorician! What an orator He
   is!" If any man makes you say that of him, suspect that he is off the
   lines a little. He is forgetting the true object of a loving mind and
   is seeking to be a fine speaker and to impress people with the idea
   that he is saying something very wonderful and saying it very grandly.

   The Savior quite ignores all idea of beautiful expression in just
   trying to bring forth His meaning in the plainest possible manner. He
   sought the shortest way to the hearts of those whom He addressed and He
   cared nothing whether flowers grew or did not grow by the roadside.
   Hence there is no eloquence like the eloquence of Jesus--there is a
   style of majestic simplicity about Him that is altogether His own and
   in this lies unsurpassed sublimity. I now and then see in books
   quotations and the names of the authors are put at the foot of the
   extracts. But when ever I observe that the name of Christ is put below
   a quotation I regard it as a superfluity which ought to be struck out.
   For there is never any fear of mistaking the language of the Son of God
   for that of any of the sons of men.

   He has a style all His own. This, however, is incidental to the design
   aimed at. For He does not study style of rhetoric in any degree but
   simply aims at conveying His thought. Hence He speaks in homely words,
   such as those of our text-- "The very hairs of your head are all
   numbered." Your great and learned men will not talk about the hairs of
   your head. All their discourse is upon the nebulae and the stars,
   geological periods and organic remains, evolution and the solidarity of
   the race, and I know not what besides. They will not stoop to common
   things.

   They must say something great, sublime, dazzling, brilliant, full of
   fireworks. The Master is as far removed from all this as the heavens
   are from the gaudiest canopy that ever bedecked a mortal's throne. He
   talks in homely language because He is at home. He speaks the language
   of the heart because He is all heart, and wants to reach the hearts of
   those to whom He speaks. I commend the text to you for that reason,
   though for many others besides. "The very hairs of your head are all
   numbered."

   Thinking over these words, they seem to have in them four things at
   least, and we may take four views of their mean-ing--and the first is,
   foreordination--"The very hairs of your head have been all numbered."
   You will find that to be a more accurate version of the text than that
   which is before us. The verb is not in the present but in the perfect
   tense. The very hairs of your head have been all numbered before worlds
   were made.

   Secondly, I see in the text, knowledge. This is very clear--God so
   knows His people that the very hairs of their head are all numbered by
   Him. Thirdly, there is here valuation--He sets such a high estimate
   upon His own servants, that of them it is said, "The very hairs of your
   head are all numbered." You are so precious that the least portion of
   you is precious. The King keeps a register of every part of you, "The
   very hairs of your head are all numbered."

   And, lastly, here is most evidently preservation. The Savior has been
   telling them not to fear those that can kill the body and are not able
   to kill the soul. He speaks of God's preserving them. In another place
   He told His disciples, "There shall not a hair of your head perish,"
   and He intends the same sense in this case. There shall be a perfect
   preservation of His people. "The very hairs of your head are all
   numbered."

   I. Come, then, to the first thought. Here is FOREORDINATION. "The very
   hairs of your head are all numbered." Most Christian people believe in
   the Providence of God but all Christian people are not prepared to
   follow out the Truth of God which that involves. They appear to believe
   that there is a Providence overruling but they seem to have forgotten
   that there always was such a Providence and that Providence must be,
   after all, a matter of Divine foresight. God must have foreseen, or He
   could not have provided, for "Providence" is, after all, but the Latin
   for foresight. And the provision which God makes is but the result of
   His vision beforehand of such-and-such a thing as needful to us.
   Foresight must essentially belong to any true and real Providence.

   How far does God's foresight extend? It extends, we believe, to the
   entire man and all about him. God ordained of old when we should be
   born and where and who our parents should be and what our lot in
   infancy and what our path in youth and what our position in manhood.
   From the first to the last it has all happened according to the Divine
   purpose, even as it was ordained by the Divine will. Not only the man
   but all that concerns the man, is foreordained of the Lord-- "The very
   hairs of your head," that is to say, all that which has anything to do
   with you, which comes into any kind of contact with you and is in any
   sense part and parcel of yourself, is under the Divine foresight and
   predestination.

   Everything is in the Divine purpose, and has been ordered by the Divine
   wisdom--all the events of your life--the greater, certainly--the
   smaller, with equal certainty. It is impossible to draw a line in
   Providence and say this is arranged by Providence and that is not. It
   must take everything in its sweep, all that happens. It determines not
   only the movement of a star but the blowing of a grain of dust along
   the public road. All this, from the very nature of the thing, is clear.
   God's Providence knows nothing of things so little as to be beneath its
   notice, nothing of things so great as to be beyond its control. Nothing
   is too little or too great for God to rule and overrule.

   All that a man undergoes is also ordained of Heaven. The hairs of your
   head, should they turn white in a single night by grief, will not do so
   without Divine permission. Should you be spared till every hair
   constitutes a part of the crown of glory of your old age, you shall not
   be older than God wills. You shall neither die before your time, nor
   live beyond it. All that concerns you, I say, from first to last, all
   that is of you and in you and around you--

   "All shall come and last and end, As shall please your heavenly
   Friend." "The very hairs of your head are all numbered."

   And this is what I call your attention to--what is the source of this
   numbering? It is not that they are all numbered by some recording angel
   who is set to do the work. It may be so but that is not the thing we
   have to consider tonight. This numbering is done by your Father, who is
   in Heaven. The ordinances that rule your life are in His hands. Unto
   Him belong the issues from death. And this makes it to be such a happy
   fact. Fate is hard and cruel. But predestination is fatherly and wise
   and kind. The wheels of Providence are always high and terrible. But
   they are full of eyes, and those eyes look with the clear sight

   of wisdom and righteousness and love--and they look towards the good of
   them that love God and are the called according to His purpose.

   Terrible, indeed, it is to think of things as fixed by an eternal plan.
   But the terror is taken from it when we feel that we are children of
   this great Father and that He wills nothing but what shall, in the end,
   work out our conformity to the image of His Son and display the glory
   of His own righteousness and Divine Grace and Truth. Dear Friend,
   perhaps you are blind! You will feel sweet content in the dark when you
   can say, "This blindness was determined of my tender and loving Father.
   I know it was so, since the very hairs of my head are all numbered."

   Or it may be that you have from childhood been the subject of another
   physical infirmity, which has caused you great loss and pain and even
   now it is a threat to bring you suddenly to the grave. Had this cross
   been laid upon you by an enemy, you might have complained but it has
   been ordained for you by Him who cannot be unkind or unjust. Therefore
   say, "It is the Lord, let Him do what seems Him good." We are taught to
   pray, "Your will be done." Dare we contradict our own prayers by
   kicking against that will? Job glorified God and yet he spoke no more
   than he should have done when he said, "The Lord gave and the Lord has
   taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

   I always admire in Job his ascribing all his afflictions to the Lord,
   because apparently it was the Sabeans that took away his oxen and
   asses. It was the Chaldeans that took away his camels. It was the wind
   from the wilderness, raised by the devil, that took away his children.
   Job does not care so much for Sabeans and Chaldeans and devils, as to
   mention them. But he cries, looking to the First Cause of all events,
   "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the
   Lord." When we can get at the back of visible things and see, not
   merely the puppets, but the strings that move them, then we come near
   to wisdom.

   Wicked beings act according to their own free will and therefore the
   whole of the moral evil of their doings rests wholly and solely with
   themselves. But the great God, somehow, mysteriously, quite clear of
   all complicity with human sin, effects His own purposes, which are
   always good and right. He it is who from evil, either real or seeming,
   still produces good and better still, in infinite progression. When, I
   say, we get to this First Force and real source of power, then we get
   where we learn wisdom and we are helped in the struggle of life. When
   we see that all things are arranged by Him who orders all things
   according to the counsel of His own will, then we bow our heads and
   worship.

   The practical outcome of all this, to every Christian, should be just
   this, "If it is so, that all things in my life are ordered of God, even
   to the hairs of my head, then let me learn submission. Let me bow
   before the Supreme will which ought to have its way. Though it cost me
   many a tear and many a pang, yet will I never be content until I can
   say, 'Father, Your will be done.' " Human nature prompts us to ask
   that, if it is possible, the bitter cup may pass away from us. But the
   Divine nature, which God has put into His true children, helps them
   still to struggle after full submission, till at last they are
   conquerors over themselves and God is glorified in the temple of their
   being. I am sure, my Brothers, our happiness lies very much in our
   complete submission to the Lord our God.

   If you cannot bring your estate to your mind, bring your mind to your
   estate. The old Proverb bids us cut our coat according to our lot and
   he that can clothe his mind with the garments which Providence allots
   him needs not to envy my Lord Mayor in his robes. Joy lies more in the
   mind than in the place or the possession. He that has enough, though he
   has but a few shillings a week, has more than the possessor of
   millions. He that is content is the truly rich man. Your money-grubber
   is always poor, how can he be otherwise but poor in the worst sense of
   the word? Oh, it is a blessed thing when one can think of all the
   events of Providence. That God is ordering them all--then we dissolve
   our own will into the sweetness of God's will and our sorrow is at an
   end!

   This, I think, should, in addition to teaching us submission, always
   give us such a degree of consolation in the time of trouble that we
   even rise into something like joy. I was reading today of old Mr. Dodd,
   who is a person the Puritans are always quoting--a man who did not
   write books but he seems to have said things with which other people
   made their books attractive. This old Mr. Dodd, it is said, had a great
   trouble, a bodily complaint I will not mention but it is one of the
   most painful a man can suffer from. And when he was told that this had
   come upon him and that it was incurable, the old man shed a few natural
   tears at the great and excruciating pain.

   But at last he said, "This is evidently from God and God never sent me
   anything but it was for my good, therefore let us kneel down together
   and thank God for this." It was well said of the old man and it was
   well done of him that he thanked God most heartily. Oh yes, let us
   kneel down together and thank God for our trouble! Is it consumption? A
   dying child? A farm that does not pay? A business that is gradually
   leaking away?--Let us firmly believe that our God has never sent us
   anything but what He meant good by it. Therefore, let us kneel down and
   thank God with all our hearts. If your child should come to

   you and say, "Father, I thank you for the rod. I know it has been for
   my good," you would feel it was time to have done correcting him.

   Evidently he is not so dull and foolish as to need a sharp awakening by
   chastisement. He sees the evil of his disobedience and the necessity of
   chastisement and now he can be left to follow out the lessons he has
   learned. When you and I begin to be familiar with affliction and to
   thank God for it, we are pretty nearly getting through it. I believe,
   myself, that there is a period often set to the sorrows of saints and
   that the period is usually coincident with their perfect acquiescence
   in them. When they are content to have all things as God wills, God
   will be content to let them have it as much as they will. When two
   wills run together, our will and God's will, then we shall find a sweet
   double stream of silver peace flowing throughout the rest of our lives.

   Therefore, let us come to this--if even the very hairs of our head are
   all numbered, if everything is really ordained of the Most High
   concerning His people--let us rejoice in the Divine appointment and
   take it as it comes and praise His name, whether our allotment is rough
   or smooth, bitter or sweet. Let us cheerfully say, "If the Lord wills
   it then we will it, too. If He has purposed it, even so let it be,
   since all things work together for good to them that love God, even to
   them that are called according to His purpose."

   I shall not plunge into the slough of difficulties which some of you
   are sure to see lying in the way. I trip over the mire with the nimble
   feet of faith. I shall not discuss how foreordination can be shown to
   be consistent with the responsibility of man and the free will of man
   and all that. I believe in the responsibility of man and the free will
   of man as much as I believe in predestination. I believe in the
   responsibility of man as much as you do, and I believe in the free
   agency of man as much as anybody living. How can I believe both
   doctrines? I evidently can believe them both, for I do believe them.

   I have learned this--that the man whose creed is consistent in the
   judgment of others usually has a very scanty, poverty-stricken creed.
   And a good deal of it is rather theory than Revelation. When you come
   to make up your theology into a system, you are very apt to act like a
   builder, who fills in between the great stones mortar of his own
   mixing. I am content to pile up the unhewn stones and put in no cement
   of my own. I will not shape the Truth of God, much less add to it. "If
   you lift up your tool upon it, you have polluted it." He who takes the
   Truth of God as he finds it in the inspired Book has enough material
   and it is all sound.

   I believe that all the so-called "contradictions" in Scripture are only
   apparent ones. I cannot expect to understand the mysteries of God,
   neither do I wish to do so. If I understood God, He could not be the
   true God. A doctrine which I cannot fully grasp is a Truth of God which
   is intended to grasp me. When I cannot climb, I kneel. Where I cannot
   build an observatory, I set up an altar. A great stone which I cannot
   lift serves me for a pillar, upon which I pour the oil of gratitude and
   adore the Lord my God. How idle it is to dream of our ever running
   parallel in understanding with the infinite God! His knowledge is too
   wonderful for us. It is so high--we cannot attain to it.

   Have you never heard of the inquisitive boy who had been forbidden to
   go into his father's study. He tried the door but it was fastened--all
   proper and safe entrance was out of the question. But he could not be
   content till he had satisfied his curiosity and therefore he climbed up
   to the window. To his father's horror, up two stories high, stood his
   little boy, looking in upon him and crying with childish pride,
   "Father, I can see you." What a position of danger for the child! He
   must be gotten down and taught not to climb there again. Shall we
   imitate this childish folly? Brethren, I will not attempt it. I do not
   want to endanger my soul and perhaps even my reasoning powers, by
   straining after the unknowable.

   Poor child that I am, I would rather love God and wonder at Him, than
   regard Him with cold, intellectual apprehensions and dream that I know
   Him altogether. I pray to grow in the knowledge of that which the Lord
   reveals--and I pray for grace to limit my curiosity by the boundaries
   of His revelation. Surely these are far enough apart for the largest
   researches. As for the difficulty before us, I do not understand it.
   And what good would it be to me if I did understand it? I know that
   whatever a man does that is wrong, he does it of his own free will. And
   all the sin in the world I believe to be caused by the willful and
   censurable choice of the transgressor.

   But I know that, at the same time, there is a grasp of foresight and
   predestination so comprehensive that everything accords with the Divine
   foreknowledge and predestination. Let our hair grow as it will, or let
   us pluck out what hairs we please, let nothing interfere with our
   absolute liberty in that matter. And yet the hairs of our head are all
   numbered. So much for foresight.

   II. Now, secondly, here is KNOWLEDGE--God's intimate knowledge of His
   people. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." Observe what a
   full knowledge God has of each one of His children. If there were
   nobody else in the world except you--and God had nothing else to do but
   to think of you. If there were no objects of His attention beyond
   yourself and His

   eternal mind had no object of consideration but you, only, the Lord
   would not then know more about you than He does now. The omniscience of
   God is concentrated upon every single being and yet it is not divided
   by the multiplicity of its objects. It is not the less upon any single
   one because there are so many.

   How it should astonish us that the Lord knows us at this moment so
   intimately as to count every hair of our heads! The knowledge which the
   Lord has concerning His people is most minute and takes in those small
   matters which men set down as unconsidered trifles. He knows what you
   and I hardly wish to know--He knows that which we may be content to
   leave unknown--"The very hairs of your head are all numbered."

   He knows us better than our friends know us. Many a man has a kind
   friend who knows his affairs most accurately, but even such a familiar
   acquaintance has never counted the hairs of his head. No man's wife has
   done that, nor even the doctor who has, by his long attendance upon us,
   become aware of the condition and health of every part of our body. God
   knows us better than we know ourselves. Nobody knows how many hairs he
   has upon his own head. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered
   by One who knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows matters
   about us that we could not of ourselves discover. There are secrets of
   the heart which are unknown even to ourselves but they are not secrets
   to Him. His penetrating knowledge reaches to the most hidden things of
   life and spirit.

   Do you not think that a charmingly tender knowledge is intended when we
   are told that the Lord counts the very hairs of our heads? Does it not
   intimate how much He thinks of them? There are some who love us very
   much and they are always aiming at our good--God goes beyond them all
   in a more than motherly care of us, strikingly minute in its
   thoughtfulness. We see that His love passes the love of women, for the
   very hairs of our head are numbered--and that at every period of our
   lives. Does it not imply a very sympathetic care? When one has a sick
   child and watches over it night and day, every little fact about it is
   known and noted.

   The darling looks a little pale today, or he fails a little in his
   appetite. The symptom is anxiously noted. You know how easily love can
   degenerate into foolishness in that direction. But, without any folly,
   God is infinitely careful and kind towards us, for He knows when we
   have lost a hair from our head. We cannot make one hair white or black
   but He knows when they turn white with grief or age. He understands all
   about our fading and our growing gray, the little details concerning
   our body as well as the minute circumstances that try our souls. It
   seems to me--I do not know how it strikes you--as meaning a very, very,
   very intimate, tender, and affectionate knowledge of us. And the fact
   that the Lord thus graciously looks upon us should fill us with joy.

   This careful, tender knowledge on God's part is constant. He knows the
   number of the hairs of our head today, tomorrow and all the days--He
   without ceasing watches all the processes which even in the least
   manner affect our lives. So intimate is His knowledge of us that our
   lying down and our rising up, our thoughts and our ways, are all
   continually before Him. And what are we to learn from this? Does it not
   make life a solemn business? Who will dare to trifle with the Lord God
   so near? Do you keep bees? Have you ever taken out one of the frames
   from their hive and held it up to observe what they are doing on both
   sides of the comb?

   Or have you looked at them through one of those interesting hives,
   furnished with a glass, through which the whole business is visible?
   The bees scarcely notice that you watch them, certainly they are not
   eye-servers, for they are so industrious that they could not do more
   even if all eyes in the universe were fixed on them. What manner of
   persons ought we to be when we know that God is observing us and noting
   every movement of our being! What care there should be as to our
   feeling, our thinking, our resolving, our desiring, our doing and our
   speaking, when everything is minutely known to God, even to the
   counting of the very hairs of our head!

   What perfect consecration we ought to maintain! If God so values me, so
   knows me, that He counts the very hairs of my head, ought I not to give
   to God my whole self even to the minutest detail? Should I not give Him
   not merely my head but my hair, as that penitent woman did, who unbound
   her tresses that she might make a towel of them, to wipe the feet that
   she had washed with her tears? Ought we not to consecrate to God the
   very least things as well as the greater things? Is it not written,
   "Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to
   the glory of God"? "You are not your own, you are bought with a
   price"--and when the inventory was taken, the Lord did not leave a hair
   of your head out of the catalog.

   Certainly He has not left your hair to any of you Christian women to
   indulge your vanity and pride. It is every tress of it your Lord's. He
   does not leave to you men even a part of your talent, of your mind, or
   of your body. Your whole self is altogether His and He takes stock of
   it and expects you to include it in your practical consecration. He
   observes what you do with little things--He notes even those minor
   matters which seem too inconsiderable to come under rule at all. We are
   under Law

   to Christ and that Law covers the whole man. Should not our belief in
   this knowledge of us by the Lord, help us in prayer? Do not some
   Brethren pray as if they were informing God about themselves?

   I think I have heard remarks in prayer which seemed to imply that God
   was not acquainted with the Shorter Catechism-- friends have even gone
   over the doctrines of grace as if the Lord was not aware of them. I
   have heard others pray as if God did not know the experience of
   Christians--as if they have had to explain to Him some of their doubts
   and fears. When we pray we do not need to explain anything, for the
   Lord knows all about us, even to the hairs of our head. Dear friends,
   we have no need to explain our difficulties and perplexities to our
   God. "Your heavenly Father knows"--let this be your comfort.

   He knows what things we have need of before we ask Him. This is a great
   help in prayer. It may shorten your prayer a good deal if you go to God
   with the expression of your desire and plead His promise and submit
   your spirit to His Divine discretion. Such a shortening of its length
   will be an addition to the strength of prayer. You need not be afraid,
   as if God did not know, but come sweetly to Him who knows all about you
   and will not act upon your faulty information but upon His own certain
   knowledge.

   This persuasion will help us to feel that the Lord will deliver us out
   of all difficulties for He knows the way out of every labyrinth--He
   perceives the answer of every enigma. If He counts the very hairs of
   your head, depend upon it, He has a high discretion for greater things
   and He is a matchless Pilot whereby, through waves and rocks and quick
   sands, He will gently steer your way and bring you to the desired
   haven. There is so much of comfort in this doctrine of the infinite
   knowledge of God that I wish every poor sinner here would remember that
   God knows all about him and consequently can deal with all his sins and
   fears.

   If you want mercy, come to the Lord at once. He knows your way, He
   knows your position, He knows your broken heart, He knows your weary
   struggles, He knows what you cannot express. The whole of the wrong you
   have worked and the whole of the right you desire, He perceives. For
   "the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

   III. Now, thirdly and very briefly--Does not this text express
   VALUATION? "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." It seems,
   then, that lowly saints are exceedingly precious to their Lord. The
   whole of Christ's flock on earth were very poor people. If they had a
   boat and a few nets, it was all they were worth. If anybody had seen
   Christ in His little Church on earth, he would have said, "There is not
   a respectable person among them." That is how we talk nowadays. As if
   it were respectable to have money. As if respect did not belong to
   character but only to possessions. Yet those twelve poor men He picked
   out and He thought so much of them that He numbered the hairs of their
   heads.

   Yonder is a poor old man in the aisle and he has a fustian jacket on.
   Never mind his fustian jacket--the very hairs of his head are all
   numbered. Yonder is a poor old woman just come out of the workhouse and
   she loves to hear the Gospel. She is such a very poor old woman that
   nobody likes to invite her into a pew. I speak to the shame of such
   pride. She is one of Christ's saints and saintship is a patent of
   nobility. If you sold a farm you might count the trees but not the
   boughs and the leaves. But if you sold a jeweler's shop, you would
   count all the pins and all the diamond rings, because everything is
   precious there. Now God reckons everything about His people to be so
   precious that He even takes stock of the hairs of their heads.

   How precious in the sight of the Master His saints are! I have been
   trying to work out a calculation--if the hairs of their heads are worth
   so much that God registers them, what are their heads worth? Who shall
   tell me that? If their heads are worth so much that the Lord Jesus
   Christ died to redeem them, who can tell what their souls are worth, or
   rather what they are not worth? They are worth more than all the worlds
   put together. Ask a mother what her child is worth. "What will you take
   for your boy, Mistress?" My Friends, if she sold him at the price she
   would consider a fair compensation, we could not all of us make up the
   money if we put all that we have into one common fund.

   The Lord set such a value on His children that He gave His Son Jesus
   Christ to die rather than He would lose one of them. And Jesus Himself
   chose to die on the Cross that none of His little ones should perish.
   Oh, the value and the preciousness of a child of God! Worlds would not
   serve for pence to be the basis of the valuation. Let us prize the
   people of God very highly, feeling as the Psalmist did when he said, "O
   God, You are my God--my goodness extends not to You. But to the saints
   that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight."

   You please Jesus when you do good unto one of the least of these, His
   children. He reckons that you have done it unto Him. If they are so
   dear to Him, let them be dear to you. And as some of those whom Christ
   has purchased with His blood are still lost--

   "O come, let us go and find them! In the paths of death they roam."

   If the hairs of their head are counted, what must their souls be worth?
   Let us feel that all we can do to save a soul from death is but cheap
   work compared with the priceless gem we seek.

   O come, you Divers, plunge into the sea--the pearls you bring up shall
   well repay your utmost risk and toil! Come, you Hunters after souls,
   there is no such chase as this! Hunt after souls as the brave Switzer
   chases the chamois upon the mountains and let no difficulties daunt
   you, for "he that wins souls is wise." There is no more profitable
   purchase than this, though you should lay down your lives to bring men
   to Christ. How very much does God value the souls of His people!

   IV. Lastly, here is PRESERVATION. See how carefully God intends to
   preserve His own people, since He begins by counting the hairs of their
   heads. I say it, for there is Scripture at the back of my assertion,
   that none of the people of God shall suffer in the long run the
   smallest loss. "There shall not a hair of your head perish," said
   Christ to His believing people. If I were to lose a hair from my head,
   I should not know it--should you? But God would know if His servants
   lost a hair of their heads and He makes the promise to them of such
   complete protection that there shall not a hair of their head perish.
   Remember that other text, "The Lord keeps all His bones, not one of
   them is broken."

   Now, a Christian man may break the bones of his body but in a real and
   spiritual sense he is free from such danger, God will keep him--yes,
   keep him to all eternity! "There shall not a hoof be left behind," said
   Moses to Pharaoh and there shall not a bone, nor a piece of a bone of
   the ransomed, be left in the dominion of death and the grave. When the
   trumpet shall sound, the whole of redeemed manhood shall start into
   life. When Peter came out of prison, the angel smote him, and his
   chains fell off and he came out of prison but he did not quit till he
   had put on his sandals. He did not leave even a pair of old shoes for
   Herod and his jailers.

   So shall it be with the children of God at last--"from beds of dust and
   silent clay," when the angel's trumpet shall ring out, they shall arise
   and they shall leave nothing behind. They shall not leave an essential
   particle in the tomb. They shall rise, body, soul and spirit completely
   redeemed of the Lord. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered."
   Christ knows what He has bought and He will have it. Even to the last
   atom He will have that which He has purchased. We shall not enter into
   our new life maimed or having one eye. He will preserve His people in
   their entirety, and present them, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
   such thing."

   Observe that in the close neighborhood of the text, we read of
   persecution. Beloved, if persecution should come, it cannot really harm
   you. The three Hebrew children, when they came out of the fire, were
   not scorched or singed. There was not the smell of fire upon their
   hats, their hose, or their hair. When God's people pass through the
   fires of persecution, they shall not be losers. They shall go through
   the fires altogether unharmed--no--they shall win the martyr's palm and
   crown, which shall make them glorious forever, even if they die in the
   flames. Therefore, fear nothing. Nothing shall by any means harm you.
   In the end your sufferings shall be your enrichment. Though you count
   not your lives dear unto you, precious shall your blood be in His
   sight.

   Besides persecution, there may come to you an accident or sudden
   calamity. Never be afraid. It is half the battle, in an accident, to
   exhibit presence of mind--therefore let the child of God be calm and
   self-possessed. For although you should suffer in body, your true self
   will be safe. Though in the tornado, or in the shipwreck, or in
   cholera, or in fire--you shall be placed in outward peril even as
   others are--yet your real life is insured by the Covenant of Grace from
   all injury. Therefore rest in the Lord, for you shall be safe though a
   thousand should fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand.
   If you lose, your loss shall be transmuted into a real gain.

   Sickness, if sickness comes, shall work your health. God's children
   have often been ripened by sickness. They are like the sycamore fig,
   which never gets sweet until it is bruised. Amos was a bruiser of
   sycamore figs and affliction is God's Amos to bruise us into sweetness.
   Maturity comes by affliction. Alas, you say, "I have lost a dear
   friend." Trust in God and by Divine friendship the void in your heart
   shall be more than filled. Have you lost a child? The Lord will be
   better to you than ten sons. Should your father and your mother be
   taken from you, you shall find them both in Christ and be no orphan.
   Thus does the promise stand--"No good thing will he withhold from them
   that walk uprightly." "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

   Trust, then, in the Lord at all hazards. Trust in Him in deep waters as
   well as on the shore. When the waves are raging, trust your God as well
   as when the sea is as glass. When the sea roars and the mountains shake
   with the swelling thereof, trust in Jehovah without the shade of a
   doubt, for "the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Why should
   you fear? Your vessel carries Jesus and all His fortune. If you are
   drowned He cannot swim, He sinks or swims with you. For thus has He put
   it, "Because I live, you shall live, also." If your Lord lives, you
   must live. Therefore, comfort one another with these words and go
   quietly, patiently, happily, joyfully through the world, under Divine
   preservation, since "the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

   As for you who are not in Christ, I feel a great sorrow for you because
   you cannot partake in the joy of this preservation. As for the
   righteous, the stars in their courses fight for them and the beasts of
   the field are in league with them. But as for you, earth groans to bear
   the weight of such a sinner, and the elements are impatient to avenge
   the quarrel of God's covenant by destroying you. All things work
   together to bring upon you the justice which you provoke. Flee! Flee!
   Flee! You have but one friend left--flee to Him! That Friend, "the
   Friend of Sinners," entreats you to come to Him. Hear Him as He cries
   in most tender accents, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are
   heavy-laden and I will give you rest."

   Come to Jesus--come at once, for His dear love's sake! O, may His
   Father draw you to Him now! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Knowing the Lord Through Pardoned Sin

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JANUARY 29, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

   "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his
   brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the
   least of them unto the greatest of them, says the Lord; for I will
   forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more." Jeremiah
   31:34.

   TRUE knowledge of God is a Covenant blessing. To know Jehovah as the
   only living and true God, to know Him personally and intimately, so as
   to say with David, "You are my God"--this is one of the choice
   blessings of the Covenant of Grace which grace bestows upon all the
   chosen. In this prophecy Jehovah declares that He will yet give this
   knowledge to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. And this is
   our hope for the long-wandering seed of Abraham, whom He will yet
   restore and save.

   If we regard the passage before us as instructive in its order, the
   knowledge of God follows closely upon the application of the Law to the
   heart. Read, "After those days, says the Lord, I will put My Law in
   their inward parts and write it in their hearts. And will be their God
   and they shall be My people . . . and they shall all know Me, from the
   least of them unto the greatest of them, says the Lord." The work of
   grace usually begins, so far as we can perceive it, by the Holy
   Spirit's bringing the Law into contact with the inner man. The Law
   outside of a man is forgotten. He may profess a reverence for it but it
   does not affect his desires and thoughts.

   But when the Holy Spirit begins to put the Law into the inward parts,
   the immediate result is the discovery of our shortcomings and
   transgressions. The more the man's heart sees the perfect holiness of
   the Law of God the more he perceives his own unholiness and impurity.
   He sets his own conduct in contrast with the Divine righteousness and
   he is overwhelmed with shame, sorrow and dismay. He feels that if God
   should mark iniquities he could not stand in His presence--more--that
   if the Lord at once condemned him, He would be just. Law-work is
   grace-work in its darker dress. It is the axe which rough-hews the
   timber which grace goes on to fashion and smooth.

   By the operation of the Law upon the conscience, convincing the man of
   sin, of righteousness and of judgment, the Holy Spirit works towards
   the transforming of the heart. He takes away the stone out of it and
   makes it to be a fleshy, tender, sensitive thing. Then with His own
   finger He writes the Divine Law upon the mind and the affections so
   that the Divine commands become the center of the man's life and the
   governing force of his action. The man now loves that Law which before
   he, at his very best, only feared--it becomes his will to do the will
   of God. By a miracle of Divine Grace his nature is changed so that its
   tendencies, which were all towards evil are corrected by new tendencies
   which are all towards good.

   Now is the Law of God indeed glorious, for it rules by love. It was
   terrible when written on those tablets of stone which Moses dashed to
   pieces. But its radiance is like that of a pearl most precious when it
   gently influences our manhood from the central throne of the heart. It
   is now written on a tablet which will endure throughout eternity, for
   it is engraved upon an immortal spirit. As the Law is written on the
   heart, a manifestation is made of God Himself. The man is made to know
   himself, to know God's Law and thus he is led to know the Lord. Now he
   acquaints himself with God and is at peace.

   Of this gracious knowledge of the Lord I am going to speak this
   morning. This is to be our first head--the one essential
   knowledge--"They all shall know Me, from the least of them unto the
   greatest of them, says the Lord." The second head equally arises out of
   the text--it is the one grand means of obtaining this essential
   knowledge. The text tells us how this knowledge is imparted by the
   Lord--"For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin
   no more." When we receive pardon from the hands of God, then we know
   Him, indeed. For, as Zacharias said in his song, our Lord Jesus has
   come "to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission
   of their sins."

   I. To begin with, then, we have here, first of all, THE ONE ESSENTIAL
   KNOWLEDGE. It is a great Truth of God that, "This is life eternal, to
   know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." To
   know God is to live in the light. This knowledge brings with it trust,
   peace, love, holiness and acceptance. Do not read this passage as some
   do and tear it up by its roots and then use it as if it were a prophecy
   of the universal spread of religion. Do not dream of a day when we
   shall not need to teach our brother and our neighbor the great Truths
   of our holy faith--at any rate, the text before us says nothing of the
   kind.

   This prophecy is to be read as it stands and in its own connection. In
   the first place, as we have already said, it relates to the house of
   Israel and the house of Judah. At the present time these have forgotten
   the Lord as to a true spiritual worship of Him. For they have rejected
   the Messiah, in whose face God's glory is seen--this nation is to be
   brought back to its best estate. Both portions of it shall be converted
   and shall come under a new Covenant of a very different tenor from that
   which their fathers so wantonly broke. The Lord will gather the remnant
   of Israel under a Covenant of Grace by which He will work in them those
   things which under the old Covenant He justly required of them.

   Under this Covenant of Grace they are to have their hearts inscribed
   with His Law. Jehovah is to be their God and they are to be His people.
   Then shall they in very deed know the Lord as their fathers knew Him in
   the days of Elijah when the fire fell from Heaven and they cried,
   "Jehovah, He is the God. Jehovah, He is the God." Whatever else these
   converts shall not know, they shall know Jehovah, "from the least of
   them unto the greatest of them."

   Refer the passage to the spiritual Israel, as you justly may and you
   learn that when God deals with men in a way of Divine Grace and
   impresses obedience upon their nature, then they all know Him--from the
   least of them unto the greatest of them. The universality of the text
   extends to all those who come under the New Covenant and are renewed in
   heart. These, without exception, know the Lord and there is no need
   that they be instructed upon that important point. These people know
   the Lord and never can forget Him--henceforth they are no more
   strangers to Him but sojourners with Him.

   Let us consider this knowledge, that we may see what it is. And to
   begin with, it is emphatically the knowledge of God--"They shall all
   know Me." They may not know everything about God. Who could? Who knows
   the Lord in that sense but the Lord Himself? Only the infinite can
   comprehend the infinite. The intellectual comprehension of the
   attributes of God is beyond us. How, then, could we grasp His essence?
   The regenerate, however, know the Lord, though they do not and cannot
   understand His incomprehensible glories. They may not know a great many
   things which they would like to know--critical, scientific, historical,
   theological, spiritual and eternal--but these matters are not spoken of
   in this place. One form of knowledge is mentioned, and only one--"They
   shall all know Me, says Jehovah."

   Observe that the Prophet speaks not of knowing facts about God, nor
   truths as to what God is, or has done, or will do--it is knowing God
   Himself. Do you not perceive the difference? I may know and I do know a
   great deal about a certain renowned person--say, if you please, Prince
   Bismarck. I have read his biography and I think I have some sort of an
   idea of his personal character--thus I know something about him. But if
   you were to ask me, "Do you know him?" I should at once answer, "No, I
   have not even seen him, I have never spoken with him, nor written to
   him, nor held any other communication with him. And therefore I cannot
   say that I know him."

   Now, if this solemn question were passed round these pews--"Do you know
   God?"--how would you answer it? Many would reply, "We have read the
   Scriptures and so we know the attributes of God and we remember with
   great reverence all that God has done and promised to do--but still we
   cannot say that we know Him. Can anyone say as much as that?" Let me
   break up the question--Have you ever spoken with God? Did He ever speak
   with you? Believers can say, "Truly our fellowship is with the Father."
   Can you say that? Were you ever conscious of the Presence of God? Has
   He ever manifested Himself to you in any special way?

   Alas, many a very knowing man must honestly confess that he does not
   know the Lord in the sense contained in my questions. Even among
   professing Christians this may be sadly true. Even as Paul said to the
   Corinthians--"Awake to righteousness and sin not. For some have not the
   knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame." The knowledge here
   spoken of is to know the Lord Himself--not to know that there is a God
   and that Jehovah, alone, is God and that He is to be had in reverence
   of them that are round about Him. But to know Him. We have such a
   tendency to run away from the Personality of God. Take an
   instance--godly people say, "I know in whom I have believed." But this
   is not what

   Paul said. He declared, "I know whom I have believed." He knew the
   Person He trusted. He was personally acquainted with Jesus Christ.

   This is true godliness--personal acquaintance with a personal God. This
   is a grand support of faith. One said to a Christian lady that he did
   not believe in the Scriptures and she replied that she believed in them
   and delighted to read them. When asked her reason, she replied,
   "Perhaps it is because I know the Author." Personal acquaintance with
   God turns faith into assurance. The knowledge of God is the basis of a
   faith of the surest and sweetest kind--we know and have believed the
   love which God has towards us. Knowing God, we believe in the Truth of
   His Words, the justice of His sentences, the goodness of His acts, the
   wisdom of His purposes--yes--and the love of His chastisements.

   When a renewed heart truly knows God, it has no further quarrel with
   Him, or with anything that He does or says. The cry is, "It is the
   Lord, let Him do what seems Him good." Thus to know God is eternal
   life. Let us return to the question--Do we know the Lord? Hearken, my
   Hearers. Has the Lord ever been so near you as to make you say, "How
   dreadful is this place"? Did your flesh ever tremble and your lips
   quiver at His voice? Do you know the feeling which overcame the Prophet
   Habakkuk when he trembled in himself? Then I know that you are sure,
   beyond all other certainty of your previous life, that God is and that
   He deals with men. Do you know the Lord in this way? I put this
   question to each one.

   Have you ever spoken to Him? Is it your habit to open your heart to
   Him? Do you tell Him all your secrets? I mean by this nothing bordering
   on fanaticism or superstition. But in sober earnestness, I ask--Is God
   real to you? Is He as real to you as she that lies in your bosom, or as
   the friend who walks with you by the way? Is the invisible God as real
   to you as any person that you can see, as much an actual fact as any
   substance which you can feel? Has the Lord ever spoken to your soul? I
   will not put any special question about the medium of that speech. It
   may be He has spoken through this Book, or through His minister, or by
   "a still small voice" within your soul--but has the Eternal One ever
   spoken with you?

   O my Hearers, are you on speaking terms with your God? If not, you
   cannot be said to know Him. And if you do not know Him, you are not
   among the renewed in heart. For of them the Lord says in this
   Scripture, "They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the
   greatest of them."

   Note, dear Friends, in the next place, that it is a personal knowledge.
   Each renewed person knows the Lord for himself. You cannot know God
   except for yourself. If I am asked whether I know such a person, it
   would be idle to answer, "Well, my brother knows him." That would be an
   admission that I did not myself know him. If the question were
   repeated, "Do you know him?" it would be folly to reply, "Well, I have
   a cousin who sometimes dines with him." That is not the question. So
   with regard to God. No second-hand knowledge can be admitted here. You
   cannot know God through other people.

   And why should you wish to do so? Is not personal knowledge the most to
   be desired? Did not Job rejoice that when he should rise from the dead
   he should behold his Redeemer? And this was the essence of his
   joy--"Whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold and not
   another." He would not have wished to see his Redeemer with another's
   eyes, nor that the vision should be his only by proxy. It is for our
   own lips to drink at the fountainhead of love and for our own eyes to
   look unto the Lord. No imaginary reception of grace by a sponsor can
   save, or even satisfy. You cannot see God with another man's eyes. You
   cannot know God through another man's knowledge. O my Hearers, you must
   yourselves be born again! You must yourselves be made pure in heart, or
   you cannot see God. Personal religion and individual knowledge of God
   are indispensable. Come, my Hearer, what have you to say to this?

   Next, this knowledge is one which is worked in us by the Spirit of the
   Lord. It is the duty of every Christian man to say to his neighbor and
   to his brother, "Know the Lord." It is the instinct of a new-born child
   of God to try and convey what he knows. God uses this effort as His
   instrumentality for saving men. But the man who really knows the Lord
   does not know Him solely by such instruction. This may be the means
   used but the knowledge obtained comes from a higher source than brother
   or neighbor.

   All Zion's children are taught of the Lord. They know God by His
   revealing Himself to them. You may know what the preacher can tell you
   and yet you may know nothing aright. You may know what this Book can
   tell you and yet if the Holy Spirit has not quickened you to perceive
   the living Truth within the Book, you know nothing truly. We may stand
   and preach, dear Friends, until our tongues are worn away and this
   inspired page may lie open before you until the ink is

   blanched and yet you, Hearers and Readers, may never know the Lord.
   Yes, I am sure you never will unless the Spirit shall show Him unto
   you.

   You cannot know a man by hearing and reading of him--you must deal with
   himself. God, through Himself, must each one of you know. There is no
   other way of truly knowing Him. When Peter confessed Christ, you
   remember how the Lord Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for
   flesh and blood have not revealed it unto you." You may know a great
   deal intellectually by the teaching of men. But heart-knowledge--the
   knowledge which is peculiar to God's elect--you can never receive
   except by the teaching of the Lord. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, "He
   shall teach you all things." Is not that a fulfillment of the old
   promise, "All your children shall be taught of the Lord"? Those whom
   God teaches are taught, indeed. But neither nature, nor art, nor the
   will of man can supply the place of this heavenly instruction.

   Beloved, true Believers know God because God has revealed Himself to
   them. Let me assure you the receivers of this personal teaching cannot
   be bamboozled by the doubts and denials of men. False prophets would,
   if it were possible, deceive the very elect. But it is not possible
   that the elect should be deceived. For they have internal evidence
   which carnal reason cannot shake. They commune with the Most High God
   and the secret of the Lord is with them and consequently their hearts
   are fixed. What we have heard and seen, we testify--and if men receive
   not our witness it is none the less sure to our own hearts.

   It is not possible for our faith to be destroyed, if it is indeed the
   work of the Holy Spirit. For that which God does shall be forever. The
   faith your mother gave you, your stepmother may take away from you. The
   religion which you inherited from your father may be sold off with the
   old furniture of the house--that which man gives, man may take away.
   But that which the Holy Spirit implants in us, all the devils in Hell
   cannot pluck up. It is not possible for all the powers of darkness to
   erase the inscription of the Spirit of God upon that heart which He has
   turned into flesh. Knowledge given by the Spirit is clear, definite,
   personal, assured, positive, and therefore, precious. We grow more and
   more persuaded as our experience ripens.

   The Truth of God which has been burned into us as with a red hot iron
   by the operations of the Spirit of God becomes a vital portion of
   ourselves. Note carefully that this knowledge of God becomes manifest
   knowledge. It is so manifest that the most earnest workers who desire
   the conversion of their fellowmen no longer say to such a man, "Know
   the Lord"--for they perceive most clearly that he already possesses
   that knowledge--so as to be beyond the need of instruction upon that
   point.

   There are many Truths of God, beloved Brethren, which I feel always
   bound to teach to you so long as I am the pastor of this flock. But if
   I had a company gathered here only of regenerated men and women, I
   should not think of saying to you, "Know the Lord." For I should be
   sure that you all knew Him, from the least even to the greatest. We
   assume the presence of this knowledge when we preach to God's
   people--we take it for granted that they know the Lord, and therefore,
   we do not again lay this foundation. A godly man's life is such that we
   perceive that he knows the Lord.

   The absence of this becomes equally clear in many of the ungodly. When
   men commit a crime, the indictment often runs, "not having the fear of
   God before his eyes." You can tell when a man has not the fear of God
   before his eyes and you can tell when a man has that fear of God.
   Brethren, if you watch him and especially if you live with him, you
   will perceive when a person has a knowledge of God. A mighty something
   operates upon him, checking or stimulating, cheering or calming him.
   Hear him as he wrestles in prayer. Stand outside the door and you will
   soon perceive that an invisible One is with him. This unseen Somebody
   is Everybody to this man and you can see it.

   Mark him when he gets into trade. He might take an unfair advantage.
   But he scorns it. Does he not want money? Yes, badly. But he has
   respect to One whom others cannot see. By a word of falsehood he might
   profit largely. He will not speak it. Why? "So did not I, because of
   the fear of the Lord." All who have been renewed in spirit and have had
   God's Law written upon the fleshy tablets of their heart manifest to a
   greater or less degree that they know the Lord-- and therefore their
   Brethren perceive it and cease to teach them what they are sure they
   know.

   Next, this knowledge of God is universal among the regenerate. It is
   not universal among the sons of Adam, for multitudes know not God and
   have no dealings with Him! But all those who are under the Covenant of
   Grace know the Lord. Brethren, it would be a doubtful child that did
   not know its own father. All the boys and girls at home differ in

   knowledge. The big boy is going to the university soon and the eldest
   girl has taken a degree at the Oxford Examination. But yonder little
   child who does not know his letters yet, still knows his father, does
   he not?

   Oh, how glad he is when Father comes home in the evening! Yes and God's
   children know their Father. Moreover, we all know the Lord Jesus, the
   Son of God. Whatever else I do not know, I can say--

   "Jesus, my God, I know His name; His name is all my trust"

   We know Jesus Himself and dwell in Him! We also know the Spirit of God.
   He has opened our eyes. He is our Comforter. He it is that brings us
   near to God. Thus we know, personally, the Father, the Son, and the
   Holy Spirit. There is no exception to this rule in all the family of
   love. The Prophet says they shall all know Him, from the least to the
   greatest. That is to say, from the new-born Believer up to the
   full-grown saint--they all know the Lord.

   The descriptions given may relate to their littleness or greatness in
   grace. Or they may refer to their littleness or greatness in ability,
   position, or usefulness. But they all know the Lord. The regenerate man
   with one talent knows the Lord. The man with ten talents boasts not of
   them but rejoices that he knows the Lord. This is the distinguishing
   mark of the regenerate--that they know the Lord. Every grace that the
   Spirit has worked in them shows this. Faith is the special mark of
   God's people. But how shall they believe in Him whom they do not know?
   "They that know Your name will put their trust in You"--thus their
   knowledge of God is the basis of their faith in Him.

   All God's people love Him supremely. But we cannot love a God whom we
   do not know. In proportion as our knowledge increases towards God, our
   love to Him burns more and more brightly. God is our hope, our
   confidence, our expectation--but we can have no hope in an unknown God.
   The knowledge of God lies at the bottom of every virtue and grace. The
   Lord God is our Friend. We hold high conversation with Him every day.
   We walk with Him. We delight in Him. He is our exceeding joy. This, in
   a large degree, is true of all those with whom the grace of God has
   dealt to bring them under His Covenant and to give them new hearts and
   right spirits--they all know the Lord from the least even unto the
   greatest.

   II. And this leads me to the second point, whereon I ask your earnest
   attention--THE ONE GRAND MEANS OF

   OBTAINING THIS KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. Here it is--"For I will forgive their
   iniquity and I will remember their

   sin no more." Do you get the idea? The clearest knowledge of God comes
   out of pardoned sin. The most distinct, vivid, assured knowledge of
   Jehovah comes to us when our iniquity is blotted out and our sin is
   covered.

   Just think a little. Without the pardon of sin it is not possible for
   us to know the Lord. We run away from Him. We do not want to know Him.
   Like father Adam we hide away among the trees of the garden. We do not
   desire to see our Maker, for we have offended Him. The thought of God
   is distasteful to every guilty man. It would be good news to him if he
   could be informed, on sure authority, that there was no God at all. He
   cannot know God, because his whole heart and mind and spirit are in
   such a state that he is incapable of knowing and appreciating the Holy
   One of Israel. Darkness covers the mind because sin has blinded the
   soul to all that is best and holy. The lover of sin does not know God
   and does not want to know Him.

   While sin lies at the door, there is a difficulty on God's part, too.
   How can He admit into an intimate knowledge of Himself the guilty man,
   as long as he is enamored of evil? Shall the great king entertain
   rebels? Shall two walk together, except they be agreed? "God is angry
   with the wicked every day." He is of purer eyes than to behold
   iniquity. Hence the guilty man is--by reason of his own impurity of
   nature and by reason of the holy nature of God--shut out from all
   knowledge of God.

   Beyond this, an awful dread comes over the guilty mind, even when it
   begins to be awakened. Conscience testifies that God must punish sin.
   It matters not what controversy may be raised over that
   question--conscience, which makes cowards of us all--assures us that
   sin cannot go unpunished. I have heard a great many arguments about the
   future of the impenitent but I am sure of this--that God has ingrained
   it in our nature to believe that He will not spare the guilty. Down
   deep in the soul of the most hardened unbeliever there is that
   conviction. You have only to let him lie long enough on a sickbed and
   gaze into eternity and he is forced to confess it--whether he likes to
   do so or not.

   Now, while that dread is on a man he does not want to know God and he
   even becomes incapable of knowing Him. But as the prodigal best knew
   his father when he had been received in love, so does man best know God
   when his sin is put away. When sin is forgiven, communion is
   commenced--sin is the great stone which lies at the door, and when this
   is rolled away, we enter in and see God. Beloved, we now speak of a
   matter which we have proved by experience--in the pardon of sin there
   is made to the pardoned man a clear and unmistakable revelation of God
   to his own soul. I venture to say that there is a clearer revelation of
   God to the individual in the forgiveness of his sin than can be found
   anywhere else.

   God is to be seen in nature. Who among us would wish to question it?
   Walk abroad and look around you and above you and behold your God! But
   while men are under the dominion of sin, nature does not reveal God to
   them. Their eyes are blinded and they will not perceive Him. The most
   eminent students of nature have some of them remained without the
   discovery of a God. The same is true of Providence. God comes very
   close to many men by preserving their lives from imminent peril, or by
   providing them with things necessary in the moment of great need.

   And yet we have known men living in the center of wondrous Providences
   and they have only thought themselves lucky fellows--or clever persons
   and so have traced God's mercy to chance or self. And let me go a
   little further. The revelation which God has made in this Holy
   Book--though it is an eminently clear and heavenly revelation--does not
   bring the personal assurance to men which comes by pardon of sin. Many
   have read the Book from their childhood and know large portions of it
   by heart and yet they have never seen God in His own Word.

   But let me tell you--if you have ever felt the guilt and burden of sin
   and God has come to you and brought you to the Savior's feet--and you
   have looked up and seen the great Sacrifice and put your trust in Him
   and the Spirit has borne witness with your spirit that your sins and
   your iniquities have been forgiven you--then you know the Lord with
   emphasis and beyond all doubt. In such a discovery of the Godhead there
   is a joyful conviction, an absolute certainty, a more than mathematical
   demonstration. The knowledge of God received by a distinct sense of
   pardoned sin is more certain than knowledge derived by the use of the
   senses in things pertaining to this life.

   This personal manifestation has about it a singular glory of
   overwhelming self-evidence. Did you ever notice, when reading the
   Scripture, how sometimes God makes the pardon of sin the proof of His
   Deity? In the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah you will see how God,
   through the Prophet, laughs at the false gods. He makes sport of the
   wooden deities. "The smith with the tongs both works in the coals and
   fashions it with hammers and works it with the strength of his arms.
   The carpenter stretches out his rule--he marks it out with a line." All
   this is sacred sarcasm against the false gods. But when Jehovah comes
   to prove that He is the true God, what does He say?

   Read verse 22 of that same chapter--"I have blotted out, as a thick
   cloud, your transgressions and as a cloud your sins-- return unto Me;
   for I have redeemed you." Here He does not quote the creation of the
   heavens and the earth, nor the working of miracles of power. But to a
   sinful people He makes this the master proof--"/ have blotted out your
   sins." Did any of the gods of the heathen forgive sins? These things
   that are made of carved work and gilt by the carpenter and the
   goldsmith--did they ever blot out iniquity? Did they ever pretend to do
   so? Jehovah's Godhead is proved by His forgiveness of sin. And it is so
   proved to all who receive that pardon.

   Look again and see how God calls men to Himself to receive salvation
   because He is God. See Isaiah 45:22--"Look unto Me and be you saved,
   all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is none else." He
   alone is God, and therefore they are bid to look to Him for salvation.
   As He proved His Godhead by salvation, so now He proves salvation by
   His Godhead. The two are bound up in one bundle. Let the burdened
   sinner see how they are joined together.

   In the thirty-third chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles, beginning
   in verse 11, let me read to you concerning Manas-seh, who had shed
   innocent blood very much--"Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the
   captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among
   the thorns and bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon. And
   when he was in affliction he besought the Lord his God and humbled
   himself greatly before the God of his fathers and prayed unto Him: and
   He was entreated of him and heard his supplication and brought him
   again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord
   He was God." When Jehovah pardoned him, then the great sinner knew that
   Jehovah was God. There is no evidence like it. Infinite mercy
   personally received is a demonstration of the Godhead.

   The Church of God, when she was in her praiseful frame of mind and full
   of joy--what do you think was her song? Micah 7:18-19 gives it to
   us--"Who is a God like unto You, that pardons iniquity and passes by
   the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retains not His
   anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will turn again, He
   will have compassion upon us. He will subdue our iniquities. And You
   will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." Hallelujah! Who
   is a God like unto You? We wonder more at the God of pardons than at
   the God of thunders. There is a more vivid apprehension of the Godhead
   in obtaining mercy than in beholding works of power.

   Beloved, you must bear with me a minute or two while I speak upon this
   delightful theme. I should just like a week in which to preach from
   this text and then I should need another month. How a man sees God when
   he comes to know in his own soul the fullness of pardon intended by
   this matchless Word, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember
   no more"! Can this be so? Does the Lord make a clean sweep of all my
   sins? Can it be that the Lord has cast them all behind His back? Has He
   blotted out the record which accused me? Has He cast my sin into the
   depths of the sea?

   Hallelujah! He is a God indeed. This is a God-like act. O Jehovah! Who
   is like unto You? When I know my sins to be forgiven, I need no one to
   say to me, "Know the Lord"--the fullness of His pardon has made Him
   known. Mark, also, how freely out of His mere love, the Lord forgives
   and herein displays His Godhead! No payment on our part, of suffering
   or service, is required. The Lord pardons for His own name's sake. He
   blots out sin because He delights in mercy. This is like a God. I know
   Him, I rejoice in Him, since He has so freely pardoned me.

   When the soul comes to think of the method of mercy, it has a further
   knowledge of God. There is a great point in this. Conscience
   inquires--"If God forgives me, can He do it justly? Can He forgive
   consistently with His Character and His position as the great moral
   Governor?" We see that He has set forth a Propitiation--that He has
   provided a great Sacrifice by which He can be just and yet the
   Justifier of him that believes. Herein is wisdom. We spell over the
   Revelation, even the word Substitution--Jesus was made a curse for us.
   Then we cry out, "Oh, the wisdom of God!"

   In the extraordinary plan of salvation by grace through Christ Jesus
   all the Divine attributes are set in a glorious light and God is made
   known as never before. Oh, the splendor of redeeming love! Does not
   every soul that knows the mystery of the Cross know the Lord? Jesus
   says, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father."

   Brethren, do not forget the great love which, when the plan was struck
   out, provided the august Person for the working out of that plan! "He
   spared not His own Son but freely delivered Him up for us all." When I
   think that the God who was offended by sin was Himself the Sufferer on
   its account, my thoughts of God are raised far above any height to
   which the interesting facts of science have elevated them. As I see God
   in nature, I reverence Him. As I see him in Providence, I adore Him. As
   I see Him in Christ Jesus, pardoning my sin, I know Him.

   If you just turn my text over a little, you will perceive another
   Truth--"I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no
   more." To my mind, the immutability of Divine pardon is one of the most
   brilliant facets of the diamond. Some think that God forgives but
   afterwards punishes--that you may be justified today but condemned
   tomorrow. Such is not the teaching of our text. God does not play fast
   and loose with pardon in that fashion. "Their sins and their iniquities
   will I remember no more." He will not recollect one of them. They are
   gone clean out of the Divine memory.

   Of course it is a figure of speech--since in a certain sense God cannot
   forget. But as He says that He will not remember, I am content to
   believe Him. The Lord looks upon the forgiven one as if he had never
   sinned. Our debts are so fully paid by our Lord Jesus that there is not
   an account upon the file of omniscience against any pardoned one. God
   Himself cannot recall His people's sin. He vows that He will remember
   it no more. Remember how the Lord has said, "In those days and in that
   time, says 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."

   If you know this irreversible pardon, my Brethren, you know the Lord
   better than you will ever know Him through gazing at the stars, or
   cutting through the rocks to the center of the globe. This, to you, is
   a manifestation of God of a more powerful and effectual sort than all
   that you will ever read of or hear of from your fellowmen. If the Lord
   God this morning not only permits me to speak to you but if He Himself
   by His own Spirit applies the pardoning blood of Jesus to you so that
   you enjoy a sense of reconciliation--this will put all Gospel matters
   beyond the shadow of a doubt.

   If you are made by the Spirit to know that you are accepted in the
   Beloved--if a sense of that acceptance comes streaming into your soul
   just as yonder sunshine pours through that window, you will say to
   yourself, I do indeed know the Lord. That heavenly joy, that "peace of
   God" will bring to you a full assurance which nothing can disturb.
   Arguments, words, reasons-- these are all the froth of the pot. But
   real contact with God and conscious enjoyment of the peace-giving power
   of the Holy Spirit--these are solid food for souls. If God deals with
   you, my Brother and you know Him, this is sure knowledge.

   Neither time with its lapse, nor suffering with its fret, nor doubt
   with its venom, nor death with its terrors can take from you that
   certainty of faith which comes with the pardon of sin. If you do not
   know the Lord by His personal manifestation of Himself in pardoning
   your sin, I do not wonder that you are easily turned about by every
   wind of doctrine. But if you do know the Lord by His appearing to you
   in Divine Grace, you are beyond the short-range guns of the enemy. Our
   memories must fail us and our senses must leave us before we can doubt
   the glorious Godhead of our Jehovah.

   We may be beaten in argument by the sophistries of the new theologians.
   But we cling to the facts of our experience and cannot be parted from
   them. When the God of the Old Testament is decried, we glory in Him,
   saying, "He has pardoned my sin and thus He has proved Himself to be
   God, indeed." Our opponents may turn round and say, "That is no
   argument to us." We only reply, "We dare say it is not. But it is
   argument enough for us and we must leave you to judge for yourselves.
   If you will not believe our testimony, we are clear."

   May the Lord renew to our souls, from day to day, our sense of pardoned
   sin and we shall be happily established in His faith and fear, whatever
   others may have to say. Oh, how I desire that all my hearers may seek
   and find this sin-pardoning God in Christ Jesus! Look to your Savior
   hanging on the tree, bearing the curse that you might be blessed. Look,
   I say and you also shall know the Lord. The Lord help you--Amen and
   amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Holding Fast the Faith

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 5, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

   "And to the angel of the Church in Pergamos write: These things says He
   which has the sharp sword with two edges. I know your works and where
   you dwell, even where Satan's seat is: and you holdfast My name and ha
   ve not denied My faith." Revelation 2:12,13.

   YOUR attention will be principally asked to these words--"You hold fast
   My name and have not denied My faith."

   Specially note, dear Friends, at the opening of this morning's
   meditation the character under which the Lord Jesus Christ presents
   Himself to the Church at Pergamos. "These things says He which has the
   sharp sword with two edges." Does the Lord Jesus come to His Church in
   that way? Does He, at the door of the Church, bear a sword? A sword
   unsheathed? A sharp sword? A sharp sword with two edges? Yes, even to
   His visible Church this is how our Lord Jesus Christ appears. To His
   own spiritual and faithful ones He is to each one a husband full of
   unutterable tenderness and love.

   But to the visible Church, which at its best estate is never altogether
   pure, He appears in severer form. To a Church He comes as Captain of
   the Lord's host and He wields a sharp sword with two edges. It is the
   parallel of that passage where John the Baptist says of Him--"His fan
   is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor and He will
   gather His wheat into His garner. But He will burn up the chaff with
   unquenchable fire." That winnowing fan is never out of His hand for it
   is always needed. Even though our Lord is full of Divine Grace, He is
   also full of Truth. His love to His servants manifests itself in a
   burning jealousy which will not endure evil.

   "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify
   the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver." We think of the
   coming of our Lord as a joy and a blessing. But, oh, remember that
   question, "But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand
   when He appears?" The Lord bears the sword and He bears it not in vain.
   Time has not blunted its edge, it is "sharp." And it has two edges, as
   of old. But what will He do with that sword in reference to a Church?
   We are not left in any doubt upon that point. Having mentioned some
   whose doctrines and lives were unclean, the Lord says, "Repent. Or else
   I will come unto you quickly and will fight against them with the sword
   of My mouth."

   He turns the sword against those within the Church who have no right to
   be there. It is no trifling thing to be a Church member. I could
   earnestly wish that certain professors had never been members of a
   Church at all. For if they had been outside the Church, they might have
   been in far less peril than they are within its bounds. Outside, their
   conduct might have been tolerated. But it is not consistent with an
   avowal of discipleship towards Jesus. I say this with deep sorrow. O
   false Professors, you may go down to Hell readily enough without
   increasing your damnation by coming into Christ's Church with a lie in
   your right hand. Alas for those who are not Christians in heart and yet
   profess to be so!

   Such ought to be startled by the vision of the Lord Himself drawing
   near to a Church with a sharp sword in His hand. Surely, "The sinners
   in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites." Yet is
   there comfort to the sincere in this glorious Man of War? He will smite
   those who are the enemies of His holy cause but He will also beat off
   those who attack His people from without. His sword is for the defense
   of the faithful. It is drawn from its sheath to protect the timid and
   the trembling. Jesus is come as our Joshua, to chase the enemy before
   us and lead us onward, conquering and to conquer. The sword with two
   edges is the defender of the least of those whose hearts are right
   before the Lord.

   I introduce the subject as the Spirit Himself introduces it. I would
   make the sermon sweet to the saints but the preface needs to be sharp
   lest any seize upon comforts to which they have no right. The Paschal
   Lamb is always to be eaten with bitter herbs--those bitter herbs I have
   set upon the table. The name of Jesus, which is the song of angels and
   the treasure of saints, has terror in it to those who refuse Him. For
   He who bears that name shall judge the quick and dead

   and pronounce condemnation on the unrighteous. Notice that this blessed
   Savior watches His Church with an observant eye. He looks at the Church
   in Pergamos and He says, "I know your works and where you dwell, even
   where Satan's seat

   is."

   The Lord sees the position and the peril of the Church at Pergamos,
   "where Satan dwells." Probably there were horrible idolatries with
   obscene orgies in the city or it may have been a place of peculiar
   licentiousness--or of special persecution. We cannot, at this distance,
   of time tell exactly what it was. But the Lord regarded it as the
   citadel of Satan. There are places in the world at this day where sin
   has so much the upper hand or where error and unbelief reign so supreme
   that the devil would seem to have there taken up his residence and to
   have made it his capital city. This is a trying neighborhood for a
   Church of Christ and yet it is the place where it is most wanted.

   You, dear Friend, may be living in society where the Evil One rules
   with undisputed sway. You are not favored to dwell with your fellow
   Christians but you go home to be met with blasphemies at the door. And
   all the week fights and sounds assail your eyes and ears which make you
   feel like Lot in Sodom. I am sorry for you. But let it comfort you that
   your Lord knows all about it and He can either remove you from the
   trying position or else He can still more glorify His Divine Grace by
   supporting you in it and enabling you to overcome the enemy. He knows
   that "Satan desires to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." And
   Jesus Christ prays for you that your faith fail not.

   He knows your perils and He considers your trials. Right well He
   perceives the way in which Satan would first mislead you and then
   accuse you. The subtlety of the old serpent He understands. He sees
   your struggles, your failures and your desperate endeavors to hold fast
   the faith. He knows how at night you are grieved as you make confession
   before Him of your shortcomings. But He knows, also, the peculiar
   circumstances in which you are placed and He judges you in great mercy.
   If you are holding fast His name and have not denied the faith--even
   that may be to Him a surer proof of your truthfulness of heart than
   works of labor and patience might be in other instances.

   You have borne fewer clusters than another vine but Jesus knows that
   you grow in a very barren bit of ground and He thinks well of your
   little fruit. Your day's work does not look like much when it is done
   but when horses plow a rock so hard that it breaks the plowshare, no
   farmer expects so much to be done as when a light loam has to be gently
   turned over. The Lord Jesus takes all our surroundings into
   consideration. He loves us too well to make excuse for our sins, yet He
   Himself mentions the circumstances which make our act to be rather
   failure than fault, even as He did for the first disciples when He
   found them asleep and He said, "The spirit truly is willing but the
   flesh is weak."

   O dear Children of God, if you are placed in positions of peculiar
   trial and difficulty, and if your hindrances are so many that you
   cannot accomplish one-tenth as much as you desire--then hear how Jesus
   puts it--"I know where you dwell, even where Satan's seat is." If you
   are faithful to your Lord and firm in His Truth, He will commend you
   and say, "Yet you hold fast My name and have not denied My faith." I
   wonder whether this word of comfort is meant for somebody here, or for
   some friend who will read the sermon. I feel that it must be so.

   Many of our Lord's beloved ones are, in God's sight, now doing much
   more, under distressing circumstances, than they used to do in happier
   days. When they had ten pounds entrusted to them, they brought in two
   by way of interest. And now that they have only one pound, they bring
   in one pound of interest--thus you see that they produce a far larger
   percentage than they used to do. And this is the Lord's way of
   calculating--for it is according to righteousness. When we have little
   strength and are placed in positions of great difficulty, then the Lord
   thinks all the more of what we produce and regards it as all the surer
   proof of fidelity.

   In the text it is commendation enough for Pergamos, under the
   circumstances that dwelling so close to Beelzebub's own capital, close
   under the shadow of the throne of Hell--that Church could earn this
   praise--"You hold fast My name and have not denied My faith." Let us
   give earnest attention to this commendation. Oh, that we may earn it
   ourselves. And if we have already earned it, may we be helped by the
   Holy Spirit to hold it fast, so that no man take our crown!

   I. The first head will be, LET US CONSIDER THIS FACT. I hope it is a
   fact with many here present as surely as it was a fact with Pergamos. I
   trust it can be said of this Church and of its members--"You hold fast
   My name and have not denied My

   faith."

   Notice, dear Friends, that the name of Christ is here made to be
   identical with the faith of Christ. "You hold fast My name and have not
   denied My faith." The faith of Scripture has Christ for its center,
   Christ for its circumference and Christ for its substance. The
   name--that is, the Person, the Character, the work, the teaching of
   Christ--this is the faith of Christians. The great doctrines of the
   Gospel are all intimately connected with the Lord Jesus Christ
   Himself--they are the rays and He is the

   sun. We never hold the faith correctly except as we see the Lord Jesus
   to be the center of it. From our election onward to our
   glorification--Christ is All and in all.

   To the Jews the Law was never in its proper place until it was laid in
   the ark and covered with the Mercy Seat. And I am sure Believers never
   see the Law aright till they see it fulfilled in Christ Jesus. If it is
   so with the Law, how much more is it so with the Gospel? The Gospel is
   the gold ring, but Christ Jesus is the diamond which is set in it.
   Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith--He is the Sum and
   Substance, the top and bottom of it. When we hold fast the name of our
   Lord then we have not denied the faith.

   But how may the faith be denied? In several ways this may be done. Let
   me say it very tenderly but very solemnly--some deny the faith and let
   go the name of Jesus by never confessing it. Remember how the Lord puts
   this matter in the gospels-- "Whosoever shall confess Me before men,
   him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. But he
   that denies Me before men shall be denied before the angels of God."
   Here it is clear that to deny is the same thing as not confessing. I
   know people who almost boast of their neutrality. They say, "I hold my
   tongue. Though the conflict should lie between Christ and Belial, yet I
   would go quietly on and never involve myself."

   Is that what you say? Then permit me to remind you of our Lord's own
   words. "He that is not with Me is against Me. And he that gathers not
   with Me scatters abroad." Again He says, "Whosoever does not bear his
   cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple." This text must bear
   hard upon those who have tried not exactly to hold with the hare and
   run with the hounds but neither to hold with the hare nor yet to run
   with the hounds. These have hoped to find in their discretion the
   better part of valor. But, believe me, it is a valor which will be
   rewarded with everlasting contempt. This way you hope to lead an easy
   life. An easy life of such a kind will end in a very uneasy death. A
   life in which we have shunned the Cross of Christ will lead to a state
   in which we shall miss the crown of glory.

   Christ is also denied by false doctrine. If we espouse error as to His
   Person, work, or doctrine and believe what Jesus did not teach and
   refuse to believe what Jesus did teach, then we have denied His name
   and His faith. One of the main points of a Christian--without which the
   rest of his life will not be acceptable with God--is that Jesus shall
   be to him "the Way, the Truth and the Life." The practical, the
   doctrinal, the experimental must all be found by us in Jesus Christ our
   Lord or else we have not placed Him in His right position. And we
   cannot be right anywhere unless the center is right and unless Jesus is
   that center. God grant that we may never turn aside from the faith once
   for all delivered to the saints. But may we resist all false
   philosophies--steadfast and immovable!

   But then it is very possible to deny the name and the faith by unholy
   living. Let none of us imagine that an orthodox creed can be of any use
   to us if we lead a heterodox life. No, Christ Jesus is to be obeyed as
   a Master as well as to be believed as a Teacher. The disciple is to be
   practically obedient, as well as attentively teachable. "Without
   holiness no man shall see the Lord." The Apostle Paul somewhere says,
   "He that cares not for his own household has denied the faith and is
   worse than an infidel (or unbeliever)." So a moral fault may be a
   denial of the faith and may make a man worse than if he had never
   professed to believe at all. God save us from an unholy life!

   Alas, we can deny the faith by actually forsaking it and quitting the
   people of God. Some do so deliberately and others because the charms of
   the world overcome them. We are told of some who went away from our
   Lord because of what He had taught. They cried, "This is a hard saying;
   who can bear it?" My Friends, if you are not prepared to accept hard
   sayings, you need not profess to be disciples of Jesus. "Horrible
   doctrine!" cried one the other day. Granted that it is horrible, may it
   not also be true? Many horrible things take place around us and yet
   none can deny the facts. You cannot exclude from your knowledge many
   things which are true by merely crying, "Horrible!"

   It is not ours to judge of our Lord's teaching by our sentiment--we are
   to receive it by faith. He speaks terribly of the doom of the wicked
   and He is not capable of exaggeration. What the Lord Jesus says is
   certain, for "He is the faithful and true witness," and therefore we
   will not turn from Him, whatever His teaching may be. Oh for grace to
   persevere to the end! Oh for fidelity and constancy so that neither
   gain nor loss, exaltation nor depression may induce us to quit our
   Savior! Let us hold fast His sacred name and never deny the faith, come
   what may. May the Holy Spirit hold us fast that we may hold fast the
   name of Jesus!

   In what way may we be said to hold fast the name of Christ and the
   faith of Christ? I answer, by the full consent of our intellect,
   yielding up our mind to consider and accept the things which are
   assuredly believed among us. We hold fast the form of sound words and
   accept whatsoever God has revealed because He has revealed it. Our
   motto is, "Let God be true but every man a liar." When Christ speaks,
   we assent with our minds and consent with our hearts to all He
   declares.

   If we hold fast the name of Jesus, we must hold the faith in the love
   of it. We must store up in our affections all that our Lord teaches.
   His Words are found and we do eat them--they are as honey to the taste.
   Let Jesus speak and I will reply, "Yes, Lord, You say it is so and I
   know it is so. I consent to Your teaching and from my soul I love You
   and accept all that You do reveal." For the doctrines revealed in Holy
   Scripture the true Believer would live or die. This love of the heart
   is that which causes us to hold fast the name of Christ.

   We also hold it fast by holding it forth in the teeth of all
   opposition. We must confess the faith at all proper times and seasons
   and we must never hide our colors. There are times when we must dash to
   the front and court the encounter when we see that our Captain's honor
   demands it. Let us never be either ashamed or afraid. Our Lord Jesus
   deserves that we should yield ourselves as willing sacrifices in
   defense of His faith. Ease, reputation, life itself, must go for the
   name and faith of Jesus. If in the heat of the battle our good name or
   our life must be risked to win the victory, then let us say, "In this
   battle some of us must fall--why should not I? I will take part and lot
   with my Master and bear reproach for His sake."

   Only brave soldiers are worthy of our great Lord. Those who sneak into
   the rear, that they may be comfortable, are not worthy of the kingdom.
   What will our Captain say of cowards in that day when He distributes
   rewards to all faithful ones? Brethren, we must be willing to bear
   ridicule for Christ's sake, even that peculiarly envenomed ridicule
   which "the cultured" are so apt to pour upon us. We must be willing to
   be thought great fools for Jesus' sake. Some of us have forgotten more
   than many of our opponents ever knew, and yet they style us ignorant.
   We are bearing shame because we have the courage of our convictions and
   yet they call us cowards.

   For my part, I am willing to be ten thousand fools in one for my dear
   Lord and Master and count it to be the highest honor that can be put
   upon me to be stripped of every honor and loaded with every censure for
   the sake of the grand old Truth of God which is written on my very
   heart. Those ships which sail with Jesus as their Lord High Admiral
   must look for tempests. For His boat was filled with the waves and
   began to sink.

   Does that man love his Lord who would be willing to see Jesus wearing a
   crown of thorns, while for himself he craves a chaplet of laurel? Shall
   Jesus ascend to His Throne by the Cross, and do we expect to be carried
   there on the shoulders of applauding crowds? Be not so vain in your
   imagination. Count the cost and if you are not willing to bear Christ's
   Cross, go away to your farm and to your merchandise and make the most
   of them--only let me whisper this in your ear--"What shall it profit a
   man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

   II. In the second place, having considered the fact, LET US FURTHER
   ENLARGE UPON IT. What do we mean by holding fast the name of Christ? I
   reply, first, we mean holding fast the Deity of that name. We believe
   in our Lord's real Godhead. "His name shall be called Wonderful,
   Counselor, the Mighty God." One of the names by which He is revealed to
   us is Immanuel. The word "El" is one of the great Oriental names of
   God. You get in Hebrew Elohim and in Arabic "Allah." Our Lord Jesus is
   Immanuel, that is, God With Us. And we believe Him to be so. He is as
   truly man as anyone among us--born of a virgin without taint of
   original sin. But He is also most surely God without the least
   diminishing of the perfections and glories of Godhead.

   We put our finger into the print of the nails, but as we do so we cry,
   "My Lord and my God." "Let all the angels of God worship Him." "At the
   name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in Heaven and things in
   earth and things under the earth. And every tongue shall confess that
   Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." We can never
   give up our belief in the Godhead of our Lord Jesus--we must, and will,
   hold fast the faith of the Deity of Christ.

   We also hold fast the name of Jesus and the faith of Jesus, as to the
   royalty of His name. He was born King of the Jews and He is also "King
   of kings and Lord of lords." That which Pilate wrote over His Cross is
   true--"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." But God also has
   highly exalted Him and made Him to have dominion over all the works of
   His hands. The Father has committed all judgment unto the Son. He shall
   put down all rule and all authority and power, for He must reign till
   He has put all enemies under His feet. "The Lord shall reign forever
   and ever--Hallelujah"! When we bow the knee in prayer and say, "Your
   kingdom come," we mean the kingdom of God and we mean also the kingdom
   of Christ Jesus.

   He it is that as a Lamb is seen in the midst of the Throne where saints
   and angels pay adoring homage. Soon shall the seventh angel sound his
   trumpet and great voices shall be heard in Heaven saying, "The kingdoms
   of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
   And He shall reign forever and ever." O Jesus, we bow before You! "Just
   and true are Your ways, You King of saints." He reigns in our hearts
   over the triple kingdom of our nature. He is King in our families. We
   desire to see him King in this city, King in this nation, King over all
   the earth. And we shall never be satisfied till, with all the redeemed
   of our race, we crown Him Lord of all. We hold fast the royalty of the
   name of Jesus Christ.

   Moreover, we believe in the grandeur of that name as being the first
   and the last. Open the New Testament and read the first verse of
   Matthew. How does it begin? "The book of the generation of Jesus
   Christ, the Son of David." The book of the New Covenant begins with
   Jesus. Now look at the last verse, see how the Testament ends--"The
   grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Jesus Christ
   appears in the first verse and He appears in the last verse. Did He not
   say, "I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End"?

   The first line of the Covenant of Grace is Jesus Christ. The last line
   of the Covenant of Grace is Jesus Christ. And all in between is the
   Lord Jesus Christ. Begin with him as A, go right through to B, C, D, E,
   F, and so on, till you end with Z and it is all Christ Jesus. He is
   All--yes, He is All in All. Oh what blessings have come to us through
   Jesus Christ! Through His name we have received remission of sins. In
   His name we are justified. In His name we are sanctified. In His name
   we shall be glorified even as in Him we were chosen from before the
   foundation of the world. My tongue can never tell you even the
   commencement of His greatness. Who shall declare His generation? The
   fringe, the hem of His infinite glories, who can touch?

   He is unspeakable. As for His glory, I may say, "O Lord, our Lord, how
   excellent is Your name in all the earth! Who has set Your glory above
   the heavens?" All glory and honor be unto Him in whom are comprehended
   all the blessings whereby God has enriched His people in time and in
   eternity.

   We hold fast the name of Christ as we believe in its saving power. "You
   shall call His name Jesus--for He shall save His people from their
   sins." We hold fast the belief that Jesus saves us from the guilt of
   sin by having borne it in His own body on the tree. We are assured that
   He makes us just before God by that righteousness of His, which is
   ours, because we are one with Him. He saves us from the punishment of
   sin because "the chastisement of our peace was upon Him." He died as a
   victim in our place. He saves us from the power of sin by His Spirit
   and by faith in His death--we overcome sin by the blood of the Lamb.
   Salvation in every department--salvation from its hopeful dawning to
   its glorious perfection--is all of Christ Jesus.

   He is Savior and He alone. "There is none other name under Heaven given
   among men, whereby we must be saved." He is the unique Savior, there is
   no other possible salvation now or in the world to come. Do you believe
   Christ? Then you have salvation. "But he that believes not shall be
   damned." Pronounce the word hard or soft as you will, it will come to
   the same thing in the end--you shall be condemned and condemned
   hopelessly if you believe not in Jesus Christ, the one sole
   Propitiation for the sins of men. This we hold fast. I know you are
   established in these Truths of God, my Beloved, and you mean to hold
   them as long as you breathe and not to deny the faith which the Lord
   Himself has delivered to you.

   Once more, we hold fast this name in its immutability. We are told
   today that this is an age of progress and therefore we must accept an
   improved Gospel. Every man is to be his own lawyer and every man his
   own savior. We are getting on in the direction of every man putting
   away his own sin, just as every chimney should consume its own smoke.
   But, dear Friends, we do not believe these idle dreams. We want no new
   Gospel, no modern salvation. Our conviction is that Jesus Christ is,
   "the same yesterday, today and forever." The way that Paul went to
   Heaven is good enough for me--

   "The way the holy Prophets went, The road that leads from banishment,"
   is broad enough and safe enough for me. When I remember my dear
   Brethren in Christ who have fallen asleep--whom I saw die with triumph
   lighting up their faces--I feel quite content with the salvation which
   saved them and I am not going to try experiments or speculations.

   To talk of improving upon our perfect Savior is to insult Him. He is
   God's Propitiation. Would you want more? My blood boils with
   indignation at the idea of improving the Gospel. There is but one
   Savior and that one Savior is the same forever. His doctrine is the
   same in every age, and is not, "yes and no." What a strange result we
   should obtain in the general assembly of Heaven if some were saved by
   the Gospel of the first century and others by the Gospel of the second
   and others by the Gospel of the seventeenth and others by the Gospel of
   the nineteenth century!

   We should need a different song of praise for the clients of these
   various periods and the mingled chorus would be rather to the glory of
   man's culture than to the praise of the one Lord. No such spotted
   Heaven and no such discordant song shall ever be produced. There is one
   Church and one Savior. We believe in one Lord, one faith and one
   Baptism. To eternal glory there is but one way. To walk therein we must
   hold fast one Truth and be quickened by one life. We stand fast by the
   unaltered, unalterable, eternal name of Jesus Christ our Lord. This is
   what we mean by holding fast the name and the faith of Jesus.

   III. Thirdly, dear Friends, to lead you a step further in the same
   road, LET ME SHOW THE PRACTICAL PLACE OF THE NAME AND OF THE FAITH WITH
   US.

   The practical place of it is this--first of all, it is our personal
   comfort--

   "Jesus, the name that charms our fears,

   That bids our sorrows cease; It is music in the sinner's ears, It is
   life and health and peace."

   The faith which we hold is our daily and hourly joy and hope. The
   doctrines which I believe in connection with the Divine Person in whom
   I trust are the pillow of my weariness, the relaxation of my care, the
   rest of my spirit. Jesus gives me a lookout for years to come which is
   celestial and at the same time I can look back with thankfulness on the
   years which are past. For all time the Lord Jesus is our heart's
   content.

   Nothing can separate us from His love and therefore nothing can deprive
   us of our confident hope. Through this blessed name and this blessed
   faith Believers are themselves made glad and strong. On the name of
   Jesus we feed and in that name we wrap ourselves. It is strength for
   our weakness, yes, life for our death.

   And then, dear Friends, this name, this faith--these are our message.
   Our only business here below is to cry, "Behold the Lamb." Are any of
   you sent of God with any other message? It cannot be. The one message
   which God has given to His people to proclaim is salvation through the
   Lamb--salvation by the blood of Jesus. It is by His blood that
   cleansing comes to the polluted. He is the one great Propitiation. To
   tell of Jesus is our occupation--we have nothing to say which is not
   comprised in the revelation made to us by God in Christ Jesus. He who
   is our one comfort is also our one theme.

   He also is our Divine authority for holy work. We preach the Gospel in
   the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. If we preached it in any other name
   men would have a right to reject it. If the spiritually sick are
   healed, it is His name which makes them strong. If devils flee before
   us, we cast them out in His name. Oh, that we did more often remember
   that all our teaching and preaching must be done in the name of Jesus!
   In His name we gather for worship. In His name we go forth to service.
   If we go in our own name we go in vain. But if we are ambassadors for
   God, as though He did beseech men by us, then we pray them in Christ's
   stead to be reconciled to God and we are hopeful that our labor will
   not be in vain in the Lord.

   This also is our power in preaching. Indeed, it is our power, our only
   power, in living before God. Brethren, the devil will never be cast out
   by any other name--let us hold it fast. If we conjure by eloquence,
   talent, music, or what not, the Evil One will say, "Jesus I know, and
   Paul I know--but who are you?" It is only His name that makes the
   legions of Hell quit the bosoms of the possessed and fly howling down
   into the deep. This is the name high over all--there is none other
   which has such power in it. Spiritual diseases, yes, death itself, will
   yield to this name. It is His name that makes Lazarus come forth from
   the grave and the young man sit upright on the bier.

   Use this name and nothing can stand before you. I said that it is our
   power in life and so, indeed, it is. When we draw near to God, what is
   our strength wherewith to prevail in prayer? Is it not that we ask in
   the name of Jesus? If you leave out the name of Jesus, what are your
   prayers but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal? Prayer without the
   name of Jesus has no wings with which to fly up to God. This is that
   golden ladder whereby we climb up to the Throne of God and take
   unspeakably precious things out of the hand of the Eternal. That name
   prevails with God concerning everything and so enables us to prevail
   with man. Therefore, hold it fast and deny not the faith. For what can
   you do if the Truth and the name of Jesus are given up?

   This name is our one hope of victory. As Constantine, in his dream, saw
   the Cross and took it for his emblem, with the motto, "By this sign I
   conquer," so today our only hope of victory for the Gospel is that the
   Cross of Christ displays it and the name of Jesus is in it. His name is
   named on us and in His name we will cast out devils and do many mighty
   works till His name shall be known and honored wherever the sun pursues
   its course, or the moon cheers the watches of the night.

   III. Now, in closing, I will URGE REASONS FOR HOLDING FAST THE NAME AND
   FAITH OF JESUS. I hope we

   hold it so fast that we can never give it up while reason holds its
   throne. There is an old Christian legend concerning Igna-tius--that he
   never spoke without mentioning the name of Jesus whom he loved. His
   speech seemed saturated with love to his Lord, and when he died, the
   name of Jesus was found to be stamped on his heart. It may not have
   been so literally but no doubt it was true spiritually.

   The name of Jesus is, I hope, written in our hearts so as to be
   inseparable from our lives. Whatever else may go, the name of Jesus can
   never depart from our thoughts. Dying men have been known to forget
   everything but this. The man has forgotten his wife, his children, his
   bosom friend and has turned away oblivious from them all as if they
   were strangers. And yet when the name of Jesus has been whispered in
   his ear, his eyes have brightened and his countenance has responded to
   that precious name. O memory, leave no other name than His recorded
   upon your tablets! Happy forgetfulness which clears all else away but
   leaves that name in solitary glory!

   That it may be so I will put the question thus--Why should we give up
   the faith? I fail to see a reason. Why should I change my belief, or
   cease to hold fast the name of Christ Jesus, my Lord? It is an
   irrational suggestion. "I am open to conviction," said a man who knew
   his ground, "I am open to conviction, but I should like to see the man
   that could convince me." I am in very much the same condition with
   regard to the Gospel of my Lord Jesus--I am open to conviction--but I
   shall never see the man that can convince me out of my experience, my
   conviction, my consciousness, my hope, my all.

   Before I could quit my faith in the substitutionary work of the Lord
   Jesus Christ and my confidence in the Everlasting Covenant ordered in
   all things and sure, I should have to be ground to powder and every
   separate atom transformed. What would they give us in exchange for the
   faith? That is a question which it is easy to ask but impossible to
   answer. Suppose the Doctrines of Grace could be obliterated and our
   hope could be taken away--what would they give us in the place of
   them-- either for this life or the next? I have never seen anything
   proposed in the place of the Gospel that was worth considering for a
   second. Have you? Uncertainty, doubt, glitter, mockery, darkness--all
   these have been offered--but who wants them? They offer us either
   bubbles or filth according to the different shade of the speculator's
   character. But we are not enamored of either. We prefer gold to dross.

   We must defend the faith. For what would have become of us if our
   fathers had not maintained it? If confessors, Reformers, martyrs and
   Covenanters had been indifferent to the name and faith of Jesus, where
   would have been the Churches of today? Must we not play the man as they
   did? If we do not, are we not censuring our fathers? It is very pretty,
   is it not, to read of Luther and his brave deeds? Of course, everybody
   admires Luther! Yes, yes. But you do not want anyone else to do the
   same today. When you go to the Zoological Gardens you all admire the
   bear. But how would you like a bear at home, or a bear wandering loose
   about the street?

   You tell me that it would be unbearable and no doubt you are right. So,
   we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago.
   The past ages are a sort of bear-pit or iron cage for him. But such a
   man today is a nuisance and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded
   bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one. Yet imagine
   that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin and their compeers had
   said, "The world is out of order. But if we try to set it right we
   shall only make a great row and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go
   to our chambers, put on our night-caps and sleep over the bad times and
   perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better."

   Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of
   error. Age after age would have gone down into the infernal deeps and
   the infectious bogs of error would have swallowed all. These men loved
   the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on. Note
   what we owe them and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our
   fathers. It is today as it was in the Reformers' days. Decision is
   needed. Here is the day for the man--where is the man for the day? We
   who have had the Gospel passed to us by martyr's hands dare not trifle
   with it--nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors who pretend to love
   it but inwardly abhor every line of it.

   The faith I hold bears upon it marks of the blood of my ancestors.
   Shall I deny their faith, for which they left their native land to
   sojourn here? Shall we cast away the treasure which was handed to us
   through the bars of prisons, or came to us charred with the flames of
   Smithfield? Personally, when my bones have been tortured with
   rheumatism, I have remembered Job Spurgeon, doubtless of my own stock,
   who in Chelmsford Jail was allowed a chair because he could not lie
   down by reason of rheumatic pain. That Quaker's broad-brim overshadows
   my brow. Perhaps I inherited his rheumatism. But that I do not regret
   if I have his stubborn faith which will not let me yield a syllable of
   the Truth of God.

   When I think of how others have suffered for the faith, a little scorn
   or unkindness seems a mere trifle, not worthy of mention. An ancestry
   of lovers of the faith ought to be a great plea with us to abide by the
   Lord God of our fathers and the faith in which they lived. As for me, I
   must hold the old Gospel--I can do no other. God helping me, I will
   endure the consequences of what men think my obstinacy.

   Look you, Sirs, there are ages yet to come. If the Lord does not
   speedily appear, there will come another generation and another and all
   these generations will be tainted and injured if we are not faithful to
   God and to His Truth today. We have come to a turning point in the
   road. If we turn to the right, maybe our children and our children's
   children will go that way. But if we turn to the left, generations yet
   unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to
   His Word. I charge you, not only by your ancestry but by your
   posterity, that you seek to win the commendation of your Master--that
   though you dwell where Satan's seat is--you hold fast His name and do
   not deny His faith.

   God grant us faithfulness for the sake of the souls around us! How is
   the world to be saved if the Church is false to her Lord? How are we to
   lift the masses if our fulcrum is removed? If our Gospel is uncertain,
   what remains but increasing misery

   and despair? Stand fast, my Beloved, in the name of God! I, your
   Brother in Christ, entreat you to abide in the Truth of God. Conduct
   yourselves like men, be strong. The Lord sustain you for Jesus' sake.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                             The Lord And The Leper

   A Sermon

   (No. 2008)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, February 12th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [2]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to
   him, and saying unto him, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. and
   Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and
   saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken,
   immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed."'Mark
   1:40-42.

   Beloved, we saw in the reading, that our Lord had been engaged in
   special prayer. He had gone alone on the mountain-side to have
   communion with God. Simon and the rest search for him, and he comes
   away in the early morning with the burrs from the hill-side upon his
   garments, the smell of the field upon him, even of a field that the
   Lord God had blessed; he comes forth among the people, charged with
   power which he had received in communion with the Father; and now we
   may expect to see wonders. And we do see them; for devils fear and fly
   when he speaks the word; and by-and-by, there comes to him one, an
   extraordinary being, condemned to live apart from the rest of men, lest
   he should spread defilement all around. A leper comes to him, and
   kneels before him, and expresses his confident faith in him, that he
   can make him whole. Now is the Son of Man glorious in his power to
   save.

   The Lord Jesus Christ at this day has all power in heaven and in earth.
   He is charged with a divine energy to bless all who come to him for
   healing. Oh, that we may see today some great wonder of his power and
   grace! Oh, for one of the days of the Son of Man here and now! To that
   end it is absolutely needful that we should find a case for his
   spiritual power to work upon. Is there not one here in whom his grace
   may prove its omnipotence? Not you, ye good, ye self-righteous! You
   yield him no space to work in. You that are whole have no need of a
   physician: in you there is no opportunity for him to display his
   miraculous force. But yonder are the men we seek for. Forlorn, and
   lost, full of evil, and self-condemned, you are the characters we seek.
   You that feel as if you were possessed with evil spirits, and you that
   are leprous with sin, you are the persons in whom Jesus will find ample
   room and verge enough for the display of his holy skill. Of you I might
   say, as he once said of the man born blind: you are here that the works
   of God may be manifest in you. You, with your guilt and your depravity,
   you furnish the empty vessels into which his grace may be poured, the
   sick souls upon whom he may display his matchless power to bless and
   save. Be hopeful, then, ye sinful ones! Look up this morning for the
   Lord's approach, and expect that even in you he will work great
   marvels. This leper shall be a picture-yea, I hope a mirror- in whom
   you will see yourselves. I do pray that as I go over the details of
   this miracle many here may put themselves in the leper's place, and do
   just as the leper did, and receive, just as the leper received,
   cleansing from the hand of Christ. O Spirit of the living God, the
   thousands of our Israel now entreat thee to work, that Jesus, the Son
   of God, may be glorified here and now!

   I. I will begin my rehearsal of the gospel narrative by remarking,
   first, that THIS LEPER'S FAITH MADE HIM EAGER TO BE HEALED. He was a
   leper; I will not stay just now to describe what horrors are compacted
   into that single word; but he believed that Jesus could cleanse him,
   and his belief stirred him to an anxious desire to be healed at once.

   Alas! we have to deal with spiritual lepers eaten up with the foul
   disease of sin; but some of them do not believe that they ever can be
   healed, and the consequence is that despair makes them sin most
   greedily. "I may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb," is the
   inward impression of many a sinner when he fears that there is no mercy
   and no help for him. Because there is no hope, therefore they plunge
   deeper and yet deeper into the slough of iniquity. Oh, that you might
   be delivered from that false idea! Mercy still rules the hour. There is
   hope while Jesus sends his gospel to you, and bids you repent. "I
   believe in the forgiveness of sins": this is a sweet sentence of a true
   creed. I believe also in the renewal of men's hearts; for the Lord can
   give new hearts and right spirits to the evil and unthankful. I would
   that you believed it; for if you did, I trust it would quicken you into
   seeking that your sins might be forgiven and your minds might be
   renewed. Do you believe it? Then come to Jesus and receive the
   blessings of free grace.

   We have a number of lepers who come in among us whose disease is white
   upon their brows, and visible to all beholders, and yet they are
   indifferent: they do not mourn their wickedness, nor wish to be
   cleansed from it. They sit among God's people, and they listen to the
   doctrine of a new birth, and the news of pardon, and they hear the
   teaching as though it had nothing to do with them. If now and then they
   half wish that salvation would come to them, it is too languid a wish
   to last. They have not yet so perceived their disease and their danger
   as to pray to be delivered from them. They sleep on upon the bed of
   sloth, and care neither for heaven nor hell. Indifference to spiritual
   things is the sin of the age. Men are stolid of heart about eternal
   realities. An awful apathy is upon the multitude. The leper in our text
   was not so foolish as this. He eagerly desired to be delivered from his
   dreadful malady: with heart and soul he pined to be cleansed from its
   terrible defilement. Oh that it were so with you! May the Lord make you
   feel how depraved your heart is, and how diseased with sin are all the
   faculties of your soul! Alas, dear friends,'there are some that even
   love their leprosy! Is it not a sad thing to have to speak thus?
   Surely, madness is in men's hearts. Men do not wish to be saved from
   doing evil. They love the ways and wages of iniquity. They would like
   to go to heaven, but they must have their drunken frolics on the road;
   they would very well like to be saved from hell, but not from the sin
   which is the cause of it. Their notion of salvation is not to be saved
   from the love of evil, and to be made pure and clean; but that is God's
   meaning when he speaks of salvation. How can they hope to be the slaves
   of sin, and yet at the same time be free? Our first necessity is to be
   saved from sinning. The very name of Jesus tells us that: he is called
   Jesus because "he shall save his people from their sins." These persons
   do not care for a salvation which would mean self- denial and the
   giving up of ungodly lusts. O wretched lepers, that count their leprosy
   to be a beauty, and take pleasure in sin which in the sight of God is
   far more loathsome than the worst disease of the body! Oh, that Christ
   Jesus would come and change their views of things until they were of
   the same mind as God towards sin; and you know he calls it "that
   abominable thing which I hate." Oh, if men could see their love to
   wrong things to be a disease more sickening than leprosy, they would
   fain be saved, and saved at once! Holy Spirit, convince of sin, that
   sinners may be eager to be cleansed!

   Lepers were obliged to consort together: lepers associated with lepers,
   and they must have made up a dreadful confraternity. How glad they
   would have been to escape from it! But I know spiritual lepers who love
   the company of their fellow lepers. Yes, and the more leprous a man
   becomes, the more do they admire him. A bold sinner is often the idol
   of his comrades. Though foul is his life, others cling to him for that
   very reason. Such persons like to learn some new bit of wickedness,
   they are eager to be initiated into a yet darker form of impure
   pleasure. Oh, how they long to hear that last lascivious song, to read
   that last impure novel! It seems to be the desire of many to know as
   much evil as they can. They flock together, and take a dreadful
   pleasure in talk and action which is the horror of all pure minds.
   Strange lepers, that heap up leprosy as a treasure! Even those who do
   not go into gross open sin, yet are pleased with infidel notions and
   skeptical opinions, which are a wretched form of mental leprosy. O
   horrible malady, which makes men doubt the word of the living God!

   Lepers were not allowed to associate with healthy persons except under
   severe restrictions. Thus were they separated from their nearest and
   dearest friends. What a sorrow! Alas! I know persons thus separated,
   who do not wish to associate with the godly: to them holy company is
   dull and wearisome; they do not feel free and easy in such society, and
   therefore they avoid it as much as decency allows. How can they hope to
   live with saints for ever, when they shun them now as dull and moping
   acquaintances?

   O my hearers, I have come hither this morning in the hope that God
   would bless the word to some poor sinner who feels he is a sinner, and
   would fain be cleansed: such is the leper I am seeking with my whole
   heart. I pray God to bless the word to those who wish to escape from
   evil company, who would no longer sit in the assembly of the mockers,
   nor run in the paths of the unholy. To those who have grown weary of
   their sinful companions, and would escape from them, lest they should
   be bound up in bundles with them to burn at the last great day'to such
   I speak at this time with a loving desire for their salvation. I hope
   my word will come with divine application to some poor heart here that
   is crying, "I wish I might be numbered with the people of God. I wish I
   were fit to be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord. Oh, that my
   dreadful sinfulness were conquered, so that I could have fellowship
   with the godly, and be myself one of them!" I hope my Lord has brought
   to this place just such lost ones, that he may find them. I am looking
   out for them with tearful eyes. But my feeble eyes cannot read inward
   character; and it is well that the loving Saviour, who discerns the
   secrets of all hearts, and reads all inward desire, is looking from the
   watch-towers of heaven, that he may discover those who are coming to
   him, even though as yet they are a great way off. Oh that sinners may
   now beg and pray to be rescued from their sins! May those who have
   become habituated to evil long to break off their evil habits! Happy
   will the preacher be if he finds himself surrounded with penitents who
   hate their sins, and guilty ones who cry to be forgiven, and to be so
   changed that they shall go and sin no more.

   II. In the second place, let us remark that THIS LEPER'S FAITH WAS
   STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE HIM BELIEVE THAT HE COULD BE HEALED OF HIS
   HIDEOUS DISEASE. Leprosy was an unutterably loathsome disease. As it
   exists even now, it is described by those who have seen it in such a
   way that I will not harrow your feelings by repeating all the sickening
   details. The following quotation may be more than sufficient. Dr.
   Thomson in his famous work, "The Land and the Book," speaks of lepers
   in the East, and says, "The hair falls from the head and eye-brows; the
   nails loosen, decay and drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and
   toes shrink up and slowly fall away. The gums are absorbed, and the
   teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue and the palate are
   slowly consumed." This disease turns a man into a mass of
   loathsomeness, a walking pile of pests. Leprosy is nothing better than
   a horrible and lingering death. The leper in the narrative before us
   had sad personal experience of this, and yet he believed that Jesus
   could cleanse him. Splendid faith! Oh that you who are afflicted with
   moral and spiritual leprosy could believe in this fashion! Jesus Christ
   of Nazareth can heal even you. Over the horror of leprosy faith
   triumphed. Oh that in your case it would overcome the terribleness of
   sin!

   Leprosy was known to be incurable. There was no case of a man being
   cured of real leprosy by any medical or surgical treatment. This made
   the cure of Naaman in former ages so noteworthy. Observe, moreover,
   that our Saviour himself, so far as I can see, had never healed a leper
   up to the moment when this poor wretch appeared upon the scene. He had
   cured fever, and had cast out devils, but the cure of leprosy was in
   the Saviour's life as yet an unexampled thing. Yet this man, putting
   this and that together, and understanding something of the nature and
   character of the Lord Jesus Christ, believed that he could cure him of
   his incurable disease. He felt that even if the great Lord had not yet
   healed leprosy, he was assuredly capable of doing so great a deed, and
   he determined to apply to him. Was not this grand faith? Oh that such
   faith could be found among my hearers at this hour! Here me, O
   trembling sinner: if thou be as full of sin this morning as an egg is
   full of meat, Jesus can remove it all. If thy propensities to sin be as
   untamable as the wild boar of the wood, yet Jesus Christ, the Lord of
   all, can subdue thine iniquities, and make thee the obedient servant of
   his love. Jesus can turn the lion into a lamb, and he can do it now. He
   can transform thee where thou art sitting, saving thee in yonder pew
   while I am speaking the word. All things are possible to the Saviour
   God; and all things are possible to him that believeth. I would thou
   hadst such a faith as this leper had, although if it were even less it
   might serve thy turn, since thou hast not all his difficulties to
   contend with, since Jesus has already saved many sinners like thyself,
   and changed many hearts as hard as thine. If he shall regenerate thee,
   he will be doing for thee no strange thing, but only one of the daily
   miracles of his grace. He has now healed thousands of thy fellow
   lepers: canst thou not believe that he can heal the leprosy in thee?

   This man had a marvelous faith, thus to believe while he was personally
   the victim of the mortal malady. It is one thing to trust a doctor when
   you are well, but quite another to confide in him when your body is
   rotting away. For a real, conscious sinner to trust the Saviour is no
   mean thing. When you hope that there is some good thing in you, it is
   easy to be confident; but to be conscious of total ruin and yet to
   believe in the divine remedy'this is real faith. To see in the sunshine
   is mere natural vision; but to see in the dark needs the eye of faith:
   to believe that Jesus has saved you when you see the signs of it, is
   the result of reason; but to trust him to cleanse you while you are
   still defiled with sin'this is the essence of saving faith.

   The leprosy was firmly seated and fully developed in this man. Luke
   says that he was "full of leprosy": he had as much of the poison in him
   as one poor body could contain, it had come to its worst stage in him;
   and yet he believed that Jesus of Nazareth could make him clean.
   Glorious confidence! O my hearer, if thou art full of sin, if thy
   propensities and habits have become as bad as bad can be, I pray the
   Holy spirit to give thee and renew thee, and do it at once. With one
   word of his mouth Jesus can turn your death into life, your corruption
   into comeliness. Changes which we cannot work in others, much less in
   ourselves, Jesus, by his invincible Spirit, can work in the hearts of
   the ungodly. Of these stones he can raise up children unto Abraham. His
   moral and spiritual miracles are often wrought upon cases which seem
   beyond all hope, cases which pity itself endeavours to forget because
   her efforts have been so long in vain.

   I like best about this man's faith the fact that he did not merely
   believe that Jesus Christ could cleanse a leper, but that he could
   cleanse him! He said, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."
   It is very easy to believe for other people. There is really no faith
   in such impersonal, proxy confidence. The true faith believes for
   itself first, and then for others. Oh, I know some of you are saying,
   "I believe that Jesus can save my brother. I believe that he can save
   the vilest of the vile. If I heard that he had saved the biggest
   drunkard in Southward I should not wonder." Canst thou believe all
   this, and yet fear that he cannot save thee? This is strange
   inconsistency. If he heals another man's leprosy, can he not heal thy
   leprosy? If one drunkard is saved, why not another? If in one man a
   passionate temper is subdued, why not in another? If lust, and
   covetousness, and lying, and pride have been cured in many men, why not
   in thee? Even if thou art a blasphemer, blasphemy has been cured; why
   should it not be so in thy case? He can heal thee of that particular
   form of sin which possesses thee, however high a degree its power may
   have reached; for nothing is too hard for the Lord. Jesus can change
   and cleanse thee now. In a moment he can impart a new life and commence
   a new character. Canst thou believe this? This is the faith which
   glorified Jesus, and brought healing to this leper; and it is the faith
   which will save you at once if you now exercise it. O Spirit of the
   living God, work this faith in the minds of my dear hearers, that they
   may thus win their suit with the Lord Jesus, and go their way healed of
   the plague of sin!

   III. Now, notice, thirdly, that this man's faith WAS FIXED ON JESUS
   CHRIST ALONE. Let me read the man's words again. He said unto Jesus,
   "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Throw the emphasis upon the
   pronouns. See him kneeling before the Lord Jesus and hear him say, "If
   thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." He has no idea of looking to the
   disciples; no, not to one of them or to all of them. He had no notion
   of trusting in a measure to the medicine which physicians would
   prescribe for him. All that is gone. No dream of other hope remains;
   but with his eye fully fixed on the blessed Miracle-worker of Nazareth,
   he cries, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." In himself he had
   no shade of confidence; every delusion of that kind had been banished
   by a fierce experience of his disease. He knew that none on earth could
   deliver him, and that by no innate power of constitution could he throw
   out the poison; but he confidently believed that the Son of God could
   by himself effect the cure. This was God-given faith'the faith of God's
   elect, and Jesus was its sole object.

   How came this man to have such faith? I cannot tell you the outward
   means, but I think we may guess without presumption. Had he not heard
   our Lord preach? Matthew puts this story immediately after the Sermon
   on the Mount, and says, "When he was come down from the mountain, great
   multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped
   him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Had this
   man managed to stand at the edge of the crowd and hear Jesus speak, and
   did those wondrous words convince him that the great Teacher was
   something more than man? As he noted the style, and manner, and matter
   of that marvelous sermon, did he say within himself, "never man spake
   like this man. Truly he is the Son of God. I believe in him. I trust
   him. he can cleanse me"? May God bless the preaching of Christ
   crucified to you who hear me this day! Is not this used of the Lord,
   and made to be the power of God unto salvation to every one that
   believeth?

   Perhaps this man had seen our Lord's miracles. I feel sure he had. He
   had seen the devils cast out, and had heard of Peter's wife's mother,
   who had lain sick of a fever, and had been instantaneously recovered.
   The leper might very properly argue'To do this requires omnipotence;
   and once granted that omnipotence is at work, then omnipotence can as
   well deal with leprosy as with fever. Did he not reason well if he
   argued thus'What the Lord has done, he can do again: if in one case he
   has displayed almighty power, he can display that same power in another
   case? Thus would the acts of the Lord corroborate his words, and
   furnish a sure foundation for the leper's hope. My hearer, have you not
   seen Jesus save others? Have you not at least read of his miracles of
   grace? Believe him, then, for his works' sake, and say to him, "Lord,
   if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."

   Besides, I think this man may have heard something of the story of
   Christ, and may have been familiar with the Old Testament prophecies
   concerning the Messiah. We cannot tell but some disciple may have
   informed him of John's witness concerning the Christ, and of the signs
   and tokens which supported John's testimony. He may thus have discerned
   in the Son of Man the Messiah of God, the Incarnate Deity. At any rate,
   as knowledge must come before faith, he had received knowledge enough
   to feel that he could trust this glorious personage, and to believe
   that, if he willed it, Jesus could make him clean. O my dear hearers,
   cannot you trust the Lord Jesus Christ in this way? Do you not
   believe'I hope you do'that he is the Son of God; and if so, why not
   trust him? He that was born of Mary at Bethlehem was God over all,
   blessed forever! Do you not believe this? Why, then, do you not rely
   upon God in our nature? You believe in his consecrated life, his
   suffering death, his resurrection, his ascension, his sitting in power
   at the right hand of the Father; why do you not trust him? God hath
   highly exalted him, and caused all fullness to dwell in him: he is able
   to save unto the uttermost, why do you not come to him? Believe that he
   is able, and then with all thy sins before thee, red like scarlet'and
   with all thy sinful habits, and thy evil propensities before thee,
   ingrained like the leopard's spots'believe that the Saviour of men can
   at once make thee whiter than snow as to past guilt, and free from the
   present and future tyranny of evil. A divine Saviour must be able to
   cleanse thee from all sin. Only Jesus can do it, but he can do it'do it
   himself alone, do it now, do it in thee, do it with a word. If Jesus
   wills to do it, it is all that is wanted; for his will is the will of
   the Almighty Lord. Say, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean."
   Faith must be fixed alone on Jesus. None other name is given among men
   whereby we must be saved. I do pray the Lord to give that faith to all
   my dear friends present this morning who as yet have not received
   cleansing at the Lord's hands. Jesus is God's ultimatum of salvation:
   the unique hope of guilty men both as to pardon and renewal. Accept him
   even now.

   IV. Now let me go a step further: THIS MAN'S FAITH HAD RESPECT TO A
   REAL MATTER-OF-FACT CURE. He did not think of the Lord Jesus Christ as
   a priest who would perform certain ceremonies over him, and formally
   say, "Thou art clean"; for that would not have been true. He wanted
   really to be delivered from the leprosy; to have those dry scales, into
   which his skin kept turning, taken all away, that his flesh might
   become as the flesh of a little child; he wanted that the rottenness,
   which was eating up his body, should be stayed, and that health should
   be actually restored. Friends, it is easy enough to believe in a mere
   priestly absolution if you have enough credulity; but we need more than
   this. It is very easy to believe in Baptismal Regeneration, but what is
   the good of it? What practical result does it produce? A child remains
   the same after it has been baptismally regenerated as it was before,
   and it grows up to prove it. It is easy to believe in Sacramentarianism
   if you are foolish enough; but there is nothing in it when you believe
   in it. No sanctifying power comes with outward ceremonials in and of
   themselves. To believe that the Lord Jesus Christ can make us love the
   good things which once we despised, and shun those evil things in which
   we once took pleasure'this is to believe in him indeed and of a truth.
   Jesus can totally change the nature, and make a sinner into a saint.
   This is faith of a practical kind; this is a faith worth having.

   None of us would imagine that this leper meant that the Lord Jesus
   could make him feel comfortable in remaining a leper. Some seem to
   fancy that Jesus came to let us go on in our sins with a quiet
   conscience; but he did nothing of the kind. His salvation is cleansing
   from sin, and if we love sin we are not saved from it. We cannot have
   justification without sanctification. There is no use in quibbling
   about it; there must be a change, a radical change, a change of heart,
   or else we are not saved. I put it now to you, Do you desire a moral
   and a spiritual change, a change of life, thought and motive? This is
   what Jesus gives. Just as this leper needed a thorough physical change,
   so do you need an entire renewal of your spiritual nature, so as to
   become a new creature in Jesus Christ. Oh that many here would desire
   this, for it would be a cheering sign. The man who desires to be pure
   is beginning to be pure; the man who sincerely longs to conquer sin has
   struck the first blow already. The power of sin is shaken in that man
   who looks to Jesus for deliverance from it. The man who frets under the
   yoke of sin will not long be a slave to it; if he can believe that
   Jesus Christ is able to set him free, he shall soon quit his bondage.
   Some sins which have hardened down into habits, will yet disappear in a
   moment when Jesus Christ looks upon a man in love. I have known many
   instances of persons who, for many years, had never spoken without an
   oath, or a filthy expression, who, being converted, have never been
   known to use such language again, and have scarcely ever been tempted
   in that direction. This is one of the sins which seem to die at the
   first shot, and it is a very wonderful thing it should be so. Others I
   have known so altered at once that the very propensity which was
   strongest in them has been the last to annoy them afterwards: they have
   had such a reversion of the mind's action that, while other sins have
   worried them for years, and they have had to set a strict watch against
   them, yet their favourite and dominant sin has never again had the
   slightest influence over them, except to excite an outburst of horror
   and deep repentance. Oh, that you had faith in Jesus that he could thus
   cast down and cast out your reigning sins! Believe in the conquering
   arm of the Lord Jesus, and he will do it. Conversion is the standing
   miracle of the church. Where it is genuine, it is as clear a proof of
   divine power going with the gospel, as was the casting out of devils,
   or even the raising of the dead in our Lord's day. We see these
   conversions still; and have proof that Jesus is able to work great
   moral marvels still. O my hearer, where art thou? Canst thou not
   believe that Jesus is able to make a new man of thee? O brethren, who
   have been saved, I entreat you to breathe a prayer at this time for
   those who are not yet cleansed from the foul disease of sin. Pray that
   they may have grace to believe in the Lord Jesus for purification of
   heart, pardon of sin, and the implantation of eternal life. Then when
   faith is given, the Lord Jesus will work their sanctification, and none
   shall effectually hinder. In silence let us pray for a moment. (Here
   there was a pause, and silent prayer went up to heaven.)

   V. And now we will go another step: THIS MAN'S FAITH WAS ATTENDED WITH
   WHAT APPEARS TO BE A HESITANCY. But after thinking it over a good deal,
   I am hardly inclined to think it such a hesitancy as many have judged
   it to be. He said, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." There was
   an "if" in this speech, and that "if" has aroused the suspicions of
   many preachers. Some think it supposes that he doubted our Lord's
   willingness. I hardly think that the language justly bears so harsh a
   construction. What he meant may have been this'"Lord, I do not know yet
   that thou art sent to heal lepers; I have not seen that thou hast ever
   done so; but, still, if it be within the compass of thy commission, I
   believe thou wilt do it, and assuredly thou canst if thou wilt. Thou
   canst heal not only some lepers, but me in particular; thou canst make
   me clean." Now, I think this was a legitimate thing for him to say, as
   he had not seen a leper healed'"If it be within the compass of thy
   commission, I believe thou canst make me whole."

   Moreover, I admire in this text the deference which the leper pays to
   the sovereignty of Christ's will as to the bestowal of his gifts. "If
   thou wilt, thou canst make me clean";'as much as to say, "I know thou
   hast a right to distribute these great favours exactly as thou
   pleasest. I have no claim upon thee; I cannot say that thou art bound
   to make me clean; I appeal to thy pity and free favour. The matter
   remains with thy will." The man had never read the text which saith,
   "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
   that showeth mercy," for it was not yet written; but he had in his mind
   the humble spirit suggested by that grand truth. He owned that grace
   must come as a free gift of God's good pleasure when he said "Lord, if
   thou wilt." Beloved, we need never raise a question as to the Lord's
   will to give grace when we have the will to receive it; but still, I
   would have every sinner feel that he has no claim upon God for
   anything. O sinner, if the Lord should give thee up, as he did the
   heathen described in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,
   thou deservest it. If he should never look upon thee with an eye of
   love, what couldst thou say against his righteous sentence? Thou hast
   wilfully sinned, and thou deservest to be left in thy sin. Confessing
   all this, we still cling to our firm belief in the power of grace, and
   cry, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst." We appeal to our Saviour's
   pitying love, relying upon his boundless power.

   See, also, how the leper, to my mind, really speaks without any
   hesitancy, if you understand him. He does not say, "Lord, if thou
   puttest out thy hand, thou canst make me clean"; nor, "Lord, if thou
   speakest, thou canst make me clean"; but only, "Lord, if thou wilt,
   thou canst make me clean": thy mere will can do it. Oh, splendid faith!
   If you are inclined to spy a little halting in it, I would have you
   admire it for running so well with a lame foot. If there was a weakness
   anywhere in his faith, still it was so strong that the weakness only
   manifests its strength. Sinner, it is so; and I pray God that thy heart
   may grasp it'if the Lord wills it he can make thee clean. Believest
   thou this? If so, carry out practically what thy faith will suggest to
   thee'namely, that thou come to Jesus and plead with him, and get from
   him the cleansing which thou needest. To that end I am hoping to lead
   thee, as the Holy Spirit shall enable me.

   VI. In the sixth place, notice that THIS MAN'S FAITH HAD EARNEST ACTION
   FLOWING OUT OF IT. Believing that, if Jesus willed, he could make him
   clean, what did the leper do? At once he came to Jesus. I know not from
   what distance, but he came as near to Jesus as he could. Then we read
   that he besought him; that is to say, he pleaded, and pleaded, and
   pleaded again. He cried, "Lord, cleanse me! Lord heal my leprosy!" Nor
   was this all; he fell on his knees and worshipped; for we read,
   "Kneeling down to him." He not only knelt, but knelt to Jesus. He had
   no difficulty as to paying him divine honour. He worshipped the Lord
   Christ, paying him reverent homage. He then went on to honour him by an
   open acknowledgment of his power, his marvelous power, his infinite
   power, by saying, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." I
   should not wonder if some that stood by began to smile at what they
   thought the poor man's fanatical credulity. They murmured, "What a poor
   fool as this leper is, to think that Jesus of Nazareth can cure him of
   his leprosy!" Such a confession of faith had seldom been heard. But
   whatever critics and skeptics might think, this brave man boldly
   declared, "Lord, this is my confession of faith: I believe that if thou
   wilt, thou canst make me clean." Now, poor soul, thou that art full of
   guilt, and hardened in sin, and yet anxious to be healed, look straight
   away to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is here now. In the preaching of the
   gospel he is with us alway. With the eyes of thy mind behold him, for
   he beholdeth thee. Thou knowest that he lives, even though thou seest
   him not. Believe in this living Jesus; believe for perfect cleansing.
   Cry to him, worship him, adore him, trust him. He is very God of very
   God; bow before him, and cast thyself upon his mercy. Go home, and on
   thy knees say, "Lord, I believe that thou canst make me clean." He will
   hear your cry, and will save you. There will be no interval between
   your prayer and the gracious reward of faith, of which I am now to
   speak.

   VII. Lastly, HIS FAITH HAD ITS REWARD. Have patience with me just a
   minute. The reward of this man's faith was, first, that his very words
   were treasured up. Matthew, Mark, Luke, all three of them record the
   precise words which this man used: "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make
   me clean." They evidently did not see so much to find fault with in
   them as some have done; on the contrary, they thought them gems to be
   placed in the setting of their gospels. Three times over are they
   recorded, because they are such a splendid confession of faith for a
   poor diseased leper to have made. I believe that God is as much
   glorified by that one sentence of the leper as by the song of Cherubim
   and Seraphim, when they continually do cry, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God
   of Sabaoth." A sinner's lips declaring his confident faith in God's own
   Son can breathe sonnets unto God more sweet than those of the angelic
   choirs. This man's first faith- words are folded up in the fair linen
   of three evangels, and laid up in the treasury of the house of the
   Lord. God values the language of humble confidence.

   His next reward was, that Jesus echoed his words. He said, "Lord, if
   thou wilt, thou canst make me clean"; and Jesus said, "I will; be thou
   clean." As an echo answers to the voice, so did Jesus to his
   supplicant. The Lord Jesus was so pleased with this man's words that he
   caught them as they leaped out of his mouth, and used them himself,
   saying, "I will; be thou clean." If you can only get, then, as far as
   this leper's confession, I believe that our Lord Jesus from his throne
   above will answer to your prayer.

   So potent were the words of this leper that they moved our Lord very
   wonderfully. Read the forty-first verse: "And Jesus, moved with
   compassion." The Greek word here used, if I were to pronounce it in
   your hearing, would half suggest its own meaning. It expresses a
   stirring of the entire manhood, a commotion in all the inward parts.
   The heart and all the vitals of the man are in active movement. The
   Saviour was greatly moved. You have seen a man moved, have you not?
   When a strong man is unable any longer to restrain himself, and is
   forced to give way to his feelings, you have seen him tremble all over,
   and at last burst out into an evident break-down. It was just so with
   the Saviour: his pity moved him, his delight in the leper's faith
   mastered him. When he heard the man speak with such confidence in him,
   the Saviour was moved with a sacred passion, which, as it was in
   sympathy with the leper, is called "compassion." Oh, to think that a
   poor leper should have such power over the divine Son of God! Yet, my
   hearer, in all thy sin and misery, if thou canst believe in Jesus, thou
   canst move the heart of thy blessed Saviour. Yea, even now his bowels
   yearn towards thee.

   No sooner was our Lord Jesus thus moved than out went his hand, and he
   touched the man and healed him immediately. It did not require a long
   time for the working of the cure; but the leper's blood was cooled and
   cleansed in a single second. Our Lord could work this miracle, and make
   all things new in the man; for "all things were made by him; and
   without him was not anything made that was made." He restored the poor,
   decaying, putrefying body of this man, and he was cleansed at once. To
   make him quite sure that he was cleansed, the Lord Jesus bade him go to
   the priest, and seek a certificate of health. He was so clean that he
   might be examined by the appointed sanitary authority, and come off
   without suspicion. The cure which he had received was a real and
   radical one, and therefore he might go away at once, and get the
   certificate of it. If our converts will not bear practical tests, they
   are worth nothing; let even our enemies judge whether they are not
   better men and women when Jesus has renewed them. If Jesus saves a
   sinner, he does not mind all men testing the change. Jesus does not
   seek display, but he seeks examination from those able to judge. Our
   converts will bear the test. Come hither, angels! Come hither, pure
   intelligences, able to observe men in secret! Here is a wretch of a
   sinner who came hither this morning. He seemed first cousin to the
   devil; but the Lord Jesus Christ has converted him and changed him. Now
   look at him, ye angels; look at him at home in his chamber! Watch him
   in private life. We can read your verdict. "There is joy in presence of
   the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth"; and this proves what
   you think. It is such a wonderful change, and angels are so sure of it,
   that they give their certificates at once. How do they give their
   certificates? Why, each one manifests his joy as he sees the sinner
   turning from his sinful ways. Oh, that the angels might have work of
   this kind to do this morning! Dear hearer, may you be one over whom
   they rejoice! If thou believest on Jesus Christ, and if thou wilt trust
   him, as the sent One of God, fully and entirely with thy soul, he will
   make thee clean. Behold him on the cross, and see sin put away. Behold
   him risen from the dead, and see new life bestowed. Behold him
   enthroned in power, and see evil conquered. I am ready to be bound for
   my Lord, to be his surety, that if thou, my hearer, wilt come to him,
   he will make thee clean. Believe thy Saviour, and thy cure is wrought.
   God help thee, for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Mark 1:16-45.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'428, 602, 546.
     __________________________________________________________________

Job Among the Ashes

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 19, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees
   You. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5,
   6.

   JEHOVAH had spoken, Job had trembled. The Lord had revealed Himself,
   Job had seen Him. Truly, God did but display the skirts of His robe and
   unveil a part of His ways. But therein was so much of ineffable glory
   that Job laid his hand upon his mouth in token of his silent consent to
   the claims of the Everlasting One. God spoke to Job out of the
   whirlwind concerning the greatness of His power, the wonders of His
   workings, the splendor of His skill, the infinity of His wisdom.
   Carefully read that wonderful speech of the Most High to the trembling
   Patriarch. I dare not call it poetry. For it rises as much above human
   poetry as the most sublime poetry stands above the poorest prose.

   It is simply a statement of facts and these are mentioned in language
   of the simplest kind. But the overpowering glory of the utterance lies
   in the facts themselves. These sublime stanzas are spoken in the idiom
   of God. Those only know the peculiar style of the living God who have
   become familiar with the sacred Word in Spirit and in Truth and such
   persons can at once distinguish the speech of Jehovah from that of men.
   Read the Divine address, that you may see how Jehovah caused the
   afflicted Patriarch to feel Him near.

   In the confession which now lies before us, Job acknowledges God's
   boundless power. For he exclaims, "I know that You can do everything,
   and that no thought can be withheld from You." He felt that whatever
   the Lord chose to think or desire He could at once accomplish. Job had
   a glimpse of that omnipotence of which the height and depth no mind can
   ever measure.

   Job sees his own folly. He speaks like a man in a maze or a muse and he
   says, "Who is He that hides counsel without knowledge?" Look at the
   second verse of chapter thirty-eight and you will see that he is
   quoting what God had said to him. The Lord's words are ringing in his
   ears and in his anguish he repeats them, accepting them as justly
   applicable to himself. It is not far from being right with us when the
   Words of God can fitly become our words. "The Lord answered Job out of
   the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words
   without knowledge?"

   And now Job replies, "I am that foolish one--I uttered what I
   understood not--things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." Job
   felt that what he had spoken concerning the Lord was, in the main,
   true. And the Lord Himself said to Job's three friends, "You have not
   spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job has." But under
   a sense of the Divine Presence Job felt that even when he had spoken
   aright, he had spoken beyond his own proper knowledge, uttering speech
   whose depths of meaning he could not himself fathom. Many a holy
   Prophet has done this, for inspired men are described as those who
   "enquired and searched diligently; searching what, or what manner of
   time the Spirit which was in them did signify, when it testified
   beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow."

   It is not the thoughts of the Prophet which have been inspired of God
   so much as their words. For frequently they were moved to speak
   prophecies which were quite beyond their own understanding--in fact, my
   Brethren, are not all the great mysteries of the faith above human
   thought? And may we not fearlessly assert that no inspired man has ever
   known all the depth of God's meaning treasured up in the words which he
   himself has been led by the Spirit of God to write? Hence I assert that
   there is a verbal inspiration, or no inspiration at all worthy of the
   name. Job, as he comes before us in the text, is impressed with his own
   folly. He had, to a large degree, spoken what he felt sure was true but
   he now feels that he did not understand what he said.

   And he at the same time tacitly confesses that he may have said in his
   bitterness many an unwise and unseemly thing, and therefore he bows his
   head before the Lord his God and confesses that he has darkened counsel
   by words without knowledge and uttered things that he understood not.

   Notwithstanding, the man of God proceeds to draw near unto the Lord,
   before whom he bows himself. Foolish as he confesses himself to be, he
   does not, therefore, fly from the supreme wisdom. Although he knows
   that he has babbled ig-norantly, he does not seek to hide from the Lord
   as Adam did when he sought the shade of the trees of the garden. No, he
   takes up the Lord's Words again and is emboldened by them to approach.
   Read the thirty-eighth chapter, third verse. The Lord there says, "Gird
   up now your loins like a man--for I will demand of you and you shall
   answer Me."

   Like a man in a dream, Job accepts the invitation and answers, "Behold
   I am vile, what shall I answer You? I will lay my hand upon my mouth.
   Once have I spoken. But I will not answer--yes, twice. But I will
   proceed no further." This was brave and wise action. Whatever Job might
   be or might not be, he was a firm believer in his God and in every Word
   which the Lord was pleased to speak. He held even to discouraging words
   with desperate tenacity and even learned to find honey in Words which
   roared like lions upon him. Hence, when he is humbled in the dust, he
   recollects that God had bid him draw near to Him. And albeit to his
   fears that bidding may have sounded like a challenge, yet to his faith
   it becomes an encouragement and he, in effect, replies, "My God, I will
   venture to take You at Your Word. You bid me come and come I will. Dust
   and ashes though I am, I will do as You allow me and make my humble
   appeal to You."

   Dear Friends, it is altogether wrong to allow our sense of folly or of
   sin to drive us away from God. But it is altogether right when our
   humiliation draws us to the Lord and our conscious need drives us to
   the Throne of Grace. The more foolish and sinful we are, the more
   urgent is our need to come to God, who alone can make us clean and
   instruct us in the way of heavenly wisdom. I commend to you, therefore,
   God's servant Job, of whom we may say, whatever fault we may perceive
   in him, none of us could have behaved so gloriously as he did--unless,
   indeed, the Lord should give us like Divine Grace.

   The Lord led Job to find fault with Him, yet God does not complain but
   even commends him. The three carping friends are commanded to bring a
   costly sacrifice but this was not demanded from Job. And even when they
   brought their seven bullocks the Lord did not accept them till Job,
   whom they had condemned, had made intercession for them. Job bore away
   the palm from the conflict. So let us do as Job did and make our
   approach unto the Lord in childlike confidence even when He seems to
   frown. Let us get where Job was when he said, "Though He slay me, yet
   will I trust in

   Him."

   When we bow lowest before His Throne, let not our humble bending have
   anything of distance in it. Lower before You, O Lord, would we be. But
   at the same time our cry is, "Nearer to You."

   Thus we come to the text, having used the connection as a step to its
   door. On the text I make three observations-- first, we have sometimes
   very vivid impressions of God. Job said, "I have heard of You by the
   hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees You." In the second place, when
   we are favored with these clearer views of God, we have lower thoughts
   of ourselves--"wherefore I abhor myself." And thirdly, whenever we are
   thus made low, our heart is filled with repentance--"I abhor myself and
   repent in dust and ashes." May the Holy Spirit aid us in this
   experimental meditation!

   I. First, then, WE HAVE SOMETIMES VERY VIVID IMPRESSIONS OF GOD. Job
   had long before heard of God

   and that is a great matter. I do not think he meant merely that he had
   heard men speak of God but that he had really, for himself, heard God's
   voice. He had been a reverent Believer in the teachings of God and an
   obedient servant to His commands--thus he had really heard God. The man
   who can say this can say a great deal. If God has ever been on speaking
   terms with you, you have much cause for gratitude. It is clear that you
   are not dead in sin, or if you were so when the Lord spoke to you, you
   are now alive. For His voice causes the dead to live.

   If you have heard God in the secret of your soul, you are a spiritual
   man--only a spirit can hear the Spirit of God-- none can discern the
   Lord but the man to whom He has given spiritual life. Job had heard
   God, but now he has a more vivid apprehension of Him. It is sometimes
   said that one eyewitness is better than ten ear-witnesses and there is
   much truth in the saying--certainly, facts perceived by the eye make a
   far more vivid impression upon the mind than the same facts heard by
   the ear. If we witness a sad scene of poverty, it has far more effect
   upon our heart than the most graphic description. Word paintings can
   never bring out the reality of a thing so well as the actual sight of
   it.

   Of course, Job could not literally see God--he does not mean to assert
   that he did. For "no man has seen God at any time." But Job means that
   he now had a view of God very much more clearly than any which he had
   obtained before. In fact, as much clearer as eyesight is more clear
   than hearing.

   Notice that in order to this close vision of God, affliction had
   overtaken him. It was not till after he had scraped himself with the
   potsherd, nor till his friends had scraped him with something worse
   than potsherds, that Job could say, "My eye sees You." Not till every
   camel and every sheep had been stolen and every child was dead could
   the afflicted Patriarch cry, "Now my eye sees You." Happy is that man
   who in prosperity can hear the voice of God in the tinkling of the
   sheep-bells of his abundant flocks, can hear Him in the lowing of the
   oxen which cover his fields and in the loving voices of dear children
   around him.

   But, mark--prosperity is a painted window which shuts out much of the
   clear light of God and only when the blue and the crimson and the
   golden tinge are removed is the glass restored to its full
   transparency. Adversity thus takes away tinge and color and dimness and
   we see our God far better than before--if our eyes are prepared for the
   light. The Lord had taken everything away from Job, and this paved the
   way to His giving him more of Himself. In the absence of other goods
   the good God is the better seen. In prosperity God is heard and that is
   a blessing. But in adversity God is seen and that is a greater
   blessing.

   Sanctified adversity quickens our spiritual sensitiveness. Sorrow after
   sorrow will wake up the spirit and it will infuse into it a delicacy of
   perception which, perhaps, does not often come to us in any other way.
   I purposely say, "perhaps," for I believe that some choice saints are
   favored to reach it by smoother ways. But I think they are very few.
   The most of us are of such coarse material that we need melting before
   we attain to that sacred softness by which the Lord God is joyfully
   perceived. O child of God, if you are to suffer as much as Job
   suffered, if you get to see the Lord with a spiritually enlightened
   eye, you may be thankful for the sorrowful process! Who would not go to
   Patmos if he might see the visions of John and who would not sit on the
   dunghill with Job to cry with him, "Now my eye sees You"?

   Possibly, Job's desertion by his friends was also helpful. Job's three
   friends! Ah me, I know their kind! They were most devotedly attached to
   him, no doubt. And how warmly they proved it! They had met together
   with him and said soft and sweet things to him in those days when he
   moved like a prince among the nobles of his people and every eye that
   saw him blessed him. But when they found him sitting "down among the
   ashes," they had altered thoughts of him. They suspected him. And
   though they knew nothing against him, yet they perceived that he was
   not in the same honor as before.

   Between a prince in ermine and the same man in sackcloth there is, to
   some minds, a great difference. Besides, the instinct of
   self-preservation leads men to hold off from one who is sinking, lest
   they sink with him. After sitting in silence for a week, these
   excellent men found it in their hearts to assail him with their
   judicious observations. Here and there they inserted nice little bits
   of cruelty, all meant for his good. Was he not covered with sores? Was
   there not a cause for all this? By this torture God delivered Job from
   men--he was not likely after that to incur the curse which comes
   through making flesh your arm. He was also strengthened in personal
   independence of mind. He could clearly see that his breath was in his
   own nostrils and not in other people's, and that he could stand alone
   by God's help, yes, even stand against those eminent men who had
   contended with him.

   Friends are all too apt to block out our view of our best Friend. When
   gracious minds are driven from men, they are drawn to God and learn to
   sing with David, "My Soul, wait you only upon God. For my expectation
   is from Him." I do not doubt, therefore, that the desertion and
   upbraiding endured by Job from his friends were a great help towards
   his being able to say to the Lord his God, "Now my eye sees You."
   Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar might have interposed between Job and God
   and their kindly help might have placed Job under lasting obligations
   to them--but now he looks alone to God and honors Him only.

   Still, before Job could see the Lord, there was a special manifestation
   on God's part to him. "Then the Lord answered Job out of the
   whirlwind." God must really come, and in a gracious way make a display
   of Himself to His servants, or else they will not see Him. Your
   afflictions will not of themselves reveal God to you. If the Lord
   Himself does not unveil His face, your sorrow may even blind and harden
   you and make you rebellious. The desertion and unkindness of friends
   is, also, no help to Divine Grace--its tendency is to sour and imperil
   your piety if it acts out its natural influence--there must be a
   special revealing of the Lord to our own souls before we shall get such
   a clear apprehension of Him as Job intended by the words, "Now my eye
   sees You."

   Read through the thirty-eighth chapter and see how Jehovah declares His
   wisdom and His power--"Where were you when I laid the foundations of
   the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who has laid the
   measures thereof, if

   you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the
   foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof when
   the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for
   joy? Have you entered into the treasures of the snow? Or have you seen
   the treasures of the hail? Can you bind the sweet influences of
   Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Can you bring forth Mazzaroth in
   his season? Or can you guide Arcturus with his sons?"

   Here was a marvelous field for thought. The Lord speaks in nature and
   it is done. His glory is seen in Heaven and earth, in the sea and all
   deep places. God is and there is none beside Him. Yes, Jehovah is God
   alone. Nor did the Lord fail to show to Job His justice, defying him to
   emulate it. See the fortieth chapter, eleventh and twelfth
   verses--"Cast abroad the rage of your wrath. And behold everyone that
   is proud and abase him. Look on everyone that is proud and bring him
   low. And tread down the wicked in their place." God is the supreme
   governor and He bears not the sword in vain. He is impartial and
   infallible and none can disannul His judgment, or condemn His acts.

   I need not tarry to say to you that all through that wonderful address
   of the Lord to His servant, He is saying, in so many words, "I am God.
   But who are you?" The Lord is proving that nothing is impossible to His
   power and His wisdom. He had, after all, not allowed His servant to
   sink out of His reach. He was always able to rescue him. You learn
   here, also, that God is not amenable to our judgment. He gives no
   account of His matters. He makes Job feel that He is God, and that is
   the end of the matter. No apology is made to Job and no explanation is
   given him--he must bow in unreserved submission and surrender
   unconditionally. And he does so.

   Notice how by the Lord's first words Job was silenced and could only
   whisper," Behold I am vile, what shall I answer You? I will lay my hand
   upon my mouth. Once have I spoken. But I will not answer: yes, twice.
   But I will proceed no further." Thus far he worshipped. But he must yet
   go further, until he cries, "I abhor myself and repent in dust and
   ashes."

   II. We have now reached our second point--WHEN WE HAVE THESE VIVID
   APPREHENSIONS OF GOD, WE HAVE LOWER VIEWS OF OURSELVES.

   Why are the wicked so proud? It is because they forget God. Why did
   Pharaoh dare to say, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?"
   It was because he did not know Jehovah. But after those ten plagues, he
   altered his tone and cried out, "Entreat the Lord" (for it is enough).
   Even his great pride was forced to bow before Jehovah when judgments
   were let loose upon him. If men knew God, how it would change their
   thoughts and talk! If they could have even an indistinct idea, "by the
   hearing of the ear," many of them would never be so irreverent as they
   now are, nor so lofty in their ideas of their own wisdom. If they could
   "see" Him as Job did and behold His inexpressible glory, they would
   become far more meek and lowly.

   Here let me observe that God Himself is the measure of rectitude, and
   hence, when we come to think of God, we soon discover our own
   shortcomings and transgressions. Too often we compare ourselves among
   ourselves and are not wise. A man says, "I am not so bad as many and I
   am quite as good as such a one, who is in high repute." What if it is
   so? Do you judge yourself by other erring ones? Your measuring line is
   false. It is not the standard of the sanctuary. If you would be right,
   you must measure yourself with the holiness of God--God Himself is the
   standard of perfect holiness, Truth, love and justice. And if you fall
   short of His glory, you have fallen short of what you ought to be.

   When I think of this, self-righteousness seems to me to be a wretched
   insanity. If you want to know what God is, He sets Himself before us in
   the Person of His dear Son. In every respect in which we fall short of
   the perfect character of Jesus, in that respect we sin. There is no
   better description of sin that I know of than this--"Sin is any want of
   conformity to the Law of God," and God's Law is the transcript of His
   own mind. Wherein in any moral or spiritual respect we fall short of
   the Divine Character, we to that extent fall into sin. No, my Brethren,
   we cannot hear the ceaseless cry of the cherubim, "Holy, holy, holy,
   Lord God of Sabaoth," without at once sinking, sinking, sinking, till
   we abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes.

   Permit me to suggest to each one here who has a high idea of himself
   and has no sense of self-abhorrence that such self-honor must arise
   from ignorance of God. For there is such an immeasurable distance
   between the perfection of God and our faultiness that our true position
   is that of penitent humility.

   Our next reflection is this--God Himself is the object of every
   transgression--and this sets sin in a terrible light. Sin frequently
   has our fellow men as its object. But even then I am not incorrect in
   what I have said, for sins against our fellow men are still sins
   against God. It would be well if we felt with David--"Against You, You
   only, have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight." Think, then, of
   sin as an offense against God, committed in God's Presence, committed

   while He is looking on. My beloved Friends, in this light observe the
   wantonness of sin. For who could wish to offend against a perfectly
   holy and entirely loving God? If God is all He should be, why do we not
   agree with Him?

   If in God we see every possible and conceivable good, why do we set up
   ourselves, our wills, our desires in opposition to Him? He is so
   gracious towards man that He may be described by that one Word, "love."
   And if it is so, why do we not love Him with all our heart and all our
   soul and all our strength? Every shortcoming and every transgression,
   therefore, is a wanton offense against infinite goodness. If Jehovah
   were a tyrant, there might be some excuse for rebellion. But since He
   is infinitely just and loving, it is atrocious that His own creatures,
   yes, His own children, should offend Him.

   Note, next, the impertinence of sin. How dare we transgress against
   God? O Man, who are you that rebels against God? How dare you to do to
   His face that which He forbids you? How dare you to leave undone in His
   very presence that which your Lord commands you to do? This makes sin a
   piece of presumption, a daring and glaring provocation of the Lord God.
   Thus it is evident that in the immediate Presence of God sin does like
   itself appear.

   The fact that sin is leveled at God makes us bow in lowliness. Although
   some of us can hold our heads high among our fellow men and we can say,
   "I am neither a drunkard, nor a thief, nor a liar, neither have I
   offended against the laws of integrity and charity," yet when we come
   before God, we perceive that we have not dealt towards Him as we ought
   to have done. To Him we have been thieves, robbing Him of His glory.
   "Will a man rob God?" To Him we have been li-ars--we have dealt
   treacherously and have broken our promises. To Him we have been
   ingrates. To Him we have been worse than brutes. Instead of equity, we
   have dealt towards God iniquity. Instead of love, we have dealt out
   enmity.

   The Lord has nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled
   against Him. Even our holy things have been defiled. Our best tears
   need to be wept over and our truest faith is spoiled with unbelief. Oh,
   when we think of this, we can understand why Job says, "Now my eye sees
   You. Wherefore I abhor myself."

   Once more--when God is seen with admiration, then of necessity we are
   filled with self-loathing. The more you appreciate God, the more you
   will depreciate yourself. While the thought of God rises higher and
   higher and higher, you also will sink lower and lower in your own
   esteem. The word used by Job, "I abhor myself," is a strong one. It
   might be paraphrased thus, "I nauseate myself. I am disgusted with
   myself. I cast forth from my soul every proud thought of my-self--cast
   it out from me as a sickening and intolerable thing."

   Ah, dear Friends, you have not seen God aright if your abhorrence turns
   upon your fellow men. But if the one man you abhor is yourself, you are
   not mistaken! A sight of God will make us regard our fellow creatures
   with sympathy, as involved in the same sin and misery as ourselves. As
   a common danger in a sinking ship makes every man a brother to his
   fellow, so a clear sense of our common guilt and ruin will make us feel
   the brotherhood of man--but, on the other hand, a sight of God will
   prevent our dreaming of personal excellence and will compel us to take
   the lowest place. Since God is glorious in our eyes, we become ashamed.
   We adore God and in contrast, we abhor self.

   Do you know what self-loathing means? Some of you do, I know. And I am
   sure that in proportion as you truly love, reverence and worship God,
   in that proportion you are full of abhorrence of self. You fine
   gentlemen, who hold your heads so high that you can scarcely get
   through common doorways, you know nothing of this! You high and mighty
   ladies, who cannot condescend to associate with any who are not of your
   superior rank. And you purse proud men, who expect all to worship the
   golden calf which you have set up, you know nothing about this.

   O you wonderfully wise men, you intellectual persons, who so modestly
   dub yourselves "thoughtful and cultured," you snuff out a poor
   evangelical Believer as if he were an idiot. May the Lord give you an
   hour of Job's, "I abhor myself," and then you will be bearable. But as
   you now are, you are a thief! While the dunghill is your proper place,
   you covet the Throne of the Almighty. But He will not yield it to
   you--you would improve upon Divine Revelation and revise infallible
   inspiration. But your boasting is vain. Oh that you had a manifestation
   of God and then you would know yourselves! God grant it to you for His
   mercy's sake!

   III. Thirdly, I have to show you that SUCH A SIGHT FILLS THE HEART WITH
   TRUE REPENTANCE. Job

   says, "I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." The word "myself
   has been added by the translators. And they could hardly have done
   otherwise. Job's expression, however, refers to all that had come out
   of himself or had lurked within himself. He abhorred all that he had
   been doing and saying. He says, "I abhor and repent in dust and ashes."
   What did he repent of? I think Job repented, first, of that tremendous
   curse which he had pronounced upon the day of his birth. It was
   terrible. See the third chapter.

   "Let the day perish wherein I was born and the night in which it was
   said, There is a man-child conceived. Let that day be darkness. Let not
   God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let it
   not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the
   number of the months." He wished he had perished from the womb, that
   his birth cry had been his first and his last. "For now should I have
   lain still and been quiet." Before God Job has to eat his bitter words.
   It is always a pity to say too much in moments of agony, because we may
   have to unsay that which escapes us. He would not curse God but he did
   curse the day of his birth and it was unseemly. Of this he unfeignedly
   repents.

   Next, Job heartily repented of his desire to die. In the sixth chapter
   he expresses it as he did several times--he says, "Oh, that I might
   have my request. And that God would grant me the thing that I long for!
   Even that it would please God to destroy me. That He would let loose
   His hand and cut me off!" Do you wonder that he said this? Was ever man
   so tried? I do not wonder at all, even at his cursing the day of his
   birth considering all the bodily pain and mental irritation which he
   was enduring at the time. I wonder that he played the man as well as he
   did.

   But still he must have looked back with deep regret upon his
   impatience. The last verses of the book run thus--"After this lived Job
   an hundred and forty years and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even
   four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days." This is the
   same man who begged to die. Elijah also said, "Let me die, I am not
   better than my fathers," and yet he never died at all. What poor
   creatures we are! What haste impatience breeds!

   Job had to repent, next, of all his complaints against God. These had
   been very many. In the seventh chapter he turns to God and says, "I
   will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the
   bitterness of my soul. Am I a sea, or a whale, that You set a watch
   over me? When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my
   complaint. Then You scare me with dreams and terrify me through
   visions--so that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my
   life. I loathe it. I would not live always--let me alone. For my days
   are vanity. How long will You not depart from me, nor let me alone till
   I swallow down my spittle?"

   Ah! poor Job had to swallow his murmuring as well as his spittle, for
   he repents of every rebellious thought. He complains of his having
   complained and with self-abhorrence he repents in dust and ashes. I do
   not doubt but what Job repented of his despair. The ninth and tenth
   chapters and many other passages wherein Job speaks are tinged with
   hopelessness. He felt as if God had left him a prey to the enemy. But
   this was not true. The Lord has never deserted any of His people. There
   is not on record in all the history of the ages a case in which God has
   failed them that trust Him.

   Has He not said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you"? And He
   never has left nor forsaken any Believer. Yet Job evidently thought
   that He had done so, and he was greatly troubled. Job had uttered rash
   challenges of God--in the ninth chapter, at the thirty-third verse, he
   says that there is no mediator between him and God, or else he would
   plead his cause--"Let Him take His rod away from me and let not His
   fear terrify me--then would I speak and not fear Him--but it is not so
   with me." This was wrong and Job abhorred himself for having fallen
   into so ill a temper and so little becoming in a man of God.

   His critics goaded him by cruelly charging him with hypocrisy and
   wickedness and Job vindicated himself with great earnestness, appealing
   to God and saying, "You know that I am not wicked." This was true. The
   indignation of an honest heart cannot be blamed for speaking thus to
   men. But Job felt that he could not speak thus before the Lord. He
   could plead his innocence in the common courts of men and there he
   could well enough defend himself. But when the matter came into the
   King's own court, he could not answer in the same strain but felt
   compelled to plead guilty. Job has to retract all his pleadings and
   challenges. If the case is to be heard as "Jehovah versus Job," then
   Job yields the point unreservedly. Who is he that can contend with his
   Maker over a matter of holiness? We are wrong, God must be right!

   Job had also to confess that his statements had been a darkening of
   wisdom by words without knowledge. Sometimes we say, "I perfectly
   understand that. I could clear up that mystery." We define this and
   define that to our Brethren. But when we get into the Presence of God
   we find that our definitions are the proofs of our ignorance. "Vain man
   would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt." Job drops
   his wisdom as well as his righteousness, although he was one of the
   wisest and holiest of men. While we see not God, we fancy that we can
   read all the riddles of His Word. But when we behold Him more clearly,
   we say with David, "So foolish was I and ignorant--I was as a beast
   before You."

   We are apt to judge the Lord by feeble sense instead of trusting Him
   for His Divine Grace. This comes of evil. In the Presence of God, Job
   bowed his head and repented of all his suspicions and mistrusts. And
   this is what we must do if, in the day of our sorrow, we have been
   petulant and unbelieving.

   Let me pass on. According to our text, repentance puts man into the
   lowest place. He says, "I repent in dust and ashes." "Dust and
   ashes"--that signifies the dust heap, or what in Scotland they call the
   "midden." Job had made dust and ashes his headquarters. The dunghill,
   the refuse place, was now the spot which he felt to be fitted for him.
   Repentance puts us in a lowly

   seat. You have heard sometimes, I dare say, among the beautiful
   nothings of the modern school, the mention of, "the dignity of human
   nature." Behold a throne for the "dignity of human nature." Yonder dust
   and ashes are for this proud royalty. The dust heap is for human nature
   in its glory, when it has on its richest robes.

   When it takes its worst place, where is it? The lowest pit of Hell,
   prepared for the devil and his angels, is the fit place for man when he
   has at last come to his true estate. I say that when man wears his best
   Sunday righteousness he is even then only fit for the midden. And every
   man of God that has been brought to true repentance, owns that it is
   so. Alas, says the man that sees his sinfulness, I should be a disgrace
   to any dust shoot. If I were cast away with the rotten refuse of the
   house, it might creep away from me because my sin is a worse corruption
   than physical nature knows--an insult even to the worm of decay-- since
   in common putridity there is not the foul offense of moral evil.
   Repentance, you see, makes a man take the lowest place.

   Next, note that all real repentance is joined with holy sorrow and
   self-loathing. I have read in the sermons of certain teachers that,
   "Repentance is only a change of mind." That may be true. But what a
   change of mind it is! It is not such a change of mind as some of you
   underwent this morning when you said, "It is really too cold to go
   out," but afterwards you braved the snow and came to the Tabernacle.
   Oh, no! Repentance is a thorough and radical change of mind and it is
   accompanied with real sorrow for sin, and self-loathing. A repentance
   in which there is no sorrow for sin will ruin the soul. Repentance
   without sorrow for sin is not the repentance of God's elect. If you can
   look upon sin without sorrow, then you have never looked on Christ. A
   faith-look at Jesus breaks the heart, both for sin and from sin. Try
   yourself by this test.

   But, next, repentance has comfort in it. It is to my mind rather
   extraordinary that the Hebrew word which is justly translated "repent,"
   is also used in two or three places, at least in the Old Testament, to
   express comfort. Isaac, it is said, took Re-bekah to his mother's tent
   and was "comforted after his mother's death." Here the word is the same
   as that which is here rendered "repent." Isaac's mind was changed as to
   the death of his mother. As, then, there is in the Hebrew word just a
   tinge of comfort. So in repentance itself, with all its sorrow, there
   are traces of joy. Repentance is a bitter-sweet or a sweet-bitter.
   After you have tasted it in your mouth as gall, it will go down into
   your belly and be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

   The door of repentance opens into the halls of joy. Job's repentance in
   dust and ashes was the sign of his deliverance. God turned His wrath
   upon the three critics but justified Job and gave him the honorable
   office of intercessor on their behalf. Then "the Lord turned the
   captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends." "The Lord blessed the
   latter end of Job more than the beginning," and the turning point was
   that sitting down in the dust and ashes. When you are brought as low as
   you can be, the next turn must be upward. Down with you, then! Off with
   the feathers of your pride and the finery of your self-righteousness!
   Down with you among the useless and worthless things! From that point
   you will ascend. The more crushed, humbled, exhausted and near to death
   you are, the more prepared you are for God to raise you up.

   Job was an unrivalled saint--none of us can compare with him. And if
   that perfect and upright man had to say, "I abhor myself," what will
   you and I say when we see God? We shall by-and-by behold Him on the
   Judgment Seat--how shall we endure it? If you have no righteousness but
   your own, you will stand naked to your shame in the day when the Lord
   appears. You self-righteous men--dare you go before God in your own
   righteousness? If you dare, I marvel at your presumption. Job dared
   not. He could stand up boldly before his accusers but when before God
   he was in another attitude.

   When it comes to dying and appearing before the Most High, you that
   have no righteousness but one of your own spinning, what will you do?
   If God should take away your soul at once, could you dare to go before
   Him in that fine character of yours, that wonderful morality, that
   large generosity? If you have any sense left, you dare not attempt such
   a thing. What shall you and I do?

   Brethren, we are not afraid. For there is a righteousness of God which
   is given to us by faith through Jesus Christ. God Himself cannot find
   any fault with His own righteousness. And if He gives me His own
   righteousness, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith in
   Jesus Christ--which is to all and upon all them that believe--then I
   may hope to sit at last, not on the midden but on the Throne!

   Then I will find myself rejoicing in Christ Jesus, crowned with a crown
   which I shall delight to cast at His feet. How happy are we if we can
   sing--

   "Jesus, Your blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress;
   Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,

   With joy shall Ilift up my head"!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Word a Sword

   DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 17, 1887,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any
   two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
   spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts
   and intents of the heart." Hebrews 4:12.

   THOSE who are fond of a labyrinth of exposition will find a maze
   perplexing to the last degree if they will read the various
   commentators and expositors upon this verse. This is the question--By
   the Word of God, are we here to understand the Incarnate Word, the
   Divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God? Or does the passage
   relate to this inspired Book, and to the Gospel, which is the kernel of
   it, as it is set forth in the preaching of the Truth in the power of

   the Holy Spirit?

   You shall find Dr. John Owen, with a very large number of eminent
   servants of God, defending the first theory, that the Son of God is
   doubtless here spoken of. And I confess that they seem to me to defend
   it with arguments which I should not like to controvert. Much more is
   to be said on this side of the question than I can here bring before
   you. On the other side, we find John Calvin, with an equally grand
   array of divines, all declaring that it must be the Book that is meant,
   the Gospel, the Revelation of God in the Book. Their interpretation of
   the passage is not to be set aside and I feel convinced that they all
   give as good reasons for their interpretation as those who come to the
   other conclusion.

   Where such Doctors differ, I am not inclined to present any
   interpretation of my own which can be set in competition with theirs
   though I may venture to propound one which comprehends them all and so
   comes into conflict with none. It is a happy circumstance if we can see
   a way to agree with all those who did not themselves agree. But I have
   been greatly instructed by the mere fact that it should be difficult to
   know whether in this passage the Holy Spirit is speaking of the Christ
   of God, or the Book of God.

   This shows us a great Truth of God which we might not otherwise have so
   clearly noted. How much that can be said of the Lord Jesus may be also
   said of the inspired volume! How closely are these two allied! How
   certainly do those who despise the one reject the other! How intimately
   are the Word made flesh and the Word uttered by inspired men, joined
   together!

   It may be most accurate to interpret this passage as relating both to
   the Word of God Incarnate and the Word of God Inspired. Weave the two
   into one thought, for God has joined them together, and you will then
   see fresh lights and new meanings in the text. The Word of God, namely,
   this Revelation of Himself in Holy Scripture, is all it is here
   described to be, because Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, is in it. He
   does, as it were, incarnate Himself as the Divine Truth in this visible
   and manifest Revelation. And thus it becomes living and powerful,
   dividing and discerning.

   As the Christ reveals God, so this Book reveals Christ, and therefore
   it partakes, as the Word of God, in all the attributes of the Incarnate
   Word. And we may say many of the same things of the written Word as of
   the embodied Word. In fact, they are now so linked together that it
   would be impossible to divide them. This I like to think of, because
   there are some nowadays who deny every doctrine of Revelation and yet,
   indeed, they praise the Christ. The Teacher is spoken of in the most
   flattering style and then His teaching is rejected, except so far as it
   may coincide with the philosophy of the moment.

   They talk much about Jesus, while that which is the real Jesus, namely,
   His Gospel and His inspired Word, they cast away. I believe I do but
   correctly describe them when I say that, like Judas, they betray the
   Son of Man with a kiss. They even go so far as to cry up the names of
   the doctrines, though they use them in a different sense that they may
   deceive. They talk of loyalty to Christ and reverence for the Sermon on
   the Mount--but they use vain words. I am charged with

   sowing suspicion. I do sow it and desire to sow it. Too many Christian
   people are content to hear anything so long as it is put forth by a
   clever man, in a taking manner.

   I want them to try the spirits, whether they are of God, for many false
   prophets have gone forth into the world. What God has joined together,
   these modern thinkers willfully put asunder and separate the Revealer
   from His own Revelation. I believe the Savior thinks their homage to be
   more insulting than their scorn would be. Well may He do so, for they
   bow before Him and say, "Hail, Master!" while their foot is on the
   blood of His Covenant and their souls abhor the doctrine of His
   substi-tutionary sacrifice.

   They are crucifying the Lord afresh and putting Him to an open shame by
   denying the Lord that bought them, by daring to deride His purchase of
   His people as a "mercantile transaction," and I know not what of
   blasphemy beside. Christ and His Word must go together. What is true of
   the Christ is here predicated both of Him and of His Word. Behold this
   day the everlasting Gospel has Christ within it. He rides in it as in a
   chariot. He rides in it as, of old, Jehovah "did ride upon a cherub and
   did fly--yes, He did fly upon the wings of the wind." It is only
   because Jesus is not dead that the Word becomes living and effectual,
   "and sharper than any two-edged sword."

   If you leave Christ out of it, you have left out its vitality and
   power. As I have told you that we will not have Christ without the
   Word, so neither will we have the Word without Christ. If you leave
   Christ out of Scripture, you have left out the essential Truth of God
   which it is written to declare. Yes, if you leave out of it Christ as a
   Substitute, Christ in His death, Christ in His garments dyed in blood,
   you have left out of it all that is living and powerful. How often have
   we reminded you that as concerning the Gospel, even as concerning every
   man, "the blood is the life thereof"--a bloodless Gospel is a lifeless
   Gospel!

   A famous picture has been lately produced, which represents our Lord
   before Pilate. It has deservedly won great attention. A certain
   excellent newspaper which brings out for a very cheap price a large
   number of engravings, has given an engraving of this picture. But,
   inasmuch as the painting was too large for the paper to print it all,
   they have copied a portion of it. It is interesting to note that they
   have given us Pilate here and Caiaphas there but since there was no
   room for Jesus upon the sheet, they have left out that part of the
   design. When I saw the picture, I thought that it was wonderfully
   characteristic of a great deal of modern preaching.

   See Pilate here, Caiaphas there, and the Jews yonder--but the Victim,
   bound and scourged for human sin--is omitted. Possibly, in the case of
   the publication, the figure of the Christ will appear in the next
   issue. But even if He should appear in the next sermon of our preachers
   of the new theology, it will be as a moral example and not as the
   Substitute for the guilty, the Sin-bearer by whose death we are
   redeemed. When we hear a sermon with no Christ in it, we hope that He
   will come out next Sunday. At the same time, the preaching is, so far,
   spoilt and the presentation of the Gospel is entirely erroneous so long
   as the principal Figure is left out.

   Oh, it is a sad thing to have to stand in any house of prayer and
   listen to the preaching and then have to cry, "They have taken away my
   Lord and I know not where they have laid Him"! Rest assured that they
   have laid Him in a tomb. You may be quite certain of that. They have
   put Him away as a dead thing and to them He is as good as dead. True
   Believer, you may comfort your heart with this recollection--He will
   rise again. He cannot be held by the bonds of death in any sense. And,
   though His own Church should bury Him and lay the huge lid of the most
   enormous sarcophagus of heresy upon Him, the Redeemer will rise again
   and His Truth with Him and He and His Word will live and reign together
   forever and ever.

   Brethren, you will understand I am going to speak about the Word of God
   as being like the Lord Jesus, the Revelation of God. This inspired
   volume is that Gospel whereby you have received life unless you have
   heard it in vain. It is this Gospel, with Jesus within it, Jesus
   working by it--which is said to be living and effectual and "sharper
   than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
   and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a discerner of the
   thoughts and intents of the heart." I shall only talk with you in very
   simple style. First, concerning the qualities of the Word of God. And,
   secondly, concerning certain practical lessons which these qualities
   suggest to us.

   I. First let me speak CONCERNING THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD. It
   is "quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword." The Word
   of God is said to be "quick." I am sorry the translators have used that
   word because it is apt to be mistaken as meaning speedy and that is not
   the meaning at all. It means alive, or living. "Quick" is the old
   English word for alive and so we read of the "quick and the dead." The
   Word of God is alive. This is a living Book. This is a mystery which
   only living men, quickened by the Spirit of God, will fully comprehend.
   Take up any other book except the Bible and there may be a measure of
   power in it, but there is not that indescribable vitality in it which
   breathes and speaks--and pleads and conquers in the case of this sacred
   volume.

   We have in the book market many excellent selections of choice passages
   from great authors and in a few instances the persons who have made the
   extracts have been at the pains to place under their quotations from
   Scripture the name "David," or "Jesus," but this is worse than
   needless. There is a style of majesty about God's Word and with this
   majesty a vividness never found elsewhere. No other writing has within
   it a heavenly life whereby it works miracles and even imparts life to
   its reader. It is a living and incorruptible seed. It moves, it stirs
   itself, it lives, it communes with living men as a living Word. Solomon
   says concerning it, "When you go, it shall lead you. When you sleep, it
   shall keep you. And when you awake, it shall talk with

   you."

   Have you ever known what that means? Why, the Book has wrestled with
   me. The Book has smitten me. The Book has comforted me. The Book has
   smiled on me. The Book has frowned on me. The Book has clasped my hand.
   The Book has warmed my heart. The Book weeps with me and sings with me.
   It whispers to me and it preaches to me. It maps my way and holds up my
   goings. It was to me the Young Man's Best Companion and it is still my
   Morning and Evening Chaplain. It is a living Book--all over alive--from
   its first chapter to its last word it is full of a strange, mystic
   vitality which makes it have pre-eminence over every other writing for
   every living child of God.

   See, my Brothers and Sisters, our words, our books, our spoken or our
   printed words by-and-by die out. How many books there are which nobody
   will ever read now because they are out of date? There are many books
   that I could read profitably when I was a youth but they would teach me
   nothing now. There are also certain religious works which I could read
   with pleasure during the first ten years of my spiritual life. But I
   should never think of reading them now, any more than I should think of
   reading the "a-b ab," and the "b-a ba," of my childhood. Christian
   experience causes us to outgrow the works which were the textbooks of
   our youth.

   We may outgrow teachers and pastors but not Apostles and Prophets. That
   human system which was once vigorous and influential may grow old, and
   at length lose all vitality. But the Word of God is always fresh and
   new and full of force. No wrinkle mars its brow--no trembling is in its
   foot. Here, in the Old and New Testaments, we have at once the oldest
   and the newest of books. Homer and Hesiod are infants to the more
   ancient parts of this venerable volume, and yet the Gospel which it
   contains is as truly new as this morning's newspaper. I say again that
   our words come and go--as the trees of the forest multiply their leaves
   only to cast them off as withered things--so the thoughts and theories
   of men are but for the season and then they fade and rot into
   nothingness.

   "The grass withers and the flower thereof falls away--but the Word of
   the Lord endures forever." Its vitality is such as it can impart to its
   readers. Hence, you will often find, when you converse with Revelation,
   that if you yourself are dead when you begin to read, it does not
   matter--you will be quickened as you peruse it. You need not bring life
   to the Scripture. You shall draw life from the Scripture. Oftentimes a
   single verse has made us start up--as Lazarus came forth at the call of
   the Lord Jesus. When our soul has been faint and ready to die, a single
   word, applied to the heart by the Spirit of God, has aroused us.

   It is a quickening as well as a living Word. I am so glad of this
   because at times I feel altogether dead. But the Word of God is not
   dead. And coming to it we are like the dead man, who, when he was put
   into the grave of the Prophet, rose again as soon as he touched his
   bones. Even these bones of the Prophets, these words of theirs spoken
   and written thousands of years ago, will impart life to those who come
   into contact with them. The Word of God is thus exceedingly alive. I
   may add it is so alive that you need never be afraid that it will
   become extinct.

   They dream--they dream that they have put us among the
   antiquities--those of us who preach the old Gospel that our fathers
   loved! They sneer at the doctrines of the Apostles and of the Reformers
   and declare that Believers in them are left high and dry--the relics of
   an age which has long since ebbed away. Yes, so they say! But what they
   say may not after all be true. For the Gospel is such a living Gospel
   that if it were cut into a thousand shreds every particle of it would
   live and grow. If it were buried beneath a thousand avalanches of
   error, it would shake off the incubus and rise from its grave, If it
   were cast into the midst of fire it would walk through the flame as it
   has done many a time, as though it were in its natural element.

   The Reformation was largely due to a copy of the Scriptures left in the
   seclusion of a monastery and there hidden till Luther came under its
   influence and his heart furnished soil for the living seed to grow in.
   Leave but a single New Testament in a Popish community and the
   evangelical faith may at any moment come to the front--even though no
   preacher of it may ever have come that way. Plants unknown in certain
   regions have suddenly sprung from the soil--the seeds have been wafted
   on the winds, carried by birds, or washed ashore by the waves of the
   sea. So vital are seeds that they live and grow wherever they are
   borne.

   And even after lying deep in the soil for centuries, when the upturning
   spade has brought them to the surface, they have germinated at once.
   Thus is it with the Word of God--it lives and abides forever and in
   every soil and under all circumstances

   it is prepared to prove its own life by the energy with which it grows
   and produces fruit to the glory of God. How vain, as well as wicked,
   are all attempts to kill the Gospel. Those who attempt the crime, in
   any fashion, will be forever still beginning and never coming near
   their end. They will be disappointed in all cases, whether they would
   slay it with persecution, smother it with worldliness, crush it with
   error, starve it with neglect, poison it with misrepresentation, or
   drown it with infidelity. While God lives His Word shall live. Let us
   praise God for that. We have an immortal Gospel incapable of being
   destroyed which shall live and shine when the lamp of the sun has
   consumed its scant supply of oil.

   In our text the Word is said to be "powerful" or "active." Perhaps
   "energetic" is the best rendering, or almost as well, "effectual." Holy
   Scripture is full of power and energy. Oh, the majesty of the Word of
   God! They charge us with Bibliolatry. It is a crime of their own
   inventing, of which few are guilty. If there are such things as venial
   sins, surely an undue reverence of Holy Scripture is one of them. To me
   the Bible is not God, but it is God's voice--and I do not hear it
   without awe. What an honor to have as one's calling to study, to
   expound and to publish this sacred Word! I cannot help feeling that the
   man who preaches the Word of God is standing, not upon a mere platform,
   but upon a throne.

   You may study your sermon, my Brother, and you may be a great
   rhetorician and be able to deliver it with wonderful fluency and force.
   But the only power that is effectual for the highest design of
   preaching is the power which does not lie in your word nor in my word
   but in the Word of God. Have you ever noticed, when persons are
   converted, that they almost always attribute it to some text that was
   quoted in the sermon? It is God's Word, not our comment on God's Word,
   which saves souls. The Word of God is powerful for all sacred ends. How
   powerful it is to convince men of sin!

   We have seen the self-righteous turned inside out by the revealed Truth
   of God. Nothing else could have brought home to them such unpleasant
   Truths and compelled them to see themselves as in a clear mirror but
   the searching Word of God. How powerful it is for conversion! It comes
   on board a man and without asking any leave from him, it just puts its
   hand on the helm and turns him round in the opposite direction from
   that in which he was going before. And the man gladly yields to the
   irresistible force which influences his understanding and rules his
   will. The Word of God is that by which sin is slain and Divine Grace is
   born in the heart. It is the light which brings life with it.

   How active and energetic it is, when the soul is convicted of sin, in
   bringing it forth into Gospel liberty! We have seen men shut up as in
   the devil's own dungeon and we have tried to get them free. We have
   shaken the bars of iron but we could not tear them out so as to set the
   captives at liberty. But the Word of the Lord is a great breaker of
   bolts and bars. It not only casts down the strongholds of doubt but it
   cuts off the head of Giant Despair. No cell or cellar in Doubting
   Castle can hold a soul in bondage when the Word of God, which is the
   master key, is once put to its true use and made to throw back bolts of
   despondency.

   It is living and energetic for encouragement and enlargement. O
   Beloved, what a wonderful power the Gospel has to bring us comfort! It
   brought us to Christ at first and it still leads us to look to Christ
   till we grow like He. God's children are not sanctified by legal
   methods but by gracious ones. The Word of God, the Gospel of Christ, is
   exceedingly powerful in promoting sanctification and bringing about
   that whole-hearted consecration which is both our duty and our
   privilege. May the Lord cause His Word to prove its power in us by
   making us fruitful unto every good work to do His will! Through the
   "washing of water by the Word"--that is, through the washing by the
   Word--may we be cleansed every day and made to walk in white before the
   Lord, adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things!

   The Word of God, then, is quick and powerful in our own personal
   experience and we shall find it to be so if we use it in laboring to
   bless our fellow men. Dear Brethren, if you seek to do good in this sad
   world, and want a powerful weapon to work with, stick to the Gospel,
   the living Gospel, the old, old Gospel. There is a power in it
   sufficient to meet the sin and death of human nature. All the thoughts
   of men, use them as earnestly as you may, will be like tickling
   Leviathan with a straw. Nothing can get through the scales of this
   monster but the Word of God. This is a weapon made of sterner stuff
   than steel and it will cut through coats of mail.

   Nothing can resist it. "Where the word of a king is, there is power."
   About the Gospel, when spoken with the Holy Spirit sent down from
   Heaven, there is the same omnipotence as there was in the Word of God
   when in the beginning He spoke to the primeval darkness saying, "Let
   there be light," and there was light. Oh how we ought to prize and love
   the Revelation of God. Not only because it is full of life but because
   that life is exceedingly energetic and effectual and operates so
   powerfully upon the lives and hearts of men.

   Next, the Apostle tells us that His Word is cutting. "Cutting" would be
   as correct a translation as that of our own version--it is "more
   cutting than any two-edged sword." I suppose the Apostle means by the
   description "two-edged" that it is all edge. A sword with two edges has
   no blunt side--it cuts both this way and that. The Revelation of God
   given us in Holy

   Scripture is edge all over. It is alive in every part and in every part
   keen to cut the conscience and wound the heart. Depend upon it, there
   is not a superfluous verse in the Bible nor a chapter which is useless.
   Doctors say of certain drugs that they are inert--they have no effect
   upon the system one way or the other.

   Now, there is not an inert passage in the Scriptures--every line has
   its virtues. Have you ever heard of one who read, as the lesson for the
   Sabbath Day, that long chapter of names wherein it is written that each
   Patriarch lived so many hundred years, "and he died"? Thus it ends the
   notice of the long life of Methuselah with "and he died." The
   repetition of the words, "and he died," woke the thoughtless hearer to
   a sense of his mortality and led to his coming to the Savior. I should
   not wonder that, away there in the Chronicles, among those tough Hebrew
   names, there have been conversions worked in cases unknown to us as
   yet.

   Anyhow, any bit of Holy Writ is very dangerous to play with and many a
   man has been wounded by the Scriptures when he has been idly, or even
   profanely reading them. Doubters have meant to break the Word to pieces
   and it has broken them. Yes, fools have taken up portions and studied
   them on purpose to ridicule them and they have been sobered and
   vanquished by that which they repeated in sport. There was one who went
   to hear Mr. Whitefield--a member of the "Hell-fire Club," a desperate
   fellow. He stood up at the next meeting of his abominable associates
   and he delivered Mr. Whitefield's sermon with wonderful accuracy,
   imitating his very tone and manner.

   In the middle of his exhortation the Lord converted him and he came to
   a sudden pause, sat down broken-hearted and confessed the power of the
   Gospel. That club was dissolved. That remarkable convert was Mr.
   Thorpe, of Bristol, whom God so greatly used afterwards in the
   salvation of others. I would rather have you read the Bible, to mock at
   it, than not read it at all. I would rather that you came to hear the
   Word of God, out of hatred to it, than that you never came at all.

   The Word of God is so sharp a thing, so full of cutting power, that you
   may be bleeding under its wounds before you have seriously suspected
   the possibility of such a thing. You cannot come near the Gospel
   without its having a measure of influence over you. And, God blessing
   you, it may cut down and kill your sins when you have no idea that such
   a work is being done. Dear Friends, have you not found the Word of God
   to be very cutting, more cutting than a two-edged sword, so that your
   heart has bled inwardly and you have been unable to resist the heavenly
   stroke?

   I trust you and I may go on to know more and more of its edge till it
   has killed us outright, so far as the life of sin is concerned. Oh, to
   be sacrificed unto God and His Word to be the sacrificial knife! Oh,
   that His Word were put to the throat of every sinful tendency, every
   sinful habit and every sinful thought! There is no sin-killer like the
   Word of God. Wherever it comes, it comes as a sword and inflicts death
   upon evil.

   Sometimes when we are praying that we may feel the power of the Word we
   hardly know what we are praying for. I saw a venerable brother the
   other day and he said to me, "I remember speaking with you when you
   were nineteen or twenty years of age and I never forgot what you said
   to me. I had been praying with you in the Prayer Meeting, that God
   would give us the Holy Spirit to the full, and you said to me
   afterwards, 'My dear Brother, do you know what you asked God for?' I
   answered, 'Yes.' But you very solemnly said to me, 'The Holy Spirit is
   the Spirit ofjudgment and the Spirit of burning and few are prepared
   for the inward conflict which is meant by these two words.' " My good
   old friend told me that at the time he did not understand what I meant
   but thought me a singular youth.

   "Ah," said he, "I see it now but it is only by a painful experience
   that I have come to the full comprehension of it." Yes, when Christ
   comes, He comes not to send peace on the earth, but a sword. And that
   sword begins at home, in our own souls, killing, cutting, hacking,
   breaking in pieces. Blessed is that man who knows the Word of the Lord
   by its exceeding sharpness, for it kills nothing but that which ought
   to be killed. It quickens and gives new life to all that is of God. But
   the old depraved life which ought to die, it hews in pieces, as Samuel
   destroyed Agag before the Lord. "For the Word of God is quick, and
   powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword."

   But I want you to notice next, that it has a further quality--it is
   piercing. While it has an edge like a sword, it has also a point like a
   rapier, "Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." The
   difficulty with some men's hearts is to get at them. In fact, there is
   no spiritually penetrating the heart of any natural man except by this
   piercing instrument, the Word of God. But the rapier of Revelation will
   go through anything. Even when the "heart is as fat as grease," as the
   Psalmist says, yet His Word will pierce it.

   Into the very marrow of the man, sacred Truth will pass and find him
   out in a way in which he cannot even find himself out. As it is with
   our own hearts, so it is with the hearts of other men. Dear Friends,
   the Gospel can find its way anywhere. Men may wrap themselves up in
   prejudice but this rapier can find out the joints of their harness.
   They may resolve not to believe and may feel content in their
   self-righteousness but this piercing weapon will find its way. The
   arrows of the Word of

   God are sharp in the hearts of the King's enemies, whereby the people
   fall under him. Let us not be afraid to trust this weapon whenever we
   are called up to face the adversaries of the Lord Jesus. We can pin
   them and pierce them and finish them with this.

   And next, the Word of God is said to be discriminating. It divides
   asunder soul and spirit. Nothing else could do that for the division is
   difficult. In a great many ways writers have tried to describe the
   difference between soul and spirit. But I question whether they have
   succeeded. No doubt it is a very admirable definition to say, "The soul
   is the life of the natural man, and the spirit the life of the
   regenerate or spiritual man." But it is one thing to define and quite
   another thing to divide.

   We will not attempt to solve this metaphysical problem. God's Word
   comes in and it shows man the difference between that which is of the
   soul and that which is of the spirit. That which is of man and that
   which is of God. That which is of Divine Grace and that which is of
   nature. The Word of God is wonderfully decisive about this. Oh, how
   much there is of our religion which is--to quote a spiritual poet--"The
   child of nature finely-dressed, but not the living child"--it is of the
   soul and not of the spirit!

   The Word of God lays down very straight lines and separates between the
   natural and the spiritual, the carnal and the Divine. You would think
   sometimes, from the public prayers and preaching of clergymen, that we
   were all Christian people. But Holy Scripture does not sanction this
   flattering estimate of our condition. When we are gathered together the
   prayers are for us all and the preaching is for us all, as being all
   God's people--all born so, or made so by Baptism, no question about
   that! Yet the way the Word of God talks is of quite another sort.

   It talks about the dead and the living--about the repentant and the
   impenitent. It talks about the believing and the unbe-lieving--about
   the blind and the seeing--about those called of God and those who still
   lie in the arms of the Wicked One. It speaks with keen discrimination
   and separates the precious from the vile. I believe there is nothing in
   the world that divides congregations, as they ought to be divided, like
   the plain preaching of the Word of God. This it is that makes our
   places of worship to be solemn spots, even as Dr. Watts sings--

   "Up to her courts with joys unknown

   The holy tribes repair;

   The Son of David holds the throne,

   And sits in judgment there.

   He hears our praises and complaints;

   And, while His awful voice

   Divides the sinners from the saints,

   We tremble and rejoice." The Word of God is discriminating.

   Once more, the Word of God is marvelously revealing to the inner self.
   It pierces between the joints and marrow-- and marrow is a thing not to
   be got at very readily. The Word of God gets at the very marrow of our
   manhood--it lays bare the secret thoughts of the soul. It is "a
   discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Have you not
   often, in hearing the Word, wondered how the preacher could so unveil
   that which you had concealed? He says the very things in the pulpit
   which you had uttered in your bed-chamber. Yes, that is one of the
   marks of the Word of God--that it lays bare a man's inmost secrets. It
   shows him that which he had not even himself perceived. The Christ that
   is in the Word sees everything. Read the next verse--"All things are
   naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."

   The Word not only lets you see what your thoughts are, but it
   criticizes your thoughts. The Word of God says of this thought, "it is
   vain," and of that thought, "it is acceptable." Of this thought, "it is
   selfish," and of that thought, "it is Christ-like." It is a Judge of
   the thoughts of men. And the Word of God is such a discerner of the
   thoughts and intents of the heart that when men twist about and wind
   and wander, yet it tracks them. There is nothing so difficult to get at
   as a man. You may hunt a badger and run down a fox but you cannot get
   at a man--he has so many doublings and hiding places. Yet the Word of
   God will dig him out and seize on him. When the Spirit of God works
   with the Gospel, the man may dodge and twist but the preaching goes to
   his heart and conscience and he is made to feel it and to yield to its
   force.

   Many times, I do not doubt, dear Brothers and Sisters, you have found
   comfort in the discerning power of the Word. Unkind lips have found
   great fault with you. You have been trying to do what you could for the
   Lord and an enemy has slandered you and then it has been a delight to
   remember that the Master discerns your motive. Holy Scripture has made
   you sure of this by the way in which it understood and commended you.
   He discerns the true object of your heart and never misinterprets you.
   And this has inspired you with a firm resolve to be the faithful
   servant of so just a Lord. No

   slander will survive the Judgment Seat of Christ. We are not to be
   tried by the opinions of men but by the impartial Word of the Lord. And
   therefore, we rest in peace.

   II. I have been all this while over the first part of the discourse. I
   have only a minute or two just to show ONE OR TWO LESSONS WE OUGHT TO
   GATHER FROM THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD that I have described.

   The first is this--Brothers and Sisters, let us greatly reverence the
   Word of God. If it is all this, let us read it, study it, prize it and
   make it the man of our right hand. And you that are not converted, I do
   pray you treat the Bible with a holy love and reverence and read it
   with the view of finding Christ and His salvation in it. Augustine used
   to say that the Scriptures are the swaddling-bands of the child Christ
   Jesus--while you are unrolling the bands, I trust you will meet with
   Him.

   Next, dear Friends, let us, whenever we feel ourselves dead and
   especially in prayer, get close to the Word, for the Word of God is
   alive. I do not find that gracious men always pray alike. Who could?
   When you have nothing to say to your God, let Him say something to you.
   The best private devotion is made up half of searching Scripture in
   which God speaks to us and the other half of prayer and praise in which
   we speak to God. When you are dead, turn from your death to that which
   still lives.

   Next, whenever we feel weak in our duties let us go to the Word of God
   and the Christ in the Word, for power. And this will be the best of
   power. The power of our natural abilities, the power of our acquired
   knowledge, the power of our gathered experience--all these may be
   vanity--but the power which is in the Word will prove effectual. Get up
   from the cistern of your failing strength to the fountain of
   omnipotence. For they that drink here, while the youths shall faint and
   are weary and the young men shall utterly fall, shall run and not be
   weary and shall walk and not faint.

   Next, if you need, as a minister, or a worker, anything that will cut
   your hearers to the heart, go to this Book for it. I say this because I
   have known preachers try to use very cutting words of their own. God
   save us from that! When our hearts grow hot and our words are apt to be
   sharp as a razor, let us remember that the wrath of man works not the
   righteousness of God. Let us not attempt to carry on Christ's war with
   the weapons of Satan. There is nothing so cutting as the Word of God.
   Keep to that.

   I believe, also, that one of the best ways of convincing men of error
   is not so much to denounce the error as to proclaim the Truth more
   clearly. If a stick is very crooked and you wish to prove that it is
   so, get a straight one and quietly lay it down by its side. When men
   look they will surely see the difference. The Word of God has a very
   keen edge about it and all the cutting words you want you had better
   borrow therefrom.

   And next, the Word of God is very piercing. When we cannot get at
   people by God's Truth, we cannot get at them at all. I have heard of
   preachers who have thought they ought to adapt themselves a little to
   certain people and leave out portions of the Truth of God which might
   be disagreeable. Brothers, if the Word of God will not pierce, our
   words will not--you may depend upon that. The Word of God is like the
   sword of Goliath which had been laid up in the sanctuary, of which
   David said, "There is none like it, give it to me."

   Why did he like it so well? I think he liked it all the better because
   it had been laid up in the Holy Place by the priests. That is one
   thing. But I think he liked it best of all because it had stains of
   blood upon it--the blood of Goliath. I like my own sword because it is
   covered with blood right up to the hilt--the blood of slaughtered sins
   and errors and prejudices has made it like the sword of Don Rodrigo,
   "of a dark and purple tint." The slain of the Lord have been many by
   the old Gospel. We point to many vanquished by this true Jerusalem
   blade.

   They desire me to use a new one. I have not tried it. What have I to do
   with a weapon which has seen no service? I have proved the Sword of the
   Lord and of Gideon and I mean to keep to it. My dear Comrades in Arms,
   gird this sword about you and disdain the wooden weapons with which
   enemies would delude you! Let us use this blade of steel, well tempered
   in the fire, against the most obstinate, for they cannot stand against
   it. They may resist it for a time but they will have to yield. They had
   better make preparations for surrender. For if the Lord comes out
   against them with His own Word, they will have to give in and cry to
   Him for mercy.

   Next, if we want to discriminate at any time between the soul and the
   Spirit and the joints and marrow, let us go to the Word of God for
   discrimination. We need to use the Word of God just now upon several
   subjects. There is that matter of holiness, upon which one says one
   thing, and another says something else. Never mind what they all
   say--go to the

   Book--for this is the umpire on all questions. Amidst the controversies
   of the day about a thousand subjects, keep to this infallible Book and
   it will guide you unerringly.

   And lastly, since this Book is meant to be a discerner, or critic, of
   the thoughts and intents of the heart, let the Book criticize us. When
   you have issued a new volume from the press--which you do every day,
   for every day is a new treatise from the press of life--take it to this
   great critic and let the Word of God judge it. If the Word of God
   approves you, you are approved. If the Word of God disapproves you, you
   are disapproved. Have friends praised you? They may be your enemies in
   so doing. Have other observers abused you? They may be wrong or right,
   let the Book decide.

   A man of one Book--if that Book is the Bible--is a man, for he is a man
   of God. Cling to the living Word and let the Gospel of your fathers,
   let the Gospel of the martyrs, let the Gospel of the Reformers, let the
   Gospel of the blood-washed multitude before the Throne of God, the
   Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ--be your Gospel and none but that-- and
   it will save you and make you the means of saving others to the praise
   of God. Adapted from The c.h. Spurgeon Collection, Version 1.0,
     __________________________________________________________________

Abram's Call--or, Half-Way--and All the Way

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 26, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his son's son
   and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went
   forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan.
   And they came unto Haran and dwelt there." Genesis 11:31.

   "And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their
   substance that they had gathered and the souls that they had gotten in
   Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the
   land of Canaan they came." Genesis 12:5.

   AFTER the Flood, when men began to multiply and increase in the earth,
   it was not very long before they began to turn aside from the living
   and true God. At first the sons of Noah walked in the light of Divine
   knowledge, though even among them was found an evil seed. When
   scattered over the earth after the confusion of tongues at Babel, the
   earth's hoary fathers carried with them a measure of the knowledge of
   God which they had received from their sires. But after a while, the
   light grew dim, men began to worship the sun and the moon and they
   adored fire as the mystic symbol of the mysterious and spiritual Lord.

   They sought out many inventions. And having once begun to quit their
   allegiance to the one God they very rapidly traveled along the downward
   road till they worshipped strange gods. It was sad that although the
   earth produced its mighty hunters and men built city after city, yet
   few among them sought after God, or built altars to His name. Well
   might the Lord God cry out, "Hear Me heavens and give ear, O earth--I
   have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against
   Me."

   A long period passed without a voice from God. Man seemed left to
   himself and in danger of being given up to idols. The nations wandered
   each a different way but all the downward road. Yet Divine Grace had
   not ended its reign. And therefore before the lamp of God had wholly
   gone out, the Lord determined to reveal Himself and establish His
   worship in the world. He would select a family to be His peculiar
   servants. He would manifest Himself to the father of that family and
   would make with him a Covenant. He would reveal to him the great things
   which He intended to do in the fullness of time and He would bid him
   hand down the Revelation to his children from generation to generation.

   This family should grow into a nation and to that nation should be
   committed the oracles of God. Out of that nation should come Prophets
   and priests and heroes who should believe in God and maintain the true
   faith against all comers, even until the Son of God Himself should come
   to manifest the glory of God in a preeminent degree. In the midst of
   that nation the Lord resolved to set up ordinances and a settled
   organization by which Truth should be taught through type and symbol
   and by the hallowed speech of godly men. This, in His wisdom, He judged
   to be best for the future of the race.

   In the wise sovereignty of His choice, the Lord chose Abram and his
   house. He gives no account of his matters and we cannot, therefore,
   tell why he took out of Ur of the Chaldees those of whom Joshua says,
   "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even
   Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor--and they served
   other gods." The Lord called Abram alone and blessed him. He set apart
   the Patriarch and his seed and put them in trust with the priceless
   treasure of Divine Revelation--this they kept for themselves and for
   the rest of mankind.

   It was needful that the elect family should be led apart and kept from
   the contamination of surrounding evil. Abram must come out from Ur of
   the Chaldees and all its associations of idolatry and he must even
   leave his kindred and his father's house and walk before the Lord in
   separation unto prompt obedience and complete consecration. Thus his
   separation unto God

   would fulfill the gracious purpose of the Most High. The Lord's end and
   aim was to keep His Truth alive in the world by means of a people who
   should be set apart for that service.

   It was therefore essential that the person chosen to be the head of
   that family, the founder of that nation, should come right away from
   all connection with the corrupt world and walk apart with God. The
   chosen nation was to dwell alone and not to be numbered among the
   peoples. Hence came that call which said to Abram, "Get you out of your
   country and from your kindred and from your father's house unto a land
   that I will show you: and I will make of you a great nation and I will
   bless you and make your name great. And you shall be a blessing."

   At this moment God is working in much the same manner in the midst of
   the world by His Church. A Church is an assembly called out. An
   ecclesia is not any and every "assembly"--a mixed crowd of unauthorized
   persons having no special right to come together would not be an
   ecclesia, or Church. In a real ecclesia the herald summoned the
   citizens by trumpet or by name and it consisted of certain persons
   called out from among the common multitude. The true Church consists of
   men who are called and faithful and chosen. They are redeemed from
   among men and called out from among their fellows by effectual grace.

   God the Holy Spirit continues to call out and bring to the Lord Jesus
   those who are chosen of God according to the good pleasure of His will.
   Practically, conversion is the result of the call--"Get you out from
   your country." It is a repetition of that searching word, "Come you out
   from among them and be you separate, says the Lord, and touch not the
   unclean thing." The Church is a repetition of the camp of Abram in the
   midst of Canaan. It is the Lord's portion among men and it keeps His
   oracles. The Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the
   Truth of God. And it is the design of God to find a home for His Gospel
   in His Church till the dispensation of Divine Grace shall close and the
   Judge shall ascend the throne.

   In gathering instruction from the call of Abram, I shall handle the
   matter by making three remarks. First, this call is often only half
   obeyed. In our first text we find the command of God very partially
   carried out. Secondly, this call is of a very special character and I
   shall endeavor to show the manner in which it comes to us at this time.
   Thirdly, this call, when it is really obeyed, puts the obedient upon a
   special footing--they are henceforth peculiarly the Lord's. May the
   Holy Spirit bless our meditation!

   I. In the first place, THIS CALL IS OFTEN ONLY HALF OBEYED. It came to
   Abram when he dwelt in Ur of the Chal-dees. But though he so far
   hearkened to it as to set out for Canaan, yet we read that "they came
   to Haran and dwelt there."

   We do not know how the call came to Abram, whether by a voice which he
   heard with his ears, or by a mysterious impulse upon his mind, or by a
   dream or vision. But Stephen tells us, in the seventh of Acts--"The God
   of glory appeared unto our father Abraham." There may have been given
   to Abram some such sight of the glory of God as Job had when he cried,
   "Now my eye sees You." The Lord appeared to Abram and made him to
   understand that he must emigrate from his country and quit his tribe.
   Somehow or other, it was laid home to Abram's heart and conscience that
   he must go forth upon a journey he knew not where. He must journey into
   another land and no more dwell in city, or town, or village but become
   a sojourner with his God, a tent-dweller, a stranger in a strange land.

   His first step would naturally be to tell his friends that he must
   leave them, for the living God had called him to go to the land of
   Canaan. At once his difficulties began. His kindred could not bear to
   part with him. If they had distinctly opposed him and said, "It is
   absurd. Your talk is insanity. Yet if you must be gone, go your way and
   welcome"--then he would have gone in sadness but assuredly he would not
   have hesitated. A man possessed of Abram's wondrous faith would have
   torn himself away with great firmness, although with deep regret at the
   sorrow which he caused. Had they opposed him, his course would have
   been plain.

   But he had to meet with a much more insidious evil. His friends
   consented to his zeal. Whether they agreed in his reverence for Jehovah
   or not, they felt that they could not cut themselves off from Abram and
   therefore they resolved to go with him. The word to Abram was express,
   "Get you out from your kindred and from your father's house." But how
   was this to be done when his kindred and his father's house clung to
   him and yielded to him? Very naturally his loving spirit could see no
   other way but to bid them all come with him and yield themselves to
   God.

   Possibly Abram looked for great things from this and rejoiced in it. It
   would seem as if his aged father Terah, with that wisdom which is a
   near to subtlety, himself led the way in the migration. For we
   read--"And Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his son's
   son and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went
   forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan."
   The father of the clan leads the way and it is rather his migration
   than that of Abram. What was Abram to do? Instead of meeting opposition
   from his family, his own father is leading the way in the journey to
   Canaan. Did not this make his obedience easier?

   We shall see. Was not this happy union of the household, this undivided
   assent to the Lord's bidding, a great cause for rejoicing? It certainly
   appeared so. But all is not gold that glitters. What we think will help
   may at length hinder. What looks like a work of grace may turn out to
   be only the movements of unrenewed nature. Like the mixed multitude
   which came out of Egypt with Israel, we may have about us professed
   friends who may become our worst foes in the secret of God's Truth and
   Divine Grace.

   In Abram's case the dreaded separation is spared--they start together
   for Canaan. So far so good--at least, it looks so. The traveling is
   wearisome and many are the murmurings. The huge caravan has not gone
   very far before the proposal is made that they should be satisfied with
   the move which they had made and remain at Haran. True, it was not
   Canaan but it might do as well. Did not the family reason, "We shall
   stay here. We have yielded a great many points to Abram in coming away
   from Ur. But we cannot yield to all his demands. We have proved our
   love to him and our reverence for the Lord by coming thus far and now
   we ask for a fair compromise.

   "Abram is very sincere but he must not be bigoted. Surely he will not
   be so foolish as to believe in verbal inspiration and insist upon
   Canaan, when Haran quite meets the spirit of the command. There is no
   doubt that Haran answers every purpose and we mean to stay here and
   Abram must stay with us." His father pleads that he is very old. To be
   moving continually is hard for aged people. And there is that broad
   Euphrates, how can the old man cross that dreaded flood? "Spare your
   venerable parent this last bitterness--I have come thus far to please
   you--do not press me further."

   I think I am not wildly imagining if I suppose that some such pleas
   induced the Patriarch to tarry with his kindred at Ha-ran. A loving and
   tender heart worked against prompt literal obedience and for a while
   the man of faith delayed, the heir of the promises hesitated. Do you
   blame him? It will be wiser to look at home. Holy Scripture describes
   his conduct and appends no absolute word of censure. But it does what
   is quite as significant--it keeps silent as to anything like a record
   of blessing, or of communion with God--while Abram was at the half-way
   house at Haran.

   To a friend of God His silence is quite enough of a rebuke. Ifmy friend
   does not smile, I do not require him to frown to let me know
   whereabouts I am in his esteem. If my friend no longer speaks to me, I
   do not need him to upbraid me--his silence is sadly eloquent to my
   heart. Abram and the rest settled down at Haran. He was conquered, not
   by open foes but by compromising friends. My Brethren, take good heed
   unto yourselves that you suffer not your feet to be entangled by the
   men of your own household. He that would follow the Lamb wherever he
   goes, must not know his own kindred when he comes to the parting of the
   ways.

   Honest wolves will not harm us one half so much as those who look like
   sheep but inwardly are not so. Our first father, Adam, fell by the
   temptation of her whom he loved and the old serpent still knows how to
   seduce through our affections and lead into ruin by the suggestion of
   friendship. O Man of God, beware! Read my parable with open eye and
   practice the lesson thereof.

   Let me describe the consequences of tarrying at any half-way house. To
   obey the Lord partially is to disobey Him. If the Lord bids Abram go to
   Canaan, he cannot fulfill that command by going to Haran. Haran was not
   mentioned in the call. You cannot keep God's command by doing something
   else which pleases you better. The essence of obedience lies in its
   exactness. Although something else may seem to you to be quite as good
   as the thing commanded, what has that to do with it?

   This is what God bids you and to refuse the thing commanded, professing
   to substitute a better thing, is gross presumption. You may not think
   it so but so it is, that half obedience is whole disobedience. We can
   only obey the Lord's command as it stands. To alter it is as great a
   treason as to make erasures in a king's statute-book. It is
   will-worship and not God worship, if I do what I choose of the Lord's
   work and leave a part undone which does not please me quite so well.

   Moreover, half-way obedience increases our responsibility, because it
   is a plain confession that we know the Lord's will, though we do it
   not. Abram had received the call and knew that he had done so, else why
   had he come to Haran? He admitted, by going as far as Haran, that he
   ought to go the whole way to Canaan. And so, by his own action he left
   himself without excuse. And any of you who are doing in a measure what
   is right because of the fear of God and yet are acting in other matters
   contrary to what you know to be the Lord's will, you are left without
   apology for such neglect.

   By the service which you do render to God you admit that He a has right
   to your obedience--why, then do you not obey Him in all things? You
   call Jesus your Lord and do some of the things which He says but why
   not the rest? Is it not clear that you know your Master's will and do
   it not? Thus, you see, there was failure in obedience and increase of
   responsibility. The result of this to Abram was the absence of
   privilege. God spoke not to His servant in Haran--neither dream, nor
   vision, nor voice came to him in the place of hesitancy. The Lord loved
   him but hid His face from him and denied him the visits of His Divine
   Grace.

   If we walk contrary to the Lord, He will walk contrary to us. Abram
   lived with his father Terah. But he was not living near his heavenly
   Father, and therefore he did not hear His voice. How greatly the true
   heart dreads this! How earnestly it sighs, "O Lord, be not silent to
   me, lest if You be silent to me, I become like them that go down into
   the pit"! O my Brothers, let us not, by wavering and half-heartedness,
   lose our communion with the Lord our God.

   Meanwhile, Abram was rendering an affliction needful. His father Terah
   must die that the cord which held Abram might be broken. If the called
   one will not come out while the old man lives, death must do his work
   and remove the cause of disobedience. If Abram fears to weep at parting
   with a living father, he must weep over his grave. One way or another
   the Lord will cause His chosen to obey Him. Oh, that we would be tender
   of heart and not be as the horse or as the mule which have no
   understanding! Whips and rods would seldom be heard of if we were more
   promptly obedient.

   While tarrying at Haran, Abram was creating cause of future disquietude
   by his attachment to Lot. He was told to come out from his kindred but
   he clung to his orphan nephew and must needs accept his company. Lot
   caused him a great deal of trouble. His herdsmen created discontent and
   strife and afterwards Lot himself was carried away captive and peaceful
   Abram was compelled to gird on the warrior's sword and go forth to
   battle, to rescue his nephew. Had Abram acted decidedly from the very
   first, he might have saved himself many a hardship.

   My Brethren, learn well these lessons. I merely hint them--will you not
   enlarge upon them? All this while Abram was delaying the great blessing
   which God was prepared to give him, he was keeping out of the promised
   land and away from the place where Jehovah would manifest Himself to
   him and enter into covenant with him. I fear that some true Believers
   are depriving themselves of the richest joy and the most heavenly
   experience by their undecided conduct. Some of you have come away from
   your old sins but you have not yet entered upon the new life in its
   fullness. You have left Ur of the Chaldees--the place of open sin--but
   you have not come to Canaan the holy.

   You are tarrying in the Haran of a partial obedience, which is neither
   here nor there--a sort of death in life, rebellion in obedience,
   unbelief in faith. I know many professors who have left their vicious
   habits but they are not yet consecrated to the Lord Jesus--they are not
   absolutely in the world and yet they are not abiding in the Lord. Their
   speech is half of Ashdod and half of the Jews' language. They dare not
   be Philistines and yet they will not be Israelites. They are willing to
   be saved by the Cross of Christ but they are not willing to take up
   Christ's Cross and come right out decidedly upon His side at all times.
   This is a perilous state to be in.

   They have enough religion to make them miserable, but, I fear, not
   enough to fit them for joys eternal. They may ultimately get into
   Heaven by the skin of their teeth--at least, I hope so. But they have
   no present joy, no immediate peace, no conscious fellowship with God.
   Half-way house godliness is wretched stuff--beware of it! Remember what
   we read of the mongrels who dwelt in Israel's land, who had been
   brought there by the Assyrian conqueror. They feared the Lord and
   served other gods and, therefore, Jehovah sent lions among them. Let
   all who are of that race remember the lions. For the Lord will not
   suffer such double-minded ones to live in peace before Him.

   Thus much, then, upon my first point--the Divine call is too often only
   half obeyed. II. Secondly, THIS CALL, ESPECIALLY AS IT COMES TO US, IS
   OF A VERY PECULIAR CHARACTER. To us, of course, it is wholly spiritual.
   We are not called today to leave our country and our kindred so far as
   our residence is concerned. But it seems to me that we are called to a
   much more difficult position than that, namely, to stay on the old
   spot, among old friends and yet to lead a wholly new life. Of course,
   we are to quit all evil company. But we are not to leave the society of
   our fellow men, nor to go out of the world. Even Abram was not called
   to be an ascetic, nor to live in a cave, nor to retire into the desert
   like a hermit.

   Within the borders of his own encampment Abram was a man among men and
   pursued his daily calling as the keeper of great flocks of sheep and
   herds of oxen and camels and so forth. Towards his neighbors he behaved
   himself with noble-minded independence and integrity. He was a pattern
   of what Divine Grace can make of a really noble man when he moves among
   those who are strangers to his God. But yet, Beloved, Abram did, to a
   great extent, dwell in a favorable condition. He lived apart from the
   grosser sort. He was not wearied with the voices of a city, as Lot
   was--his own tents and the many tents of his servants, made up quite a
   settlement, where God's name was reverenced and the fear of the Lord
   was felt.

   That canvas town had one over it of whom the Lord said, "I know him,
   that he will command his children and his household after him and they
   shall keep the way of the Lord." Some of us can almost seclude our
   families but many others have a far harder task. They have to live in
   the city amid its sins and yet not to be of it. They have in their
   earthly callings to come into daily contact with the ungodly and yet
   they have to be holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. As
   Abram was no

   Canaanite, though he sojourned in Canaan, so are we to prove ourselves
   to be of a totally distinct race. This is a very difficult piece
   ofbusiness.

   How great a wonder was asked by our Savior's prayer--"I pray not that
   You should take them out of the world but that You should keep them
   from the Evil One"! Not by difference in brogue, nor by peculiarity in
   dress are we to be marked out as the servants of God. But our lives
   must be so Christ-like and pure that men shall say of us, "You also
   were with Jesus of Nazareth, for your life betrays you." This call,
   then, is of a deeply spiritual and peculiar character. My Brother, have
   you heard it? My Sister, have you heard it? Have you endeavored to obey
   it to the full? It means just this--that we are to flee all sin,
   without exception and follow after everything that is pure and holy.

   Others wallow in what they call the pleasures of sin--abhor such things
   and protest against them. Shun, also, everything that is doubtful. For,
   "whatsoever is not of faith is sin." If you are not sure it is right,
   it is sin to you. Avoid the appearance of evil. Separate yourself from
   all that which Christ would have disapproved. Be so decided, also, as
   to leave everything that is hesitating. Be out-and-out for Jesus. While
   many will try to run both with the hare and the hounds, make it your
   object to abhor that which is evil and to cleave to that which is good.
   Make a point of wearing your regimentals. Be dead and buried to this
   present evil world with its frivolities, philosophies and grandeurs.

   Regard the world as crucified to you and be yourself crucified to it.
   The friendship of the world is enmity with God. Go without the camp
   bearing Christ's reproach. In matters of religion follow the Lord
   fully, let the Word of God be your sole and sure rule and nothing else.
   That religion which is not according to God's Word is a false religion.
   Accept neither doctrine nor ceremony for which there is no Scriptural
   warrant. Search the Word about it all--"to the Law and to the
   testimony--if they speak not according to this Word, it is because
   there is no light in them." Follow your conscience, as your conscience
   is enlightened by the Spirit of God concerning His Word.

   Follow the Word even in its jots and tittles. Make not too much of
   peculiarities in comparison with vital and fundamental Truths of God.
   But, still, even with these less weighty matters, take heed that you do
   not trifle, lest in neglecting the less you learn to neglect the
   greater and so become guilty of the great transgression. Avoid the
   world's religion. For if there is one world worse than another, it is
   the Christian world. No enemies of Israel were so bitter as their
   Brethren the Edomites-- Brethren in name only become the fiercest of
   foes. Be distinctly removed from the religion which is based upon
   self-will, pride of intellect and worldly conformity.

   The world's religion is as evil as the world's irreligion. Surrender to
   the plain teaching of the Spirit of God and resolve in all things to
   follow your Lord wherever He may lead you. Stand alone, if others will
   not obey. In your house let there be an altar for God, if there is not
   another in the land. Make a Covenant with God through the one great
   Sacrifice, even if all others forget the Savior.

   See, dear Friends, what the call is, and then remember that it comes to
   the Believer from God Himself. The Lord calls His servants unto the
   separated life and because of His authority they are bound to obey. He
   calls by His Word, either preached or read--it comes to the individual
   by an application of the Spirit of God so that the man yields cheerful
   assent. He is drawn and therefore he runs. Such a person feels it a
   pleasure to take Christ for his example and to put his feet down in the
   very tracks of the Lord Jesus. It is ours to follow the Lord's precept
   and example with great care and solemn determination, turning neither
   to the right hand nor to the left. It was so with Abram--is it so with
   you?

   Because this call comes from God, it has for us a supreme authority. We
   follow our Lord even when darkness is round about Him--though we know
   not the way, we know the Lord, and therefore we follow Him implicitly.
   To us the Word of God is more than the decrees of emperors, or the
   statutes of senators. If this thing were of men, if this thing were
   ordained by a learned council, or a reverend bench, it would be of
   small account in our eyes. But when He that made us and redeemed us
   speaks to us, we can only reply, "Help Your servants to do Your
   will--for Your will is our delight."

   My Brethren, if we thus separate ourselves unto obedience, we must
   expect violent opposition. Severe criticism will not be spared us. Of
   course, some will say, "The man is mad"--others more gently will
   murmur, "He is sadly misled." Many will accuse you of a liking to be
   singular, or a weakness for going to extremes, or a self-righteous wish
   to excel others, or of having "a bee in your bonnet." Accusers will
   hint that you are seeking your own in some form or other. And if they
   cannot quite see a motive, they will imagine one. What is the use of
   imagination if it will not help a man out when his facts run short?
   Having once made up their mind that you are foolish and contemptible
   they will view all your conduct through colored glasses and condemn you
   up and down. Be not dismayed but endure hardness for the love of Jesus.

   To go forth and lead a separated life will need faith and to have faith
   you will need the Divine Grace of God. Believe that God's command is
   right and believe that He will justify you in fulfilling it. Believe
   that God's promise is true and that He will

   prove it so. Abram was bid to go and he went. Look at Abram's case and
   see how impossible it was for him to obey apart from faith in God. He
   was to go away from all that was dear, from all that was comfortable
   and settled. He was to go, he knew not where, and he was to go to
   obtain an inheritance for a son that was not born and that was not
   likely ever to be born. For he was old and Sarai was well stricken in
   years.

   Only faith could enable him to obey a call which looked so like a
   delusion. We need faith in every step of a holy life. Oh for more
   looking unto Jesus, more child-like dependence upon God! If you
   believe, you will do the Lord's will. But if you do not believe, you
   will refuse to obey and miss the blessing.

   Suppose we do obey the Divine call, what then? Will our course be
   smooth ever afterwards? Far from it. The walk of the separated Believer
   involves trial. The trial of Abram in leaving his country was but one
   out of ten which are recorded. It is written, "In the world you shall
   have tribulation." In the Lord's vineyard the knife is used if nowhere
   else. The Lord tried Abram and He will try us--it is a part of the
   process of love by which He prepares us for the eternal rest. The
   course of true faith never does run smooth. If you will obey the Divine
   call you shall be favored with more trials, you shall be honored with
   still greater tests of your fidelity. But then you shall be known as
   the friend of God and God, by His Divine Grace, shall make you to be a
   blessing to others even to the end of time.

   Mark well what is proposed to you--that God shall take you and give you
   His light and His Truth and His salvation-- that you may preserve it
   for all the ages, until Christ shall come. Are you willing to accept so
   high an honor? Will you count the cost and make your calling and
   election sure? Will you cry with Esaias, "Here am I! Send me"? As the
   Roman consul devoted himself to death in battle for the sake of the
   beloved city, will you devote yourself to God and His cause, and Truth?

   In very deed such is my spirit. I wish there were ten thousand who
   would say the same. O my Brother, blessed are you among men if you are
   set apart for God and Truth. Yes, my Sister, blessed are you among
   women, if you are following the Lord fully in the way of His will.

   III. This brings me to my third and last point. THIS CALL, WHEN IT IS
   OBEYED, PUTS US ON SPECIAL GROUND.

   For, first, God is bound to justify the course which He Himself
   commands. When Abram went to Canaan at the Lord's bidding and remained
   there, the responsibility was with the Lord. If any evil had come of
   Abram's conduct he could not have blamed himself. It was neither his
   own wisdom nor his own folly which led him--God alone was his director.
   It is mine to obey, it is God's to prove that my obedience is wise.
   What peace this brings! O my Hearer, if you believe in Christ with all
   your heart and if you become a sincere follower of Jesus in all things,
   God will justify you in so doing, for you do it at His bidding.

   If there is any folly in holiness, the folly is not with you but with
   Him that bade you be holy. The servant is accountable for any action he
   does of his own head but not for that which he does by the command of
   his principal. So you, in keeping close to God's will, are not
   accountable for consequences. The consequences must lie with God. As
   surely as wisdom is justified of her children, so is God justified of
   all Believers. Yes, and He justifies Believers, and their faith is
   counted unto them for righteousness. Therefore, Beloved, we stand on
   the ground ofjustification when we obey the call of God.

   We cease, also, from that moment to be of the world. God deals with the
   world one way but with His separated ones in another way. "Them that
   are without, God judges." But those who are within are not under Law
   but under Grace. It is the joy of faith that there is no condemnation
   to them that are in Christ Jesus. There is discipline now within the
   House of God-- but it is not that of a court ofjustice but of the abode
   of love. The Lord chastens His children that they may not be condemned
   with the world. The separated ones are not numbered among the people of
   the earth.

   When you read of the seven trumpets and vials and plagues, fear not,
   for nothing shall by any means hurt you. When the blood shall flow in
   the day of vengeance up to the horses' bridles, then shall not a hair
   of your head perish, for the Lord secures those who are sealed to Him.
   Babylon must fall, that lies hard by Ur of the Chaldees, from where you
   came. And all that bear the mark of the beast shall die, even as Terah
   died in Haran. But as for you, "at destruction and famine you shall
   laugh." No evil shall touch you, for the Lord is your keeper.

   If you are walking in the separated path with God and are setting Him
   always before you, you shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
   What a condition to be in! First justified, and then secured from the
   doom which will surely fall upon the guilty world. Now, as free Divine
   Grace has separated you unto God, you come into an honored fellowship
   with Him. Abram, in his tent, had God for his companion. He had near
   and clear manifestations of God. He entertained angels unawares, and
   with those angels was the Son of God Himself.

   If you quit the world to abide with God, God Himself will abide with
   you. If you come out from the unclean world, the Lord has said, "I will
   dwell in them and walk in them. I will be a father unto them and they
   shall be My sons and daughters,

   says the Lord God Almighty." Oh, rest you in this sweet fact, that the
   Triune God will manifest Himself to His chosen as He does not to the
   world. You shall be one of the people near unto Him.

   By coming out from the world and following the Lord closely, we come
   under His Divine care and protection. How wonderfully Abram was
   screened from evil! Jehovah was his shield. He was a stranger in the
   midst of enemies but they did not molest him--an awe was upon them, for
   Jehovah had said, "Touch not My anointed and do my Prophets no harm."
   Wherever a true saint goes, the Lord lays His commands on all the
   powers of nature and all the angels of Heaven to take care of him. When
   Abram was at peace, God blessed him in all things. And if he went to
   war, God gave his enemies as driven stubble to his bow.

   If we are with God, God is with us. When God's will is our delight,
   God's Providence is our inheritance. It is not so with you all--no, not
   even with all of you who profess to be Christians. But it is so with
   those of you who keep close to God's Word and follow in will, in
   spirit, in belief and in act the example of His dear Son. O Beloved,
   let us strive after this! Let us aim at perfect conformity to the will
   of God, for this will place us in quiet nearness to God.

   Henceforth Abram was for God's use only. God treated him as His
   confidant, as the receiver of heavenly Revelations and as the founder
   of a race. God will also use us if we will come where He can use us.
   Vessels set apart for the Master's use must not be used by the
   servants. God is a great King. And when He selects a cup for His own
   table, He will not have it used by others. If other lips drink out of
   the chalice of your life, the Lord disdains you. You must be for Him
   only, or you are not His spouse. If you are His from the crown of your
   head to the sole of your foot by solemn consecration, He will honor you
   yet more and more. Yes, you know not to what high ends He has ordained
   you, both in this life and in the ages to come. But look you well to
   this, that you be holiness unto the Lord.

   One more thought presses itself upon my heart--the man who for Christ's
   sake has cut all his moorings and separated himself from the world to
   follow the Lamb--has learned how to live but he has also learned how to
   die. We die unto the world and thereby learn to die. When we cease to
   trust in riches, when we resign our comforts, when we no longer lean on
   friends, when all things visible become as shadows to us, then we make
   a rehearsal of death. Unless the Lord Himself shall soon descend from
   Heaven with a shout, we shall all die. Yes, the hour of our departure
   hastens on. Then we shall have to cut ourselves loose from our
   moorings, be they what they may.

   Soon shall we hear this word from Heaven, "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 will be our summons to the better Canaan, the land
   that flows with milk and honey. We shall depart out of this world to
   face an unknown eternity. But we shall by no means dread the migration.
   He that has crossed the great river, the river Euphrates, will not fear
   the Jordan. To give up the world will be no new thing for you or for
   me--we have given it up many times already. We have frequently given up
   everything into the Lord's hands in real earnest and we can readily do
   it once more.

   We live here as strangers and sojourners and we find little to charm us
   in this foreign land. Our treasure is above and it will be a joy for
   our souls to rise to the place where our hearts already dwell. We
   cannot be sorry to quit a dead world. Who loves to sit in a morgue? If
   we tremble to leave kindred and friends, yet let us remember that we
   have already quit them in spirit. Let us journey, as Abram did, towards
   the south. That is to say, let us get still further away from the old
   abode. Let us make for the heart of Immanuel's land. Let us press
   towards the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city and rest not till we stand
   in our lot and behold Him whom Abram saw with gladness.

   The one question I finish with is--Do you know anything about this?
   Have you ever felt this Divine call? If so, make your calling and
   election sure. Carry out the separating ordinance to the full. Some of
   us had to take very decided steps at our first starting but we began
   aright. We have been called since to equally painful courses but we
   hope to keep right. Anything is better than a wound in the conscience.
   If we keep close to Christ we shall find rest unto our souls. We look
   back without regret to what we may have suffered by decision--counting
   it less than nothing for the joy that was set before us.

   We wish that all our converts would be out-and-out in their course of
   life. O you, who by Divine Grace are beginners in the heavenly life,
   make a strong resolve--"We will be the servants of God and endeavor in
   all things to obey Him." Since God made you and by the blood of His
   dear Son redeemed you, it is yours to be doubly the Lord's. There are
   the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ--are these yours? Make sure
   on that point. And if they are yours, yield yourself to Jesus and from
   this day forward do His bidding without question or delay.

   Quit everything contrary to the Lord's mind and will. At all cost be
   true--then shall the Lord be your delight and His service shall be your
   Heaven below. If you are now separated unto Him, you shall find your
   reward in that day when He shall divide the sheep from the goats--for
   then you shall be placed at His right hand to hear Him say, "Come, you
   blessed of My

   Father."
     __________________________________________________________________

Grace Abounding Over Abounding Sin

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MARCH 4, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Moreover the Law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin
   abounded, grace did much more abound." Romans 5:20.

   THE first sentence will serve as a preface. The second sentence will be
   the actual text. "Moreover the Law entered, that the offense might
   abound." Man was a sinner before the Law of Ten Commandments had been
   given. He was a sinner through the offense of his first father, Adam.
   And he was, also, practically a sinner by his own personal offenses.
   For he rebelled against the light of nature and the inner light of
   conscience. Men, from Adam downward, transgressed against that memory
   of better days which had been handed down from father to son and had
   never been quite forgotten.

   Man everywhere, whether he knew anything about the Law of Moses or not,
   was alienated from his God. The Word of God contains this truthful
   estimate of our race--"They are all gone out of the way, they are
   together become unprofitable. There is none that does good, no, not
   one." The Law was given, however, according to the text, "that the
   offense might abound." Such was the effect of the Law. It did not
   hinder sin, nor provide a remedy for it. But its actual effect was that
   the offense abounded. How so?

   It was so, first, because it revealed the offense. Men did not in every
   instance clearly discern what was sin. But when the Law came, it
   pointed out to man that this evil, which he thought little of, was an
   abomination in the sight of God. Man's nature and character was like a
   dark dungeon which knew no ray of light. Yonder prisoner does not
   perceive the horrible filthiness and corruption of the place wherein he
   is immured, so long as he is in darkness. When a lamp is brought, or a
   window is opened and the light of day comes in, he finds out to his
   dismay the hideous condition of his den.

   He spies loathsome creatures upon the walls and marks how others burrow
   out of sight because the light annoys them. He may, perhaps, have
   guessed that all was not as it should be but he had not imagined the
   abundance of the evils. The light has entered and the offense abounds.
   Law does not make us sinful but it displays our sinfulness. In the
   presence of the perfect standard we see our shortcomings. The Law of
   God is the mirror in which a man sees the spots upon his face. It does
   not wash you--you cannot wash in a mirror. But it prompts you to seek
   the cleansing water. The design of the Law is the revealing of our many
   offenses, that thereby, we may be driven out of self-righteousness unto
   the Lord Jesus, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the
   forgiveness of sins.

   The Law causes the offense to abound by making an offender to stand
   without excuse. Before he knew the Law perfectly, his sin was not so
   willful. While he did but faintly know the commands, he could, as it
   were, but faintly break them. But as soon as he distinctly knows what
   is right and what is wrong, then every cloak is taken away from him.
   Sin becomes exceedingly sinful when it is committed against light and
   knowledge. Is it not so with some of you? Are you not forced to admit
   that you commit many sins, now that you have been made to know the Law
   and yet willfully offend against it, by omission or commission? He who
   knows his Master's will and does it not, will be beaten with many
   stripes--because he is guilty of abounding offenses. The Law enters to
   strip us of every cloak of justification and so to drive us to seek the
   robe of Christ's righteousness.

   Next, I think the Law makes the offense to abound by causing sin to be
   more evidently a presumptuous rebellion against the great Lawgiver. To
   sin in the front of Sinai, with its wonderful display of Divine
   majesty, is to sin, indeed. To rebel against a Law promulgated with
   sound of trumpet and thunders and pomp of God is to sin with a high
   hand and a defiant heart. When you have heard the Ten Commands, when
   you know the Law of the kingdom, when your Maker's will is plainly set
   before you, then to transgress is to transgress with an insolence of
   pride which will admit of no excuse.

   Once more--the entrance of the Law makes the offense to abound in this
   sense, that the rebellious will of man rises up in opposition to it.
   Because God commands, man refuses. And because He forbids, man desires.
   There are some men

   who might not have sinned in a particular direction if the commandment
   had not forbidden it. The light of the Law, instead of being a warning
   to them to avoid evil, seems to point out to them the way in which they
   can most offend. Oh, how deep is the depravity of human nature! The Law
   itself provokes it to rebel. Men long to enter because trespassers are
   warned to keep away. Their minds are so at enmity against God that they
   delight in that which is forbidden--not so much because they find any
   particular pleasure in the thing itself but because it shows their
   independence and their freedom from the restraints of God.

   This vicious self-will is in all of us by nature. For the carnal mind
   is enmity against God--and therefore the Law, though in itself holy and
   just and good, provokes us to do evil. We are like lime and the Law is
   as cold water, which is in itself of a cooling nature. Yet, no sooner
   does the water of the Law get at the lime of our nature than a heat of
   sin is generated--thus, "the Law entered, that the offense might
   abound."

   Why, then, did God send the Law? Is it not an evil thing that the
   offense should abound? In itself it may seem to be so. But God deals
   with us as physicians sometimes deal with their patients. A disease
   which will be fatal if it spends itself within the patient must be
   brought to the surface--the physician, therefore, prescribes a medicine
   which displays the evil. The evil was all within but it did not abound
   as to its visible effects. It is needful that it should do so, that it
   may be cured. The Law is the medicine which throws out the depravity of
   man, makes him see it in his actions and even provokes him to display
   it. The evil is in man, like rabbits in yonder brushwood--the Law sets
   a light to the cover and the hidden creatures are seen.

   The Law stirs the mud at the bottom of the pool and proves how foul the
   waters are. The Law compels the man to see that sin dwells in him and
   that it is a powerful tyrant over his nature. All this is with a view
   to his cure. God be thanked when the Law so works as to take off the
   sinner from all confidence in himself! To make the leper confess that
   he is incurable is going a great way towards compelling him to go to
   that Divine Savior who alone is able to heal him. This is the object
   and end of the Law towards men whom God will save.

   Consider for a moment--you may take it as an axiom, a thing
   self-evident, that there can be no Divine Grace where there is no
   guilt--there can be no mercy where there is no sin. There can be
   justice, there can be benevolence--but there cannot be mercy unless
   there is criminality. If you are not a sinner, God cannot have mercy
   upon you. If you have never sinned, God cannot display pardoning Grace
   towards you for there is nothing to pardon. It were a misuse of words
   to talk of forgiving a man who has done no wrong, or to speak of
   bestowing undeserved favor upon a person who deserves reward. It would
   be an insult to innocence to offer it mercy. You must, therefore, have
   sin or you cannot have Divine Grace--that is clear.

   Next, consider that there will be no seeking after Divine Grace where
   there is no sense of sin. We may preach till we are hoarse, but you
   good people who have never broken the Law and are not guilty of
   anything wrong, will never care for our message of mercy. You are such
   kind people that, out of compliment to religion, you say, "Yes, we are
   sinners. We are all sinners." But you know in your heart of hearts you
   do not mean it. You will never ask for Divine Grace. For you have no
   sense of shame or guilt. None of you will seek mercy till first you
   have pleaded guilty to the indictment which the Law of God presents
   against you. Oh, that you felt your sins! Oh, that you knew your need
   of forgiveness! Then you would see yourselves to be in such a condition
   that only the free, rich, Sovereign Grace of God can save you.

   Furthermore, I am sure that there will be no reception and acceptance
   of Divine Grace by any man till there is a full confession of sin and a
   burdensome sense of its weight. Why should you receive Divine Grace
   when you do not want it? What is the use of it to you? Why should you
   bow your knee to God and receive, as the free gift of His charity, that
   which you feel you do not need? Have you not already earned eternal
   life? Are you not as good as other people? Have you not some
   considerable claim upon God? Do I startle you with these plain
   questions? Have I not heard you say much the same? The other day when
   we preached the electing love of God you grumbled and muttered that God
   was unjust to choose one rather than another.

   What did this mean? Did it not mean that you felt you had some claim
   upon God? O Sir, if this is your spirit I must deal plainly with you!
   If you have any claim upon your Maker, plead it and be sure that He
   will not deny you your just rights. But I would advise you to change
   your method of dealing with your Judge--you will never prevail in this
   fashion. In Truth, you have no claim upon Him. You must appeal to His
   pure mercy. You are not in a position for Him to display free Divine
   Grace to you till your mouth is shut and you sit down in dust and
   ashes, silently owning that you de-

   serve nothing at His hands but infinite displeasure. Confess that
   whatever He gives you that is good and gracious must be given freely to
   one who deserves nothing.

   Hell gapes at your feet--cease from pride and humbly sue out a pardon.
   You see, then, the use of the Law--it is to bring you where Divine
   Grace can be fitly shown you. It shuts you up that you may cry to Jesus
   to set you free. It is a storm which wrecks your hopes of
   self-salvation and washes you upon the Rock of Ages. The condemning
   sentence of the Law is meant to prepare you for the absolution of the
   Gospel. If you condemn yourself and plead guilty before God, the royal
   pardon can then be extended towards you. The self-condemned shall be
   forgiven through the precious blood of Jesus and the Sovereign Grace of
   God.

   Oh, my Hearer, you must sit down there in the dust, or else God will
   not look at you! You must yield yourself to Him, owning His justice,
   honoring His Law--this is the first condition of His mercy. And to
   this, His Grace brings all who feel its power. The Lord will have you
   bow before Him in self-abhorrence and confess His right to punish you.
   Remember, "He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and He will
   have compassion on whom He will have compassion." And He will have you
   know this and agree to it. His Grace must reign triumphantly and you
   must kiss its silver scepter. Thus has the first sentence served us for
   a preface--God bless it to us!

   I. The doctrine of the text itself is this, that "where sin abounded,
   grace did much more abound." And I shall try to bring out that Truth of
   God, first, by saying that THIS IS SEEN IN THE WHOLE WORK OF GRACE,
   from beginning to end.

   I would direct your attention to the context. The safest way to preach
   upon a text is to follow out the idea which the inspired writer was
   endeavoring to convey. Paul has, in this place, been speaking of the
   abounding result for evil of one sin in the case of Adam, the federal
   head of the race. That one sin of Adam's abounded terribly. Look at the
   multitudinous generations of our race which have gone down to death.
   Who slew all these? Sin is the wolf which has devoured the flocks of
   men. Sin has poisoned the streams of manhood at their fountainhead and
   everywhere they run with poisoned waters. Concerning this, Paul says,
   "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."

   First, then, sin abounded in its effect upon the whole human race--one
   sin overthrew all humanity--one fatal fault, the breach of a plain and
   easy Law, made sinners of us all. "By one man's disobedience many were
   made sinners." Simple as was the command which Adam broke, it involved
   obedience or disobedience to the sovereignty of God. All the trees of
   the garden were generously given to happy Adam in Paradise--"Of every
   tree of the garden you may freely eat." There was but one tree reserved
   for God by the prohibition, "You shall not eat of it--for in the day
   that you eat thereof you shall surely die."

   Adam had no need to touch that fruit--there were all the other trees
   for him. Nothing was denied him which was really for his good. He was
   only forbidden that which would ruin him. We all look back to that
   Paradisiacal state and wish we could have been put in some such a
   position as he--yet he dared to trespass on God's reserves and thus to
   set himself up above his Maker. He judged it wise to do what God
   forbade--he ran the risk of death in the foolish hope of rising into a
   still higher state.

   See the consequences of that sin on all sides, the world is full of
   them. Yet, says Paul, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,"
   and he gives us this as a proof of it--"And not as it was by one that
   sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation but
   the free gift is of many offenses unto justification" (Rom. 5:16). The
   Lord Jesus came into the world, not to put away only Adam's sin but all
   the sins which have followed upon it. The second Adam has repaired the
   desperate ruin of the first and much more. By His death upon the Cross,
   our Divine Substitute has put away those myriads of sins which have
   been committed by men since the first offense in Eden.

   Think of this! Take the whole aggregate of Believers and let each one
   disburden his conscience of its load of sin. What a mountain! Pile it
   up! Pile it up! It rises huge as high Olympus! Age after age Believers
   come and lay their enormous loads in this place. "The Lord has made to
   meet on Him the iniquities of us all." What Alps! What Himalayas of
   sin! If there were only mine and yours, my Brothers and Sisters, what
   mountains of division would our sins make! But the great Christ, the
   free gift of God to us, when He bare our sins in His own body on the
   tree, took all those countless sins away.

   "Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world"! Here
   is infinite grace to pardon immeasurable sin! Truly the "one man's
   offense" abounded horribly. But the "one man's obedience," the
   obedience of the Son of God,

   has superabounded. As the arch of Heaven far exceeds in its span the
   whole round globe of the earth, so does Divine Grace much more abound
   over human sin.

   Follow me further, when I notice, secondly, that sin abounded in its
   ruinous effects. It utterly destroyed humanity. In the third chapter of
   Romans you see how, in every part of his nature, man is depraved by
   sin. Think of the havoc which the tyrant, sin, has made of our natural
   estate and heritage. Eden is withered--its very site is forgotten. Our
   restfulness among the trees of the field freely yielding their fruit,
   is gone and God has said, "In the sweat of your face shall you eat
   bread." The field we till has lost its spontaneous yield of
   corn--"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you." Our life
   has lost its glory and immortality--"Dust you are and unto dust shall
   you return." Every woman in her pangs of travail, every man in his
   weariness of labor and all of us together in the griefs of death--see
   what sin has done for us as to our mortal bodies.

   Alas, it has gone deeper--it has ruined our souls. Sin has unmanned
   man. The crown and glory of his manhood, it has thrown to the ground.
   All our faculties are out of gear. All our tendencies are perverted.
   Beloved, let us rejoice that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to redeem
   us from the curse of sin and He will undo the evil of evil. Even this
   poor world He will deliver from the bondage of corruption. And He will
   create new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness. The
   groans and painful travail of the whole creation shall result in a full
   deliverance, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   As for ourselves, we are lifted up to a position far higher than that
   which we should have occupied had the race continued in its innocence.
   The Lord Jesus Christ found us in a horrible pit and in the miry clay
   and He not only lifted us up out of it but He set our feet upon a rock
   and established our goings. Raised from Hell, we are lifted not to the
   bowers of Eden but to the Throne of God. Redeemed human nature has
   greater capacities than unfallen human nature. To Adam the Lord did not
   say, "You are a son of God, joint-heir with the only Begotten." But He
   has said that to each Believer redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus.
   Beloved, such a thing as fellowship with Christ in His sufferings could
   not have been known to Adam in Paradise.

   He could not have known what it is to be dead and to have his life hid
   with Christ in God. Blessed be His name, our Lord Jesus Christ can say,
   "I restored that which I took not away"! He restored more than ever was
   taken away from us. For He has made us to be partakers of the Divine
   nature and in His own Person He has placed us at God's right hand in
   the heavenly places. Inasmuch as the dominion of the Lord Jesus is more
   glorious than that of unfallen Adam, manhood is now more great and
   glorious than before the Fall. Grace has so much more abounded, that in
   Jesus we have gained more than in Adam we lost. Our Paradise Regained
   is far more glorious than our Paradise Lost.

   Again--sin abounded to the dishonor of God. I was trying the other day
   to put myself into the position of Satan at the gates of Eden, that I
   might understand his diabolical policy. He had become the archenemy of
   God and when he saw this newly-made world and perceived two perfectly
   pure and happy creatures placed in it. He looked on with envy and
   plotted mischief. He heard the Creator say, "In the day that you eat
   thereof you shall surely die," and he hoped here to find an opportunity
   for an assault upon God. If he could induce those new-made creatures to
   eat of the forbidden fruit, he would place their Maker upon the horns
   of a dilemma--either He must destroy the creatures which He had made,
   or else He must be untrue.

   The Lord had said, "You shall surely die," and He must thus undo His
   own work and destroy a creature which He had made in His own image,
   after His own likeness. Satan probably perceived that man was an
   extraordinary being with a wonderful mystery of glory hanging about his
   destiny. And if he could make him sin, he would cause God to destroy
   him and so far defeat the eternal purpose. On the other hand, if the
   Lord did not execute the sentence, then He would not be truthful and
   throughout all His great universe it would be reported that the Lord's
   Word had been broken--either He had changed His mind, or He had spoken
   in jest, or He had been proven to have threatened too severe a
   penalty--in either case, the Evil Spirit hoped to triumph. It was a
   deep, far-reaching scheme to dim the splendor of the King of kings.

   Beloved, did it not seem as if sin had abounded beyond measure when
   first the woman, and then the man, had been deceived and had done
   despite to God? Behold how Divine Grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ,
   did much more abound! God is more honored in the redemption of man than
   if there had never been a Fall. The Lord has displayed the majesty of
   His justice and the glory of His grace in the great sacrifice of His
   dear Son in such a manner that angels and principalities and powers
   will wonder throughout all ages. More of God is to be seen in the great
   work of redeeming love than could have been reflected in the creation
   of myriads of worlds--had each one of them been replete with marvels of
   Divine skill and goodness and power.

   In Jesus crucified, Jehovah is glorified as never before. Where sin
   abounded to the apparent dishonor of God, grace does much more abound
   to the infinite glory of His ever-blessed name.

   Again--sin abounded by degrading human character. What a wretched being
   man is as a sinner against God! Unchecked by Law and allowed to do as
   he pleases, what will not man become? See how Paul describes men in
   these progressive times--in these enlightened centuries--"This know
   also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be
   lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers,
   disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection,
   trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those
   that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more
   than lovers of God; having a form of godliness but denying the power
   thereof."

   Human nature was not at all slandered by Whitefield when he said that,
   "left to himself, man is half beast and half devil." I do not mean
   merely men in savage countries. I am thinking of men in London. Only
   the other day a certain newspaper gave us plenty of proof of the sin of
   this city--I will say no more--could brutes or demons be worse? Read
   human history-- Assyrian, Roman, Greek, Spanish, English. And if you
   are a lover of holiness, you will be sick of man. Has any other
   creature, except the fallen angels, ever become so cruel, so mean, so
   false? Behold what villains, what tyrants, what monsters sin has made!

   But now look on the other side and see what the Divine Grace of God has
   done. Under the molding hand of the Holy Spirit a gracious man becomes
   the noblest work of God. Man, born again and rescued from the Fall is
   now capable of virtues to which he never could have reached before he
   sinned. An unfallen being could not hate sin with the intensity of
   abhorrence which is found in the renewed heart. We now know by personal
   experience the horror of sin and there is now within us an instinctive
   shuddering at it. An unfallen being could not exhibit patience, for it
   could not suffer, and patience has its perfect work to do.

   When I have read the stories of the martyrs in the first ages of the
   Christian Church and during the Marian persecution in England, I have
   adored the Lord who could enable poor feeble men and women thus to
   prove their love to their God and Savior. What great things they
   suffered out of love to God! And how grandly did they thus honor Him! O
   God, what a noble being Your grace has made man to be! I have felt
   great reverence for sanctified humanity when I have seen how men could
   sing God's praises in the fires. What noble deeds men have been capable
   of when the love of God has been shed abroad in their hearts! I do not
   think angels, or archangels have ever been able to exhibit so admirable
   an all-round character as the Divine Grace of God has worked in
   once-fallen men whom He has, by His grace, inspired with the Divine
   life.

   In human character, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." I
   believe God looks out of Heaven today and sees in many of His poor,
   hidden people such beauties of virtue, such charms of holiness that He
   Himself is delighted with them. "The Lord takes pleasure in them that
   fear Him." These are such true jewels that the Lord has a high estimate
   of them and sets them apart for Himself--"They shall be Mine, says the
   Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels."

   Again--dear Friends, sin abounded to the causing of great sorrow. It
   brought with it a long train of woes. The children of sin are many and
   each one causes lamentation. We cannot attempt to fathom the dark
   abysses of sorrow which have opened in this world since the advent of
   sin. Is it not a place of tears--yes, a field of blood? Yet by a
   wonderful alchemy, through the existence of sin, Divine Grace has
   produced a new joy, yes, more than one new joy. The calm deep joy of
   repentance must have been unknown to perfect innocence. This right
   orient pearl is not found in the rivers of Eden.

   Yes, and that joy which is in Heaven in the presence of the angels of
   God over sinners that repent is a new thing, whose birth is since the
   Fall. God Himself knows a joy which He could not have known had there
   been no sin. Behold, with tearful wonder the great Father as He
   receives His returning prodigal and cries to all about Him, "Let us eat
   and be merry--for this My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost
   and is found." O Brethren, how could almighty love have been victorious
   in Divine Grace had there been no sin to battle with? Heaven is the
   more Heaven for us since there we shall sing of robes washed white in
   the blood of the Lamb. God has greater joy in man and man has greater
   joy in God because Divine Grace abounded over sin. We are getting into
   deep waters now! How true our text is!

   Once more, sin abounded to hinder the reign of Christ. I believe that
   Satan's design in leading men into sin at first was to prevent the
   supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ as man and God in one Person. I do
   not lay it down as a doctrine, specifically taught in Scripture, but
   still it seems to me a probable Truth of God that Satan foresaw that
   the gap which was made in Heaven by the fall of the angels was to be
   filled up by human beings, whom God would place near His Throne. Satan
   thought that he saw before him the beings who would take the places of
   the fallen spirits and he envied them. He knew that they were made in
   the image of the Only-Begotten, the Christ of God and he hated Him
   because he saw united in His Person God whom he abhorred and man whom
   he envied.

   Satan shot at the second Adam through the breast of the first Adam. He
   meant to overthrow the Coming One. But, fool that Satan is, the Lord
   Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, is now exalted higher than ever we
   could conceive Him to have been had there been no sin to bear, no
   redemption to work out. Jesus, wounded and slain, has about Him higher
   splendor than before. O King of kings and Lord of lords, Man of
   Sorrows, we sing hallelujahs unto You! All our hearts beat true to You!
   We love You beyond all else! You are He whom we will praise forever and
   ever! Jesus sits on no precarious throne in the empire of love. We
   would each one maintain His right with the last pulse of our hearts.
   King of kings and Lord of lords! Hallelujah, Where sin abounded, Divine
   Grace has much more abounded to the glory of the Only-Begotten Son of
   God.

   II. I find time always flies fastest when our subject is most precious.
   I have a second head, which deserves a lengthy consideration. But we
   must be content with mere hints. This great fact--that where sin
   abounded, grace did much more abound-- crops up everywhere. THIS IS TO
   BE SEEN IN SPECIAL CASES.

   The first special case is the introduction of the Law. When the Law of
   Ten Commands was given, through man's sin, it ministered to the
   abounding of the offense. But it also ministered to the abounding of
   Divine Grace. It is true there were ten commands. But there was more
   than tenfold Grace. With the Law there came forward a High Priest. The
   world had never seen a High Priest before, arrayed in jeweled
   breastplate and garments of glory and beauty. There was the Law. But at
   the same time there was the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most
   High with its altar, its laver, its candlestick and its table of
   show-bread. There was, also, the secret shrine where the majesty of God
   dwelt. God had, by those symbols and types, come to dwell among men.

   It is true, sin abounded through the Law. But, then, sacrifices for sin
   also abounded. Up to then there had been no morning and evening lambs.
   There had been no day of atonement; no sprinkling of blood; no
   benediction from the Lord's High Priest. For every sin that the Law
   revealed, a sacrifice was provided. Sins of ignorance, sins of their
   holy things, sins of all sorts were met by special sacrifices--so that
   the sins uncovered to the conscience were also covered by the
   sacrifice.

   The story of Israel is another case in point. How often the nation
   rebelled. But how often did mercy rejoice over judgment! Truly, the
   history of the chosen people shows how sin abounded and grace did much
   more abound. Run your eye down history and pause at the crucifixion of
   our Lord Jesus. This is the highest peak of the mountains of sin. They
   crucified the Lord of Glory. Here sin abounded. But do I need to tell
   you that Divine Grace did here much more abound? You can look at the
   death of Christ till Pilate vanishes and Caiaphas fades away and all
   the clamor of the priests and Jews is hushed and you see nothing and
   hear nothing but free grace and dying love.

   There followed upon the crucifixion of our Lord, the casting away of
   the Jewish people for a while. Sin abounded when the Lord thus came to
   His own and His own received Him not. Yes. But the casting away of them
   was the saving of the nations. "We turn to the Gentiles," said the
   Apostle. And that was a blessed turning for you and for me, was it not?
   They that were bid to the feast were not worthy and the Master of the
   house, being angry, invited other guests. Mark, "being angry"! What did
   He do when He was angry? Why, He did the most gracious thing of all. He
   said, "Go you out into the highways and hedges and as many as you shall
   find bid to the supper." Sin abounded, for Israel would not enter the
   feast of love. But Divine Grace did much more abound, for the heathen
   entered the kingdom.

   The heathen world at that time was sunk in the blackest darkness and
   sin abounded. You have only to study ancient history and you will fetch
   a heavy sigh to think that men could be so vile. A poor and unlettered
   people were chosen of God to receive the Gospel of Jesus and they went
   about telling of an atoning Savior in their own simple way, until the
   Roman empire was entirely changed. Light and peace and the Truth of God
   came into the world and drove away slavery and tyranny and bestial
   lust. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. What wonderful
   characters were produced in the terrible reign of Diocletian! What
   consecration to God was seen in the confessors! What fearlessness in
   common Christians! What invincible loyalty to Christ in the martyrs!
   Out of barbarians the Lord made saints and the degraded rose to
   holiness sublime.

   If I were to ask you, now, to give the best illustrations of grace
   abounding in individuals, I think your impulse would be to choose men
   in whom sin once abounded. What characters do we preach of most when we
   would magnify the grace of God? We talk of David and Manasseh and
   swearing Peter and the dying thief and Saul of Tarsus and the woman
   that was a sinner. If we want to show where grace abounded we naturally
   turn our eyes to the place where sin abounded. Is it not so? Therefore,
   I need not give you any more cases--it is proven that where sin
   abounded, grace did much more abound.

   III. Lastly. And this is what I want to hold you to, dear Friends, at
   this time--THIS HOLDS TRUE TO EACH ONE OF

   US.

   Let me take the case of the open sinner. What have you been? Have you
   grossly sinned? Have you defiled your body with unhallowed passions?
   Have you been dishonest to your fellow men? Does some scarlet sin stain
   your conscience even as you sit

   in the pew? Have you grown hardened in sin by long perseverance in it?
   Are you conscious that you have frequently, willfully and resolutely
   sinned? Are you getting old and have you been soaking these seventy
   years in the crimson dye of sin till you are saturated through and
   through with its color? Have you even been an implacable opponent of
   the Gospel? Have you persecuted the saints of God? Have you tried by
   argument to batter down the Gospel or by ridicule to put it to
   reproach?

   Then hear this text--"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."
   And as it was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be till this
   world shall end. The Grace of God, if you believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, will triumph over the greatness of your wickedness. "All manner
   of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Throw down your
   weapons of rebellion-- surrender at discretion--kiss the pierced hand
   of Jesus which is now held out to you and this very moment you shall be
   forgiven and you shall go your way a pardoned man, to begin a new life
   and to bear witness that "where sin abounded, grace did much more
   abound."

   Perhaps this does not touch you, my Friend. Listen to my next word
   which is addressed to the instructed sinner. You are a person whose
   religious education has made you aware of the guilt of sin. You have
   read your Bible and you have heard truthful preaching. And although you
   have never been a gross open sinner, yet you know that your life teems
   with sins of omission and commission. You know that you have sinned
   against light and knowledge. You have done despite to a tender
   conscience very often--and therefore you rightly judge that you are
   even a greater sinner than the more openly profane.

   Be it so. I take you at that. Do not run back from it. Let it be so.
   For "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Oh, that you may
   be as much instructed in the remedy as you are instructed in the
   disease! Oh, that you may have as clear a view of the righteousness of
   Christ as you have of your own unrighteousness! Christ's work is a
   Divine work, broad enough to cover all your iniquity and to conquer all
   your sin. Believe this! Give glory to God by believing it. And
   according to your faith, so be it unto you.

   I address another, who does not answer either of these two descriptions
   exactly. But he has lately begun to seek mercy and the more he prays
   the more he is tempted. Horrible suggestions rush into his mind.
   Damnable thoughts beset and bewilder him. Ah, my Friend, I know what
   this means--the nearer you are to Divine mercy, the nearer you seem to
   get to Hell's gate! When you most solemnly mean to do good you feel
   another Law in your members bringing you into captivity. You grow worse
   where you hoped you would have grown better.

   Very well, then--grip my text firmly as for your life--"Where sin
   abounded, grace did much more abound." If a whole legion of devils
   should be let loose upon you, Christ will glorify Himself by mastering
   them all. If now you cannot repent, nor pray, nor do anything--remember
   that text, "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died
   for the ungodly." Look over the heads of all these doubts and devils
   and inabilities and see Jesus lifted on the Cross, like the brazen
   serpent upon the pole. And look to Him and the fiery serpents shall
   flee away from you and you shall live. Believe this text to be true,
   for true it is--"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."

   "Ah," says another, "my case is still worse, Sir. I am of a despondent
   turn of mind. I always look upon the black side of everything and now
   if I read a promise I am sure it is not for me. If I see a threat in
   God's Word I am sure it is for me. I have no hope. I do not seem as if
   I should ever have any. I am in a dungeon into which no light can
   enter--it is dark, dark, dark, and worse darkness is coming. While you
   are trying to comfort me, I put the comfort away."

   I know you. You are like the poor creature in the Psalm, of whom we
   read--"His soul abhors all manner of meat." Even the Gospel itself he
   cannot relish. Yes. I know you. You are writing bitter things against
   yourself. And your writing is that of a poor bewildered creature. It is
   not to be taken notice of. I see you writing in text hand, great black
   words of condemnation. But there is nothing in them all. Verily,
   verily, I say unto you, your handwriting shall be blotted out and the
   curse, causeless, shall not come. Thus says the Lord, "Your covenant
   with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with Hell shall not
   stand, for the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed you and where sin
   abounded, grace shall much more abound."

   Broken in pieces, all asunder, ground between the millstones, reduced
   to nothing, yet believe this Revelation of God, "that where sin
   abounded, grace did much more abound." Notice that "much more"--"much
   more abound." If you can grip it and know it to be of a certainty the
   great principle upon which God acts--that grace shall outstrip
   sin--then there is hope of you. No, more than hope--there is salvation
   for you on the spot. If you believe in Jesus, whom God has set forth to
   be a propitiation for sin, you are forgiven.

   Oh, my Hearers, do not despise this Divine Grace! Come and partake of
   it. Does anyone say, as Paul foresaw that some would say, "Let us sin,
   that grace may abound"? Ah, then, such an infamous inference is the
   mark of the reprobate and your damnation is just. He that turns God's
   mercy into a reason for sin has within him something worse than a heart
   of stone-- surely his conscience is seared with a hot iron.

   Beloved, I hope better things of you--for I trust that, on the
   contrary, the sound of the silver bells of infinite love, free pardon,
   abounding grace--will make you hasten to the hospital of mercy that you
   may receive healing for your sinfulness, strength for your feebleness
   and joy for your sorrow. Lord, grant that in this house, in every case
   wherein sin has abounded, Your Grace may yet more abound, for Jesus'
   sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Infallibility of Scripture

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MARCH 11, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Isaiah 1:20.

   WHAT Isaiah said was therefore spoken by Jehovah. It was audibly the
   utterance of a man. But, really, it was the utterance of the Lord
   Himself. The lips which delivered the words were those of Isaiah but
   yet it was the very Truth of God that, "The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." All Scripture, being inspired of the Spirit, is spoken by
   the mouth of God. How ever this sacred Book may be treated nowadays, it
   was not treated contemptuously, nor negligently, nor questioningly by
   the Lord Jesus Christ, our Master and Lord. It is noteworthy how He
   reverenced the written Word. The Spirit of God rested upon Him
   personally, without measure and He could speak out of His own mind the
   Revelation of God and yet He continually quoted the Law and the
   Prophets and the Psalms.

   And always He treated the Sacred Writings with intense reverence,
   strongly in contrast with the irreverence of "modern thought." I am
   sure, Brethren, we cannot be wrong in imitating the example of our
   Divine Lord in our reverence for that Scripture which cannot be broken.
   I say, if He, the Anointed of the Spirit and able to speak Himself as
   God's mouth, quoted the Sacred Writings and used the holy Book in His
   teachings, how much more should we. We who have no spirit of prophecy
   resting upon us and are not able to speak new revelations must come
   back to the Law and to the Testimony and value every single Word which
   "The mouth of the Lord has spoken."

   The like valuation of the Word of the Lord is seen in our Lord's
   Apostles. They treated the ancient Scriptures as supreme in authority
   and supported their statements with passages from Holy Writ. The utmost
   degree of deference and homage is paid to the Old Testament by the
   writers of the New. We never find an Apostle raising a question about
   the degree of inspiration in this book or that. No disciple of Jesus
   questions the authority of the books of Moses, or of the Prophets. If
   you want to cavil or suspect, you find no sympathy in the teaching of
   Jesus, or anyone of His Apostles. The New Testament writers sit
   reverently down before the Old Testament and receive God's Words as
   such, without any question whatever.

   You and I belong to a school which will continue to do the same--let
   others adopt what behavior they please. As for us and for our house,
   this priceless Book shall remain the standard of our faith and the
   ground of our hope so long as we live. Others may choose what gods they
   will and follow what authorities they prefer. But, as for us, the
   glorious Jehovah is our God and we believe concerning each doctrine of
   the entire Bible, that "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it."

   Coming closely, then, to our text, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken
   it," our first head shall be--THIS IS OUR WARRANT FOR TEACHING
   SCRIPTURAL TRUTH. We preach because, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken
   it." It would not be worth our while to speak what Isaiah had spoken,
   if in it there were nothing more than Isaiah's thoughts-- neither
   should we care to meditate hour after hour upon the writings of Paul,
   if there were nothing more than Paul in them. We feel no imperative
   call to expound and to enforce what has been spoken by men. But, since
   "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it, "it is woe unto us if we preach
   not the Gospel! We come to you with, "Thus says the Lord," and we
   should have no justifiable motive for preaching our lives away, if we
   have not this message.

   The true preacher, the man whom God has commissioned, delivers his
   message with awe and trembling because, "The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." He bears the burden of the Lord and bows under it. Ours is
   no trifling theme but one which moves our whole soul. They called
   George Fox a Quaker, because when he spoke he would quake exceedingly
   through the force of the Truth of God which he so thoroughly
   apprehended. Perhaps if you and I had a clearer sight and a closer grip
   of God's Word, and felt more of its majesty, we should quake also.
   Martin Luther, who never feared the face of man, yet declared that when
   he stood up to preach he often felt his knees knock together under a
   sense of his great responsibility.

   Woe unto us if we dare to speak the Word of the Lord with less than our
   whole heart and soul and strength! Woe unto us if we handle the Word as
   if it were an occasion for display! If it were our own word, we might
   be studious of the graces of oratory. But if it is God's Word, we
   cannot afford to think of ourselves--we are bound to speak it, "not
   with wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of no
   effect." If we reverence the Word, it will not occur to us that we can
   improve

   upon it by our own skill in language. Oh, it were far better to break
   stones on the road than to be a preacher, unless one had God's Holy
   Spirit to sustain him--our charge is solemn and our burden is heavy.

   The heart and soul of the man who speaks for God will know no ease, for
   he hears in his ears that warning admonition-- "If the watchman warn
   them not they shall perish. But their blood will I require at the
   watchman's hands." If we were commissioned to repeat the language of a
   king we should be bound to do it decorously lest the king suffer
   damage. But if we rehearse the Revelation of God, a profound awe should
   take hold upon us and a godly fear lest we mar the message of God in
   the telling of it. No work is so important or honorable as the
   proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus--and for that very reason
   it is weighted with a responsibility so solemn that none may venture
   upon it lightly, nor proceed in it without an overwhelming sense of his
   need of great Divine Grace to perform his office aright.

   We live under intense pressure, who preach a Gospel, of which we can
   assuredly say, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." We live rather in
   eternity than in time--we speak to you as though we saw the Great White
   Throne and the Divine Judge before whom we must give an account of not
   only what we say but how we say it.

   Dear Brethren, because the mouth of the Lord has spoken the Truth of
   God, we therefore endeavor to preach it with absolute fidelity. We
   repeat the Word as a child repeats his lesson. It is not ours to
   correct the Divine Revelation but simply to echo it. I do not take it
   to be my office to bring you new and original thoughts of my own. But
   rather to say, "The Word which you hear is not mine but the Father's
   which sent me." Believing that, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it,"
   it is my duty to repeat it to you as correctly as I can after having
   heard it and felt it in my own soul. It is not mine to amend or adapt
   the Gospel. What? Shall we attempt to improve upon what God has
   revealed? The Infinitely Wise--is He to be corrected by creatures of a
   day?

   Is the infallible Revelation of the infallible Jehovah to be shaped,
   moderated and toned down to the fashions and fancies of the hour? God
   forgive us if we have ever altered His Word unwittingly--wittingly we
   have not done so, nor will we, by His grace. His children sit at His
   feet and receive His Words and then they rise up in the power of His
   Spirit to publish far and near the Word which the Lord has given. "He
   that has My Word, let him speak My Word faithfully," is the Lord's
   injunction to us. If we could abide with the Father according to our
   measure, after the manner of the Lord Jesus and then come forth from
   communion with Him to tell what He has taught us in His Word, we should
   be accepted of the Lord as preachers and accepted also of His living
   people far more than if we were to dive into the profound depths of
   science, or rise to the loftiest flights of rhetoric.

   What is the chaff to the wheat! What are man's discoveries to the
   teachings of the Lord! "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it."
   Therefore, O man of God, add not to His Words lest He add to you the
   plagues which are written in His Book and take not from them, lest He
   take your name out of the Book of Life!

   Again, dear Friends, as, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it," we
   speak the Divine Truth with courage and full assurance. Modesty is a
   virtue. But hesitancy when we are speaking for the Lord is a great
   fault. If an ambassador sent by a great king to represent his majesty
   at a foreign court should forget his office and only think of himself,
   he might be so humble as to lower the dignity of his prince, so timid
   as to betray his country's honor. He is bound to remember not so much
   what he is in himself but whom he represents. Therefore he must speak
   boldly and with the dignity which beseems his office and the court he
   represents. It was the custom with certain Oriental despots to require
   ambassadors of foreign powers to lie in the dust before them.

   Some Europeans, for the sake of trade interests, submitted to the
   degrading ceremony. But when it was demanded of the representative of
   England, he scorned thus to lower his country. God forbid that he who
   speaks for God should dishonor the King of kings by a pliant
   subservience. We preach not the Gospel by your leave. We do not ask
   tolerance, nor court applause. We preach Christ Crucified and we speak
   boldly as we ought to speak--because it is God's Word and not our own.
   We are accused of dogmatism. But we are bound to dogmatize when we
   repeat that which the mouth of the Lord has spoken. We cannot use "ifs"
   for we are dealing with God's "shalls" and "wills." If He says it is
   so, it is so. And there is the end of it. Controversy ceases when
   Jehovah speaks.

   Those who fling aside our Master's authority may very well reject our
   testimony--we are content they should do so. But if we speak that which
   the mouth of the Lord has spoken, those who hear His Word and refuse
   it, do so at their own peril. The wrong is done not to the ambassador
   but to the King. Not to our mouth but to the mouth of God, from whom
   the Truth has proceeded.

   We are urged to be charitable. We are charitable. But it is with our
   own money. We have no right to give away what is put into our trust and
   is not at our disposal. When we have to do with the Truth of God we are
   stewards and must deal with

   our Lord's treasury, not on the lines of charity to human opinions but
   by the rule of fidelity to the God of Truth. We are bold to declare
   with full assurance that which the Lord reveals. That memorable Word of
   the Lord to Jeremiah is needed by the servants of the Lord in these
   days--"You therefore gird up your loins and arise and speak unto them
   all that I command you: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound
   you before them. For, behold, I have made you this day a fortified city
   and an iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land, against the
   kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests
   thereof and against the people of the land. And they shall fight
   against you. But they shall not prevail against you. For I am with you,
   says the Lord, to deliver you."

   When we speak for the Lord against error, we do not soften our tones.
   But we speak thunderbolts. When we come across false science, we do not
   lower our flag--we give place by subjection--no, not for an hour. One
   Word of God is worth more than libraries of human lore. "It is
   written," is the great gun which silences all the batteries of man's
   thought. They should speak courageously who speak in the name of
   Jehovah, the God of Israel.

   I will also add under this head, that because, "The mouth of the Lord
   has spoken it," therefore we feel bound to speak His Word with
   diligence--as often as ever we can and with perseverance--as long as
   ever we live. Surely it would be a blessed thing to die in the
   pulpit--spending one's last breath in acting as the Lord's mouth. Dumb
   Sabbaths are fierce trials to true preachers. Remember how John Newton,
   when he was quite unfit to preach and even wandered a bit by reason of
   his infirmities and age, yet persisted in preaching. And when they
   dissuaded him, he answered with warmth, "What? Shall the old African
   blasphemer leave off preaching Jesus Christ while there is breath in
   his body?"

   So they helped the old man into the pulpit again, that he might once
   more speak of free grace and dying love. If we had common themes to
   speak about, we might leave the pulpit as a weary pleader quits the
   forum. But as, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it," we feel His Word
   to be as fire in our bones and we grow more weary with refraining than
   with testifying. O my Brethren, the Word of the Lord is so precious
   that we must in the morning sow this blessed Seed and in the evening we
   must not withheld our hands. It is a Living Seed and the Seed of Life
   and therefore we must diligently scatter it. Brethren, if we get a
   right apprehension concerning Gospel Truth--that, "The mouth of the
   Lord has spoken it"--it will move us to proclaim with great ardor and
   seal.

   We shall not drone the Gospel to a slumbering handful. Many of you are
   not preachers but you are teachers of the young, or in some other way
   you try to publish the Word of the Lord--do it, I pray you, with much
   fervor of Spirit. Enthusiasm should be conspicuous in every servant of
   the Lord. Let those who hear you know that you are all there--that you
   are not merely speaking from the lips outwardly--but that from the
   depths of your soul your very heart is welling up with a good matter
   when you speak of things which you have made, touching the King.

   The everlasting Gospel is worth preaching even if one stood on a
   burning pyre and addressed the crowd from a pulpit of flames. The
   Truths of God revealed in Scripture are worth living for and dying for.
   I count myself thrice happy to bear reproach for the sake of the old
   faith. It is an honor of which I feel myself to be unworthy. And yet
   most truly can I use the words of our hymn--

   "Shall I, to soothe the unholy throng,

   Soften Your Truths and smooth my tongue?

   To gain earth's gilded toys, or flee

   The Cross endured, my God, by You?

   The love 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.

   My life, my blood I here present,

   If for Your Truth they may be spent--

   Fulfill Your sovereign counsel, Lord!

   Your will be done, Your name adored!" I cannot speak out my whole heart
   upon this theme which is so dear to me but I would stir you all up to
   be instant in season and out of season in telling out the Gospel
   message. Specially repeat such a word as this--"God so loved the world,
   that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him
   should not perish but have everlasting life." And this--"Him that comes
   to Me I will in no wise cast out." Proclaim boldly, proclaim in every
   place, proclaim to every creature, "For the mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." How can you keep back the heavenly news? "The mouth of the
   Lord has spoken it"--shall not your mouth rejoice to repeat it?

   Whisper it in the ear of the sick. Shout it in the corner of the
   streets. Write it on your stationery. Send it forth from the press--but
   everywhere let this be your great motive and warrant--preach the Gospel
   because, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Let nothing be silent
   that has a voice when the Lord has given the Word by His own dear Son--

   "Float, float, you winds His story,

   And you, you waters, roll,

   Till like a sea of glory

   It spreads from pole to pole."

   II. Let us now row in another direction for a moment or two. In the
   second place, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." THIS IS THE CLAIM
   OF GOD'S WORD UPON YOUR ATTENTION.

   Every Word which God has given us in this Book claims our attention
   because of the infinite majesty of Him that spoke it. I see before me a
   Parliament of kings and princes, sages and senators. I hear one after
   another of the gifted Chrysostoms pour forth eloquence like the
   "Golden-mouthed." They speak and they speak well. Suddenly, there is a
   solemn hush. What a stillness! Who is now to speak? They are silent
   because God the Lord is about to lift up His voice. Is it not right
   that they should be so? Does He not say, "Keep silence before Me, O
   islands"? What voice is like His voice? "The voice of the Lord is
   powerful.

   The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks
   the cedars--yes, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. The voice of
   the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of
   Kadesh. See that you refuse not Him that speaks. O my Hearer, let it
   not be said of you that you went though this life, God speaking to you
   in His Book and you refusing to hear! It matters very little whether
   you listen to me or not. But it matters a very great deal whether you
   listen to God or not. It is He that made you. In His hands is your
   breath. And if He speaks, I implore you, open your ears and be not
   rebellious. There is an infinite majesty about every line of Scripture,
   but especially about that part of Scripture in which the Lord reveals
   Himself and His glorious plan of saving Grace in the Person of His dear
   Son Jesus Christ. The Cross of Christ has a great claim upon you. Hear
   what Jesus preaches from the tree. He says, "Incline your ear and come
   unto Me: hear and your soul shall

   live."

   God's claim to be heard lies, also, in the condescension which has led
   Him to speak to us. It was something for God to have made the world and
   bid us look at the work of His hands. Creation is a picture-book for
   children. But for God to speak in the language of mortal men is still
   more marvelous, if you think about it. I wonder that God spoke by the
   Prophets. But I admire still more that He should have written down His
   Word in black and white, in unmistakable language which can be
   translated into all tongues, so that we may all see and read for
   ourselves what God the Lord has spoken to us. And what, indeed, He
   continues to speak.

   For what He has spoken He still speaks to us, as freshly as if He spoke
   it for the first time. O glorious Jehovah, Do You speak to mortal man?
   Can there be any that neglect to hear You? If You are so full of loving
   kindness and tenderness that You will stoop out of Heaven to converse
   with Your sinful creatures, none but those who are more brutal than the
   ox and the ass will turn a deaf ear to You!

   God's Word has a claim, then, upon your attention because of its
   majesty and its condescension. But, further, it should win your ear
   because of its intrinsic importance. "The mouth of the Lord has spoken
   it"--then it is no trifle. God never speaks vanity. No line of His
   writing treats of the frivolous themes of a day. That which may be
   forgotten in an hour is for mortal man and not for the eternal God.
   When the Lord speaks, His speech is God-like and its themes are worthy
   of one whose dwelling is infinity and eternity. God does not play with
   you, Man--will you trifle with Him? Will you treat Him as if He were
   altogether such a one as yourself? God is in earnest when He speaks to
   you--will you not in earnest listen?

   He speaks to you of great things which have to do with your soul and
   its destiny. "It is not a vain thing for you. Because it is your life."
   Your eternal existence, your happiness or your misery, hang on your
   treatment of that which the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Concerning
   eternal realities He speaks to you. I pray you, be not so unwise as to
   turn away your ear. Act not as if the Lord and His Truth were nothing
   to you. Treat not the Word of the Lord as a secondary thing, which
   might wait your leisure and receive attention when no other work was
   before you--put all else aside--and hearken to your God.

   Depend upon it--if "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it," there is an
   urgent, pressing necessity. God breaks not silence to say that which
   might as well have remained unsaid--His voice indicates great urgency.
   Today, if you will hear His voice, hear it. For He demands immediate
   attention. God does not speak without abundant reason. And, O my
   Hearer, if He speaks to you by His Word, I beseech you, believe that
   there must be overwhelming cause for it! I know what Satan says--he
   tells you that you can do very well without listening to God's Word. I
   know what your carnal heart whispers--it says, "Listen to the voice of
   business and of pleasure. But listen not to God." But, oh, if the Holy
   Spirit shall teach your reason to be reasonable and put your mind in
   mind of true wisdom, you will acknowledge that the first thing you have
   to do is to heed your Maker!

   You can hear the voices of others another time. But your ear must hear
   God first since He is first, and that which He speaks must be of first
   importance. Without delay do you make haste to keep His Commandments.
   Without reserve answer to His call and say, "Speak, Lord, for Your
   servant hears." When I stand in this pulpit to preach the Gospel, I
   never feel that I may calmly invite you to attend to a subject which is
   one among many and may very properly be let alone for a time should
   your minds be already occupied. No. You may be dead before I again
   speak with you and so I beg for immediate attention. I do not fear that
   I may be taking you off from other important business by entreating you
   to attend to that which the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

   No business has any importance in it compared with this--this is the
   master theme of all. It is your soul, your own soul, your ever-existing
   soul which is concerned, and it is your God that is speaking to you. Do
   hear Him, I beseech you. I am not asking a favor of you when I request
   you to hear the Word of the Lord--it is a debt to your Maker which you
   are bound to pay. Yes, it is, moreover, kindness to your own self. Even
   from a selfish point of view I urge you to hear what the mouth of the
   Lord has spoken, for in His Word lies salvation. Hearken diligently to
   what your Maker, your Savior, your best Friend, has to say to
   you--"Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation," but "incline your
   ear and come unto Me--hear and your soul shall live." "Faith comes by
   hearing and hearing by the Word of God."

   Thus I have handled my text in two ways--it is warrant and motive for
   the preacher. It is a demand upon the attention of the hearer.

   III. And now, thirdly, THIS GIVES TO GOD'S WORD A VERY SPECIAL
   CHARACTER. When we open this sacred

   Book and say of that which is here recorded, "The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it," then it gives to the teaching a special character.

   In the Word of God the teaching has unique dignity. This Book is
   inspired as no other book is inspired and it is time that all
   Christians avowed this conviction. I do not know whether you have read
   Mr. Smiles' life of our late friend, George Moore. But in it we read
   that at a certain dinner party, a learned man remarked that it would
   not be easy to find a person of intelligence who believed in the
   inspiration of the Bible. In an instant George Moore's voice was heard
   across the table, saying boldly, "I do, for one."

   Nothing more was said. My dear Friend had a strong way of speaking, as
   I well remember. For we have upon occasions vied with each other in
   shouting when we were together at his Cumberland home. I think I can
   hear his emphatic way of putting it--"I do, for one." Let us not be
   backward to take the old-fashioned and unpopular side and say outright,
   "I do, for one." Where are we if our Bibles are gone? Where are we if
   we are taught to distrust them? If we are left in doubt as to which
   part is inspired and which is not, we are as badly off as if we had no
   Bible at all. I hold no theory of inspiration. I accept the inspiration
   of the Scriptures as a fact.

   Those who thus view the Scriptures need not be ashamed of their
   company. For some of the best and most learned of men have been of the
   same mind. Locke, the great philosopher, spent the last fourteen years
   of his life in the study of the Bible and when asked what was the
   shortest way for a young gentleman to understand the Christian
   religion, he bade him read the Bible, remarking--"Therein are contained
   the words of eternal life. It has God for its Author, salvation for its
   end and Truth, without any admixture of error, for its matter." There
   are those on the side of God's Word whom you need not be ashamed of in
   the matter of intelligence and learning.

   And if it were not so, it should not discourage you when you remember
   that the Lord has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has
   revealed them unto babes. We believe with the Apostle that, "the
   foolishness of God is wiser than men." It is better to believe what
   comes out of God's mouth and be called a fool than to believe what
   comes out of the mouth of philosophers and be, therefore, esteemed a
   wise man. There is also about that which the mouth of the Lord has
   spoken an absolute certainty. What man has said is unsubstantial--even
   when true, is like grasping fog--there is nothing of it. But with God's
   Word you have something to grip, something to have and to hold. This is
   substance and reality.

   But of human opinions we may say, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
   Though Heaven and earth should pass away, yet not one jot or tittle of
   what God has spoken shall fail. We know that and feel at rest. God
   cannot be mistaken. God cannot lie. These are postulates which no one
   can dispute. If "The mouth of God has spoken it," this is the Judge
   that ends the strife where wit and reason fail. And henceforth we
   question no more.

   Again--if, "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it," we have in this
   utterance the special character of immutable fixedness. Once spoken by
   God, not only is it so now but it always must be so. The Lord of Hosts
   has spoken and who shall disannul it? The rock of God's Word does not
   shift, like the quicksand of modern scientific theology. One said to
   his minister, "My dear Sir, surely you ought to adjust your beliefs to
   the progress of science." "Yes," said he, "but I have not had time to
   do it today,

   for I have not yet read the morning papers." One would have need to
   read the morning papers and take in every new edition to know where
   scientific theology now stands. For it is always chopping and changing.
   The only thing that is certain about the false science of this age is
   that it will be soon disproved. Theories, vaunted today, will be
   scrapped tomorrow.

   The great scientists live by killing those who went before them. They
   know nothing for certain except that their predecessors were wrong.
   Even in one short life we have seen system after system--the mushrooms,
   or rather the toadstools, of thought--rise and perish. We cannot adapt
   our religious belief to that which is more changeful than the moon. Try
   it who will--as for me, if "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it," it is
   the Truth of God to me in this year of Divine Grace, 1888. And if I
   stand among you a gray-headed old man, Lord willing, somewhere in 1908,
   you will find me making no advance upon the Divine ultimatum. If "The
   mouth of the Lord has spoken it," we behold in His Revelation a Gospel
   which is without variableness, revealing "Jesus Christ, the same
   yesterday, today and forever."

   Brothers and Sisters, we hope to be together forever before the eternal
   Throne where bow the blazing Seraphim and even then we shall not be
   ashamed to avow that same Truth of God which this day we feed upon from
   the hand of our God--

   "For He's the Lord, supremely good, His mercy is forever sure; His
   Truth, which always firmly stood, To endless ages shall endure."

   Here let me add that there is something unique about God's Word because
   of the almighty power which attends it. "Where the word of a king is,
   there is power." Where the Word of a God is, there is omnipotence. If
   we dealt more largely in God's own Word as, "The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it," we should see far greater results from our preaching. It is
   God's Word, not our comment on God's Word, that saves souls. Souls are
   slain by the sword--not by the scabbard--nor by the tassels which adorn
   the hilt of it.

   If God's Word is brought forward in its native simplicity, no one can
   stand against it. The adversaries of God must fail before the Word as
   chaff perishes in the fire. Oh, for wisdom to keep closer and closer to
   that which the mouth of the Lord has spoken! I will say no more on this
   point, although the theme is a very large and tempting one--especially
   if I were to dwell upon the depth, the height, the adaptation, the
   insight and the self-proving power of that which, "The mouth of the
   Lord has spoken."

   IV. Fourthly and very briefly, THIS MAKES GOD'S WORD A GROUND OF GREAT
   ALARM TO MANY. Shall I read you the whole verse? "But if you refuse and
   rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord
   has spoken it." Every threat that God has spoken, because He has spoken
   it, has a tremendous dread about it. Whether God threatens a man or a
   nation, or the whole class of the ungodly, if they are wise they will
   feel a trembling take hold upon them, because, "The mouth of the Lord
   has spoken it."

   God has never yet spoken a threat that has fallen to the ground. When
   He told Pharaoh what He would do, He did it. The plagues came thick and
   heavy upon him. When the Lord at any time sent His Prophets to denounce
   judgments on the nations, He carried out those judgments. Ask travelers
   concerning Babylon and Nineveh and Edom and Moab and Bashan. And they
   will tell you of the heaps of ruins which prove how the Lord carried
   out His warnings to the letter. One of the most awful things recorded
   in history is the siege of Jerusalem. You have read it, I do not doubt,
   in Josephus, or elsewhere. It makes one's blood run cold to think of
   it. Yet it was all foretold by the Prophets and their prophecies were
   fulfilled to the bitter end.

   You talk about God as being "love," and, if you mean by this that He is
   not severe in the punishment of sin, I ask you what you make of the
   destruction of Jerusalem? Remember that the Jews were His chosen nation
   and that the city of Jerusalem was the place where His temple had been
   glorified with His Presence. Brethren, if you roam from Edom to Zion
   and from Zion to Sidon and from Sidon to Moab, you will find, amid
   ruined cities, the tokens that God's Words of judgment are sure. Depend
   on it, then, that when Jesus says, "These shall go away into
   everlasting punishment," it will be so. When He says, "If you believe
   not that I am He, you shall die in your sins," it will be so.

   The Lord never plays at frightening men. His Word is not an
   exaggeration to scare men with imaginary bugbears. There is emphatic
   Truth in what the Lord says. He has always carried out His threats to
   the letter and to the moment. And, depend upon it, He will continue to
   do so, "For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it."

   It is of no avail to sit down and draw inferences from the nature of
   God and to argue, "God is Love and therefore He will not execute the
   sentence upon the impenitent." He knows what He will do better than you
   can infer--He has not left us to inferences for He has spoken pointedly
   and plainly. He says, "He that believes not shall be damned," and it
   will be so, "For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Infer what you
   like from His nature. But if you draw an inference contrary to what He
   has spoken, you have inferred a lie and you will find it so.

   "Alas," says one, "I shudder at the severity of the Divine sentence."
   Do you? It is well! I can heartily sympathize with you. What must he be
   that does not tremble when he sees the great Jehovah taking vengeance
   upon iniquity! The terrors of the Lord might well turn steel to wax.
   Let us remember that the gauge of the Truth of God is not our pleasure
   nor our terror. It is not my shuddering which can disprove what the
   mouth of the Lord has spoken. It may even be a proof of its truth. Did
   not all the Prophets tremble at manifestations of God? Remember how one
   of them cried. "When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at
   the voice; rottenness entered into my bones."

   One of the last of the anointed Seers fell at the Lord's feet as dead.
   Yet all the shrinking of their nature was not used by them as an
   argument for doubt. O my unconverted and unbelieving Hearers, do
   remember that if you refuse Christ and rush upon the keen edge of
   Jehovah's sword, your unbelief of eternal judgment will not alter it,
   nor save you from it. I know why you do not believe in the terrible
   threats. It is because you want to be easy in your sins. A certain
   skeptical writer, when in prison, was visited by a Christian man who
   wished him well but he refused to hear a word about religion.

   Seeing a Bible in the hand of his visitor, he made this remark, "You do
   not expect me to believe in that Book, do you? Why, if that Book is
   true, I am lost forever." Just so. Therein lies the reason for half the
   infidelity in the world and all the infidelity in our congregations.
   How can you believe that which condemns you? Ah, my Friends, if you
   would believe it to be true and act accordingly you would also find in
   that which the mouth of the Lord has spoken a way of escape from the
   wrath to come! For the Book is far more full of hope than of dread.
   This inspired volume flows with the milk of mercy and the honey of
   Divine Grace. It is not a Doomsday Book of wrath but a Testament of
   Grace.

   Yet, if you do not believe its loving warnings, nor regard its just
   sentences, they are true all the same. If you dare its thunders, if you
   trample on its promises and even if you burn it in your rage, the holy
   Book still stands unaltered and unalterable. "The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." Therefore, I pray you, treat the sacred Scriptures with
   respect and remember that, "These are written, that you might believe
   that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that believing you might
   have life through His name."

   V. And so I must finish, for time fails, when I notice, in the fifth
   place, that THIS MAKES THE WORD OF THE LORD

   THE REASON AND REST OF OUR FAITH. "The mouth of the Lord has spoken
   it," is the foundation of our confidence. There is forgiveness. For God
   has said it. Look, Friend, you are saying, "I cannot believe that my
   sins can be washed away, I feel so unworthy." Yes but, "The mouth of
   the Lord has spoken it." Believe over the head of your unworthiness.
   "Ah," says one, "I feel so weak I can neither think, nor pray, nor
   anything else, as I should." Is it not written, "When we were yet
   without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly"? "The mouth
   of the Lord has spoken it." Therefore, over the head of your inability
   still believe it, for it must be so.

   I think I hear some child of God saying, "God has said, 'I will never
   leave you, nor forsake you,' but I am in great trouble. All the
   circumstances of my life seem to contradict the promise"--yet, "The
   mouth of the Lord has spoken it," and the promise must stand. "Trust in
   the Lord and do good. So shall you dwell in the land and verily you
   shall be fed." Believe God in the teeth of circumstances. If you cannot
   see a way of escape or a means of help, yet still believe in the unseen
   God and in the Truth of His Presence--"For the mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it."

   I think I have come to this pass with myself, at any rate for the time
   present, that when circumstances deny the promise, I believe it none
   the less. When friends forsake me and foes belie me and my own spirit
   goes down below zero and I am depressed almost to despair, I am
   resolved to hang to the bare Word of the Lord and prove it to be in
   itself an all-sufficient stay and support. I will believe God against
   all the devils in Hell, God against Ahithophel and Judas and Demas and
   all the rest of the turncoats. Yes, and God against my own evil heart.
   His purpose shall stand, "For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it."
   Away, you that contradict it--ours is a well-grounded confidence, "For
   the mouth of the Lord has spoken it."

   By-and-by we shall come to die. The death-sweat shall gather on our
   brow and perhaps our tongue will scarcely serve us. Oh that then, like
   the grand old German Emperor, we may say, "My eyes have seen Your
   salvation," and, "He has helped me with His name." When we pass through
   the rivers He will be with us, the floods shall not overflow us--"For
   the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." When we walk through the valley
   of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil, for He will be with us--
   His rod and His staff shall comfort us--"The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." Ah, what will it be to break loose from these bonds and
   rise into the glory? We shall soon see the King in His beauty and be
   ourselves glorified in His glory. For "the mouth of the Lord has spoken
   it." "He that believes has everlasting life." Therefore a glad eternity
   is ours.

   Brethren, we have not followed cunningly devised fables. We are not
   "wanton boys that swim on floats," which will soon burst under us. But
   we are resting on firm ground. We abide where Heaven and earth are
   resting--where the whole universe depends--where even eternal things
   have their foundation--we rest on God Himself. If God shall fail us, we
   gloriously fail

   with the whole universe. But there is no fear. Therefore let us trust
   and not be afraid. His promise must stand--"The mouth of the Lord has
   spoken it." O Lord, it is enough! Glory be to Your name, through Christ
   Jesus! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"As We Have Heard, So Have We Seen"

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MARCH 18, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "As we ha ve heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts,
   in the city of our God: God will establish it forever." Psalm 48:8.

   "As we have heard, so have we seen"--this is seldom true. In many
   places we see what we have not heard and what we have heard we do not
   see. Time was when many simpletons believed that the streets of London
   were paved with gold. I am sure I do not know any part of London in
   which a single lump of that metal can be found in the footway. Ten
   thousand idle tales there are in every country of mines where fortunes
   may be dug out of the earth and plains where wealth forces itself on
   the immigrant. But how seldom do we hear the good news, "As we have
   heard, so have we seen."

   But when you come into the "City of the Lord of Hosts, in the city of
   our God," the reports about it are true and the truth exceeds the
   report. For, like the Queen of Sheba, we cry, "The half was not told
   me." When we speak of the privileges of the Church of God on earth it
   is impossible to exaggerate. "Behold, what manner of love the Father
   has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."
   Behold, what blessings, what riches, what royalties the Lord Jesus
   bestows upon His chosen! How cleansed they are by His blood! How
   quickened by His life! How honored by His glorious enthronement at the
   right hand of the Father!

   You cannot speak of Zion and her prosperity in too exulting a style.
   Happy are you, O Israel! And if we speak of the city of God as it
   shines in full splendor above, words fail us to set it forth. I doubt
   not when we arrive at its blessed abodes and tread its golden streets
   and wear our crowns of immortality, we shall not only say, "As we have
   heard, so have we seen," but we shall be lost in wonder and surprise at
   the overwhelming revelations of Divine love.

   It is always true of the things of God and of the Church of God--"As we
   have heard, so have we seen." What His Word promises His work performs.
   This thought will be the clue of my sermon and my line of discourse
   will be guided by the text. May the Holy Spirit make it useful to us
   all!

   I. Our first observation upon the text is this--IT IS MOST IMPORTANT
   THAT WE LISTEN TO TRUE WITNESSES. Otherwise we shall not be able to
   say, "As we have heard, so have we seen." If we listen to false
   witnesses, the more we believe them the worse for us--it will not be
   faith but credulity and in due time there will be a sad awakening from
   idle dreams. It is of the first importance to you all that you should
   hear the Word of God and receive the Truth of God as it is in Jesus. So
   that both in the throng of life, and when you stand upon the borders of
   death and in the changeless state of eternity, you may be able to say,
   "We thank God for the Gospel which we heard. For what we heard with our
   ears has been verified in our lives."

   The Israelites who sang this forty-eighth Psalm had heard of Jerusalem
   and its Temple, of Jehovah and of His sure defense of His chosen
   city--how had they heard of it? They had heard of it by reading for
   themselves, or listening to the reading of the Word of God. They had
   five books of Moses and other writings. In these books they read
   marvelous stories of what Jehovah had done for His people. They would
   remember well how the Lord worked for His chosen in Egypt and how He
   brought them out of the house of bondage with a high hand and an
   outstretched arm. They would read the record of God's merciful
   provision for the tribes in the wilderness, of His victories over their
   enemies, such as Og, king of Bashan and Sihon, king of the Amorites.

   They would read with wonder the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and the
   overthrow of tyrants by Gideon and Barak and Jephthah. They would see
   what the Lord worked by His servant, David, and by others who trusted
   Him in the old times. All this would raise high their confidence in
   Jehovah--and now it had come to pass that while Jehoshaphat was king,
   the holy city had been beleaguered by confederate Moabites and Edomites
   and Ammonites. And once more the Lord had made bare His holy arm and
   given a glorious triumph to Judah--without it being necessary for His
   people to

   strike a single blow. The adversaries, moved with mutual jealousy, had
   fallen upon one another and become their own executioners. When the men
   of Judah saw this, they cried, "The old Book is true. Jehovah has
   worked wonders before our eyes. As we have heard, so have we seen in
   the city of the Lord of Hosts."

   My Brethren, attend carefully to what this Book records and reveals. It
   is now enlarged for your greater edification. Let this record be the
   report which you hear concerning the Lord our God and His ways of
   Divine Grace. Let us give earnest heed to Prophets and Apostles and
   Evangelists who wrote in the name of the Lord. For in that case we
   shall hear the Truths of God which shall be so verified by experience
   as to make us joyfully exclaim, "As we have heard, so have we seen."

   These good people had also listened to the ministers of God. The
   priests, when they were not engaged in actual attendance at the Temple,
   were expected to teach the people. It is said of the tribe of Levi,
   "They shall teach Jacob Your judgments and Israel Your Law." Prophets
   also went through the land declaring the mind of God and when the
   people heard these messengers whom the Lord had sent to speak in His
   name, they heard that which the Lord fulfilled. For none of the words
   of His servants were suffered to fall to the ground. How necessary it
   is that you should hear the Truth of God spoken by those that are sent
   of God.

   Many false Prophets have gone forth into the world. That which a man
   fetches out of his own mind may or may not be true. In any case you
   have a right to criticize and discuss it. But he that speaks with,
   "Thus says the Lord," at the back of his words stands on another
   platform. God's Word demands our reverent faith and he that speaks it
   faithfully speaks with authority and not as the scribes. Conscience
   within the breast of man echoes to the voice of Divine Truth and owns
   its power, even when the will refuses to obey. Oh, that you may not,
   because of itching ears, heap to yourselves teachers. But may you hear
   the faithful messenger of God so that you may say at the end, "As we
   have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God"!

   No doubt, also, these good people had listened to their fathers. In
   these days the proud notion is abroad that our fathers cannot have been
   so wise as their highly cultured sons. Yet in the long run, these same
   youths will alter their opinions as their years increase. Wisdom is
   neither in age nor in youth but in God alone. I love to hear what
   gray-headed men have to say who are further advanced in the journey of
   life than I am. For there is weight in their testimony. They may not
   speak with all the brilliance and fire of youth, but their speech has
   salt in it, derived from the certainty of actual experience. I love to
   think of those things which we have heard with our ears and our fathers
   have told us. Even the wondrous things which the Lord did in their day
   and in the old time before them.

   The singers of our Psalm had listened to their gracious fathers and
   when they saw the adversary round about the City of God and afterwards
   marched forth to that strange battle in which there was no clash of
   arms but only a joyful division of the spoil--then, I say they knew
   that what their fathers had told them was really true and they cried
   out in wonder, "As we have heard, so have we seen."--

   "In Zion God is known,

   A refuge in distress.

   How bright has His salvation shone

   Through all her palaces!

   Often have our fathers told,

   Our eyes ha ve often seen,

   How well our God secures the fold

   Where His own sheep ha ve been." Those who were not actually in
   Jerusalem would hear the descriptions of those who had been there. They
   had heard of the Temple which was so "exceedingly magnificent." They
   had heard of Jachin and Boaz, the two famous pillars--of the great
   altar and the smoking sacrifices of the morning and the evening lamb,
   and the priests in their white attire ministering at the altar. They
   had heard of the high priest himself, when he came forth in his
   garments of glory and of beauty and of the blessing which he blessed
   the assembled people. In the cottage homes on the far-off hills they
   had heard of all these things and heard a truthful report, so that when
   they came to the holy city and their feet stood within the gates of
   Jerusalem, their hearts beat high and they said within themselves, "We
   have not listened to cunningly devised fables. But as we have heard, so
   have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts."

   It is well, dear Friends, for us to form our associations with a view
   to lasting benefit. Let the friends of God be your friends. Speak to
   those who speak well of God and of His holy name. Cultivate the
   acquaintance of those who, by experience, are able to inform you
   whether these things are so. "He that walks with wise men shall be
   wise." He that talks much with experienced Christians will acquire much
   assurance in the things of God. It is most important for us that we
   receive the recorded witness of ancient saints and the hearty testimony
   of living worthies--that afterwards we may be able to say--"As we have
   heard, so have we seen."

   Some, nowadays, are inclined to hear everything, bad, good and
   indifferent. I believe that hearing everything will end in hearing
   nothing. That text is often quoted and misunderstood, which says,
   "Prove all things." If men really mean what they say and are going to
   prove all things, I would persuade them to begin with their bodies and
   not at first to run great risks with their souls. Gentlemen, I invite
   you to begin with more common things than the Gospel. For
   instance--commence with proving all the patent medicines and next prove
   all the drugs of the chemist. If you survive the process, it will then
   be time to go round and prove all the ministers and all the different
   doctrines of this wretched period.

   If you survive the drugs and poisons, you will not survive the false
   doctrines. False doctrines cannot be proved and you need not make the
   attempt. It is only the Truth of God which is capable of proof. The
   text does not mean "experiment upon everything"--but receive nothing
   until it has been proved to be true and good. The most of us are not
   appointed to the office of Universal Taster--we are not commissioned to
   taste all deadly things that we may know their precise effect--we are
   far better employed in holding fast that which is good. The truths
   which we have already proved to be the Truths of God, we hold as with a
   death grip. And, as we hold them fast, we also hold them forth.

   That which we accept for ourselves we commend to others--this is a far
   safer and healthier exercise than imitating the Athenians in their
   desire to be forever hearing some new thing. Take heed what you hear,
   lest you be not able to say, "As we have heard, so have we seen."

   II. Secondly, GOOD HEARING LEADS ON TO SEEING--"As we have heard, so
   have we seen." You cannot all use those words. Some of you have heard
   and heard but have never yet seen. The man who is content with one
   inlet to his mind, namely, his ears--but never uses his eyes, must
   imagine that God has made a mistake and has given him more senses than
   he needs. Surely this argues a want of sense. Dear Friends, you are not
   only invited to hear the Gospel, but the Lord Jesus says to you, as He
   said to His first disciples, "Come and see." "O taste and see that the
   Lord is good." You are invited to see for yourselves whether these
   things are so. You will ask how can a hearer of the Gospel become a
   seer of it?

   Note first, that he can do this by examining the facts which he hears
   stated, and judging whether they are really so. The Scripture tells you
   that your heart is deceitful--see whether it is not so. It tells you
   that there is a natural inclination in man towards evil--study yourself
   and see whether this is not the case. It tells you that there is in
   human nature an impotence towards that which is truly good and an
   aversion to God. Seriously consider whether your own life, as a natural
   man, does not prove the truth of these charges. There are some things
   about yourself, while as yet you are unconverted, which you have heard
   of in the Scriptures and I would urge you to see whether they are not
   true in your own case. It will be a great help to you if you will
   examine these things in reference to your own self. The subject for
   consideration is near at hand and it will be, in many ways, useful to
   yourself to know whether Holy Scripture gives a true description of
   human nature, as you find it in yourself.

   We further see what we hear when we obey the commands and receive the
   blessings promised upon obedience. For instance, you are bid to confess
   your sins. Now see whether this is true--"If we confess our sins, He is
   faithful and just to forgive us our sins"--not only hear the precept
   but see whether the promise is true. Here is another test--"Come unto
   Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."
   You have heard it hundreds of times--come and see for yourself whether
   such a rest is given. Obey the precept so that you may receive the
   promise which hangs upon the precept.

   We also turn hearing into sight when, receiving the blessings which are
   promised to faith, we enter into a new life. Some of us can bear
   witness that we have entered into a new world. That things which are
   now everything to us were nothing to us a little while ago. As to a
   deaf man there is no sound, as to a blind man there is no light, so to
   us a few years ago there were no spiritual things. We were devoid of
   those spiritual faculties by which spiritual things are discerned. But
   now that we have believed in Jesus we have passed into another
   universe. And we now possess a life as much above the life of our
   former state as the mental life is above that of the brute which
   perishes. We know that there is a heavenly life, for we possess it. And
   in the power of it we see a thousand things not dreamed of in the
   common man's philosophy. We heartily wish that all of you who hear the
   Gospel would see its Truths, so that you might say with the singers in
   this Psalm, "As we have heard, so have we seen."

   The promises of God are of little service to a man if he merely hears
   them or reads them and has no further dealing with them. They are like
   a check which is kept for months and years in a drawer and never
   presented at the bank. The promises of

   God must be presented by prayerful faith to the Lord Himself. The
   sacred promises, though in themselves most sure and precious, are of no
   avail for the comfort and sustenance of the soul unless you grasp them
   by faith, plead them in prayer, expect them by hope and receive them
   with gratitude. Oh, that you might say of every promise of God, "As we
   have heard, so have we seen."

   The best hearing is that which leads to seeing. When a man says, "The
   Word of God tells me so and I will test it for my-self"--that man is in
   a very hopeful state. To this we invite our hearers. The banquet is
   spread and rich are the provisions. But do not so trust our testimony
   as to stay away. Come and see for yourselves. We tell you that there is
   a great atonement made by the blood of Jesus which will at once wash
   out the most scarlet sins. Believe our message so far as to come and
   try it for yourselves and you will soon exclaim, "As we have heard, so
   have we seen."

   III. I beg your attention to the third point, which is this--that
   SEEING WONDERFULLY CONFIRMS THE TRUTH

   OF WHAT WE HEAR. We are bound to believe God, even when we cannot see.
   That the Lord has said it would be quite enough for us if we reverenced
   Him as we ought. But it does help us very much when, having implicitly
   believed in God's testimony, He grants us grace to see that what we
   have believed is most surely true. Let me show how the experience of a
   believing man confirms the truth of what he has heard.

   To go back to where I was just now, all that Holy Scripture says about
   our ruin may be seen to be true. Many of us have not only heard but we
   have felt the evil result of sin upon our minds and hearts. We know
   that sin dwells in us and strives for the mastery. We can never doubt
   that our natural tendencies are faulty and that our best desires are
   imperfect. Since the Holy Spirit convinced us of sin the existence of a
   foul fountain within our nature is a fact which we cannot doubt. Sin's
   infinite demerit is, also, a Truth of God to which our conscience gives
   solemn assent. I remember when I learned this lesson, with the Law as
   my schoolmaster. If anyone had asked me whether I deserved to be sent
   to the lowest Hell my tears would have owned that no punishment could
   be too severe for sin like mine.

   Whenever I read a terrible threat in Scripture, I gave an inward assent
   to it in my quickened conscience--yes--and I do so now. Apart from my
   Lord on the Cross, a deep damnation would be mine. It does not matter
   what modern deceivers preach--you may depend upon it--that men when
   they come to die, if their consciences are at all awake, are persuaded
   that the threats of Holy Scripture are true. Sentiment kicks against
   eternal punishment. But conscience cries, "Amen" to the righteous
   sentence of the Law. When the Spirit of God awakens conscience, it
   ceases to trifle with sin and no longer denies that an awful penalty
   must surely be its consequence.

   I am sure I can appeal to those of you who have seen the Lord in His
   glory, so as to abhor yourselves in dust and ashes and to those of you
   who have seen yourselves, so that you have been ashamed and confounded
   at your own ways. I say I can appeal to you to confirm the most solemn
   statements of Holy Scripture. However much its denunciations may make
   you shudder, your inmost soul consents to the truth of them. When the
   Holy Spirit opens up before us the bottomless pit of our natural
   depravity, we admit that, "The heart is deceitful above all things and
   desperately wicked." We believe in the Fall, for we are fallen. We are
   sure we are not as the Lord made us. We believe in the hereditary taint
   of natural depravity--for we mourn it in ourselves. We believe in the
   impotence of fallen humanity--for we are ourselves without strength.

   We believe in our personal desert of the wrath of God, for we are sure
   it is so and our only comfort is that the sentence of death has been
   fulfilled in us in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Substitute.
   All that the Holy Scripture says about sin and its results we do from
   our heart of hearts confirm, for, "As we have heard, so have we seen."

   Brighter things, however, have we heard and seen. Brethren, we heard
   that there is a calling of God whereby He separates His chosen from the
   rest of mankind. And we know that there is such an effectual calling by
   the Spirit of God for we have been so called. We heard the general call
   by which men were invited to come to Christ. But we refused that call.
   We learned that there was a special effectual call of the Holy Spirit
   by which men are sweetly drawn to Jesus and we found this report to be
   true for we have been so drawn. The Spirit of God did not drag us to
   Christ by our ears but He drew us with bands of love. We came to Jesus
   with the full consent of our renewed wills and yet against our old
   wills. Without violating one single delicate Law of our mind, the Lord
   constrained us to run in the way of salvation. As we have heard
   concerning the effectual calling of the Spirit of God so have we seen
   and we cannot but bear witness of it this day.

   We heard, too, that if we came to Jesus as we were, He would receive
   us--and He did receive us. We heard that He would graciously forgive.
   And He did forgive. We heard that in forgiveness He would give us peace
   and we have found it so. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with
   God through our Lord Jesus Christ." We heard that poor sinners,
   justified by faith, received a joy unspeakable and we have received
   that joy. We bear our testimony that, "This Man receives sinners"--we
   bear witness that He casts out none that come to Him. We declare to you
   that in the fullness of His grace He puts rebels in the chil-

   dren's place. Yes, "As we have heard, so have we seen." The bravest
   preacher of the Gospel has never preached more Gospel than is true. The
   boldest testifier to the free grace of God has never said more for the
   freedom and fullness of Divine Grace than he ought to have said.
   Exaggeration is impossible. When you would describe Divine Grace you
   may lay the reins upon the neck of thought.

   Then we heard that there was such a thing as regeneration. We used to
   hear with wonder that declaration, "You must be born again." We were
   told that we must pass from death unto life--that old things must pass
   away and all things must become new. We heard it attentively and
   believingly. But now we have gone further--we have seen it. Many of you
   know the great and radical change because you have experienced it. You
   can say, "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." We
   have passed out of a dead world into a living world. Having been buried
   with Christ we have also risen with Him and our life dwells and
   flourishes in a new world. We are conscious that a new heart beats
   within us. A new life looks out of our eyes and moves in our members.
   The new birth is a fact--"As we have heard, so have we seen."

   We used to hear of the Holy Spirit and it seemed to us when we heard it
   that His operations and indwelling were mysteries incomprehensible. How
   could God the Holy Spirit dwell in men and make their bodies His
   temples? We marveled as we heard of His convincing men of sin,
   withering their self-righteousness, enkindling hope in their bosoms,
   leading them to Jesus, renewing them, comforting them, sanctifying
   them, illuminating them, preserving them. We used to hear of all this.
   But now with delight we can stand before you and say, "As we have
   heard, so have we seen in the city of our God."

   The Holy Spirit has convinced us of sin. What a "spirit of bondage" He
   was to us for a time! He seemed to fetter hand and foot and shut us up
   under the Law! Then He broke our chains asunder and taught us that
   where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. What a liberty it
   is! How joyfully did we leap when we were set free from the tyranny of
   sin. Since then the blessed Spirit has continually quickened, guided
   and strengthened us. Speak, sons and daughters of mourning, and tell
   how the Comforter has graciously consoled you! He has also taught us
   and led us into all Truth. He has been in us life and light and fire.
   He has moved upon our minds and He has ever given us in the same hour
   what we should speak!

   What a permeating influence is that of the Holy Spirit! How He makes us
   mourn for sin! How He constrains us to follow after holiness! How He
   uplifts and elevates the heart, causing our conversation to be in
   Heaven while our body is still on earth. "As we have heard, so have we
   seen." And we have never heard more of the glorious power of the Holy
   Spirit than is absolutely true--our own joyful experience leads us to
   believe that He can work all gracious things in us.

   Further, to show you how experience supports the Word of God, we were
   told many times over that God hears prayer. We were reminded of the
   Savior's words, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall
   find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Brothers and Sisters, how
   have you found it? Has prayer been a mere pious amusement? Have you
   found it to be a reality? Have you not prayed yourselves out of the
   dark into the sunlight? Prayed yourselves out of the low dungeon of
   despondency to the mountaintop of communion? Prayed yourselves out of
   the depths of despair up to the Throne of God? "Out of the belly of
   Hell, cried I," said one, "and You heard my voice." Oh, the omnipotence
   of prayer! The facts which prove the prevalence of prayer would
   convince anybody unless he is determined not to be convinced.

   There are numbers of persons here whom any lawyer would be glad to put
   in the witness box on any matter of fact. For their statements would be
   questioned by nobody, since they are well known for integrity and
   truth. These persons are prepared to bear solemn witness, as in the
   Presence of God, that many a time God has as distinctly heard their
   prayers as if He had thrust His hand through yonder skies. As we have
   heard about prayer, so have we seen. And none can drive this faith out
   of us since it is confirmed by what we have seen over and over again in
   actual experience. So long as reason holds her seat we must, and will,
   believe in prayer.

   Yes, let me remind you, also, that we heard with our ears, that there
   is a God of Providence who rules and overrules all things. We were glad
   to sing, "The Lord will provide." We used joyfully to hear the
   congregation say--

   "Though cisterns are broken and creatures all fail, The Word He has
   spoken will surely prevail." We believe in a gracious Providence and we
   have also seen it! Time does not suffice this morning for us to narrate
   personal incidents but assuredly my own experience teems with them. In
   times of need the Lord has showed Himself quite as able and willing to
   supply the needs of His servant in these days as He was to feed the
   nation in the wilderness when He rained manna from Heaven for them
   daily.

   All things have worked together for good to them that love God, even
   until now. We can look back upon experiences which, at the time, were
   especially bewildering and perplexing. And of those very experiences we
   can now say, "Blessed be God for them!" If I were to ask those to stand
   up who have seen undoubted proofs of Providential care, I believe
   thousands of you

   would rise from your seats and bear witness that the hand of the Lord
   still works wisely and powerfully for those who trust in Him. We heard
   that it was so and we have seen that the report was true to the letter.
   Even as to temporal things, the Lord is gracious. And as to eternal
   things, He is beyond conception kind.

   One thing more I will notice and have done with these verifications
   which sight gives to hearing. We have often heard that those who
   believe in God have hope in their deaths. We have been told over and
   over again, that--

   "Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows."

   Now, we have not seen this for ourselves, for we have not yet forded
   the last river. But we have seen it in others. I suppose that the most
   of you have distinctly seen that the end of the righteous man is peace.
   I, from my calling, have many scores of times seen saints in their last
   hours. This is the witness I put on record--the very happiest persons I
   have ever met with have been departing Believers.

   I have not met at weddings, nor at jubilee feasts, nor in moments of
   singular prosperity such joyful persons as I have seen amid weakness
   and pain upon their dying beds. The only sons of men for whom I have
   felt any envy have been dying members of this very Church whose hands I
   have grasped in their passing away. Almost without any exception I have
   seen in them holy delight and triumph. And in the exceptions to this
   exceeding joy I have seen deep peace exhibited in a calm and deliberate
   readiness to enter into the presence of their God. They have been as
   ready for the eternal world as they would have been to rise from their
   beds and return to their daily callings on the Monday morning. "The
   peace of God, which passes all understanding" has kept their hearts and
   minds even when the joy of the Lord has not lifted them into transports
   or ecstasies.

   Saintly deathbeds are grand evidences of Christianity. It is something
   to say in our last hours, "As we have heard, so have we seen." I can
   truly say that up to now my own experience and observation have
   confirmed the teachings of the Word of God. I have not yet met with
   anything which could shake my confidence in the Divine Revelation. I
   trust I am neither an absolute fool nor a blind bigot who would shut
   his eyes to reason--I would not ignore a certified fact, either in
   science, or history, or in the world of mental life. And yet I know of
   no fact which can disprove so much as one of the solemn declarations of
   God-- nor even cast a shadow of suspicion upon a doctrine of Holy
   Scripture. I have heard much but I have seen nothing of the science
   which disproves the Scriptures--there is no such science--it is an
   impostor which has stolen the name.

   Our knowing is far better than our theorizing. And whatever our
   theorizing may have done, our actual knowledge has never been on the
   side of the baptized infidelity of the advanced school. All our
   experience makes us say, "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city
   of the Lord of Hosts." On this point I have spent the strength of my
   discourse. The remaining two heads shall be treated briefly, although
   they are of great practical value.

   IV. WHEN HEARING TURNS TO SEEING AND IS CONFIRMED BY IT, THEN IT LEADS
   TO WITNESSING.

   The text, you see, is itself a testimony--"As we have heard, so have we
   seen." In these days every man that can witness for the Truth of God
   ought to do so--even if he stammers, he must not be silent. So many are
   decrying the Truth of God that, if in your heart and conscience you
   have proved it true, you are bound to give to the Lord the testimony of
   even a stammerer. I suppose Moses could do no more than that for he was
   a man slow in speech. But when he would have preferred to be quiet the
   Lord said to him, "Who has made man's mouth?" Your mouth is as God made
   it--use it as best you can, and speak up for His name and cause.

   Such testimony as that of our text is sometimes involuntary and is none
   the less precious on that account. When these good people had seen the
   Moabites and Ammonites and Edomites marching round Jerusalem in their
   pride and a few days afterwards had beheld them cold in death, they
   could not help crying, "As we have heard, so have we seen." You could
   not have kept them quiet in the presence of such a marvel. You could
   not have muzzled them into silence. They were so taken aback, so
   astounded at what God had done, that they cried aloud, "As we have
   heard, so have we seen." So when you have tasted and handled of the
   good things of God, I am sure you will have to tell others of your
   glorious discoveries! Your mouth will be filled with laughter and your
   tongue with singing till those who are round about you will be
   compelled to say, "The Lord has done great things for them," and you
   will answer, "Yes, the Lord has done great things for us; whereof we
   are glad."

   Jesus said, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have You ordained
   strength," when the children were shouting in the Temple. Young
   converts, if they have newly tasted that the Lord is gracious, must
   sound out their joys. Who would stop them? If these should hold their
   peace, the stones would cry out. But your involuntary witnessing must
   lead up to constant voluntary witnessing for your Lord and His holy
   cause. O you who are on the Lord's side, awake, arise, or be condemned
   as traitors!

   Our testimony should be very frequent. Believers would do a thousand
   times more good if they were not so particularly careful to avoid
   offending men of the world. If Christ Jesus offends people, they ought
   to be offended. For he is sure to be a "stumbling stone and rock of
   offense" to those who stumble at the Word, being disobedient. We have
   heard of a great warrior who was more at home on the field of battle
   than amid the ceremonies of courts. His sword nearly tripped him up
   when walking backwards from the throne and his majesty remarked that
   his sword seemed very much in the way. "Yes," said the brave man, "and
   your majesty's enemies find it so."

   If we give offense by the Gospel to those who take no active part in
   holy warfare, let us not be put out of countenance-- we are soldiers of
   the Cross and we do not regret that our religion does trouble certain
   people, for they ought to be troubled. The man who has never offended
   anybody by his religion has none worth having--rest assured of that.
   There are times and places when it must be seen that we are the friends
   of God and, consequently, cannot be in league with His enemies. Silence
   when the Truth of God is questioned will prove us to be recreant to
   Christ and false to our profession. Let us speak when it may bring upon
   us sneers and slanders. Why, what matters if they sneer? We shall
   survive that. We do not live on the breath of other men's nostrils. We
   ask not leave of mortal man to be true to our convictions. But we will
   often and far more often than we have done, bear witness that, "As we
   have heard, so have we seen."

   This we should be sure to do more earnestly if we were more thoughtful.
   Read the ninth verse--"We have thought of Your loving kindness, O God,
   in the midst of Your temple." As a true man thinks in his heart, he
   will speak with his lips. That which lies in the well of your thought,
   will come up in the bucket of your speech. Think much of what the Lord
   has done for you and then you will bear witness for Him. This needs to
   be done on a far larger scale than at present. Read the rest of the
   Psalm and see how the Psalmist puts it--"According to Your name, O God,
   so is Your praise unto the ends of the earth." Oh, for more of the
   missionary spirit, more telling out to the ends of the earth of what
   the Lord has done! What were the stars if they did not shine? What were
   the sun if it did not make our day? What were the rivers if they did
   not water the lands? What were the sea itself if it did not act as the
   pulsing heart of the world?

   What are Christians, if they do not shine as lights? Piety bottled up
   is dead. Religion put into a tin and hermetically sealed is useless.
   Why not go to Heaven at once if you do no good on earth? No, but would
   they have you among the angels? He that is of no use in the world is
   not fit for Heaven. He who does not glorify God on earth would not
   glorify Him in Heaven. Where shall we put useless people? What shall be
   done with salt that has lost its savor? I know not where it can be put,
   for Jesus says it is not fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill.
   And, if men cast it out, what will God do with it? If even men cannot
   use dead religionists, what will God do with them? If a vine does not
   bear fruit it is good for nothing--you cannot boil a pot with it nor
   even make out of its wood a hook by which to hang the pot over the
   fire.

   Without fruitfulness the vine becomes the most worthless of all trees.
   And without testimony for the Truth of God, the professing Christian is
   of no use whatever. Creation's blot, creation's blank, is the best
   description of a dead professor. Think what you will of yourselves, O
   you savorless Professors--your religion is mere emptiness, a vain
   pretense. O children of God, stand up and bear your witness--

   "Stand up, stand up for Jesus!" in this day of blasphemy and rebuke.

   V. AND LASTLY, HEARING, SEEING, WITNESSING--GOD WILL GIVE YOU A FULLER
   ASSURANCE

   THAN YOU HAVE AS YET. Permit me to read the text again--"As we have
   heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts, in the city of
   our God: God will establish it forever." That is the conclusion which
   the saint comes to when he has tried the Truth of God for himself and
   borne witness to the result of his trial. God will never leave His
   Church. God will never forfeit His Word. God will never desert His
   Gospel. He is Jehovah of Hosts and changes not and has all power at His
   disposal. He is our Lord, our God in Covenant. He cannot desert the
   work of His own hands, nor leave the people of His love.

   Because His honor is bound up in the whole enterprise that Christ
   undertook, He must go through with it and He must arrive at a glorious
   conclusion. God will establish it forever. Come, my Brethren, let us
   cast aside all doubts about what the future is to be. The battle rages,
   the foe is as furious as he is subtle--while we are weak as water and
   can do nothing by ourselves. But let us not despair. If the Gospel is
   God's Gospel, He will take care of it. If the Church is Christ's
   Church, the gates of Hell cannot prevail against her. The battle is not
   ours but the Lord's--in His name let us set up our banners and cry with
   full confidence of victory, "The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of
   Jacob is our refuge." Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 The Rent Veil

   A Sermon

   (No. 2015)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 25th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [3]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
   And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to
   the bottom'Matthew 27:50-51.

   Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the
   blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which be hath consecrated for
   us, through the, veil, that is to say, his flesh'Hebrews 10:19-20.

   THE DEATH of our Lord Jesus Christ was fitly surrounded by miracles;
   yet it is itself so much greater a wonder than all besides, that it as
   far exceeds them as the sun outshines the planets which surround it. It
   seems natural enough that the earth should quake, that tombs should be
   opened, and that the veil of the temple should be rent, when He who
   only hath immortality gives up the ghost. The more you think of the
   death of the Son of God, the more will you be amazed at it. As much as
   a miracle excels a common fact, so doth this wonders of wonders rise
   above all miracles of power. That the divine Lord, even though veiled
   in mortal flesh, should condescend to be subject to the power of death,
   so as to bow His head on the cross, and submit to be laid in the tomb,
   is among mysteries the greatest. The death of Jesus is the marvel of
   time and eternity, which, as Aaron's rod swallowed up all the rest,
   takes up into itself all lesser marvels.

   Yet the rending of the veil of the temple is not a miracle to be
   lightly passed over. It was made of "fine twined linen, with Cherubims
   of cunning work." This gives the idea of a substantial fabric, a piece
   of lasting tapestry, which would have endured the severest strain. No
   human hands could have torn that sacred covering; and it could not have
   been divided in the midst by any accidental cause; yet, strange to say,
   on the instant when the holy person of Jesus was rent by death, the
   great veil which concealed the holiest of all was "rent in twain from
   the top to the bottom." What did it mean? It meant much more than I can
   tell you now.

   It is not fanciful to regard it as a solemn act of mourning on the part
   of the house of the Lord. In the East men express their sorrow by
   rending their garments; and the temple, when it beheld its Master die,
   seemed struck with horror, and rent its veil. Shocked at the sin of
   man, indignant at the murder of its Lord, in its sympathy with Him who
   is the true temple of God, the outward symbol tore its holy vestment
   from the top to the bottom. Did not the miracle also mean that from
   that hour the whole system of types, and shadows, and ceremonies had
   come to an end? The ordinances of an earthly priesthood were rent with
   that veil. In token of the death of the ceremonial law, the soul of it
   quitted its sacred shrine, and left its bodily tabernacle as a dead
   thing. The legal dispensation is over. The rent of the veil seemed to
   say'"Henceforth God dwells no longer in the thick darkness of the Holy
   of Holies, and shines forth no longer from between the cherubim. The
   special enclosure is broken up, and there is no inner sanctuary for the
   earthly high priest to enter: typical atonements and sacrifices are at
   an end."

   According to the explanation given in our second text, the rending of
   the veil chiefly meant that the way into the holiest, which was not
   before made manifest, was now laid open to all believers. Once in the
   year the high priest solemnly lifted a corner of this veil with fear
   and trembling, and with blood and holy incense he passed into the
   immediate presence of Jehovah; but the tearing of the veil laid open
   the secret place. The rent front top to bottom gives ample space for
   all to enter who are called of God's grace, to approach the throne, and
   to commune with the Eternal One. Upon that subject I shall try to speak
   this morning, praying in my inmost soul that you and 1, with all other
   believers, may have boldness actually to enter into that which is
   within the veil at this time of our assembling for worship. Oh, that
   the Spirit of God would lead us into the nearest fellowship which
   mortal men can have with the Infinite Jehovah!

   First, this morning, I shall ask you to consider what has been done.
   The veil has been rent. Secondly, we will remember what we therefore
   have: we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood Jesus."
   Then, thirdly, we will consider how we exercise this grace: we "enter
   by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath
   consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh."

   I. First, think of WHAT HAS BEEN DONE. In actual historical fact the
   glorious veil of the temple has been rent in twain from the top to the
   bottom: as a matter of spiritual fact, which is far more important to
   us, the separating legal ordinance is abolished. There was under the
   law this ordinance'that no man should ever go into the holiest of all,
   with the one exception of the high priest, and he but once in the year,
   and not without blood. If any man had attempted to enter there he must
   have died, as guilty of great presumption and of profane intrusion into
   the secret place of the Most High. Who could stand in the presence of
   Him who is a consuming fire? This ordinance of distance runs all
   through the law; for even the holy place, which was the vestibule of
   the Holy of Holies, was for the priests alone. The place of the people
   was one of distance. At the very first institution of the law when God
   descended upon Sinai, the ordinance was, "Thou shalt set bounds unto
   the people round about," There was no invitation to draw near. Not chat
   they desired to do so, for the mountain was together on a smoke, and
   "even Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake." "The Lord said unto
   Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the
   Lord to gaze, and many of them perish." If so much as a beast touch the
   mountain it must be stoned, or thrust through with a dart. The spirit
   of the old law was reverent distance. Moses and here and there a man
   chosen by God, might come near to Jehovah; but as for the bulk of
   people, the command was, "Draw not nigh hither." When the Lord revealed
   His glory at the giving of the law, we read'"When the people saw it,
   they removed, and stood afar off." All this is ended. The precept to
   keep back is abrogated, and the invitation is, "Come unto me, all ye
   that labor and are heavy laden." "Let its draw near" is now the filial
   spirit of the gospel. How thankful I am for this! What a joy it is to
   my soul! Some of God's people have not yet realized this gracious fact,
   for still they worship afar off. Very much of prayer is to be highly
   commended for its reverence; but it has in it a lack of childlike
   confidence. I can admire the solemn and stately language of worship
   which recognizes the greatness of God; but it will not warm my heart
   nor express my soul until it has also blended therewith the joyful
   nearness of that perfect love which casteth out fear, and ventures to
   speak with our Father in heaven as a child speaketh with its father on
   earth. My brother, no veil remains. Why dost thou stand afar off, and
   tremble like a slave? Draw near with full assurance of faith. The veil
   is rent: access is free. Come boldly to the throne of grace. Jesus has
   made thee nigh, as nigh to God as even He Himself is. Though we speak
   of the holiest of all, even the secret place of the Most High, yet it
   is of this place of awe, even of this sanctuary of Jehovah, that the
   veil is rent; therefore, let nothing hinder thine entrance. Assuredly
   no law forbids thee; but infinite love invites thee to draw nigh to
   God.

   This rending of the veil signified, also, the removal of the separating
   sin. Sin is, after all, the great divider between God and man. That
   veil of blue and purple and fine twined linen could not really separate
   man from God: for He is, as to His omnipresence, not far from any one
   of us. Sin is a far more effectual wall of separation: it opens in
   abyss between the sinner and his Judge. Sin shuts out prayer, and
   praise, and every form of religious exercise. Sin makes God walk
   contrary to us, because we walk contrary to Him. Sin, by separating the
   soul from God, causes spiritual death, which is both the effect and the
   penalty of transgression. How can two walk together except they be
   agreed? How can a holy God have fellowship with unholy creatures? Shall
   justice dwell with injustice? Shall perfect purity abide with the
   abominations of evil? No, it cannot be. Our Lord Jesus Christ put away
   sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He taketh away the sin of the world,
   and so the veil is rent. By the shedding of His most precious blood we
   are cleansed from all sin, and that most gracious promise of the new
   covenant is fulfilled'"Their sins and their iniquities will I remember
   no more." When sin is gone, the barrier is broken down, the
   unfathomable gulf is filled. Pardon, which removes sin, and
   justification, which brings righteousness, make up a deed of clearance
   so real and so complete that nothing now divides the sinner from his
   reconciled God. 'The Judge is now the Father: He, who once must
   necessarily have condemned, is found justly absolving and accepting. In
   this double sense the veil is rent: the separating ordinance is
   abrogated, and the separating sin is forgiven.

   Next, be it remembered that the separating sinfulness is also taken
   away through our Lord Jesus. It is not only what we have done, but what
   we are that keeps us apart from God. We have sin engrained in us: even
   those who have grace dwelling them have to complain, "When I would do
   good, evil is present with me." How can we commune with God with our
   eyes blinded, our ears stopped, our hearts hardened, and our senses
   deadened by sin? Our whole nature is tainted, poisoned, perverted by
   evil; how can we know the Lord? Beloved, through the death of our Lord
   Jesus the covenant of grace is established with us, and its gracious
   provisions are on this wise: "This is the covenant that I will make
   with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into
   their mind, and write them in their hearts." When this is the case,
   when the will of God is inscribed on the heart, and the nature is
   entirely changed, then is the dividing veil which hides us from God
   taken away: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
   Blessed are all they that love righteousness and follow after it, for
   they are in a way in which the Righteous One can walk in fellowship
   with them. Spirits that are like God are not divided from God.
   Difference of nature hangs up a veil; but the new birth, and the
   sanctification which follows upon it, through the precious death of
   Jesus, remove that veil. He that hates sin, strives after holiness, and
   labors to perfect it in the fear of God, is in fellowship with God. It
   is a blessed thing when we love what God loves, when we seek what God
   seeks, when we are in sympathy with divine aims, and are obedient to
   divine commands: for with such persons will the Lord dwell. When grace
   makes us partakers of the divine nature; then are we at one with the
   Lord, and the veil is taken away.

   "Yes," saith one, "I see now how the veil is taken away in three
   different fashions; but still God is God, and we are but poor puny men:
   between God and man there must of necessity be a separating veil,
   caused by the great disparity between the Creator and the creature. How
   can the finite and the infinite commune? God is all in all, and more
   than all; we are nothing, and less than nothing; how can we meet?" When
   the Lord does come near to I His favored ones, they own how incapable
   they are of enduring the excessive glory. Even the beloved John said,
   "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead." When we have been
   especially conscious of the presence and working of our Lord, we have
   felt our flesh creep, and our blood chill; and then we have understood
   what Jacob meant when he said, "How dreadful is this place! this is
   none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." All
   this is true; for the Lord saith, "Thou canst not see my face and
   live." Although this is a much thinner veil than those I have already
   mentioned, yet it is a veil; and it is hard for man to be at home with
   God. But the Lord Jesus bridges the separating distance. Behold the
   blessed Son of God has come into the world, and taken upon Himself our
   nature! "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of the flesh and
   blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." Though He is
   God as God is God, yet is He as surely man as man is man. Mark well how
   in the, person of the Lord Jesus we see God and man in the closest
   conceivable alliance; for they are united in one person forever. The
   gulf is completely filled by the fact that Jesus has gone through with
   us even to the bitter end, to death, even to the death of the cross. He
   has followed out the career of manhood even to the tomb; and thus we
   see that the veil, which hung between the nature of God and the nature
   of man, is rent in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We enter into
   the holiest of all through His flesh, which links manhood to Godhead.

   Now, you see what it is to have the veil taken away. Solemnly note that
   this avails only for believers: those who refuse Jesus refuse the only
   way of access to God. God is not approachable, except through the
   rending of the veil by the death of Jesus. There was one typical way to
   the mercy-seat of old, and that was through the turning aside of the
   veil; there was no other. And there is now no other way for any of you
   to come into fellowship with God, except through the rent veil, even
   the death of Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be the
   propitiation for sin. Come this way, and you may come freely. Refuse to
   come this way, and there hangs between you and God an impassable veil.
   Without Christ you are without God, and without hope. Jesus Himself
   assures you, "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your
   sins." God grant that this may not happen to any of you!

   For believers the veil is not rolled up, but rent. The veil was not
   unhooked, and carefully folded up, and put away, so that it might be
   put in its place at some future time. Oh, no! But the divine hand took
   it and rent it front top to bottom. It can never be hung up again; that
   is impossible. Between those who are in Christ Jesus and the great God,
   there will never be another separation. "Who shall separate us from the
   love of God?" Only one veil was made, and as that is rent, the one and
   only separator is destroyed. I delight to think of this. The devil
   himself can never divide me from God now. He may and will attempt to
   shut me out from God; but the worst he could do would be to hang up a
   rent veil. What would that avail but to exhibit his impotence? God has
   rent the veil, and the devil cannot mend it. There is access between a
   believer and his God; and there must be such free access forever, since
   the veil is not rolled up, and put on one side to be hung up again in
   days to come; but it is rent, and rendered useless.

   The rent is not in one corner, but in the midst, as Luke tells us. It
   is not a slight rent through which we may see a little; but it is rent
   from the top to the bottom. There is an entrance made for the greatest
   sinners. If there had only been a small hole cut through it, the lesser
   offenders might have crept through; but what an act of abounding mercy
   is this, that the veil is rent in the midst, and rent from top to
   bottom, so that the chief of sinners may find ample passage! This also
   shows that for believers there is no hindrance to the fullest and
   freest access to God. Oh, for much boldness, this morning, to come
   where God has not only set open the door, but has lifted the door from
   its hinges; yea, removed it, post, and bar, and all!

   I want you to notice that this veil, when it was rent, was rent by God,
   not by man. It was not the act of an irreverent mob; it was not the
   midnight outrage of a set of profane priests: it was the act of God
   alone. Nobody stood within the veil; and on the outer side of it stood
   the priests only fulfilling their ordinary vocation of offering
   sacrifice. It must have astounded them when they saw that holy place
   laid bare in a moment. How they fled, as they saw that massive veil
   divided without human hand in a second of time! Who rent it? Who but
   God Himself? If another had done it, there might have been a mistake
   about it, and the mistake might need to be remedied by replacing the
   curtain; but if the Lord has done it, it is done rightly, it is done
   finally, it is done irreversibly. It is God Himself who has laid sin on
   Christ, and in Christ has put that sin away. God Himself has opened the
   gate of heaven to believers, and cast up a highway along which the
   souls of men may travel to Himself. God Himself has set the ladder
   between earth and heaven. Come to Him now, ye humble ones. Behold, He
   sets before you an open door!

   II. And now I ask you to follow me, dear friends, in the second place,
   to an experimental realization of my subject. We now notice WHAT WE
   HAVE: "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest,"
   Observe the threefold "having" in the paragraph now before us, and be
   not content without the whole three. We have "boldness to enter in."
   There are degrees in boldness; but this is one of the highest. When the
   veil was rent it required some boldness to look within. I wonder
   whether the priests at the altar did have the courage to gaze upon the
   mercy-seat. I suspect that they were so struck with amazement that they
   fled from the altar, fearing sudden death. It requires a measure of
   boldness steadily to look upon the mystery of God: "Which things the
   angels desire to look into." It is well not to look with a merely
   curious eye into the deep things of God. I question whether any man is
   able to pry into the mystery of the Trinity without great risk. Some,
   thinking to look there with the eyes of their natural intellect, have
   been blinded by the light of that sun, and have henceforth wandered in
   darkness. It needs boldness to look into the splendors of redeeming and
   electing love. If any did look into the holiest when the veil was rent,
   they were among the boldest of men; for others must have feared lest
   the fate of the men of Bethshemesh would be theirs. Beloved, the Holy
   Spirit invites you to took into the holy place, and view it all with
   reverent eye for it is full of teaching to you. Understand the mystery
   of the mercy-seat, and of the ark of the covenant overlaid with gold,
   and of the pot of manna, and of the tables of stone, and of Aaron's rod
   that budded. Look, look boldly through Jesus Christ: but do not content
   yourself with looking! Hear what the text says: "Having boldness to
   enter in." Blessed be God if He has taught us this sweet way of no
   longer looking from afar, but of entering into the inmost shrine with
   confidence! "Boldness to enter in" is what we ought to have.

   Let us follow the example of the high priest, and, having entered, let
   us perform the functions of one who enters in. "Boldness to enter in"
   suggests that we act as men who are in their proper places. To stand
   within the veil filled the servant of God with an overpowering sense of
   the divine presence. If ever in his life he was near to God, he was
   certainly near to God then, when quite alone, shut in, and excluded
   from all the world, he had no one with him, except the glorious
   Jehovah. O my beloved, may we this morning enter into the holiest in
   this sense! Shut out front the world, both wicked and Christian, let us
   know that the Lord is here, most near and manifest. Oh that we may now
   cry out with Hagar, "Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?"
   Oh, how sweet to realize by personal enjoyment the presence of Jehovah!
   How cheering to feel that the Lord of hosts is with us! We know our God
   to be a very present help in trouble. It is one of the greatest joys
   out of heaven to be able to sing'Jehovah Shammah'the Lord is here. At
   first we tremble in the divine presence; but as we feel more of the
   spirit of adoption we draw near with sacred delight, and feel so fully
   at home with our God that we sing with Moses, "Lord, thou hast been our
   dwelling place in all generations." Do not live as if God were as far
   off from you as the east is from the west. Live not far below on the
   earth; but live on high, as if you were in heaven. In heaven You Will
   be with God; but on earth He will be with you: is there much
   difference? He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in
   heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Jesus hath made us nigh by His
   precious blood. Try day by day to live in as great nearness to God, as
   the high priest felt when he stood for awhile within the secret of
   Jehovah's tabernacle.

   The high priest had a sense of communion with God; he was not only
   near, but he spoke with God. I cannot tell what he said, but I should
   think that on the special day the high priest unburdened himself of the
   load of Israel's sin and sorrow, and made known his requests unto the
   Lord. Aaron, standing there alone, must have been filled with memories
   of his own faultiness, and of the idolatries and backslidings of the
   people. God shone upon him, and he bowed before God. He may have heard
   things which it was not lawful for him to utter, and other things which
   he could not have uttered if they had been lawful. Beloved, do you know
   what it is to commune with God? Words are poor vehicles for this
   fellowship; but what a blessed thing it is! Proofs of the existence of
   God are altogether her superfluous to those of us who are in the habit
   of conversing with the Eternal One. If anybody were to write an essay
   to prove the existence of my wife, or my son, I certainly should not
   read it, except for the amusement of the thing; and proofs of the
   existence of God to the man who communes with God are much the same.
   Many of you walk with God: what bliss! Fellowship with the Most High is
   elevating, purifying, strengthening. Enter into it boldly. Enter into
   His revealed thoughts, even as He graciously enters into yours: rise to
   His plans, as He condescends to yours; ask to be uplifted to Him, even
   as He deigns to dwell with you.

   This is what the rent of the veil brings us when we have boldness to
   enter in; but, mark you, the rent veil brings us nothing until we have
   boldness to enter in. Why stand we without? Jesus brings us near, and
   truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
   Let us not be slow to take up our freedom, and come boldly to the
   throne. The high priest entered within the veil of blue, and purple,
   and scarlet, and fine twined linen, with blood, and with incense, that
   he might pray for Israel; and there he stood before the Most High,
   pleading with Him to bless the people. O beloved, prayer is ai divine
   institution, and it belongs to us. But there are many sorts of prayers.
   There is the prayer of one who seems shut out from God's holy temple;
   there is the prayer of another who stands in the court of the Gentiles
   afar off, looking towards the temple; there is the prayer of one who
   gets where Israel stands and pleads with the God of the chosen; there
   is the prayer in the court of the priests, when the sanctified man of
   God makes intercession; but the best prayer of all is offered in the
   holiest of all. There is no fear about prayer being heard when it is
   offered in the holiest. The very position of the man proves that he is
   accepted with God. He is standing on the surest ground of acceptance,
   and he is so near to God that his every desire is heard. There the man
   is seen through and through; for he is very near to God. His thoughts
   are read, his tears are seen, his sighs are heard; for he has boldness
   to enter in. He may ask what he will, and it shall be done unto him. As
   the altar sanctifieth the gift, so the most holy place, entered by the
   blood of Jesus, secures a certain answer to the prayer that is offered
   therein. God give us such power in prayer! It is a wonderful thing that
   the Lord should hearken to the voice of a man; yet are there such men.
   Luther came out of his closet, and cried, Vici"I have conquered." He
   had not yet met his adversaries; but as he had prevailed with God for
   men, he felt that he should prevail with men for God.

   But the high priest, if you recollect, after he had communed and prayed
   with God, came out and blessed the people. He put on his garments of
   glory and beauty, which he had laid aside when be went into the holy
   place, for there he stood in simple white, and nothing else; and now he
   came out wearing the breast-plate and all his precious ornaments, and
   he blessed the people. That is what you will do if you have the
   boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus: you will
   bless the people that surround you. The Lord has blessed you, and He
   will make you a blessing. Your ordinary conduct and conversation will
   be a blessed example; the words you speak for Jesus will be like a dew
   from the Lord: the sick will be comforted by your words; the despondent
   will he encouraged by your faith; the lukewarm will be recovered by
   your love. You will be, practically, saying to each one who knows you,
   "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon
   thee, and give thee peace." You will become a channel of blessing: "Out
   of your belly shall flow rivers of living water." May we each one have
   boldness to enter in, that we may come forth laden with benedictions!

   If you will kindly look at the text, you will notice, what I shall
   merely hint at, that this boldness is well grounded. I always like to
   see the apostle using a "therefore": "Having therefore boldness." Paul
   is often a true poet, but he is always a correct logician; he is as
   logical as if he were dealing with mathematics rather than theology.
   Here he writes one of his therefores.

   Why is it that we have boldness? Is it not because of our relationship
   to Christ which makes us "brethren?" "Having therefore, brethren,
   boldness." The feeblest believer has as much right to enter into the
   holy places as Paul had; because he is one of the brotherhood. I
   remember a rhyme by John Ryland, in which he says of heaven'

   "They shall all be there, the great and the small;

   Poor I shall shake hands with the blessed St. Paul."

   I have no doubt we shall have such a position, and such fellowship.
   Meanwhile, we do shake hands with I Him this morning as he calls us
   brethren. We are brethren to one another, because we are brethren to
   Jesus. Where we see the apostle go, we will go; yea, rather, where we
   see the Great Apostle and High Priest of our profession enter, we will
   follow. "Having therefore, boldness."

   Beloved, we have now no fear of death in the most holy place. The high
   priest, whoever he might be, must always have dreaded that solemn day
   of atonement, when he had to pass into the silent and secluded place. I
   cannot tell whether it is true, but I have read that there is at
   tradition among the Jews, that a rope was fastened to the high priest's
   foot that they might draw out his corpse in case he died before the
   Lord. I should not wonder if their superstition devised such a thing,
   for it is an awful position for a man to enter into the secret dwelling
   of Jehovah. But we cannot die in the holy place now, since Jesus has
   died for us. The death of Jesus is the guarantee of the eternal life of
   all for whom He died. We have boldness to enter, for we shall not
   perish.

   Our boldness arises from the perfection of His sacrifice. Read the
   fourteenth verse: "He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."
   We rely upon the sacrifice of Christ, believing that He was such a
   perfect Substitute for us, that it is not possible for us to die after
   our Substitute has died; and we must be accepted, because He is
   accepted. We believe that the precious blood has so effectually and
   eternally put away sin from us, that we are no longer obnoxious to the
   wrath of God. We may safely stand where sin must be smitten, if there
   be any sin upon us; for we are so washed, so cleaned, and so fully
   justified that we are accepted in the Beloved. Sin is so completely
   lifted from us by the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, that we have
   boldness to enter where Jehovah Himself dwells.

   Moreover, we have his for certain, that as a priest had a right to
   dwell near to God, we have that privilege; for Jesus hath made us kings
   and priests unto God, and all the privileges of the office come to us
   with the office itself We have a mission within the holy place; we are
   called to enter there upon holy business, and so we have no fear of
   being intruders. A burglar may enter a house, but he does not enter
   with boldness; he is always afraid lest he should be surprised. You
   might enter a stranger's house, without an invitation, but You Would
   feel no boldness there. We do not enter the holiest as housebreakers,
   nor as strangers; we come in obedience to a call, to fulfill our
   office. When once we accept the sacrifice of Christ, we are at home
   with God. Where should a child be bold but in his father's house? Where
   should a priest stand but in the temple of his God, for whose service
   he is set apart? Where should a blood-washed sinner live but with his
   God, to whom he is reconciled?

   It is a heavenly joy to feel this boldness! We have now such a love for
   God, and such a delight in Him, that it never crosses our minds that we
   are trespassers when we draw near to Him. We never say, "God, my
   dread," but "God, my exceeding joy." His name is the music to which our
   lives are set: though God be a consuming fire we love Him as such, for
   He will only consume our dross, and that we desire to lose. Under no
   aspect is God now distasteful to its. We delight in Him, be He what He
   may. So you see, beloved, we have good grounds for boldness when we
   enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

   I cannot leave this point until I have reminded you that we may have
   this boldness of entering in at all times, because the veil is always
   rent, and is never restored to its old place. "The Lord said until
   Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into
   the holy Place within the veil before the mercy-seat, which is upon the
   ark; that he die not"; but the Lord saith not so to us. Dear child of
   God, you may at all times have "boldness to enter in." The veil is rent
   both day and night. Yea, let me say it, even when thine eye of faith is
   dim, still enter in; when evidences are dark, still have "boldness to
   enter in"; and even if thou hast unhappily sinned, remember that access
   is open to thy penitent prayer. Come still through the rent veil,
   sinner as thou art. What though thou hast backslidden, what though thou
   art grieved with the sense of thy wanderings, come even now! "Today, if
   ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart," but enter at once; for
   the veil is not there to exclude thee, though doubt and unbelief may
   make you think it is so. The veil cannot be there, for it was rent in
   twain from the top to the bottom.

   III. My time has fled, and I shall not have space to speak as I meant
   to do upon the last point'HOW WE EXERCISE THIS GRACE. Let me give you
   the notes of what I would have said.

   Let us at this hour enter into the holiest. Behold the way! We come by
   the way of atonement: "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter
   into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." I have been made to feel
   really ill through the fierce and blasphemous words that have been used
   of late by gentlemen of the modern school concerning the precious
   blood. I will not defile my lips by a repetition of the thrice-accursed
   things which they have dared to utter while trampling on the blood of
   Jesus. Everywhere throughout this divine Book you meet with the
   precious blood. How can he call himself a Christian who speaks in
   flippant and profane language of the blood of atonement? My brothers,
   there is no way into the holiest, even though the veil be rent, without
   blood. You might suppose that the high priest of old brought the blood
   because the veil was there; but you have to bring it with you though
   the veil is gone. The way is open, and you have boldness to enter; but
   not without the blood of Jesus. It would be an unholy boldness which
   would think of drawing near to God without the blood of the great
   Sacrifice. We have always to plead the atonement. As without shedding
   of blood there is no remission of sin, so without that blood there is
   no access to God.

   Next, the way by which we come is an unfailing way. Please notice that
   word'"by a new way"; this means by a way which is always fresh. The
   original Greek suggests the idea of "newly slain." Jesus died long ago,
   but His death is the same now as at the moment of its occurrence. We
   come to God, dear friends, by a way which is always effectual with God.
   It never, never loses one whit of its power freshness.

   Dear dying lamb, thy precious blood

   Shall never lose its power.

   The way is not worn away by long traffic: it is always new. If Jesus
   Christ had died yesterday, would you not feel that you could plead His
   merit today? Very well, you can plead that merit after these 19'
   centuries with as much confidence as at the first hour. The way to God
   is always newly laid. In effect, the wounds of Jesus incessantly bleed
   our expiation. The cross is as glorious as though He were still upon
   it. So far as the freshness, vigor, and force of the atoning death is
   concerned, we come by a new way. Let it be always new to our hearts.
   Let the doctrine of atonement never grow stale, but let it have dew
   upon your souls.

   Then the apostle adds, it is a "living way." A wonderful word! The way
   by which the high priest went into the holy place was of course a
   material way, and so a dead way. We come by a spiritual way, suitable
   to our spirits. The way could not help the high priest, but our way
   helps us abundantly. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the
   life." When we come to God by this way, the way itself leads, guides,
   bears, brings us near. This way gives its life with which to come.

   It is a dedicated way. "which he hath consecrated for us." When a new
   road is opened, it is set apart and dedicated for the public use.
   Sometimes a public building is opened by a king or a prince, and so is
   dedicated to its purpose. Beloved, the way to God through Jesus Christ
   is dedicated by Christ, and ordained by Christ for the use of poor
   believing sinners, such as we are. He has consecrated the way towards
   God, and dedicated it for us, that we may freely use it. Surely, if
   there is a road set apart for me, I may use it without fear; and the
   way to God and heaven through Jesus Christ is dedicated by the Saviour
   for sinners; it is the King's highway for wayfaring men, who are bound
   for the City of God; therefore, let us use it. "Consecrated for us!"
   Blessed word!

   Lastly, it is a Christly way; for when we come to God, we still come
   through His flesh. There is no coming to Jehovah, except by the
   incarnate God. God in human flesh is our way to God; the
   substitutionary death of the Word made flesh is also the way to the
   Father. There is no coming to God, except by representation. Jesus
   represents us before God, and we come to God through Him who is our
   covenant head, our representative and forerunner before the throne of
   the Most High. Let us never try to pray without Christ; never try to
   sing without Christ; never try to preach without Christ. Let us perform
   no holy function, nor attempt to have fellowship with God in any shape
   or way, except through that rent which He has made in the veil by His
   flesh, sanctified for us, and offered upon the cross on our behalf.

   Beloved, I have done when I have just remarked upon the next two
   verses, which are necessary to complete the sense, but which I was
   obliged to omit this morning, since there would be no time to handle
   them. We are called to take holy freedoms with God. "Let us draw near,"
   at once, "with a true heart in full assurance of faith." Let us do so
   boldly, for we have a great high priest. The twenty-first verse reminds
   us of this. Jesus is the great Priest, and we are the sub-priests under
   Him, and since He bids us come near to God, and Himself leads the way,
   let follow Him into the inner sanctuary. Because He lives, we shall
   live also. We shall nor die in the holy place, unless He dies. God will
   not smite us unless He smites Him. So, "having a high priest over the
   house of God, let its draw near with a true heart in full assurance of
   faith."

   And then the apostle tells its that we may not only come with boldness,
   because our high priest leads the way, but because we ourselves are
   prepared for entrance. Two things the high priest had to do before he
   might enter: one was, to be sprinkled with blood, and this we have; for
   "our hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience."

   The other requisite for the priests was to have their "bodies washed
   with pure water." This we have received in symbol in our baptism, and
   in reality in the spiritual cleansing of regeneration. To us has been
   fulfilled the prayer'

   "Let the water and the blood,

   From thy riven side which flowed,

   Be of sin the double cure,

   Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

   We have known the washing of water by the Word, and we have been
   sanctified by the Spirit of His grace; therefore let us enter into the
   holiest. Why should we stay away? Hearts sprinkled with blood, bodies
   washed with pure water'these are the ordained preparations for
   acceptable entrance. Come near, beloved! May the Holy Spirit be the
   spirit of access to you now. Come to your God, and then abide with Him!
   He is your Father, your all in all. Sit down and rejoice in Him; take
   your fill of love; and let not your communion be broken between here
   and heaven. Why should it be? Why not begin today that sweet enjoyment
   of perfect reconciliation and delight in God which shall go on
   increasing in intensity until you behold the Lord in open vision, and
   go no more out? Heaven will bring a great change in condition, but not
   in our standing, if even now we stand within the veil. It will be only
   such a change as there is between the perfect day and the daybreak; for
   we have the same sun, and the same light from the sun, and the same
   privilege of walking in the light. "Until the day break, and the
   shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young
   hart upon the mountains of Division." Amen, and Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'HEBREWS 10.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'318, 296, 395.
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus Affirmed To Be Alive

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, APRIL 1, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation
   of such things as I supposed: but had certain questions against him of
   their own superstition and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul
   affirmed to be alive." Acts 25:18,19.

   FESTUS is giving to King Agrippa a brief account of the matter between
   Paul and the Jews. It may not be a very accurate account. For Festus
   did not profess to understand the business. He was a Roman governor
   newly come to Judea. He had no acquaintance whatever with Jewish
   Scriptures nor with Jewish laws. He is, therefore, merely giving to
   King Agrippa a rough and ready outline of the affair as it struck him.
   He had never thought it worth his special attention but he was a little
   puzzled how he should represent the matter to Caesar, to whom Paul had
   appealed.

   Festus is represented by our translators as calling the Jewish religion
   a "superstition." I hardly think he would have used so harsh a term
   before Agrippa who professed to be of the Jewish faith. But yet, as he
   probably knew that Agrippa's religion did not lie very deep and was the
   mere appendage of a man of fashion, Festus was not very particular
   about the word which he used. And he lighted upon one which may mean
   "superstition" as the Authorized Version has it, or "religion" as the
   Revised Version has it.

   "Well, well," he seems to say to Agrippa, "I do not know much about it.
   I supposed, when the Jews brought this man before me, that he would be
   charged with a breach of the Roman Law and I was prepared, of course,
   to deal with the prisoner. But when I listened to their accusation and
   found that there was nothing in it but some disputes about their
   religion, I hardly knew what to say. Their controversy is important to
   them, I dare say. But it can be of no consequence either to you or to
   me, for it turned very much upon a person of the name of Jesus, which
   was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive."

   I want you to notice that, rough and ready as this description is, and
   neither full nor deep, yet on the surface we see that in the
   controversy we have the same condition of things as we usually see in
   such conflicts. On the one side Paul's opponents fought with the
   weapons of "certain questions," and on the other hand he defended
   himself with a bold affirmation. This is the old story of speculation
   against dogmatism. It is always the way--the adversaries of the Cross
   of Christ assert nothing but they question everything. They will not
   lay down a basis nor define their opinions. If they would do this, we
   might soon demolish their fabrics of falsehood. But all that they
   propound is "certain questions."

   On the other hand, those who are witnesses for the Lord Jesus have
   little care about questions, speculations and the boasted outcome of
   cultured thought. They affirm certain definite facts--they affirm these
   to be a Revelation from God and there they stand. Brethren, it is, at
   least, a hopeful token when we are on the side of the affirmation. As
   to that side which is abundant only in questions, what can be the
   practical value of its contentions? Can ten thousand questions ease a
   guilty conscience? Can a myriad of speculations yield comfort for the
   dying hour? Are we helped forward in true holiness or even converted to
   the way of life by questions?

   Let us take hold upon the Truths of God which are surely revealed, the
   things which we have tasted and handled and verified. And, holding
   these intelligently and heartily, let us resolve to hold them to the
   end. Let us accept that which has come to us by Revelation of the Holy
   Spirit and let us stand firmly there, as Paul did when he affirmed that
   Jesus was alive. Let us plainly declare definite Truths of God of which
   we are not ashamed--Truths which are often disputed but can never be
   disproved.

   Another thing is very noticeable in this somewhat flippant account of
   the whole affair by Festus--namely that he noticed that the Jews raised
   certain questions about opinions, superstitious or religious. But Paul
   made a statement concerning a Person. Paul was seen with half an eye to
   be the more conscientious and the more religious of the two. But still
   his religion resolved itself into attachment to a Person--"one Jesus,
   which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." Brethren, the hinge

   of the controversy must ever turn upon our Lord, His Divine nature, the
   authority of His teaching and especially the meaning of His death and
   resurrection.

   Did He die as a sacrifice for sin according to Old Testament prophecy?
   Did He justify many by bearing their iniquities? Did He, or did He not?
   The side which Paul takes is that which magnifies Jesus. He finds his
   chief treasure in the Person of the Savior. May the Spirit of God lead
   us more and more to contend for Jesus who is not only the Author and
   Finisher of our faith but the sum and substance of it! Son of God and
   yet Son of Man. Eternal, yet born into this world. Our Sacrifice and
   yet our Prophet, Priest and King. Bearer of our sorrow and fountain of
   our joy. Sacrifice for our transgression and yet source of our
   righteousness. Jesus Christ is our All in All!

   God forbid that we should glory, save in His Cross, for we preach
   Christ crucified. God forbid that we should ever despair of His
   triumph, for we affirm that He is alive, able to save unto the
   uttermost those that come unto God by Him. Oh, for a deeper love to our
   Lord, Himself, loving doctrine, precept and ordinance for His dear
   sake--rejoicing most of all that He lives--since because He lives we
   shall live, also. May even the blindest observer of our lives be forced
   to see that Jesus holds the most prominent place in them and that the
   battle of our existence is for Jesus, our living Lord!

   We will give more consideration this morning to the words of Festus
   than he gave to them himself. May the Spirit of God give us a blessing
   while we review this superficial utterance of an utterly worldly man!
   Seen in its true light, it may be instructive to us.

   First, let us observe that true Gospel preaching is full of Jesus. Paul
   spoke so much of Him that an irreligious heathen magistrate perceived
   that he spoke of "one Jesus." Secondly, note that Gospel preaching
   makes much of the resurrection. For this is implied in what Festus says
   of Paul's affirmation. And, thirdly, Gospel preaching affirms that
   Jesus who died is alive. The great contention was concerning "one
   Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive."

   I. To begin with--TRUE GOSPEL PREACHING IS FULL OF JESUS. Jesus is the
   most notable figure in Christian testimony. The Apostle Paul, whom we
   may regard as a model in preaching, exercised a ministry which was
   always full of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   Following the historical connection of the verse before us, we note
   that he preached "Jesus to multitudes unknown." Fes-tus evidently knew
   not Jesus, for he speaks of Him as "one Jesus." He mentions the name as
   belonging to some obscure individual of whom he knew nothing and cared
   less. The great ones of the earth know nothing of the King of kings.
   Beloved, to this day this is the wonder of wonders, that the incarnate
   God is not known. The world which He made knows Him not. He came at
   first to His own nation, who had been studying the prophecies
   concerning Him. Even to the jots and tittles had they studied those
   prophecies and yet, when He came, who was the clear fulfillment of them
   all, they knew Him not. For had they known Him, they would not have
   crucified the Lord of Glory.

   When He was born into the world, there was no room for Him in the inn,
   where there is room for everybody. No palace gave welcome to the more
   than royal child. He was of the house and lineage of David but they did
   not perceive in Him the answer to their question, "Where is He that is
   born King of the Jews?" His birth is the starting point of the age. And
   yet it was almost unanimously ignored by those who wielded the
   recording pen of history. His was the most extraordinary life that ever
   passed before mortal eyes. And yet how little notice was taken of it!
   Beyond Palestine it seems not even to have awakened curiosity. He died
   and then to the people most concerned in Him He became "one Jesus,
   which was dead."

   The new Roman procurator and myriads like he, well informed upon other
   matters, hardly knew His name, and only mentioned half of it when they
   spoke of "one Jesus, which was dead." Brethren, this is why we must
   keep on preaching Jesus Christ--because He is still so little known.
   The masses of this city are as ignorant of Jesus as Festus was. You can
   never have a congregation in any of our places of worship and feel sure
   that they all know Jesus. If you gather in the outsiders from the
   street you may be sure that the story of Jesus will be news to them. We
   call this a Christian country. But it would be very difficult to prove
   that it is so. If we took certain lines of observation as to the moral
   and religious conduct of our fellow men, we should logically arrive at
   the conclusion that we live in a heathen, rather than in a Christian,
   city.

   Still the world knows Him not. As a sun He shines on all eyes and yet
   men do not see Him. As an atmosphere He surrounds all life and yet men
   do not perceive Him. Let this sad fact constrain us to fill our
   teaching with Christ. As Gideon's fleece dripped with dew, so let us
   saturate our ministry with Christ. Be it ours truthfully to say, "We
   preach Christ crucified." We do this always and evermore. Not by
   accident but by continual design. Paul preached Jesus, who was despised
   by many. The language of Festus is not only that of ignorance but in a
   measure that of contempt. He speaks of "one Jesus, which was dead."
   Jesus is evidently nothing to Festus and Festus does not imagine that
   Jesus is very much to King Agrippa. Probably he was quite right--Jesus
   was nobody among the rank and fashion and culture of the period.

   Behold the unlearned of the day, if you speak to them of the great
   Sacrifice and the wondrous atonement made by blood, they scarcely
   hearken to you, for such high things are not for them--they are so
   hardly pressed with daily labor and slender pay that they cannot think
   of sin and sacrifice and salvation. But they ask, "What has the poor
   working man to do with religion?" Alas, that this folly should be so
   prevalent! Then you turn to the learned and hope that here, at any
   rate, due attention will be given to the great marvel of reconciling
   love. Alas, it is not so. To these more educated ones the doctrine of
   the Cross is foolishness. They ask for something new. Something more
   philosophical. Substitution and sacrifice?--they will have none of
   them.

   The story of the league ofjustice with Divine Grace--the reconcilement
   of holiness with mercy--is beneath their notice. They are too cultured
   to believe the common faith, too wise to accept that which God has
   revealed unto babes. Beloved Brethren, it should never cause us doubt
   when we see many despising our Lord, for this is nothing new, and
   nothing unexpected. Did He tell us that if we preached in His name all
   men would receive us? No, He warned us that the contrary result would
   follow.

   Did not His Apostles assure us that the offense of the Cross had not
   ceased? Is not Christ crucified a stumbling block and foolishness to
   carnal men? If all men had received our message with a ready gratitude,
   we might have questioned the Truth of Scripture. But inasmuch as they
   fight against it, we may see in this an argument for its truth since we
   were told of old that "the natural man receives not the things of the
   Spirit of God--for they are foolishness unto him."

   Gospel preaching is also full of Jesus Christ in this respect--we do
   not conceal His death. Festus notes that the conflict was concerning
   "one Jesus, which was dead." The Jews said He was dead and Paul also
   confessed that He was dead--there was no disagreement between them over
   that matter. Hear, then, the debate. "What? Did your Leader die?"
   "Yes--He was crucified." "Did you not say He was Divine?" "Yes." "Yet
   is He dead?" "It is even so." "Yet you spoke of His leading you on to
   victory?" "So we did." "Yet He is dead?" "Yes, He died at Calvary."
   "How, then, can your boasting stand?" "We believe that by His death He
   has gained the victory and accomplished His great purpose."

   "But how did He die?" He died the death of a felon upon a gibbet. His
   enemies nailed Him to a Cross and put Him to a death which was reserved
   for slaves. We confess this. Yes, we glory in it! We tell you, too,
   that He not only died that which was a penal death externally but He
   actually and truly died such a death. "He was made a curse for us: for
   it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree." Isaiah said of
   Him, "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all," and again, "He
   was numbered with the transgressors and He bare the sin of many." His
   death was the equivalent to that penal death which was our just desert.

   Hear how He cries--"Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold,
   and see if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow, which is done unto
   Me, wherewith the Lord has afflicted Me in the day of His fierce
   anger." We glory that our Lord Jesus was put to death as bearing the
   sin of many. This we hold and teach. Not defending it, nor apologizing
   for it. But affirming it with all boldness, with the desire that we may
   be understood. If any object to this teaching, we do not therefore
   conceal it. We expected that it would be objectionable. We desire more
   and more to obtrude this Truth of Substitution whenever we preach and
   to make it the head and front of our Gospel.

   As the brazen serpent was lifted up upon the pole and was by no means
   concealed, even so would we set forth plainly the sufferings and death
   of our Lord Jesus, that sinners may look to Him and live. This is the
   hope of men--the sacrifice of Jesus proclaimed with great plainness of
   speech. Jesus is to be believed in as the sin-bearing Lamb of God.
   Believed in as dying the death of the Cross, that we might live through
   Him. That only is Gospel preaching which has this for its subject and
   spirit. A Christless Gospel is a useless Gospel. Our sermons should be
   so perfumed with Jesus that never should a congregation gather and
   separate without perceiving a savor of Christ.

   Even people who are not saved by it should yet be made to know that we
   preach Christ crucified. In such a case, we have done our work
   successfully, even if souls are not saved. For we are unto God a sweet
   savor of Christ as well in them that perish as in them that are saved,
   if we have exalted the Lord Jesus and borne witness to His power to
   save.

   Beloved, I would have you further note that true Gospel preaching will
   be full of Jesus as He is revealed in the Old Testament. Our Apostle,
   when he spoke before King Agrippa, went on to declare that he had said
   "none other things than those which the Prophets and Moses did say
   should come: that Christ should suffer and that He should be the first
   that should rise from the dead and should show light unto the people
   and to the Gentiles." Evidently it was this astounding statement about
   Jesus having risen from the dead and being yet alive that was uppermost
   in the mind of Festus, so that when Paul re-asserted it, he cried with
   a loud voice, "Paul, you are beside yourself; much learning does make
   you mad."

   The learning he referred to was his study of the ancient books of the
   Jews, the writings of Moses and the Prophets. Paul's teaching paid as
   much deference to the ancient Scriptures as did that of the Jewish
   rabbis who were opposed to him--no, in very truth--Paul paid a far more
   real homage to the Bible than they did. As for us, the Old Testament is
   prized by us as much as the New. We do not preach Jesus as a fresh
   arrival, the inventor of a new religion, the founder of a novel way of
   salvation. No. We preach the Messiah of the Old Testament, whose Gospel
   is set forth in the types and in the teachings of Moses and the
   Prophets--"Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today, and forever."

   Do not imagine that the religion of Abraham was one thing and ours
   another--ours is but the continuation of that Gospel which was revealed
   to all the faithful from the days of righteous Abel until now. All who
   have spoken in the name of God have borne witness to the same Truth. If
   you would see a suffering Savior I need not refer you to the Gospels
   but in the twenty-second Psalm behold the full-length portrait of
   Messiah in His agony. Hear him cry, "My God, My God, why have You
   forsaken Me?" Mark how they part His garments among them and cast lots
   upon His vesture after they have pierced His hands and His feet!

   No Evangelist, even though he were an eyewitness, could have drawn the
   picture more accurately. Read also the fifty-third of Isaiah. Where can
   you find a better description of the Messiah's sufferings than when you
   see Him cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the
   transgression of His people? Beloved, the New Testament is the key to
   the Old, but the lock is not superseded by the key--no, it is made more
   useful. We have not received a new religion--we worship the God of
   Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob--for He is the God and Father of our
   Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

   Our Gospel has threads of many colors in it--both the Old and New
   Testaments are set forth in it to the glory of the one Christ who is
   the sole Revelation of God. Every Gospel sermon should set forth Jesus
   scripturally. For it is not the Christ of fancy but the Christ of fact
   that saves the souls of men. Let me add that where the Gospel is
   faithfully preached the reproach of Christ will not be shunned by the
   preacher. Read in the fifth verse of the twenty-fourth of Acts how Paul
   won this reproach. His adversaries said--"We have found this man a
   pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout
   the world and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes."

   This was the reputation of Paul. Well did Mr. Whitefield say, "There is
   no going to Heaven as a minister except in a fool's cap and a fool's
   coat." There is no hope of preaching Christ faithfully without being
   called by disrespectful titles, regarded as a fool and reckoned among
   the vulgar and ignorant. Some kind of ugly name will always be appended
   to the preacher of the true Gospel. Brethren, expect it and accept it!
   Bid farewell to a quiet life, if you resolve to be true to Jesus.
   Nothing excites such animosity as the preaching of Jesus. The carnal
   mind rages at the Cross of Christ. That which would be to men the
   greatest comfort and the greatest joy if they were in their right minds
   is their direst hate because sin has perverted their judgments.

   Do not, I beseech you, imagine that it is possible, fairly and
   squarely, to preach Jesus Christ and His Gospel without raising
   opposition. I know a minister of whom one said, "He is a truly good man
   and nobody ever says a word against him." Upon enquiry I heard a
   judicious person say, "He preaches no error but he avoids the obnoxious
   side of the Truth of God. What he preaches is true enough, no doubt,
   but it is not easy to say what it is. Nine out of ten of his hearers
   could not say what his precise opinion may be, but he has a fine flow
   of words. Those who do know what he is preaching about usually say
   that, "take it for granted, there is nothing in it."

   Of course nobody opposes an indistinct, colorless, please-everybody
   Gospel--it is not worth anything. But speak clearly and distinctly the
   doctrine of the great Sacrifice and you will bring upon your head a
   shower of opposition--you will be "a pestilent fellow" and "a
   ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." Gospel preaching does not
   cry, "Peace, peace," where there is no peace. But it is the sword which
   the Lord Jesus came to send upon the earth.

   Once more--Jesus Christ must be preached in the Gospel as the sum and
   substance of it all. For we note concerning Paul, in this connection,
   that whoever might be his hearer, his theme was the same--he preached
   Jesus. If he speaks to Felix, he does not only preach to him of
   "righteousness, temperance and judgment to come," as some remind
   us--but in the twenty-fourth verse of the twenty-fourth chapter we are
   told that, "after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla,
   which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith
   in Christ."

   The faith in Christ was the first thing that Paul preached and then he
   "reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come." The
   foundation of Christian morality is Christ Himself. And though we do
   preach moral duties most earnestly and press them home upon the
   conscience, yet first of all we preach the faith of Jesus Christ. When
   Paul spoke to Festus in the twenty-sixth chapter at the twenty-third
   verse, he told him that, "Christ should suffer and that He should be
   the first that should rise from the dead." It was this that made Festus
   cry out, because he was amazed at this strange Truth of God concerning
   Jesus.

   So was it with Agrippa. Agrippa is forced to feel that Paul is
   preaching Christ, for he cries, "You almost persuaded me to be a
   Christian." Paul did not merely persuade him to justice and
   righteousness but he pressed him to yield himself to Christ. Indeed the
   whole of Paul's address goes to prove the power and glory of the Jesus
   by whom Paul had been called to be an Apostle.

   Now, Beloved, as I resolve, God helping me, in my preaching to preach
   to you nothing else save Jesus Christ, so I beseech you, in your
   schools, in your families, in your public ministries of any and every
   kind, begin and end with Jesus, who was dead and is alive. Declare His
   blessed name and proclaim the glory of His Cross! God forbid that you
   should place anything in front of your testimony save Jesus crucified!
   Your Gospel is a golden frame, let Jesus be the portrait which is hung
   up in it.

   II. Secondly--GOSPEL PREACHING AFFIRMS THE RESURRECTION. Please notice
   that Paul did not argue the

   resurrection but affirmed it. He did not prove it philosophically but
   he affirmed that Jesus rose from the dead because such-and-such persons
   saw Him alive after He had risen. He did not merely say that it was
   probable, that it was possible, that it was reasonable--but that it was
   so--for witnesses proved it. Two saw Him, eleven saw Him, four hundred
   saw Him. He dealt with the resurrection as common-sense persons deal
   with any other fact of history.

   He quoted his authorities and affirmed that it was so. His witnesses
   were honest and true men who dared to go to prison and even to die on
   account of their statements. They had nothing whatever to gain and
   everything to lose by their testimonies. They stated that Jesus, whom
   they knew to have been dead, had risen again and had given clear proofs
   that He was alive. This cornerstone of our faith is sure and upon the
   certainty of it we build our faith.

   Paul asserted that the Savior had the pre-eminence in resurrection and,
   "that He should be the first that should rise from the dead." Several
   persons rose from the dead before our Savior but not in the sense which
   Paul intended. Those mentioned in the Old Testament were quickened for
   a time but they died after all and saw corruption. They lived anew but
   they lived not evermore, as Jesus does. A miracle was worked but it
   gave them only a temporary prolongation of life. They went back to the
   grave again in due time. Whether it was the child of the woman in the
   Old Testament, or the brother of Mary and Martha in the New, they were
   not so raised from the dead as to have attained to immortality.

   But our Savior finally rose from the dead and rose from the dead by His
   own power. He was the first fruits of the resurrection harvest. He was
   the first sheaf of that wheat which will one day be gathered in
   bulk--He was the first fruits to be presented unto the Lord to sanctify
   the whole. Jesus is the pattern, the proof, the pledge, the earnest,
   the guarantee of the resurrection of all the rest. This Paul asserted
   and declared as a Revelation of God. From this he inferred the general
   resurrection. He says in another place that if there is no resurrection
   of the dead, then is Christ not risen and the whole faith of the Gospel
   falls to the ground.

   To you and to me this is full of comfort--the dead must rise. Our
   beloved ones have been taken from us but they shall come again from the
   land of the enemy. We have a glorious hope concerning our own bodies.
   "I know that my Redeemer lives: and though after my skin worms destroy
   this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." We shall rise, for Jesus
   has risen. This is the constant assertion of Scripture. There would be
   no proof of the resurrection of the dead if Jesus had not risen. But as
   He has risen from the dead, our resurrection is secured. Now has death
   lost its sting--the grave may receive us but it cannot retain us, since
   Jesus has burst its bars.

   Moreover, Paul--and he, I say, is a model among Gospel
   preachers--teaches us to preach in our Gospel all the sweet inferences
   which flow from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Here they are:
   He rose from the dead and therefore His sacrifice has been accepted.
   God has brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd
   of the sheep, by the blood of the Everlasting Covenant. The work He has
   done has pleased the Father and therefore He has brought Him back from
   among the dead. His acceptance is ours--we are "accepted in the
   Beloved."

   Next, Jesus Himself is clear. He had, as our sponsor, become our
   hostage. Sin was laid on Him and He was laid in the grave. But now the
   sinner's surety is as clear as the sinner himself--for the Lord Jesus
   is released from the prison of the tomb. He was delivered for our
   offenses but He rose again for our justification. Now, also, we live
   unto God. Our Lord Jesus died unto sin once. But in that He lives, He
   lives unto God--so is it with us. This is our joy--His work is
   accepted, His bearing of our curse is finished, life in us is made
   manifest.

   And now, Beloved, we see in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
   dead that He is Divine. He is "declared to be the Son of God, with
   power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from
   the dead." So says Paul in the first chapter of his Epistle to the
   Romans. Jesus raised Himself from the dead by His own will. "I have
   power to lay down My life," said He, "and I have power to take it
   again." Who could possess and exercise such a power but a Divine Being?

   I must repeat what I have said already, that from the resurrection of
   our Lord we draw the comfortable inference of the resurrection unto
   eternal life of all who are in Christ. We said farewell, a little while
   ago, to him whom we loved so well but we shall see the honored one
   again. We laid our sister in the grave with many tears. Oh, how we miss
   her! But we shall meet her again when the trumpet shall sound. We
   preserve a long list of departed ones, of which we scarcely dare to
   think, for tears drown our eyes. Yet will we refrain from weeping, for
   as the dew of herbs causes them to spring up again, so the rising again
   of our Lord restores to us the beloved ones who have fallen asleep. The
   broken circle of our fellowship shall be renewed, for Jesus, its
   center, has risen again.

   III. But now, alas for me! I have scant time for the point which I
   wanted most fully to discuss--GOSPEL PREACHING AFFIRMS THAT JESUS IS
   ALIVE. We do not preach to you a dead Christ but one who is able to
   save to the uttermost, seeing He ever lives.

   Jesus died, Jesus rose again, Jesus is now alive. Paul knew that Jesus
   lived, for He had spoken to him out of Heaven. Paul had both seen and
   heard the Lord Jesus and thus he had been turned from a persecutor into
   an Apostle. We do not need to see Jesus, nor to hear His voice, for we
   are well satisfied with the witness of a man so true as Paul, in whom a
   change so remarkable was worked by what he saw. His entire being was
   transformed by what he saw and heard--assuredly he was no deceiver and
   he was not the sort of person to have been deceived.

   Jesus Christ is then alive, for Paul saw Him. No, not only once did he
   see Him but on several other occasions. He saw the Lord when he was in
   the temple in a trance and heard Him say, "Depart, for I will send you
   far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts 22:17-21). Even when he lay in
   prison in Jerusalem the Lord stood by him and said, "Be of good cheer,
   Paul: for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must you bear
   witness also at Rome." Jesus had thus spoken to Paul, once, twice and
   many times. And so He was to him most assuredly alive. Ah, dear
   Friends, if the Lord Jesus has had gracious dealings with any of us and
   we have had Him revealed within us, we also shall affirm that He is
   alive.

   Beloved, receiving the witness of our Apostle and remembering many
   other infallible proofs which we have not time to mention, we also
   believe that Jesus, who was dead, is alive. What follows from this?
   Why, first, He is alive to bestow the Holy Spirit. Many blessings come
   from our Lord's death but the Holy Spirit was an early gift of His
   resurrection life--especially was it the outcome of His ascended life.
   The gift of the Holy Spirit is the ascension gift of our living Lord.
   When we think of His resurrection life, we couple with it the
   outpouring of the Spirit of God.

   Oh, that this same Spirit would work among us more manifestly just now!
   And why not? He is with us because Jesus lives. No Spirit of life could
   proceed from a dead Christ. Jesus, if He were not alive, could not send
   the Comforter to us. The life and light and liberty of the Spirit are
   with us, because Jesus lives. Beloved, do you think the times are dark
   and dreary? Be not afraid--while Jesus lives the Holy Spirit is always
   obtainable--the Holy Spirit is always ready to work in and with us.
   What more do we want? Error will fall and the Truth of God will be
   established by the Holy Spirit. This is our battle-axe and weapon of
   war. O living Christ, we praise and bless Your name. For out of You
   shall come abundance of life and power through Your Spirit!

   Jesus is alive. Dwell on that thought. He is alive, to claim Heaven for
   His redeemed. He has gone up before us to occupy our inheritance for
   us. When He first put His feet within the golden gate He took
   possession of eternal glory for every soul that He represents. He is
   our forerunner and representative. Brethren, Heaven is yours, Heaven is
   mine, because Jesus is, "the Man in possession," on our behalf. That
   pierced hand has taken hold of eternal bliss on the behalf of those for
   whom He shed His blood.

   Jesus is also in Heaven making preparation for our coming. What has to
   be done to make Heaven ready I am sure I do not know, though I have
   often tried to guess. But Jesus says, "I go to prepare a place for
   you." Heaven, when we get there, will prove to be the exact place for
   us. It has taken Jesus all these years to make it ready for us. He that
   with a Word made earth fit for created man, did not with a Word make
   Heaven fit for His regenerated but went to Heaven Himself as a living
   Christ to see everything set in order for them. I think I hear Him say,
   "This will not do for My Beloved. There is something yet needed. These
   fruits are not quite mellow enough, these flowers are not full-blown
   enough for My Beloved, whom I desire to entertain to the utmost of
   their capacity." Jesus is living--living on purpose to keep Heaven for
   us and make it in all respects ready for us.

   Furthermore, lay hold of this thought--that Jesus is alive to intercede
   for us. I am most rich, Beloved, when I have your prayers. If I might
   have a part in the prayers of all the saints on earth I would not envy
   a Kaiser his dominions. Yet what are all the prayers of saints compared
   with the prayers of the King of saints? When He prays--He of the
   pierced hands and feet-- when He prays whom the Father loves so
   well--who has such deservings of Jehovah for His obedience unto death,
   even the

   death of the Cross? What a prevalence must dwell in His intercession!
   We trust not in a dumb, dead Christ, who could not speak for us but we
   rest in an Advocate whose eloquent pleadings before the Throne of God
   can never be denied.

   Observe also that our Lord lives to rule all things on our behalf. His
   enemies put Him to an ignominious death but the Father has delivered
   all things into His hands. He whom they spat upon wears majesty in His
   face. The despised and rejected of men has all power in Heaven and in
   earth. Jesus lives to control all events and overrule them for the
   highest purposes of Divine Grace. Trust in Him for His kingdom cannot
   fail, neither can anything go amiss while He is to the front. Paul
   affirmed that He was alive. And alive He is in the fullest sense, so
   that nothing escapes His government. Hallelujah!

   "Ah," you say, "you have now put Him far away from us by reason of His
   adorable majesty." Then let me bring Him near to you. He is not only
   alive Godward, that the Father may delight in Him but alive towards
   you, that He may have the fellowship of kinship with you. He is touched
   with a feeling of your infirmities. He sympathizes with all your
   griefs, even as a loving husband shares the pangs and sorrows of his
   spouse. He is most near to you, for He is one with you. We may not
   think of our Lord as One whose shadow flitted over the historic page
   and left a faint photographic trace. But He lives as truly in the
   present as in the past.

   He is not Jesus of the mist but of this day's light. He is the same in
   heart, the same in tenderness, the same in living feeling and union as
   ever He was. Did you ever reflect that something of Christ remained on
   earth and was not taken to Heaven? I mean those drops of blood which
   fell from Him in Gethsemane and that other stream which gushed from His
   pierced heart on Calvary. I see that his heart's essence is with us
   still. It was after death that His heart poured forth for us its
   treasure of water and blood. And now, long after death His whole heart
   is as truly ours as it was when He bare our sins in His own body on the
   tree.

   O child of God, I would have you further remember that Jesus is still
   alive to commune with you. You bend not over His corpse but you sit at
   His feet. Carnal men would think me dreaming if I were to tell of our
   spiritual relationship with our living Lord. Still does He speak to our
   hearts. Pearls may not be cast before swine, nor the love secrets of
   our souls declared in the streets. But we have been conscious at times
   of influences other than those which are natural and common. Jesus has
   made Himself known to us--He has stood behind us and His shadow has
   fallen over us. He has manifested Himself to us as He does not to the
   world.

   Many a time has He cast a spell over us and bathed us in mystic
   influence. We have been raised from the valley of weeping to the
   mountains of joy by a Word from Himself laid home to the heart. You
   know what I mean. Jesus does not forget us. He has not allowed a great
   gulf to open between us and Himself. He is still the loving, living,
   active Jesus to us and with us. How I wish that every child of God here
   who is in trouble would go at once with that trouble to the living
   Christ! Oh, that every sinner who is crushed beneath his load of sin
   would bow at once before the living Christ, whose voice speaks pardon!

   You cannot perceive Jesus but He is present where His Gospel is
   preached. Eyes cannot see Him, nor hands touch Him but He is visible
   and tangible to faith. Bow before Him. I know you have often thought,
   "If, instead of seeing Mr. Spurgeon on the platform, I could see Jesus,
   I would confess my sin to Him and ask His pardon." I pray you do so
   even though you see Him not, for He sees you. Gladly would I cease to
   be seen of you that your hearts might see my Lord, for He is here. Bow
   before Him, confess to Him and trust Him.

   "Oh," cries a loving one, "if Jesus were visibly here, I would take Him
   home with me and entertain Him." Do so, I pray you, though you do not
   see Him. Constrain Him to abide with you. Treat the Lord Jesus, not as
   a phantom but as a real Christ. Paul affirmed that He was
   alive--believe Paul's affirmation and speak to the living Jesus. I will
   give you a text, "Whom having not seen, you love." You cannot love a
   dead person as a dead person. You may love the memory of the dead. But
   if you love them, you regard them as living. Love is for life. It
   cannot dwell with death. We have not seen Jesus but we love Him and
   this proves that to our hearts He lives.

   Let us view Him in the light of life at this very hour. I beseech my
   Lord Jesus to let me personally realize His august Presence. My Lord,
   are You really here? Hear, then, my prayer--I beseech You, enable me to
   serve You with my whole being and to count reproach for Your sake to be
   greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt. Will you not, my
   Beloved, each one of you, think of your Lord as with you at this
   moment? Behold Him and speak to Him in the silence of your hearts. Will
   you now renew your dedication vow and be the Lord's forever?

   Oh that our Lord would now appear! Oh that His silver trumpets would
   ring out while yet I speak to you! Oh that His feet would once more
   touch this earth! The second coming of our living Lord is the ultimatum
   of our faith. He is alive and as surely as He lives, He will open wide
   the golden gate and come again to take His people up to be with Him
   forever. Has He not

   said, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself"? They that have
   been faithful to Him in this evil generation, through the dark as well
   as through the light and have followed at His heels through mire and
   slough--these shall partake of His glory.

   "These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes." Who is on the
   side of the living Christ at this hour? Let him come out and boldly say
   so. Hold not back lest you be found traitors. Confess your Lord, take
   up your cross and by God's grace be the living servants of the living
   Jesus. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"David's Spoil"

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, APRIL 15, 1888.

   "This is David's spoil." 1 Samuel 30:20.

   We have earlier gathered spoil for ourselves out of David's behavior in
   the hour of his sorrow at Ziklag and we will now turn to the other side
   of this leaf in his history and receive instruction from the time of
   his victory. But we must not do this till we have refreshed our
   memories with the story of his conduct under distress. When he came to
   the city he found it burned with fire, the property of himself and his
   comrades carried away and what was worse, all their wives and their
   sons and their daughters gone into captivity. In the madness of their
   grief the people turned upon their leader, as if he had led them into
   this calamity. He was the only calm person among them, for he
   "encouraged himself in the Lord his God."

   With due deliberation he waited upon the Lord and consulted the oracle
   through the appointed priest and then, under Divine guidance he pursued
   the bandits, took them by surprise, recovered all of his people's goods
   and captured a large booty which the Amalekites had collected
   elsewhere. David, who had been the chief object of the people's mutiny
   and the leader of the successful pursuit of the robbers, most properly
   received a special portion of the spoil and concerning it the words of
   our text were spoken, "This is David's spoil."

   We shall now look into this victorious act on the part of David with
   the view of finding spiritual teaching in it. David may be regarded as
   a very special type of our Lord Jesus Christ. Among the personal types
   David holds a leading place--for in so many points he is the Prophetic
   foreshadowing of the great and glorious Son of David. Whenever David
   acts as the man after God's own heart, he is the picture and emblem of
   the One who is still more after God's own heart-- even the Christ of
   God.

   David, under Divine guidance, pursued the Amalekites who had come as
   thieves to smite and to burn and carry away captives. The marauders
   were overtaken and slaughtered and a great spoil was the result. David
   recovered all that the Amalekites had taken. "And there was nothing
   lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters,
   neither spoil, nor anything that they had taken to them: David
   recovered all." We are told several times over in the chapter that
   nothing was lacking--"David recovered all." When our Lord Jesus worked
   out our redemption, He recovered all and left nothing in the enemy's
   hand. All glory to His name!

   But over and above, David took great store of cattle and jewels and
   gold and silver and so forth, which belonged to the Amalekites, and out
   of this a bountiful portion was taken which was set apart as David's
   spoil. David's men, in the moment of their despair, had spoken of
   stoning him. But now, in the morning of their victory, with general
   acclamations, they determine that David shall have, as his portion of
   the spoil, all the cattle which belong to the Amalekites themselves.
   And so, driving these in front, as they return to Ziklag, they say,
   "This is David's spoil." I think I hear them, as they drive the
   bullocks and the sheep before them, shouting right lustily, "This is
   David's spoil."

   Now, using David as the type of Christ, I want, if I can, to set all
   David's men--all Christ's men--shouting with all their hearts, "This is
   Jesus' spoil!" He it is of whom Jehovah says, "I will divide Him a
   portion with the great and He shall divide the spoil with the strong."
   He has a grand reward as the result of the great battle of His life and
   death. We will even now award to Him the spoil and cry, "This is
   David's spoil," feeling, all the while, as the Psalmist did when he
   said, "You are more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey."

   I. We begin with the first observation that practically all the spoil
   of that day was David's spoil and in truth all the good that we enjoy
   comes to us through our Lord Jesus. He has been given as a Leader and a
   Commander to the people and every victory they win is due to Him and to
   Him alone. Without Him we can do nothing and without Him we can obtain
   nothing. All that we once possessed by nature and under the Law, the
   Spoiler has taken away. By our own efforts

   we can never regain what we have lost--only through our great Leader
   can we be restored and made happy. We ascribe unto Jesus all our
   gains--even as David's men honored their captain.

   For, first, David's men defeated the Amalekites and took their
   spoil--but it was for David's sake that God gave success to the band.
   God's eyes rested upon His chosen servant, the Lord's anointed, and it
   was not for the warrior's own sakes but for David's sake that God
   guided them to the hosts of Amalek and gave them like driven stubble to
   their sword. How much more true it is to us that every blessing, every
   pardoning mercy, every delivering mercy, is given to us through Him who
   is our Shield and God's Anointed! It is for the sake of Jesus that we
   are pardoned, justified, accepted, preserved, sanctified. Only through
   this channel does the mercy of God come to us.

   The Lord God says, "Not for your sakes do I this, O house of Israel! Be
   ashamed and confounded for your own ways." And we, in response to that,
   can answer, "Not unto us, not unto us but unto the name of the
   well-Beloved be praise and honor and glory forever and ever!" Since
   everything comes to us because of Christ Jesus, we may say of every
   Covenant mercy, "This is David's spoil." On this blessing and on that
   favor, yes, on them all, we see the mark of the Cross. These are all
   fruits of our Redeemer's passion, the purchase of His blood. Again we
   say with gratitude, "This is David's spoil."

   Moreover, David's men gained the victory over Amalek because of David's
   leadership. If he had not been there to lead them to the fight--in the
   moment of their despair they would have lost all heart and would have
   remained amidst the burning walls of Ziklag a discomfited company. But
   David encouraged himself in the Lord and so encouraged all his
   desponding followers. Drawing his sword and marching in front, he put
   spirit into them--they all followed with eager step because their
   gallant leader so courageously led the way.

   This is exactly our case, Beloved, only we are even more indebted to
   our Lord Jesus than these men were to David. The Lord Jesus Christ has
   been among us and has fought our battle for us and recovered all that
   we had lost by Adam's Fall and by our own sin. It is written of Him,
   "He shall not fail nor be discouraged." You know how He sets His face
   like a flint, how stout-hearted He was to accomplish the work of our
   redemption and how He ceased not till He could cry victoriously, "It is
   finished"--

   "Our glorious Leader claims our praise For His own pattern given."

   Following at His feet, we, too, fight with sin. Treading in His
   footsteps, we, too, overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. Have
   you ever heard Him say, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world"?

   And you, dear Brothers and Sisters--whatever victories you win,
   whatever spoils you divide--will acknowledge that it is through Jesus
   that you have conquered. They said of Waterloo that it was a soldier's
   battle and the victory was due to the men. But ours is our Commander's
   battle and every victory won by us is due to the great Captain of our
   salvation. Let the crown be set upon His head, even on the battlefield
   and let us say of every sin that we have overcome, every evil habit
   that we have destroyed, "This is David's spoil."

   We had never won this victory if Jesus had not led us--we have it for
   His sake. We have it under His leadership. Without exception, all the
   saints on earth and in Heaven confess this to be true--

   "I ask them from where their victory came?

   They, with united breath,

   Ascribe their conquest to the Lamb,

   Their triumph to His death.

   They marked the footsteps that He trod,

   His zeal inspired their breast,

   And, following their incarnate God,

   Possess the promised rest."

   I will not say more upon this point but only ask you to remember that
   by nature we had all lost everything. We lost the garden with all its
   Paradisiacal joys. Lost this world, the very earth bringing forth
   thorns and thistles to us. Lost life, lost hope, lost peace, lost the
   favor of God. But Jesus has recovered all. All that the first Adam lost
   the second Adam has restored. David recovered all and Jesus has
   recovered all. We ourselves were lost. But Jesus has brought us back
   from the hand of the enemy. He has given us ourselves, if I may use
   such an expression--and now we who were dead are alive again--the lost
   are

   found. Once, every faculty of ours was being used for our own
   destruction but now, sanctified by the Grace of God, all is being used
   for God's glory and for our own ripening and perfecting.

   Jesus has recovered us for ourselves and for our God--the prey has been
   taken from the mighty and the lawful captive has been delivered. Yes,
   and our Lord Jesus has recovered for us the future as well as the past.
   Our outlook was grim and dark, indeed, till Jesus came. But oh, how
   bright it is now that He has completed His glorious work! Death is no
   more the dreaded grave of all our hopes. Hell exists no longer for
   Believers. Heaven, whose gates were closed, is now set wide open to
   every soul that believes. We have recovered life and immortal bliss. We
   are snatched like brands from the burning and made to shine like lamps
   of the palace of the great King.

   We are set up to be forever trophies of the conquering power of Jesus,
   our glorious David. Look at all the saints in Heaven in their serried
   ranks and say of them all, "This is David's spoil." Look at the
   blood-bought Church of God on earth--the ten thousands that are already
   washed in His blood and following at His feet--we may say of all this
   ransomed flock, "This is David's spoil." Each one of us, looking at
   himself and all his past and all his future, may say, "This, too, is
   David's spoil."

   Christ has done it, done it all and unto His name let the whole host
   shout the victory. I feel as if I could stop the sermon and ask you to
   sing but it will be better if I content myself with repeating the
   hymn--

   "Rejoice, you shining worlds on high,

   Behold the King of Glory near!

   He comes adorned with victory,

   He made our foes before Him flee.

   You hea venly gates, your lea ves display,

   To make the Lord the Sa vior's way!

   Laden with spoils from earth and Hell,

   The Conqueror comes with God to dwell.

   Raised from the dead, He goes before;

   He opens Heaven's eternal door--

   To give His saints a blessed abode,

   Near their Redeemer and their God." II. But the most interesting part
   of our subject is this--all the booty was practically David's spoil but
   there was a part of it which was not recovered but was a clear gain.
   They recovered all they had lost and over and above there was a surplus
   of spoil from the defeated foe. Now, in the great battle of Christ on
   our behalf He has not only given us back what we lost but He has given
   us what Adam in his perfection never had. And I want you to dwell upon
   that--because this part of it is peculiarly our Lord's spoil. Those
   good things which we now possess over and above what we lost by sin
   come to us by the Lord Jesus. Now that the Son of God has come into the
   field He is not content with restoration--He turns the loss into a
   gain--the Fall into a greater rising.

   And first, dear Friends, think--in Christ Jesus human nature is lifted
   up where it never could have been before. Man was made in his innocence
   to occupy a very lofty place. "You made him to have dominion over all
   the works of Your hands. You have put all things under his feet." Man
   would have enjoyed that dominion had he never fallen but he never could
   have obtained what he has now gained, for, "we see Jesus, who was made
   a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with
   glory and honor."

   And we see in Jesus human nature joined in mysterious union with the
   Godhead. I never know how to speak about this miracle of the Divine
   incarnation. We are men and women, poor creatures at our very best. Yet
   in Christ Jesus our dignity is perfectly amazing. Angels excel in
   strength and beauty but no angel was ever joined to the Godhead as
   manhood is now united to God. The nearest being to God is a man. The
   most noble existence--how shall I word it?--the most noble of all
   beings is God. And the God-Man Christ Jesus, in whom dwells all the
   fullness of the Godhead bodily is with Him upon His Throne.

   It is a wondrous honor, this--that manhood should be taken into
   intimate connection, yes, absolute union with God! For listen--through
   Jesus Christ we are this day made the sons of God which angels never
   were. "Unto which of the angels said He at any time, You are My Son"?
   But He has said this to us. Christ took not up angels but He took up
   the seed of Abraham and He has made the believing seed of Abraham to be
   the sons of God. Listen again--"And if children, then heirs. Heirs of
   God." God's heirs! What a word is this! How simple but how sublime! I
   know how to say it but not how to expound it!

   It does not want explanation and yet its depths are fathomless. Every
   Believer is God's heir--the heir of God. Could this have been and there
   been no Fall and no redemption? Children and heirs are more than was
   ever spoken of in Eden. Yes, listen yet again. Now we are one with God
   in Christ Jesus. For it is written concerning our Lord, "We are members
   of His body, of His flesh and of His bones." Close as the marriage
   union is, yet Paul declared, when he spoke of it, "This is a great
   mystery-- but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." Unfallen
   manhood was never declared to be one with the Son of God and yet
   through the Covenant of Grace this is our position.

   We are joined by vital, real, conjugal union to Jesus Christ the Son of
   the Highest, very God of very God. And this is an elevation so
   transcendent that I feel bowed down beneath the weight of glory which
   is revealed in us. The most glorious being next to God is man. A sinner
   most shameful, once, but now in Christ a child accepted and honored!
   What can I say of this but, "This is David's spoil"? This is what Jesus
   brought us. It came to us by no other way or method. Neither do we know
   in what way or method it could have been given to us but by the will of
   God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is given to us through Jesus
   Christ, our elder Brother and our covenant Head and unto Him let the
   glory of it be ascribed world without end.

   Another blessing which was not ours before the Fall and therefore never
   was lost but comes to us as a surplus, is the fact that we are
   redeemed. You sang just now that verse--

   "Never did angels taste above Redeeming grace and dying love."

   It is clear that you could never have known free grace and dying love
   if Jesus had not come to redeem you. Unfallen intelligent spirits will
   say in eternity, "Do you see those beings bowing nearest to the eternal
   Throne? Do you see those well-beloved creatures? Who are they?" Spirits
   that have lived in other worlds will come crowding up to the great
   metropolis and will say one to another, "Who are those courtiers--those
   that dwell nearest to God? Who are they?"

   And one spirit will say to another, "They are beings whom God not only
   made as He made us but whom the eternal Son of God redeemed by blood."
   And one shining one will say to his fellow, "What is that? Tell me that
   strange story." Then will his companion delight to say, "They were
   saved because the Son of God took their nature and in that nature
   died." "Wonderful! Wonderful," his friend will answer, "How could it
   be? Was there suffering for them and pain for them and bloody sweat for
   them and death for them on the part of the ever-blessed Son of God?"
   The answer, "It was even so," will be news full of astonishment even to
   the best instructed celestial mind.

   Spirits will look at us with wonder and say, "What strange beings are
   these? Others are the work of God's hands but these are the fruit of
   the travail of His soul. On others we see the marks of Divine skill and
   power but here we see the tokens of a Divine sacrifice--a Divine
   blood-shedding." Truly, we may say of our redemption, "This is David's
   spoil." That you and I should be such wonders as we must be in being
   redeemed beings is, indeed, something given to us by Jesus over and
   above what Adam lost. And throughout eternity all the sacred
   brotherhood of the redeemed by blood will be princes in the courts of
   God--the aristocracy of Heaven--for "He has made us kings and priests
   unto God."

   We shall be creatures who have known sin and have been recovered from
   its pollution. There will be no fear of our being exalted with pride,
   or drawn away by ambition as the now-apostate angels were. For we shall
   constantly remember what sin did for us and how grievous was our fault.
   We shall forever remember the price at which we were redeemed. And we
   shall have ties upon us that will bind us to an undeviating loyalty to
   Him who exalted us to so glorious a condition. It seems to me wonderful
   beyond expression--the more I consider it, the more I am astonished. A
   spirit that has never fallen cannot be trusted in the same way as one
   that has fallen and has been delivered and has been newly-created and
   blood-washed and has been gifted with an abiding and eternal character!

   Such a being shall never fall because it is forever held by cords of
   love eternal and bonds of gratitude infinitely strong. Cords of love
   which will never let it waver in holy service. It is a work worthy of a
   God to create such beings as we shall be-- since we shall be securely
   bound to voluntary holiness. And our wills, though always free, shall
   be immutably loyal to our Lord. As the twice-born we shall be the most
   noble of God's works. We shall be the first fruits of His creatures. We
   shall be accounted as the royal treasure of Jehovah. Then shall we sit
   with Christ upon His Throne and reign with Him forever. "This is
   David's spoil."

   We receive blessings unknown to beings who have never fallen. I
   sometimes murmur to myself--and sweet music it has been as I have
   quietly murmured it--we are the elect of God. Election is a privilege
   most high and precious--what can exceed it in delight? This also is
   David's spoil. We are also redeemed from among men--the redemption of
   the soul is precious. "This is David's spoil." We are covenanted ones,
   with whom God has entered into bonds of promise, swearing by an oath to
   keep

   His Word--this, too, is David's spoil. Where had you ever heard of
   redemption, election, covenant and such-like words if it had not been
   for the blessed Christ of God who has redeemed us by His blood?

   Sing, then, you who have received back your lost inheritance--and sing
   more sweetly, still, you who have been blessed with all spiritual
   blessings in the heavenlies according as the Father has chosen you in
   Christ Jesus. Sing aloud unto His holy name--and say of your special
   privileges--"This is David's spoil."

   Again--to my mind it is a very blessed fact that you and I will partake
   of a privilege which would have been certainly unnecessary to Adam and
   could not by Adam have been known and that is, the privilege of
   resurrection. We shall die unless the Lord should suddenly appear. I
   would not have you, Brothers and Sisters, look upon the prospect of
   death with any sort of dread. I know that death is associated with
   pain. But nothing can be more absurd. There is no pain in death--pain
   belongs to life. Death, even naturally, puts an end to pain. But death
   to the Believer is undressing as His Lord undressed--putting off
   garments of which, I think, we need not be so very fond, for they do
   fit us ill.

   And oftentimes, when our spirit is willing, it is hampered by these
   garments of clay--for the flesh is weak. Some look with intense delight
   to the prospect of the Savior's coming--as a means of escape from
   death. I confess I have but slender sympathy with them. If I might have
   my choice, I would prefer, of the two, to die. Let it be as the Lord
   wills. But there is a point of fellowship with Christ in death which
   they will miss who shall not sleep. And it seems to me to have some
   sweetness in it to follow the Lamb wherever He goes, even though He
   descend into the sepulcher. "Where should the dying members rest but
   with their dying Head?" That grave of our blessed Lord, if He had not
   meant us to enter it, would have been left an empty tenement when He
   came away. But when He came out of it, He left it furnished for those
   that should come after Him. See there the grave clothes folded up for
   us to use!

   The bed is prepared for our slumber. The napkin is laid by itself
   because it is not for the sleeper but for those who have lost His
   company. Those who remain behind may dry their eyes with the napkin but
   the grave clothes are reserved for others who will occupy the royal
   bedchamber. When great men died in olden times their servants took away
   the tapestry or hangings of their chambers. But if those hangings
   remained it was for the convenience of guests who were invited to
   occupy my lord's rooms. See, then, our Lord expects us to lie in His
   royal bedchamber for He has left the hangings behind Him! To the
   retiring room of the tomb we shall go in due time. And why should we be
   grieved to go? For we shall come forth again--we shall rise from the
   dead.

   "Your brother shall rise again," was Mary's consolation from the
   Master's lips. It is yours. We are not going to a prison but to a bath
   wherein the body, like Esther, shall be purified to behold the King. It
   is our joy to be sure that, "as the Lord our Savior rose, so all His
   followers must." We do not know much about the resurrection of the body
   and therefore we will not attempt to describe it. But surely it will be
   a delightful thing to be able to dwell forever in a body that has been
   in the grave and has had fulfilled in it the sentence, "Dust you are
   and unto dust shall you return," but which has been raised again by
   that same power which raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

   We shall inhabit a body which shall no more see corruption, or be
   subject to weakness, or pain, or decay but shall be like the glorified
   person of our Lord. Oh, there is sweetness in the thought that we shall
   in this forever have fellowship with our risen Lord! Children of the
   resurrection, dread not death! Your faces are turned to the sun. Press
   forward to the light eternal and fear not to pass through the
   death-shadow--it is no more than a shadow. If you cannot leap over the
   grave you can pass through it. It shall be your joy to rise when the
   morning breaks and to be satisfied. For you shall wake up in His
   likeness. As for the resurrection, "this is David's spoil," this is
   Christ's gift and benefit. The resurrection from the dead is the
   peculiar glory of Christianity. The immortality of the soul had been
   taught and known before, for it is a Truth of God which even reason
   itself teaches.

   But the resurrection of the body comes in as the last and crowning
   effort of our spirits--and "this is David's spoil." Let me not weary
   you. The topic might well interest us on several occasions. It is too
   large to be confined to one discourse. Our singular relation to God and
   yet to materialism is another rare gift of Jesus. God intended, by the
   salvation of man and the lifting up of man into union with Himself, to
   link together in one the lowest and the highest--His creation and
   Himself. Shall I make it very plain? These poor substances--earth,
   water and the like--they seem far down in the scale. God makes a being
   that shall be, as an old Puritan used to say, half soul and half
   soil--even man who is both spirit and dust of the earth.

   We find in him water, salts, acids, all sorts of substances combined to
   make up a body and married to this is a soul, which is brother to the
   angels and akin to Deity. Materialism is somewhat exalted in being
   connected with spirit at all. When spirit becomes connected with God
   and refined materialism becomes connected with a purified spirit by the
   resurrection from the dead, then shall be brought to pass the uplifting
   of clay and its junction with the celestial. Do you not see how God, in
   the

   perfecting of His gracious purpose through the resurrection of the
   dead, causes His glory to be reflected even upon what we regard as poor
   material substances, gross and mean?

   Try and get at my meaning again. Quakers, whom I greatly respect, get
   rid of the two ordinances by denying that they are of perpetual
   obligation. They banish Baptism--they put away the Lord's Supper. I
   have sometimes wished that I were able to agree with them because my
   whole spirit and tendency are towards the spiritual rather than the
   ritual. But if anything is plain to me in Scripture, it is that Jesus
   Christ did command us to be baptized in water in the Triune name and
   that He bade His disciples remember Him in the breaking of bread and in
   the drinking of the cup. The danger of men's making too much of outward
   forms was encountered for some wise purpose. It was, I think, because
   God would have us know that even the material, though it can only enter
   the outer court, is still to be sanctified unto Himself.

   Therefore, water, bread and wine--all material substances--are used not
   only as symbols but as tokens that all created things shall be ennobled
   and sanctified. Look, Sirs, "Creation was made subject to vanity, not
   willingly but by reason of Him who has subjected the same in hope."
   Through man's sin this outward world became blackened, darkened and
   degraded. But God intends, through man, to lift up the nethermost
   extremities of His creation into a greater nearness to Himself than
   they ever could have reached by any other means. And this is how it
   comes about. We are taking up with us, as it were, the earth which
   makes a part of ourselves.

   We are drawing up with ourselves the earth in those simple symbols with
   which we worship God. We are ourselves lifted up as spirits and we are
   soon to be lifted up as spirits enshrined in purified bodies and thus
   we bring the whole creation of God into nearer contact with Himself.
   Hence it is that we are called "kings and priests." What can the dead
   earth do in worship till there comes one who worships God as the
   world's priest? What can the fields and woods and hills say in the
   worship of God? They are dumb till a tongue attempts the holy task of
   uttering their praise. You and I are made of such stuff as the world
   around us and yet we are the compeers of angels.

   We are brothers to the worm. And this body of ours is but a child of
   mother earth on which it lives. See, then, how mother earth worships
   God through us and dull, dead matter, finds life and song. Behold the
   mists and the clouds become a steaming incense of praise to God through
   men like ourselves, who, because Christ was slain, have been made kings
   and priests unto God.

   I wish you would, rather than listen to me, try and muse upon the
   wonderful position which redeemed men do now occupy and will occupy
   forever and ever. For my own part, I would not change places with the
   angel Gabriel--not if he gave me his swift wing to boot--for I believe
   that an infinitely greater honor belongs to the least of God's children
   than to the very highest of God's servants. To be a child of God--oh,
   bliss!--there is no glory that can excel it. But all this is a special
   gift to our humanity through our Lord Jesus. "This is David's spoil."

   Our manifestation of the full glory of God is another of the choice
   gifts which the pierced hands of Jesus, alone, bestow. Principalities
   and powers shall see in the mystical body of Christ more of God than in
   all the universe besides. They will study in the saints the eternal
   purposes of God and see therein His love, His wisdom, His power, His
   justice, His mercy blended in an amazing way. They will admire forever
   those whom God loves and delights in, those whom He keeps as the apple
   of His eye. Those whom He rejoices over and of whom He has said that He
   will rest in His love and He will rejoice over them with singing. Truly
   it has not entered into the heart of man to guess at the glory of God
   in the saints--the exceeding glory which shall be revealed in us
   through Jesus Christ our Lord. "This is David's spoil." Oh, come, let
   us sing unto the Lord, let us magnify the name of Jesus Christ!

   III. I close with the most practical part of my sermon--that which we
   willingly give to Jesus may be called His spoil. There is a spoil for
   Christ which every true-hearted follower of His votes to Him
   enthusiastically. We have already seen that all things which we have
   are of Christ and that there are certain special gifts which are
   peculiarly of Christ. And now, what shall be David's spoil from you and
   from me?--

   "First, our hearts are His, alone, forever.

   Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it,

   Seal it for Your courts above."

   Of every believing heart it may be said, "This is David's spoil." You
   and I must give ourselves tomorrow to earning our daily bread and our
   thoughts must go, to a large extent, after earthly things in the common
   pursuits of everyday life. But our hearts, our hearts, are as fountains
   sealed for our Well-Beloved.

   O mammon, you shall not have them! O pleasure, you shall not have them!
   These are David's spoil. Our hearts belong to Jesus, only. "My son,
   give Me your heart," is an Old Testament command but under the New
   Testament manifestation of love

   we fulfill it--"for the love of Christ constrains us. Because we thus
   judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead--and that He died
   for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto
   themselves but unto Him which died for them and rose again." Let it be
   so that our whole heart is the sole possession of Jesus! We will
   neither rend it, nor cast lots whose it shall be, for "this is David's
   spoil."

   Now there is another property I should like King Jesus to have and that
   is our special gifts. I know one who, before his conversion, was likely
   to sing and he often charmed the ears of men with the sweet music which
   he poured forth. But when he was converted he said, "Henceforth my
   tongue shall sing nothing but the praises of God." He devoted himself
   to proclaiming the Gospel by his song, for he said, "This is David's
   spoil."

   Have you not some gift or other, dear Friend, of which you could say,
   "Henceforth this shall be sacred to my bleeding Lord?" Some peculiar
   faculty? Some choice piece of acquirement not generally possessed?
   Something in which you excel? I would that you had at least some little
   garden of flowers or herbs which you could so reserve that therein only
   Jesus should pluck the fruits. Say of the best gift you possess, "This
   is David's spoil." Is it not well to consecrate some part of the day
   and say, "This hour is Christ's"?

   "I have my work to do, my business must be seen to--all is Christ's.
   But, still I will reserve a special season and wall it in, like a
   private garden, in which, with prayer and praise and meditation, I will
   commune with my Lord, or else in actual service I will honor His name."
   Say, "This is David's spoil." Come dear Heart, what do you mean to give
   Him? Surely you have some natural faculty or acquired skill which you
   can lay at His feet.

   Moreover, while our whole selves must be yielded to the Lord Jesus
   there is one thing that must always be Christ's--and that is our
   religious homage as a Church. Somebody says that the Queen is head of
   the Church. God bless her. But she is not head of the Church of Christ!
   The idea is blasphemous--headship "is David's spoil." Jesus Christ is
   Head over all things to His Church and nobody else can take that
   position. No one may dare to take the title of "head of the Church"
   without an usurpation of our Lord's royal right.

   Certain teachers of the Church claim authority over conscience and
   assert that they are infallible. I have heard it said that they are
   supreme guides but I do not believe it, because, "This is David's
   spoil." We have one infallible Teacher and that is Jesus Christ our
   Savior. We yield obedience to His every word and demand that others
   should do the same. Whatsoever He says to us by His Spirit in the Word
   of God is to us infallible Truth and we cease to dispute when Jesus
   speaks. But no man else shall dictate doctrine to us, for "This is
   David's spoil."

   Jesus Christ must be sole Rabbi in the midst of His Church. We call Him
   Master and Lord for so He is. I would have you keep your conscience for
   Christ alone. Take care that no book ever overlaps the Bible, that no
   creed ever contradicts the form of sound words contained in God's own
   Word--that no influence of minister or writer supplants the guidance of
   the Holy Spirit. Your soul's obedience and faith belong to Jesus
   only--"This is David's spoil."

   Lastly, have you not something of your own proper substance that shall
   be David's spoil just now? That was a blessed act when the woman broke
   the most precious thing she had--her box of alabaster and let the
   perfumed nard stream down the Savior, anointing Him for His burial. She
   felt that the precious perfume was "David's spoil." There was no waste.
   In fact, no other gift ever went so completely to its purpose without
   being taxed on the road, for Jesus had it all. Kindly did He observe
   the loving honor which she paid Him. What if the ointment were sold and
   given to the poor? Yet it could never be so economically used as when
   it was all devoted to Him.

   I do think it so pleasant sometimes to give Jesus Christ distinctly a
   gift from yourself of somewhat that you will miss. It is good to give
   to the poor but it has a daintier sweetness in it to do somewhat
   distinctly for Him, for the spread of His own glory and the making
   known of His own fame. "The poor you have always with you"--abound
   towards them in your charity whenever you will--but to your Lord at
   special seasons dedicate a choice gift and say, "This is David's
   spoil."

   There was a poor woman once, whose little fortune could be carried
   between her finger and her thumb--her fortune I said, for it was all
   she had. Two mites, I am told, was all it came to. She took it--it was
   her all and she put it in the treasury. For this was "David's spoil."
   It belonged to the Lord her God and she gave it cheerfully. I do not
   know whether since the days of the Apostles anybody has ever given so
   much as that woman. I have not. Have you? She gave all her living. Not
   all her savings but all her living. She had nothing left when she gave
   her farthing--she loved so much that she consecrated all her living.

   We sometimes sing--

   "Yet if I might make some reserve,

   And duty did not call,

   I love my God with zeal so great

   That I would give Him all."

   But do we mean it? If not, why do we sing falsehoods? There was a man
   who, in the Providence of God, had been enabled to lay by many
   thousands. He was a very rich and respected man. I have heard it said
   that he owned at least half-a-million. And at one collection, when he
   felt especially grateful and generous, he found a well-worn sixpence
   for the plate, for that was David's spoil! That was David's spoil! Out
   of all that he possessed, that sixpence was David's spoil! This was the
   measure of his gratitude!

   Judge by this how much he owed, or at least how much he desired to pay.
   Are there not many persons who, on that despicable scale, reward the
   Savior for the travail of His soul? I shall not upbraid them. I shall
   not urge them to do more, lest I spoil the generosity of the large
   gifts they mean to bring. Let a hint suffice. For us, who are deep in
   the Redeemer's debt, who have had much forgiven, who every day are
   bankrupt debtors to the measureless mercy of infinite love--for us no
   paltriness will suffice. We must give something which, if it is not
   worthy of Him, shall, at least, express the truth and warmth of the
   gratitude we feel.

   God help us to be often setting aside this and that and the other
   choice thing and saying, "This is David's spoil and it shall be a joy
   to my heart to give it!" We shall find much sweetness in buying our
   sweet-cane with money and filling our Lord with the fat of our
   sacrifices. It is Heaven for a true heart to give largely to Jesus. God
   bless you, dear Friends. May we come to the table of communion and meet
   with our glorious David there and feel His praises making music in our
   hearts! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Cured At Last!

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, APRIL 8, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all
   her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind
   Him and touched the border of His garment: and immediately her issue of
   blood stanched." Luke 8:43, 44.

   THOUGH I take Luke's statement as a text, I shall constantly refer to
   the version of the same story which we find in Mark 5:25 to 29. Here we
   have one of the Lord's bid ones--a case not to be publicly described
   because of its secret sorrow. We have here a woman of few words and
   much shamefacedness. Her malady subjected her to grievous penalties
   according to the ceremonial Law. There is a terrible chapter in the
   Book of Leviticus concerning such a case as hers. She was
   unclean--everything that she sat upon and all who touched it--shared in
   the defilement. So that, in addition to her continual weakness, she was
   made to feel herself an outcast, under the ban of the Law.

   This created, no doubt, great loneliness of spirit, and made her wish
   to hide herself out of sight. In the narrative before us she said not a
   word until the Savior drew it out of her, for her own lasting good. She
   acted very practically and promptly but she was a silent seeker--she
   would have preferred to have remained in obscurity, if so it could have
   been. Some here may belong to the great company of the timid and
   trembling ones. If courage before others is needed to secure salvation,
   matters will go hard with them. They shrink from notice and are ready
   to die of shame because of their secret grief.

   Cowper's hymn describes their inward feelings, when it says of the
   woman--

   "Concealed amid the gathering throng She would have shunned your view,
   And if her faith was firm and strong, Had strong misgivings too."

   Such plants grow in the shade and shrink from the light of the sun. The
   nature of their sorrows forces them into solitary self-communion. Oh,
   that the Lord may heal such at this hour!

   The immediate cure of this woman is the more remarkable because it was
   a wayside miracle. The Savior was on the road to restore the daughter
   of Jairus. This woman's healing was an extra portion of Divine Grace, a
   sort of over-splash of the great fountain of mercy. The cup of our
   Lord's power was full, full to the brim--and He was bearing it to the
   house of the ruler of the synagogue. This poor woman did but receive a
   drop which He spilt on the way. We do well if, when going upon some
   errand of love, we concentrate all our energy upon it and do it well in
   the end--but the Savior could not only perform one great marvel but He
   could work another as a sort of by-play incidentally--I almost said
   "accidentally," on the road.

   The episodes of the Lord Jesus are as beautiful as the main run of His
   life's poem. Oh, that this day, while my sermon may seem meant for one
   and distinctly directed to his salvation, it may also, by the power of
   Jesus, save another not so clearly pointed at! While the Word is aimed
   at one particular character, may the Lord cause the very wind of the
   Gospel shot to overcome another--or, to change the figure for a better
   one, while we spread the table for some bid guest, may another hungry
   soul have Divine Grace given him to take his place at the banquet of
   Grace! May those who hide away and whom, therefore, we are not likely
   to discover, come forth to Jesus and touch Him and live!

   Let us at once speak of this much-afflicted woman, for she is a typical
   character. While we describe her conduct and her cure, I trust she may
   serve as a mirror in which many tremblers may see themselves. We shall
   carefully note what she had done and then what came of it. This will
   lead us on to see what she did, at last, and what we, also, should do.
   May the

   Holy Spirit make this a very practical discourse by causing you to
   follow her till you gain the blessing as she did! The preacher is very
   weak. And may the Lord, for this very reason, work by him to your
   salvation.

   Consider, therefore, concerning this woman, WHAT SHE HAD DONE. She had
   been literally dying for twelve years. What had she been doing? Had she
   resigned herself to her fate, or treated her malady as a small matter?
   Far from it. Her conduct is highly instructive.

   First, she had resolved not to die if a cure could be had. She was
   evidently a woman of great determination and hopefulness. She knew that
   this disease of hers would cause her life to ebb away and bring her to
   the grave. But she said within herself, "I will have a struggle for it.
   If there is a possibility of removing this plague it shall be removed,
   let it cost me what it may of pain or payment." Oh, what a blessing it
   would be if unsaved ones here would say each one for himself, "I am a
   lost soul. But if a lost soul can be saved, I will be saved. I am
   guilty. But if guilt can be washed away, mine shall be washed away. I
   have a hard heart and I know it. But if a heart of stone can be turned
   into a heart of flesh, I long to have it so and I will never rest until
   this gracious work is worked in me!"

   Alas, it is not so with many! Indifference is the rule. Indifference
   about their immortal souls! Many are sick with dire spiritual disease
   but they make no resolve to have it cured. They trifle with sin and
   death and Heaven and Hell. Insensibility has seized upon many and a
   proud conceit--they are full of sin, and yet they talk of
   self-righteousness, they are weak and can do nothing--yet they boast of
   their ability. They are not conscious of their true condition and hence
   they have no mind to seek a cure. How should they desire healing when
   they do not believe that they are diseased? How sad that beneath the
   ruddy cheek of morality there should lurk the fatal consumption of
   enmity to God!

   How horrible to be fair without and leprous within! Are there not many
   who can talk freely about religion and seem as if they were right with
   God and yet in the secret of their hearts they are the victims of an
   insincerity and a want of the Truth of God which fatally undermines the
   life of their profession? They are not what they seem to be--a secret
   sin drains away the lifeblood of their religion. May the Holy Spirit
   show every unregenerate person the fatal nature of his soul's disease.
   For this, I trust, would lead to the making of a firm resolve to find
   salvation, if salvation is to be had.

   No doubt some are held back from such action by the freezing power of
   despair. They have reached the conclusion that there is no hope for
   them. The promises of the Gospel they regard as the voice of God to
   others but as having no cheering word for them. One might suppose that
   they had searched the Book of Life and had made sure that their names
   were not written there. They act as if their death warrant had been
   signed. They cannot believe in the possibility of their becoming
   partakers of everlasting life. They are under a destroying delusion,
   which leads them to abandon hope. None are more presumptuous than the
   despairing. When men have no hope, they soon have no fear. Is not this
   a dreadful thing? May the Lord save you from such a condition!

   Despair of God's mercy is an unreasonable thing--if you think you have
   grounds for it, the lying spirit must have suggested them to you. Holy
   Scripture contains no justification for hopelessness. No mortal has a
   just pretense to perish in despair. Neither the nature of God nor the
   Gospel of God, nor the Christ of God, warrant despair. Multitudes of
   texts encourage hope. But no one Scripture, rightly understood, permits
   a doubt of the mercy of God. "All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be
   forgiven unto men." Jesus, the great Healer, is never baffled by any
   disease of human nature--he can cast out a legion of devils and raise
   the dead. Oh that I could whisper hope into the dull ear of yonder
   mourner! Oh that I could drop a rousing thought into the sullen heart
   of the self-condemned--how glad should I be! My poor desponding Friend,
   I would gladly see your chains snapped, your fetters broken off! Oh
   that the Spirit of God would cause you, like this woman, to resolve
   that if there is healing for your soul you will have it!

   Alas, many have never come to this gracious resolution because they
   cherish a vain hope and are misled by an idle dream. They fancy that
   salvation will come to them without their seeking it. Certainly they
   have no right to expect such a thing. It is true that our Lord is found
   of them that sought Him not. But that is an act of His own sovereignty
   and is not a rule for our procedure. The plain directions of the Gospel
   are, "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is
   near." How dare they set these gracious words aside? They fancy that
   they may wake up one of these fine days and find themselves saved.
   Alas, it is more likely to happen to them as the rich man in the
   parable, "In Hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments."

   God grant that none of you may trifle your souls into such misery! Some
   fancy that in the hour of death they may cry, "God be merciful to me a
   sinner," and so may leap into salvation. It seems to them a very slight
   business to be recon-

   ciled to God. They imagine that they can be converted just when they
   will and so they put it off from day to day, as if it were of no more
   consequence than going to shop to buy a coat or a gown. Believe me, the
   Word of God does not set forth the matter in this way. It tells us that
   even the righteous scarcely are saved and it rouses us to strive to
   enter in at the strait gate. God save you from every false confidence
   which would prevent your being in earnest about the healing of your
   souls.

   Spiritually, your case is as desperate as that of the poor woman now
   before us. May the Lord sweetly constrain you to feel that you must be
   healed and that you cannot afford to put off the blessed day! If
   beneath the firmament of Heaven there is healing for a sin-sick soul,
   seek it till you find it. When the Lord brings you to this resolve by
   His good Spirit, you will not be far from the kingdom of Heaven.

   Let us next note that this woman, having made her resolve, adopted the
   likeliest means she could think of. Physicians are men set apart on
   purpose to deal with human maladies, therefore she went to the
   physicians. What better could she do? Though she failed, yet she did
   what seemed most likely to succeed. Now, when a soul is resolved to
   find salvation, it is most fit and proper that it should use every
   likely means for the finding of salvation, Oh that they were wise
   enough to hear the Gospel and to come at once to Jesus! But often they
   make grave mistakes. This woman went to gentlemen who were supposed to
   understand the science of medicine. Was it not natural that she should
   look for help to their superior wisdom?

   She cannot be blamed for looking to the men of light and leading. Many,
   in these days, do the same thing. They hear of the new discoveries of
   professedly cultured men and hear their talk about the littleness of
   sin and the larger hope and the non-necessity of the new birth. Poor
   deceived creatures! They find in the long run that nothing comes of it.
   For the wisdom of man is nothing but pretentious folly. The world by
   wisdom knows neither God nor His salvation. Many there are who know
   less of the saving Truth of God because they know so much of what human
   fancy has devised and human search discovered. We cannot blame the
   woman that, being a simple soul and anxious for healing, she went to
   those first who were thought to know most. Let us not, with Christ so
   near, go roundabout as she did but let us touch our Lord at once.

   No doubt the sufferer also tried men who had diplomas, or were
   otherwise authorized to act as physicians. How can you blame her for
   going to those who were in the succession and had the official stamp?
   Many sin-sick souls nowadays are, at first, very hopeful that the
   ordained clergy can benefit them by their duly performed services and
   duly administered sacraments. At least, good men, eminent in the
   Church, may be looked to for aid--surely these know how to deal with
   souls! Alas, it is vain to look to men at all, and foolish to depend on
   official dignity, or special repute. Some teachers do not know much
   about their own souls and therefore know less about the souls of
   others.

   Vain is the help of man, be the man who he may. Whatever his
   popularity, learning, or eloquence, if you seek him for his prayers, or
   his teachings, as able to save you, you will certainly seek in vain. As
   this poor woman did--she is not to be blamed but to be commended, that
   she did what seemed best to her, according to her light. But you are
   warned--go not, therefore, to men.

   No doubt she met with some who boasted that they could heal her
   complaint at once. They began by saying, "You have tried So-and-So but
   he is a mere quack--mine is a scientific remedy. You have used a
   medicine which I could have told you would be worthless. But I have the
   secret. Put yourself absolutely into my hands and the thing is done. I
   have healed many that have been given up by all the faculty. Follow my
   orders and you will be restored." Sick persons are so eager to recover
   that they readily take the bait which is offered them by brazen
   impudence. An oily tongue and a bland manner, backed with unblushing
   assurance, are sure to win their way with one who is anxious to gain
   that which is offered.

   Ah, me, "All is not gold that glitters." And all the professions which
   are made of helping sin-sick souls are not true professions. Many
   pretenders to new revelations are abroad but they are physicians of no
   value. There is no balm in Gilead. There is no physician there--if
   there had been, the hurt of the daughter of my people had long ago been
   healed. There is no medicine beneath the sky that can stay the
   palpitations of a heart which dreads the judgment to come. No earthly
   surgery can take away the load of sin from the conscience. No hand of
   priest or presbyter, Prophet or philosopher, can cleanse the leprosy of
   guilt. The finger of God is wanted here. There is one Heal-all, one
   Divine Catholicon and only one.

   Happy is he that has received this infallible balm from Jehovah
   Rophi--the "Lord that Heals." Yet we marvel not, that when souls are
   pressed down with a sense of guilt, they try anything and everything
   which offers even a faint hope of relief. I could wish that all my
   hearers had an intense zeal to find salvation. For even if it led them
   into passing mistakes, yet, under God's blessing, they would find their
   way out of them and end by glorifying the Divine Grace of our Lord
   Jesus Christ which never fails.

   This woman, in the next place, having resolved not to die if a cure
   could be had and having adopted the likeliest means, persevered in the
   use of those means. No doubt she tried many and even opposite remedies.
   One doctor said, "You had better go to the warm baths of the lake of
   Tiberius--such bathing will be comforting and helpful." She grew worse
   at the warm bath, and went to another physician who said, "You were
   wrongly treated. You need bracing up in the cold baths of the Jordan."
   Thus she went from vanity to vanity, to find both of them useless. An
   eminent practitioner assured her that she needed an internal remedy and
   he alone could give her an infallible receipt.

   This, however, was of no use to her. And she went to another who said
   that an external application should be tried, such as Isaiah's lump of
   figs. What perseverance that woman must have had! I am not going to say
   anything about our doctors nowadays, no doubt they are the most learned
   and skillful that can be--but in earlier times surgery was murderous
   and medicines were poisonous. Many of the prescriptions of those days
   are sickening and yet ridiculous. I read yesterday a prescription, of
   our Savior's time, warranted to cure many diseases which consisted of
   grasshopper's eggs. These were supposed to exercise a marvelous
   influence but they are no longer in the list of medicines.

   The tooth of a fox was said to possess special powers. But I noticed
   that one of the chief drugs of all, the most expensive but the surest
   in its action, was a nail from the finger of a man who had been hanged.
   It was important that he should have been hanged--another fingernail
   might have had no efficacy. Poor creatures were made to suffer most
   painfully by cruel medicines which were far worse than the disease. As
   for surgical operations, if they had been designed to kill, they were
   certainly admirably arranged for their purpose. The wonder is that for
   twelve years poor human nature could stand out, not against the
   disease, but against the doctors.

   Brethren, the case is much the same spiritually. How many, under their
   burden of sin, go first to one and then to an-other--practice this and
   agonize after that and pine for the other--perseveringly and still
   without avail! Travel as fast as you may in a wrong direction you will
   not reach the place you seek. Vain are all things save Jesus our Lord.

   Have you been to Doctor Ceremony? He is, at this time, the fashionable
   doctor. Has he told you that you must attend to forms and rules? Has he
   prescribed you so many prayers and so many services? Ah, many go to him
   and they persevere in a round of religious observances but these yield
   no lasting ease to the conscience. Have you tried Doctor Morality? He
   has a large practice and is a fine old Jewish physician. "Be good in
   outward character," says he, "and it will work inwardly and cleanse the
   heart." A great many persons are supposed to have been cured by him and
   by his assistant, Doctor Civility, who is nearly as clever as his
   master. But I have it on good evidence that neither of them apart, nor
   even the two together, could ever deal with an inward disease.

   Do what you may, your own doings will not stanch the wounds of a
   bleeding heart. Doctor Mortification has also a select practice. But
   men are not saved by denying themselves until they first deny their
   self-righteousness. Doctor Excitement has many patients but his cures
   seldom outlive the sunset. Doctor Feeling is much sought after by
   tender spirits. These try to feel sorrow and remorse. But, indeed, the
   way of cure does not lie in that quarter. Let everything be done that
   can be done apart from our blessed Lord Jesus Christ and the sick soul
   will not be better. You may try human remedies for the space of a
   lifetime but sin will remain in power, guilt will cling to the
   conscience, and the heart will abide as hard as ever.

   But this woman not only thus tried the most likely means and persevered
   in the use of them but she also spent all her substance over it. That
   was perhaps the chief thing in ancient surgery!--the golden ointment
   which did good to the physician, whatever became of the patient. The
   most important point was to pay the doctor. This woman's living was
   wasting away as well as her life. She continued to pay and to pay and
   to pay. But she received no benefit from it. You might say, rather,
   that she suffered more than she would have done had she kept her gold.
   Thus do men waste their thought, their care, their prayer, their agony
   over that which is as nothing--they spend their money for that which is
   not bread.

   At last she came to her last shekel. In the end there was an end to her
   means. But so long as the silver lasted, she lavished it out of the
   bag. What would not a man give to be saved? I never wonder that dying
   men give their estates to priests in the hope that they can save their
   souls. If gold could purchase pardon, who would withhold it? Health of
   body, if it could be purchased with gold, would be cheap at any price.
   But health of soul, holiness of character, acceptance with God,
   assurance of Heaven--

   these would be cheap if we counted out worlds as poor men pay down
   their pence for bread. There are men so mean that they would not part
   with a pound for a place in Paradise. But if these once knew their true
   condition they would alter their minds. The price of wisdom is above
   rubies. If we had mines of gold, we might profitably barter them for
   the salvation of our souls.

   Beloved, you see where this woman was. She was in downright, desperate
   earnest to have her mortal malady healed and so she spared neither her
   labor nor her living. In this we may wisely imitate her.

   II. We have seen what the woman had done. Now let us think of WHAT HAD
   COME OF IT. We are told that she had suffered many things of many
   physicians. That was her sole reward for trusting and spending--she had
   not been relieved, much less healed. But she had suffered. She had
   endured much additional suffering through seeking a cure. That is the
   case with you who have not come to Christ but, being under a sense of
   sin, have sought relief apart from Him. All that you do apart from
   Jesus, in order to win salvation, will only cause you increased
   suffering.

   You have tried to save yourself by prayers. Your prayers have turned
   your thoughts upon your sin and its punishment and thus you have become
   more wretched than before. You have attended to ceremonies and if you
   have used them sincerely, they have worked in you a solemn sense of the
   holiness of God and of your own distance from Him. And this, though
   very proper, has only increased your sorrow. You have been trying to
   feel good and to do good, that so you may be good. But the very effort
   has made you feel how far off you are from the goodness you so much
   desire.

   Your self-denial has excited cravings after evil and your
   mortifications have given new life to your pride. Efforts after
   salvation made in your own strength act like the struggles of a
   drowning man, which sink the more surely. As the fruit of your
   desperate efforts, you have suffered all the more. In the end I trust
   this may work for your good, but up till now it has served no healing
   purpose--you are now at death's door and all your praying, weeping,
   Church-going, Chapel-going and sacrament-taking--do not help you one
   bit. There has been this peculiarly poignant pang about it all, that
   you are not better. Cheerily did you hope but cruelly are you
   disappointed.

   You cried, "I have it this time," but the bubble vanished as you
   grasped it. The evil of your nature, when repressed in one place, broke
   out in another. You dealt with the symptoms of your disease but you did
   not cut off the root of the mischief--it only showed itself in another
   form--it never went away. You gave up one sin only to fall into
   another--you watched at the front entrance and the thief stole in at
   the back door. Up till now, O Soul, you have not come to Jesus and
   after all your goings elsewhere, you are not better!

   And now, perhaps this morning you are saying, "What can I do? What
   shall I do?" I will tell you. You can do nothing except what this woman
   ultimately did, of which I will speak by-and-by. You are now brought to
   this extremity--that you are without strength, without merit, without
   power, and you must look out of yourself to another--one who has
   strength and merit, and can save you. God grant that you may look to
   that glorious One before this service is over!

   We read of this woman, that though she suffered much, she was not
   better but rather grew worse. No better after twelve years of medicine?
   She went to the Egyptian doctor and he promised her health in three
   months. She was worse. She tried the Syrian doctor--he was a man who
   had great knowledge of the occult sciences and was not ashamed to
   practice enchantments. She was bitterly disappointed to find herself
   decidedly weaker. Then she heard of a Greek practitioner, who would
   cure her, presto! in a instant. She paid her remaining money but she
   still went backward. She bought disappointment very dearly.

   Friend, is this your condition? You are anxious to be right, and
   therefore you are earnest in every effort to save yourself. But still
   you are not better. You climb a treadmill and are no higher after all
   your climbing. You drift down the river with one tide and you float up
   again when it turns. Night after night you pull up in the same old
   creek that you started from. Oh, pitiful condition! Getting gray,
   too--becoming quite the old gentleman. And yet no nearer eternal life
   than when, as a lad, you used to attend the House of God and wish to
   become a child of God.

   Was she better? No. She grew worse? Fresh mischief had developed--other
   diseases fed upon her weakness. She was more emaciated, more lifeless
   than ever. Sad result of so much perseverance! And is not that the case
   with some of you who are in earnest but are not enlightened? You are
   working and growing poorer as you work. There is not about you so much
   as there used to be of good feeling, or sincere desire, or
   prayerfulness, or love for the Bible, or care to hear the Gospel. You
   are becoming more careless, more dubious than you once were. You have
   lost much of you former sensitiveness. You are doing certain things now
   that would have startled you years ago and you are leaving certain
   matters undone which once you would have thought essential. Evidently
   you are caught in the current and are nearing the waterfall. The Lord
   deliver you!

   This is a sad, sad case! As a climax of it all, the heroine of our
   story had now spent all that she had. She could not go now to the
   Egyptian doctor, or to the Syrian doctor, or to the Hebrew doctor, or
   to the Roman doctor, or to the Greek doctor. No. Now she must do
   without their flattering unction in the future. As for those famous
   medicines which raised her hopes, she

   can buy no more of such costly inventions. This was, perhaps, her
   bitterest grief--but let me whisper it in your ear--this was the best
   thing that had yet happened to her. And I am praying that it may happen
   to some of you. At the bottom of your purse I trust you will find
   wisdom.

   When we come to the end of self we come to the beginning of Christ!
   That last shekel binds us to the pretenders but absolute bankruptcy
   sets us free to go to Him who heals diseases without money and without
   price. Glad enough am I when I meet with a man who is starved out of
   self-sufficiency. Welcome, Brother! Now you are ready for Jesus. When
   all your own virtue has gone out of you, then shall you seek and find
   that virtue which goes out of HIM.

   III. This brings to our notice, in the third place, WHAT THIS WOMAN DID
   AT LAST. Weaker and weaker had she become and her purse had become
   lighter and lighter. She hears of Jesus of Nazareth, a man sent of God
   who is healing sick folk of all sorts. She hears attentively. She puts
   the stories together that she hears. She believes them. They have the
   likeness of the Truth of God about them. "Oh," says she, "there is yet
   another opportunity for me. I will get in the crowd and if I can only
   touch the bit of blue which he wears as the border of his garment, I
   shall be made whole."

   Splendid faith! It was thought much of in her own day and we may still
   more highly prize it now that faith has grown so rare. Note well she
   resolved to trust in Jesus in sheer despair of doing anything else. My
   dear Friend, I do not know where you are sitting this morning in this
   great congregation--I almost wish I did, that I might come up to you
   and say to you personally, "Try Jesus Christ, trust Him and see whether
   He will not save you. Every other door is evidently shut--why not enter
   by Christ, the Door? There is no other life buoy. Lay hold on this! Say
   with our poet--

   "I can but perish if I go; I am resolved to try; For if I stay away, I
   know I must forever die."

   Exercise the courage which is born of desperation. May God the Holy
   Spirit help you now to thrust forth your finger and get into touch with
   Jesus! Say, "Yes, I freely accept Christ. By God's grace, I will have
   Him to be my only hope. I will have Him now." Be driven to Jesus by
   force of circumstances. Since there is no other port, O weather-beaten
   boat, make for this One! Wanderer, here is a Refuge! Turn in here, for
   there is no other shelter.

   After all, this was the simplest and easiest thing that she could do.
   Touch Jesus. Put out your finger and touch the hem of His garment. The
   prescriptions she had purchased were long. But this was short enough.
   The operations performed upon her had been intricate. But this was
   simplicity itself. The suffering she had endured had complicated her
   case. But this was as plain as a pikestaff. "Touch with your finger the
   hem of His garment--that is all." O my Hearer, you have tried many
   things, great things and hard things and painful things--why not try
   this simple matter of faith? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you
   shall be saved. Trust Jesus to cleanse you and He will do it. Put
   yourself into your Savior's hands once and for all, and He will save
   you.

   Not only was this the simplest and easiest thing for the poor afflicted
   one, but certainly it was the freest and most gracious. There was not a
   penny to pay. Nobody stood at the door of the consulting room to take
   her guinea. And the good Physician did not even give a hint that He
   expected a reward. The gifts of Jesus are free as the air. He healed
   this believing woman in the open street, in the midst of the crowd. She
   had felt that if she could but get into the throng, she would, by hook
   or by crook, get near enough to reach the hem of His garment and then
   she would be healed.

   It is so this morning, dear Hearer. Come and receive Divine Grace
   freely. Bring no good works, no good words, no good feelings, no good
   resolves, as the price of pardon. Come with an empty hand and touch the
   Lord by faith. The good things which you desire, Jesus will give you as
   the result of His cure. But they cannot be the cause or the price of
   it. Accept His mercy as the gift of His love! Come empty-handed and
   receive! Come undeserving and be favored! Only come into contact with
   Jesus, who is the Fountain of Life and you shall be saved.

   This was the quietest thing for her to do. She said nothing. She did
   not cry aloud like the blind men. She did not ask friends to look on
   and see her make her venture. She kept her own counsel and pushed into
   the press. In absolute silence she took a stolen touch of the Lord's
   robe. O my Hearer, you can be saved in silence. You have no need to
   speak to any person of your acquaintance, not even to mother or father.
   At this moment, while in the pew, believe and live. Nobody will know
   that you now are touching the Lord. In after days you will own your
   faith but in the act itself you will be alone and unseen. Believe on
   Jesus. Trust yourself with Him. Have done with all other confidences
   and say, "He is all my salvation." Take Jesus at once, if not with a
   hand's grasp, yet with a finger's touch. O you poor, timid, bashful
   Creature, touch the Lord! Trust in His power to save. Do not let me
   tell you to do it in vain but do it at once. May God's Spirit cause you
   to accept Jesus now!

   This is the only effectual thing. Touch Jesus and salvation is yours at
   once. Simple as faith is, it is never-failing. A touch of the fringe of
   the Savior's garment sufficed--in a moment she felt in her body that
   she was healed of that plague. "It is twelve years ago," she said to
   herself, "since I felt like a living woman. I have been sinking in a
   constant death all this while, but now I feel my strength come back to
   me." Blessed be the name of the great Healer! She was exceeding glad.
   Tremble she did, lest it should turn out to be too good to be true. But
   she was most surely healed. O my dear Hearer, do trust my Lord, for He
   will surely do for you that which none other can achieve. Leave feeling
   and working and try faith in Jesus. May the Holy Spirit lead you to do
   so at once!

   IV. And now, poor convicted Sinner! Here comes the driving home of the
   nail. DO AS THIS WOMAN DID--ask nobody about it--but do it. She did not
   go to Peter, James and John and say, "Good Sirs, advise me." She did
   not beg from them an introduction to Jesus but she went of her own
   accord and tried for herself the virtue of a touch. You have had
   advising enough. Now come to real work. There is too much tendency to
   console ourselves by conversations with godly men--let us get away from
   them and speak to their Master. Talks in the enquiry room and chats
   with Christian neighbors are all very well. But one touch of Jesus will
   be infinitely better.

   I do not blame you for seeking religious advice--this may be a half-way
   house to call at but do not make it the terminus. Press on till, by
   personal faith, you have laid hold on Jesus. Do not tell anybody what
   you are about to do. Wait till it is done. Another day you will be
   happy to tell the minister and God's people of what the Lord has done
   for you. But for the present, quietly believe in the Lamb of God which
   takes away the sin of the world. Do not even ask yourself about it. If
   this poor woman had consulted with herself she might never have
   ventured so near the Holy One of God. So clearly shut out from society
   by the Law of her people and her God, if she had given the matter a
   second thought, she might have abandoned the idea.

   Blessed was the impetuosity which thrust her into the crowd and kept
   her head above the throng and her face towards the Lord in the center
   of the press. She did not so much reason as dare. Do not ask yourself
   anything about it. But do it. Believe and have done with it. Stop not
   to parley with your own unbelief, nor answer your rising doubts and
   fears. But at once, this instant, put out your finger, touch the hem of
   His garment and see what will come of it. God help you to do so while I
   am speaking!

   Yield to the sacred impulse which is just now operating upon you. Do
   not say, "Tomorrow may be more convenient." In this woman's case there
   was the Lord before her. She longed to be healed at once and so, come
   what may, into the crowd she plunged. She was so enfeebled that one
   wonders how she managed to get near Him. But possibly the crowd took
   her off her feet and carried her onward, as often happens in a rush.
   However, there was her chance and she seized it. There was the fringe
   of the Lord's mantle--out went her finger--it was all done.

   O my Friend, you have an opportunity now, by God's great grace, for you
   are in His House of Prayer. Jesus of Nazareth passes by at this moment.
   He who speaks to you is not trying to say pretty things but he is
   pining to win your soul for Jesus. Oh, how I wish I could lead you to
   that saving touch! The Spirit of God can do it. May He now move you to
   cry--"I will believe in the appointed sacrifice and trust my soul with
   Jesus"! Have you done so? You are saved. "He that believes in Him has
   everlasting life."

   "Oh but I tremble so!" So did she whom Jesus healed. Her hand shook but
   she touched Him all the same for that. I think I see her quivering
   finger. Poor emaciated woman, with pale and bloodless cheeks! What a
   taper finger was that which she held out and how it quivered! However
   much the finger of your faith may tremble, if it does but touch the hem
   of the Lord's garment, virtue will flow from Him to you. The power is
   not in the finger which touches but in the Divine Savior who is
   touched. So long as there is a contact established between you and the
   almighty power of Jesus, His power will travel along your trembling
   finger and bring healing to your heart.

   A telegraph wire may shake with the wind and yet convey the electric
   current and so may a trembling faith convey salvation from Jesus. A
   strong faith which rests anywhere but in Jesus, is a delusion. But a
   weak faith which rests alone on Jesus, brings sure salvation. Out with
   your finger, dear Soul, out with your finger! Do not go away till you
   have touched the Lord by a believing prayer or hope. Holy Spirit, do
   not suffer any to quit the Tabernacle until, by a believing desire, or
   trust, or confidence of some sort, they have established a contact
   between themselves and Jesus and have felt the virtue enter them for
   their instant healing.

   O Lord, save this people! Why do you come, Sunday after Sunday, in such
   crowds? And why must I stand here and bleed my heart away in love to
   your souls? Is the sole result to be that I help you to spend an
   hour-and-a-half in a sort of religious amusement? What a waste it is of
   my labor and of your time unless some gracious work is done! O Sirs, if
   you are not brought

   to Christ, my preaching will prove a curse to you! It appalls me to
   think that the preaching of the Gospel will be a savor of death unto
   you unless it brings you life. Put not the day of Divine Grace from
   you.

   By the living God, I do implore you, trust the living Redeemer. As I
   shall meet you all, face to face, before the Judgment Seat of Christ, I
   do implore and beseech you--put out the finger of faith and trust the
   Lord Jesus, who is so fully worthy to be trusted. The simple trust of
   your heart will stay the death which now works in you. Lord, give that
   trust, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?"

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, APRIL 22, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the
   Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for Me?"
   Jeremiah 32:26,27.

   THIS method of questioning the person to be instructed is known to
   teachers as the Socratic method. Socrates was likely, not so much to
   state a fact as to ask a question and draw out thoughts from those whom
   he taught. His method had long before been used by a far greater
   teacher. Putting questions is Jehovah's frequent method of instruction.
   When the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind it was with a series of
   questions. "Know you the ordinances of Heaven? Can you set the dominion
   thereof in the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that
   abundance of waters may cover you? Can you send lightning, that they
   may go and say unto you, Here we are?" and so forth.

   Questions from the Lord are very often the strongest affirmations. He
   would have us perceive their absolute certainty. They are put in this
   particular form because He would have us think over His great thought
   and confirm it by our own reflections. The Lord shines upon us in the
   question and our answer to it is the reflection of His light. The
   Infallible One challenges a contradiction, or even a doubt. "Is
   anything too hard for Me?" is the strongest way of saying that nothing
   can be too hard for Him, for it proclaims defiance to Heaven and earth
   and Hell, to produce a difficulty which can perplex the Lord.

   I invite you, therefore, dear Friends, to turn the question over in
   your minds till the omnipotence of Jehovah shall be your one
   all-absorbing thought. You cannot think of anything which renders it
   necessary to put a footnote to the text. Search well and see if it
   needs qualification. See whether there is an exception to the rule of
   absolute omnipotence. Revolve the Divine question long and well--"Is
   anything too hard for Me?" May your thoughts be awake at this time! May
   the Truth of the text take possession of your minds and fill them with
   its fragrance even as the woman's box of ointment filled the room with
   its perfume!

   I. I shall ask you, first, to consider the wonderful question of our
   text which the Lord put to the Prophet, VIEWING IT AS NECESSARY. The
   utterance of these words was no superfluity, there was need for them to
   be spoken. Flesh is frail and mortal minds are forgetful. And Jeremiah,
   great as he was, was but a man.

   It was needful to tell the Prophet this though he knew it. He never
   doubted that the Lord is Almighty and yet it was needful for Jehovah
   Himself to speak home this Truth to his mind and heart. It is often
   necessary for the Lord Himself to drive home a Truth into the mind of
   His most faithful servant. None can teach as the Lord teaches. Truth is
   never fully known by the sons of Zion until the Lord teaches it to
   them. Hence it is written, "all your children shall be taught of the

   Lord."

   We learn much in many ways, but we learn nothing vitally and
   practically till the Spirit of God becomes our schoolmaster. The God of
   Truth must teach us the Truth of God or we shall never learn it.
   Jeremiah knew this Truth in his inmost soul--see the sixteenth and
   seventeenth verses of this chapter--"I prayed unto the Lord, saying,
   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." He expressed the Truth admirably and yet the Lord saw it needful
   to give him a special Divine Revelation to impress it more fully upon
   his heart.

   Brethren, it is one thing to know that such a doctrine is true and
   quite another thing to know the Truth itself. We need to be persuaded
   of it so as to embrace it. It is a glorious thing to see Truth blaze
   out as if written in letters of fire. We are far too apt to put Truth
   down in our creed and after that to shut it away from practical
   everyday use. We believe it and we should be indignant if anybody
   disputed it. And yet we ignore it. The Truth of God laid upon the shelf
   is as

   good as unknown. Doctrines which are disputed often have the most
   influence upon the community because they are brought clearly before
   men's minds. And being threshed out, they yield seed for the sower and
   bread for the eater.

   We read in one of the Epistles, "I put you in remembrance of these
   things, though you know them and are established in the present truth."
   There is a Proverb which says that, "Truth is mighty and will prevail."
   That is true, as far as it goes. But the Truth of God may be formally
   admitted and then it may be laid aside and so may never prevail. It is
   ill to treat a Truth like some great Egyptian king who is swathed in
   fine linen, embalmed with precious spices and pompously placed in the
   tomb with other honorable mummies. The Lord would not have the Truth of
   His own omnipotence thus dealt with, and therefore He comes forth from
   His secret place and speaks personally to His servant, saying, "Is
   anything too hard for Me?"

   May the Lord do the same with us in reference to the precious Truths of
   His Gospel! May the Holy Spirit Himself take of the things of Christ
   and show them to us. Then shall we see them in their own light and know
   them as Divine realities!

   But I go a step further and say that it is necessary for us to be thus
   specially instructed, even though we know a Truth well enough to plead
   it in prayer, as Jeremiah did when he cried, "There is nothing too hard
   for You." That man is no mean scholar in the classes of Christ who has
   learned to handle Scriptural Truths when pleading with the Lord. Oh,
   that we used more argument in prayer! Prayers are weak when they lack
   pleadings. "Bring forth your strong reasons, says the Lord." The sinews
   of prayer are the holy arguments which we urge with the Lord, such as
   His own promises and our great needs--His own glory, His covenant, the
   malice of the enemy, and so forth. We know great Truths of God well
   when we see their bearing towards God in supplication.

   And yet, though we may be able to plead it in supplication, we may not
   even, then, know the Truth to the full. O men of God, you that are
   fathers in Israel, may the Holy Spirit still teach you, till you know
   all the power and fullness of His Truth. In lowliness of spirit I doubt
   not that you still cry--

   "I find myself a learner yet, Unstable, weak and apt to slide." May the
   Comforter continually bring to your remembrance the things which Jesus
   has told you till you know the heart and soul of them.

   You gracious mothers in Israel, may God reveal Himself to you more and
   more and even those Truths which you already plead in your closet may
   He yet cause you to realize more vividly still. May you weave songs as
   well as prayers out of the Truth of God. This Truth of His omnipotence
   may He come and speak to our hearts as He did to the heart of
   Jeremiah--

   "Behold, I am Jehovah, the God of all flesh-- Is there anything too
   hard for Me?" But I must yet go a step further. It is necessary for God
   thus to reveal Truth individually to each of our hearts even though we
   may have acted on it. Jeremiah had acted on the fact that nothing was
   too hard for God. He had but very little money. And in days of famine
   and pestilence money was very precious. A morsel of bread was worth
   silver during the siege. Poor Jeremiah had not many shekels and those
   shekels would all be wanted in one way and another for the necessaries
   of life. And yet he had counted into the scales the price of a piece of
   land at Anathoth, which he would probably never see, much less enjoy.

   The Lord had bid him do so and he had done it without demur. Beloved,
   it is a great thing to be a little child before God, unquestioningly
   obedient to our Father's will. We may not calculate consequences, nor
   estimate difficulties. We are to do what the Lord tells us, as He tells
   us, when He tells us. O you Jeremiahs, it is--

   "Yours not to reason why, Yours at all price to buy."

   Jeremiah did not doubt, debate, or even delay. He signed the deed and
   took care to have it properly preserved. If you see any difficulty,
   obey the Lord first and seek an explanation afterwards, for so the
   Prophet did. He obeyed in the full confidence that nothing was too hard
   for God.

   After his obedience he began to look back on what he had done and to be
   considerably bewildered while trying to make out how God would justify
   what He had done. Elijah himself was faint, though he had taken the
   Prophets of Baal and slain them before the Lord--but the faintness came
   after the conflict and not before it. This is much the best time for

   faintness, if we faint at all. He was the Prophet of fire, a man of
   iron firmness for his Master, yet after the strong excitement had
   passed he was overcome and it was needful for his Lord to revive him.

   The best of men are men at the best. If the Lord lifts you up into the
   purity and dignity of a child-like faith, yet you will have your
   moments when you will cry, "Lord, speak to me Yourself again, even
   though it be out of the whirlwind. And let me know that I have done all
   these things according to Your word and not after my own fancy." Even
   the practice of Truth does not raise us above the need of having it
   again and again laid home to the soul. So, you see, our gracious God
   applies to our hearts the Truth which we know, which we plead and which
   we practice--that it may come even yet more fully into our soul and
   abide there.

   Another necessity for this arises out of further manifestations with
   which we are to be favored. God had caused Jeremiah to know His
   omnipotence so far but he was to see still more of it. Faith has led
   you into marvelous places. But there are greater things before you and
   the Lord presses Truth upon you that you may receive more of it. Did
   you ever climb a mountain? A friend of mine, when among the Alps,
   asserted confidently that he could reach the top of a certain mountain
   in half-an-hour. It certainly looked very near us but my eye had been
   better educated to estimate distances among mountains and I assured him
   that it would take him all the day to stand upon that ridge.

   The fact is, that when you have climbed one stiff bit of hill you find
   yourself bound to go down into a valley before you can tackle the next
   ascent. There are hills above hills and one summit is a sort of lookout
   from which you see that you have much further to go. That which looked
   like a part of the side of the hill may really be a mountain by itself.
   And when you have ascended it, you have the cheering privilege of
   seeing that you are now at the bottom of the next. In fact, although
   you are decidedly higher, you often seem to have further to go than
   when you started.

   It is just so with our experience of Divine things--when we know the
   Lord to the full of our capacity, that capacity enlarges and we begin
   to learn again. We know more and for that very reason are far more
   conscious of our ignorance than we were at the first. The Lord Himself
   came to His servant Jeremiah and thus prepared him for those greater
   things which He was about to reveal. The Lord had told him what to do
   and he had done it and thus he had believed up to the highest degree of
   that which was revealed to him. And therefore the Lord was going to
   reward his obedient faith by committing to him other mysteries and
   prophecies of the future.

   The city was to be burned and to be destroyed. God would wash out the
   footprints of sin in the blood of the sinners and lay their land
   utterly waste. And yet the day would come when the scattered people
   would come back and lands and vineyards would be bought and sold,
   whereof the buying of the field at Anathoth was a type and a pledge.
   Then the Lord would restore the nation to more than its former
   prosperity and make with the people an Everlasting Covenant that He
   would not turn away from them to do them good and would put His fear in
   their hearts that they should not depart from

   Him.

   All that he had already believed would prepare Jeremiah to believe in
   this amazing blessing. Possibly some of you imagine that it would be an
   easy thing for him to believe well of Israel but, indeed, you forget
   how the people had treated him. He had been dealing with them patiently
   and tearfully for many years and they had proved a most perverse,
   rebellious and cruel people. They had jested at his tears, disbelieved
   his prophecies and refused his warnings. He was even then in prison for
   having spoken the Truth. So that it needed that God Himself should come
   to him and cheer him as to these people, saying, "I am the Lord, the
   God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for Me?"

   The stiff-necked people could be brought to obedience and should be,
   for the Lord Himself would do it. The Lord would take away the stony
   heart out of their flesh and make them a lovingly obedient people. This
   was impossible with Jeremiah but possible with Jehovah. He will yet be
   glorified even in the midst of those who have dishonored Him and
   despised His Prophets. Thus you see how wise it was of the Lord to
   repeat to His servant that which he knew, pleaded and acted on--that he
   might be made to believe still more fully in the all-sufficiency of the
   Lord his God.

   II. Under the second head of our discourse we shall look at the text
   REGARDING IT AS DECISIVE. "Then came the Word of the Lord unto
   Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there
   anything too hard for Me?" This argument is decisive. For the argument
   is fetched from the Lord Himself. Note this--in his prayer, Jeremiah
   drew his encouragement from what the Lord had done. Observe "Ah, Lord
   God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great
   power and stretched out arm and there is nothing too hard for You."

   Creation is a fine argument. The God that made the heavens and the
   earth without help from any can surely do anything He pleases. He who
   made the mountains and the sea and the isles thereof can do anything.
   He who created the skies and made the stars also in the far-off
   space--those great and mighty orbs--what is there that He cannot do?
   This was good argument for Jeremiah. But Jehovah does not point to His
   works, nor quote creation nor Providence--He speaks of Himself--the
   source of all, from where a thousand earths and heavens might flow like
   streams from a fountain. There it stands in its majestic simplicity--"I
   am Jehovah."

   When we look to God alone and think, by the help of His Spirit, of who
   He is and what He must be, then we realize that nothing can be too hard
   for Him. Alas, what feeble notions we have of God! I dare say we think
   that we magnify Him but in reality we belittle Him with our highest
   thoughts. When we go down to the sea of trial and do business on great
   waters of trouble we find that we know little enough of God. When we
   see His wonders on the deep we are astonished and overwhelmed and if
   one of His storms should arise, our faith is staggered. If we did but
   rise to an idea of God--if we could but form a fair idea of the
   immeasurable greatness of His power--doubt and mistrust would become
   impossible. "Is anything too hard for Me?" says Jehovah.

   Meditate much upon the Divine Father, Creator and Preserver. Meditate
   upon the Divine Son, the risen Redeemer, who has all power in Heaven
   and in earth. Meditate upon the sacred Spirit, of whom the rushing
   mighty wind in the tornado is but a faint symbol and you will feel that
   here is the source of all might. "I am Jehovah." The argument takes you
   to Himself and coming to you from His own mouth the reason is a
   decisive one.

   But He means us also to see the argument as founded on His name, "I am
   Jehovah." I am always sorry that our revisers had not the courage of
   their knowledge and had left the Divine name as it is in the original
   Hebrew and given us the word "Jehovah" where they usually put LORD. It
   is a name of awe and glory, and the Christian Church must get back to
   it and return more distinctly to the worship of Jehovah. The God of
   Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob--this God is our God forever and ever.
   And we might more clearly have recognized this if the incommunicable
   name had been preserved to us in our version of the sacred Scriptures.

   The name brings out the personality of God. Those who say that there is
   no God, are, some of them, forced to admit that there is a central
   force--a power which makes for righteousness. They talk of an
   impersonal something but we believe in a personal God and he who has no
   personal God has, in truth, no God at all. I cannot call an unknown
   force my Father, and I cannot address my trust or my prayer to it. It,
   indeed! The Creator of persons an it! We want Him, a Person, a
   conscious, thinking, acting personality. This we have here--"I am
   Jehovah." The name signifies self-existence. God does not exist because
   of His surroundings--He draws nothing from without. His life is in
   Himself. He derives no support or aid from anything outside of Himself.
   Indeed, there is nothing which has not come of Him. All things were
   made by Him and He sustains all things by the word of His power.

   The name of Jehovah reminds us that He has within Himself sufficiency
   for all His will. He has adequate power of performance for all His
   purposes and decrees. Jehovah wills and it is done. He has created
   legions of angels but He borrows nothing from them. He can truly say,
   "I Am and there is none beside Me." Those mysterious living creatures
   which are nearest to His Throne are His creatures and not His helpers.
   The best instructed and the most willing of His servants derive their
   all from Him but supply Him with nothing. Remembering the name,
   Shaddai, God All-Sufficient, we understand all the better His question,
   "Is anything too hard for Me?"

   He lays the burden of the question upon His own Self. The whole stress
   of that which is hard in itself and too hard for others, He meets with
   that word, "I am Jehovah." All the power that can possibly be required
   in any imaginable case is in that name "Jehovah"! It is an immeasurable
   word--the eagle's wing cannot rise to its height. He that dives into
   the abyss cannot reach its depth. Jehovah's name is higher than Heaven,
   deeper than Hell, broader than space and greater than all things. What
   can we know of this infinite Word, "I am Jehovah"?

   Moreover, the name sets forth the Truth that He is immutable--He is "I
   Am that I Am." Time does not affect Him, nor change come near Him. He
   is never less than Jehovah. He cannot be more. We may at any moment of
   the dark night rest as confidently upon the I AM as in the brightest
   day. In fact, the meaning of that glorious word is infinite and
   unutterable. I do not wonder that the Jew should fear to write it and
   substitute for it the word Adonai, or Lord. We, casting away the
   superstition, feel an equal reverence and when our God says to us, "I
   am Jehovah," we bow before Him and confess that all questioning of
   possibility is ended forever.

   Yet in the text please notice that the argument is also founded on the
   Lord's relation to man. "I am the Lord, the God of all flesh." There is
   no other God for man anywhere or at any time save Jehovah. The gods of
   the heathen, aha, aha! They deserve no such name--they are idols but
   our God made the heavens. There is one living and true God for all
   flesh. There is, there can be no other. There is no room for another
   god, for our God fills all things. He is the God of all flesh, for "it
   is He that made us and not we ourselves."

   We have neither been evolved by Law, nor struck out by chance. The
   wretched it, which idiots talk of, is no sire of ours--Jehovah is the
   Maker of all flesh--

   "His sovereign power, without our aid, Made us of clay and formed us
   men." We rejoice that all flesh have such a God. Yet note that before
   the Lord, men are only "flesh." Hear this, you kings and great ones of
   the earth! He calls you "flesh." How sorrowfully do we see the truth of
   this in the heart-rending sickness of one of the greatest and best
   beloved of potentates! How wretchedly do we see it amidst the pomp of
   the funeral when the greatest of the great are carried out to be laid
   in the pasture of the worm!

   Hear this, you men of light and leading! You who have bedecked your
   names with all the letters of the alphabet! You, too, with all your
   learning, are but flesh. Do I hear you say of such a one--he is a great
   man? Is "great" a word which can be linked with flesh? What is the
   grandeur, the glory, the pomp of flesh? All flesh is grass and grass is
   cut down and withers. Right surely is he accursed that trusts in man
   and makes flesh his arm. You tell me of the charms of beauty. You sing
   of your beloved so white and ruddy--think what they will come to
   by-and-by. Flesh! Ah me! Leave it to itself. Is there anything fouler
   or more putrid than flesh when God calls back the spirit which quickens
   it?

   Behold the harvest of flesh in the garner of the sepulcher! See how the
   great reaper heaps up corruption! This is what we are, Brothers and
   Sisters. God sees us in our true condition and He calls us "flesh." Yet
   I do rejoice that, while we are flesh, He is our God. How is the worm
   linked to the immortal! Happy men who have such a God! Not that flesh
   and blood, as they are, can inherit the kingdom of God, nor that
   corruption can dwell with incorruption. But for Believers in the Lord
   Jesus there is a resurrection which shall lift us into a body of a
   nobler sort. We shall soon be rid of this carrion and we shall be aloft
   with Him where He dwells. And then, in the day of His appearing, even
   this poor body shall put on glory and in our flesh shall we see God.

   As the Lord makes the dull gold of earth into clear gold, like unto
   transparent glass, even so He makes this vile body to be like the
   glorious body of our risen and ascended Lord. We bow before the Lord,
   even we who are but dust and ashes, yes, worse--who are but flesh--and
   we bless His name, that yet He deigns to call us His people and to be
   our God. The argument is that since Jehovah is the God of all flesh He
   can effect His purposes by men and work among them things which seem
   impossible. The argument is so great that it puts all other arguments
   out of court.

   Poor Jeremiah is puzzled--he has been buying that acre or two of land
   which he will never see and his pockets are empty. And Baruch has been
   putting away the title-deeds in an earthen vessel, with a half-smile
   upon his face. The Prophet sits down and thinks over the transaction
   and his reason as the devil whispers, "What a fool you are! You might
   just as well have bought a horn of the new moon." Yet, somehow it must
   be made to appear a wise and sensible transaction, for the Lord never
   makes fools of His people. Jeremiah feels that as the command came from
   Jehovah, his own judgment is out of court--it is for the Lord and not
   for him to make good the transaction.

   All Jerusalem was to be burned and destroyed. What could be the use of
   his purchase? But, then, the condition of Jerusalem was not the point
   to be considered. God had said, "I am Jehovah," and that had put the
   King of Judah and his mighty men out of the reckoning. Is anything too
   hard for Jehovah? Come, Jeremiah, rake up your difficulties. Set in
   order the discouraging circumstances. Call in your friends, who all
   shake their heads at you and point their fingers to their brows, as
   much as to insinuate that you are a little gone from your senses. And
   then, answer them all with this-- "nothing is too hard for Jehovah."

   This clears the deck of every doubt that would board your vessel. This
   is the blessed argument which answers every difficulty and sets faith
   upon a rock from which it cannot be removed! "My soul, wait you only
   upon God. For my expectation is from Him."

   III. Having led you thus far, I now would have you follow me in
   something practical, namely, APPLYING IT IN DETAIL. The text says, "Is
   anything too hard for Me?" Apply this question to the justification of
   your obedience. When

   you know what is right it will happen, more often than not, that to do
   right will be costly or at least risky--and if you judge after the
   manner of worldly-wise men you will consider yourselves likely to be
   losers by obeying God. You may lose friends, reputation, assistance and
   peace. This question of loss is answered at once by this fact--if you
   do what God bids you--the responsibility of your conduct lies with Him
   and He will bear you through. "Is anything too hard for the

   Lord?"

   As He justified the action of His servant Elijah at Carmel and
   justified the purchase made by Jeremiah, so will He justify all the
   obedient actions of His people. He will bring forth our judgment as the
   light and our righteousness as the noonday. Apply this glorious Truth
   of God to the sure fulfillment of all the Divine promises. Consider a
   great one to begin with. This chapter evidently shows that the Jews are
   one day to be converted and restored. Do you believe it? "Oh," says
   one, "that would be a wonder"! It will be a wonder and the text may be
   read, "Is anything too wonderful for

   Me?"

   He can call them off from money-hunting--can take away their unbelief
   concerning the Lord Jesus. He can cause the lips which now revile the
   name of the Crucified to sing praises to the Nazarene. Glory be to His
   name, He can cause the waters of Siloa, which flow softly, again to
   flow with blessing and make the desolate land again to blossom as the
   rose. They that crucified the Lord of Glory shall look on Him whom they
   pierced and shall mourn for Him. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

   Apply this to any case of great sin. Select anyone whom you knew to be
   especially hard-hearted and pray for him earnestly and hopefully.
   Choose out some glaring sinner, or special heretic, or fierce hater of
   religion and pray for him. You say to yourself, "I will choose an
   easier case." Do not. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Will you, in
   your judgment, set anyone beyond the reach of mercy and out of the
   bounds of grace? Make an application of our text to the most desperate
   and loathsome sinner and believe that nothing is too hard for the Lord.
   O chief of sinners, if you are here this morning--blasphemer, swearer,
   thief, drunkard, whoremonger, harlot, take home this question to
   yourself--Thus says the Lord, "Is anything too hard for Me?"

   If you believe in the Lord Jesus, God has saved you, saved you now. He
   can and will wash every believing sinner from all his sins through the
   blood of Jesus and He will graciously blot out all his iniquities.
   Remember how He forgave David and Manasseh and the dying thief and Saul
   of Tarsus and the woman that was a sinner? May the Holy Spirit make a
   personal application of omnipotent love to each of you who now feel
   your sins! Salvation is not too hard a thing for the Lord.

   Apply this to difficult Truths of God. I will put before you a problem.
   There is the Truth of man's free agency. It is an easy cut, you know,
   to deny that there is such a thing as free will. But it is not fair,
   for men are responsible, free agents, and God has endowed them with
   will. But the knotty question arises--if man acts freely in his sinful
   actions how can predestination be a fact? If every man acts after his
   own will, how, then, does God foreordain all things? I answer, "Is
   anything too hard for Jehovah?" The solving of this great problem
   constrains me to worship the Lord. For He does solve it in actual
   history.

   I could understand God's executing His purposes upon material
   substances such as stones and wood. But this is the grandeur of His
   power, that while He leaves men free agents and does not in any case
   lead them to sin, yet they do act exactly as He foretold that they
   would do. The responsibility lies with them, for they do as they
   please. But yet His Divine purpose is effected. Peter said to the Jews
   concerning our Lord, "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel
   and foreknowledge of God you have taken and by wicked hands have
   crucified and slain." They did their evil deed most willingly and yet
   it was in the Divine purpose from of old.

   They were eager to destroy Christ out of diabolical malice and yet all
   the while they were the instruments of the death by which we are
   redeemed from destruction. Have faith enough to believe that Jehovah
   rules in the world of mind as well as in that of matter. He does as He
   wills among the armies of Heaven and among the inhabitants of this
   lower world. Consider another hard case--the hardest of all--human
   salvation. Sin must bring with it punishment. It is an inevitable Law
   of moral government that if you break the commandment, the command will
   be avenged upon you.

   Yet God is merciful and He is willing to forgive sin. How can it be
   possible for God to exercise the fullness of His mercy and yet
   discharge the necessities of His justice? All men and all angels put
   together would have made but one fool in trying to solve that
   difficulty. The Lord has answered it. He gave His Son to bear our sin.
   Jehovah Jesus died and presented Himself as the great sacrifice for our
   iniquities. On yonder Cross the Law is honored and man is justly saved.
   "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

   Bring here your own little problems. You are always getting into
   tangles and snarls. Prudent friends try to help you but the tangle
   grows worse. Bring your hard cases to One who is wiser than Solomon and
   He will draw out a clear thread for you. "Is anything too hard for the
   Lord?" After Calvary nothing is intricate or difficult. The atoning
   sacrifice is such a triumph of wisdom and grace as can never be
   paralleled. Love here wore the girdle of omnipotence. All things are
   possible since Jesus has died. We believe in the deep depravity of
   humanity but Jehovah can change its nature. The Lord of Love can make
   sinners into saints. We tremble lest some have lost the very capacity
   for virtue. We ask in despair, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or
   the leopard his spots?" But with God such marvels are everyday things.

   For the salvation of great multitudes we are also exercised. We look on
   wicked London and despair of it. We look on China and India and Africa
   and say, "Can these dry bones live?" "Is anything too hard for the
   Lord?" The tears are in our eyes as we think of the Congo and the
   heroic ones who have perished by its pestilential waters. Will Africa
   ever stretch out its hands to Christ? "Is anything too hard for the
   Lord?"

   We look upon the Church at home in the present day. It is steeped in
   worldliness and smothered with false doctrine. Many have turned aside
   from the Gospel and given themselves up to a thousand errors--how can
   the evil be cured? It is to be cured. It must be cured. It shall be
   cured, for thus says Jehovah--"Is anything too hard for Me?" If the
   Lord had left but one faithful man under Heaven He would with that one
   man deliver Israel. But He has reserved for Himself thousands who have
   not bowed the knee to Baal. Let us have no fear about it but let us
   exhibit a boundless confidence. God's Truth will win the day whoever
   comes against it. "Is anything too hard for Jehovah?"

   I have lived to see and shall yet live to see such marvels in this
   respect as fill my mouth with laughter and my tongue with singing. "The
   Lord has done great things for us, whereof we are glad." If the Lord
   waits a little it is that He may gain the more glory. If He even seems
   to draw back, does not many a man draw back when he is about to take
   the longer leap? Have you ever seen a man draw back his hand when he is
   about to strike a tremendous blow? God is never baffled--Jesus shall
   not fail, nor be discouraged. The living Christ has died in weakness
   once. But now that He lives He lives, in all the power and majesty of
   the living God. To what may we not apply the text, when Jehovah asks
   us, "Is anything too hard for Me?"

   IV. Lastly, dear Friends, I beg you to treat the text as USING IT WITH
   DELIGHT. Time allows but few words. Use the text as a preventive of
   unbelieving sin. You say you are in a nasty hobble. I know you are. And
   therefore the devil says, "Put forth your hand unto iniquity." An evil
   transaction seems the sure way to get you out of your difficulty. What?
   Do you wish to help the Lord? Do you dream that He needs your sin to
   aid Him in delivering you? Flee from the rash action. Let not your hand
   reproach you, as Crammer's did. When at the stake he held it in the
   fire and cried, "That unworthy right hand," because it had once signed
   a recantation.

   Do not sin. Be poor, but be holy. Be straightforward and honest, come
   what may. God does not need the help of your sin in order that He may
   give you your daily bread. When I think of a man supposing that sin is
   necessary to help God's Providence, I am ashamed. Even in what is
   right, our aid to God is like an ant lending help to an elephant. But
   to do wrong to help the Lord to provide for us is a sort of acted
   blasphemy. And such a poor creature as you are, do you think that your
   foul finger is needed for God's Divine work?

   Away with the idea of its ever being needful to do wrong. Let all sins
   of haste, all tricks of policy, all compromises with error, all silence
   through the fear of consequences, all doings or not doings which would
   involve a blot on your conscience be put away forever. That filthy
   thing--temporizing and parleying with evil, which men call
   prudence--let it be hanged upon the gallows of scorn. Do God's work
   thoroughly, heartily, intensely--and God will reward you in His grace.

   Use it next for consolation in the time of trouble. You are now in a
   pit wherein there is no water--how can you ever get out? Listen--"Is
   anything too hard for the Lord?" It is worse than a pit, you say --it
   seems like a living Hell. The Lord can deliver you. Remember Jonah in
   the belly of the great fish which went down deeper and deeper till it
   seemed to dive below the bottoms of the mountains? It seemed all over
   with Jonah. But it was not so. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
   Jonah owned that "salvation is of the Lord," and the fish was not able
   to imprison him any longer. Forth came Jonah to life and liberty.
   Jehovah has delivered those who trust in Him, and He will yet deliver
   us.

   Next, use the text as a window through which you look with expectation.
   "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Expect the unexpected to happen to
   you. He who whispers to himself--"God is going to do something for me
   that I have never looked for" is the brave man. "A storm is brewing,"
   cries one. Is it? My way of putting it is--rain is being prepared for
   the earth. Brethren, the Lord's blessing is coming upon the
   Churches--look for it! Let this text be a stimulus to you to engage in
   great enterprises. Launch out into the deep. Do not always keep on
   fishing for shrimp along the shore.

   Attempt great things for God. Attempt something which as yet you cannot
   do. Any fool can do what he can do. It is only the Believer who does
   what he cannot do. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Fall back upon
   omnipotence and then go forward in the strength of it.

   Let the text be a reason for adoration. O You to whom nothing is hard,
   we adore You! We worship You with all our hearts and this day we
   believingly link our weakness with Your omnipotence. We trust You for
   life, for death, for eternity. Dear Savior, we trust You now with all
   our sins and sorrows. Nothing is too hard for You, therefore save Your
   poor servants according to the riches of Your grace--

   "A guilty, weak and helpless worm,

   On Your kind arms I fall;

   Be You my strength and righteousness,

   My Jesus and my All."
     __________________________________________________________________

Nathanael--Or, the Ready Believer and His Reward

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto you, I saw you
   under the fig tree, you believe? You shall see greater things than
   these." John 1:50.

   NATHANAEL was by nature a man free from cunning and deceit. He was a
   specimen of that "honest and good ground" of which our Savior speaks in
   the parable, upon which, when the seed fell, a hundred-fold harvest was
   produced. We have some such men about us, thank God, in this
   country--regular John Blunts, as we say, clear as crystal, true as the
   sun in the heavens. Many men are well known to us who are upright,
   downright, truthful, honest, candid and open-hearted. You might trust
   them anywhere. Yes, trust them to repeat a conversation without
   misrepresenting it and that is saying a good deal in these times.

   Such people do not understand the clever arts of craft and cunning for
   they do not take to them naturally and have never been trained in the
   practice of policy. Speech is not to them the medium for concealing
   their thoughts. When they have a mind to speak, they speak their mind.
   You know where they are. They may have a great many faults but they
   have not the faults of deception and dissimulation. They are
   Israelites, indeed, in whom is no guile. You know the kind of
   people--they may at times speak too harshly and hurt your feelings.
   They may put things in an ugly shape and tread on people's corns--but
   they are as straight as a plumb-line and you may be sure that you know
   them when you have heard what they say.

   In the end they cause far less pain to people's feelings than those who
   have a great deal of finesse and policy, whose words are softer than
   butter but inwardly they are drawn swords. Smooth and oily tongues,
   with lying hearts at the back of them are fit instruments for Satan.
   But truth-speaking lips, which are joined to an honest heart are
   precious things which the Lord Himself delights to use. Now, when the
   good Brethren who had joined the Savior came to tell Nathanael that
   they had found the Christ he blurted out his objection at once.

   They said, "We have found Him, of whom Moses in the Law and the
   Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth." But he did not take everything
   for Gospel which his friends told him. Nathanael had been born and bred
   in the midst of people prejudiced against Nazareth and he had sucked in
   their prejudice and felt sure that the Messiah could no more come from
   Nazareth than a profound philosopher could come from Gotham. He does
   not beat about the bush but he says at once, "Can there any good thing
   come out of Nazareth?"

   It is always a good thing, when a man has a prejudice, if he will but
   state it and "out" with it. You can always deal with this kind of
   fellow. If he will say what is troubling him and tell you what keeps
   him back from faith, why, then you can put your finger on his
   difficulty and try to remove it. It is a great miracle when a dumb
   devil is cast out. If the evil will but speak and so declare itself we
   have a chance of overcoming it.

   Nathanael's question was met at once by his comrades, who said to him,
   "Come and see." And like the honest man that he was, he took up their
   challenge. He would "come and see." How many there are who make
   objections but they will not "come and see"! They have heard concerning
   a certain preacher, perhaps, such-and-such absurd things. But another
   says, "It is not so. Come and see." Not they. They do not want to come
   and see--for they are unfair and prefer to cherish a bad opinion of the
   man. They have heard that Calvinistic doctrine is cruel, harsh and
   unjust. "Ah," says a Believer in Free Grace, "you have only seen a
   caricature of it. You should read for yourself and judge by Scripture."

   Oh, no--they do not want to read! They have made up their minds--not
   that they have much of a mind to make up. If they had more mind it
   might take them longer to make it up. But, having once made up their
   little mind, they have no mind to unmake it. They prefer to go blindly
   on whether they are right or wrong. They know so much that they do not
   wish to learn any more. Nathanael was not of that sort. "Come and see,"
   was an invitation which commended itself to his judgment. "Oh, yes,"
   said he, "by all means! I am open to conviction. I will come and see."

   I wish I could prevail on each one of my hearers to search the Bible
   for himself to see what the true doctrine is, that he may have a firm
   foundation to build upon and not take his religion second-hand from
   another. Nathanael is on his way to see for himself, when the Lord
   Jesus Christ, turning to those round about Him, says, in a voice loud
   enough for Nathanael to hear, "Behold an Israelite, indeed, in whom is
   no guile!" Here comes a man with no craft, no cunning in him. Nathanael
   is startled to find his real character so clearly read and somewhat
   bluntly asks, "From where do You know me?"

   I must do him the justice of believing that he said it respectfully,
   yet, nevertheless, he curtly said, "From where do You know me?" As much
   as to say-- "You have hit the nail on the head. But how came You to
   know this?" You see, the enquiry that was in his mind is soon upon his
   tongue--his words at once declare his thought. It is a great mercy when
   men dare speak upon that which troubles them. Instead of letting a
   doubt or a difficulty fester in their souls, they bring it out--that
   the light may play upon it and it is soon gone.

   "Jesus answered and said to him, Before that Philip called you, when
   you were under the fig tree, I saw you." What Nathanael was doing under
   the fig tree I do not know. Some think that he was there in meditation.
   Others say in prayer. Very possibly, but I do not know, and the wisest
   expositors do not know, and you do not know. Nobody knew but Jesus and
   Nathanael. He was doing something of which he was not ashamed but which
   he modestly did not wish to have known and so he had chosen a private
   place. That transaction was a secret between himself and the Lord, his
   God, and He who knew that secret must have come from God.

   Perhaps he was doing nothing there but sitting still before the Lord in
   anguish of spirit. Possibly he there had looked towards the God of his
   fathers with hope, or had enjoyed hallowed fellowship with Heaven.
   Anyhow, Jesus mentioned to him something which he remembered and
   thought much of, though it was entirely between God and his own soul.
   Between Jesus and Nathanael--"under the fig tree"--served as a
   password. They were known to one another by that. And at once Nathanael
   cried, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel."

   He is fairly won and by an open confession he commits himself at once
   to what he believes. He is not ashamed of his convictions. He has
   enlisted beneath the banner of the King of Israel once and for all.
   Forth he comes without a moment's reservation with that blessed
   confession of faith--"Rabbi, You are the Son of God. You are the King
   of Israel." Our Lord Jesus, charmed with the grace which He had Himself
   given, delighted with the faith which He had Himself created, answers,
   "Because I said unto you, I saw you under the fig tree, you believe?
   You shall see greater things than these." This ready convert, so
   speedily convinced, was very acceptable to the Lord Jesus.

   Now, we have tonight here, first, one who believed readily. I am going
   to speak of that. Secondly, here is one who was highly commended for
   it--"You shall see greater things than these." Thirdly, here is one who
   might possibly in after days be subject to a peculiar temptation on
   account of his very readiness to believe. And, lastly, here is one who,
   I doubt not, was peculiarly grateful. And if there is another here like
   he, he ought to be very grateful, too.

   I. First, then, HERE IS ONE WHO BELIEVED READILY. The first time he saw
   the Savior he was converted to the faith. The first sentences that were
   addressed to him by the Lord Jesus Christ fairly won him to hearty
   faith and loyal service. Why was that? Why was he so soon brought to
   discipleship?

   I think, perhaps, it was because he was such a true man himself that
   the element of suspicion was not in his character. Persons who are
   remarkably suspicious and constantly incredulous are seldom very
   truthful themselves. If you follow them home, you will discover that
   they are suspicious of others because they are not true themselves and
   their difficulty in believing others arises from the fact that they
   measure other people's corn with their own bushel. They imagine that
   other people are as big liars as they are themselves. I believe that
   this is the bottom of much of the mistrust and questioning which
   seethes around us.

   Sometimes that suspiciousness comes upon men's minds through long
   dealing with deceptive persons. But if you find that a man began life
   with a general suspicion and doubt of others, you may conclude that he
   was a born deceiver, radically false from his birth. He judges human
   nature from his experience within his own heart. He has observed his
   own trickiness and he thinks that everybody else is going to trick him.
   And so he is full of suspicion. Nathanael had never taken anybody in
   nor tried to mislead anyone in his life and therefore he did not expect
   to be deceived.

   I wonder whether he was a sailor. I should think that he must have
   been, for sailors are generally as open as the sea they sail over. He
   never said anything with reserve. Not he. He was accustomed to wear his
   heart on his sleeve even if the

   crows did peck at it. He could not conceal anything, nor think that
   others did so. He was just as honest as the day. And so he came to the
   Savior with a heart that was open to faith, ready to believe Him. I
   should think the very sight of the Savior's blessed face had half won
   him and the tone of that truthful voice had moved him. But when it came
   to his laying bare a secret in his life which he was sure that nobody
   knew but himself and God, then Nathanael yielded to conviction at once
   and became a Believer straightway.

   Now I do hope that there are some here to whom the Lord has given, from
   their very birth, a truthful, openhearted nature--and if you should
   believe in Jesus Christ tonight straightway, even though it is the
   first time you have ever heard of Him, I shall bless the grace of God
   which has led you to so speedy a closing in with Christ. Oh that the
   Holy Spirit may complete the work of which there is already so hopeful
   a beginning! But, further, this Nathanael, this rapid Believer in the
   Lord Jesus Christ, had, I have no doubt, been seeking guidance
   beforehand and that guidance he had honestly followed.

   I should think that he had for years been expecting the coming of the
   Messiah. The tone of his language argues that. Therefore, when Philip
   came to him and told him that he had found the Messiah and indicated to
   him that he had better come and see for himself, he was willing at once
   to come and without delay he came with the view of seeing for himself
   whether this Jesus of Nazareth was the Promised One. He was not only
   candid but he was interested. He was concerned about Divine things and
   in thorough earnest to know the Truth of God in reference to them. So
   he came to Jesus with solemn intent and eager desire.

   O dear Friends, if you came to hear the Gospel in sincerity, we should
   expect to see more of you converted. But people come into our great
   assemblies to see the congregation, or to inspect the building, or to
   hear the preacher. Their motive is mere idle curiosity. If they get a
   blessing we shall heartily thank God for it and admire the sovereignty
   of His Grace. But when persons come, as they often do, I thank God,
   even from a great distance with the desire to know what the Gospel is
   and with a wish to find the Savior for themselves, then we have surer
   hope. These enquirers are the people that are likely to be converted.

   When fish want to be caught, it is good fishing. When they are anxious
   to take the bait, then the fisherman have fine times. If, my dear
   Hearers, you would come here saying, "I will go and see whether I can
   find salvation. I will hear with the intention that the hearing may be
   a means of grace to my soul," none of you would come long in vain where
   Christ Jesus is faithfully preached. If you come with a desire of
   understanding and knowing Him, He will come and reveal Himself to you.
   This was one main reason why Nathanael so speedily believed--that he
   came having sought guidance and desiring really to find the Messiah of
   whom Philip had spoken.

   Observe that he was satisfied with one piece of clear evidence. That
   one item of evidence convinced him. The Lord Jesus said, "Before that
   Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nobody
   knew that he had been under the fig tree except the Lord who sees all
   things. No mortal living was aware of what Nathanael had done, or
   thought, or purposed in that shady retreat. When Jesus, therefore, with
   a peculiar look, said "I saw you," Nathanael also saw Him that spoke to
   him. "Godhead alone could speak thus," said he--"there is the Spirit of
   God in that man. He knows the secret things of my life. He has revealed
   me to myself." "Rabbi," said he, "You are the Son of God. You are the
   King of Israel." The conclusion was a sound one but how speedily it was
   reached!

   One argument, if it is sound, is enough. If a matter is in dispute and
   if one man can solemnly declare that he saw such-and-such a thing and
   that one man is of high repute, his evidence is sufficient for a
   truthful man to rest upon. Twenty may come and say that they think it
   is so-and-so but twenty weak links will not make a strong chain. And I
   would rather trust to one solid link than I would trust to a chain of
   twenty worn and rusted links--each one of which is ready to snap. If it
   is so, it is so. If it is not so, it is not so. If a man has proved
   anything to me by one infallible proof that is enough. Hence, I believe
   that those who come to Christ on one bit of evidence are justified in
   so doing. They afterwards receive a host of confirming evidences but
   one is quite enough for them to begin with.

   Oh that I might have some tonight who shall hear in this sermon some
   one thing which shall strike them as being of the Lord! I pray that
   some secret matter, which I do not personally know, shall yet be
   uttered by me so that my hearers will say to themselves, "How came that
   to be spoken? That fits me exactly, yet the minister could not have
   known it. God must have spoken to me. Only the Lord knew what I did in
   the back kitchen. Only He knew what I was thinking of this afternoon.
   But speaking through His servant He has touched a secret spring and
   opened a drawer in my cabinet that nobody knew of, save myself! This is
   the finger of God."

   God grant that some may thus be led to Jesus Christ by one piece of
   evidence and may not tarry to feel fifty impressions on their hearts.
   Oh, that you would not wait for whole weeks of invitations and months
   of pressure and years of expostulation. But oh, that you would yield
   tonight! Sometimes, in warfare, cities have been taken without a shot
   being fired. The valiant men have come up to the gates and they have
   said, "Capitulate and you shall be spared." And the townsmen have
   opened wide their gates. I know that many other cities have had to be
   battered till there has been scarcely a house without tokens of shot
   and shell. But what has been their gain when they have been captured
   after all? Do not let it be so with your souls but yield at once to the
   conquering Savior who comes forth in the robes of His glorious Grace
   and bids you yield. He promises that if you accept His scepter you
   shall see the greatness of His Grace.

   Notice, however, that although Nathanael yielded at once and believed
   on one bit of evidence, yet his faith went a long way! He did not
   merely say, "Rabbi, I believe that you are the Messiah," but he said,
   "You are the Son of God." This was farther than anybody else had gone
   at that time so far as I remember. He added, "You are the King of
   Israel." And this again was a great declaration to make. He worshipped
   Jesus and he crowned Him. He owned Him as God and he magnified Him as
   King. Do not suppose that the faith which is quickly born is therefore
   weak. No, but that faith which comes suddenly and quickly is often the
   very best and strongest faith in all the world. And I trust that some
   of you may prove it to be so tonight by flying to Christ at once--as
   the doves fly to their windows--and rest in Him till you find fullness
   of peace.

   Thus much concerning the Israelite, indeed, who believed readily.

   II. In the second place, HERE IS ONE WHO WAS HIGHLY COMMENDED. The Lord
   Jesus owned his faith to be true faith. He said, "You believe?" But He
   meant that He perceived that he truly believed. He owned that though
   his faith was born then and there, it was the genuine article. Christ
   owns, as true faith, that faith which is not long in coming. Fear not,
   dear Hearer, that if you believe at this very moment your faith will be
   any the less sincere and effectual.

   Jesus did more than own it to be faith. He commended it as rarely
   excellent. He spoke as if He were astonished. "Because I said, I saw
   you under the fig tree, you believe?"--as much as to say, "Many see Me
   work miracles and do not believe. Do you believe so soon? They see Me
   heal lepers and raise the dead and yet they will not believe. But you
   believe merely because I said I saw you under the fig tree?" He is
   charmed with him for his readiness to own the Truth. Why, there are
   some young people who come to Christ and believe in Him by one little
   word from their mother. And on the other hand there are men and women
   who have been for fifty years hearers of the Gospel and yet have not
   believed.

   Now, the text proves that Christ has an admiration of those who
   readily, willingly, obediently and cheerfully come. Those who make no
   questions, raise no difficulties but on comparatively slender evidence,
   that evidence being quite sufficient, yield their full trust to Jesus
   Christ their Lord. And our blessed Lord was so pleased with this ready
   faith that He made a promise to Nathanael. Said He, "You shall see
   greater things than these. If you can see so much in My one saying that
   I saw you under the fig tree, you have the kind of eyes that are fit to
   see great sights."

   He that will see shall see, but he that closes his eyes shall be
   blinded. Many are the people in this world who, if you show them the
   greatest marvel, do not wonder. They look at it and see nothing. When
   you meet with such an unobservant person, you say to yourself, "I shall
   not show that man anything more. It does not pay to unveil rarities to
   him, he has no appreciation of them." But here is another who, when you
   show him some curio that you have in your house, is pleased with it and
   spies out at once the excellence and beauty of it. You say, "I have
   something more which I will gladly show you!" When your visitor
   appreciates your choice treasure, you say to him, "I will unlock all my
   cabinets. I will take you into my private room and every little thing I
   have that can interest you, you shall see, because I perceive that you
   have eyes and a mind which finds gratification in rare curiosities."

   Oh, you that readily believe in Christ--you are the men and women to
   whom Christ will make known His secrets! Those of you who are "fools
   and slow of heart to believe" must mend your manners, or the Holy
   Spirit will never lead you into the mysteries of the kingdom. Did not
   Jesus say to one who came to Him by night, "If I have told you earthly
   things and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of
   heavenly things?" But, you Israelites, indeed, you quick Believers--to
   you will He reveal Himself as the Ladder that father Jacob saw,
   reaching from earth to Heaven, upon which the angels ascend and descend
   between God and His chosen. You shall see the deep things of God. You
   are the people out of whom He will make such men as John, who, in
   Patmos, beheld a glorious Apocalypse.

   O my beloved Hearers, may it be so with you! Because your faith so
   readily chimes in with what Christ reveals, may you have visions of God
   and may none of you be so dull of heart that it shall be said, "He
   could not show them many mighty works because of their unbelief"!

   III. I have thus spoken and I come, thirdly, to notice that HERE IS A
   MAN WHO MIGHT POSSIBLY BE TROUBLED WITH A PECULIAR TEMPTATION.

   People of this kind are subject to a special trial with which I will
   now deal. In this Church a considerable number of us, beginning with
   the pastor, came to Christ after an awful amount of conviction and
   despondency. We are none the better for this but we are at least free
   from one particular temptation of the Evil One. Oh, how I look back
   upon those times in which I felt my bondage but could not attain
   liberty--those days in which Christ was preached to me but I could not
   hear Him and I wandered up and down everywhere before I found peace!

   In this Church and in the officers of the Church among the deacons,
   there is especially one dear Brother who sometimes can hardly
   understand me when I speak about the difficulties some have in coming
   to Christ for he never experienced them. You all know him, one of the
   sweetest and best of men. But he came to Jesus Christ as a boy readily
   enough. He heard the Gospel and he believed it and without any sort of
   terror he rejoiced in the Lord and he continues to do so to this day.
   He is none the worse saint for this but in some respects all the
   better.

   I know, however, what is the peculiar temptation of those who come so
   readily to Christ. The devil comes to them and he says, "Now, look at
   you. You have read Mr. Bunyan's 'Grace Abounding,' have you not?"
   "Yes," says the good man. "Well," says he, "you never went through the
   like battle and struggle." "No, I never did." "Then," says he, "You are
   no child of God. You see you were easily converted--there was no deep
   work in your soul. You came to Jesus Christ one sunshiny day and you
   will go away from Him one dark day. You are like the stony-ground
   hearer, the seed sprang up in you on a sudden, because there was no
   depth of earth and you will soon die away when the sun is risen with
   fervent heat."

   Now, the next time the devil comes to any of you with that, I want you
   to talk to him, if he is worth it, for your own good. I want you to
   quench the fiery dart which he will fling at you. It is true that many
   come to the Lord Jesus under extreme difficulties and are long before
   they can rest in faith. But you must not compare yourself with others,
   nor expect that the work of God will take precisely the same shape in
   every heart. Some, like Nicodemus, say, "How can these things be?" But
   others believe in Jesus as readily as Nathanael did and they come just
   as truly, just as really, just as lastingly as those who find it
   difficult to come.

   Let me help you with a few considerations. Those you have read of, who
   came to Christ under so much terror--it may be that they had some other
   trouble at the same time--as well as the trouble of their conscience.
   Perhaps, in addition to being convinced of sin, they were suffering
   from poverty, or sickness, or indigestion, or remorse, or some other
   vexation of spirit. Discern carefully between spiritual trouble and
   temporal trouble. Temporal trouble may help to aggravate the spiritual
   but it is not a necessary part of it--in fact, very much the reverse.
   It may increase the apparent depth of the work of repentance but it may
   detract from its real worth.

   In the next place, it may be, and probably is, the fact that those who
   found so much difficulty in coming to Christ were worried by Satan.
   Perhaps he injected into their minds blasphemous thoughts or he
   suggested doubts concerning the Scriptures, or the Truth of God.
   Because they were just escaping from his power he worried them most
   maliciously. Do you want to be worried in that way? Do you think that
   there is any advantage in Satan's attacks? If you can get to Christ
   without them, ought you not to be thankful to escape them? How can you
   desire an affliction so utterly undesirable? How can you wish to feel
   that which those who suffer from it would give their eyes to be rid of?
   I beseech you, be reasonable.

   In many persons their difficulties in coming to Christ were caused very
   largely by their melancholy temperament. We are not all alike cheerful
   by natural constitution. Why, here is one man who is bright-eyed by
   nature and when he is down he is higher up than others are when they
   are up. He is always bright and hopeful. Yonder is another Brother who
   seems inevitably to take a dark view of matters. He is an unhappily
   constituted person. A person with whom it is not easy to live except in
   a very large hotel, in which the dinner-table is many yards long. You
   know and avoid the style of man.

   If there is a melancholy disposition, it tends to darken the work of
   the Spirit in the heart. And whereas the work of the Spirit makes the
   man sorrowful, his own melancholy disposition, perhaps caused by mental
   disease, darkens that sorrow into black despair. Few of us are
   perfectly sane. In fact, I do not think anybody is altogether so. I see
   you smile but I am not jest-ing--we have each one a peculiarity which
   we could hardly defend by the rules of strict reasoning. Have we not?
   We are all a little "touched" by that black hand which sin stretched
   out when it shook our universal manhood in all its faculties.

   Some are touched with melancholy from their birth and so a part of
   their great terror, when under conviction, may arise from the fact that
   they are not absolutely free to form a hopeful judgment. Why should you
   wish to be like they? What can there be desirable about feelings which
   spring from a disease?

   Again, there is no doubt that many in coming to Christ are greatly
   troubled because they are ignorant. They do not know that which would
   comfort them if they did but know it. They are vexed with fears which
   would not exist if they were better acquainted with Scripture. If they
   knew more of the Doctrines of Grace they would not be vexed with the
   fears which their ignorance creates. You who are taught in the Word are
   all the more likely to find speedy peace. Now, dear Friends, do you
   want to be bothered with fears which only spring out of ignorance? Must
   it not be much better for you, having a clearer light and a brighter
   knowledge, to say, "Yes, that is it. I believe in Jesus Christ and I am
   saved. Blessed be His name! I ask no questions. I believe and am saved
   at once"?

   May it not also be that those who are so hard put to it in coming to
   Christ are without the helps that you have? Perhaps they cannot read.
   Possibly they have nobody to explain the Scriptures to them. They may
   be misled by their religious guides and have no one to keep them out of
   the ditch. It may be that they are placed where they are rather
   hindered than helped-- they have no Sunday school teacher, no Christian
   friend to sympathize with them. And so they have a hard fight of it.
   Many a man who is wounded in battle is soon restored because the
   surgeon takes him up as soon as the bullet lays him low. Whereas the
   wound of another, who has to lie and bleed for hours, will prove far
   more serious. Do you not think that you ought to be very thankful that
   you have so many things to help you, and that thus you the more readily
   come to Christ?

   Very possibly, too, many of those who had those terrors and horrors in
   coming to Christ, as I had myself, must lay them to the door of their
   unbelief. Had they believed, they might have had comfort long before.
   But they went to the Law for comfort, or they looked to feelings
   instead of looking to Christ and so they remained in darkness. Now, if
   you have the privilege of believing at once, as I pray you may have,
   should you not be glad of it and instead of envying those others,
   should you not thank God that you were brought to find Jesus Christ by
   so sunny and speedy a route?

   There is a story that I have told you before but I must tell it to you
   again, for I do not know anything better. A young man in Edinburgh went
   out and he thought he would speak about Jesus to the first person that
   he met with. He met a Mussel burgh fishwife carrying a great load on
   her back. I cannot speak Scotch--I have not that useful acquirement--so
   I will put the conversation into English. He said to her, "Here you are
   with your burden." "Yes," said she. "Well," he said, "did you ever feel
   a spiritual burden?" "Yes," said she, "that I did, long ago, long ago
   and I soon got rid of it. For I did not go the same way to work that
   John Bunyan's pilgrim did."

   "Oh," thought the young man, "I hoped that I had met with a Christian
   woman, but she must be a great heretic to talk in that way." "Now,"
   said she, "Bunyan's Evangelist that he speaks of was not half a Gospel
   preacher. He was one of the usual sort. He was not clear in the Gospel.
   For when he met with the poor pilgrim, weary with his burden, he said
   to him, 'Do you see that wicket-gate?' 'No,' said the man, 'I do not
   see it.' 'Do you see that light over the gate?' 'Well,' he said, 'I
   think I do.' 'Now,' he said, 'you run that way with your burden.' Why
   man," said she, "that was not the way to do at all. What had that man
   to do with the wicket-gate or with the light over it?

   "The Gospel does not say run to a gate or a light. What he should have
   said was, 'Do you see that Cross? Look at that and your burden will
   fall from your shoulder.' I looked straight away to the Cross and not
   to the wicket-gate. And at the Cross I lost my burden. Now," said she,
   "what did Pilgrim get by going round to the wicket-gate? He tumbled
   into the Slough of Despond and was like to have lost his life there."
   "Ah," said the young man, "did you never go through the Slough of
   Despond?" "Ah, yes!" she said, "I have been through that slough many a
   time. But, let me tell you, it is much better to go through it with
   your burden off than it is with your burden on."

   And so it is. I do not want any of you to attempt to flounder through
   the Slough of Despond with your burden on. I want you to have done with
   the Slough of Despond and the wicket-gate and all that bother and just
   look to Christ alone. For salvation lies in a look at Him and there is
   salvation in none other. Peace comes to sinners by nothing else but
   faith in Jesus. All else is vain, be it what it may. Frames and
   feelings, sinkings and risings, doings and fretting--all these may go
   for nothing. Believe in Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. This is
   God's short way to Heaven and blessed is he who knows how to take it.

   Listen yet once more. You say, "But I have heard of some who endured a
   dreadful Law-work within their souls. They were plowed and cut up
   dreadfully and I never was." I will further tell you that certain
   persons need rougher handling than others. The needle in surgery will
   do for certain cases, whereas the lancet is wanted for others. If the
   Lord can, with a needle, do for you all that is needed, why do you want
   more? The Lord required to take the knife to me and are you going to
   fret because you have never felt the deep gashes which made me cry out
   in agony? I pray you, be not such a fool--I cannot speak a softer word
   if you have a craving after anguish.

   Again, the Lord may deal roughly with some because He means to qualify
   them for comforting despairing souls. He puts His servants through the
   furnace when He means them to work at pulling others out of the fire.
   He chastens them every morn-

   ing because He means to make Barnabases of them, that they may be sons
   of consolation to souls in distress. I have been through the thick
   darkness at times for your sakes. If ever a soul was in a horror of
   great darkness, I was, one day, when I preached in this pulpit from "My
   God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" I could not understand why I
   felt in such an awful state as I did, till that evening there came into
   the vestry a man whose hair seemed to stand on end.

   He looked at me and said, "I have never found a preacher that met my
   experience before." We sat down and he told me his tale of woe. By
   God's grace I rescued that man, by seasonable comfort, from being sent
   to a lunatic asylum and perhaps from committing suicide. And then I
   said to the Lord my God, "Let me go through the fire again if it will
   help me to meet the case of your poor afflicted children. Let me feel
   the horror of great darkness, if so I may thereby find light with which
   to cheer the victims of despair."

   But you, my dear Brother, my dear Sister, may not be called thus to cut
   your way through the forests of sorrow as the pioneer of others. You
   are not sent to be a guide to thousands but quietly to pursue your own
   lowly way. And why do you want all this painful experience? You cannot
   make use of it. Be thankful that you are spared the ordeal. These who
   have to be champions must be trained for war after a sterner sort than
   those who only make up the rank and file of the army. If your Lord
   means to lead you only as sheep at His heel into the green pastures by
   the still waters, you will see but little of the war and little of the
   rough side of the march. And why should you be so stupid as to desire
   distress and condemn yourself because you have it not?

   Be a Nathanael. Take the happier and better side and believe your God
   without a doubt or a quibble. And go to Heaven following the Lamb
   wherever He goes, without doubt or fear. I was going to have another
   head but I think that I will not, I will venture no further but close
   with a word to sinners, although I have in truth been speaking to them
   all through my discourse.

   Hear me, you that would be saved! The way of salvation is by believing
   in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, by trusting Him. There are two
   things I have to say to you. First, God COMMANDS you to believe in
   Jesus Christ--and, secondly, nothing you can do will please God so much
   as for you to believe at once in His Only-Begotten Son, whom He has set
   forth to be the propitiation for sin.

   These are two strong things to say and so I will not say them, of
   myself, but give you God's Word for them. Please note these texts down,
   all of you. First Epistle of John, third chapter, at the twenty-third
   verse--"And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name
   of His Son Jesus Christ." Let me tell you where it is again. First
   Epistle of John, third chapter, twenty-third verse--"This is His
   commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus
   Christ." If you are commanded to do it, do it. If you have salvation
   promised you when you do believe on the name of Jesus, why then,
   believe, and have salvation. Believe on the name of His Son Jesus
   Christ. That is the first point. God commands you--will you disobey?

   The second thing I said was that nothing you can do will please God so
   much as for you, now, to believe in Jesus Christ. Look at the sixth
   chapter of John's Gospel and the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses.
   There you have it. "Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we
   might work the works of God?" They meant, "What are the best works, the
   works most pleasing to God?" "Jesus answered and said unto them, This
   is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent." If you
   could build a row of almshouses, or endow a Church, or pay the salaries
   of a hundred missionaries, it would not half so well please God as for
   you to believe on His Son Jesus Christ.

   Trust Christ and you have worshipped God as acceptably as cherubim and
   seraphim. Trust Christ and you have brought unto the Lord that which
   will charm Him more than the hallelujahs which day without night,
   circle His Throne with praise. You poor guilty man, you poor guilty
   woman--humble, unknown, obscure, a nobody--God bids you trust His Son
   and assures you that this will please Him more than all else you can
   do! Will you not do it? Oh, end your ramblings! End your strivings! End
   your seeking! Come and trust my Lord Jesus and you shall receive
   eternal life. Your fretting and your hoping and your doubting, your
   coming and your going--end them all by simply trusting Jesus and it is
   finished--you are saved from wrath and the life of holiness has begun
   in you.

   Now shall you live after a nobler sort. Now shall you be filled with
   good works to the praise of His Glory, seeing you are no more trusting
   in them. I beseech you, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and you
   shall receive power to become a child of

   God.

   May the Lord bless you, dear Friends! May we all meet in Heaven, the
   whole company of us, without exception, for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"The Wedding Was Furnished with Guests"

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MAY 6, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The wedding was furnished with guests." Matthew 22:10.

   OUR discourse will follow the lines of the parable. A king desired to
   honor his son right royally. He loved his son well, for he deserved
   richly of him and therefore, as the most fitting time had come, he
   resolved to honor him. His son was about to take to himself a
   spouse--should not his marriage, which is a great event in life--be
   celebrated with honor? The father determined to honor his son on the
   joyful occasion by inviting a large number of guests to a sumptuous
   banquet. Not by the infliction of pain, or the pressure of taxation but
   by liberality and festivity would the king honor the Crown Prince. It
   should be an extraordinary feast.

   Surely, it would be the simplest thing in the world to gather together
   a grateful company of guests. One would expect a competition for
   admission--everybody in the royal domain would eagerly ask for an
   invitation. But it fell out otherwise. There was a disloyal feeling
   abroad and it now expressed itself--those who were bid would not come
   and means had to be used to secure the result spoken of in the text so
   that "the wedding was furnished with guests."

   The parable is plain. The great Father delights to honor Jesus, his
   Only-Begotten Son. The Father loves the Son, with whom He is One. The
   Son has deserved well at the Father's hands, for He has been "obedient
   unto death, even the death of the Cross." It is the Father's aim in the
   work of Divine Grace to glorify His Son, who, as God and Man in one
   nature, is the channel of Divine Grace to fallen men. He proposes to do
   this now that the Lord Jesus takes His Church into marriage union with
   Himself. The incarnate God calls a chosen company, the bride, the
   Lamb's wife and celebrates thus early in the day this happy union by a
   wedding breakfast, to which He invites multitudes to come.

   It is a feast of mercy, grace and peace. A marriage feast of delight
   and joy. The feast is for the glorifying of the Lord Jesus Christ in a
   very special manner. Can any of us measure the glory which comes to our
   Lord Jesus by His union with the Church? Angels and principalities and
   powers, intelligences now existing and all intelligences yet to be
   created will wonderingly gaze upon the riches of His inheritance in the
   saints. What a spectacle is this! The Word made flesh that He might
   dwell among us! Immanuel, God with us, taking unto Himself a company of
   chosen men to be one with Him forever. In the union of Christ and His
   Church all wisdom centers--all Grace shines forth.

   "The excellency of our God" is to be seen in the salvation of the elect
   and the joining of them unto the Christ. Our glorious Second Adam was
   like the first Adam in the garden, for whom no helpmeet was found.
   Neither cherubim nor seraphim, angels nor spirits, could be fit
   companions for Him. He says, "My delights were with the sons of men."
   He willed that His chosen Church should stand to Him in the same
   relation as Eve stood to Adam, to be the solace of His heart and the
   rest of His love. He chose men to be His companions, His friends, His
   joy, His crown.

   One would have thought that every man hearing that manhood was thus to
   be honored by union with Godhead would flock towards the marriage
   feast. It would have seemed certain that all would desire to know this
   heavenly mystery, and as soon as they knew it, would press forward to
   be partakers in its bliss. Alas, this is not the case. And this morning
   my business is to tell you the story of how the purpose of Divine love
   appeared in peril but how, in the end, it is accomplished. And,
   according to the language of the text, "the wedding was furnished with
   guests."

   I. Our first point is, that IT SEEMED AS IF NONE WOULD COME. The
   wedding feast was prepared--oxen and

   fatlings were killed--all things were ready. But where were the guests?
   Those first invited and naturally expected, would not come. Previous
   notice had been given them of the festival and afterwards a summons had
   been sent to say that the hour was come. But, instead ofjoyfully
   responding, they would not come.

   These were, first of all, the Jews--to whom the Gospel had been given
   by the Law and the Prophets long beforehand. "He came unto His own but
   His own received Him not." Israel was not gathered--few out of the
   chosen nation

   recognized the Messiah. He came with a feast of mercy for them but they
   would have none of it. He called and they refused.

   Today this same class will be found among the children of godly
   parents. Dedicated from their birth, prayed for by loving piety,
   listening to the Gospel from their childhood and yet unsaved. We look
   for these to come to Jesus. We naturally hope that they will feast upon
   the provisions of Divine Grace and like their parents will rejoice in
   Christ Jesus. But, alas, how often it is the case they will not come?
   Some such are here this morning. We greatly grieve over you. You do not
   choose your father's God, nor accept your mother's Savior. Ah me! If
   you will not come, who will? If you, who are taught concerning
   salvation by Divine Grace, yet refuse it, how can we wonder that the
   children of the godless and the profane reject our message? Who will
   come ifyou will not?

   Dear Hearers, some of you are not privileged with godly parents but you
   have been for many years willing listeners to the Word of Life and yet
   you do not accept Christ Jesus as yours, nor accept the provisions of
   His Grace. You do not joy with Him in His union with His chosen, for
   you do not love Him. How sad this is! Well may the dispirited preacher
   mourn and fear in his heart that the great festival of love will prove
   a failure! If such as you are will not come--how will the wedding be
   furnished with guests?

   The outlook grew worse still when they came not though they were
   reasoned with. When they would not come, the king sent other servants
   to bring them to a better mind. And this was the form of His
   reasoning--"Behold, I have prepared My dinner, My oxen and My fatlings
   are killed and all things are ready--come unto the marriage." No kinder
   argument could have been used--there was an appeal to all that was
   noble in them, and had they been worthy, they would have come at once.
   I can well understand that the servants would repeat their lord's
   message with special eagerness, as they thought of His waiting in the
   palace and watching for the guests.

   They would cry to those who hesitated, "You have waited long enough,
   come at once. The marriage cannot be delayed, why should you delay?
   Tarry no longer. Today if you will hear His voice harden not your
   hearts." Still they made light of it. When you have been invited to
   Jesus many a time--when tearful earnestness has pleaded with you and
   yet men of God have had to return to their Master, saying, "Who has
   believed our report?"--it becomes a sorrowful business and our anxious
   fears cannot see how the wedding will be furnished with guests. This
   would have been an overwhelming surprise to us if Jesus had not
   declared of men in His own day, "You will not come unto Me that you
   might have life." If they refused His pleadings, we cannot wonder that
   they reject our sayings. Still it is a mournful fact, that "Many are
   called but few chosen."

   The case looks darker, still, when we notice that, though reasoned with
   by new messengers, they did not come. It is said, "He sent forth other
   servants." I tell you from my very soul that if my Lord will only bring
   you to the banquet of His Grace, I care not who shall be the successful
   messenger. If you will not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ unto
   eternal life through what I have to say, may the Lord remove me and
   send someone else to whom He will give power by His Grace to reach your
   hearts. I shall be glad to remain in this pulpit for years to come but
   not at the cost of a single soul, if somebody else can preach to you
   more efficiently, if someone else can get at your hearts better than I
   have done, may the Lord allow me to retire for your good!

   Do you wish it? "He sent other servants." A preacher may be too
   rhetorical--let a plain-speaking person be tried. He may be too
   weighty--let another come with parable and anecdote. Alas, with some of
   you the thing wanted is not a new voice but a new heart. You would
   listen no better to a new messenger than to the old one. After so many
   good men and true have spoken--after Paul and Apollos and Cephas have
   all failed--how shall the wedding be furnished with guests? If you look
   at the various characters who would not come you will see more and more
   cause for sorrow. Of some we simply read that "they would not come."
   They made no excuses or apologies but curtly said they would not come.
   That was the end of the matter.

   Many dismiss the Gospel at once. They are not to be reasoned with--they
   do not want it and will not have it. A large class of the community
   have heard of the way of salvation but they care nothing for it. It is
   not with them lack of information but want of inclination. They have
   neither mind nor will for heavenly things. A second class made light of
   it. They were indifferent to royal honors and duties. They were taken
   up with the care of what they had in possession and went their way,
   each man to his farm saying, "I have worked hard to get my farm and I
   cannot afford to let it lie idle."

   Another was taken up with the care of getting an estate and went to his
   merchandise, saying, "I have nobody to keep my shop. I must mind the
   main chance. If you do not look alive, everybody will run over you. I
   must attend to my buying and my selling." The worldly-wise make up a
   very numerous class. The rich man cannot be religious--his position in
   society prevents it. The poor man cannot mind the things of God--he is
   worn out by earning his daily bread. Thus they all make excuse. Lord,
   when so many are unwilling and so many more are occupied with other
   things, how shall the wedding be furnished with guests?

   A third class were violently opposed--they would not be bothered, they
   had no patience with religious cant--they "took His servants and
   entreated them spitefully and slew them." These are not so numerous as
   the others. But yet they are found among us. Skeptics, swearers,
   revilers of godliness and "modern thought" men--these revile the Cross
   and are ferocious against the Gospel. When we see these raging, we are
   apt to ask very mournfully--How can the wedding be furnished with
   guests?

   The most dreadful thought of all remains--some of the invited had
   already perished. The King in His wrath sent His troops and slew the
   murderers of His messengers and burned their city. While I have been
   preaching, many of my hearers have died. Where are they now? If they
   died without Christ they are now past hope. Ah me! They can never enter
   now, for the door is shut. If they died in their sins, they are in the
   outer darkness--where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you think
   of it, this is a dark prospect. Men are dying, dying without hope. And
   those who are yet alive are resolved to perish in like manner, for they
   are earnestly invited to the feast of love but they refuse to come. How
   can the wedding be furnished with guests?

   The King tells us the real reason why they would not come--they were
   not worthy. Those who were invited specially and about whom there was
   the greatest hope had nothing in them to encourage that hope--they were
   not loyal, they were not kind-hearted, they were not honest, they were
   not worthy--else they would have come to do honor to the Son of their
   King. Their not coming revealed the enmity of their hearts. It was a
   wretched way of showing their spite to the Prince upon His wedding day.
   It is horrible that men refuse Christ and Heaven out of enmity to God.
   Rejecters of Christ are unworthy of pardoning Grace, unworthy of a
   dying Savior, unworthy of those marriage bonds into which Jesus enters
   with believing hearts. They are not worthy in the Gospel sense of
   worthiness, and of course, they were far less worthy in a legal sense.

   The most mournful spectacle in the world is a heart which refuses the
   mercy of God. Objection is sometimes made to the doctrine of total
   depravity. I do not know what adjective can be too strong to describe
   human depravity when I perceive that it refuses God under His loveliest
   aspect--God in the greatness of His love, God sparing not His own Son.
   If men turn away from God in anger I can understand it. If men turn
   aside from God in justice I can understand it. But when they so hate
   God that they will not even have His salvation--when they refuse pardon
   through the precious blood of Christ, when they will sooner be damned
   than reconciled to God--this shows that their heart is desperately
   wicked. The Cross rejected is the clearest proof of the heart depraved.
   There I leave this mournful subject and go a step further. Certainly it
   did seem as if the wedding would not be furnished with guests.

   II. Secondly, IT WAS A MOURNFUL PROSPECT. Imagine that there had been
   no guests at the wedding feast--

   what then?

   First, it would have been greatly to the King's dishonor. The Crown
   Prince is married and nobody comes to the wedding! The feast is free,
   costly, plentiful but nobody will come to it. What an insult! The
   banquet hall is lighted and the minstrels are in their place but no
   eyes or ears are charmed. Oxen and fatlings make the tables groan but
   none are there to make the hall resound with shout and song. What a
   wretched spectacle! Empty halls, unfurnished benches, meat uneaten
   carried out to the dogs! History does not record a more deliberate and
   unmistakable insult.

   Let me translate the parable. If no souls are saved, if the great plan
   of redemption does not save, what a farce the whole business will be!
   What a dishonor to the name of the great God! Look at the supposition
   that you may see the impossibility of it. Think for an instant of a
   defeated, disappointed, dishonored Jehovah, Can it be? And yet, if the
   wedding had not been furnished with guests, the king would have been
   disappointed and insulted in the most tender point. If the chosen are
   not saved, if men are not brought to Christ, then the glorious name of
   the God of Grace is dishonored. Do you think it is possible?

   In the next place, suppose none had come to the wedding feast. Then the
   king's son would have been grieved. His wedding and nobody there! If it
   were your own, perhaps you could put up with it. For you do not stand
   in so public a position as the king's son and you have not provided so
   vast a banquet. But the king's son! Only imagine that it is his
   wedding-day and the servants are mustered in the hall but not a single
   guest arrives. He has no one to congratulate him upon the happy day, no
   one to wish him well, no one to welcome the bride.

   Now, the same is true of our Lord Jesus Christ--if He dies and men do
   not believe in Him. If He rises again and men do not accept Him. If He
   enters Heaven as a Prince and a Savior and yet no one receives
   repentance and remission, where is His honor? Where is His Glory? Look
   at the dreadful supposition and think whether it can be. I am sure, as
   you gaze upon it, you will say, "Impossible! A bleeding Savior cannot
   die in vain. Our Christ could not in death have paid down the ransom
   price for nothing. He could not have stood a Substitute for men and yet
   see men lost after all!"

   If no guests had arrived, how disappointed would the Bride have been!
   She, too, would have had to share in the failure of the day. Her
   wedding would not have been remembered with pleasure. She would have
   been happy in the Bridegroom but also unhappy because of the unkindness
   shown to Him. In vain her rich apparel and her costly ornaments-- for
   there are no eyes to gaze upon them. If souls are not saved the Church
   misses her greatest joy. When men believe in Jesus, how delighted we
   are! Our hearts leap for joy when men repent. But if sinners are not
   saved, if the preaching of the Gospel is in vain, if they will not come
   to Christ--then are saints full of heaviness and the Church cries out
   in her anguish, "Have you forgotten to be gracious?"

   Had none come to the marriage feast, a store of provisions would have
   been wasted. The King says, "My oxen and my fatlings are killed." See
   the bullocks roasting whole! See yonder fatted calf killed for the
   feast! Mark how the sheep are led to the slaughter! All this will
   remain untouched. Yonder dainty dishes and flowing bowls and luscious
   fruits will have none to enjoy them. It will be a wretched business,
   indeed! I want you to look at the dreadful picture till it vanishes out
   of sight. Can it be that Jesus has made Himself the heavenly bread and
   none will feed on Him, or at the best a very few? Can it be that He has
   provided a robe of righteousness and nobody will wear it? Is Heaven
   prepared and will it remain half occupied? I do but suppose it for the
   moment--to make you see what a melancholy fact a failure in the scheme
   of mercy would be.

   Would it not have meant, also, the enemy's triumph? The King's foes
   would have heard of it and laughed Him to scorn. At a royal wedding He
   could not command guests! How they would scoff at His wasted provision!
   "Ha, ha! Ha, ha!" The story would have been told on every ale-bench.
   The sons of Belial would make rare mirth of it. The King, the Prince,
   the Bride would all have been ridiculed, because of a wedding in empty
   halls, a feast with phantom guests! I do not believe that God intends
   to let Satan triumph in this way. I cannot imagine that He will allow
   the powers of darkness thus to open their wicked mouths against Him. If
   free will refuses the gift of God, Free Grace will come in and win the
   day.

   I have shown you already how free will threatens to empty the
   banqueting hall and dishonor the King, the Son and the Bride. And if
   the business had been left to the free will of man, this is the result
   which would have come of it--a God dishonored and men preferring to die
   rather than accept life through Jesus Christ. Then it could never have
   been said that "the wedding was furnished with guests."

   III. Let us go a step further and notice that in the parable THIS
   CATASTROPHE WAS GRACIOUSLY PREVENTED. "The wedding was furnished with
   guests."

   We are very much in the same case today as the servants were in when
   the invited ones would not come. We preach and teach the Gospel but we
   have to complain that so many will not come to the banquet of Divine
   Grace. God gives us many souls but not so many as we desire. We are
   eager for many more and we begin to be afraid lest, after all, God
   should not be glorified as we wish that He should be. In the parable an
   unfurnished banquet was prevented and so it will be in the reality. How
   was the calamity averted? It was prevented, first, by a fuller
   invitation. At first the heralds only called those who had been
   previously bid, a sort of aristocracy of hopeful persons.

   As these would not come, we read, "Go you therefore into the highways
   and as many as you shall find, bid to the marriage." They went out, not
   to a select band but to all whom they might find. Brethren, it is a
   grand thing when we get a clearer idea of what the Gospel really is.
   The more evangelical our notions become--so that we are prepared to
   preach the Gospel to every creature under Heaven and to say, "He that
   believes and is baptized shall be saved"--the

   more we may hope for large success. If, by my preaching, I lead a man
   to look at himself--to see whether there is anything in him which
   entitles him to believe--I practically hide the Gospel from him.

   If I preach only character so that the man mainly enquires whether he
   has that character, I fix his eye upon himself. And this is not what I
   should aim at. If I go forth and gather together as many as I find,
   both good and bad, then their thoughts are on the banquet rather than
   on themselves. We want men to look to Jesus, and therefore we cry,
   "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." When we get
   upon clear Gospel lines and keep there, we may expect to see the arm of
   the Lord revealed and the wedding furnished with guests.

   Again, the invitation was now given more publicly. They had simply gone
   to the houses of the invited guests and said, "All things are
   ready--come." But now the servants go to the chief places of concourse.
   And they cry aloud and spare not among the crowds of men. One has gone
   to the market. Another is preaching where four ways meet. Hark to the
   voice of one upon the village green and to the songs of others as they
   traverse the back slum. You cannot now go along a street without
   hearing the news of the great wedding feast. Many will be brought in
   when many are eager to bring them in. God is pleased to acknowledge the
   means which He has Himself ordained.

   The more constant and public the proclamation of the Gospel becomes,
   the more numerous will men be saved through the Spirit of God. Then is
   the set time to favor Zion come. We are not to hide our lamps under a
   bushel. He that knows the Gospel should speak it out as plainly as he
   can and let his voice be as the silver trumpets ofjubilee--that every
   ear may hear. It came to pass that the king's message was more widely
   made known and thus "the wedding was furnished with guests."

   Another matter assisted--the servants were now thoroughly zealous. I am
   sure I should have felt dreadfully agitated to see all those provisions
   and none coming to eat them. Think of the halls decorated, the cooks
   working day and night, the big fires burning, bullocks roasting, the
   wines positioned on the lees and yet no guests. It would have worried
   me greatly and you, too. You would have said, "It cannot be, it must
   not be, we cannot bear it. The King, how sad He must feel! The good
   Prince, how bitter it is for Him! The dear Bride, what must be her
   sadness when this great insult is put upon her? "I must fetch in some
   guests, or die in the attempt."

   I am sure we should have traveled six ways at once if we could. We
   should have invited with a thousand mouths if possible. Getting hold of
   one man's coat and of another man's sleeve, we should have compelled
   them to come in. This, also, is the Lord's way of blessing men. He
   excites His own people, makes them sorrowful for the sins of the times,
   and then they grow earnest and troubled and so they lay themselves out
   to snatch men as brands from the burning. "As soon as Zion travailed,
   she brought forth her children." The want of travailing causes the
   absence of conversion. When we begin to sigh and cry and mourn because
   the ways of God are forsaken--then our earnestness moves the
   heart--both of God and man--and the guests come to the wedding.

   Again, the calamity of a wedding without guests was prevented by a
   certain secret power which went with the messengers. We read that they
   "gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good." They
   did not merely invite them but they gathered them in. Now people are
   not to be gathered in great numbers all of a sudden and led to a feast
   by mere words. Words are but air. There is nothing in our words to make
   men come to Jesus unless the Lord works by them. Yet the guests did
   come in shoals. An influence went with the words of those servants
   which drew the people together. They could not wish to stay away. They
   came gladly. Their wills were sweetly inclined and they thronged the
   palace.

   Beloved, all the hope of our ministry lies in the Spirit of God
   operating upon the spirits of men. I want all the members of this
   Church to feel this more deeply and practically than ever. Do not put
   trust in the preacher--if he happens to be away, do not think that God
   is tied to him. Look for a blessing upon the Gospel itself--whoever
   preaches it. If the Holy Spirit is with us we shall see thousands
   flocking to Jesus. No sinner will ever come to Christ apart from the
   quickening, enlightening, drawing, converting power of the Holy Spirit
   supernaturally exercised upon the conscience and heart. Let us believe
   this.

   And next, let us be assured that the Spirit of God is with us and let
   us then go forth with all boldness. To the street corner, the cottage,
   the lodging house, the wayside--let us go forth and publish abroad the
   invitation of the great King--"My oxen and My fatlings are killed and
   all things are ready: come unto the marriage." Thus you have seen the
   outward means by which the Holy Spirit brings men to Jesus and the
   wedding is furnished with guests.

   IV. I close by noticing, in the fourth place, that IN THE END THE FEAST
   WAS A GLORIOUS SUCCESS. "The

   wedding was furnished with guests." Guests are a part of the furniture
   of a wedding feast. You may pile on your gold and silver plates, hang
   up your banners, load your tables and sound your music--but if you have
   no guests, the feast is a failure. It is our solemn conviction that the
   Lord our God has never failed yet and that He never will fail. We
   believe that the Lord's eternal purpose will stand and that He will do
   all His pleasure. We believe in no blind fate, but we trust in a
   predestination which is full of eyes and which accomplishes its purpose
   to the least jot and tittle.

   God's greatest work is redemption--will He fail in it? Salvation is the
   focus of His Glory--shall this be frustrated? If God were to fail in
   connection with the Cross, it would be a failure, indeed. God would be
   dishonored and His crown jewels cast into the mire. But it shall not
   be. Turn to the parable and we find there were sufficient guests--"the
   wedding was furnished with guests." There were as many guests as were
   necessary to the honor of the King and His Son and His Bride. Oh yes,
   in the gathering up and consummation of all things, the wedding of the
   Lord Jesus will be amply furnished with guests--"He shall see of the
   travail of His soul and shall be satisfied."

   There will be no disappointment to Christ at the Last Great Day. Satan
   may whisper disaster and disappointment to us at this hour and for the
   moment it may seem as if the forces of darkness triumphed. But the end
   is not yet. The will of God--so full of grace and mercy--shall be
   accomplished, the preparations of Divine Grace shall be used and the
   purpose of love fulfilled. As the wedding was furnished with guests, so
   shall Heaven be filled with "a number which no man can number."

   The feast was more of a success than it would have been had there been
   no opposition. The persons who came to the wedding were more grateful
   than the first invited might have been if they had come. The richer
   sort had a good dinner every day. Those farmers could always kill a fat
   sheep. And those merchants could always buy a calf. "Thank you for
   nothing," they would have said to the King if they had accepted His
   invitation. But these poor beggars picked off the streets had not
   tasted meat for months. Their half-starved bodies welcomed the
   fatlings. How glad they were!

   One of them said to the other, "It's a long time since you and I sat
   down to such a meal as this," and the other answered, "I can hardly
   believe that I am really in a palace dining with a king. Why, yesterday
   I begged all the day and only had two pence at night. Long live the
   King, say I, and blessings on the Prince and His Bride!" I warrant they
   were thankful for such a feast. They said it was an ill wind that blew
   nobody any good--because their betters had refused to come-- there was
   now room for them.

   When the Lord saves great sinners such as you and me, He wins warm
   hearts for Himself. When the Lord saves unlikely ones, He gets unusual
   thankfulness. When He brings in the drunkard and the profane, the
   unclean and the hard-ened--and makes them pure and holy and puts them
   among the children--what gratitude He gets! The Pharisee may ask Christ
   to a cold dinner but it is the woman that was a sinner who will wash
   His feet with tears and wipe them with the hairs of her head. If some
   of you moralists get saved--and God grant you may!--you will never
   prize the precious blood so much as those do who are washed by it from
   foulest stains.

   The joy that day was much more expressed than it would have been had
   others come. Those ladies and gentlemen who were first invited--if they
   had come to the wedding--would have seated themselves there in a very
   stiff and proper manner. Dear me, what a fine thing propriety is! And
   yet, what a dead thing it is! One said to me the other day, "I have
   gone to my place of worship for many years and nobody ever did speak to
   me that I know of and nobody ever will. For we are all too respectable
   to know one another."

   You know the dignified style of self-satisfied people. Among such there
   is no cordiality, no freshness, no sweet naturalness. Did you ever
   attend a breakfast or a dinner of beggars? Did you ever see a company
   of very hungry people feeding to their heart's content? They make a
   merry clatter. They are not muzzled by propriety. They are glad at the
   sight of every dish. They look at the waiters as angels. And when the
   hurrahing comes to be done, you admire the strength of their lungs. The
   dull monotony of respectability knows no joy like that which comes to
   poverty when it feasts to the full at the table of bounty.

   The Crown Prince was happier that day among His poor subjects than He
   would have been among the grandees and the fashionables. Those paupers,
   those laborers, those tramps, those hedge-birds--those were the fellows
   to make merry! To whom much is forgiven, the same loves much. Up in
   Heaven they sing like the voice of many waters and like great thunder
   because they have been cleansed from many sins and have partaken of
   great grace. Let the Pharisee and the mor-

   alist refuse the Gospel. There are those about who, in accepting it,
   will do it greater honor than those dull souls could ever render to it.
   Thus the wedding was furnished with guests who expressed their joy
   enthusiastically.

   How the provisions were relished! It does one good to see a hungry man
   eat his food. To him even every bitter thing is sweet. He does not turn
   over his food and cut off every little bit of gristle, as some of you
   do because of your delicate appetites. The true Gospel hearer hearkens
   to the text--"Eat you that which is good and let your soul delight
   itself in fatness." He does not act the critic and laugh at this
   expression and that. He is too sharp-set to be particular about the
   dishes and the carving. We marvel sometimes at the capacity of hungry
   men. There is no end to it.

   And it is the same with spiritual as with natural hunger. I think I can
   tell what happened at that wedding--the Bride nudged the Bridegroom and
   said, "See these poor people eat! Is it not a pleasure to give one's
   oxen and fatlings where they are so much needed?" The Bridegroom was as
   happy as He could be, for He was of a sympathizing heart and He greatly
   rejoiced in the joy of the poor people around Him. The King Himself
   that day was gladdened as He saw what a gallant company of trenchermen
   they were and how there was no bickering, nor finding fault but only
   unbroken enjoyment and gratitude. The choicest kind of guests had been
   collected if the object was to give joy.

   Ah, dear Friends, if you have a deep sense of sin, you will greatly
   love Free Grace and dying love. This is the lack of certain gentlemen
   who are always finding fault with the Gospel--they never knew their own
   state by nature and by practice and therefore they do not prize
   salvation. If they had felt a few lashes of the ten-thronged whip of
   the Law upon their bare consciences, they would relish Gospel
   forgiveness far more. He that has been in the prison of conviction
   prizes blood-bought freedom. He that has felt the chains of sin values
   the liberty wherewith Christ makes him free.

   So I say that inasmuch as these poor creatures were brought in from the
   streets and their splendid appetites enjoyed the feast--the wedding
   festival was no failure but all the greater success--because of the
   King's enemies. The wedding was furnished with guests--guests who
   enjoyed the abundance provided by the King. Certainly, the occasion
   became more famous than it would otherwise have been. If the feast had
   gone on as usual it would have been only one among many such things.
   But now this royal banquet was the only one of its kind--unique,
   unparalleled. To gather in poor men off the streets, laboring men and
   idle men--bad men and good men to the wedding of the Crown Prince--this
   was a new thing under the sun.

   Everybody talked of it. There were songs made about it and these were
   sung in the King's honor where none honored kings before. In the
   kitchens, among the servants, this was a fine story to tell by the
   fireside while Mary and Jane wished they had been there to see. In
   every lodging house for years to come this would be the favorite
   story--the tale of the poor man's Prince and the needy man's Queen. On
   the exchange and in the market men talked of the brave Bride and
   Bridegroom who had defied the customs of fashion and had done a deed so
   daring in its goodness. Was ever such a thing heard ofbefore?

   Here was a feast for men who never feasted before! Sensible men said,
   "And nothing could be better--they were feeding those that wanted
   feeding--they were giving good cheer to those who have little enough of
   it." Among the poor, themselves, the Prince's name was very famous
   while the portrait of the Princess was nailed up over the mantel.
   Children said to one another, "My father went to the wedding of the
   imperial Prince." To many it seemed like a story out of the Arabian
   Nights. It did not read like a piece of common history at all, but like
   a fairy tale of the age of gold.

   Dear Friends, when the Lord saved some of us by His Grace, it was no
   common event. When He brought us great sinners to His feet and washed
   us and clothed us and fed us and made us His own--it was a wonder to be
   talked of forever and ever. We will never leave off praising His name
   throughout eternity. That which looked as though it would defame the
   King turned out to His honor and "the wedding was furnished with
   guests."

   One thing more--the king's liberality was all the better seen. If those
   who were first bid had put in an appearance they would have come
   arrayed in their own scarlet and fine linen. Some of the gentlemen
   would have bought a new suit on purpose. You may depend upon it--all
   the cunning women in the city would have been employed to get their
   Ladyships ready for the banquet that they might have honor in the court
   that day. Now these fine clothes would have been more for the glory of
   those who came in them than for the honor of the King.

   There was nothing of this among those who were gathered from the
   highways. They were in sorry gear. It was difficult, perhaps, in some
   cases, to tell which was the original stuff of their garments, so
   patched and mended they were. Anyhow, they were a ragged regiment. And
   what was the consequence? Why, then they must all be dressed in the
   Prince's

   own livery and all the glory of their apparel must be unto Him. He said
   to His servants, "Go to My wardrobe. Bring forth changes of raiment."
   Everyone that came in to the feast was invited to put on the King's
   wedding garments. When He came in to see the guests, it was a grand
   sight, for everybody was royally arrayed.

   The king's wedding robes were much better than His subjects' best
   suits. It was a grand sight to see so many all in one royal
   livery--every guest wearing the uniform of mercy. So is it with us poor
   sinners saved by Divine Grace. If we had possessed any true
   righteousness of our own we should have worn it. But now we count our
   own righteousness but dross and dung that we may win Christ and be
   found in Him. His righteousness decorates all the saints--they could
   not be better arrayed. Thus is the feast made more glorious than it
   otherwise would have been and the wedding is furnished with guests.

   How I wish that I could gather in many this morning, both bad and good!
   I mean by good, those who are comparatively so as to their moral
   conduct. You are bid to come to the wedding feast of love. But even if
   you are bad and obliged to admit that you are so, I am equally anxious
   to gather you in to the feast. Do you ask me--What are we to do? What
   were these persons to do? To come just as they were and freely receive
   what the King had freely provided. Sometimes at our treats for Sunday
   school children, every child is told to bring his own mug and plate.
   But it is not so with our great King. His banquet is too royal for
   that. You are to bring nothing.

   Still, everybody must go home and wash, must he not? No, the washing
   and the clothing shall all be done for you at the King's palace. Come
   as you are. "But what do you mean by coming?" We mean trusting--trust
   your soul with Jesus Christ and He will save you. Trust Him and you
   shall know that He died in your place, so that believing in Him, you
   shall not perish but have everlasting life. May the Holy Spirit lead
   you to believe in Jesus, that is, trust Him.

   I have told you the Gospel and the whole of it. Trust the crucified
   Savior and you shall live. Jesus says, "Look unto Me and be you saved,
   all the ends of the earth." Do not look within to see what is there but
   look to Jesus hanging on the Cross. A look at Christ crucified will
   save you. Look, dear Hearers, young as you are, look to Jesus now!
   Look, you gray-headed men and women who have never looked before--look
   now! Strangers and foreigners who have not heard this word before,
   there is life in a look at the Crucified One for you! You guiltiest of
   the guilty and you most amiable of the amiable, turn away from anything
   there is in yourselves--bad or good--and look to Jesus only.

   Receive from Jesus all He brings you--pardon, righteousness,
   sanctification, redemption, Himself. He that comes to a wedding feast
   has nothing to do but to eat and to drink. Give your mind up to this
   delightful exercise. Take the food which God provides you. You shall do
   good works afterwards! For they will follow as a consequence of the
   strength which comes of receiving heavenly food through faith. But just
   now eat, drink and be merry, as becomes a Prince's marriage. May the
   Father be pleased, His Son be honored and His Church be comforted
   through you! Amen and Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                         The Blessing of Full Assurance

   A Sermon

   (No. 2023)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, May 13th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [4]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the
   Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may
   believe on the name of the Son of God."'1 John 5:13.

   JOHN wrote to believers'"These things have I written unto you that
   believe on the name of the Son of God." It is worthy of note that all
   the epistles are so written. They are not letters to everybody, they
   are letters to those who are called to be saints. It ought to strike
   some of you with awe when you open the Bible and think how large a part
   of it is not directed at you. You may read it, and God's Holy Spirit
   may graciously bless it to you, but it is not directed to you. You are
   reading another man's letter: thank God that you are permitted to read
   it, but long to be numbered with those to whom it is directed. Thank
   God much more if any part of it should be used of the Holy Ghost for
   your salvation. The fact that the Holy Spirit speaks to the churches
   and to believers in Christ should make you bow the knee and cry to God
   to put you among the children, that this Book may become your Book from
   beginning to end, that you may read its precious promises as made to
   you. This solemn thought may not have struck some of you: let it
   impress you now.

   We do not wonder that certain men do not receive the epistles, for they
   were not written to them. Why should they cavil at words which are
   addressed to men of another sort from themselves? Yet we do not marvel,
   for we knew it would be so. Here is a will, and you begin to read it;
   but you do not find it interesting: it is full of words and terms which
   you do not take the trouble to understand, because they have no
   relation to yourself; but should you, in reading that will, come upon a
   clause in which an estate is left to you, I warrant you that the nature
   of the whole document will seem changed to you. You will be anxious now
   to understand the terms, and to make sure of the clauses, and you will
   even wish to remember every word of the clause which refers to
   yourself. O dear friends, may you read the Testament of our Lord Jesus
   Christ as a testament of love to yourselves, and then you will prize it
   beyond all the writings of the sages.

   This leads me to make the second remark, that as these things are
   written to believers, believers ought especially to make themselves
   acquainted with them, and to search into their meaning and intent. John
   says, "These things have I written to you that believe on the name of
   the Son of God." Do not, I beseech you, neglect to read what the Holy
   Ghost has taken care to write to you. It is not merely John that
   writes. John is inspired of the Lord, and these things are written to
   you by the Spirit of God. Give earnest heed to every single word of
   what God has sent as his own epistle to your hearts. Value the
   Scriptures. Luther said that "he would not be in paradise, if he might
   , without the Word of the Lord; but with the Word he could live in hell
   itself." He said at another time that "he would not take all the world
   for one leaf of the Bible." The Scriptures are everything to the
   Christian'his meat and his drink. The saint can say, "O how I love thy
   law!" If we cannot say so, something is wrong with us. If we have lost
   our relish for Holy Scripture, we are out of condition, and need to
   pray for spiritual health.

   This much is the porch of my sermon, let us now enter more fully into
   our subject, noticing, first, that John wrote with a special purpose;
   and then going on to assert, secondly, that this purpose we ought to
   follow up.

   I. First, JOHN WROTE WITH A SPECIAL PURPOSE. Men do not write well
   unless they have some end in writing. To sit down with paper and ink
   before you, and so much space to fill up, will ensure very poor
   writing. John knew what he was at. His intent and aim were clear to his
   own mind, and he tells us what they were.

   According to the text the beloved apostle had one clear purpose which
   branched out into three.

   To begin with, John wrote that we might enjoy the full assurance of our
   salvation. "These things have I written unto you that believe on the
   name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life."

   Many who believe on the name of Jesus are not sure that they have
   eternal life; they only hope so. Occasionally they have assurance, but
   the joy is not abiding. They are like a minister I have heard of, who
   said he felt assured of his salvation, "except when the wind was in the
   east." It is a wretched thing to be so subject to circumstances as many
   are. What is true when the wind is in the soft south or the reviving
   west is equally true when the wind is neither good for man nor beast.
   John would not have our assurance vary with the weather-glass, nor turn
   with the vane. He says, "These things have I written unto you, that ye
   may know that ye have eternal life." He would have us certain that we
   are partakers of the new life, and so know it as to reap the golden
   fruit of such knowledge, and be filled with joy and peace through
   believing.

   I speak affectionately to the weaker ones, who cannot yet say that they
   know they have believed. I speak not to your condemnation, but to your
   consolation. Full assurance is not essential to salvation, but it is
   essential to satisfaction. May you get'may you get it at once; at any
   rate may you never be satisfied to live without it. You may have full
   assurance. You may have it without personal revelations: it is wrought
   in us by the Word of God. These things are written that you may have
   it; and we may be sure that the means used by the Spirit are equal to
   the effect which he desires. Under the guidance of the Spirit of God,
   John so wrote as to attain his end in writing. What, then, has he
   written with the design of making us know that we have eternal life? Go
   through the whole Epistle, and you will see that it all presses in that
   direction; but we shall not at this present have time to do more than
   glance through this chapter.

   He begins thus: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born
   of God." Do you believe that Jesus is the anointed of God? Is he so to
   you? Is he anointed as your prophet, priest, and king? Have you
   realized his anointing so as to put your trust in him? Do you receive
   Jesus as appointed of God to be the Mediator, the Propitiation for sin,
   the Saviour of men? If so, you are born of God. "How may I know this?"
   Brethern, our evidence is the witness of God himself as here recorded.
   We need no other witness. Suppose an angel were to tell you that you
   are born of God, would that be a more sure testimony than the
   infallible Scripture? If you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you are
   born of God. John has thus positively declared the truth, that you may
   know that you have eternal life. Can anything be more clear than this?

   The loving spirit of John leads him to say, "Every one that loveth him
   that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him." Do you love God?
   Do you love his Only-begotten Son? You can answer those two questions
   surely. I knew a dear Christian woman who would sometimes say, "I know
   that I love Jesus; but my fear is that he does not love me." Her doubt
   used to make me smile, for it never could have occurred to me. If I
   love him, I know it is because he first loved me. Love to God in us is
   always the work of God's love towards us. Jesus loved us, and gave
   himself for us, and therefore we love him in return. Love to Jesus is
   an effect which proves the existence of its cause. Do you love Jesus?
   Do you feel a delight in him? Is his name as music to your ear, and
   honey to your mouth? Do you love to hear him extolled? Ah, dear
   friends! I know that to many of you a sermon full of his dear name is
   as a royal banquent; and if there is no Christ in a discourse, it is
   empty, and vain, and void to you. Is it not so? If you do indeed love
   him that begat and him that is begotten of him, then this is one of the
   things that is written "that ye may know that ye have eternal life."

   John goes on to give another evidence: "By this we know that we love
   the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments." Do
   you love God? and do you love his children? Listen to another word from
   the same apostle: "We know that we have passed from death unto life,
   because we love the brethren." That may appear to be a very small
   evidence; but I can assure you it has often been a great comfort to my
   soul. I know I love the brethern: I can say unto my Lord,

   "Is there a lamb among thy flock

   I would disdain to feed?"

   I would gladly cheer and comfort the least of his people. Well, then,
   if I love the brethern, I love the Elder Brother. If I love the babes,
   I love the Father; and I know that I have passed from death unto life.
   Brethren, take this evidence home in all its force. It is conclusive:
   John has said, "We know that we have passed from death unto life,
   because we love the brethren"; and he would not have spoken so
   positively if it had not been even so. Brethren, never be content with
   sentimental comforts; set your feet firmly upon the rock of fact and
   truth. True Christian assurance is not a matter of guesswork, but of
   mathematical precision. It is capable of logical proof, and is no
   rhapsody or poetical fiction. We are told by the Holy Ghost that, if we
   love the brethren, we have passed from death to life. You can tell
   whether you love the brethren, as such, for their Master's sake, and
   for the truth's sake that is in them; and if you can truly say that you
   thus love them, then you may know that you have eternal life.

   Our apostle gives us this further evidence: "This is the love of God,
   that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous."
   Obedience is the grand test of love. If you are living after your own
   will, and pay no homage to God, you are none of his. If you never think
   of the Lord Jesus as your Master, and never recognize the claims of
   God, and never wish to be obedient to his will, you are not in
   possession of eternal life. If you desire to be obedient, and prove
   that desire by your actions, then you have the divine life within you.
   Judge yourselves. Is the tenor of your life obedience or disobedience?
   By the fruit you can test the root and the sap.

   But note, that this obedience must be cheerful and willing. No doubt
   some for a while obey the commands of God unwillingly. They do not like
   them, though they bow to them. They fret and grizzle because of the
   restraints of piety; and this proves that they are hypocrites. What you
   wish to do you practically are doing in the sight of God. If there
   could be such a thing as holiness forced upon a man, it would be
   unholiness. O my hearer, it may be that you cannot fall into a certain
   line of sin; but if you could, you would: your desires show what you
   really are. I have heard of Christian people, so called, going to
   sinful amusements, just, as they say, to enjoy a little pleasure. Ah
   well, we see where you are! Where your pleasure is, your heart is. If
   you enjoy the pleasures of the world, you are of the world, and with
   the world you will be condemned. If God's commands are grievous to you,
   then you are a rebel at heart. Loyal subjects delight in the royal law.
   "His commandments are not grievous." I said to one who came to join the
   church the other day, "I suppose you are not perfect"? and the reply
   was, "No, sir, I wish I might be." I said, "And suppose you were"? "Oh,
   then," she said, "that would be heaven to me." So it would be to me. We
   delight in the law of God after the inward man. Oh, that we could
   perfectly obey in thought, and word, and deed! This is our view of
   heaven. Thus we sing of it:

   "There shall we see his face,

   And never, never sin;

   There from the rivers of his grace

   Drink endless pleasures in."

   We would scarce ask to be rid of sorrow, if we might be rid of sin. We
   would bear any burden cheerfully if we could live without spot we shall
   also be without grief. His commandments are not grievous, but they are
   ways of pleasantness and peace to us. Do you feel that you love the
   ways of God, that you desire holiness, and follow after it joyfully?
   Then, dear friends, you have eternal life, and these are the sure
   evidences of it. Obedience, holiness, delight in God never came into a
   human heart except from a heavenly hand. Wherever they are found they
   prove that the Lord has implanted eternal life, for they are much too
   precious to be buried away in a dead soul.

   John then proceeds to mention three witnesses. Now, dear hearers, do
   you know anything about these three witnesses? "There are three that
   bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and
   these three agree in one." Do you know "the Spirit" ? Has the Spirit of
   God quickened you, changed you, illuminated you, sanctified you? Does
   the Spirit of God dwell in you? Do you feel his sacred impulses? Is he
   the essence of the new life within you? Do you know him as clothing you
   with his light and power? If so, you are alive unto God. Next, do you
   know "the water," the purifying power of the death of Christ? Does the
   crucified Lord crucify your sins? Is the water applied to you to remove
   the power of sin? Do you now long to perfect holiness in the fear of
   God? This proves that you have eternal life. Do you also know "the
   blood"? This is a wretched age, in which men think little of the
   precious blood. My heart has well-nigh been broken, and my very flesh
   has been enfeebled, as I have thought upon the horrible things which
   have been spoken of late about the precious blood by men called
   Christian ministers. "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto
   their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united." Beloved friends, do
   you know the power of the blood to take away sin, the power of the
   blood to speak peace to the conscience, the power of the blood to give
   access to the throne of grace? Do you know the quickening, restoring,
   cheering power of the precious blood of Christ which is set forth in
   the Lord's Supper by the fruit of the vine? Then in the mouth of these
   three witnesses shall the fact of your having eternal life be fully
   established. If the Spirit of God be in you, he is the earnest of your
   eternal inheritance. If the water has washed you, then you are the
   Lord's. Jesus said to Peter, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in
   me." But ye are washed, and therefore the Lord's. If the precious blood
   has cleansed you from the guilt of sin, you know that it has also
   purchased you from death, and it is to you the guarantee of eternal
   life. I pray that you may from this moment enjoy the combined light of
   these three lamps of God'"the spirit, and the water, and the blood,"
   and so have full assurance of faith.

   One thing more I would notice. Read the ninth verse: the apostle puts
   our faith and assurance on the ground that we receive "the witness of
   God." If I believe that I am saved because of this, that, and the
   other, I may be mistaken: the only sure ground is "the witness of God."
   The inmost heart of Christian faith is that we take God as his word;
   and we must accept that word, not because of the probabilities of its
   statements, nor because of the confirmatory evidence of science and
   philosophy, but simply and alone because the Lord has spoken it. Many
   professing Christians fall sadly short of this point. They dare to
   judge the Word instead of bowing before it. They do not sit at the
   Master's feet, but become doctors themselves. I thank God that I
   believe everything that God has spoken, whether I am able to see its
   reason or not. To me the fact that the mouth of God hath spoken it
   stands in the place of all argument, either for or against. If Jehovah
   says so, so it is. Do you accept the witness of God? If not, you have
   made him a liar, and the truth is not in you; but if you have received
   "the witnesses of God," then this is his witness, that "He hath given
   to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." I say again, if your
   faith stands in the wisdom of men, and is based upon the cleverness of
   a preacher, it will fail you; but if it stands on the sure Word of the
   Lord it will stand for ever, and this may be to you a special token
   that you have eternal life. I have said enough upon this subject; oh
   that God may bless it to you! May we be enabled, from what John has
   written, to gather beyond doubt that we have the life of God within our
   souls.

   Furthermore, John wrote that we might know our spiritual life to be
   eternal. Please notice this, for there are some of God's children who
   have not yet learned this cheering lesson. The life of God in the soul
   is not transient, but abiding; not temporary but eternal. Some think
   that the life of God in the believer's soul may die out; but how, then,
   could it be eternal? If it die it is not eternal life. If it be eternal
   life it cannot die. I know that modern deceivers deny that eternal
   means eternal, but you and I have not learned their way of pumping the
   meanings out of the words which the Holy Spirit uses. We believe that
   "eternal" means endless, and that if I have eternal life, I shall live
   eternally, Brethren, the Lord would have us know that we have eternal
   life.

   Learn, then, the doctrine of the eternality of life given in the new
   birth. It must be eternal life, because it is "the life of God." We are
   born again of the Spirit of God by a living and incorruptible seed,
   which liveth and abideth for ever. We are said to be "made partakers of
   the divine nature." Surely, this means, among other things, that we
   receive an undying life; for immortality is of the essence of the Life
   of God. His name is "I am that I am." He hath life in himself, and the
   Son hath life in himself, and of this life we are the receivers. This
   was his purpose concerning his Son, that he might give eternal life to
   as many as the Father had given him. If it be the life of God which is
   in a believer'and certainly it is, for he hath begotten us again'then
   that life must be eternal. As children of God, we partake of his life,
   and as heirs of God, we inherit his eternity. "This is life eternal,
   that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
   thou hast sent."

   Beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ calls the life of his people eternal
   life. How often do I quote this text! It seems to lie on the tip of my
   tongue: "I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never
   perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." And again,
   "He that believeth in him hath everlasting life." It is not temporary
   life, not life which at a certain period must grow old and die, but
   everlasting life. "It shall be in him a well of water springing up into
   everlasting life." This is the life of Christ within the soul. "For ye
   are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." "I live; yet not I,
   but Christ liveth in me." "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear,
   then shall ye also appear with him in glory." If our life is Christ's
   life, we shall not die until Christ dies. If our life is hidden in him,
   it will never be discovered and destroyed until Christ himself is
   destroyed. Let us rest in this.

   Mark again how our Lord has put it: "Because I live, ye shall live
   also." As long, then, as Jesus lives, his people must live, for the
   argument will always be the same, "Because I live, ye shall live also."
   We are so one with Christ that while the head lives the members cannot
   die. We are so one Christ that the challenge is given, "Who shall
   separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" A
   list is added of things which may be supposed to separate, but we are
   told that they cannot do so, for "in all these things we are more than
   conquerors through him that loved us." Is it not clear, then, that we
   are quickened with a life so heavenly and divine that we can never die?
   John tells us in this very chapter, "We know that whosoever is born of
   God sinneth not." He does not go back to his old sin, he does not again
   come under the dominion of sin; but, "he that is begotten of God
   keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."

   Beloved, I entreat you to keep a hard and firm grip of this blessed
   doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. How earnestly do I long
   "that ye may know that ye have eternal life"! Away with your doctrine
   of being alive in Christ to-day and dead tomorrow. Poor, miserable
   doctrine that! Hold fast to eternal salvation through the eternal
   covenant carried out by eternal love unto eternal life; for the Spirit
   of God has written these things unto you that believe on the name of
   the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.

   Once more, according to the Authorized text, though not according to
   the Revised Version, John desired the increase and confirmation of
   their faith. He says, "That ye might believe on the name of the Son of
   God." John wrote to those who believed, that they might believe in a
   more emphatic sense. As our Saviour has come not only that we may have
   life, but that we may have it more abundantly, so does John write, that
   having faith we may have more of it. Come beloved, listen for a moment
   to this! You have the milk of faith, but God wills that you should have
   this cream of assurance! He would increase your faith. May you believe
   more extensively. Perhaps you do not believe all the truth, because you
   have not yet perceived it. There were members of the Corinthian church
   who had not believed in the resurrection of the dead, and there were
   Galatians who were very cloudy upon justification by faith. Many a
   Christian man is narrow in the range of his faith from ignorance of the
   Lord's mind. Like certain tribes of Israel, they have conquered a
   scanty territory as yet, though all the land is theirs from Dan to
   Beersheba. John would have us push out our fences, and increase the
   enclosure of our faith. Let us believe all that God has revealed, for
   every truth is precious and practically useful. Perhaps your doctrinal
   belief has been poor and thin. Oh that the Lord would turn the water
   into wine! Many of you live upon milk, and yet your years qualify you
   to feed on meat. Why keep the babes' diet? You that believe are
   exhorted to "go in and out, and find pasture"; range throughout the
   whole revelation of God.

   It will be well for you if your faith also increases intensively. Oh
   that you may more fully believe what you do believe! We need deeper
   insight and firmer conviction. We do not half believe, as yet, any of
   us. Many of you only skim the pools of truth. Blessed is the wing which
   brushes the surface of the river of life; but infinitely more blessed
   is it to plunge into the depths of it. This is John's desire for you,
   that you would believe with all you heart, and soul, and strength.

   He would have you believe more constantly, so that you may say, "My
   heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise."
   It is not always so with us. We are at times chicken-hearted. We play
   the man today, and the mouse tomorrow. Lord have mercy upon us: we are
   an inconsistent people, fickle as the wind. The Lord would have us
   abide always in him with strong and mighty confidence, being rooted and
   built up in him.

   He would have us trust courageously. Some can believe in a small way
   about small things. Oh for a boundless trust in the infinite God! We
   need more of a venturesome faith: the faith to do and dare. Often we
   see the way of power, but have not the faith which would be equal to
   it. See Peter walking on the sea! I do not advise any of you to try it,
   neither did our Lord advise Peter to do so: we do well enough if we
   walk uprightly on land. But when Peter had once taken a few steps on
   the sea, he ought to have known that his Lord could help him all the
   rest of the way; but alas! His faith failed, and he began to sink. He
   could have walked all the way to Jesus if he had believed right on. So
   is it with us: our faith is good enough for a spurt, but it lacks
   staying power. Oh, may God give us to believe, so that we may not only
   trip over a wave or two, but walk on the water to the end! If the Lord
   bids you, you may go through fire and not be burned, through the floods
   and not be drowned. Such a fearless, careless, conquering faith may the
   Lord work in us!

   We need also to have our faith increased in the sense of its becoming
   more practical. Some people have a fine new faith, as pretty as the
   bright poker in the parlour, and as useless. We want an everyday faith,
   not to look at, but to use. Brothers and sisters, we need faith for the
   kitchen and the pantry, as well as for the drawing-room and the
   conservatory. We need workshop faith, as well as prayer-meeting faith.
   We need faith as to the common things of life, and the trying things of
   death. We could do with less paint if we had more power. We need less
   varnish and more verity. God give to you that you may believe on the
   name of the Son of God with a sound, common-sense faith, which will be
   found wearable, and washable, and workable throughout life.

   We need to believe more joyfully. Oh what a blessed thing it is when
   you reach the rest and joy of faith! If we would truly believe the
   promise of God, and rest in the Lord's certain fulfillment of it, we
   might be as happy as the angels. I notice how very early in the morning
   how the birds begin to sing: before the sun is up or even the first
   grey tints of morning light are visible, the little songsters are awake
   and singing. Too often we refuse to sing until the sun is more than up,
   and noon is near. Shame on us! Will we never trust our God? Will we
   never praise him for favours to come? Oh for a faith that can sing
   through the night and through the winter! Faith that can live on a
   promise is the faith of God's elect. You will never enjoy heaven below
   until you believe without wavering. The Lord give you such faith.

   II. Thus I have gone through my first head, and taken nearly all the
   time. I must now come to push of pike, as the old soldiers used to say.
   We must drive our teaching home. THE PURPOSE WHICH JOHN HAD IN HIS MIND
   WE OUGHT TO FOLLOW UP. If he wished us to know that we have eternal
   life, brothers and sisters, let us try to know it. The Word of God was
   written for this purpose; let us use it for its proper end. The whole
   of these Scriptures were written that "we might believe that Jesus is
   the Christ, and that believing we might have life through his name."
   This Book is written to you who believe, that you may know that you
   believe. Will you suffer your Bibles to be a failure to you? Will you
   live in perpetual questioning and doubt? If so, the Book has missed its
   mark for you. The Bible is sent that you may have full assurance of of
   your possession of eternal life; do not, therefore, dream that it will
   be presumptuous on your part to aspire to it. Our conscience tells us
   that we ought to seek full assurance of salvation. It cannot be right
   for us to be children of God, and not to know our own Father. How can
   we kneel down and say, "Our Father which art in heaven," when we do not
   know whether he is our Father or not? Will not a life of doubt tend to
   be a life of falsehood? May we not be using language which is not true
   to our consciousness? Can you sing joyful hymns which you fear are not
   true to you? Will you join in worship when your heart does not know
   that God is your God? Until the spirit of adoption enables you to cry,
   "Abba, Father," where is your love to God? Can you rest? Dare you rest,
   while it is a question whether you are saved or not? Can you go home to
   your dinner to-day and enjoy your meal, while there is a question about
   your soul's eternal life? Oh, be not so foolhardy as to run risks on
   that matter! I pray you, make sure work for eternity. If you leave
   anything in uncertainty, let it concern your body or your estate, but
   not your soul. Conscience bids you seek to know that you have eternal
   life, for without this knowledge many duties will be impossible of
   performance. Many Scriptures which I cannot quote this morning stir you
   up to this duty. Are you not bidden to make your calling and election
   sure? Are you not a thousand times over exhorted to rejoice in the
   Lord, and to give thanks continually? But how can you rejoice, if the
   dark suspicion haunts you, that perhaps, after all, you have not the
   life of God? You must get this question settled, or you cannot rest in
   the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Come, brothers and sisters, I
   beseech you, as you would follow Scripture, and obey the Lord's
   precepts, get the assurance without which you cannot obey them.

   Listen, as I close, to this mass of reasons why each believer should
   seek to know that he has eternal life. Here they are. Assurance of your
   salvation will bring you "the peace of God, which passeth all
   understanding." If you know that you are saved, you can sit down in
   poverty, or in sickness, or under slander, and feel perfectly content.
   Full assurance is the Koh-i-noor amongst the jewels wherewith the
   heavenly Bridegroom adorns his spouse. Assurance is a mountain of
   spices, a land that floweth with milk and honey. To be the assured
   possessor of eternal life is to find a paradise beneath the stars,
   where the mountains and the hills break forth before you into singing.

   Full assurance will sometimes overflow in cataracts of delight. Peace
   flows like a river, and here and there it leaps in cascades of ecstatic
   joy. There are seasons when the plant of peace is in flower, and then
   it sheds a perfume as of myrrh and cassia. Oh, the blessedness of the
   man who knows that he has eternal life! Sometimes in our room alone,
   when we have been enjoying this assurance, we have laughed outright,
   for we could not help it. If anybody had wondered why a man was
   laughing by himself alone, we could have explained that it was nothing
   ridiculous which had touched us, but our mouth was filled with laughter
   because the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we were glad.
   That religion which sets no sweatmeats on the table is a niggardly
   housekeeper. I do not wonder that some people give up their starveling
   religion: it is hardly worth the keeping. The child of God who knows
   that he has eternal life goes to school, be he has many a holiday; and
   he anticipates that day of home-going when he shall see the face of his
   Beloved for ever.

   Brethren, full assurance will give us the full result of the gospel.
   The gospel ought to make us holy; and so it will when we are in full
   possession of it. The gospel ought to make us separate from the world,
   the gospel ought to make us lead a heavenly life here below; and so it
   will if we drink deep draughts of it; but it we take only a sip of it
   now and again, we give it no chance of working out its design in us. Do
   not paddle about the margin of the water of life, but first wade in up
   to your knees, and then hasten to plunge into the waters to swim in.
   Beware of contentment with shallow grace. Prove what the grace of God
   can do for you by giving yourself up to its power.

   Full assurance gives a man a grateful zeal for the God he loves. These
   are the people that will go to the Congo for Jesus, for they know they
   are his. These are the people that will lay down their all for Christ,
   for Christ is theirs. These are the people that will bear scorn and
   shame and misrepresentation for the truth's sake, for they know that
   they have eternal life. These are they that will keep on preaching and
   teaching, spending and working, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,
   and they know it. Men will do little for what they doubt, and much for
   what they believe. If you have lost your title deeds, and you do not
   know whether your house is your own or not, you are not going to spend
   much in repairs and enlargements. When you know that heaven is yours,
   you are anxious to get ready for it. Full assurance finds fuel for zeal
   to feed upon.

   This also creates and sustains patience. When we know that we have
   eternal life, we do not fret about the trials of this passing life. I
   could point to the brethren here this morning, and I could mention
   sisters at home, who amaze me by their endurance of pain and weakness.
   This I know concerning them, that they never have a doubt about their
   interest in Christ; and for this cause they are able to surrender
   themselves into those dear hands which were pierced for them. They know
   that they are the Lord's, and so they say, "Let him do what seemeth him
   good." A blind child was in his father's arms, and a stranger came into
   the room, and took him right away from his father. Yet he did not cry
   or complain. His father said to him, "Johnny, are you afraid? You do
   not know the person who has got hold of you." "No, father," he said, "I
   do not know who he is, but you do." When pain gives us an awkward nip,
   and we do not know whether we shall live or die, when we are called to
   undergo a dangerous operation, and pass into unconciousness, then we
   can say, "I do not know where I am, but my Father knows, and I leave
   all with him." Assurance makes us strong to suffer.

   This, dear friends, will give you constant firmness in your confession
   of divine truth. You who do not know whether you are saved or not, I
   hope the Lord will keep you from denying the faith; but those who have
   a firm grip of it, these are the men who will never forsake it. A
   caviller in an omnibus said to a Christian man one day, "Why, you have
   nothing after all to rest upon. I can prove to you that your Scriptures
   are not authentic." The humble Christian man replied, "Sir, I am not a
   learned man, and I cannot answer you questions; but I believe in the
   Lord Jesus Christ, and I have experienced such a change in character,
   and I feel such a joy and peace through believing, that I wish you knew
   my Saviour, too." The answer he received was a very unexpected one: the
   unbeliever said, "You have got me there; I cannot answer that." Just
   so: we have got them there. If we know what has been wrought in us by
   grace, they cannot overcome us. The full-assurance man baffles the very
   devil. Satan is cunning enough, but those who know and are persuaded,
   are birds which he cannot take in the snares of hell. When you know
   that your Lord is able to keep that which you have committed to him
   until that day, then you are firm as a rock. God make you so.

   Dear brethren, this is the kind of thing that will enable you to bear a
   telling testimony for your Lord. It is of no use to stand up and preach
   things that may or may not be true. I am charged with being a dreadful
   dogmatist, and I am not anxious to excuse myself. When a man is not
   quite sure of a thing, he grows very liberal: anybody can be a liberal
   with money which he cannot claim to be his own. The broad-school man
   says, "I am not sure, and I do not suppose that you are sure, for
   indeed nothing is sure." Does this sandy foundation suit you? I prefer
   rock. The things which I have spoken to you from my youth up have been
   such as I have tried and proved, and to me they wear an absolute
   certainty, confirmed by my personal experience. I have tried these
   things: they have saved me, and I cannot doubt them. I am a lost man if
   the gospel I have preached to you be not true; and I am content to bide
   the issue of the day of Judgement. I do not preach doubtingly, for I do
   not live doubtingly. I know what I have told you to be true; why should
   I speak as if I were not sure? If you want to make your own testimony
   tell in such a day as this, you must have something to say that you are
   sure about; and until you are sure about it I would advise you to hold
   you tongue. We do not require any more questionings; the market is
   overstocked. We need no more doubt, honest or dishonest; the air is
   dark with these horrible blacks.

   Brethren, if you know that you have eternal life, you are prepared to
   live, and equally prepared to die. How frequently do I stand at the
   bedside of our dying members! I am every now and then saying to myself,
   "I shall certainly meet with some faint-hearted one. Surely I shall
   come across some child of God who is dying in the dark." But I have not
   met with any such. Brethren, a child of God may die in the dark. One
   said to old Mr. Dodd, the quaint old Puritan'"How sad that our brother
   should have passed away in the darkness! Do you doubt his safety?"
   "No," said old Mr. Dodd, "no more than I doubt the safety of him who
   said, when he was dying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?""
   Full assurance, as we have said before, is not of the essence of
   salvation. Still, I beg of you to note this, that all along through
   these many years, in each case, when I have gone to visit any of our
   brethren and our sisters at death, I have always found them departing
   in sure and certain hope of seeing the face of their Lord in glory. I
   have often marvelled that this should be without exception, and I glory
   in it. Often have they said to me, "We have fed on such good food that
   we may well be strong in the Lord." God grant that you may have this
   assurance, all of you! May sinners begin to believe in Jesus, and
   saints believe more firmly, for Christ's sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'1 JOHN 5.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN-BOOK"'175, 738, 711.
     __________________________________________________________________

What Is the Wedding Garment?

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MAY 20, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And when the king came in to see the guests he saw there a man which
   had not on a wedding garment: and he said unto him, Friend, how came
   you in here not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then
   said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot and take him away
   and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing
   of teeth." Matthew 22:11-13.

   Two Sabbath mornings ago I preached from this parable and I trust many
   were encouraged by it. But I noticed among enquirers who came to see me
   afterwards, a desire to know about the wedding garment. For they feared
   lest, in coming to join the Church, they should come like the man of
   whom I shall now speak. Many true hearts are extremely sensitive to the
   impression of fear and they seem to be on the watch for reasons for
   anxiety. I do not condemn them--on the contrary I wish there were more
   of such holy tremblers. It is much better to be afraid of being wrong
   than to be indifferent as to what you are. I perceive among the very
   best of the saints a considerable number who are deeply anxious as to
   their state before God.

   Those who will one day be cast out of the wedding feast are feeding
   themselves without fear, while those who have the most right to enjoy
   the banquet are full of gracious anxiety. Solomon says, "Happy is the
   man that fears always"--he will cling closely to his God and that will
   make him happy. He will not run risks like the presumptuous and so he
   will be happy. Holy fear spreads few banquets but it takes care that
   when there is a feast we go to it in a wedding garment.

   My chief object this morning will be to allay the fears of gracious
   ones. If they understand what the wedding garment really is, they will
   probably discover that they are wearing it. And, if not, they will know
   in whose wardrobe that garment ofjoy is to be found and they will
   gladly ask to be arrayed therein. May the Holy Spirit, the Comforter,
   give a wedding joy this morning to each wedding guest, by causing him
   to see for certain that he is clothed in the wedding robe.

   Immediately after our text, we find these solemn words--"Many are
   called, but few are chosen." This is a conclusion drawn from the whole
   parable in which we see processes at work which separate the chosen few
   from the many who are called. A distinction was made by the summoning
   of the invited guests. The simple delivery of the invitation set a
   difference between the loyal and the rebellious--a distinction most
   marked and decisive. So it is in the preaching of the Gospel--we preach
   it to every creature within our reach. Lovingly, tenderly, earnestly.
   Not so well as we would, but still with all our heart we call men to
   the royal feast of Divine Grace.

   And straightway the very invitation begins to gather out the precious
   from the vile. Pure Gospel preaching is very discriminating. You can
   tell Cain from Abel as soon as the sacrifice is the subject. Preach
   salvation by Divine Grace and you find that some will not have it at
   any price. Others postpone all consideration of it and a third party
   raise questions without end. Still do men make light of it and go their
   way to their farms and to their merchandise. Thus, dear Friends, every
   Sabbath Day, without our attempting to sit in judgment on men, the
   Gospel is, in itself, a refining fire.

   In the Gospel the Son of David has a throne ofjudgment as well as of
   mercy. When men will not have Christ and His Grace, the Word preached
   by His humble servant drives them away and they go with the chaff. But
   the work of discrimination is not finished after the Gospel has been
   heard and men have been brought into the Church. Alas, even in the
   Church division has to be made. Indeed, it is there that this is most
   fully carried out. "His fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge
   His floor." If He uses a scourge nowhere else, He will be sure to use
   it in His own temple.

   Among the sheep there are goats. Among the virgins there are foolish
   ones. And among the guests at the wedding feast there are those who
   have not on the wedding garment. Until we come to Heaven itself we
   shall always discover necessity for the work of self-examination. Even
   in the Apostolic College Judas carried on his dishonesty, as if to warn
   us

   that no rank in service, no honor among Brethren, no length of
   experience can screen us from the necessity of saying, "Lord, is it I?"
   when His warning voice says, "One of you shall betray Me."

   In our text we see a man who has hearkened to the invitation and has
   come into the feast and thus has passed the first test. And yet he is
   unable to abide the second. He has been received by the servants but he
   cannot deceive their Master. The King detects him as a spot in the
   feast and he is cast out from the palace of mercy into the outer
   darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. May
   none of us be of this sort.

   I shall endeavor to answer four questions naturally arising out of the
   parable. First, what is meant by the king's coming in?--"when the king
   came in to see the guests." Secondly, what is the wedding garment?
   Thirdly, who is he that has it not? And fourthly, why did he stand
   speechless when he was asked, "How came you in here not having a
   wedding garment?"

   I. May the Holy Spirit help us while we consider, first, WHAT IS MEANT
   BY THE KING IS COMING IN.

   "The king came in to see the guests." They were all reclining at the
   tables, for "the wedding was furnished with guests." They gathered
   while the sun was up but darkness covered the world outside when "the
   king came in to see the guests." They had feasted and now the king came
   to honor the assembly.

   It was the crown and the culmination of the feast. No matter how dainty
   the viands, nor how bright the hall, the feast has not reached its
   height till his majesty appears in gracious condescension. It is so
   with us, Beloved, in reference to our greater King. When we are
   gathered in this house, which has often proved to us a palace of
   delights, we never reach the height of our desire till the Lord
   manifests Himself to us. You delight to hear the preacher and to join
   in the song and to say Amen to the prayer but these are not all. Your
   heart and your flesh cry out for God, for the living God--you look to
   behold the King in His beauty.

   When the glorious Father reveals Himself in Christ Jesus, then the
   Sabbath is a high day, for our prayer is answered, "Make Your face to
   shine upon Your servant." Our glorious King is not always equally
   manifest in our solemn assemblies. Doubtless because of our sins He
   hides Himself. In truth He is always with us. For the feast is His and
   the hall is His and every guest is brought in by His Grace and every
   dish on the table is placed there by His love. But yet there are times
   when He is specially seen among His people. Then our communion with the
   Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, is sweet, indeed.

   These are seasons of gracious visitation--times of refreshing from the
   presence of the Lord. When the King comes into the assembly, the
   preaching of the Word is in demonstration of the Spirit and in power.
   Then the day of Pentecost has fully come, the Spirit is abundantly
   outpoured, souls are saved, saints are edified and Christ is glorified.
   The spiritual soon detect the Divine Presence and the shout of a King
   is heard in the camp. When I think of it, my heart cries out with
   Isaiah, "Oh that You would rend the heavens, that You would come down,
   that the mountains might flow down at Your presence!"

   The presence of our God brings with it heavenly happiness, solemn
   content and overflowing joy. Well does Dr. Watts sing--

   "The King Himself comes near, And feasts His saints today; Here we may
   sit and see Him here, And love and praise and pray."

   "One day amidst the place Where my dear God has been Is sweeter than
   ten thousand days

   Of pleasurable sin."

   Beloved Friends, you know better than I can tell you when the King is
   near and you know sorrowfully when He is not in the assembly. Alas,
   from how many congregations is He absent and that absence not mourned!
   When the Lord is gone we spread our sails but there is no wind--we
   bring the sacrifice but there is no fire. The wedding would have been a
   failure without guests. But what would the feast have been if the host
   had refused to come in and see the guests? But the King came in in due
   time. Yes, came in among that crowd of wayfarers gathered from the
   highways at a moment's notice and His presence crowned the festival
   with honor and rapture.

   This coming in to see the guests indicates a glorious Revelation of
   Himself. When the King saw the guests, the guests saw Him. But,
   inasmuch as His sight of them was the more important sight of the two,
   the chief thing is mentioned while the minor matter is implied. Do we
   know what it is to see God? This is the special privilege of the pure
   in heart. When the Lord's way is in the sanctuary, then His sanctified
   ones behold Him. Spiritual eyes have looked to Jesus by faith and He
   says, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." Have you ever been
   like John in Patmos, ready to swoon away because of the Revelation of
   the Father in Christ?

   When Jesus has been set forth evidently crucified among us, we have in
   Him beheld the face of the great King and our hearts have leaped for
   joy so that we have been ready to leap into Heaven itself if the word
   had been given. When Augustine read those words, "You can not see My
   face and live," he was bold enough to answer, "Let me die to see Your
   face." Blessed vision!--

   "Lord, let me see Your beauteous face!

   It yields a Heaven below;

   And angels round the throne will say,

   It is all the Heaven they know." The King delights to see His guests
   and His guests delight to see Him. Then is our worship full of bliss
   and no place out of Heaven is so like to Heaven as the place of our
   assemblies. We read in the Gospel of John--"Then were the disciples
   glad when they saw the Lord." And well they might be. Then are we glad,
   also, when we distinctly discern Him as our Lord and our God. My own
   soul knows this joy unspeakable but because it is unspeakable, I say no
   more.

   For the King to come in and see the guests includes a manifestation of
   special favor. He comes in, not to judge the guests but to look upon
   them. You that were here last Thursday might will remember my
   text--"Look You upon me and be merciful unto me, as You used to do unto
   those that love Your name" [Psa. 119:132]. The Lord is accustomed to
   look with favor upon those who love His name, for He is pleased with
   them. O Brothers and Sisters, when the love of God is shed abroad in
   our hearts by the Holy Spirit--when the Father lifts upon us the light
   of His countenance--then our summer weather is come! Can anything be
   compared with the favor of God? The smiles of kings, the friendships of
   emperors--do not mention them in the same breath.

   Some of you know that the Lord loves you. Yes, that He loved you from
   before the foundation of the world and He will love you when the world
   has ceased to be. Oh that the King would come here this morning in that
   sense and look into all your faces and give you all the full assurance
   that you are in His heart and shall be there to all eternity! Oh that
   this whole Church may be a living temple in which the Lord shall
   delight to dwell. May every stone of it be brilliant with the reflected
   light of His favor. May all our testimonies and labors be acceptable
   unto Him and may He be very gracious at the voice of our cry!

   O Jehovah, manifest Yourself here as You did between the cherubim! For
   Your sake we have borne reproach--Lord be our glory! We have held fast
   Your Truth. We beseech You, let the light of Your countenance encourage
   us!

   But here is the solemn point to which I call your attention--this
   visitation brings with it a time of discovery and searching of heart.
   When the King comes in to see the guests, the light grows stronger and
   hidden things are revealed. For all things are naked and open to the
   eyes of Him with whom we have to do. When the Lord visits His Church,
   His fire is in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem. Then the man without
   a wedding garment is winked at no longer. You can go on sleeping as a
   Church when God is away and no members will fall off. For those who
   know not the Lord will come in and go out among you as before.

   The dead will remain quiet till the Lord sounds the trumpet of
   resurrection--mere professors will not know that they are making a
   false profession but will remain at ease in our solemn feasts. But when
   the King comes in, all things are changed. "Who may abide the day of
   His coming? And who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a
   refiner's fire and like fullers' soap." You cannot receive abundant
   spiritual life into the Church without the discernment of the unworthy
   and the expulsion of the spiritually dead. One goes away because he is
   offended at the doctrine, another is grieved at the heart-searching
   experience, and a third feels himself too sternly rebuked as to his
   life.

   Thus the Lord's visitation of Divine Grace becomes an assize ofjudgment
   and the finger of the Lord writes upon the wall, "You are weighed in
   the balances and are found wanting." If the Lord our God were to come
   into His Church today there would be an awful shrinkage among the
   number of His guests. A panic would seize the assembly and the door
   would be blocked with men hastening to escape His eye.

   Look how the king's discernment is recorded in the text. One man, only,
   had refused to put on a wedding garment. But the king at once fixed His
   eye upon him. The Savior, by a kind of heavenly charity, mentions only
   one intruder but I fear we must regard the one as the type of many. If
   the King should come in at the time of our communion, I am afraid He
   would de-

   tect more than one. Still, if there were but one, he would concentrate
   His gaze upon that one and speak to him by himself. If you are the only
   person who has dared to enter the Church knowing that you are not
   converted, the King will spy you out.

   If you make a profession of religion out of bravado and keep it up by
   sheer deceit, you may hide yourself away among your family connections,
   or think that your respectability will screen you. But you are
   mistaken. You have to deal with One whose eyes are as a flame of fire
   and He will so unmask you that you will not have a word to say in your
   own defense. This is a solemn matter. It will not make the true-hearted
   wish the King to stay away but those who are willful deceivers may well
   tremble. The King does come to this Church. He is specially present in
   the midst of this people and the consequence is that His judgment is
   strict with us. I have seen the rod of His discipline here in a very
   striking manner. I have seen the fair professor wither in the heat of
   love and the rootless Christian dried up in the noontide of Divine
   Grace.

   He might have gone on very well in any other Church but he has not been
   able to abide the brandished sword of the Spirit and its dividing
   asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow. He has not been able to sit
   it out but has been obliged to go away and find an easier rest. Just in
   proportion as we really have the King in the midst of us making glad
   the saints, we shall have the King in the midst of us discerning the
   false and casting them out. First into the outer darkness of the world,
   which lies in the Wicked One and at last into the outer darkness of
   weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Still, be the result what it
   may, our prayer this morning is, "God be merciful unto us and bless us.
   And cause His face to shine upon us."

   II. Now I would answer the second question--WHAT IS THE WEDDING
   GARMENT? You are probably aware that this has been a point greatly
   disputed among theologians. Is the wedding garment justification, or
   sanctification, or what? I am not going to be theological and bring
   doctrinal matters to the text. But I shall read the parable as it
   stands and interpret its details by its general run. It is called a
   "wedding garment"--a garment suitable for a marriage feast. Let us
   translate the figure rather than attempt to rivet a doctrine to it.
   What does a wedding garment mean? What is that which we must have in
   connection with our Lord's marriage or be cast out forever?

   I think I may say plainly that it must signify a distinguishing mark of
   Divine Grace. Everybody does not wear a wedding garment--he who wears
   it has put it on because he is a wedding guest. You know the wedding
   guest at once by his attire. He dresses in a way which would be
   considered singular if he were so arrayed every day. Your steady
   citizen indulges in a white waistcoat on the nuptial occasion but he
   never dreams of going down to his office in the city in such gear. True
   members of the Church of God wear a distinguishing mark. If you are not
   different from other people, you have no right in the Church of God. If
   a servant can live with you for years and never discover your love to
   God, I should think there is none to discover.

   If you are just the same as those you lived with in your former days,
   if you have undergone no change and are like the rest of men, you have
   not the distinguishing mark which sets forth your right to be in the
   Church of God. There ought to be a something about us which sets us
   apart--a something which can be seen and understood by common people,
   even as a wedding garment could be seen and its meaning at once
   perceived. Your religion must not require a microscope to perceive it,
   nor should it be so indistinct that few can discover any meaning in it.
   It should be as visible as the white garment which was worn by Easterns
   at a marriage. Is it so?

   I may boldly add here that the wedding garment was a distinguishing
   mark of Divine Grace. For as these people were fetched in from the
   highways they could not have provided themselves with wedding garments.
   It is the custom in the East for a king to provide robes for his
   guests. Therefore this wedding garment was a mark of Divine Grace,
   freely given and received. Is there, then, a something about you which
   the Lord in love has given you? Do you differ from others, not in
   natural attainments but in spiritual Grace? Does the difference mainly
   lie in what God Himself has done for you? That is the question involved
   in the symbol of the wedding garment.

   Do you differ from what you used to be. Do you differ from what you
   were years ago? Do you differ from those with whom you used to
   associate, so that you seek other company and turn aside from those who
   once were charming fellows to you? If so, you have on the wedding
   garment. It is a distinguishing mark. I do not mean to put this in a
   way that would grieve anybody here unless they ought to be grieved. But
   if they ought to be grieved then we would have them cry to God for
   renewal by His Grace. May the Lord make you to wear His livery! May He
   give you the spot of His children and cause you no longer to be of the
   world! A distinguishing mark is plainly the first meaning of the
   wedding garment.

   In the next place, it was a symbol of respect for the king. To be fit
   for His company, the dress must be special. The absence of such a dress
   was, in the case before us, the badge of irreverence and disloyalty.
   This man said to himself--"I will feed at the feast without
   acknowledging its intent. Whoever stops me, I will push my way in and I
   shall sit there in my everyday garments to let the king know that I do
   not respect Him in the least and will not wear the robes He provides."
   It is as if you had lost a

   son and some wretched man should say, "I will attend the funeral in a
   wedding suit. I shall thus wound the feelings of the mourners and show
   my contempt for the whole affair."

   What an insult it would be! To turn the picture. Suppose you were being
   married and somebody forced his way into the wedding dressed in
   mourning, with crape upon his hat and black kid gloves upon his hands?
   What a wanton insult! If such impudence were met with a horse-whip, who
   would be surprised? Now, this man acted in that fashion--he had no
   respect for the king--he showed his traitorous nature in the worst
   possible manner--spiting the King in His own halls upon a tender
   occasion.

   Dear Friends, I trust that you can truly say, "I have on the wedding
   garment of reverence for the King. I do not despise the Lord God. But I
   bow before Him in true worship. I would come into His Church, not to
   dishonor Him but to give glory to His name." The wedding garment was a
   token of respect to Him who had provided the feast and presided over
   it--judge this day whether you have on the wedding garment, by
   enquiring whether you honor and reverence the Lord God and labor to be
   obedient to Him in all things.

   The wedding garment was, moreover, a token of honor for the Prince.
   Those who put on the wedding garment did as good as say, "We join in
   the joy of the Prince and come here today to show our attachment to
   Him, and to wish Him joy of His Bride." My Hearers, do you feel a love
   to the Lord Jesus Christ? Many do not. I grieve to say we have a race
   of men sprung up nowadays who call themselves Christians who pour
   contempt upon His precious blood and ridicule the substitutionary
   sacrifice. Dreadful assertion! But it is a matter of fact.

   The name of Jesus, why, it is to our lives what the sun is to the
   skies! What the rivers are to the plains. Nothing makes us so glad as
   thoughts of Jesus. I am sure when I hear a sermon about Christ, my
   Master, my very heart grows warm within me! Is it so with you? Well,
   then, you have on the wedding garment. That is to say, you do truly,
   though it is but in a simple way, pay homage to the Prince of Peace.
   You love the Name and Person of Jesus and you come into His Church
   because you do so. The wedding garment also signified a confession of
   sympathy with the great occasion. Every man who ate of the fatlings,
   every man who drank of the wines, every man who gave his presence, was
   a helper in the honors of that wedding feast, save only this one
   intruder, who would not even pretend to join in the joy for he refused
   the simple act of putting on a robe fit for the feast.

   Dear Friend, do you feel sympathy with the Lord's purposes of Divine
   Grace? Do you rejoice that Jesus finds a Bride among our race? Do you
   bless God for the Covenant of Grace, which includes incarnation,
   redemption and sanctification? Do you bless the name of the incarnate
   God for taking into everlasting union with Himself a people prepared of
   the Lord? Well, then, you are in sympathy with the marriage of the Lamb
   and you have a right to be present at the feast. You evidently wear the
   wedding garment which denotes your joy in Christ, your interest in His
   Church, your part and lot in the joyous work of His salvation.

   The wedding garment means, in a word, conformity to the requirements of
   the occasion. It was a wedding and the guests must put on a suitable
   dress. This man refused to put it on. He was proud and would not wear
   the gift of Divine Grace. He was self-willed and must needs be singular
   and show his independence of mind. The regulation was by no means
   irksome and to the rest of the guests the commandment was not grievous.
   But this man would have his own way in defiance of the Lord of the
   feast. What could come of such folly?

   Now, Beloved, one of the requirements of the feast is that you, with
   your heart, believe on the Lord Jesus and that you take His
   righteousness to be your righteousness. Do you refuse this? If you will
   not accept the Lord Jesus as your Substitute, bearing your sins in His
   own body on the tree, you have not the wedding garment. Another
   requirement is that you should repent of sin and forsake it. And that
   you should follow after holiness and endeavor to copy the example of
   the Lord Jesus. You are to possess, as the work of Divine Grace, a
   godly and upright character. Have you such a character? Even though you
   are not perfect, inasmuch as you follow after righteousness, you have
   the wedding garment. You say that you are a Christian--do you live like
   a Christian? Are you in a position and condition which agree with the
   Gospel feast? If so, you have on the wedding garment.

   Those who came unto the feast were, when they came, both bad and
   good--so that the wedding garment does not relate to their past
   character but relates to something with which they were invested when
   they came to the banquet. The putting on of a wedding robe cannot refer
   to an elaborate ceremony, or a feat of the intellect, or to a deep
   experience of the heart. And yet it involved joining in the wedding, or
   not joining in it. It involved reverence for the King and homage to the
   Prince and sympathy with the whole matter. Look well to yourselves and
   see whether you truly yield yourselves to the Lord and agree with Him
   in the whole matter.

   III. Thirdly, WHO IS THE MAN THAT HAS NOT ON THE WEDDING GARMENT?

   I should say, first, he is the man who rejects God's revealed Gospel
   that he may follow his own thought and his own wisdom. He says that he
   is loyal to Christ and he expects all his fellow guests to be firm
   friends with him, for is he not in the banquet as much as they are? But
   he does not mean by loyalty what they mean by it. He is among Believers
   but he is not truly of them. He talks about atonement. He does not mean
   substitution. He talks about the divinity of Christ. He does not mean
   the Godhead of Christ. He talks about justification by faith. But he
   does not mean the old-fashioned doctrine.

   He speaks of regeneration but means evolution. He girds himself with
   the garment of philosophy but he refuses the robe of Revelation, for
   the cut of it is too old-fashioned for him. He is no more a wedding
   guest than he is a clown--perhaps, not as much so. He wears raiment in
   which the robe of righteousness and the garments of gladness are not to
   be seen. The looms of Free Grace and dying love have never woven him a
   wedding dress. His robe is not of God's provision. It is from his own
   wardrobe. He glories in his own culture and not in the Revelation of
   God, nor yet in the work of Divine Grace upon the heart. He is in the
   Church but he is not in Christ. He has a name to live but he is dead.

   The next person who has not on the wedding garment is the man who
   refuses the righteousness of God because he has a righteousness of his
   own. He thinks his work-day dress good enough for Christ's own wedding.
   What does he want with imputed righteousness? He thinks it immoral--he
   who is himself immoral! What does he want with the precious blood of
   Jesus? He does not need to be washed from crimson stains. He writes a
   paper against the sensuousness of those persons who sing--

   "There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel's veins."

   His own righteousness, though it be of the Law and such as Paul
   rejected, he esteems so highly that he counts the blood of the Covenant
   an unholy thing! Ah me, the insolence of self-righteousness! Its pride
   is the very chief of sins, for it slights the righteousness of God.
   Practically, the self-righteous man does not see any wedding in the
   Gospel system. He does not see anything in the Gospel to make him glad,
   nothing for him to sing about, nothing to make him shout for joy of
   heart. He will not praise the Prince. Not he! He is under the Law and
   he is content to be a slave. He is trying to save himself by his own
   works and Law knows no holidays. He is not a wedding guest but a mere
   drudge.

   Another sort of person has profession without feeling. If he were
   outside of the Church his conscience might trouble him--he has come
   inside of it, and now he says to himself, "It is all right." He does
   not care to watch his feelings. He never had any--he would rather not
   have any. To the power of the Word he is a stranger, though he knows
   the letter of it. As to repentance and the burden of sin, he never knew
   them and does not want to know them. He thinks Mr. Bunyan must have
   been superstitious or morbid when he wrote "Grace Abounding." Joy in
   the Lord is equally a thing unknown to him, for he hates all
   excitement. He has no solemn depressions and no raptures, for he has no
   spiritual life.

   As he has no holy feeling, so he has no holy action--he is a Christian,
   he says. But having put up the sign-board, he drives no trade. His
   religion operates far more upon his boots and his hat than it does upon
   his heart--that is to say he comes out respectably dressed on a Sunday
   but his religion never affects his conduct. Nobody can find much fault
   with him except that he is as dead as a door nail. He commits no gross
   sin, he certainly performs no brilliant deeds of piety. Spiritually he
   is a very well washed corpse--and that is all he is.

   We have others who are in the Church who think that what they have done
   themselves, or what nature has done for them is quite enough. They do
   not seek anything supernatural. They do not want any wedding garment
   more than their everyday coats. They are quite reputable in appearance
   even now, and with a little touching up they will be good enough
   without the new birth and without the Holy Spirit. Alas, my Hearers!
   All that nature can ever do for you will leave you on the wrong side of
   Heaven. You may cultivate nature to its utmost--it will never bring
   forth the fruits of the Spirit. "You must be born again."

   If you have not come into living contact with a living Savior by the
   work of the Holy Spirit you may be in the Church but you are not in
   Christ and have not on the wedding garment. Why, some dare to come into
   the Church who have not even common morality. It is shocking we should
   have to say it, but nowadays we meet with those who call themselves
   Christians who can drink upon the sly, who can commit uncleanness with
   their bodies, who can be dishonest in their trading, who can be liars,
   who can hate their own flesh and blood and be at enmity with their
   Brethren--and yet dare to come to the communion table!

   In the highlands of Scotland it was at one time difficult to get
   Christian people to come to the Lord's Table, for they so trembled
   under a sense of their unworthiness. We do not want to push this too
   far, but that is a great deal better than that unholy daring, which is
   to be found in the minds of so many who serve Christ and Belial. God
   save His Church from

   degradation! Unholy professors have not on a wedding garment--their
   outward robes by no means befit the King's feast. They are a dishonor
   to Him.

   I do not see how that man can be said to have on a wedding garment who
   takes no interest in the work of the Church. You see, when a man puts
   on the wedding garment, he does as good as say, "I am interested in the
   wedding. I wish God's blessing to the Bride and Bridegroom." But many
   come in now to the King's feast who do not care a snap of the finger
   for the Church of God, nor for Christ, either. They come in because a
   sort of selfishness makes them anxious to be saved. But as to the
   Bride, the Lamb's wife, they do not care whether she starves or
   flourishes.

   Sad and wretched business this! If members of the Church only
   distribute tracts or attend meetings for prayer--if they are doing this
   and show an interest, thus, in the wedding--they have on the wedding
   garment. But if all they do is simply listen, either to criticize or to
   enjoy, but never work for Christ, nor pray for Christ, they have no
   sympathy in the wedding feast and therefore they have not on a wedding
   garment.

   IV. To close, WHY WAS THIS MAN SPEECHLESS? We do not often meet with
   people who have no excuse. Excuse-making is the easiest trade out. A
   man can make an excuse out of nothing at all, or out of what is less
   than nothing--out of a direct lie. But here was a man who could not
   speak? Why was that?

   Well, I think, first, the affront was too bare-faced. "How came you in
   here?" If he did not like the King he should have stayed outside. There
   was no need why he should come in at all and there, display his malice.
   If any of you are resolved to be lost, you need not add to your eternal
   ruin by making a profession of religion--for hypocrisy is a superfluity
   of naughtiness. But this man willfully refused the wedding garment. Now
   those dear souls I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon do not
   willfully refuse the Lord's Grace--I am sure they do not. Oh no, they
   are afraid they are not right but they do not wish to be wrong. Such
   are not among those whom this parable condemns.

   Next, the affront was so audacious. "How came you in here?" said the
   King. He must have pushed by the deacons at the door. The fellow would
   come in. When the king said, "Bind him hand and foot," I think it was
   because he had used hand and foot to get in. He would get in. He said,
   "I will get in. I will defy the King to His face and sit in among His
   guests without a wedding garment." You, dear Friend, do not wish to do
   that--I am sure it is the last thing you would do. Why, we have to
   persuade you to come in at all. For you are so tenderly jealous lest
   you should be mistaken. Do not let this parable condemn you.

   But why was the man speechless? I answer once more, because it was the
   King Himself who spoke to him. Ah, if I speak to you, what am I but
   flesh and blood? You do not mind me! But if the King Himself were here
   today, and He said to any one of you, "Friend, how came you in here not
   having a wedding garment?" the tone of His voice, the glory of His
   presence, would flash in upon your hearts--you would be obliged to feel
   it and you could not invent an answer. If you do not love Him, if you
   have no reverence for Him, no sympathy with His Son, you will be
   speechless before His bar.

   Lastly, the reason why he was speechless was because, even if he could
   have spoken and been free from terror, there was nothing to be said. He
   could not cry, "Lord, I did not know it." He saw all the rest with
   wedding garments on. He could not say, "Lord, I could not get a wedding
   garment"--each one had received a garment gratis and he might have
   received the same. He could not say, "Lord, I was pushed in here by
   somebody else." No, he had willingly chosen to come and to defy the
   rules. The guests had all looked at him--some had edged a little way
   off from him.

   Some had tenderly said, "Brother, will you not put on the wedding
   garment?" He answered, "No." "Will you not go out before the King comes
   in?" "Why," he said, "I came on purpose to defy Him. I mean to keep my
   place." I do not wonder that the king said, "Bind him hand and foot and
   cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of
   teeth." Our Lord Jesus Christ says very strong things about the future
   of the wicked. I have been accused of representing the state of the
   lost in too horrible a manner. I have never gone beyond the dreadful
   descriptions given by our Lord Himself.

   Do not risk your eternal future. Come to the Church of God and join it
   but do not join it unless you love the Lord. Do not come to the Gospel
   feast unless you reverence the King. Unless you love the Prince. Unless
   you are in sympathy with the great work of Divine Grace which is
   pictured as a wedding feast. If you have sympathy with the wedding,
   love to the Bridegroom, and delight in the Bride, then come and
   welcome. For you have the wedding garment.

   I am thinking just now of all those other hundreds of people at the
   wedding, all of them clothed with the wedding garment. What joy they
   felt! Many had been bad and all had been poor--but they all had the
   wedding garment and not

   one of them was cast out. If you will but put your trust in Jesus and
   so honor the Son--and rest in the love of the Father and so honor the
   King, it is written, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."
   God bless you for Jesus' sake! Amen. Amen. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Tender Enquiry of a Friend

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "How long will you cut yourself?" Jeremiah 47:5.

   TRAVELERS in the East tell us that among the most melancholy scenes
   they witness is the following: Men inflict upon themselves very
   grievous voluntary wounds and then exhibit themselves in public. They
   even disfigure themselves with gashes and cuts in the presence of
   excited throngs. I am speaking of what has occurred even within the
   last few years among the Muslims. When some great Prophet or emir is
   coming that way, a certain number of fanatical Mahometans take swords,
   spears and other sharp instruments and gash themselves terribly,
   cutting their breasts, their faces, their heads and all parts of their
   bodies.

   Frequently they have taken care to dress themselves in white sheets so
   that as the blood flows copiously from their bodies, it may be the more
   clearly seen, that they may become the more ghastly spectacles of
   misery, or more fully display the religious excitement under which they
   labor. As everything in the East remains forever the same, this Muslim
   superstition carries us back to the olden times whereof we read in the
   Old Testament when the priests of Baal, having cried in vain to their
   idol, cut themselves with lances and with knives. Our translators were
   probably afraid to write the harsher words and so they translated the
   passage "knives and lances," but they might have written swords and
   spears--sharp instruments of a desperate character.

   Thus they displayed their inward zeal and thus, perhaps, they hoped to
   move the pity of their god. Eastern fanaticism surpasses belief--you
   would suppose that the raving creatures were about to commit suicide
   and yet there is a method in their madness. You could hardly think that
   men possessed of reason would torture themselves and disfigure
   themselves as they do. But they know what they are doing and are only
   carrying out their plans. The Lord expressly forbade His people, the
   Jews, to perpetrate such folly. They were not even to shave the corners
   of their beards, or to hack their hair, as the Orientals do in the hour
   of their grief.

   And then they were further prohibited from injuring their bodies by the
   command, "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead,
   nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord" (Lev. 19:28.) Men in
   Eastern lands, not only in connection with fanaticism but in reference
   to domestic affairs, will cut themselves to express their grief and
   anguish--or to make other people believe that they are feeling such
   grief and anguish. We may congratulate ourselves that we are free from
   at least one foolish custom.

   The Prophet here speaks to the Philistines who were about to endure the
   tremendous judgments of God and, indeed, to be crushed as a nation by
   the Egyptians and the Chaldeans. And he says to Philistia, "How long
   will you cut yourself?" Gaza was to be made bald by the smiting of
   Pharaoh. Ashkelon was to be shorn away. And the whole nation was to
   feel the sword of the Lord, which would not rest in its scabbard. How
   long would they continue to bring upon themselves such terrible
   judgments?

   The expression is used, first, almost in despair. The question is asked
   with little hope--as if the self-torturer would never have done but
   would go on to mutilate himself without end. I intend to use it at this
   time, in the second place, as a question asked instructively and
   hopefully, in the hope that some, who have practically been cutting
   themselves, will cease from this self-torture and find rest and peace
   where it is to be had and to be had at once and forever. May the good
   Spirit grant our desire!

   I. First, dear Friends, I SHALL ASK THIS QUESTION VERY
   DESPAIRINGLY--"How long will you cut your-self?"--for many are cutting
   themselves very terribly and will have to feel their wounds for a long,
   long time--neither can we induce them to cease.

   I allude, first, to some professors of religion who have been Church
   members for ten, twenty, or more years and yet have practically done
   nothing at all for the Savior. If they were really to awaken to a sense
   of their neglect, I do not know how long they would be in anguish, or
   how deep would be their distress. For if Titus mourned that he had lost
   a day when he had done no good action for twenty-four hours--and he but
   a heathen--what would happen to a Christian if he were really to see
   his responsibility before God and to feel that he has not only lost a
   day but a year--perhaps many years?

   Have not some of you well-near lost a whole lifetime? What hosts of
   opportunities you have thrown away! What multiplied responsibilities
   you have incurred! Favored as you have been and so ungrateful!
   Comforted as you have been and yet keeping the comfort to yourself and
   never seeking out other lonely hearts to share with them the heavenly
   balm. Instructed as you have been and yet instructing none in return!
   With Divine light shining upon you and yet never giving that light to
   others!--

   "Can we, whose souls are lighted With wisdom from on high, Can we, to
   men benighted, The lamp of life deny?"

   The good Bishop's hymn asks the question as if it were impossible. But,
   Sirs, it is not impossible. It is sadly true. And alas, commonly true!
   Our Churches are made up largely of barren members and of cumber-ground
   trees that bring forth no fruit. Oh, if I am addressing such--and
   honestly in the sight of God I fear I am--then how long will you
   chasten yourselves for your neglect? It must be long before you can
   forgive yourselves for such wicked indolence. How long will you afflict
   yourselves to think that you should have suffered time which you can
   never recall and opportunities which you will never enjoy again, to go
   by you wasted?

   The miller puts his wheel hard by the stream and uses its constant flow
   to grind his corn. But you have a stream of opportunity and power
   flowing by you which you have turned to no practical service. Your
   tears might well be as plentiful as the drops of the wasted stream of
   life. Some of you stand by and listen to the hum of the wheel and
   admire the liquid music of the falling waters. But nothing practical
   comes of it. Your taste is gratified and your conscience is eased by
   attending religious services but there is nothing done for
   Christ--nothing done for the souls of men.

   Like little children with their toy windmills you are amused with that
   which, if you were true men, you would turn to good account. Are you
   not ashamed to have been playing, while God and Heaven and even Satan
   and Hell are all so terribly in earnest? You have come to years of
   discretion, when "life is real, life is earnest," and you have still
   trifled. Can you ever be sorry enough for this? How long will you cut
   yourself? Ah, me! I think I should eternally regret it if up till now I
   had never preached the Gospel of the Grace of God. Ah, me! If it had
   not been God's good pleasure to let me break out as a soul-winner while
   yet a boy, I could lay me down upon my bed and wish that I had never
   been born.

   If I had reached the very center of life and yet had done nothing to
   reclaim and restore the sons of men and glorify the Lord my Redeemer, I
   should tear my hair. Do I address any who have come to the noon of life
   and have not yet done a hand's turn in my Lord's vineyard? The dew of
   the morning is gone and the best hours of the day have glided away--why
   do you stand here all the day, idle? Do I make you feel uncomfortable?
   I shall thank God if I do. And I shall be happy, indeed, if, instead of
   cutting yourselves with vain regrets, you lacerate yourselves with my
   sharp remarks as with spears and knives and then gird up your loins and
   say, "God helping me, there shall never be another wasted year, no, nor
   another wasted day!"

   Then I shall be rejoiced, indeed. Oh, how I wish each one of you would
   pray--

   "Let every flying hour confess I bring Your Gospel fresh reno wn, And
   when my life and labors cease May I possess the promised crown!" But,
   lazy Professors, when will you have done with your regretting if your
   conscience is once aroused? If you are once moved to see what cause you
   have for shame, surely you will never leave off cutting yourselves with
   regrets? But what will be the use of your lamentations unless they lead
   you to amendments and from sluggards you become laborers? Let us hope
   it will be so. But I am not very hopeful, for it is hard to make long
   habits of indolence yield to diligence.

   The same may be applied and applied very solemnly, too, to those who
   backslide--who, in addition to being useless, are injurious because
   their example tends to hinder others from coming to Christ. Oh, if any
   of you that name the name of Jesus and have been happy in His service
   and have enjoyed high days and holy days in His presence, turn aside, I
   shall use this lamentation over you! You will do yourselves terrible
   injury and I shall shudder as I see the edged tools of sin in your
   reckless hands. Every sin is a gash in the soul. The Lord will bring
   you back and save you, as I believe. But oh, how long will you cut
   yourselves? You will feel in after life how grievously you have injured
   your souls.

   David's great sin was put away so that he did not die but he was never
   the same David as before. The Lord's people seem to have shunned him
   for a time while the adversary found occasion to blaspheme. He offers a
   remarkable prayer in the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm when he says,
   "Let those that fear You turn unto me" (v. 79). I think they had, in a
   measure, turned away from him in horror at his great sin. They began to
   stand in doubt of him. They had loved him as their champion

   in his earlier days, when he led the van of the armies of the Lord of
   Hosts and when as a youth he returned from the battle bringing the head
   of Goliath.

   They had looked up to him when he was in the wilderness because of his
   integrity. Though hunted like a partridge by the ungodly party, yet he
   was the hope of Israel and the joy of all the saints. With what delight
   did they gather round him at Hebron and Jerusalem when he was crowned
   their king! They felt that God had blessed His people in giving them
   such a leader. But when it was whispered that he had defiled his
   neighbor's wife, then the godly shuddered. They knew what blasphemy and
   rebuke would come of it and they kept out of his way. They must have
   been deeply grateful when they found him truly penitent. When he was
   crying to God for mercy, probably some of them would know it and
   perhaps step in to cheer him.

   But still David was scarcely David again, either to the people of God
   or to himself. The Lord, out of very love to him, chastened him sorely
   and pursued him with plague upon plague. His family became his dishonor
   and his sorrow. He went with broken bones to the grave--a man of
   sorrows and acquainted with grief. How grievously he had injured
   himself! How long he had to cut himself with anguish for that one sin!
   His life, surely, from the time when he fell with Bathsheba, was
   penitential sorrow rather than confident delight. And though the Lord
   left him not but brought him to much maturity of Divine Grace out of
   his brokenness of heart, still, as often as he went to his couch, the
   memory of his great transgression would cut and wound his heart.

   What is true of David applies also to others who have in any great
   measure turned aside. Solomon, in a high degree, hurt himself by his
   terrible follies. In the New Testament Peter is a conspicuous example.
   It is a tradition that whenever Peter heard the cock crow he used to
   weep. And I do not wonder at it. Alas, If you and I should ever be
   suffered to fall into grievous sin, it may be all done in ten minutes
   but it cannot be gotten rid of in fifty years. We shall bear the scars
   of that ten minutes' sin until the Lord shall take us home and permit
   us to wake up, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," in the
   full likeness of our perfect Lord.

   Oh, my Brethren, watch anxiously lest you have to mourn for years over
   the sin of an instant! God grant that all His servants may be kept both
   from the sin of omission, of which I spoke at first, which leads to
   neglect of duty--and also from the sin of commission which leads to
   actual backsliding and practical departing from the living God.

   There is one thing which comes after these and comes in connection with
   them. If you and I should know that souls have been lost--lost as far
   as we are concerned--through our neglect, how long shall we cut
   ourselves on that account? A dear soul said to me yesterday, "My
   husband died. He had been a sad drunkard but in his last illness,
   through the blessing of God upon those who visited him, I trust he
   found peace. He said that he believed in the Lord Jesus and there is my
   comfort. But oh, if he had died without finding Christ, I should have
   been indeed a widow! I know not what could have comforted me."

   I am grateful that our Sister called in her Christian friends and that,
   by their efforts and her prayers, she was spared the keenest edge of
   sorrow. "Surely the bitterness of death is past." But suppose you were
   to lose your son and that your son should die in sin which he learned
   from you? Or in sin which you saw in him and never rebuked? Suppose, I
   ask, your son should die in his iniquity? What if he should have been
   your favorite child and you should have tolerated much evil in him
   which you would not have suffered in another? What if you pampered and
   indulged him and gave him liberty to make himself

   vile?

   Shall I tell you how you will behave yourself when the news comes to
   you that he is dead? You will get by yourself alone and cry like David,
   "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for
   you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" You can lay your children down upon
   the bed all stark and cold and follow them to the tomb and even sing as
   you commit their mortal remains to the grave, when you know that they
   die in hope. But if they perish in their sin, guilty, red-handed,
   unforgiven, what will you say to yourselves?

   Fathers, if you have never sought to bring your children to repentance,
   how will you excuse yourselves? If you have never prayed with them, or
   wept with them--if you have never even instructed them in the things of
   God, what flattering unction will you lay to your guilty consciences?
   What will you say, Mother, if your daughter passes into eternity
   unforgiven and you have never tried to lead her to Jesus? What shall I
   say of you, my congregation, if I waste your Sabbaths with fine shows
   of oratory but do not seek your souls? When next the knell is heard and
   there is another gone who constantly listened to my voice, if I have
   not been faithful with you and persuaded you to lay hold on Christ, how
   long must I tear my hair and cut myself for very anguish because my
   garments will be spotted crimson with your blood?

   These are solemn things but there are deep Truth of Gods in them and
   they ought to be considered by all of you who profess to be Christians.
   I knew one who used to have a man calling upon him in the way of
   business and bringing certain articles which he bought across the
   counter. This tradesman said one day to himself, "I have dealt with
   that man for nine or ten years

   and we have scarcely passed the time of day. He has brought in his work
   and I have paid him across the counter but I have never tried to do him
   any good. Surely this cannot be right. Providence has put him in my way
   and I ought at least to have asked him whether he is saved in Christ."

   Well, the next time the man came, our good Brother's spirit failed him
   and he did not like to begin a religious conversation. The man never
   came again but a boy brought in the next lot of goods. "How is this?"
   said the shopkeeper. "Father is dead," said the boy. My friend, the
   shopkeeper, said to me, "I could never forgive myself. I could not stay
   in the shop that day. I felt that I was guilty of that man's blood. But
   I had not thought of it before. How can I ever clear myself from the
   guilty fact that, when I did think of it, my ungracious timidity
   prevented me from opening my mouth?"

   My dear Friends, do not bring upon yourselves such cutting regrets!
   Avoid them by daily watching to save men from the second death. Will
   you let them die? Will you let them die? If so, when you wake up to the
   sense that you have suffered them to perish, then this dreadful
   question may well be put to you, "How long will you cut yourself?" How
   long will you feel remorse and regret that your hopeful opportunity was
   allowed to pass by unimproved?

   One other most solemn use may be made of this question--God grant that
   it may never be so but if anyone of you should die in his sins, how
   long will you regret it? It looks dreadfully possible that some of you
   will perish forever since you have so often been entreated to come to
   Christ and have never come. For the moment, suppose that there is no
   Hell but if you are only shut out of Heaven, how long will that be a
   subject of grief? If you should only hear the King say, "Depart, you
   cursed!" and should only have to depart and keep on departing, oh, the
   wringing of hands and the anguish! O you who have lost eternal life,
   how long will you cut yourself?

   If you should miss Christ and miss mercy and miss Heaven and miss
   eternal glory--if there were nothing else--how long will you bemoan
   yourself? With what depth of anguish will you smart to have lost all
   this--to have, in fact, lost all which makes up life and joy! What if,
   after all, I come short of the kingdom, I that had my Sabbaths but
   never found rest in Christ? I that heard the Gospel but never took
   Christ to be my Savior? I that was almost persuaded and yet never
   yielded my heart to Divine Grace? I that was almost in the ark and yet,
   not being altogether in it, was left to drown? I that had so much about
   me that was hopeful? I that would, as I said, in a short time, concern
   myself about Divine things--I--I am cast out, left with the tares, not
   gathered with the wheat?

   What if I find myself on the left hand, condemned and cast away? What
   regrets will such a calamity cost me if it is so! O souls, how
   long--how long will you grieve and mourn when it shall come to this?
   According to my reading of this Book-- and I would gladly read it
   otherwise if I did not feel that truth and honesty forbid me to do
   so--your loss, your anguish will be forever. Forever you will cut
   yourselves. Forever will you lament that when the opportunity was so
   near you, you put it away from you and when Christ was ready to receive
   you, you would not be received but chose your own delusions and
   committed eternal suicide.

   O Friends, do not trifle with that which is and must be eternal! Make
   not a dreadful choice which can never be altered. Be solemn, be intense
   when you are dealing with matters which for good or bad will be past
   changing when death comes to you.

   II. I leave this very painful use of the text now, to try and use it at
   greater length in a happier sort, by way of consolation and hopeful
   comfort, to those who will, we trust, be soon brought to receive the
   Lord Jesus. "How long will you cut yourself?" I SHALL ASK THIS QUESTION
   HOPEFULLY, trusting that in many their sorrow is nearing its end.

   This text may be very profitably and prudently applied to those who
   have been bereaved and who, being bereaved, sorrow and sorrow to
   excess. I hope that I am not about to say a harsh word. But I would
   deal faithfully with rebellious repining. "Jesus wept." And he that
   does not weep when he loses a dear one must be something less than a
   man and unworthy to be called a Christian. But there is such a thing as
   carrying to an extreme our sorrow for those we lose till it becomes
   rebellion against God.

   You remember the Quaker saying to the lady who was wearing very deep
   double mourning attire years after one of her children had died,
   "Madam, have you not forgiven God yet?" And there is a truth about that
   remark. Some do not forgive God for what He has done. Their sorrow
   amounts to this--that they have a quarrel with God over His
   dispensations. "How can He be good and have taken away my mother?" said
   one to me. "How can God be good and have taken away my child?" cried
   another. There is a want of faith, a want of reverence, a want of love,
   a want of many sweet and placid graces in such mourning as that.

   And, without dwelling long upon it, I beg to put that question to any
   mourner here who is mourning with the ungodly sorrowing of the
   heathen--as if there were no hope. "How long will you cut yourself?" Is
   not your child in Jesus' bosom? Has not your friend gone among the
   angels, to join the sweet singers of God? Is it not a gain to the
   departed, though it is a loss to

   you, that they are translated to the place of everlasting bliss? Would
   you have them back again? Dare you wish such a thing even for a moment?
   If they are supremely blessed, is there no blessedness to you in their
   blessedness? Are you so selfish that you would tear a star from Heaven
   that you might have the light of it all to yourself?

   Come, be reconciled, not only to your grief but to your God who sent
   it! It has come to be now like a fretting canker within you--will you
   not end it? As the moth eats the garment, so does this grief eat you
   up. Therefore arise and shake yourself from it. Know you not that their
   Redeemer lives and your Redeemer, too? And will you not now yield up to
   Christ what is infinitely more His than yours and cheerfully say, "Let
   Him have those whom He has purchased with His blood and for whom He
   prayed, 'Father, I will that they also, whom You have given Me, be with
   Me where I am' "? "How long will you cut yourself?" Put away your
   disputing and murmuring and either, like Aaron, hold your peace, or
   better still, like Job, bless the name of the Lord and rejoice in your
   God.

   But now, turning to quite another character, I would use the same
   expression for another purpose. There are some persons with whom God is
   dealing in great love and yet they are very rebellious. They persevere
   in known sin although the evil way has become exceedingly hard on them.
   They seem as if they would walk over red-hot plowshares to Hell. I have
   known some who have found the pleasures which once delighted them to
   become a nuisance, a trouble, a pain, a disgust and a weariness. And
   yet they continue in their unprofitable course.

   You remember Saul of Tarsus, to whom the Lord said, "It is hard for you
   to kick against the pricks"--he was acting as though with a naked foot
   he kicked against iron nails, or like the bullock when it is struck
   with the ox-goad and kicks back, driving the goad much deeper into
   itself than otherwise it would have gone. Certain men are doing just
   that--how I wish they could see that it is so! They are following a
   wild course of life and they are losing money at it and they are likely
   to lose much more. They are plunging down. What are they thinking of?
   "How long will you cut yourself?" Already they have met with great
   disasters and misfortunes--they will meet with many more. When the dogs
   are out hunting, they run in packs. The plagues of Egypt are ten, at
   least, and everyone who plays the Pharaoh may expect the full number.

   you to whom the Lord is sternly kind--by terrible things in
   righteousness He will chasten you to your right mind! If the Lord means
   to have you at His feet, He will bring you there. By hook or by crook
   He will bring you there, depend upon it. And if you will not come by
   gentle means, you shall come by some other means. But He will break you
   down in due time. I know that already certain of you have had stroke
   upon stroke. From wealth you have descended to poverty, from health you
   have come down to sickness, from honor you have fallen to obscurity. Is
   not this enough to humble you before God?

   You will come down lower yet. As surely as you live, you will be made
   to feel that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. My
   heart's desire is that it may be so--that by this painful method you
   may be saved. I spoke some time ago with the son of a very godly man.
   He seemed to be an infidel outright and had taken to horseracing and
   the like. My inmost soul was grieved concerning him--I could have wept.
   As he talked very largely, and mild words were lost on him, I said to
   him, "Keep as many racehorses as you can and go in for gambling most
   heartily, for thus the sooner you will lose all your money. Some
   prodigals never come back to the Father's house until they sink as low
   as the pig's trough and that is probably the way for you. When you get
   a hungry belly, I trust you will come home."

   He knows what my warning meant and I fear he intends to make it true.
   The way of transgressors is hard. And it is a mercy when it becomes so
   hard that they are resolved to quit it for another and a better way. Is
   this happening to anybody here? Have you spent your money riotously?
   Are you getting into trouble? I half congratulate you. I congratulate
   the angels who watch your course--I hope that the probabilities are
   that you will soon say, "How many hired servants of my Father's have
   bread enough and to spare and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go
   to my Father." But do not make the process too long, I charge you. "How
   long will you cut yourself?"

   Have you not had enough of the consequences of your folly? Will you not
   turn at the Lord's rebuke? Will you not yield under the strokes you
   have already felt? "Turn you; turn you; why will you die, O house of
   Israel?" Why should you be stricken any more? Have you not played the
   fool long enough? "How long will you cut yourself?"

   1 might use this expression even to the Jewish nation itself. Ah, my
   God, through what seas of trouble have they had to swim since the day
   when they said, "His blood be on us and on our children"? Alas, the
   story of Israel is enough to make one's blood turn to ice within his
   veins! And will they not come back? Will they not come back? Must they
   be hunted in Germany and hounded in Russia? Shame on the countries that
   dare do such things! But must it be so? God grant that they may no
   longer provoke their Holy One to indignation against them! How long
   will they cut themselves? For still these great evils happen to them
   according to the eternal counsels of the God of Abraham, Isaac and
   Jacob, because of their unbelief.

   When they turn to the Messiah, their glory shall return, also, and the
   crown God crowned His people shall again be set upon their head and
   their ancient city shall again be "beautiful for situation, the joy of
   the whole earth." Assuredly the Lord gave the land of Canaan to Abraham
   and his seed forever--how long will they shut themselves out of it?

   But, now, all this has rather kept me from my main design which is to
   speak to those dear Friends of ours who are afflicting their souls with
   needless fears. No good can possibly come by a continuance in their
   unhappy moods--they are cutting themselves quite needlessly. They might
   at once have peace and rest and joy if they were willing to accept the
   Lord's gracious way of salvation. You who are burdened with sin and are
   trying to get rid of it but will not come to Christ for deliverance--I
   want to ask each one of you, "How long will you cut yourself?"

   Why, there are some persons who think that before they can believe in
   Christ they must undergo a world of torture! From where do they derive
   the notion and what Scripture do they twist to support it? My
   commission runs thus, "Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel
   to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." I
   do not find that I am to look out for those who have undergone a long
   probation and then tell them to believe in Christ. But every creature
   is to hear the good news that whosoever believes in Christ Jesus has
   everlasting life and shall never come into condemnation. So far the
   Gospel message gives no hint of a sort of purgatory in this life. It
   deals with every creature as it finds him.

   Now, you think, "Well, I must not--I really must not lay hold upon this
   salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus. I dare not be so greatly blessed.
   I must first of all be tortured with conviction and afflicted with
   despair." Alas, that you should thus choose to be miserable and refuse
   to be made happy! I am forced, again, to put to you the question, "How
   long will you cut yourself?" Find me, if you can, any place where the
   Lord requires this at your hand--that you should be dragged about by
   the devil--that you should be despairing, that you should be tempted to
   blaspheme and all that. I know that some who have come to Christ have
   endured such misery but I defy you to prove that it is any part of the
   Gospel and that we are to preach such an experience as a necessary
   preface to believing in Christ. The case is far otherwise.

   Hear me, I beseech you, and be not obstinately wedded to your
   wretchedness. You are a sinner--you cannot question that fact. Christ
   Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If you trust Him you are
   saved. This, in brief, is the glad tidings of salvation. This is the
   Gospel way. Who has required at your hands that you should despond?
   That you should despair? That you should deny the promises of God? That
   you should put from you the invitation of mercy? That you should remain
   outside the Gospel feast, and say, "I dare not enter, for I am not
   hungry enough, nor poor enough, nor ragged enough, nor filthy enough"?
   Oh, that you were wise and would cut yourself no more with these absurd
   objections to infinite Grace!

   How can this cutting of yourself, this tearing of yourself with
   anguish, bring you any benefit? Do you think that God delights in it?
   Is He a God who delights in the misery of His creatures? Will it not be
   joy to Him that you should believe in His Son and find peace? He wills
   not the death of any but that they should turn unto Him and live. "Oh,"
   said one to me, "I cannot think that the way can be so plain, for my
   grandfather was so miserable for years that they had to put him into a
   lunatic asylum before he found the Savior." You smile but the good
   woman who told me this was in terrible earnest. I cannot help quoting
   what she said, for it was the natural and outspoken form of an error
   which lurks in thousands of minds.

   I believe that many think they must be driven near to madness or they
   will not be able to come to Christ. But what benefit could this despair
   possibly be to you? If the Gospel were, "Doubt and be saved," I would
   bid you doubt. And if it were, "Despair and be saved," I would preach
   despair to you with all my might, though it might go a little against
   the grain. But it is not so written. The Scripture is,
   "Believe--trust--confide--rely. Trust in Jesus--and you are saved."
   Despairing and desponding are not commanded in the Gospel but they are
   forbidden by it. Do not cultivate these gross follies, these deadly
   sins. Do not multiply these poisonous weeds--this hemlock and this rye
   grass--as if they were fair flowers of Paradise.

   How long do you mean to continue in this wretched condition? Have you
   set yourself a certain point of anguish up to which you will go and
   then you will trust Christ? The sooner you reach that point the better.
   But suppose that, in reaching that point, you should grow hardened in
   sin and perish? Suppose that in striving to be more tender, the very
   skin of your soul should turn hard, so that you no longer feel
   anything? I have known that to occur. I have known persons attend
   places of worship many years and always say, "I do not feel tender
   enough and penitent enough," and all the time they have been growing
   invulnerable to the shafts of God's Word till they have perished in an
   unfeeling, indifferent, immovable condition.

   They have hugged a sort of self-righteousness of feeling and would not
   give it up to believe in Christ and that self-righteousness has been
   their destruction. Beware lest you lose all feeling because you idolize
   feeling. Beware lest your heart turn to an adamant stone because you
   prefer your own feelings to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus.

   Why, my Friends, if you are allowed to follow up this despairing policy
   much further, some of you will go out of your senses! Those who love to
   take up a reproach against the Lord Jesus frequently declare that
   religion has deprived many people

   of their reason. But the fact is that many lose their senses because
   they refuse true religion and then take to sullenness and morbid
   feeling. Why blame Jesus for the fact that men refuse Him and so find
   no rest? I do fear that many have fought against believing in Christ
   till their uneasiness has weighed them down and so they have lost their
   reason. They have been indulging their pride. And, not yielding
   themselves up to Jesus has cost them dearly. I am afraid that some of
   you, who now feel God's hand heavy upon you, will come to utter
   hopelessness unless you yield to the Lord Jesus very soon. Therefore, I
   pray you, make haste about it and may the blessed Spirit lead you to
   obey the Gospel--believe in Jesus and enter into rest!

   Besides all this, remember that you may die while you are, as you
   think, getting ready for the Savior. The Savior never told you to get
   ready for Him. Have we not preached to you continually that you are to
   come as you are? Alas, you will not come just as you are but will try
   to mend and improve. And I have a dreadful fear upon me that you will
   die in the process of mending and improving. If it should be so, where
   will you be? Why, you will be guilty of having set up your mending and
   improving in the place of Christ and that is a serious insult to the
   great God and His dear Son! You will have taken more notice of your own
   efforts to save yourself than of Christ's atoning death. Will not this
   seal your condemnation?

   Jesus will save you, if you will have Him, just as you are, whoever you
   may be. But if you reply, "Not just as I am. I must be somewhat better
   before I can trust Him." Then, if you perish while you are getting
   somewhat better, who shall be to blame? A sick man is dying and the
   physician says, "Here is medicine that will restore you. Will you take
   it?" The dying man answers, "Sir, I believe in your medicine but I will
   not take it till I feel better." If that man dies, who murders him?
   Shall the physician be blamed? Surely not. On his own head his death
   must lie. And recollect that it will be as certainly your ruin to
   refuse Christ because you want to be better, as it will be to refuse
   Him from any other reason. Any reason which leads you to reject the
   Lord Jesus is a bad one.

   One man refuses Christ because he hates Him and he blasphemes Him.
   Another refuses Him because he thinks that he must be a little better.
   There may be a difference in the motive but the result will amount to
   the same thing. Take heed, I pray you, lest through your pride in
   refusing to receive the Gospel just now and just as you are, you should
   put it away from you till you get where there will be no Gospel
   preaching and no invitations to Christ and you are cast away forever.

   Now let me ask you this question--what good have you got by all this up
   till now? O you, good Sir, who always mean to have Christ
   by-and-by--how much farther have you got after all your good intentions
   and painful waiting? You used to sit in that pew twelve, fifteen,
   twenty years ago. And even then you had hopeful resolves. Are you any
   nearer Christ now than you were then? Say, does the preaching affect
   you any more than it did in those bygone days? "No," you say, "not half
   so much."

   This is a dangerous symptom--what does it mean? Has the preacher
   changed? I will take my share of the blame. I grow older, I know.
   Perhaps I get more stupid, too. But still, when I sat yesterday to see
   the converts coming to join the Church, I saw them till I had not
   physical power to see any more, for God had brought so many to come and
   tell me that I had led them to the Savior. Therefore I think that there
   cannot be much difference in my preaching. It must be I that is getting
   hard! I fear you are getting chilled into indifference and I pray that
   the deadly process may go no further.

   Therefore I pray God that you may end this mischief, this death, this
   ruin to your soul. And may you be driven or drawn--whichever God
   pleases--to say at once, "I will immediately cast myself on Jesus. If I
   perish, I will perish clinging to His Cross. If there is power in
   trusting Christ to give a man peace, liberty, salvation, holiness, then
   I will have it. And if there is not this power, I will at least know by
   personal trial that it is not so and that Free Grace is not for me."

   Would to God that you, my dear Hearers, would leave all else and just
   come and cast yourselves on Jesus! If you will not, I must again
   persecute each one of you with this enquiry, "How long will you cut
   yourself?" How long must you go on with your piteous prayers and get no
   answer? Must you have more tears, more groans, more cries, more
   despairs, more regrets, more broken vows? How long will you cut
   yourselves with these vain attempts to be your own Savior? How long
   must you shut Heaven's door against yourself by a horrible resolve to
   disbelieve? How long will you be so diligent to pull down an avalanche
   of wrath upon your own head?

   How long will you refuse the bread of Heaven, and determine to perish
   with famine, while all the plenty of God's Grace is round about you?
   How long? How long? God end it ere you cross the portal of this House
   of Prayer and go down those stone steps, which will again conduct you
   to the level of a careless world! Stop here till you have yielded
   yourself to Jesus. I beseech you not to go home a stranger to eternal
   life. The Lord grant that you may now throw yourself into the arms of
   Jesus, for His dear name's sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

                           To the Saddest of the Sad

   A Sermon

   (No. 2026)

   Intended for Reading on Lord's-day, June 3rd, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [5]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not
   unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage."'Exodus 6:9.

   LITTLE WORDS OFTEN CONTAIN great meanings. It is often the case with
   that monosyllable "so." In the present instance we must lay stress upon
   it and read the text thus'"Moses spake so unto the children of Israel."
   That is, he said what God told him to say. He did not invent his
   message. He did not think out the gospel that he had to carry to the
   people. He was simply a repeater of the divine message. As he received
   it, so he spake it. "Moses spake as unto the children of Israel." If he
   had not done so, the responsibility must have rested upon himself,
   whether the nation was moved by his words or not; but when he was
   simply God's ambassador, saying only what God would have him say, his
   responsibility was limited. If he delivered the Lord's own word and it
   failed to win the heart of Israel, he could not be blamed. Although it
   was a great sadness of heart to him that the people did not, and even
   could not, receive the divine message, yet as far as he was concerned,
   his conscience was clear. It is ever so with the preacher of the
   gospel: if he declares the word of the Lord as he has received it,
   whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, he is clear before
   God, whatever his hearers may do or may not do.

   I often wonder what those preachers do who feel called to make up their
   message as they go on; for if they fail, their failure must be
   attributed in great measure to their want of ability to make up a
   moving tale. They have to spread their sails to the breeze of the age,
   and to pick up a gospel that comes floating down to them on the stream
   of time, altering every week in the year; and they must have an endless
   task to catch this new idea, or, as they put it, to keep abreast of the
   age. Unless, indeed, like chameleons, they have a natural aptitude to
   change colour, they must have a worrying time of it, and a horrible
   amount of shifting to get through. When they have done their best to
   preach this gospel of their own, then they are accountable for having
   made that gospel. For every bit of its teaching they are accountable,
   because they were the manufacturers of it, and it came forth from their
   foundry, bearing their stamp. If they take this yoke upon them, and so
   refuse to learn of Christ, they will find no rest to their souls. To me
   the preaching of the Lord's own gospel is a joy and a privilege; for
   notwithstanding that concern for your souls loads me with the burden of
   the Lord, it is his burden, and not one which I have selected for
   myself. I often feel on a Sabbath night when I go home weary: "I know
   that I have preached what I believe to be God's gospel." I have not
   said anything'I have not intended to say anything that was my own. I
   have not left out, at least, I have not intended to leave out anything
   that was in the text, nor anything which I believe to be the teaching
   of the gospel of Christ. And then if you do not receive it, that is a
   sorrowful business, but it is no concern of mine so that I shall have
   to answer for it at the last great day. When a man-servant goes to the
   door with a message from his master, if you do not like what he tells
   you, do not be angry with him. What has he to do with it? Has he said
   what his master told him to say? If he has, then be angry with his
   master if you must be, or accept what his master says if you think fit;
   but let the poor man that brought the message be held clear if he has
   faithfully reported his master's words. I claim that, if I have
   preached my Master's gospel, whether men are saved or lost, whether
   they accept it or reject it, I must leave that with themselves, and not
   have their sin laid at my door. How heartily do I cry to God that the
   Word may not be a savour of death unto death, but a savour of life unto
   life; but oh, my hearers, if you perish after hearing the gospel of
   God, do not think that you can cast the blame on me.

   Now, the message Moses brought was rejected, and he knew why it was
   rejected. He could see the reason. The people were in such bondage,
   they were so miserably ground down, they were so unhappy and hopeless,
   that what he spake seemed to them to be as idle words. There are
   hundreds of reasons why men reject the gospel. We will not go into them
   to-night. He that wants to beat a dog can always find a stick, and he
   that wishes to reject Christ can always find a reason for it; and,
   however unreasonable a reason may be, it will serve a sinner's turn,
   when that turn happens to be the making of some excuse for himself why
   he should not yield to the Saviour. Oh that men were less cunning in
   making apologies for refusing the Lord Jesus!

   Amongst all the reasons, however, that I ever heard, that with which I
   have the most sympathy, is this one'that some cannot receive Christ
   because they are so full of anguish, and are so crushed in spirit that
   they cannot find strength enough of mind to entertain a hope that by
   any possibility salvation can come to them. It is to their sad case
   that I desire to speak. I think that I can speak to the case, if God
   help me, for I have felt the same. I do remember when I could not
   believe even Jesus himself by reason of sore anguish and straitness of
   spirit; and, therefore, as one who has worn the chains, I speak to
   those who are still in chains. I know the clanking of those fetters,
   and what it is to feel the damp of the stone walls, and to fear that
   there is no coming out of prison, and to be so despairing that even
   when the emancipator turned the great key in the lock, and set the door
   wide open, yet still my heart had made for itself a direr cage, and I
   could not believe in the possibility of liberty, and therefore I sat
   bound in a dungeon of my own creation. Ah! there is no Bastille so
   awful as that which is built by despair, and kept under the custody of
   a crushed spirit. Many are the desponding ones whose eyes fail so that
   they cannot look up, or look out. To such I speak. May God speak
   through me by the Holy Spirit, the Comforter!

   I. And first, will you notice that what Moses brought to these people
   was glad tidings. IT WAS A FREE AND FULL GOSPEL MESSAGE. To them it was
   the gospel of salvation from a cruel bondage, the gospel of hope, the
   gospel of glorious promise. It is a very admirable type and
   metaphorical description of what the gospel is to us. Moses' word to
   them was singularly clear, cheering, and comforting; but they could not
   receive it. "They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and
   cruel bondage."

   First, Moses spoke to them about their God. He said, "You have a God,
   and his name is Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
   of Isaac, and of Jacob." They looked up from their bricks, and they
   seemed to say, "God? What have we to do with him? Oh, that the straw
   were given us to make our bricks! We are up to our necks in this filthy
   Nile mud, making the bricks, and you come and talk to us about God. Go,
   and preach to Pharaoh and the taskmasters that rule us; but as for us
   poor creatures, slaves that we are, we do not understand you. What do
   you mean by JAH, Jehovah, our God? Bring us more garlic and onions, or
   lessen our daily tasks, or take away the sticks from our drivers, and
   then we will listen to you." And so they shook their heads, and said
   that such mysteries and theologies were not for them. And yet, dear
   sirs, if any of you are in such a case, it is for you. Jehovah,
   Israel's God, was indeed their only hope, and he is your only hope
   also. Alas, that they should be so unwise as to refuse to let the light
   shine upon them, for light it was! What a poor reason for refusing
   light because the night is so dark! Man's best hope lies in his God. O
   you whose lives are bitter with toil and want, there is something for
   you after all, much better than the hard saying, "What shall we eat,
   and what shall we drink?" There is an inheritance above the grinding
   toil of every-day life. There is a portion much better than this
   killing care, which frets so many of you and makes life a calamity to
   you. Do not, therefore, because of the heaviness of your lot, refuse to
   hear about God, your Maker, your Benefactor. In that direction lies
   your only real hope. Have this God for a father and a friend, and life
   will wear another aspect, and you will be another man.

   Then Moses went on to tell them about a covenant. He said, "You have a
   God, and that God has said, "I have also established my covenant with
   them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage,
   wherein they were strangers.'" Covenant? Why, many of them would hardly
   know what it meant. "Covenant?" said they, "God made a covenant with us
   poor brickmakers, that have to slave from morning to night without
   wage, and now are forced to make bricks without straw?" God and a
   covenant: these are strange words in ears that hear the curses of
   taskmasters and the crack of their whips. It sounded like mockery to
   them to talk of such high matters. I doubt not they muttered to
   themselves, "This Moses is a mad philosopher who has grand mouthfuls of
   words; but what are words to us? A bit of fish out of the Nile, or a
   cumber from the irrigated fields would be a deal better than talking to
   us about a covenant." And yet, hearken. If any of you are in a sad
   condition, your best hopes may lie this way. What if God has entered
   into covenant with you that he will bless you for Jesus Christ's sake?
   There may be a mint of wealth for the sons of poverty in this
   everlasting covenant; and the best kind of wealth, too. There may be
   for you a promised emancipation which will break the fetters which now
   hold you, and set you free. I tell you that in the covenant of grace
   lies the charter of the poor and needy. At any rate, if you come under
   that covenant it cannot be worse with you than it is now. You seem now
   to be under a covenant of bondage and of sorrow, and any change will be
   for the better. If there be another covenant'a covenant of grace, and
   love, and peace, and everlasting faithfulness, it were worth while to
   hear about it, and to seek it out until you discover whether you have
   part and lot in it. I entreat you, look into this matter. Hearken
   diligently to the voice of the gospel. Hear, and your soul shall live.

   So, when Moses had spoken of the covenant, he went on to speak yet more
   about God's pity to them. He reported that Jehovah had said, "I have
   also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians
   keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant." I fancy that those
   words opened their eyes a little. They looked up and said to one
   another, "Is there, indeed, a God who has heard our groanings? Oh,
   but," they muttered, "look at the many years we have been groaning.
   Why, it is forty years since this man Moses first came out and saw our
   burdens. Where has he been these forty years? What is the use of pity
   that is so tardy in its movements?" And yet, dear sirs, if you are
   inclined to talk so, it may be that if God be slow he is sure; and if
   he be slow to you it is out of patience and long-suffering to others.
   He knows best when and how to save his people. Remember that when the
   tale of bricks was doubled then Moses came; and when you are getting to
   your very worst, and your night is darkening into a sort of hellish
   midnight, it may be that your darkness is coming to an end. Therefore,
   be not so bowed down as to let the brick-earth get into your ears and
   eyes and make you deaf and blind. But do listen if there be anything to
   be heard that is better than your daily moans and groans. Listen to the
   messenger of God who comes to tell of what God is about to do. He is a
   God full of compassion, and he has respect unto broken hearts and
   tearful eyes.

   And then Moses went on further with his blessed gospel message to tell
   them about the Lord's resolve to rescue them by a great redemption. The
   Lord had said, "I am Jehovah, and I will bring you out from under the
   burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage." Do
   you notice that all along the Lord uses strong words, and speaks like a
   great king? "I am Jehovah. I will. I will. I will." When you go home
   just notice what a number of "I wills" there are in this declaration of
   the great God. When God says, "I will," he means it; depend upon it. He
   does not ask our leave, or wait for our help. "I will" is omnipotence
   putting itself into speech. Jehovah will accomplish what he promises.
   He told them, therefore, that he meant to come to their rescue. "I will
   bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid
   you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out
   arm, and with great judgments." God means to save you. Poor, troubled,
   confessedly guilty sinner, believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, and
   trust yourself with him, and the Lord will save you. He will deliver
   you from all the guilt of your past life, from the evil habits of your
   present life, and from the temptations of your future life. He will
   break the yoke of Satan from off your neck and make you to be no more
   the slave of sin, but you shall become the child of the living God.

   Moses told them about the Lord's ways of grace and the inheritance
   which he had prepared for them. My message is after the same sort. Thus
   saith Jehovah to-night, in the preaching of the gospel to every one
   that will believe in Jesus, "I will save and I will deliver you; and I
   will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am your God, which
   bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will
   bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it
   to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an
   heritage: I am the Lord." These are great words, but they come from the
   mouth of the great God, who cannot lie. Wherefore believe them, and
   take heart of hope. God will take you, poor guilty ones, to be his
   children. He will promote you to be his willing servants. He will use
   you for his glory though now you dishonour his name. He will sanctify
   you and cleanse you, and he will bring you to heaven, even you who have
   lien among the pots and have been defiled in the brick-kilns of sin. He
   will never rest till he makes you sit upon his throne with him, where
   he is glorified, world without end. This I speak to you who are in
   bondage. Even as Jesus said of old, so say I in my measure as his
   messenger: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because he hath sent
   me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
   and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." Believe you in
   Christ Jesus, and he who has come to save the lost will give you as
   clear and clean a deliverance from the power of sin as Jehovah gave
   Israel deliverance from the power of the Egyptian tyrant. He will bring
   you out of bondage and guide you through the wilderness till you come
   into the eternal rest, even to a goodlier land than Canaan, though it
   flowed with milk and honey.

   II. We come now to note that IT WAS RECEIVED WITH UNBELIEF CAUSED BY
   ANGUISH OF HEART. The message was from the Lord, and it was full of
   hope for them, but they were too much broken down to receive it. We can
   quite understand what that meant. Let us look into the case. They could
   not now receive this gospel because they had at first caught at it, and
   had been disappointed. They were under a misapprehension, for they
   expected to be free at once, as soon as Moses went to Pharaoh; and as
   they did not get immediate relief, they fell back into sullen despair.
   When Moses came to them and said that God had appeared to him at the
   bush, and had sent him to deliver them, they bowed their heads, and
   worshipped. Great things they looked for on the morrow, for they were
   at the end of their patience; but after that, when Moses went in unto
   Pharaoh, and the tyrant doubled their labour by denying them straw,
   then they could not believe in God or in his messenger. In the process
   of salvation it often happens'I have seen it many time'that after
   persons have come to hear the gospel, after they have, in some measure,
   become attentive to its invitations, they have for a season been much
   more miserable than they were before. Have you never noticed, in taking
   a medicine, how often you are made to feel more sick before you are
   made well? It is often so in the workings of the great remedy of divine
   grace: it discovers to us our disease that we may the more heartily
   accept the heavenly medicine. Yes, and in special cases there may be
   evils within the spiritual system which must be thrown out in the
   flesh, to be made visible, and so to become the subjects of repentance
   and abhorrence. The man who judges with shortness and straightness of
   judgment, demands a remedy that will cure his soul of all evils on the
   spot, and if it does not evidently and immediately do this, he cries,
   "Away with it." I find that the Hebrew word translated "anguish" here
   signifies shortness. Your marginal Bibles have "straitness." So they
   could not believe because of the shortness of their judgment: they
   measured God by inches. They limited the great and infinite God to
   minutes and days; and so, as they found themselves at first getting
   into a worse case than before, they said to Moses, deliberately, "Let
   us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians." They did as good as say'You
   have done us no good; indeed you have increased our miseries; and we
   cannot believe in you or accept your message as really from God, seeing
   it has caused us a terrible increase of our sufferings.

   Grace may truly and effectually come to a heart, and for a while cause
   no joy, no peace; but the reverse. I have known many a man coming to
   this Tabernacle, who has been prospering in business, and so on, and
   yet he has been going down to hell as fast as ever he could travel.
   Well, he has come and heard the gospel, and he has made a great many
   improvements in his conduct, and has become a regular and attentive
   hearer; and at that very time he has fallen into an affliction the like
   of which he had never experienced before; and he has consequently
   complained, "Why, I am worse instead of better. I find my heart grows
   more rebellious against God than ever it was before." I do not wonder
   that it should be so, for I have seen so many examples of it. The
   discipline of the household of God begins very early. But a present
   increase of sorrow has nothing to do with what the main result will be,
   except that it works towards it in a mysterious manner. Perhaps what
   you at first thought was genuine faith was not faith; and God is going
   to knock down the false before he builds up the true. If you had an old
   house, and any friend of yours were to say, "John, I will build you a
   new house. When shall I begin?" "Oh!" you might say, "begin next week
   to build the new house." At the end of the week he has pulled half your
   old house down. "Oh," say you, "this is what you call building me a new
   house, is it? You are causing me great loss: I wish I had never
   consented to your proposal." He replies, "You are most unreasonable:
   how am I to build you a new house on this spot without taking the old
   one down?" And so it often happens that the grace of God does seem in
   its first work to make a man even worse than he was before, because it
   discovers to him sins which he did not know to be there, evils which
   had been concealed, dangers never dreamed of. Thus the work of grace
   even makes his bondage seem to be heavier than ever it was; and yet
   this is all done in wisdom, in love, and in fulfilment of the promise
   which God has given. Yet I am never very much astonished when I find
   people ready almost to turn away from the hearing of the gospel;
   because, after having at first heard it with pleasure, they find that,
   for the time being, it involves them in even greater sorrow than
   before. How earnestly would I persuade them to overcome their very
   natural tendency to a hasty judgment! Press on, dear friend. Be of good
   courage. Pharaoh will not long be able to make you keep up that
   enormous number of bricks. Within a very few days he will be glad to
   get rid of you. Wait hopefully; for the God who begins in darkness will
   end in light, and before long you will come to understand those ways of
   mercy, which are now past finding out. Not many weeks after the sobbing
   and sighing at the brickyards, Moses and the children at Israel sang
   this song unto the Lord: " Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed
   gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." The
   work of deliverance began very grimly, but it ended very gloriously.

   The inability of Israel to believe the message of Moses arose also from
   the fact that they were earthbound by heavy oppression: the mere
   struggle to exist exhausted all their energy, and destroyed all their
   hope. The extreme hardness of their lot made them despondent and
   sullen. They had to work from morning to night. The Egyptian fellahs of
   the present age have known what it is to work very, very hard, and to
   let their earnings go into the coffers of their precious princes. It
   seems always to have been so with wretched Egypt: it is ever the house
   of bondage. But these Israelites, being not even Egyptians, but
   strangers in Egypt, were worked without any pity or mercy. It was a
   daily question with them whether life was worth living under such cruel
   conditions. I do not wonder that a great many are unable to receive the
   gospel in this city of ours, because their struggle for existence is
   awful. I am afraid that it gets more and more intense, though even now
   it passes all bounds. If any of you can do anything to help the
   toil-worn workers, I pray you, do it. The poor workwoman, who sits so
   many hours with the candle and needle, and does not earn enough, when
   she has worked all those hours, to more than just pay the rent and keep
   body and soul together, do you wonder that she thinks that this gospel
   of ours cannot be for her, and does not care to listen to it? I know
   that it would be her comfort, but her soul refuseth to be comforted,
   she is so crushed. The dock labourer, who comes home five days out of
   the six having earned nothing, and hears his little children crying for
   bread'is it any wonder that he cannot hear about heavenly things? Why,
   it is with our white population very much as it was with the negro
   population of Jamaica. When there was work to be had, and they could
   get enough to eat and more, our churches were crowded with them. They
   were the best of hearers and the speediest of converts; they were soon
   gathered into immense churches. But when everything went badly with
   them, and they had to work very hard barely to live, there were groups
   of backsliders, and multitudes who did not feel that they could go to
   the house of God at all. They said that they had no garments to wear,
   and no money to spare; and do you wonder at it? Their poverty was so
   grinding, and their toil so severe, that the services they had once
   delighted in they had no heart for. It is all very easy to say that it
   ought not to be so; but it is so; and it is so with multitudes in
   London. And yet, dear friend'if such a one has come in here to-night'I
   pray you do not throw away the next world because you have so little of
   this. This is sheer folly. If I have little here, I would make sure of
   the more hereafter. If you have such a struggle for existence here, you
   should seek that higher, nobler, better life, which would give you,
   even in penury and want, a joy and a comfort to which you are a
   stranger now. May the Holy Ghost come upon you, and raise you out of
   this present evil world into newness of life in Christ Jesus! I do not
   find that God's people get into a condition of utter desolation: they
   are, at their very worst, kept from total desertion; for the Lord hath
   said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." They do have to work
   hard, and they may come very near to want, but my observation satisfies
   me that they are happy still; that they are joyful still; and they are
   uplifted by the inner life above the down-dragging depression of
   external trials. I would to God that I could say a word that might
   comfort any child of poverty who should happen to be here to-night, and
   I pray the Lord himself to be their comforter and helper.

   But, worst of all, there are some who seem as if they could not lay
   hold on Christ because their sense of sin has become so intolerable,
   and the wretchedness which follows upon conviction has become so
   fearful, that they have grown almost to be continually despairing. I
   hardly know any condition of mind that is worse than chronic despair,
   when at last that which seemed alarming enough to drive to madness
   settles down into a lifeless, sullen moroseness. These Israelites had
   at last sunk so low that they said, "Let us alone, that we may serve
   the Egyptians." But your lot is terrible. "We know it is," they said,
   "but we shall never get out of it." But your bondage is horrible. "Yes,
   but you may make it worse by interfering. You will only aggravate our
   taskmasters, and bring upon us that last straw which breaks the back.
   Let us alone. We are doomed to suffer: we are predestined to be
   bondsmen. Let us go on as quietly as we may in our slavery. It may be
   that like poor fishes in the cave, we may lose our eyes yet, and then
   we shall not know that it is dark, for we shall have lost the capacity
   for light." Oh, it is a dreadful thing when a heart gets to that'when a
   man desires that Christ would depart from him, and let him alone to
   perish. Do not some men virtually say, "I know I am lost. Let me enjoy
   myself as well as I can; I cannot'I cannot enjoy sin; but don't vex my
   conscience. Do not worry me with your talk here, for I shall suffer
   enough hereafter. Do not tantalize me about saving faith, for I shall
   never believe. Do not begin talking to me about repentance. I shall
   never have a soft and tender heart; I know I never shall." A man who
   has begun to be numbed with cold, cries to his comrades, "Leave me to
   sleep myself to death"; and thus do despairing ones ask to be left in
   their misery. Dear soul, we cannot, we dare not, thus desert you. I
   will tell you what you shall do, dear soul; do give me a hearing. In
   the name of God, believe that there is hope yet'that even now Christ
   Jesus invites men, and especially such as you, to put their trust in
   him. O you who are burdened with sin, he calls you to let him be your
   Saviour. If there is a man in the world he died for, you are the man.
   If I see a physician hurrying down the street in his brougham, and
   anybody says to me, "Where is that doctor going?" if I knew every house
   in the street, I should pick out the case of a man that I knew to be in
   the worst condition, and most near to death's door. "Sir," I should
   say, "the doctor is going there. That dying person needs him most, and
   I believe that he is hurrying to his bedside." If there is one man here
   that is worse than any other, more sad, more sick, more sorry, more
   despairing than another, my Lord Jesus Christ, who is here, has come to
   meet with such a one. O troubled heart, Jesus has come to seek and to
   save you! I am sure it is so. Hope thou! Hope thou! Hope thou! Thou art
   not beyond hope of salvation.

   See, O soul, thou'rt yet alive,

   Not in torment; not in hell.

   Still doth his good Spirit strive,

   With the chief of sinners dwell.

   Lift up thy eyes, for thou art not yet where the rich man was after his
   death and burial. Do not yet despair. May be, there awaits thee yet a
   happy life of joy in God. The sun may yet bring thee brighter days,
   days of peace, and rest, and usefulness. Did you never hear the story
   of John Newton, on the coast of Africa? He had got himself into such a
   state by his sins, his drunkenness, his vice, that at last he was left
   on the coast of Africa, and virtually became a slave. Did John Newton
   dream, when he wandered up and down with a hungry belly, full of fever,
   and at death's door, that the day would come when he would be the
   companion and dear friend of Cowper, and when the church of St. Mary
   Woolnoth, over there in the city, would be crowded every time he stood
   up to preach of free grace and dying love? He did not think it, but it
   was so predestined. Something equally gracious may be ordered for you.
   Blasphemer, you may preach the gospel yet. O thou Magdalene, full of
   filthiness, thou wilt yet wash his feet with thy tears, and wipe them
   with the hairs of thy head. Thou black villain, thou mayest yet stand
   among that white-robed host, of whom the angel asked, "Who are these,
   and whence came they?" You, even you, will sing more sweet and loud
   than any of them unto him that loved you and washed you from your sins
   in his precious blood. God make it so, and unto his name shall be
   praise for ever and ever!

   III. I have many more things to say, but I might weary you with them
   rather than bless you. The message was at first not received by Israel
   by reason of their anguish of soul, but IT WAS TRUE FOR ALL THAT, AND
   THE LORD MADE IT SO. What did the Lord do when he found that those
   people did not hearken to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel
   bondage? What did the Lord do? He was not going to give them up because
   of their wretched condition. He had said, "I will bring them out," and
   he meant to do it.

   The first thing the Lord did to prove his persevering grace was to
   commission Moses again. (Ex. 6:1; 7:2.) So the Lord God, in everlasting
   mercy, says to his minister, "You have to preach the gospel again to
   them. Again proclaim my grace." It seems a terrible thing to have to
   pour our souls into deaf ears. Yet I shall not give it up, for I have
   done it with some here for nearly thirty-three years, and I may as well
   go on. Why should I lose so much labour? I will try again, like Peter,
   who, after toiling all night and taking nothing, yet let down the net
   at the Lord's bidding. One of these days those dead ears will be made
   to live. God in mercy says, "Go on with it. As long as there is breath
   in your body, tell them to believe in my Son, and they shall live. Tell
   them till you die that 'He that with his mouth confesseth, and with his
   heart believeth that God hath raised Christ from the dead shall be
   saved.'"

   But the Lord did more than that for Israel. As these people had not
   listened to Moses, he called Moses and Aaron to him, and he renewed
   their charge. He laid it upon them'gave them again their marching
   orders: "He gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto
   Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land
   of Egypt." A monstrous thing it did look. They would not even hear
   Moses but the Lord will have his servants stand to their work. Moses
   and Aaron have to do it, however impossible it may appear. There is to
   be no backing out of it. They must know of a surety that Israel is to
   be delivered by their means. It is a grand point when the Lord lays the
   conversion of men on the hearts of his ministers, and makes them feel
   that they must win souls. Moses was bound to bring out Israel. "But
   there is Pharaoh" Pharaoh is included in the divine charge. They have
   to beat Pharaoh into submission. "But those children of Israel will not
   obey." The Lord put them in the charge: did you not observe the words,
   "He gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh "?
   Moses and Aaron, you have to bring Israel out, Pharaoh is to let them
   go, and Israel is to go willingly. God has issued his royal decree, and
   be you sure it will stand. I believe that God is saying to his church
   "You have to do it. You have to gather out mine elect out of every
   nation under heaven." To the church in London, he says, "Bring this
   people out of the bondage of sin." That terrible London with all its
   poverty, its drunkenness, its infidelity, and licentiousness: you are
   to save it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Its darkness is dense; you
   are to shine till it is enlightened. You have to save London. So do not
   back out of it. "Oh," says one man, who lives down some street near
   this place, "Sir, I can hardly live in the street. It teems with
   ill-living women." You have to save them. Passing a little shop as I
   did the other day, I saw written up in the window, "If any poor girl
   that wishes to lead a better life will only step inside she will find a
   friend." That is one of our dear members. I felt so pleased as I saw
   it. I should like to see such a notice in a great many windows. I would
   like to see you live among the wicked, and put up in your windows, "If
   anybody wants a friend, there is one inside. Come in." You are called
   to save them! They must not be lost. Somebody says, "What are you
   talking about, Mr. Spurgeon? We cannot save them." I am talking as God
   said, when be told Moses and Aaron that he gave them a charge to bring
   his people out of Egypt. They could not do it: but yet they did it.
   Anyone can do what he can do, but it is only God's servant that can do
   what he cannot do. We, my brethren, are called to perform the
   impossible; we are to be familiar with miracles. Look at Ezekiel. There
   is a valley full of dry bones. Ezekiel is to go and say to them, "Thus
   saith the Lord, Ye dry bones, live." What a preposterous thing! An able
   divine of good repute once said that, to preach the gospel to dead
   sinners, was as preposterous as to wave a pocket-handkerchief over a
   grave. Ah, just so! Therefore, I would not have him do it. If the Lord
   has not sent him to do it he would do no good if he were to attempt to
   preach to the sinner dead in sin; but it is a different thing when it
   is my case, for I feel that I am sent to do it, and therefore I am not
   vexed at being thought to be acting absurdly. If God had sent me to
   wave a pocket-handkerchief over the dead in Nunhead cemetery, that they
   might live, I would go and wave that pocket-handkerchief, and they
   would live. To the eye of reason there is no use in preaching to men
   dead in sin. I freely admit that; but if it is a commission from God,
   then it is not ours to raise questions, but to do as we are bidden. God
   has commissioned his servants to preach the gospel to every creature.
   Whatever those creatures may be, we are to say to them, "He that
   believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not
   shall be dammed." This is our message and our mission, and we are just
   to tell the truth, and leave God to apply it to the heart. Oh that he
   may give us grace to tell out the gospel, and to keep on doing it till
   he has brought his own elect out of the bondage of sin and Satan, and
   saved them with an everlasting salvation!

   Once more. As I told you in the reading, I greatly admire this chapter.
   I cannot help admiring the next thing that God did when he told his
   servant what to do. The Lord began to count the heads of those whom he
   would redeem out of bondage. You see the rest of the chapter is
   occupied with the children of Reuben, and the children of Simeon, and
   the children of Levi. God seemed to say, "Pharaoh, let my people go!"
   "I will not," said the despot. Straightway the Lord goes right down
   into the brick-town where the poor slaves are at work, and he makes out
   a list of all of them, to show that he means to set free. So many there
   of Simeon. So many here of Reuben. So many here of Levi. The Lord is
   counting them. Moreover he numbers their cattle, for he declares,
   "There shall not a hoof be left behind." Men say, "It is of no use
   counting your chickens before they are hatched"; but when it comes to
   God's counting those whom he means to deliver, it is another matter;
   for he knows what will be done, because he determines to do it and he
   is almighty. He knows what is to come of the gospel, and he knows whom
   he means to bless. And so let Satan rage, and let adversaries do what
   they will, "The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The
   Lord knoweth them that are his"; and to prove this, he goes on writing
   down their names, and taking an account of them. "They shall be mine,
   saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels." Now, my hearers,
   if you do not come to Christ, it will be your own loss, and not his. If
   you refuse him, it will be because you are not Christ's sheep, as he
   said to you. He has a people, and he will save them, whether you, my
   hearer, believe in Jesus or wilfully refuse to do so. Out of the mass
   of mankind a company shall come to him, and shall glorify his name, as
   it is written, "This people have I formed for myself; they shall show
   forth my praise." Oh, that you had such a mind in you that you would
   accept his gospel! Will you do so even now? Trust Christ, and you are
   saved. Look unto him, and be ye saved The Lord bless you, for his
   name's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Exodus 4:31 to 6:14.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'397, 540, 502.

   * Since this sermon was preached, brother Bilborough has gone to his
   reward.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Sluggard's Farm

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JUNE 3, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man
   void of understanding. And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and
   nettles had covered the face thereof and the stone wall thereof was
   broken down. Then I saw and considered it well: I looked upon it and
   received instruction." Proverbs 24:30-32.

   NO DOUBT Solomon was sometimes glad to lay aside the robes of State,
   escape from the forms of court and go through the country unknown. On
   one occasion, when he was doing so, he looked over the broken wall of a
   little estate which belonged to a farmer of his country. This estate
   consisted of a piece of plowed land and a vineyard. One glance showed
   him that it was owned by a sluggard who neglected it, for the weeds had
   grown right plentifully and covered all the face of the ground. From
   this Solomon gathered instruction.

   Men generally learn wisdom if they have wisdom. The artist's eye sees
   the beauty of the landscape because he has beauty in his mind. "To him
   that has shall be given" and he shall have abundance, for he shall reap
   a harvest even from a field that is covered with thorns and nettles.
   There is a great difference between one man and another in the use of
   the mind's eye. I have a book entitled, "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye,"
   and a good book it is--the harvest of a quiet eye can be gathered from
   a sluggard's land as well as from a well-managed farm. When we were
   boys we were taught a little poem, called "Eyes and no Eyes." There was
   much truth in it for some people have eyes and see not, which is much
   the same as having no eyes--while others have quick eyes for spying out
   instruction.

   Some look only at the surface, while others see not only the outside
   shell but the living kernel of truth which is hidden in all outward
   things. We may find instruction everywhere. To a spiritual mind nettles
   have their use and weeds have their doctrine. Are not all thorns and
   thistles meant to be teachers to sinful men? Are they not brought forth
   of the earth on purpose that they may show us what sin has done and the
   kind of produce that will come when we sow the seed of rebellion
   against God?

   "I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man
   void of understanding," says Solomon. "I saw and considered it well: I
   looked upon it and received instruction." Whatever you see, take care
   to consider it well and you will not see it in vain. You shall find
   books and sermons everywhere--in the land and in the sea, in the earth
   and in the skies--and you shall learn from every living beast and bird
   and fish and insect and from every useful or useless plant that springs
   out of the ground. We may also gather rare lessons from things that we
   do not like. I am sure that Solomon did not in the least degree admire
   the thorns and the nettles that covered the face of the vineyard. But
   he nevertheless found instruction in them.

   Many are stung by nettles but few are taught by them. Some men are hurt
   by briars but here is one who was improved by them. Wisdom has a way of
   gathering grapes from thorns and figs from nettles and she distills
   good from herbs which in themselves are noisome and evil. Do not fret,
   therefore, over thorns but get good out of them. Do not begin stinging
   yourself with nettles--grip them firmly and then use them for your
   soul's health. Trials and troubles, worries and turmoil, little frets
   and little disappointments may all help you, if you will.

   Like Solomon, see and consider them well--look upon them and receive
   instruction. As for us, we will now, first, consider Solomon's
   description of a sluggard--he is "a man void of understanding."
   Secondly, we shall notice his description of the sluggard's land--"it
   was all grown over with thorns and nettles had covered the face
   thereof." When we have attended to these two matters we will close by
   endeavoring to gather the instruction which this piece of waste ground
   may yield us.

   First think of SOLOMON'S DESCRIPTION OF A SLOTHFUL MAN. Solomon was a
   man whom none of us would contradict for he knew as much as all of us
   put together. And besides that, he was under Divine inspiration when he
   wrote this Book of Proverbs. Solomon says a sluggard is "a man void of
   understanding." The slothful does not think so. He puts his hands in
   his pockets and you would think from his important air that he had all
   the Bank of England at his disposal. You can

   see that he is a very wise man in his own esteem for he gives himself
   airs which are meant to impress you with a sense of his superior
   abilities.

   How he has come by his wisdom it would be hard to say. He has never
   taken the trouble to think, and yet I dare not say that he jumps to his
   conclusions because he never does such a thing as jump--he lies down
   and rolls into a conclusion. Yet he knows everything and has settled
   all points--meditation is too hard work for him and learning he never
   could endure. But to be clever by nature is his delight. He does not
   want to know more than he knows, for he knows enough already and yet he
   knows nothing. The Proverb is not complimentary to him and I am certain
   that Solomon was right when he called him, "a man void of
   understanding."

   Solomon was rather rude according to the dainty manners of the present
   times because this gentleman had a field and a vineyard and as Poor
   Richard says, "When I have a horse and a cow every man bids me good
   morrow." How can a man be void of understanding who has a field and a
   vineyard? Is it not generally understood that you must measure a man's
   understanding by the amount of his ready cash? At all events you shall
   soon be flattered for your attainments if you have attained unto
   wealth. Such is the way of the world--but such is not the way of
   Scripture. Whether he has a field and a vineyard or not, says Solomon,
   if he is a sluggard he is a fool--or if you would like to see his name
   written out a little larger--he is a man empty of understanding.

   Not only does he not understand anything but he has no understanding to
   understand with. He is empty-headed if he is a sluggard. He may be
   called a gentleman, he may be a landed proprietor, he may have a
   vineyard and a field. But he is none the better for what he has--no, he
   is so much the worse--because he is a man void of understanding. and
   is, therefore, unable to make use of his property.

   I am glad to be told by Solomon so plainly that a slothful man is void
   of understanding for it is useful information. I have met with persons
   who thought they perfectly understood the Doctrines of Grace, who could
   accurately set forth the election of the saints, the predestination of
   God, the firmness of the Divine decree, the necessity of the Spirit's
   work and all the glorious Doctrines of Grace which build up the fabric
   of our faith. But these gentlemen have inferred from these doctrines
   that they have to do nothing and thus they have become sluggards.
   Do-nothing-ism is their creed. They will not even urge other people to
   labor for the Lord, because, say they, "God will do His own work.
   Salvation is all of grace!"

   The notion of these sluggards is that a man is to wait and do nothing.
   He is to sit still and let the grass grow up to his ankles in the hope
   of heavenly help. To arouse himself would be an interference with the
   eternal purpose which he regards as altogether unwarrantable. I have
   known him to look sour, shake his aged head and say hard things against
   earnest people who were trying to win souls. I have known him to run
   down young people and like a great steam ram, sink them to the bottom
   by calling them unsound and ignorant. How shall we survive the censures
   of this dogmatic person? How shall we escape from this very knowing and
   very captious sluggard?

   Solomon hastens to the rescue and extinguishes this gentleman by
   informing us that he is void of understanding. Why, he is the standard
   of orthodoxy, and he judges everybody! Yet Solomon applies another
   standard to him and says he is void of understanding! He may know the
   doctrine but he does not understand it. Or else he would know that the
   Doctrines of Grace lead us to seek the Divine Grace of the doctrines.
   And he would know that when we see God at work we learn that He works
   in us, not to make us go to sleep but to will and to do of His good
   pleasure. God's predestination of a people is in His ordaining them
   unto good works that they may show forth His praise. So, if you or I
   shall, from any doctrines, however true, draw the inference that we are
   warranted in being idle and indifferent about the things of God, we are
   void of understanding.

   We are acting like fools. We are misusing the Gospel. We are taking
   what was meant for meat and turning it into poison. The sluggard,
   whether he is sluggish about his business or about his soul, is a man
   void of understanding. As a rule we may measure a man's understanding
   by his useful activities. This is what the wise man very plainly tells
   us. Certain persons call themselves "cultured," and yet they cultivate
   nothing. Modern thought, as far as I have seen anything of its actual
   working, is a bottle of smoke out of which comes nothing solid. Yet we
   know men who can distinguish and divide, debate and discuss, refine and
   refute and all the while the hemlock is growing in the furrow and the
   plow is rusting.

   Friend, if your knowledge, if your culture, if your education does not
   lead you practically to serve God in your day and generation, you have
   not learned what Solomon calls wisdom and you are not like the Blessed
   One, who was incarnate Wisdom, of whom we read that, "He went about
   doing good." A lazy man is not like our Savior, who said, "My Father
   works up to now and I work." True wisdom is practical--boastful culture
   vapors and theorizes. Wisdom plows its field, wisdom hoes its vineyard,
   wisdom looks to its crops, wisdom tries to make the best of everything.
   And he who does not do so, whatever may be his knowledge of this, of
   that, or of the other--is a man void of understanding.

   Why is he void of understanding? Is it not because he has opportunities
   which he does not use? His day has come, his day is going and he lets
   the hours glide by to no purpose. Let me not press too harshly upon
   anyone but let me ask you all to press as harshly as you can upon
   yourselves while you enquire each one of himself--"Am I employing the
   minutes as they fly?" This man had a vineyard but he did not cultivate
   it. He had a field but he did not till it. Do you, Brethren, use all
   your opportunities? I know we each one have some power to serve God--do
   we use it? If we are His children He has not put one of us where we are
   of necessity, useless.

   Somewhere we may shine by the light which He has given us, though that
   light be only a farthing candle. Are we thus shining? Do we sow beside
   all waters? Do we in the morning sow our seed and in the evening still
   stretch out our hand? If not, we are rebuked by the sweeping censure of
   Solomon, who says that the slothful man is a "man void of
   understanding." Having opportunities he did not use them and being
   bound to the performance of certain duties he did not fulfill them.
   When God appointed that every Israelite should have a piece of land
   under that admirable system which made every Israelite a landowner, He
   meant that each man should possess his plot--not to let it go to
   waste--but to cultivate it.

   When God put Adam in the garden of Eden it was not that he should walk
   through the glades and watch the spontaneous luxuriance of the unfallen
   earth, but that he might dress it and keep it. And He had the same end
   in view when He allotted each Jew his piece of land. He meant that the
   holy soil should reach the utmost point of fertility through the labor
   of those who owned it. Thus the possession of a field and a vineyard
   involved responsibilities upon the sluggard which he never fulfilled
   and therefore he was void of understanding. What is your position, dear
   Friend? A father? A master? A servant? A minister? A teacher? Well, you
   have your farms and your vineyards in those particular spheres.

   If you do not use those positions aright you will be void of
   understanding because you neglect the end of your existence. You miss
   the high calling which your Maker has set before you. The slothful
   farmer was unwise in these two respects and in another also. For he had
   capacities which he did not employ. He could have tilled the field and
   cultivated the vineyard if he had chosen to do so. He was not a sickly
   man who was forced to keep to his bed but he was a lazybones who was
   there of choice. You are not asked to do in the service of God that
   which is utterly beyond you--it is expected of us according to what we
   have--not according to what we have not.

   The man of two talents is not required to bring in the interest of five
   but he is expected to bring in the interest of two. Solomon's slothful
   man was too idle to attempt tasks which were quite within his power.
   Many have a number of dormant faculties of which they are scarcely
   aware and many more have abilities which they are using for themselves
   and not for Him who created them. Dear Friends, if God has given us any
   power to do good, let us do it, for this is a wicked, weary world. We
   should not even cover a glow-worm's light in such a darkness as this.
   We should not keep back a syllable of Divine Truth in a world that is
   full of falsehood and error.

   However feeble our voices, let us lift them up for the cause of the
   Truth of God and righteousness. Do not let us be void of understanding
   because we have opportunities that we do not use, obligations that we
   do not fulfill and capacities which we do not exercise. As for a
   sluggard in soul matters, he is indeed void of understanding, for he
   trifles with matters which demand his most earnest heed. Man, have you
   ever cultivated your heart? Has the plowshare ever broken up the clods
   of your soul? Has the seed of the Word ever been sown in you? Or has it
   taken no root? Have you ever watered the young plants of desire? Have
   you ever sought to pull up the weeds of sin that grow in your heart?

   Are you still a piece of the bare common or wild hearth? Poor Soul! You
   can trim your body and spend many a minute at the glass--do you not
   care for your soul? How long you take to decorate your poor flesh which
   is but worm's meat, or would be in a minute if God took away your
   breath! And yet all the while your soul is uncombed, unwashed,
   unclad--a poor neglected thing! Oh, it should not be so! You take care
   of the worse part and leave the better to perish through neglect. This
   is the height of folly! He that is a sluggard as to the vineyard of his
   heart is a man void of understanding. If I must be idle, let it be seen
   in my field and my garden, but not in my soul.

   Are you a Christian? Are you really saved and are you negligent in the
   Lord's work? Then, indeed, whatever you may be, I cannot help saying
   you have too little understanding. For surely, when a man is himself
   saved, and understands the danger of other men's souls, he must be in
   earnest in trying to pluck the firebrands from the flame. A Christian
   sluggard! Is there such a being? A Christian man on half-time? A
   Christian man working not all for his Lord--how shall I speak of him?
   Time does not tarry, DEATH does not tarry, HELL does not tarry. Satan
   is not lazy, all the powers of darkness are busy--how is it that you
   and I can be sluggish, if the Master has put us into His vineyard?
   Surely we must be void of understanding if, after being saved by the
   infinite love of God, we do not spend and are not spent in His service.
   The eternal fitness of things demands that a saved man should be an
   earnest man.

   The Christian who is slothful in his Master's service has no idea what
   he is losing. For the very cream of religion lies in holy consecration
   to God. Some people have just enough religion to make it questionable
   whether they have any or not. They have enough godliness to make them
   uneasy in their ungodliness. They have washed enough of their face to
   show the dirt upon the rest of it. "I am glad," said a servant, "that
   my mistress takes the sacrament, for otherwise I should not know she
   had any religion at all." You smile and well you may. It is ridiculous
   that some people should have no goods in their shop and yet advertise
   their business in all the papers--should make a show of religion and
   yet have none of the Spirit of God.

   I wish some professors would do Christ the justice to say, "No, I am
   not one of His disciples. Do not think so badly of Him as to imagine
   that I can be one of them." We ought to be reflections of Christ. But I
   fear many are reflections upon Christ. When we see a lot of lazy
   servants we are apt to think that their master must be a very idle
   person himself, or he would never put up with them. He who employs
   sluggards and is satisfied with their snail-like pace cannot be a very
   active man himself. O, let not the world think that Christ is
   indifferent to human woe, that Christ has lost His zeal, that Christ
   has lost His energy-- yet I fear they will say it or think it if they
   see those who profess to be laborers in the vineyard of Christ not
   better than mere sluggards.

   The slothful man, then, is a man void of understanding. He loses the
   honor and pleasure which he would find in serving his Master. He is a
   dishonor to the cause which he professes to venerate and he is storing
   up thorns for his dying pillow. Let that stand as settled--the slothful
   man, whether he is a minister, deacon, or private Christian--is a man
   void of understanding.

   Now, secondly, LET US LOOK AT THE SLUGGARD'S LAND--"I went by the field
   of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding.
   And lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the
   face thereof." Note, first, that land will produce something. Soil
   which is good enough to be made into a field and a vineyard must and
   will yield some fruit or other. And so you and I, in our hearts and in
   the sphere God gives us to occupy, will be sure to produce something.
   We cannot live in this world as entire blanks. We shall either do good
   or do evil, as sure as we are alive. If you are idle in Christ's work,
   you are active in the devil's work.

   The sluggard, by sleeping, was doing more for the cultivation of thorns
   and nettles than he could have done by any other means. As a garden
   will either yield flowers or weeds, fruits or thistles, so something
   either good or evil will come out of our household, our class, or our
   congregation. If we do not produce a harvest of good by laboring for
   Christ, we shall grow tares to be bound up in bundles for the last
   dread burning. Note again that if it is not farmed for God, the soul
   will yield its natural produce. And what is the natural produce of land
   if left to itself? What but thorns and nettles, or some other useless
   weeds?

   What is the natural produce of your heart and mine? What but sin and
   misery? What is the natural produce of your children if you leave them
   untrained for God? What but unholiness and vice? What is the natural
   produce of this great city if we leave its streets and lanes and alleys
   without the Gospel? What but crime and infamy? There will be harvests
   and the sheaves will be the natural produce of the soil, which is sin,
   death and corruption. If we are slothful, the natural produce of our
   heart and of our sphere will be most inconvenient and unpleasant to
   ourselves.

   Nobody can sleep on thorns, or make a pillow of nettles. No rest can
   come out of an idleness which lets ill alone and does not by God's
   Spirit strive to uproot evil. While you are sleeping, Satan will be
   sowing. If you withhold the seed of good, Satan will be lavish with the
   seed of evil and from that evil will come anguish and regret for
   time--and it may be for eternity. O Man, the garden put into your
   charge, if you waste your time in slumber, will reward you with all
   that is noisome and painful. "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring
   forth to you."

   In many instances there will be a great deal of this evil produce. For
   a field and a vineyard will yield more thistles and nettles than a
   piece of ground that has never been reclaimed. If the land is good
   enough for a garden it will present its owner with a fine crop of weeds
   if he only stays his hand. A choice bit of land fit for a vineyard of
   red wine will render such a profusion of nettles to the slothful man
   that he shall rub his eyes with surprise. The man who might do most for
   God, if he were renewed, will bring forth most for Satan if he is let
   alone. The very region which would have glorified God most if the Grace
   of God were there to convert its inhabitants will be that out of which
   the vilest enemies of the Gospel will arise.

   Rest assured of that. The best will become the worse if we neglect it.
   Neglect is all that is needed to produce evil. If you want to know the
   way of salvation I must take some pains to tell you. But if you want to
   know the way to be lost, my reply is easy. For it is only a matter of
   negligence--"How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"
   If you desire to bring forth a harvest unto God, I may need long to
   instruct you in plowing, sowing and watering. But if you wish your mind
   to be covered with Satan's hemlock, you have only to leave the furrows
   of your nature to themselves. The slothful man asks for "a

   little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to
   sleep"--and the thorns and thistles multiply beyond all numbering and
   prepare for him many a sting.

   While we look upon the lazy man's vineyard let us also peep into the
   ungodly sluggard's heart. He does not care about repentance and faith.
   To think about his soul, to be in earnest about eternity, is too much
   for him. He wants to take things easy and have a little more folding of
   the arms to sleep. What is growing in his mind and character? In some
   of these spiritual sluggards you can see drunkenness, uncleanness,
   covetousness, anger and pride and all sorts of thistles and nettles. Or
   where these ranker weeds do not appear, by reason of the restraint of
   pious connections, you find other sorts of sin. The heart cannot
   possess it.

   My dear Friend, if you are not decided for God you cannot be neutral.
   In this war every man is for God or for His enemy. You cannot remain
   like a sheet of blank paper. The legible handwriting of Satan is upon
   you--can you not see the blots? Unless Christ has written across the
   page His own sweet name, the autograph of Satan is visible. You may
   say, "I do not go into open sin. I am moral," and so forth. Ah, if you
   would but look and consider and search into your heart you would see
   that enmity to God and to His ways and hatred of purity are there. You
   do not love God's Law nor love His Son, nor love His Gospel. You are
   alienated in your heart and there is in you all manner of evil desires
   and vain thoughts and these will flourish and increase so long as you
   are a spiritual sluggard and leave your heart uncultivated.

   O, may the Spirit of God arouse you! May you be stirred to anxious,
   earnest thoughts, and then you will see that these rank growths must be
   uprooted. Then you will see that your heart must be turned up by the
   plow of conviction and sown with the good seed of the Gospel--till a
   harvest rewards the great Husbandman.

   Friend, if you believe in Christ, I want to peep over the hedge into
   your heart, also--if you are a sluggish Christian. For I fear that
   nettles and thistles are a threat to you, also. Did I not hear you sing
   the other day--"It is a point I long to know"? That point will often be
   raised, for doubt is a seed which is sure to grow in lazy men's minds.
   I do not remember reading in Mr. Wesley's diary a question about his
   own salvation. He was so busy in the harvest of the Master that it did
   not occur to him to distrust his God.

   Some Christians have little faith in consequence of their having never
   sown the grain of mustard seed which they have received. If you do not
   sow your faith by using it, how can it grow? When a man lives by faith
   in Christ Jesus and his faith exercises itself actively in the service
   of his Lord, it takes root, grows upward and becomes strong till it
   chokes his doubts. Some have sadly morbid forebodings. They are
   discontented, fretful, selfish, murmuring--and all because they are
   idle. These are the weeds that grow in sluggards' gardens. I have known
   the slothful become so peevish that nothing could please them.

   The most earnest Christian could not do right for them. The most loving
   Christians could not be affectionate enough. The most active Church
   could not be energetic enough. They detected all sorts of wrong where
   God Himself saw much of the fruit of His Spirit. This censoriousness,
   this contention, this perpetual complaining is one of the nettles that
   are quite sure to grow in men's gardens when they fold their arms in
   sinful ease. If your heart does not yield fruit to God it will
   certainly bring forth that which is mischievous in itself--painful to
   you and injurious to your fellow men. Often the thorns choke the good
   seed. But it is a very blessed thing when the good seed comes up so
   thick and fast that it chokes the thorns.

   God enables certain Christians to become so fruitful in Christ that
   their graces and works stand thick together and when Satan throws in
   the tares they cannot grow because there is not room for them. The Holy
   Spirit by His power makes evil to become weak in the heart so that it
   no longer keeps the upper hand. If you are slothful, Friend, look over
   the field of your heart and weep at the sight. May I next ask you to
   look into your own house and home? It is a dreadful thing when a man
   does not cultivate the field of his own family.

   I recollect in my early days a man who used to walk out with me into
   the villages when I was preaching. I was glad of his company till I
   found out certain facts and then I shook him off and I believe he
   hooked on to somebody else, for he must needs be gadding abroad every
   evening of the week. He had many children and these grew up to be
   wicked young men and women and the reason was that the father, while he
   would be at this meeting and that, never tried to bring his own
   children to the Savior. What is the use of zeal abroad if there is
   neglect at home? How sad to say, "My own vineyard have I not kept."

   Have you ever heard of one who said he did not teach his children the
   ways of God because he thought they were so young that it was very
   wrong to prejudice them and he had rather leave them to choose their
   own religion when they grew older? One of his boys broke his arm and
   while the surgeon was setting it the boy was swearing all the time.
   "Ah," said the good doctor, "I told you what would happen. You were
   afraid to prejudice your boy in the right way but the devil had no such
   qualms. He has prejudiced him the other way and pretty strongly, too."

   It is our duty to prejudice our field in favor of corn, or it will soon
   be covered with thistles. Cultivate a child's heart for good--or it
   will go wrong of itself--for it is already depraved by nature. O that
   we were wise enough to think of this and leave no little one to become
   a prey to the Destroyer. As it is with homes, so it is with schools. A
   gentleman who joined this Church some time ago had been an atheist for
   years and in conversing with him I found that he had been educated at
   one of our great public schools and to that fact he traced his
   infidelity.

   He said that the boys were stowed away on Sunday in a lofty gallery at
   the far end of a Church, where they could scarcely hear a word that the
   clergyman said but simply sat imprisoned in a place where it was
   dreadfully hot in summer and cold in winter. On Sundays there were
   prayers and prayers and prayers but nothing that ever touched his heart
   until he was so sick of prayers that he vowed if he once got out of the
   school he would have done with religion. This is a sad result, but a
   frequent one. You Sunday school teachers can make your classes so
   tiresome to the children that they will hate Sunday. You can fritter
   away the time in school without bringing the lads and lasses to Christ
   and so you may do more hurt than good.

   I have known Christian fathers who by their severity and want of
   tenderness have sown their family field with the thorns and thistles of
   hatred to religion instead of scattering the good seed of love to it. O
   that we may so but love our Father who is in Heaven. May fathers and
   mothers set such an example of cheerful piety that sons and daughters
   shall say, "Let us tread in our father's footsteps, for he was a happy
   and a holy man. Let us follow our mother's ways, for she was sweetness
   itself." If piety does not rule in your house, when we pass by your
   home we shall see disorder, disobedience, pride of dress, folly and the
   beginnings of vice.

   Let not your home be a sluggard's field, or you will have to rue it in
   years to come. Let every deacon, every class leader and also every
   minister enquire diligently into the state of the field he has to
   cultivate. You see, Brothers and Sisters, if you and I are set over any
   department of our Lord's work and we are not diligent in it we shall be
   like barren trees planted in an orchard. They are a loss altogether
   because they occupy the places of other trees which might have brought
   forth fruit unto their owners. We shall cumber the ground and do damage
   to our Lord unless we render Him actual service.

   Will you think about this? If you could be put down as a mere cipher in
   the accounts of Christ, that would be very sad. But, Brothers and
   Sisters, it cannot be so--you will cause a deficit unless you create a
   gain. Oh that through the Grace of God we may be profitable to our Lord
   and Master. Who among us can look upon His life-work without some
   sorrow? If anything has been done aright we ascribe it all to the Grace
   of God. But how much there is to weep over! How much that we would wish
   to amend! Let us not spend time in idle regrets but pray for the Spirit
   of God that in the future we may not be void of understanding but may
   know what we ought to do and where the strength must come from with
   which to do it. And then pray for Divine Grace to give ourselves up to
   the doing of it.

   I beg you, once more, to look at the great field of the world. Do you
   see how it is overgrown with thorns and nettles? If an angel could take
   a survey of the whole race, what tears he would shed, if angels could
   weep! What a tangled mass of weeds the whole earth is! Yonder the field
   is scarlet with the poppy of popery and over the hedge it is yellow
   with the wild mustard of Mohammedanism. Vast regions are smothered with
   the thistles of infidelity and idolatry. The world is full of cruelty,
   oppression, drunkenness, rebellion, uncleanness, misery. What the moon
   sees! What God's sun sees! What scenes of horror! How far is all this
   to be attributed to a neglectful Church?

   Nearly nineteen hundred years are gone and the sluggard's vineyard is
   but little improved! England has been touched with the spade but I
   cannot say that it has been thoroughly weeded or plowed yet. Across the
   ocean another field equally favored knows well the Plowman and yet the
   weeds are rank. Here and there a little good work has been done but the
   vast mass of the world still lies a moorland never broken up, a waste,
   a howling wilderness. What has the Church been doing all these years?
   She ceased after a few centuries to be a missionary Church and from
   that hour she almost ceased to be a living Church. Whenever a Church
   does not labor for the reclaiming of the desert it becomes itself a
   waste.

   You shall not find on the roll of history that for a length of time any
   Christian community has flourished after it has become negligent of the
   outside world. I believe that if we are put into the Master's vineyard
   and will not take away the weeds, neither shall the vine flourish nor
   shall the corn yield its increase. However, instead of asking what the
   Church has been doing for this nineteen hundred years, let us ask
   ourselves, What are we going to do now? Are the missions of the
   Churches of Great Britain always to be such poor, feeble things as they
   are? Are the best of our Christian young men always going to stay at
   home?

   We go on plowing the home field a hundred times over, while millions of
   acres abroad are left to the thorn and nettle. Shall it always be so?
   God send us more spiritual life and wake us up from our sluggishness,
   or else when the holy watcher gives in His report, He will say, "I went
   by the field of the sluggish Church, and it was all grown over with
   thorns and nettles

   and the stone wall was broken down, so that one could scarcely tell
   which was the Church and which was the world, yet still she slept and
   slept and slept and nothing could waken her."

   I conclude by remarking that THERE MUST BE SOME LESSON IN ALL THIS. I
   cannot teach it as I would like. I want to learn it myself. I will
   speak it as though I were talking to myself. The first lesson is that
   unaided nature always will produce thorns and nettles and nothing else.
   My Soul, if it were not for Divine Grace, this is all you would have
   produced. Beloved, are you producing anything else? Then it is not
   nature but the Grace of God that makes you produce it. Those lips that
   now most charmingly sing the praises of God would have been delighted
   with an idle ballad if the Grace of God had not sanctified them.

   Your heart, that now clings to Christ would have continued to cling to
   your idols--you know what they were--if it had not been for Divine
   Grace. And why should Divine Grace have visited you or me--why? Echo
   answers, Why? What answer can we give? "It is even so, Father, for so
   it seemed good in Your sight." Let the remembrance of what Divine Grace
   has done move us to manifest the result of that Grace in our lives.
   Come, Brothers and Sisters, inasmuch as we were aforetime rich enough
   in the soil of our nature to produce so much of nettle and thistle--and
   God only knows how much we did produce-- let us now pray that our lives
   may yield as much of good corn for the great Husbandman.

   Will you serve Christ less than you served your lusts? Will you make
   less sacrifice for Christ than you did for your sins? Some of you were
   whole-hearted enough when in the service of the Evil One. Will you be
   half-hearted in the service of God? Shall the Holy Spirit produce less
   fruit in you than that which you yielded under the spirit of evil? God
   grant that we may not be left to prove what nature will produce if left
   to itself.

   We see here, next, the little value of natural good intentions. This
   man who left his field and vineyard to be overgrown always meant to
   work hard one of these fine days. To do him justice we must admit that
   he did not mean to sleep much longer, for he said--"Yet a little sleep,
   a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." Only a
   little doze and then he would tuck up his sleeves and show his muscle.
   Probably the worst people in the world are those who have the best
   intentions but never carry them out. In that way Satan lulls many to
   sleep. They hear an earnest sermon. But they do not arise and go to
   their Father. They only get as far as saying, "Yes, yes, the far
   country is not a fit place for me. I will not stay here long. I mean to
   go home by-and-by."

   They said that forty years ago but nothing came of it. When they were
   quite youths they had serious impressions. They were almost persuaded
   to be Christians and yet they are not Christians even now. They have
   been slumbering forty years! Surely that is a liberal share of sleep!
   They never intended to dream so long, and now they do not mean to lie
   in bed much longer. They will not turn to Christ at once but they are
   resolved to do so one day. When are you going to do it, Friend? "Before
   I die." Going to put it off to the last hour or two, are you? And so,
   when unconscious and drugged to relieve your pain, you will begin to
   think of your soul? Is this wise?

   Surely you are void of understanding. Perhaps you will die in an hour.
   Did you not hear the other day of the alderman who died in his
   carriage? Little must he have dreamed of that. How would it have fared
   with you had you also been smitten while riding at your ease? Have you
   not heard of persons who fall dead at their work? What is to hinder
   your dying with a spade in your hand? I am often startled when I am
   told in the week that one whom I saw on Sunday is dead--gone from the
   shop to the Judgment Seat.

   It is not a very long time ago since one went out at the doorway of the
   Tabernacle and fell dead on the threshold. We have had deaths in the
   House of God, unexpected deaths. And sometimes people are hurried away
   unprepared who never meant to have died unconverted--who always had
   from their youth up some kind of desire to be ready, only still they
   wanted a little more sleep. Oh, my Hearers, take heed of little delays
   and short pauses. You have wasted time enough already--come to the
   point at once before the clock strikes again. May God the Holy Spirit
   bring you to decision.

   "Surely you do not object to my having a little more sleep?" says the
   sluggard. "You have waked me so soon. I only ask another little nap."
   "My dear man, it is far into the morning." He answers, "It is rather
   late, I know, but it will not be much later if I take just another
   doze." You wake him again and tell him it is noon. He says, "It is the
   hottest part of the day--I daresay if I had been up I should have gone
   to the sofa and taken a little rest from the hot sun." You knock at his
   door when it is almost evening and then he cries, "It is of no use to
   get up now, for the day is almost over." You remind him of his
   overgrown field and weedy vineyard and he answers, "Yes, I must get up,
   I know." He shakes himself and says, "I do not think it will matter
   much if I wait till the clock strikes. I will rest another minute or
   two."

   He is glued to his bed, dead while he lives, buried in his laziness. If
   he could sleep forever he would, but he cannot, for the Judgment Day
   will rouse him. It is written, "And in Hell he lift up his eyes, being
   in torment." God grant that you spiritual sluggards may wake before
   that. But you will not unless you bestir yourselves, for "now is the
   accepted time." And it may be

   now or never. Tomorrow is only to be found in the calendar of fools.
   Today is the time of the wise man, the chosen season of our gracious
   God.

   Oh that the Holy Spirit may lead you to seize the present hour, that
   you may at once give yourselves to the Lord by faith in Christ Jesus!
   And then from His vineyard--"Quickly uproot the noisome weeds, that
   without profit suck the soil's fertility from wholesome plants."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Love of God and the Patience of Christ

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, JUNE 17, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the
   patient waiting for Christ." 2 Thessalonians 3:5.

   FOR the moment, Paul in spirit is coasting the purple shores of the
   celestial country. With his Thessalonian friends he is making a joyful
   voyage within hail of Immanuel's land. The sail is bright with the
   sunlight and the keel is marking a silver track behind it. The
   Apostle's happy soul has left far in the stern the deceivableness of
   unrighteousness and the rocks of error. It comes into his heart that he
   would gladly steer his friends into certain of those lovely creeks
   which run up far into the inner recesses of the sacred fatherland.
   Shall he turn the helm that way? He pauses, for the navigation is
   difficult. One must be greatly expert to thread the streams which
   descend from the sunny fountains.

   It is not given to all saints to follow safely all the windings of the
   rivers of delight. Paul had been with his Brethren at sea in the place
   where the Lord sank all their transgressions in the depths and he had
   been with them in sore affliction when neither sun nor moon
   appeared--and in all such seafaring he was in his element. But, brave
   pilot as he was, he could not pretend to penetrate all the richer and
   rarer experiences which bring elect souls nearest to the heart of the
   great Father. Therefore, instead of offering to be their pilot, he
   bowed his head and prayed, "The Lord direct your hearts into the love
   of God and into the patient waiting for Christ."

   The special entrance into the goodly land, which the Apostle desired
   for his friends, was one which mere insight, wit, knowledge, or
   instruction could never give them. If so, he would have directed their
   minds that way at once. But the perception of the heavenlies is only
   given to heavenly faculties. The attainments which Paul desired for his
   friends were not beliefs of the head but indwelling of the heart. To
   return to our figure of sailing up the creeks and rivers into the
   center of the glorious country--that delicious voyage was only possible
   to the more refined and spiritual powers of the soul. Those sweet
   waters could only be navigated by the heart and the heart itself would
   need Divine direction before it could find the entrance to them.

   There is a path which the vulture's eye has not seen and the lion's
   whelp has not trod--only God sees and knows it. The Beulah country of
   spiritual wisdom, especially in its higher reaches, is a matter for
   personal Revelation from God to each one of His own. We are here
   hopelessly in the dark if we have no light from above. And even with
   that light we do but see the difficult nature of our way and fail to
   enter upon it until the light becomes a force and He whom we desire to
   know directs our hearts into communion with Himself. Yes, yonder are
   the radiant coasts and the rivers of life up which our boat might sail
   into the center of "the island of the innocent." Yet our great Apostle
   does not rush into the office of pilot but humbly acts as intercessor,
   crying, "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God."

   All this whets our desires! Who would not wish to go where only choice
   spirits can enter and where these can only come as the Lord directs
   their hearts? Paul could give his converts external directions, he
   could guide his more advanced Brethren in the work, walk and warfare of
   life. And he did so with all simplicity and earnestness. He urged them
   to abound in this grace and to avoid that folly. But he felt that his
   exhortation would be inefficient unless their hearts were touched. Here
   he felt his own powerlessness and so he cast the grand matter of
   heart-work upon the Lord Himself. As the heart naturally baffles all
   physicians so spiritually it is far beyond our knowledge. Who among
   ministers can guide you? Therefore, may "the Lord direct your hearts."

   God alone knows the heart and God alone can rule it--for this ruling
   Paul makes request. "The Lord direct your hearts." Let us borrow his
   prayer and turn it to our own personal use--"Domine dirige nos." The
   place for God in reference to the heart is that of supreme director.
   When the Lord lays His hand on the heart, which is the helm of the
   ship, then the whole vessel is rightly directed--this, therefore, is
   what we beseech Him to do. When the Holy Spirit comes into

   the heart and takes supreme control of the affections, the whole life
   and conversation are after a godly sort, Oh, that He may prove this
   fact to each one of us! Some think much of liberty--I long far more to
   be in perfect subjection to the Lord my God. Oh, how I wish for a
   Master, a Dictator, a Director! Oh, that my Lord would take the reins
   and bring my every thought into captivity to His own will, henceforth
   and forever!

   What a heavenly content I feel in yielding myself to the sacred
   Trinity! The God who made us may most fitly be called upon to govern
   us. When we recognize the glory of the whole Godhead we perceive the
   perfect suitability of such direction as will come from the Three in
   One God. Albeit that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in this verse by
   name, He is mentioned by His operations, for it is the Spirit of God
   that deals with the hearts of Believers. I take rare pleasure in our
   text, because we have the blessed Trinity in unity in these few words,
   "The Lord"--that is, the Holy Spirit who dwells within
   Believers--"direct your hearts into the love of God (by whom I
   understand the Father) and into the patient waiting for Christ."

   May the Trinity in Unity work with us and fulfill in each of us this
   prayer of the Apostle that our hearts may be directed into the love of
   God and into the patient waiting for Christ! Paul would have his
   Thessalonian friends advance in a straight line. Our heart is to be as
   a vessel that is not left to beat about, nor to come into harbor by a
   circuitous route, but is steered directly into the fair haven. May the
   Spirit of God take us and give us a straight tendency towards the
   holiest things and then at once bring us into the love of God and into
   the patient waiting for Christ.

   But here we must do a little translating or interpreting. Observe in
   the Revised Version a difference of translation. There we read "into
   the patience of Christ." This is a great improvement upon our former
   translation. But, although it is accurate, it is not complete--it does
   not take up the whole of the meaning. In our Authorized Version we have
   "the patient waiting for Christ," but in its margin we find "into the
   patience of Christ"--showing that the earlier translators felt that
   "the patience of Christ" would be a good translation. And yet, after
   considering it in all its bearings, they thought that Paul did not
   quite mean the patience of Christ, but that he meant a patience which
   we exert towards Christ.

   Is there not weight in this? Does not the context support it? As the
   love into which we are to be directed is love to God, so the patience
   into which we are to be directed must be a patience towards Christ. Our
   grand old translators expressed this Truth by language which may be
   inaccurate as mere wordings, but it is deeply correct as to its sense.
   Surely Paul did mean "the patience towards Christ which manifests
   itself in the patient waiting for Christ." If you consider all this you
   will see that we have no infant-class lesson in the text before us!
   Here are nuts for young men who have cut their wisdom-teeth. May the
   good Spirit help us to reach the kernels.

   Having turned the text over many times, I thought that we might be able
   to gather up a considerable amount of its real meaning if we thought of
   it thus--first, here are two precious things for us to enter into--the
   love of God and the patience of Christ. And, secondly, here are two
   eminent virtues to be acquired by us--the love of God, that is, love to
   God and the patience of Christ--the patient waiting for Christ.

   I. To begin, then, here are TWO PRECIOUS THINGS FOR US TO ENTER INTO.
   We cannot enter into them except as the Lord directs our hearts. There
   is a straight entrance into them but we do not readily find it. It
   needs the Holy Spirit to direct our feet along the narrow way which
   leads to this great blessedness.

   The first precious thing which we are to enter is the love of God.
   Beloved, we know the love of God in various ways. Many know it by
   having heard of it, even as a blind man may thus know the charms of an
   Alpine landscape. Poor knowledge this! Others of us have tasted of the
   love of God, have talked about the love of God, have prayed and have
   sung concerning the love of God. All very well, but Paul meant a dove
   of a brighter feather. To be directed into the love of God is quite
   another thing from all that we can be told of it. A fair garden is
   before us. We look over the wall and are even allowed to stand at the
   door while one hands out to us baskets of golden apples. This is very
   delightful. Who would not be glad to come so near as this to the garden
   of heavenly delights?

   Yet it is something more to be shown the door, to have the latch
   lifted, to see the gateway opened and to be gently directed into the
   Paradise of God. This is what is wanted--that we may be directed into
   the love of God. Oh, that we may feel something of it while we meditate
   upon it! Beloved, we come, when we are taught of the Spirit of God, to
   enter into the love of God by seeing its central importance. We see
   that the love of God is the source and center, fountain and foundation
   of all our salvation, and of all else that we receive from God.

   At first we are much taken up with pardoning Grace. We are largely
   engrossed with those royal robes of righteousness with which our
   nakedness is covered. We are delighted with the viands of the marriage
   banquet--we eat the fat and we drink the sweet. What else would you
   expect from starving souls admitted to the abundant supplies of
   heavenly Grace? Afterwards we begin more distinctly to think of the
   love that spread the feast, the love that provided the raiment, the
   love that invited us to the banquet and gently led us to take our place
   in it. This does not always come at first.

   But I pray that none of us may be long receiving the gifts of love
   without kissing the hand of love. That none of us may be content to
   have had much forgiven without coming and washing the feet of our
   forgiving Lord with our tears and declaring our deep and true love to
   Him. O saved soul, may the Lord fill you with personal love to that
   personal Savior through whom all blessings come to you! Remember, you
   have all good things because God loves you! Remember that every cake of
   the heavenly manna, every cup of the living water comes to you because
   of His great love wherewith He loved you. This will put a sweetness
   into what you receive even greater than that which is there
   intrinsically, sweet though God's mercies are in their own nature and
   quality. Oh, to enter into God's love by perceiving it to be the
   wellhead of every stream of mercy by which we are refreshed!

   If we further enter into the love of God, we see its immeasurable
   greatness. There is a little word which you have often heard, which I
   beg to bring before you again--that little word "so." "God so loved the
   world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in
   Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Come, you surveyors,
   bring your chains and try to make a survey of this word "so." No, that
   is not enough. Come here, you that make our national surveys and lay
   down charts for all nations. Come, you who map the sea and land and
   make a chart of this word "so."

   No, I must go further. Come here, you astronomers, that with your optic
   glasses spy out spaces before which imagination staggers, come here and
   encounter calculations worthy of all your powers! When you have
   measured between the horns of space, here is a task that will defy
   you--"God so loved the world." If you enter into that you will know
   that all this love is to you--that while Jehovah loves the world, yet
   He loves you as much as if there were nobody else in all the world to
   love. God can pour the infinite love of His heart upon one object and
   yet, for all that, can love ten thousand times ten thousand of His
   creatures just as much. O Heir of God, your store of love is not
   diminished because the innumerable company of your Brethren share it
   with you! Your Father loves each child as if He had no other. Peer into
   this abyss of love. Plunge into this sea. Dive into this depth
   unsearchable. Oh, that God might direct you into the immeasurable
   greatness of this love!

   Neither be you afraid to enter into this love by remembering its
   antiquity. Some fight the great Truth of the eternal electing love of
   God. But to me it is as wafers made with honey. What music lies in that
   sentence--"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love"! When this
   great world, the sun, and moon and stars, had not yet flashed the
   morning of their little day, the Lord Jehovah loved His people with an
   everlasting love. In the Divine purposes, which were not of yesterday,
   nor even of that date of which Scripture speaks as "In the
   beginning"--when the Lord created the heavens and the earth--God loved
   His own people.

   He had chosen you, thought of you, provided for you and made ten
   thousand forecasts of loving kindness towards you before the earth was.
   Beloved Believer, you were engraved on the hands of Christ even then.
   Oh that the Lord would direct you into the antiquity of His love. It
   shall make you greatly prize that love to think that it had no
   beginning and shall never, never have an end.

   Again--I pray that we may be directed into the love of God as to its
   infallible constancy. The unchangeable Jehovah never ceases to love His
   people. It would be a wretched business to be directed into the love of
   God only to find it a thing of the past. O believing Soul, you have not
   to deal with things which once were gems of the mine but now are dreams
   of the night. Oh, no! The love of God abides forever the same. When you
   are in darkness the Lord still sees you with an eye of love--

   "He saw you ruined in the Fall, Yet loved you notwithstanding all."

   When you were without strength, "in due time Christ died for the
   ungodly." Since you have known Him He has never varied in His love.
   When you have grown cold He has loved you. When you have grown cruel He
   has loved you. You have grievously provoked Him till He has taken down
   His rod and made you smart. But He has loved you in the smiting. With
   God there is as much love in chastening as in caressing. He never
   abates in fervor towards His ancient

   friends. Has He not said, "I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore you
   sons of Jacob are not consumed"? I pray the Lord to direct us into the
   immutability of His Divine love, for this is a great medicine in the
   day of soul-trouble.

   When conscious of imperfection, when darkened by the shadow of a great
   fault, when trembling under apprehension of wrath it draws you back
   again if you can feel, "Still my Father is my Father, still will He
   receive His wandering child and press His prodigal to His bosom and
   rejoice over me and say, 'This My son was dead and is alive again.' " O
   Child of God, your questionings of Divine love are grievous to your
   God. But if you can learn this Truth and be led into it--that He loves
   you evermore the same--it will help you right graciously.

   This love we ought to know and if the Lord will lead us into it we
   shall know that it is omnipresent. I mean by this, that whatever
   condition we may be in, the Lord is still active in love towards us.
   You are going across the sea to a far country but your Father's love
   will be as near you on the blue wave as on the greensward of Old
   England. You have come out tonight alone--time was when you did come to
   the House of God in company. But it may be that graves and desertions
   furnish sad reasons for your present solitude. Still, you are not
   alone, your Father's love is with you.

   You are tonight, perhaps, in a very strange part of your spiritual
   experience--you have not gone this way before. But the road is not new
   to eternal love. Go where you may, the air is still about you--go where
   you may, your Father's love is all around you. Higher than your
   soaring, deeper than your sinking is all-surrounding love. You are
   going home, perhaps, to a bed from which you shall not rise for months.
   You have no apprehension just now of what lies before you in the
   immediate future. It is as well you should not know. I should be slow
   to lift the curtain of merciful concealment even if it were in my power
   to do so. There is no necessity to know details when one or two grand
   facts provide for all contingencies.

   Trouble not yourself about the morrow. If you are to be sick or if you
   are to die, your Father's love will be with you still. Therefore go on
   and fear not. He cannot, will not, turn away from you. An omnipresent
   God means omnipresent love and omnipotence goes hand-in-hand with
   omnipresence. The Lord will show Himself strong on the behalf of them
   that trust Him. His love, which never fails, is attended by a power
   that faints not, nor is weary. Oh, may the Lord lead you into such love
   as this! May the Holy Spirit lead you into the innermost secret of this
   joy of joys, this bliss unspeakable.

   And I would also wish that you may be directed into the love of God as
   to its entire agreement with His justice, His holiness, His spotless
   purity. I firmly believe that God loves sinners but I am equally sure
   that He hates sin. I do believe that He delights in mercy but I am
   equally clear that He never dishonors His justice, nor frustrates the
   sternest threat of His Law. It is our joy that a holy God loves us and
   does not find it needful to stain His holiness to save the unclean. We
   are loved by one so just, so righteous that He could not pardon us
   without atonement. Even today He will never spare our sins but He will
   drive the love of them out of us by chastisement, even as He has washed
   the guilt of them away by the precious blood of His dear Son.

   Beloved, we have a holy God who is determined to make us holy. He would
   have us love our wives. And he sets before us a holy model--"Even as
   Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it; that He might
   sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word." All
   true love goes towards purification. And the true love of God goes that
   way with an invincible current that can never be turned aside. O
   Believer, your God loves you so well that He will not let a darling sin
   stay in your heart. He loves you so strongly that He will not spare any
   iniquity in you. "You only have I known of all the families of the
   earth. Therefore I will punish you for your iniquities." Out of His
   pure love He will chasten and refine till He has made us pure and able
   to abide in fellowship with His perfect nature.

   1 have thus spoken a little upon a vast theme. I fear it will seem to
   you mere surface-work. And yet I pray that it may lead you to deep
   knowledge of Divine things so that you may apprehend God's love as
   yours. And that you may feel the power, the unction, the savor which
   come out of His love. I pray this knowledge, by His Grace, will make
   your heart as sweet and aromatic as a chamber in which a box of
   precious ointment has been broken. Oh, that you might be led into the
   innermost secret of the Lord's love till it shall saturate you,
   influence you, take possession of you, carry you away! The Lord direct
   you into the love of God.

   The second part of the prayer upon which we shall have to dwell is,
   "The Lord direct your hearts into the patience of Christ." Now,
   Beloved, I have another great sea before me, and who am I that I should
   act as your convoy over this main

   ocean? Here I am lost. I cannot take my bearings. I am a lone speck
   upon the infinite. I will imitate the wise Apostle and pray, "The Lord
   direct your hearts into the patience of Christ."

   What a patience that was which Jesus exhibited for us in our
   redemption! To come from Heaven to earth, to dwell in poverty and
   neglect and find no room even in the inn! Admire the patience of
   Bethlehem. To hold His tongue for thirty years--who shall estimate the
   wonderful patience of Nazareth and the carpenter's shop! When He spoke,
   to be despised and rejected of men. What patience for Him whom Cherubim
   obey! Oh, the patience of the Christ to be tempted of the devil! One
   can hardly tell what patience Christ must have had to let the devil
   come within ten thousand miles of him, for He was able to keep him far
   down in the abyss below His feet.

   There is not much in a patience which cannot help itself. But you well
   know that all the while Christ could have conquered all foes, chased
   away all suffering and kept off all temptation. But for our sakes, as
   Captain of our salvation, that He might be made perfect through
   suffering, His patience had its perfect work, right on to Gethsemane.
   Do you need that I tell you this? Golgotha, with all its woes, its
   "lama Sabacthani," its abysmal griefs--do I need remind you of the
   patience of Christ for us when the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us
   all? Patient as a lamb, He opened not His mouth but stood in
   omnipotence of patience, all-sufficient to endure. You have heard of
   the patience of Job but you have need to enter into the patience of
   Jesus.

   Oh, the patience within Christ Himself! God never seems so like a God
   as when He divinely rules Himself. I can understand His shaking earth
   and Heaven with His Word. But that He should possess His own soul in
   patience is far more incomprehensible. Marvel that omnipotent love
   should restrain omnipotence itself. In the life and death of our Lord
   Jesus we see almighty patience. He was very sensitive--very sensitive
   of sin, very sensitive of unkindness, and yet, with all that
   sensitiveness He showed no petulance but bore Himself in all the calm
   grandeur of Godhead. He was not quick to resent an ill but He was
   patient to the uttermost. As I have said before, there went with His
   sensitiveness the power at any time to avenge Himself and deliver
   Himself but He would not use it.

   Legions of angels would have been glad to come to His rescue but He
   bowed alone in the garden and gave Himself up to the betrayer without a
   word. And all the while He was most tender and graciously considerate
   of everybody but Himself. He spoke burning words sometimes--His mouth
   could be like the red lips of a volcano as He poured out the burning
   lava of denunciation upon "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." But the
   resentment was never aroused by any injury done to Himself. When He
   looked that way it was always gentleness--He cried, "Father, forgive
   them. For they know not what they do." Oh, the wondrous patience of
   Heaven's own Christ!

   Enter into His patience with us as well as for us. How He put up with
   each one of us when we would not come to Him! How He wept over us when
   we neglected Him! How He drew us with constancy of love when we tugged
   against the cords! And when we came to Him and since we have been with
   Him, what patience He has had with our ill manners! If I had been
   Christ, I would have discharged such a servant as I have been long ago.
   Often have I gone to His feet and cried, "Dismiss me not Your service,
   Lord." I know how justly He might have stripped His livery from my
   back. But He has not done so. Have you not often wondered that He
   should still love you? He is affianced to you and He hates divorce.

   But is it not marvelous that He keeps His betrothal with you and will
   do so, though you have often defiled yourself and forgotten Him?
   Blessed fact, the ring is on His finger rather than on yours and the
   marriage is as sure as His love. He will present you unto Himself,
   "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," one of these days. But
   oh, His patience with each one of us! How He has put up with our
   unbelief, our mistrust, our hard hearts, our indifference, our strange
   ways! Never lover so kind as He! On our part never return so unworthy.
   Blessed be the patience of our Best Beloved!

   Now, Beloved, what is wanted is that we be directed into this patience
   of Christ. The choicest saints in different ages of the world have
   studied most the passion of our Lord. And although nowadays we hear
   from the wise men that it is sensuous to talk about the Cross and the
   five wounds and so forth, for my part I feel that no contemplation ever
   does me so much real benefit as that which brings me very near my
   bleeding Lord. The Cross for me! The Cross for me! Here is doctrine
   humbling, softening, melting, elevating, sanctifying. Here is Truth
   that is of Heaven and yet comes down to earth--love that lifts me away
   from earth even to the seventh Heaven.

   Have you ever read the words of holy Bernard, when his soul was all on
   fire with love of that dear name of which he so sweetly sang--

   "Jesus the very thought of You

   With sweetness fills my breast"? Why, Bernard is poet, philosopher and
   Divine, and yet a child in love. Have you studied Rutherford's letters
   and the wondrous things which he says about his own dear Lord? For an
   hour at Glory's gate commend me to heavenly Master Rutherford. Have you
   ever held fellowship with George Herbert, that saintly songster? Hear
   him as he cries--

   "How sweetly does my Master sound! My Master!

   As ambergris leaves a rich scent

   Unto the taster,

   So do these words a sweet content,

   An oriental fragrance, my Master!" O Friends, I can wish you no greater
   blessing than to be directed into these two things--the love of God and
   the patience of your Savior. Enter both at the same time. You cannot
   divide them--why should you? The love of God shines best in the
   patience of the Savior. And what is the patience of Christ but the love
   of the Father? "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder."
   May the Lord lead us into both of them at this hour and continue upon
   us the heavenly process all the rest of our lives, in all experiences
   of sorrow and of rapture and in all moods and growths of our spirit!

   II. But now I must ask your attention for the few minutes that remain
   to me to what is, perhaps, still the real gist of the text--HERE ARE
   TWO EMINENT VIRTUES TO BE ACQUIRED.

   "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God." Beloved, let the
   love of God to you flow into your hearts and abide there till it
   settles down and bears on its surface the cream of love to God, yielded
   by your own heart. The only way to love God is to let God's love to you
   dwell in your soul till it transforms your soul into itself. Love to
   God grows out of the love of God.

   Well, now, concerning love to God--if you receive it fully into your
   souls it will nourish the contemplative life. You will want to be
   alone. You will prefer to sit silently at Jesus' feet while others
   wrangle over the little politics of the house. You will give up being
   busy-bodies, talking in six peoples' houses in an hour--quietude will
   charm you. You will love no company so much as the society of Him who
   is the Best and the Most. To be with God in quiet will be your highest
   enjoyment. You will not say, as some do, "I must have recreation."

   Contemplation of God is recreation to the child of God. It creates the
   soul anew. And is not this the truest recreation? Whenever God's
   creation in us seems to have grown a little dim, love to God will
   gender and nourish the contemplative life and so make us come forth as
   new creatures, fresh from our Maker's holy hand.

   It will also animate the active life if you love God. You will feel
   that you must yield fruit unto your Lord. Your soul, when full of the
   love of God, will cry, "I must go after the wanderer. I must care for
   the poor. I must teach the ignorant." You cannot love God and be lazy.
   Love to God will stir you up. Contemplation teaches you to sit still
   and this is no trifling lesson. But after sitting still, you rise with
   greater energy to go about the one thing needful, namely, the service
   of your Lord's love.

   Love to God will also arouse enthusiasm. We want more persons in the
   Church who will be a little daring--rash men and women who will do
   things which nobody else would think of doing, such as will make their
   prudent friends hold up their hands and say, "How could you? If you had
   consulted with me, I could have given you many a wise hint as to how it
   ought to have been done." This has been my lot of late. I have been
   surfeited with notions as to how I should have acted. Yes, my Friend, I
   know you of old. You have wisdom at your fingers' ends. But let me
   quietly whisper that you would have done nothing at all. You would have
   been too anxious to save yourself from trouble.

   It is an easy thing to tell a man how he ought to have done it. And yet
   that man, perhaps, may be suffering intensely for having done bravely a
   well-meant deed. Instead of your showing sympathy with him, you treat
   him to the remark, "It might have been done better in another way."
   There was never a child that was near drowning but what the man that
   plunged in and drew him out of the river ought to have done it in a
   better way. He wetted himself too much. He waited too long. Or he
   handled the drowning one too roughly. Alas, for silly criticisms of
   gracious deeds!

   If you come to love God with all consuming zeal you will not be
   hindered by criticisms. You will testify for Jesus freely, because you
   cannot help yourself. It has to be done--somebody has to sacrifice
   himself to do it and you say to

   yourself, "Here am I, Lord, send me. At every risk or hazard, send me.
   For Your dear love's sake I count it joy to suffer shame or loss. I
   count it life to suffer death that I may honor You." Love to God will
   arouse enthusiasm.

   It will also stimulate holy desire. They that love God can never have
   enough of Him--certainly never too much. Sometimes they are found
   pining after Him. When we love the Lord, we chide the laggard hours
   which keep us from His coming. Time has not wings enough--

   "My heart is with Him on His Throne,

   And ill can brook delay,

   Each moment listening for the voice,

   'Rise up and come away.'"

   A heavenly love-sickness sometimes makes God's handmaids swoon. For
   they long to see the Beloved face to face and to be like Him and to be
   with Him where He is. The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God
   in some such fashion as this. For it will make you sit loose by all
   things here below.

   Do you ever feel that your wings are growing? Do you ever sigh, "Oh,
   that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at
   rest"? And this love, better still, will transform the character. It is
   wonderful what a difference love makes in the person that is possessed
   with it. A poor timid hen that will fly away from every passerby loves
   its offspring and when it has its chicks about it, it will fight like a
   very lion for its young. And when the love of Christ comes into a timid
   Believer, how it changes him! It takes the love of sin away and
   implants a sublime nature.

   Only God knows what a mortal man can yet become. Of women sunken in
   sin, what saints the Lord has made when He has filled them with His
   love! When the sun shines on a bit of glass bottle far away it flashes
   like a diamond. A little fleecy vapor in the sky rivals an angel's wing
   when the sun pours itself upon it. Our Lord can put so much of Himself,
   by means of His love, into the hearts of His people that they may be
   mistaken for Himself. John made a blunder in Heaven and fell at the
   feet of one of his Brethren, the Prophets--for he had come to be so
   much like His Lord that John could hardly tell the one from the other.
   Had he forgotten that word, "We shall be like He. For we shall see Him
   as He is"? It does not yet appear what we shall be but love is the
   transfiguring power in the hand of the Holy Spirit. If the heart is
   directed into the love of Christ, it is on the highway to holiness.

   Lastly--I am sorry that time will fly so fast just now--we want our
   hearts to be directed into patience towards Christ. What a subject is
   this! Beloved, if our heart is directed into patience towards Christ we
   shall suffer in patience for our Lord's sake and we shall not complain.
   Those about us will say, "It is wonderful how resigned he seems." Or,
   "How gladly she bears grief for love of Christ!" And if it is the
   suffering of reproach and scorn for Jesus' sake, if we are directed
   into the patience of Christ, it will not seem to be any trouble at all.
   We shall bear it calmly and in our hearts we shall laugh at those who
   laugh at us for Jesus' sake.

   Yet it is not all patience of suffering that we want. We want the
   patience offorbearing. We must learn not to answer those who blaspheme.
   "Bear and forbear and be silent." Chew the cud in peace. Put up with
   much. When reviled, revile not again. The Lord direct your hearts into
   the patience of Christ.

   We shall also want the patience of working--working on when nothing
   comes of it--pleading on with souls that are not converted. Preaching
   when preaching seems to have no effect--teaching when the children do
   not care to learn. We need the patience of Christ who set His face like
   a flint and would accomplish His work, cost what it may. He never
   turned aside from it for a moment. The Lord direct our hearts into
   patient working.

   Then there is the patience of watching in prayer--not giving it up
   because you have not received an answer. What? Did a friend say she had
   prayed for seventeen years for a certain mercy and now meant to ask it
   no more? Sister, make it eighteen years and when you have got to the
   end of eighteen make it nineteen. May the Lord direct our hearts into
   the patience of Christ in prayer! We long kept Him waiting--we need not
   complain if He makes us tarry at His leisure. Still believe. Still
   hope. Still wrestle, until the break of day.

   Pray for the patience of waiting His will, saying, "Let Him do what
   seems Him good." Though it be for months, for years, wait on. Christ is
   glorified by our patience. Depend on it, the best way in which certain
   of us can extol Him is by letting Him have His way with us. Even though
   He plunge me into seven boiling caldrons one after the other, I will
   say--Let Him do what He wills with His own and I am His own. I am sure
   that He does not make the furnace one degree too hot. If He means to
   give His servant ten troubles, let His heavy hand fall even to the
   tenth, if so He pleases.

   We want to be directed into patience towards Christ and especially in
   patience in waiting for His coming. That, no doubt, is very justly
   inferred and so it is put in our translation very prominently--"Patient
   waiting for Christ." He will come, Brothers. He will come, Sisters. It
   is true the interpreters of the Book of Revelation told us that He was
   to come three hundred years ago and there are thousands upon thousands
   of books in the British Museum which were very dogmatic upon this point
   and yet they have all been disproved by the lapse of time.

   Men were as sure as sure could be that Christ would come just then. And
   He did not, for He is bound by His Word-- not by their interpretation
   of it. He will come at the appointed hour. To the jots and tittles,
   God's Word will stand. He will come to the tick of the clock. We know
   not when. We need not ask. But let us wait.

   Just now some of you may be, as I am, troubled because the Lord does
   not yet appear to vindicate His cause. And there is noise and triumph
   among the priests of Baal. The Lord direct our hearts into the patience
   of Christ. It is all right. Clouds gather. The darkness becomes more
   dense. The thunder rolls, friends flee in confusion. What next? Well,
   perhaps before we have hardly time for dread, silver drops of gracious
   rain may fall and the sun may break through the clouds and we may say
   to ourselves, "Who would have thought it?"--

   "You fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread
   Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head."

   May the Lord direct each one of us into the patient waiting for Christ!
   I am sorry, very sorry, that there are persons here to whom all this
   must seem a strange lot of talk. They know nothing about it. Dear
   Souls, you cannot at present know anything about it. You must first be
   born again. A total change of heart must come over you before you can
   enter into the love of God or the patience of Christ. May that change
   take place tonight, before you go to sleep!

   If the Lord shall lead you to seek His face, this is the way to seek
   it--trust His dear Son. Lifted on the Cross is Jesus Christ, the great
   Propitiation for sin. Look to Him and looking alone to Him, you shall
   be saved. He will give you the new heart and the right spirit with
   which you shall be enabled to enter into the love of God and the
   patience of Christ. The Lord direct you at this very hour, for Jesus'
   sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            Let Him Deliver Him Now

   A Sermon

   (No. 2026)

   Intended for Reading on Lord's-day, June 17, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [6]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now; if he will have him: for
   he said, I am the Son of God."'Matthew 27:43.

   THESE WORDS ARE a fulfilment of the prophecy contained in the
   twenty-second Psalm. Read from the seventh verse'"All they that see me
   laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
   He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him,
   seeing he delighted in him." Thus to the letter doth our Lord answer to
   the ancient prophecy.

   It is very painful to the heart to picture our blessed Master in his
   death-agonies, surrounded by a ribald multitude, who watched him and
   mocked him, made sport of his prayer and insulted his faith. Nothing
   was sacred to them: they invaded the Holy of holies of his confidence
   in God, and taunted him concerning that faith in Jehovah which they
   were compelled to admit. See, dear friends, what an evil thing is sin,
   since the Sin-bearer suffers so bitterly to make atonement for it! See,
   also, the shame of sin, since even the Prince of Glory, when bearing
   the consequences of it, is covered with contempt! Behold, also, how he
   loved us! For our sake he "endured the cross, despising the shame." He
   loved us so much that even scorn of the most cruel sort he deigned to
   bear, that he might take away our shame and enable us to look up unto
   God.

   Beloved, the treatment of our Lord Jesus Christ by men is the clearest
   proof of total depravity which can possibly be required or discovered.
   Those must be stony hearts indeed which can laugh at a dying Saviour,
   and mock even at his faith in God! Compassion would seem to have
   deserted humanity, while malice sat supreme on the throne. Painful as
   the picture is, it will do you good to paint it. You will need neither
   canvas, nor brush, nor palette, nor colours. Let your thoughts draw the
   outline, and your love fill in the detail; I shall not complain if
   imagination heightens the colouring. The Son of God, whom angels adore
   with veiled faces, is pointed at with scornful fingers by men who
   thrust out the tongue and mockingly exclaim, "He trusted on the Lord
   that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in
   him."

   While thus we see our Lord in his sorrow and his shame as our
   substitute, we must not forget that he also is there as our
   representative. That which appears in many a psalm to relate to David
   is found in the Gospels to refer to Jesus, our Lord. Often and often
   the student of the Psalm will say to himself, "Of whom speaketh the
   prophet this?" He will have to disentangle the threads sometimes, and
   mark off that which belongs to David and that which relates to the Son
   of God; and frequently he will not be able to disentangle the threads
   at all, because they are one, and may relate both to David, and to
   David's Lord. This is meant to show us that the life of Christ is an
   epitome of the life of his people. He not only suffers for us as our
   substitute, but he suffers before us as our pattern. In him we see what
   we have in our measure to endure. "As he is, so are we also in this
   world." We also must be crucified to the world, and we may look for
   somewhat of those tests of faith and taunts of derision which go with
   such a crucifixion. "Marvel not if the world hate you." You, too, must
   suffer without the gate. Not for the world's redemption, but for the
   accomplishment of divine purposes in you, and through you to the sons
   of men, you must be made to know the cross and its shame. Christ is the
   mirror of the church. What the head endured every member of the body
   will also have to endure in its measure. Let us read the text in this
   light, and come to it saying to ourselves, "Here we see what Jesus
   suffered in our stead, and we learn hereby to love him with all our
   souls. Here, too, we see, as in a prophecy, how great things we are to
   suffer for his sake at the hands of men." May the Holy Spirit help us
   in our meditation, so that at the close of it we may more ardently love
   our Lord, who suffered for us, and may the more carefully arm ourselves
   with the same mind which enabled him to endure such contradiction of
   sinners against himself.

   Coming at once to the text, first, observe the acknowledgment with
   which the text begins: "He trusted in God." The enemies of Christ
   admitted his faith in God. Secondly, consider the test which is the
   essence of the taunt: "Let him deliver him, if he will have him." When
   we have taken those two things into our minds, then let us for a while
   consider the answer to that test and taunt: God does assuredly deliver
   his people: those who trust in him have no reason to be ashamed of
   their faith.

   I. First, then, my beloved brethren, you who know the Lord by faith and
   live by trusting in him, let me invite you to OBSERVE THE
   ACKNOWLEDGMENT which these mockers made of our Lord's faith: "He
   trusted in God." Yet the Saviour did not wear any peculiar garb or
   token by which he let men know that he trusted in God. He was not a
   recluse, neither did he join some little knot of separatists, who
   boasted their peculiar trust in Jehovah. Although our Saviour was
   separate from sinners, yet he was eminently a man among men, and he
   went in and out among the multitude as one of themselves. His one
   peculiarity was that "he trusted in God." He was so perfectly a man
   that, although he was undoubtedly a Jew, there were no Jewish
   peculiarities about him. Any nation might claim him; but no nation
   could monopolize him. The characteristics of our humanity are so
   palpably about him that he belongs to all mankind. I admire the Welch
   sister who was of opinion that the Lord Jesus must be Welch. When they
   asked her how she proved it, she said that he always spoke to her heart
   in Welch. Doubtless it was so, and I can, with equal warmth, declare
   that he always speaks to me in English. Brethren from Germany, France,
   Sweden, Italy'you all claim that he speaks to you in your own tongue.
   This was the one thing which distinguished him among men'"he trusted in
   God," and he lived such a life as naturally grows out of faith in the
   Eternal Lord. This peculiarity had been visible even to that ungodly
   multitude who least of all cared to perceive a spiritual point of
   character. Was ever any other upon a cross thus saluted by the mob who
   watched his execution? Had these scorners ever mocked anyone before for
   such a matter as this? I trow not. Yet faith had been so manifest in
   our Lord's daily life that the crowd cried out aloud, "He trusted in
   God."

   How did they know? I suppose they could not help seeing that he made
   much of God in his teaching, in his life, and in his miracles. Whenever
   Jesus spoke it was always godly talk; and if it was not always
   distinctly about God, it was always about things that related to God,
   that came from God, that led to God, that magnified God. A man may be
   fairly judged by that which he makes most of. The ruling passion is a
   fair gauge of the heart. What a soul-ruler faith is! It sways the man
   as the rudder guides the ship. When a man once gets to live by faith in
   God, it tinctures his thoughts, it masters his purposes, it flavours
   his words, it puts a tone into his actions, and it comes out in
   everything by ways and means most natural and unconstrained, till men
   perceive that they have to do with a man who makes much of God. The
   unbelieving world says outright that there is no God, and the less
   impudent, who admit his existence, put him down at a very low figure,
   so low that it does not affect their calculations; but to the true
   Christian, God is not only much, but all. To our Lord Jesus, God was
   all in all; and when you come to estimate God as he did, then the most
   careless onlooker will soon begin to say of you, "He trusted in God."

   In addition to observing that Jesus made much of God, men came to note
   that he was a trusting man, and not self-confident. Certain persons are
   very proud because they are self-made men. I will do them the credit to
   admit that they heartily worship their maker. Self made them, and they
   worship self. We have among us individuals who are self-confident, and
   almost all-sufficient; they sneer at those who do not succeed, for they
   can succeed anywhere at anything. The world to them is a football which
   they can kick where they like. If they do not rise to the very highest
   eminence it is simply out of pity to the rest of us, who ought to have
   a chance. A vat of sufficiency ferments within their ribs! There was
   nothing of that sort of thing in our Lord. Those who watched him did
   not say that he had great self-reliance and a noble spirit of
   self-confidence. No, no! They said, "He trusted in God." Indeed it was
   so. The words that he spake he spake not of himself, and the great
   deeds that he did he never boasted of, but said "the Father that
   dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." He was a truster in God, not a
   boaster in self. Brethren and sisters, I desire that you and I may be
   just of that order. Selfconfidence is the death of confidence in God;
   reliance upon talent, tact, experience, and things of that kind, kills
   faith. Oh that we may know what faith means, and so look out of
   ourselves and quit the evil confidence which looks within!

   On the other hand, we may wisely remember that, while our Lord Jesus
   was not self-reliant, he trusted, and was by no means despondent: he
   was never discouraged. He neither questioned his commission, nor
   despaired of fulfilling it. He never said, "I must give it up: I can
   never succeed." No; "He trusted in God." And this is a grand point in
   the working of faith, that while it keeps us from self-conceit, it
   equally preserves us from enfeebling fear. When our blessed Lord set
   his face like a flint; when, being baffled, he returned to the
   conflict; when, being betrayed, he still persevered in his love, then
   men could not help seeing that he trusted in God. His faith was not
   mere repetition of a creed, or profession of belief, but it was
   childlike reliance upon the Most High. May ours be of the same order!

   It is evident that the Lord Jesus trusted in God openly since even
   yonder gibing crowd proclaimed it. Some good people try to exercise
   faith on the sly: they practise it in snug corners, and in lonely
   hours, but they are afraid to say much before others, for fear their
   faith should not see the promise fulfilled. They dare not say, with
   David, "My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear
   thereof, and be glad." This secrecy robs God of his honour. Brethren,
   we do not glorify our God as he ought to be glorified. Let us trust in
   him, and own it. Wherefore should we be ashamed? Let us throw down the
   gauge of battle to earth and hell. God, the true and faithful, deserves
   to be trusted without limit. Trust your all with him, and be not
   ashamed of having done so. Our Saviour was not ashamed of trusting in
   his God. On the cross he cried, "Thou didst make me hope when I was
   upon my mother's breast." Jesus lived by faith. We are sure that he
   did, for in the Epistle to the Hebrews he is quoted as saying, "I will
   put my trust in him." If so glorious a personage as the only begotten
   Son of God lived here by faith in God, how are you and I to live except
   by trust in God? If we live unto God, this is the absolute necessity of
   our spiritual life "the just shall live by faith." Shall we be ashamed
   of that which brings life to us? The cruel ones who saw Jesus die did
   not say, "He now and then trusted in God"; nor "he trusted in the Lord
   years ago"; but they admitted that faith in God was the constant tenor
   of his life: they could not deny it. Even though, with malicious
   cruelty, they turned it into a taunt, yet they did not cast a question
   upon the fact that "he trusted in God" Oh, I want you so to live that
   those who dislike you most may, nevertheless, know that you do trust in
   God! When you come to die, may your dear children say of you, "Our dear
   mother did trust in the Lord"! May that boy, who has gone furthest away
   from Christ, and grieved your heart the most, nevertheless say in his
   heart, "There may be hypocrites in the world, but my dear father does
   truly trust in God"! Oh, that our faith may be known unmistakably! We
   do not wish it to be advertised to our own honour. That be far from our
   minds. But yet we would have it known that others may be encouraged,
   and that God may be glorified. If nobody else trusts in God, let us do
   so; and thus may we uplift a testimony to the honour of his
   faithfulness. When we die, may this be our epitaph'"He trusted in God."

   David, in the twenty-second Psalm, represents the enemies as saying of
   our Lord'"He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him." This
   practical faith is sure to be known wherever it is in operation,
   because it is exceedingly rare. Multitudes of people have a kind of
   faith it God, but it does not come to the practical point of trusting
   that God will deliver them. I see upon the newspaper placards,
   "Startling New! People in the Planets!" Not a very practical discovery.
   For many a day there has been a tendency to refer God's promises and
   our faith to the planets, or somewhere beyond this present every-day
   life. We say to ourselves, "Oh yes, God delivers his people." We mean
   that he did so in the days of Moses, and possibly he may be doing so
   now in some obscure island of the sea. Ah me! The glory of faith lies
   it its being fit for every-day wear. Can it be said of you, "He trusted
   in God, that he would deliver him"? Have you faith of the kind which
   will make you lean upon the Lord in poverty, in sickness, in
   bereavement, in persecution, in slander, in contempt? Have you a trust
   in God to bear you up in holy living at all costs, and in active
   service even beyond your strength? Can you trust in God definitely
   about this and that? Can you trust about food, and raiment, and home?
   Can you trust God even about your shoes, that they shall be iron and
   brass, and about the hairs of your head that they are all numbered?
   What we need is less theory and more actual trust it God.

   The faith of the text was personal: "that he would deliver him."
   Blessed is that faith which can reach its arm of compassion around the
   world, but that faith must begin at home. Of what use were the longest
   arm if it were not fixed to the man himself at the shoulder? If you
   have no faith about yourself, what faith can you have about others? "He
   trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him." Come, beloved, have you
   such a faith in the living God? Do you trust in God through Christ
   Jesus that he will save you? Yes, you poor, unworthy one, the Lord will
   deliver you if you trust him. Yes, poor woman, or unknown man, the Lord
   can help you in your present trouble, and in every other, and he will
   do so if you trust him to that end. May the Holy Spirit lead you to
   first trust the Lord Jesus for the pardon of sin, and then to trust in
   God for all things.

   Let us pause a minute. Let a man trust in God; not in fiction but in
   fact, and he will find that he has solid rock under his feet. Let him
   trust about his own daily needs and trials, and rest assured that the
   Lord will actually appear for him, and he will not be disappointed.
   Such a trust in God is a very reasonable thing; its absence is most
   unreasonable. If there be a God, he knows all about my case. If he made
   my ear he can hear me; if he made my eye he can see me; and therefore
   he perceives my condition. If he be my Father, as he says he is, he
   will certainly care for me, and will help me in my hour of need if he
   can. We are sure that he can, for he is omnipotent. Is there anything
   unreasonable, then, in trusting in God that he will deliver us? I
   venture to say that if all the forces in the universe were put
   together, and all the kindly intents of all who are our friends were
   put together, and we were then to rely upon those united forces and
   intents, we should not have a thousandth part so much justification for
   our confidence as when we depend upon God, whose intents and forces are
   infinitely greater than those of all the world beside. "It is better to
   trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust
   in the Lord than to put confidence in princes." If you view things in
   the white light of pure reason, it is infinitely more reasonable to
   trust in the living God than in all his creatures put together.

   Certainly, dear friends, it is extremely comfortable to trust in God. I
   find it so, and therefore speak. To roll your burden upon the Lord,
   since he will sustain you, is a blessed way of being quit of care. We
   know him to be faithful, and as powerful as he is faithful; and our
   dependence upon him is the solid foundation of a profound peace.

   While it is comfortable, it is also uplifting. If you trust in men, the
   best of men, you are likely to be lowered by your trust. We are apt to
   cringe before these who patronize us. If your prosperity depends upon a
   person's smile, you are tempted to pay homage even when it is
   undeserved. The old saying mentions a certain person as "knowing on
   which side his bread is buttered." Thousands are practically degraded
   by their trusting in men. But when our reliance is upon the living God
   we are raised by it, and elevated both morally and spiritually. You may
   bow in deepest reverence before God, and yet there will be no fawning.
   You may lie in the dust before the Majesty of heaven, and yet not be
   dishonoured by your humility; in fact, it is our greatness to be
   nothing in the presence of the Most High.

   This confidence in God makes men strong. I should advise the enemy not
   to oppose the man who trusts in God. In the long run he will be beaten,
   as Haman found it with Mordecai. He had been warned of this by Zeresh,
   his wife, and his wise men, who said, " If Mordecai be of the seed of
   the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail
   against him, but shalt surely fall before him." Contend not with a man
   who has God at his back. Years ago the Mentonese desired to break away
   from the dominion of the Prince of Monaco. They therefore drove out his
   agent. The prince came with his army, not a very great one, it is true,
   but still formidable to the Mentonese. I know not what the high and
   mighty princeling was not going to do; but the news came that the King
   of Sardinia was coming up in the rear to help the Mentonese and
   therefore his lordship of Monaco very prudently retired to his own
   rock. When a believer stands out against evil he may be sure that the
   Lord of hosts will not be far away. The enemy shall hear the dash of
   his horse-hoof and the blast of his trumpet, and shall flee before him.
   Wherefore be of good courage, and compel the world to say of you, "He
   trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him."

   II. Secondly, I want you to follow me briefly in considering THE Test
   WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF THE TAUNT which was hurled by the mockers
   against our Lord'"Let him deliver him now, if he will have him."

   Such a test will come to all believers. It may come as a taunt from
   enemies; it will certainly come as a trial of your faith. The
   arch-enemy will assuredly hiss out, "Let him deliver him, seeing he
   delighted in him."

   This taunt has about it the appearance of being very logical, and
   indeed in a measure so it is. If God has promised to deliver us, and we
   have openly professed to believe the promise, it is only natural that
   others should say, "Let us see whether he does deliver him. This man
   believes that the Lord will help him; and he must help him, or else the
   man's faith is a delusion." This is the sort of test to which we
   ourselves would have put others before our conversion, and we cannot
   object to be proved in the same manner ourselves. Perhaps we incline to
   run away from the ordeal, but this very shrinking should be a solemn
   call to us to question the genuineness of that faith which we are
   afraid to test. "He trusted on the Lord," says the enemy, "that he
   would deliver him: let him deliver him"; and surely, however malicious
   the design, there is no escaping from the logic of the challenge.

   It is peculiarly painful to have this stern inference driven home to
   you in the hour of sorrow. Because one cannot deny the fairness of the
   appeal, it is all the more trying. In the time of depression of spirit
   it is hard to have one's faith questioned, or the ground on which it
   stands made a matter of dispute. Either to be mistaken in one's belief,
   or to have no real faith, or to find the ground of one's faith fail is
   an exceedingly grievous thing. Yet as our Lord was not spared this
   painful ordeal, we must not expect to be kept clear of it, and Satan
   knows well how to work these questions, till the poison of them sets
   the blood on fire. "He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him;
   let him deliver him;" he hurls this fiery dart into the soul, till the
   man is sorely wounded, and can scarcely hold his ground.

   The taunt is specially pointed and personal. It is put thus: "He
   trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him";
   "Do not come to us with your fiddle-faddle about God's helping all his
   chosen. Here is a man who is one of his people, will he help him? Do
   not talk to us big things about Jehovah at the Red Sea, or in the
   Desert of Sinai, or God helping his people in ages past. Here is a
   living man before us who trusted in God that he would deliver him: let
   him deliver him now." You know how Satan will pick out one of the most
   afflicted, and pointing his fingers at him will cry, "Let him deliver
   HIM." Brethren, the test is fair. God will be true to every believer.
   If any one child of God could be lost, it would be quite enough to
   enable the devil to spoil all the glory of God for ever. If one promise
   of God to one of his people should fail, that one failure would suffice
   to mar the veracity of the Lord to all eternity; they would publish it
   in the "Diabolical Gazette," and in every street of Tophet they would
   howl it out, "God has failed. God has broken his promise. God has
   ceased to be faithful to his people." It would then be a horrible
   reproach'"He trusted in God to deliver him, but he did not deliver
   him."

   Much emphasis lies in its being in the present tense: "He trusted in
   God that he would deliver him: let him deliver him now." I see Thee, O
   Lord Jesus, thou art now in the wilderness, where the fiend is saying,
   "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."
   No. Thou art nailed to the tree; thine enemies have hemmed thee in. The
   legionaries of Rome are at the foot of the cross, the scribes and
   Pharisees and raging Jews compass thee about. There is no escape from
   death for thee! Hence their cry'"Let him deliver him now." Ah, brothers
   and sisters! this is how Satan assails us, using our present and
   pressing tribulations as the barbs of his arrows. Yet here also there
   is reason and logic in the challenge.

   If God does not deliver his servants at one time as well as another he
   has not kept his promise. For a man of truth is always true, and a
   promise once given always stands. A promise cannot be broken now and
   then, and yet the honour of the person giving it be maintained by his
   keeping it at other times. The word of a true man stands always good:
   it is good now. This is logic, bitter logic, cold steel logic, logic
   which seems to cut right down your backbone and cleave your chine. "He
   trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him
   now." Yet this hard logic can be turned to comfort. I told you a story
   the other day of the brother in Guy's Hospital to whom the doctors said
   that he must undergo an operation which was extremely dangerous. They
   gave him a week to consider whether he would submit to it. He was
   troubled for his young wife and children, and for his work for the
   Lord. A friend left a bunch of flowers for him, with this verse as its
   motto, "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now." "Yes," he thought,
   "now". In prayer he cast himself upon the Lord, and felt in his heart,
   "Come on, doctors, I am ready for you." When the next morning came, he
   refused to take chloroform, for he desired to go to heaven in his
   senses. He bore the operation manfully, and he is yet alive. "He
   trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him" then and there, and the
   Lord did so. In this lies the brunt of the battle.

   A Christian man may be beaten in business, he may fail to meet all
   demands, and then Satan yells, "Let him deliver him now." The poor man
   has been out of work for two or three months, tramping the streets of
   London until he has worn out his boots; he has been brought to his last
   penny. I think I hear the laugh of the Prince of Darkness as he cries,
   "Let him deliver him now." Or else the believer is very ill in body,
   and low in spirit, and then Satan howls, "Let him deliver him now."
   Some of us have been in very trying positions. We were moved with
   indignation because of deadly error, and we spoke plainly, but men
   refused to hear. Those we relied upon deserted us; good men sought
   their own ease and would not march with us, and we had to bear
   testimony for despised truth alone, until we were ourselves despised.
   Then the adversary shouted, "Let him deliver him now." Be it so! We do
   not refuse the test. Our God whom we serve will deliver us. We will not
   bow down to modern thought nor worship the image which human wisdom has
   set up. Our God is God both of hills and of valleys. He will not fail
   his servants, albeit that for a while he forbears that he may try their
   faith. We dare accept the test, and say, "Let him deliver us now."

   Beloved friends, we need not be afraid of this taunt if it is brought
   by adversaries; for, after all, no test will come to us apart from any
   malice, for it is inevitable. All the faith you have will be tried. I
   can see you heaping it up. How rich you are! What a pile of faith!
   Friend, you are almost perfect! Open the furnace door and put the heap
   in. Do you shrink? See how it shrivels! Is there anything left? Bring
   hither a magnifying glass. Is this all that is left? Yes, this is all
   that remains of the heap. You say, "I trusted in God." Yes, but you had
   reason to cry, "Lord, help my unbelief." Brethren, we have not a tithe
   of the faith we think we have. But whether or not, all our faith must
   be tested. God builds no ships but what he sends to sea. In living, in
   losing, in working, in weeping, in suffering, or in striving, God will
   find a fitting crucible for every single grain of the precious faith
   which he has given us. Then he will come to us and say'You trusted in
   God that he would deliver you, and you shall be delivered now. How you
   will open your eyes as you see the Lord's hand of deliverance! What a
   man of wonders you will be when you tell in your riper years to the
   younger people how the Lord delivered you! Why, there are some
   Christians I know of who, like the ancient mariner, could detain even a
   wedding guest with their stories of God's wonders on the deep.

   Yes, the test will come again and again. May the gibes of adversaries
   only make us ready for the sterner ordeals of the judgment to come. O
   my dear friends, examine your religion. You have a great deal of it,
   some of you; but what of its quality? Can your religion stand the test
   of poverty, and scandal, and scorn? Can it stand the test of scientific
   sarcasm and learned contempt? Will your religion stand the test of long
   sickness of body and depression of spirit caused by weakness? What are
   you doing amid the common trials of life? What will you do in the
   swellings of Jordan? Examine well your faith, since all hangs there.
   Some of us who have lain for weeks together, peering through the thin
   veil which parts us from the unseen, have been made to feel that
   nothing will suffice us but a promise which will answer the taunt, "Let
   him deliver us now."

   III. I shall finish, in the third place, dear friends, by noticing The
   Answer to the test. God does deliver those who trust in him. God's
   interposition for the faithful is not a dream, but a substantial
   reality. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord
   delivereth him out of them all." All history proves the faithfulness of
   God. Those who trust God have been in all sorts of troubles; but they
   have always been delivered. They have been bereaved. What a horrible
   bereavement was that which fell to the lot of Aaron, when his two sons
   were struck dead for their profanity in the presence of God! "And Aaron
   held his peace"! What grace was there! Thus will the Lord sustain you
   also should he take away the desire of your eyes with a stroke. Grave
   after grave has the good man visited till it seemed that his whole race
   was buried, and yet his heart has not been broken; but he has bowed his
   soul before the will of the ever-blessed One. Thus has the Lord
   delivered his afflicted one by sustaining him. In other ways the bush
   has burned, and yet has not been consumed. Remember the multiplied and
   multiform trials of Job. Yet God sustained him to the end so that he
   did not charge God foolishly, but held fast his faith in the Most High.
   If ever you are called to the afflictions of Job you will also be
   called to the sustaining grace of Job. Some of God's servants have been
   defeated in their testimony. They have borne faithful witness for God,
   but they have been rejected of men. It has been their lot, like
   Cassandra, to prophesy the truth, but not to be believed. Such was
   Jeremiah, who was born to a heritage of scorn from those whose benefit
   he sought. Yet he was delivered. He shrank not from being faithful. His
   courage could not be silenced. By integrity he was delivered.

   Godly men have been despised and misrepresented, and yet have been
   delivered. Remember David and his envious brethren, David and the
   malignant Saul, David when his men spake of stoning him. Yet he took
   off the giant's head; yet he came to the throne; yet the Lord built him
   a house.

   Some of God's servants have been bitterly persecuted, but God has
   delivered them. Daniel came forth from the lions' den, and the three
   holy children from the midst of the burning fiery furnace. These are
   only one or two out of millions who trusted God and he delivered them.
   Out of all manner of ill the Lord delivered them. God brought this
   crowd of witnesses through all their trials unto his throne, where they
   rest with Jesus, and share the triumph of their Master at this very
   day. O my timid brother, nothing has happened to you but what is common
   to men. Your battle is not different from the warfare of the rest of
   the saints; and as God has delivered them he will deliver you also,
   seeing you put your trust in him.

   But God's ways of deliverance are his own. He does not deliver
   according to the translation put upon "deliverance" by the ribald
   throng. He does not deliver according to the interpretation put upon
   "deliverance" by our shrinking flesh and blood. He delivers, but it is
   in his own way. Let me remark that, if God delivers you and me in the
   same way as he delivered his own Son, we can have no cause of
   complaint. If the deliverance which he vouchsafed to us is of the same
   kind as that which he vouchsafed to the Only Begotten, we may well be
   content. Well, what kind of a deliverance was that? Did the Father tear
   up the cross from the earth? Did he proceed to draw out the nails from
   the sacred hands and feet of his dear Son? Did he set him down upon
   that "green hill far away, beyond the city wall," and place in his hand
   a sword of fire with which to smite his adversaries? Did he bid the
   earth open and swallow up all his foes? No; nothing of the kind.
   Jehovah did not interpose to spare his Son a single pang; but he let
   him die. He let him be taken as a dead man down from the cross and laid
   in a tomb. Jesus went through with his suffering to the bitter end. O
   brothers and sisters, this may be God's way of delivering us. We have
   trusted in God that he would deliver us; and his rendering of his
   promise is, that he will enable us to go through with it; we shall
   suffer to the last, and triumph in so doing.

   Yet God's way of delivering those who trust in him is always the best
   way. If the Father had taken his Son down from the cross, what would
   have been the result? Redemption unaccomplished, salvation work undone,
   and Jesus returning with his life-work unfinished. This would not have
   been deliverance, but defeat. It was much better for our Lord Jesus to
   die. Now he has paid the ransom for his elect, and having accomplished
   the great purpose of atonement, he has slept a while in the heart of
   the earth, and now has ascended to his throne in the endless glories of
   heaven. It was deliverance of the fullest kind; for from the pangs of
   his death has come the joy of life to his redeemed. It is not God's
   will that every mountain should be levelled, but that we should be the
   stronger for climbing the Hill Difficulty. God will deliver; he must
   deliver, but he will do it in our cases, as in the case of our Lord, in
   the best possible manner.

   Anyhow, he will deliver his chosen: the taunt of the adversary shall
   not cause our God to forget or forego his people. I know that the Lord
   will no more fail me than any other of his servants. He will not leave
   a faithful witness to his adversaries. "I know that my Avenger liveth,
   and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though
   after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
   whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not
   another; though my reins be consumed within me." Is this also your
   confidence? Then do not sit down in sorrow, and act as though you
   despaired. Quit yourselves like men. Be strong, fear not. Cast
   yourselves on the love that never changeth and never fainteth, and the
   Lord will answer all the revilings of Rabshakeh, and the blusterings of
   Sennacherib.

   There are times when we may use this text to our comfort. "Let him
   deliver him now," saith the text, "if he will have him." You, dear
   friends, who have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ before, how I
   wish you could try him now! You feel this morning full of sin, and full
   of need. Come, then, and trust the Saviour now. See whether he will not
   save you now. Is there one day in the year in which Jesus cannot save a
   sinner? Come and see whether the 17th of June is that day. Try whether
   he will not deliver you now from the guilt, the penalty, the power of
   sin. Why not come? You have never, perhaps, been in the Tabernacle
   before, and when coming here this morning you did not think of finding
   the Saviour. Oh, that the Saviour may find you! Jesus Christ is a
   Saviour every day, all the year round. Whoever cometh to him shall find
   eternal life now. "Oh," you say, "I am in such an unfit state; I am in
   all the deshabille of my carelessness and godlessness." Come along,
   man, come along, just as you are. Tarry not for improvement or
   arrangement, for both of these Jesus will give you; come and put your
   trust in the great Sacrifice for sin, and he will deliver you'deliver
   you now. Lord, save the sinner, now!

   Others of you are the children of God, but you are in peculiar trouble.
   Well, what are you going to do? You have always trusted in God before;
   are you going to doubt him now? "O my dear sir, you do not know my
   distress; I am the most afflicted person in the Tabernacle." Be it so;
   but you trusted in the Lord the past twenty years, and I do not believe
   that you have seen any just cause for denying him your confidence now.
   Did you say that you have known him from your youth up? What! you
   seventy years of age? Then you are too near home to begin distrusting
   your heavenly Father. That will never do. You have been to sea, and
   have weathered many a storm in mid-ocean, and are you now going to be
   drowned in a ditch? Think not so. The Lord will deliver you even now.
   Do not let us suppose that we have come where boundless love and
   infinite wisdom cannot reach us. Do not fancy that you have leaped upon
   a ledge of rock so high as to be out of reach of the everlasting arm.
   If you had done so I would still cry'Throw yourself down into the arms
   of God, and trust that he will not let you be destroyed.

   It may be that some of us are in trouble about the church and the
   faith. We have defended God's truth as well as we could, and spoken out
   against deadly error; but craft and numbers have been against us, and
   at present things seem to have gone wrong. The good are timid, and the
   evil are false. They say, "He trusted in God: let him deliver him now."
   Sirs, he will deliver us now. We will throw our soul once more into
   this battle, and see if the Lord does not vindicate his truth. If we
   have not spoken in God's name we are content to go back to the dust
   from whence we sprang; but if we have spoken God's truth we defy the
   whole confederacy to prevail against it.

   Peradventure, I speak to some missionary, who is mourning over a time
   of great trial in a mission which is dear to his heart. Ah, dear
   friend! Christ intended that the gospel should repeat his own
   experience, and then should triumph like himself. The gospel lives by
   being killed, and conquers by defect. Cast it where you will, it always
   falls upon its feet. You need not be afraid of it under any trial. Just
   now, the wisdom of man is its worst foe, but the Lord will deliver it
   now. The gospel lives and reigns. Tell it out among the heathen, that
   the Lord reigneth from the tree, and from that tree of the curse he
   issues his supreme commands. The self-same day in which Jesus died, he
   took with him into his kingdom and his inmost paradise a thief who had
   hung at his side. He liveth and reigneth for ever and ever, and calleth
   to himself whomsoever he hath chosen. Let us drown the taunts of the
   adversary with our shouts of Hallelujah! The Lord shall reign for ever
   and ever. Hallelujah. Amen!

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Psalm 119.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'196, 34, 37 (Part II).
     __________________________________________________________________

Moses--His Faith and Decision

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JUNE 24, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the
   son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with
   the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
   esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in
   Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward." Hebrews
   11:24-26

   WE generally picture Moses with beams of glory rising from his brow and
   the two tables of the Law in his hand. A stern man holding forth a
   sterner Law. But we must correct our idea. Moses is as much an example
   of faith as he is a representative of Law. What he did was as much due
   to his faith as were the acts of Paul or John. In describing Moses, the
   summary must begin, "By faith," as much as if we were describing
   Abraham. Continue to regard Moses as a representative of the Law but
   also view him as a man of wonderful and powerful faith.

   I need scarcely remind you that the faith of Moses was peculiarly
   active and operative. I might apply the words of James to him and say,
   "Likewise, was not Moses justified by works when he refused to be
   called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and chose to endure affliction
   with the people of God?" The faith of Moses was what ours must be, a
   faith which worked by love--even love to God and love to His people. It
   was no mere belief of a fact. But that fact had an overpowering
   influence upon his life. Moses believed, believed firmly and intensely,
   believed for himself, so that he took fast hold of that which is
   invisible. Moses showed the reality of his faith in his life--by what
   he refused to do--and by what he chose to do.

   Both the negative and the positive poles were made right by his faith.
   Everything about Moses proved the truth and the vigor of his faith in
   God. He was second to none among those "who believed God and it was
   accounted unto them for righteousness." He was king in Jeshurun and he
   was the greatest of Law-givers. But yet he happily takes his place
   among Believers who find their all in God. On the Arc de Triomphe which
   is raised in this eleventh chapter of Hebrews the name of Moses is
   written among the very greatest of those who lived by faith in God. I
   pray that while I am speaking this morning faith may be worked in some
   here present who have it not as yet.

   And I pray also that others who have true faith but have not yet avowed
   it may find themselves drawn to take a decided step and take their
   place on the side of God and His people. The question, "Who is on the
   Lord's side?" is the one I would press upon you this morning in the
   hope that, like Moses, many of you may be willing to suffer the
   reproach of Christ, which has not ceased.

   Our first remark shall be Moses had faith. The second shall be Moses
   exhibited clear decision as the result of his faith. And then, thirdly,
   we will say Moses should be imitated by us.

   I. First, then, MOSES HAD FAITH. I am not going through the whole life
   of Moses--that is much too large a theme for one discourse. But I shall
   very much keep to my text.

   It is very clear that Moses believed in God. He was learned in all the
   learning of the Egyptians. He had been brought up in the very best
   academies of the period. But he had not been seduced from faith in his
   God. There were many gods in Egypt. But Moses worshipped the one God,
   the God of his fathers. And though he may have known comparatively
   little of Him, he knew enough to have no other God but the God of
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I suppose that his mother and father could
   tell him but little of the family faith. But as they were God-fearing,
   believing people, they taught him what they knew.

   He believed in the living God, Creator of Heaven and earth. He
   worshipped one God, the Ruler of Providence--one God who is to be
   obeyed and adored. And to this God he adhered. I would that all of you
   believed in the living, personal, working, ever present God! In these
   days many do not believe in a personal God but in some sort of force or
   mystic en-ergy--they know not what. This is virtually to have no God at
   all. To Moses the existence and ruling power of God were the greatest
   facts of life. He believed in the one living and true God, bowed before
   Him, desired to be found serving Him and to have Him as his friend,
   even though this should put him in opposition with all the world.
   Although the pomp and power and glory and wisdom of the ruling nation
   were all on the side of idols, Moses worshipped the one God. For in His
   power and Godhead he solemnly believed.

   In the next place, Moses believed that the Israelites were the chosen
   people of God. This, of course, he had learned from his parents and he
   heartily believed it, though it certainly did not look to be true. If
   the seed of Jacob were the people of God, why were they left under
   oppression? Why were they enslaved by Pharaoh? Why were their children
   doomed to die? Could the elect of God be left in so evil a plight? If
   God was the God of this people, why were they made to endure
   affliction? Perhaps they told him that God had revealed unto their
   fathers that they were to go down into Egypt and to be strangers in a
   strange land.

   But whether or not, it was the solemn conviction of Moses that the
   living and true God had chosen the seed of Abraham to be His people and
   had taken them into covenant with Himself. They were the election of
   Divine Grace. For this cause Moses loved them and desired to be
   numbered with them. Certainly, they were not in themselves a very
   lovable people--there was much about them that must have saddened the
   heart of Moses. They were ignorant, while he was edu-cated--they had
   been debased by slavery, while he was of that brave disposition which
   is nourished in freedom. When he, himself, attempted to be their
   champion, they did not receive him. He found two of them striving
   together and when, with gentle words he would have made peace between
   them, one of them replied, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?"

   Yet Moses said to himself, "Whatever they may be, they are the people
   of God and I will be one of them." Even to this day the Lord has a
   chosen people, a remnant according to the election of Divine Grace.
   Looking critically at the Church of God, we soon detect much that is
   faulty, many shortcomings and many grievous evils. Yet the Church of
   God is God's choice and we may not despise it. I can say of God's
   people--"These are the company I keep. These are the choicest friends I
   know."

   If they are good enough for God, they are good enough for me. If you
   never join a Church till you find a perfect Church, you must wait till
   you get to Heaven. And if you could go there as you are, they would not
   receive you into fellowship. Consider who are the people that
   acknowledge God in their lives, who hold the Truth of God as it is
   revealed, who believe the Holy Scriptures and worship God in the
   Spirit, having no confidence in the flesh. Cast in your lot with these
   people, however poor and common-place they may be. If they are not all
   you would like them to be, neither are you yourself all you would like
   to be. But simply, because you believe them to be the people of God,
   cast in your lot with them, begging the Lord to have mercy upon you and
   deal with you as He is likely to do to those who fear His name.

   Moses further believed that the reproach which fell upon his people was
   the reproach of Christ. It is said that he "esteemed the reproach of
   Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." But Christ was not
   there. Christ as yet had not been born into the world. How could the
   reproach of Israel in Egypt be the reproach of Christ? This shows us
   that the Christ was always one with His people. Even as the Church is
   the body of Christ now, so were the Lord's people the body of Christ of
   old. The Lord Christ so sympathized with Israel in Egypt that what they
   bore He bore. "In all their affliction He was afflicted and the angel
   of His Presence saved them." Jesus is that "angel of His Presence."

   Brethren, it is a grand thing to discover and know by faith that the
   reproach which falls upon the people of God is the reproach of Christ.
   When Stephen was killed, it was Stephen, was it not, that died? Yes,
   but Christ stood up from His Throne that day. When Christ spoke to Saul
   on the road to Damascus He did not say, "Saul, Saul, why do you
   persecute the Church?" but, "why do you persecute Me?" Christ suffers
   in the least of His people. The poorest and the most obscure of them,
   when ridiculed and put to scorn for His sake, is not alone in his
   grief--the Head suffers in the members. The reproach of Believers is
   really the reproach of Him in whom they believe. The reproach of Israel
   is the reproach of Christ and Moses believed this. "Ah," said he,
   "whatever they say against these people and whatever they do against
   them, they are really saying and doing against the Lord's Anointed."

   Furthermore, Moses believed it to be wisest to be upon the side of God.
   "He had respect unto the recompense of the reward." Adding all things
   up and making a deliberate calculation of the whole business he
   believed that it must be right and wise to stand on that side which was
   in agreement with the living God. He made up his mind that he would be
   where the Lord was. Now, dear Friends, that is a wise conclusion to
   come to, is it not? Should we not be on the side of God? We are His
   creatures--should we contend with our Creator? He has been infinitely
   good to us--ought we not to side with our Benefactor? All that He does
   is right, all that He permits is just, all that He advocates is pure.

   Should we not be on that side? The other side is the side of evil and
   darkness, the side of the devil--should we be found there? I think not.
   O young Man, it will be your glory to be upon the side of God. O young
   Woman, it will be your beauty to espouse the cause of Christ. What can
   become of us if we are opposed to God, the Good and True? Shall the
   thread contend with the flame, or the wax with the fire? If we are on
   the side of God we are on the right side. And being on the right side
   we shall have peace of conscience and rest of heart. The right must
   ultimately win the day.

   But even if it were not so, a brave heart is content with being right.
   Is it just? Is it true? Then put down my name as a soldier in that
   army. It must be well to be upon the side of God because God's worst is
   better than the world's best. Did you notice how Moses put it? He
   brings forth affliction and he esteems it to be better than the
   "pleasures of sin." Now, pleasures are certainly better than
   afflictions, according to any ordinary judgment. But Moses came to this
   conclusion-- that although affliction might be God's worst--it was
   better than the pleasure of sin, which is evil's best. He mentions
   reproach, which is one of the most bitter kinds of affliction, for many
   a man can bear pain but cannot bear ridicule.

   Moses set down reproach and he counted it to be better than the
   treasures in Egypt. Yet the treasures in Egypt were the best things in
   Egypt--its gold, its horses, its fine linen and the many things that
   made Egypt famous. I say he put all these down in the schedule, and
   then preferred the reproach of Christ to them all. God's fast is better
   than Egypt's feast. Thus he calmly and deliberately made his decision
   and said, "I throw in my lot with the people of God. I take their God
   to be my God and where my duty to God may call me, there will I go."

   Next, dear Friends, note this--Moses had faith in a future judgment. He
   looked beyond the present. He "had respect to the recompense of the
   reward." It is dangerous to be always looking at things from one point
   of view. If we could go quite round and see things from the future,
   looking back upon them rather than forward to them, how different they
   would appear! "Oh," said a lady to her minister, "I find great pleasure
   in going to the play. There is the pleasure of anticipation, there is
   the pleasure of enjoying it and there is the pleasure of thinking it
   over afterwards." "Yes," said her minister, "I know all that, Madam.
   But there is one pleasure you have forgotten, namely, the pleasure of
   meditating upon it on a dying bed." She shrugged her shoulders, she
   could see no pleasure there.

   I wish that men would estimate their pleasures by that rule. How will
   they look when they lie dying? How will they appear when they stand
   before the judgment seat of God? When I have once come into eternity
   and have to spend it according to the final sentence, how shall I look
   back upon what I have done? As a Christian man, how shall I look back
   upon wasted opportunities and idleness in my Master's vineyard? As an
   unbeliever, how shall I regard wasted Sabbaths, rejected entreaties, a
   neglected Bible, a disregarded Mercy Seat? If we could only view things
   in that clear light which beats about the eternal future we should
   avoid a thousand mistakes. View the course of life as Moses did, in
   connection with the recompense of the reward and a resolve will be
   taken which will make you commence a life for God and holiness.

   Let me not quit this point till I have said that Moses had a personal
   faith by which he realized the whole business for himself. He did not
   say, "Yes, there is a God undoubtedly and these are God's people and
   there is an end of it." But he said, "There is a God for me to worship,
   for me to trust, for me to obey. Here are God's people. I resolve to be
   numbered with them. Their God shall be my God. I will be one of the
   sheep of His pasture, and take my part with His flock. If they suffer,
   I will suffer with them. If they rejoice, I will wait to rejoice till
   they rejoice."

   His faith led him on to personal action. He did not say, "I am placed
   by Providence in the palace of Pharaoh and so I am not called upon to
   suffer like the rest of my race." No, no--he refused to be called the
   son of Pharaoh's daughter. He did not say, "I am so circumstanced that
   I need not suffer and therefore I will keep out of the general trouble
   as well as I can." You know how men feel--that there is nothing like
   keeping on the warm side of the hedge. Moses resolved that he would
   suffer affliction with the people of God. Moses would be on a level
   with his brethren. He declared himself to be one of the despised
   nation. The reproaches of them that reproached Christ in His people
   fell upon him.

   This was the faith of Moses, a real personal faith. Come, dear Friends,
   ask yourselves, have you all such a personal faith in God? I tell you,
   if your faith is not personal and practical faith, it is not worth two
   pence. It will do you no good, either here or hereafter. It will leave
   you lost to God if it leaves you still a friend to the world and an
   alien from the people of God. Oh, that you may say from your heart,
   "This God is my God forever and ever. He shall be my Guide even unto
   death." Faith in Moses was the foundation of the whole building of his
   life. Have you faith? Then every good thing will come of it. Have you
   no faith? Then you have no beginning from which a happy end can come.

   How can you read your title clear to mansions in the skies, when you do
   not, as yet, know the first letters of the alphabet of Divine Grace?
   You can never build up a character such as God will approve. For you
   have not even laid the first cornerstone of faith.

   II. Our second point is this--MOSES EXHIBITED A CLEAR DECISION. Oh,
   that the Spirit of God would work the like in all of us! Note, first,
   the time of his choice--"When he was come to years." We do not know the
   exact time to which this refers. When he was forty years of age he
   visited his Brethren but his mind may have been made up long before. It
   was "when he was come to years." I suppose that means early in life, as
   soon as he was of full age. Why not earlier still? He was in Pharaoh's
   court under many influences which may have prevented an earlier
   confession. We are not sure that God had yet spoken to his heart so as
   to make him feel the importance of following the Lord fully.

   Anyway, it was in early life that he declined the world and chose his
   God. It is a grand thing for young people to decide for God soon--it
   will save them from a thousand mistakes and bring them a thousand
   advantages. Early piety leads on to eminent piety--he who begins his
   journey early travels far in the day. The great bulk of those who have
   distinguished themselves in the Church of God will be found to have
   been converted while they were yet young. "When he was come to years."
   Does some youth here claim that he has not yet come to years? I
   answer--Is that so? Why, the other day you were demanding of your
   father certain liberties because you felt yourself quite the man.

   I find that lads nowadays become men earlier than they used to do. I
   wish they would take upon themselves ripe responsibilities as well as
   covet ripe privileges, Oh, that they would act as Moses did when he
   came to years! If you feel you have come to years in one way, admit
   that you have come to years in another way. Say, "Now is the time when
   I must come right straight out and be a Christian man." You young women
   who do not care to be called girls any longer, I pray you give your
   hearts to Christ. The sooner you are decided, the better. Still it is
   said, "when he was come to years," as much as to say that whatever his
   decision was while he was yet young, that decision was carried out more
   practically when he was come to years.

   We wish to see young people converted, but we wish it to be as
   thoughtful a conversion, as clear and deliberate a change as if they
   were advanced in age. We trust that their following years will confirm
   what they do in their youth. Now, what do you say, Brothers and Sisters
   of mature years? If you could lay aside your religious profession and
   begin again, would you still make today the decision which you arrived
   at when you were young? Oh yes, we can say and do say--We have lifted
   our hand unto God and we cannot go back. And instead of wishing to go
   back, we lift both hands now, and cry--

   "It is done, the great transaction's done, I am my Lord's and He is
   mine."

   We do not wish to retreat from the Covenant of our youth, or draw back
   from the bond of our Baptism into Christ of long years ago. We repeat
   the vow and cry, "Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of
   the altar." Moses decided for God early in life. But he also decided
   when he was capable of forming a mature and deliberate judgment. Moses
   went about arranging his life like a man of business and decided
   wisely. But we must note well the prospect which he gave up. He
   "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." To be the son of
   Pharaoh's daughter made him a prince of Egypt. Some have thought that
   the Pharaoh then reigning had no other child but this daughter and that
   her son Moses would have succeeded to the throne of Egypt. We cannot be
   sure of that, though it may have been so.

   The son of a princess has noble rank and grand opportunities. Wealth
   was evidently to be had--the treasures of Egypt were before him. Honor
   was his already and as he grew older titles would multiply upon him.
   But he said firmly, "No. I cannot be an Egyptian. I am an Israelite and
   I prefer the privileges which come to me from Father Abraham to those
   which come by Pharaoh's daughter. I cannot relinquish my part in the
   Promise and the Covenant but I can, and

   will, relinquish all the honors which come of Pharaoh's court." He did
   so--deliberately did so. "He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
   daughter."

   A great many would say--What a fool he was to give up what others
   covet! I fear that many of you professors would not lose a situation
   for Christ. Some of you could not lose a shilling a week of extra pay
   for the Lord. Ah me, this is a miserable age! Go with a lancet
   throughout these Isles and you could not get enough martyr blood to
   fill a thimble. Backbones are scarce and grit is a rare article. Men do
   not care to suffer for Christ. They must be respectable, they must vote
   in the majority, they must go with the committee and be thought well of
   for their charity. As to standing up and standing out for Christ, it is
   looked upon as an eccentricity, or worse.

   Today if a young man proposed to sacrifice his position for Christ's
   sake, father and mother and friends would all say--"Do not think of
   such a thing. Be prudent. Do not throw away your life." Once men could
   die for conscience sake--but conscience is nowadays viewed as an ugly
   thing, expensive and hampering. No doubt many advised Moses to be
   called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but he steadily refused. He
   deliberately divested himself of his rank that he might be numbered
   with the downtrodden people of God. For a moment I will show you some
   of the arguments which Moses must have had to meet. In his own mind,
   when having come to years, he began to think the matter over, many
   arguments would arise and demand reply.

   The first argument would be, "You will be acting very unkindly to your
   adopted mother--What will she say? She drew you out of the water when
   you might have been drowned. She took you home, she saw that you were
   nursed and cared for, she has had you trained and educated. She has
   spent no end of money on you. There is nothing you could wish for but
   what she has supplied it--her heart is entwined in yours--and now,
   having come to years, if you refuse to be called her son, it will be a
   very sad return for her love."

   Natural affection has often proved a serious difficulty in the way of
   grace. The Lord Jesus has said, "He that loves father or mother more
   than Me is not worthy of Me. And many are thus unworthy." In the case
   of Moses, a sense of honor would join with affection. He knew that it
   was right to refuse to be the son of Pharaoh's daughter. But still,
   there was something to be said on the other side. For how could he
   disown a tie which the hands of love had fastened? Could he rend that
   fond connection? Could he persist in saying, "I am no Egyptian"? I
   doubt not that he felt, "I should be playing the hypocrite if I
   professed to be of Egypt, and I must tell the Princess as gently as I
   can, but still most firmly, that I cannot be called by her name. For I
   am the son of Amram, of the tribe of Levi, of the seed of Jacob."

   Moses was an Israelite, indeed. He would not conceal his nationality
   nor renounce it by becoming a naturalized Egyptian. Though it should
   tear the heartstrings of his foster mother and be even as a sentence of
   death to himself, yet he would take his stand. Moses thus proved his
   faith to be stronger than that of many who are mastered by family ties
   and held captive by the bonds of earthly love. Unequal yoking is the
   ruin of thousands. The friendship of the world is the blight of piety.
   Happy are they who love Jesus more than all!

   Next, there would come before the mind of Moses the plausible argument,
   "Providence has led you where you are and you ought to keep your
   position." When Moses looked back he saw a remarkable Providence
   watching over him in the ark of bulrushes and bringing the Egyptian
   princess down to that particular part of the Nile to bathe. How
   singular that she should see the ark and save the life of the weeping
   babe! Could he fly in the teeth of Providence by relinquishing the high
   position so specially bestowed? Thus would flesh and blood reason.

   How often have I heard people excuse themselves for doing wrong by
   quoting what they call Providence! Arguments from Providence against
   positive commands are ingenious deceptions. Providence is of God, but
   the lesson which we draw from it may be of the devil. When Jonah wanted
   to flee to Tarshish he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to
   Tarshish. How providential! Nothing of the sort. When Cain killed his
   brother Abel, was it Providence which found the club? Whenever a man
   wants to do wrong he will find opportunities at hand. But let him not
   excuse his wickedness by the apparent opportunity for it. Be afraid of
   that kind of Providence which makes sin easy.

   When a Providence comes across you in doing right, do not give over
   your gracious purpose but know that it is sent to try you, whether you
   can serve the Lord under difficulty. A Providence which chimes in with
   your natural inclination may be a stone of stumbling by which your
   hypocrisy will be made clear. Moses felt that Providence did bring him
   into Pharaoh's court, but he also felt that it brought him there that
   he might be put to the test to see whether he would come

   out of it for the Lord's sake. Do not believe in the reasoning which
   suggests that Providence would have us slide along an easy, though
   evil, way.

   Providence, if it is read aright, never tempts to sin, though it may
   put before us trials for our faith. Our rule of life is the commandment
   of the Lord, not the doubtful conclusions which may be drawn from
   Providences. Yet another argument may have met Moses, for it is one
   which I have heard repeated till I am sick of answering it. Moses could
   do a deal of good by retaining his position. What opportunities for
   usefulness would be in his way! See how he could help his poor
   Brethren! How often he could interpose at the court to prevent
   injustice! Moreover, what a bright light he would be in his high
   position--his example would commend the faith of the true God to the
   courtiers and great ones.

   Nobody could tell what an influence would thus be exercised upon Egypt.
   Pharaoh himself might be converted and then all Egypt would bow before
   Jehovah. Thus have we met with Brethren who say, "Yes, I am in a Church
   with which I do not agree. But then, I can be so useful." Another
   cries, "I know that a certain religious union is fostering evil. But
   then, I can serve the cause by staying in it." Another is carrying on
   an evil trade but he says, "It is my livelihood and besides, it affords
   me opportunities of doing good!" This is one of the most specious of
   those arguments by which good men are held in the bonds of evil. As an
   argument, it is rotten to the core.

   We have no right to do wrong from any motive whatever. To do evil that
   good may come is no doctrine of Christ but of Satan. Fallen nature may
   wander in that way but the Grace of God delivers us from such wicked
   sophistry. Whatever good Moses might have thought that he could do in a
   false position, he had faith enough to see that he was not to look to
   usefulness but to righteousness. Whatever the results may be, we must
   leave them with God, and do the right at all cost.

   But, dear Friends, do you not think that Moses might have made a
   compromise? That idea is very popular. "Now then, Moses, do not be too
   strict. Some people are a deal too particular. Those old-fashioned
   puritanical people are narrow and strait-laced--be liberal and take
   broader views. Cannot you make a compromise? Tell Pharaoh's daughter
   you are an Israelite but that, in consequence of her great kindness,
   you will also be an Egyptian. Thus you can become an
   Egypto-Israelite--what a fine blend! Or say an Israelito-Egyptian--with
   the better part in the front. You see, dear Friends, it seems a simple
   way out of a difficulty to hold with the hare and run with the hounds.
   It saves you from unpleasant decisions and separations.

   Besides, Jack-of-Both-Sides has great praise from both parties for his
   large-heartedness. I admire this in Moses, that he knew nothing of
   compromise. First he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter
   and secondly he made a deliberate choice rather, "to suffer affliction
   with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
   season." My Hearers, come out, I pray you, one way or the other. If God
   is God, serve Him. If Baal is God, serve him. If it is right to be an
   Israelite, be an Israelite. If it is right to be an Egyptian, be an
   Egyptian. None of your trimming. It will go hard with trimmers at the
   Last Great Day. When Christ comes to divide the sheep from the goats,
   there will be no middle sort. There is no place for trimmers. Modern
   thought is trying to make a purgatory but as yet the place is not
   constructed and meanwhile you border people will be driven down to
   Hell. May God grant us His Grace to be decided!

   Notice the lot which Moses chose. He refused to be called the son of
   Pharaoh's daughter and he chose to take his portion with the oppressed,
   reproached and ridiculed Israelites. I want you to see the terms in
   which his judgment is expressed. For no doubt the Holy Spirit tells us
   exactly how Moses put it in his own mind. He chose rather to suffer
   "affliction with the people of God." Does not that alter it
   wonderfully? "Affliction" nobody would choose. But "affliction with the
   people of God," ah, that is another business altogether. "These are
   they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes
   and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

   I choose the "great tribulation," not because I like it, but because
   these came out of it and have "washed their robes and made them white
   in the blood of the Lamb." "Affliction with the people of God" is
   affliction in glorious company. I was reading the other day the life of
   John Philpot who was shut up in Bishop Bonner's coal-hole in Fulham
   Palace. There he and his friends sang Psalms so merrily that the Bishop
   chided them for their mirth. They could have quoted Apostolic authority
   for singing in prison. When there were seven of them, Philpot wrote--"I
   was carried to my Lord's coal-house again, where I, with my six fellow
   prisoners, do rouse together in the straw as cheerfully, we thank God,
   as others do in their beds of down."

   To be with the people of God, one would not mind being in the
   coal-hole. No one wants to be in Bonner's coal-hole. But better be
   there with the martyrs, than upstairs in the palace with the Bishop. To
   hear the saints' holy talk and sing

   with them their gladsome Psalms and with them behold the Angel of the
   Covenant, is a very different thing from mere suffering or
   imprisonment. "With the people of God"--that is the sweet which kills
   the bitter of affliction. Nobody here wants to go into a burning fiery
   furnace. But none of us would refuse to be there with Shadrach, Meshach
   and Abednego and that "fourth" who was "like unto the Son of God"!

   I admire this in Moses, that he does not look at half a thing. He views
   it all round, and having seen it all, he forms his judgment. He did not
   choose affliction for its own sake but affliction with the people of
   God he preferred to the pleasures of sin. Note the next
   expression--"Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
   treasures in Egypt." Nobody desires reproach for its own sake. But "the
   reproach of Christ" is a very different matter. That gives a new flavor
   to it. Nobody wants to stand up in yonder pillory, where everybody is
   hurling mud and filth at the object of their scorn. But tell me that
   the sufferer is the Lord Jesus Christ and I will find you a host of
   volunteers to stand with Him and gather honor by sharing in His
   dishonor. "The reproach of Christ." Why, that is glory!

   Thus Moses placed things in their right light and they seemed to
   undergo a complete change. Now. Notice what he said about the baits
   upon the other side--"Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the
   people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." See!
   He calls the pleasures of the court "the pleasures of sin." Why, Moses,
   you need not fall into vice! You could be an Egyptian and yet be chaste
   and honest and sober and just and good. Yes, but he regards his
   proposed life as the son of Pharaoh's daughter as full of "the
   pleasures of sin." Now, mark this--If you believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, it becomes your duty decidedly to come out and stand on His
   side. And if you do not do so, the pleasures derived from your sin of
   omission will be the pleasures of sin. You are living a life of
   disloyalty to Christ and that is a life of sin.

   "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." That is to say, if you have not
   faith that you are doing right, you are doing wrong. And as Moses could
   not feel that he was doing right by being an Egyptian, whatever
   pleasure he might have gained from his remaining at court would have
   been "the pleasure of sin." Then note the word, "For a season." Did you
   hear the tolling of a bell? It was a knell. It spoke of a new-made
   grave. This is the knell of earthly joy--"For a season!" Honored for
   doing wrong--"For a season!" Merry in evil company--"For a season!"
   Prosperous through a compromise--"For a season!" What after that
   season? Death and judgment.

   Note once again, that Moses spoke about treasures. And as a great man
   in Egypt he knew what wealth there was in the land. But he qualifies
   the treasures by saying, "treasures in Egypt." For an Israelite those
   treasures were nothing, since they were in a foreign land. Treasures in
   the land that flows with milk and honey--these were real treasures. But
   treasures in Egypt were a mockery. Moses shakes his head at them. He
   esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in
   Egypt. So, you see, most deliberately, with great discrimination, Moses
   made his choice and kept to it and God blessed him in it. He was
   preserved in the ark of Grace from the hand of the enemy and was drawn
   out of the waters of temptation to be consecrated to the high service
   of God.

   III. I want, in the last place, hurriedly to say that MOSES SHOULD BE
   IMITATED BY US.

   First, Brethren, we should have Moses' faith. The things which Moses
   believed are true, and therefore ought still to be believed. They are
   as important today as when he believed them. Let us lay hold upon them
   and feel their practical bearings this very morning. Young men,
   especially--I entreat you to believe in God and in His work of Grace
   among His people, that you may be numbered with His chosen now and in
   the day of His appearing.

   Next, we must imitate Moses in this--that if we do believe we must come
   out on the Lord's side. Now that you have "come to years," do let it be
   seen on whose side you are. Let there be no doubt, no hesitation, no
   vacillation. But let those who see you in the house, or in business,
   know that you are on the Lord's side. Let me exhort you also to see
   things in the eternal light. Do not look at things in their bearings
   upon today, or tomorrow, or the next few years. Judge by eternity. For
   the present the good man may be a loser. You must look further than
   your foot. Take the measuring line of the sanctuary and use it when you
   judge of spiritual things.

   Note another important matter--I pray that you may get into fellowship
   with Christ. Oh, to know Christ and love Him--to have Him to be your
   Savior and then to feel that you can wear the reproach of Christ as a
   chain of gold! This is a great help in the life of a tried child of
   God. Dear Friend, if you are a Believer in Christ, give yourself up to
   God without reserve--say, "I will follow You, my Lord, through flood or
   flame. I will follow You up hill or down dale. I will follow wherever
   the Lord shall lead the way. I will follow at all cost and hazard." Say
   this in your soul. Take God for

   your all in poverty and disgrace. Take God on the bleak winter's day
   and say--"I am resolved, God helping me, to do

   His will."

   If you do this, you cannot tell what God has in store for you, nor need
   you give it a consideration. Moses, after all, was not a loser by his
   self-denial. He became King in Jeshurun and was more than a monarch in
   the wilderness. He refused to be Pharaoh's son but in the Book of
   Exodus God said to him--"See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh."
   Egypt's haughty monarch feared his plagues and entreated his
   intercession. The Lord made Moses so great that among those who are
   born of woman he ranks among the first unto this day. Even in Heaven he
   is remembered. For they sing "the song of Moses the servant of God and
   of the Lamb."

   Young man, if you give yourself unto the Lord you can little guess what
   He will do with you. What you lose will be a mere trifle compared with
   what you will gain. As to honor--all honor and glory lie in the service
   of the Most High. I am come to this conclusion, my Brethren--whether I
   sink or whether I swim, I am the Lord's! By His Grace I will believe
   His Word and cling to its inspiration, whether the Lord shall roll away
   my reproach or not. I would say with the three holy children, "Our God
   whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and
   He will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known
   unto you, O King, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the
   golden image which you have set up."

   By God's Grace, with Job my heart has said--"Though He slay me, yet
   will I trust in Him." Be this the resolve of each one, for Christ's
   sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

David Dancing Before the Ark Because of His Election

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JULY 1, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of
   Saul came out to meet Da vid and said, How glorious was the king of
   Israel today, who uncovered himself today in the eyes of the handmaids
   of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovers
   himself! And David said unto Michal, It was before the Lord, which
   chose me before your father and before all his house, to appoint me
   ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel: therefore will I play
   before the Lord. And I will yet be more vile than thus and will be base
   in my own sight: and of the maidservants which you have spoken of, of
   them shall I be had in honor." 2 Samuel 6:20-22.

   DAVID had been soaring up on eagle's wings. Perhaps never in his life
   before had he so enjoyed the public worship of God. He had forgotten
   everything in the delight of bringing the Ark of the Lord home to his
   own city where he had prepared a tabernacle for its resting place. He
   had thrown himself into the gladsome service of the Lord that day. Nor
   had he been alone in joyful adoration--all the people had been
   unanimously with him in honoring Jehovah, the God of their fathers. It
   had been a high day, a day of days, such a day as the nation had not
   enjoyed in all its history.

   The king came home to bless his household, wishing that all his family
   might share in his joy. Exactly at that moment his wife, Michal, Saul's
   daughter, who had felt disgusted at seeing her husband dressed like a
   common Levite and leading the way in the midst of the common people,
   came out to meet him, full of furious scorn. Her language to him must
   have acted as if a man had thrown a pail of cold water into his face.
   With sarcastic words, villainously exaggerating what he had done and
   imputing to him what he had never done, she scolded the man she had
   scorned. How he must have felt it for the moment! We need not wonder if
   some have thought that his answer was somewhat bitter. Remember that
   David was not Jesus but only David.

   Always suspect some danger near when you perceive too much delight. It
   may sound like a paradox, but it is true, and experience proves that we
   never seem to be so near meeting the devil as when we have just met our
   God. When our Savior had been on the Mount of Transfiguration with His
   disciples, He met, at the foot of the hill, a father with a child
   possessed of the devil! Whenever you enjoy a season of peculiarly close
   communion with God and are full of very high joy, be on your guard. The
   very worst side of the world will be turned towards you when you have
   been nearest to the eternal Throne.

   Probably Michal had never spoken so to David. But then David had never
   danced before the Ark of the Lord. Here stood the man of God confronted
   by one whose feelings were the very opposite of his own. Like an
   iceberg, she crossed the path of this great vessel and chilled it like
   an Arctic winter. This led David to reaffirm and yet more plainly state
   his faith in God. As many of the choicest words of our Lord Jesus were
   brought out of Him by the Pharisees, so one of the choicest statements
   of electing love that David had made was brought out by the sarcasm of
   Saul's daughter.

   I hope it will be for our profit this morning to consider it. David
   justified what he had done by God's choice of him. If he had arrayed
   himself like a Levite and danced with all his might before the ark in
   the presence of the common people, he said, "It was before the Lord,
   which chose me before your father, and before all his house, to appoint
   me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel: therefore will I
   play before the Lord."

   Dear Brethren, there is a great power in the truth of election when a
   man can grasp it. When he knows for himself truthfully, and by
   indisputable evidence, that the Lord has chosen him, then he breaks
   forth in songs of Divine adoration and praise--then is his heart lifted
   up and he pays a homage to God which others would not think of paying.
   The Lord

   Jesus has manifested Himself to him as He does not unto the world. And
   therefore he acts towards the Lord Jesus as the world can never act and
   does what the world can never understand.

   I am going to speak to those of you who believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, for you are chosen--faith is the sure mark of election. If you
   believe in Jesus and are resting in Him, this is the token that God has
   chosen you from before the foundation of the world. For no man yet ever
   had a true faith in Christ without receiving it from God and that gift
   from God is the token that He will give all other saving gifts, and
   that He has chosen that man to eternal salvation. The effect upon you
   of your knowing your election of God will be similar to the effect
   which it had upon David when he knew that the Lord had chosen him to be
   the ruler over Israel.

   I. What effect had this doctrine, this experience, this inward
   conviction upon David? First, IT MADE GOD THE LEADING THOUGHT WITH
   DAVID. I believe that in every case where a man is inwardly persuaded
   of the Holy Spirit that the Lord has chosen him out of the world, the
   sure and certain effect is that the Lord stands out to him in a clear
   light and becomes to him the greatest force in his life, the chief
   motive power, the main thought of his mind. Observe how David said to
   Michal, "It was before the Lord." And all through the chapter you
   constantly read that David did this and that "before the Lord."

   In the fourteenth verse we read, "And David danced before the Lord with
   all his might." It will be so--God will be realized in every passage of
   our life. Has the Lord chosen me to be His own? Then I see the hand of
   the Lord in my parentage, in my birth, in my bringing up. I see the
   hand of the Lord in my calling out from the world and in my conversion.
   I see the Lord in His Providence, in His preservation of me from the
   paths of the Destroyer. In fact, everywhere I see the Lord.

   You will notice in the whole teaching of the Puritans, great believers
   in this doctrine of Divine Choice, that they saw God's hand in
   everything. The laws of nature they knew very little about, but the
   Presence of God they knew a great deal about. And to my mind we have
   made a very poor exchange when we have given up the Lord for His laws
   and when the whole bent of our philosophy has been to teach us that God
   is much further off than our fathers thought. I love still to see God
   when I wake and watch through the day and believe that I see Him in all
   that happens.

   In a thunderstorm I hear the voice of God and I see His Glory in the
   flames of fire. I love to think of God as sending us the genial shower
   and the cheery sunshine. I know it is all resolved into natural law but
   I am simple enough to see God rather than the law. The man who believes
   that God has chosen him, from that moment, beholds a living God in
   nature, in Providence and in Divine Grace--in fact, the Lord becomes
   everything to him.

   This was especially the case with David in his devotion. David that day
   worshipped God in spirit and in truth. A great many people, when they
   go up to the assembly, are very particular about their bonnets or their
   garments. Somebody might, perhaps, notice their bonnets and this
   thought weighs heavily on their hearts. I have known people say that
   they could not go to a place of worship because they had not proper
   things to go in, their clothes being evidently a great consideration.
   What a turning aside from God to the tailor! Often people sit in the
   House of Prayer and profess to worship but they are noticing who is
   there and who is not there. And any little slip in the preacher's
   language is a welcome diversion to them.

   They think of anybody and anything rather than God. It was not so with
   David--to him the Lord was All in All in worship. He said to himself,
   "I am King of Israel but that I may avow myself to be the true servant
   of Jehovah I will put on a linen garment today, like a common Levite."
   This he did "before the Lord." The Lord, who searches the heart, knew
   what David meant by his dress, by his playing upon the harp and by his
   leaping and dancing in the midst of the people. It was "before the
   Lord" that he showed his excessive joy. And if others happened to be
   there as spectators, he did not repel them but he did not restrain
   himself.

   If the Lord accepted him and his offerings and his praises, he would
   have all that he wanted, whether the multitude or the princes of Israel
   accepted him or not. The man who believes that the Lord has chosen him
   unto Himself will worship the Lord alone and will neither idolize the
   creature, nor even cast a side-look upon him when he is adoring his
   Maker. It is ours to worship always and to worship none but Jehovah. I
   adore Jehovah. I take His Book in my hand. I read it believing it to be
   inspired. And while so doing, I do not sit as a judge but as a
   disciple. I do not criticize but I adore.

   I look up to Christ on the Cross and I worship God in Christ Jesus--I
   do not quibble about the righteousness of substitution but I adore the
   wisdom and the Divine Grace which are displayed therein. He that
   believes that God has chosen him feels so high a regard for God that He
   becomes his All in All. He says, "This people have I formed for
   Myself." And we reply, "This God is our God forever and ever."

   The effect of this Truth of God upon David was also that, as the Lord
   had become the great influence of his life and the great object of his
   adoration, so He was to him his supreme Lord. Mark well the language of
   the twenty-first verse-- "The Lord which chose me to appoint me ruler
   over the people of the Lord." David did not say, "Over my people"--he
   acknowledged that they were not his people but Jehovah's people. He was
   only lieutenant-governor--the Lord was still the great King of Israel.

   O dear Friends, if you have a due sense of God's choice of you, you
   recognize that Jehovah is your Lord and King. You are mindful of your
   stewardship. You admit that you are God's servant. If you have
   property, it is not yours but His who has chosen you. If you are placed
   in office in Church or State, still the Lord, who has chosen you, has
   sovereign rights over you which you acknowledge in your daily life,
   only grieving that you fail to be perfectly obedient and that when you
   have done all, you are still only an unprofitable servant.

   Complete subordination to God is the desire of every man who delights
   in being chosen of the Lord. Oh, that we could practice it more and
   more! Those who are chosen are the Lord's portion and are not their own
   to live unto themselves. Those who hope to be saved by merit, work for
   themselves that they may win their wages. But those who have received
   the gift of God, which is eternal life, live unto the Lord, alone, that
   they may show their gratitude for His royal love. Our hearts are stout
   before men but in the Lord's presence we bow in the dust. The words of
   others we test and weigh but at the Word of Jehovah we tremble.

   Every man who recognizes himself as chosen of God will loyally serve
   the glorious Lord who has chosen him. It is not ours to follow our
   wills, wishes, or whims--but ours to fulfill our life's mission at all
   costs knowing that He who has appointed us has an absolute right to do
   as He wills with His own.

   The great system known as "The Doctrines of Grace" bring before the
   mind of the man who truly receives it, God, and not man. The whole
   scheme of that doctrine looks God-ward and regards God as first and the
   plan of salvation as chiefly arranged for the glory of the Most High.
   If you believe that everything turns upon the free will of man, apart
   from any purpose of God, you will naturally have man as the principal
   figure in your landscape. But if you believe that there is a choice on
   the part of the Lord, then God will become prominent in your thoughts.
   If you look to be saved by your own works you will, of course, think
   much of yourself.

   If you believe your faith and your repentance to have come to you
   without the work of the Spirit of God, you will think well of yourself.
   And if you believe that your future perseverance depends upon your
   unaided self, you will look to yourself for everything and you will
   rely upon your own wisdom and strength. The doctrines which are not of
   Divine Grace lead you away from God and throw you upon self.

   On the other hand, if you fully believe the doctrine which Jonah
   learned in the belly of the great fish--"salvation is of the
   Lord"--then you will trust in God, hope in God, love God, worship God,
   serve God and God will be even unto you as the rising sun, shining more
   and more in your heart unto the perfect day. I do pray that God may be
   great and greatly to be praised in the heart of everyone of us. May we
   serve Him with gladness and come before Him with thanksgiving. For we
   are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

   II. Secondly, IT WILL CREATE IN US A PROPER DISREGARD FOR HUMAN
   OPINION. I have already told

   you that in his worship David did not allow the opinions of men to
   weigh with him. He worshipped "before the Lord," and there he left it.
   Men might judge him mad, as Michal seems to hint that he was. Or they
   might condemn him as fanatical, extravagant and rabid--but this was as
   the chaff of the threshing floor to him. If any despised him in their
   hearts he was not moved. So long as he knew that his heart was right
   before God and that his worship was accepted of God, he would let
   others commend or censure at their own sweet wills.

   God's chosen servant is not the servant of men. He could not serve two
   masters and he does not try to do so. He goes about his Master's
   business with a holy liberty of soul, for his bonds are loosed towards
   man. He does not seek honor from the many. You remember Saul and what
   he said to Samuel. Samuel turned away from him in indignation and was
   about to leave him when Saul laid hold upon him and said, "Honor me
   before the people." That was the great idea of

   Saul's mind. "Honor me before the people. Let the people think well of
   me. O Prophet of God, do not disgrace me in the eyes of the multitude,
   but let the people still have me in esteem."

   David sought not the honor which comes from men. It would have struck
   some minds that if the king wore the ordinary garment of a Levite, if
   he mixed with the crowd, if he became one of the people, if he walked
   in procession with them, if he even led them in the holy dance, then
   the common crowd would say in their hearts, "Is this a king? Why should
   we obey a man who is one of ourselves?" Potentates surround themselves
   with pomp and keep themselves apart-- that they may have glory in men's
   eyes. But it did not occur to David to provide against such a danger
   when the glory of God was concerned.

   The populace might think as they pleased of him--he was the elect of
   God and therefore he did not consider his standing with the people. In
   the Presence of God it became him to abase himself and he did so,
   whether it was good policy or not. Kings before God are only men--and
   however bright their crowns or high their thrones--when they worship,
   they must lay aside their trappings and affectations of superiority and
   must bow before Jehovah in the dust. So King David did and in doing it
   he had no fear lest the multitude should hold him in the less esteem. O
   child of God, have a holy disregard of that Vox Populi which is
   profanely said to be Vox Dei--but which once cried, "Crucify Him,
   crucify

   Him."

   David did not even consult the judgment of the few. Of course he had
   around him a little set of special people, the elite of Israel, who had
   great reverence for royalty and all its dignity. Michal was the
   representative of these. Looking out of the window she looked down upon
   David in a double sense, for she could not bear to see a king dressed
   as a servant, a king dancing before the ark. She thought him
   light-headed and frivolous, if not distinctly mad. No doubt there are
   particularly nice and dainty people who will censure God's chosen if
   they live wholly to His praise and they will call them eccentric,
   old-fashioned, obstinate, absurd, and I don't know what besides.

   From the window of their superiority they look down upon us. Suppose
   they do. They may wait until it is their turn to look up and that will
   come sooner than they think. The man who says, "God has chosen me," can
   afford to let others think and speak after their own nature. It is his
   business to take his stand separately and deliberately and distinctly
   to do what he believes to be right and let the many or the few do as
   they will. Beloved, the Doctrines of Grace put the very idea of
   honoring man out of court with us. Go and listen to certain preachers
   and hear how they enlarge upon the dignity of human nature.

   My friend Dr. Pierson, who prayed just now, has accepted very little of
   modern teaching upon that point. For he confessed unto God that we were
   worse than the worms we trod upon. What do you say to that? We are not
   very dignified creatures according to that statement. And I fully
   endorse it. Dignity of human nature? Dignity of flesh which goes to
   corruption and the worm? Let those who will, extol the creature of an
   hour--I glorify the Creator, who is everlasting. Fallen human nature
   deserves no praise. It is not easy to find terms humiliating enough to
   describe the degradation into which sin has brought us, and the
   helplessness in which sin has left us, and the need of Sovereign Grace
   to save us from perishing forever.

   If any think that we should magnify man, we are of another mind. We
   wonder that the Lord should be mindful of him and visit him. The Lord
   of Hosts will not endure that man should magnify himself. For He has
   purposed to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all
   the excellent of the earth. Proud man-worshippers will despise you if
   you hold to the Doctrines of Grace--they want something novel--and so
   they sneer at you as a piece of antiquity. Be content to be
   old-fashioned--God's choice of you is older than the fashions--and if
   that stands, you may well stand by the truth of it.

   Some will despise you for your simplicity and insinuate that you are
   destitute of culture and science and are repeating exploded dogmas only
   believed in by the illiterate. This refutes itself. For the truly wise
   never show contempt of others. After all, God's Truth is more profound
   than all the speculations of men. "The foolishness of God is wiser than
   men." Hold to God's Truth, challenge it who may. If you find a doctrine
   in God's Word which flatters human nature, let me know of it. I find
   therein great Truths which lay our nature among the diseased, the
   condemned and the dead. But none which sing our praises.

   The Scriptures tell us that we must be born again and called out of our
   spiritual graves by a miracle. They also tell us that we are not saved
   by our works and that "it is not of him that wills, nor of him that
   runs but of God that shows

   mercy." We are saved by Divine Grace and Divine Grace alone. And that
   Divine Grace is free and sovereign according to that wondrous word, "I
   will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on
   whom I will have compassion." So, you see, the effect of this doctrine,
   when it is really grasped is to set the Lord on high in the soul but to
   put human opinion in a lower place.

   III. Then, thirdly, A SENSE OF ELECTION CAUSES A LOW OPINION OF SELF.
   David said, "I will yet be more vile than thus and will be base in my
   own sight." David would more and more abase himself before the Lord. He
   felt that whatever Michal's opinion of him might be, it could not be
   more humbling than his own view of himself. Brother, if any man thinks
   ill of you, do not be angry with him. For you are worse than he thinks
   you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied,
   for if he knew you better he might change the accusation and you would
   be no gainer by the correction.

   If you have your moral portrait painted and it is ugly, be satisfied.
   For it only needs a few blacker touches and it would be still nearer
   the truth. "I will be base in my own sight." This was well said.
   Perhaps if David had carried it out more fully and had been rendered
   watchful thereby, it might have saved him from his great fall. A sense
   of electing love will render you base in your own sight. I will tell
   you why.

   First, you will never understand why the Lord has chosen you. Often
   will you sing--

   "What was there in me that could merit esteem, Or give the Creator
   delight? "It was even so, Father,'I ever must sing, 'Because it seemed
   good in Your sight.'" The more sure you are of the Divine choice and
   the better you understand it, the more will you enquire--"Why me?"

   I dare say David, in a few quick thoughts, reviewed his former estate.
   He saw himself as the shepherd's boy keeping a few sheep in the
   wilderness. He saw himself fetched home all in a hurry because Samuel
   had asked for him. The Prophet had come to anoint one of Jesse's sons
   and each one of the big brothers imagined that he, himself, must be the
   Lord's chosen. But his hopes were quenched as the Prophet cried,
   "Neither has the Lord chosen this." David must be brought in.

   What a change from the shepherd boy with a crust in his wallet, to the
   king who "dealt among all the people, even among the whole multitude of
   Israel, as well to the women as men, to everyone a cake of bread and a
   good piece of flesh and a flagon of wine"! David could not remember the
   change without feeling that he was unworthy of such goodness. Is it not
   the same with us?

   Then the king remembered the dangers and troubles he had experienced.
   Oh, that some persons who talk so proudly could but know a little of
   the rough side of life! Hunted like a partridge on the mountains,
   bearing his life in his hand for many a day, David had at last passed
   out of persecution and had become the accepted king of all Israel!
   Because the Lord had chosen him, He had helped and saved him from the
   hand of all his enemies. His bitter experiences made him wear his
   honors meekly.

   Brothers and Sisters, if you have had a tried experience you will look
   back upon it with deep gratitude and self-abasement. The tears will be
   in your eyes as you sing of judgment and mercy and abundantly utter the
   memory of His great goodness. I cannot exalt myself, nor talk of my
   works, my prayers, my desires, my seeking of the Lord, or anything that
   is my own. For my salvation was all of Divine Grace and the Lord worked
   all my works in me. The doctrine of Distinguishing Grace sinks us, and
   our experience in connection with it sinks us. We cannot lie low enough
   before the Lord.

   David's high position must have made him feel lowly when he knew to
   whom he owed it all. When a man prospers little by little he may become
   used to it and grow proud. But when the Lord heaps on His bounties we
   become like Peter's boat, which was so filled with fish that it began
   to sink. Well may we be humbled by the great mercies of the Lord.
   "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we
   should be called the sons of God." A little while ago we were heirs of
   wrath even as others. How could the Lord adopt such poor creatures? I
   cannot make it out.

   I, that once loved sin, am now made to hate it. I, that was a stranger
   to God and to His service, am enriched with access to the Throne of
   God. I, that was without strength, have now Grace to do all things
   through Christ that strengthens me. Oh the greatness, the unspeakable
   greatness of almighty love! Brothers and Sisters, if this does not
   humble you, then you are not really Believers. If you have really
   obtained the mercies of the Covenant through the Lord's gracious choice
   of you, the knowledge of this fact will lay you low and keep you there.
   Your cry will be, "Why me, Lord? Why me?"--

   I once had a dear Friend, a man of God who is now in Heaven, a
   clergyman of the Church of England. His name was Curme and he used,
   with a pleasant smile, to divide his name into two syllables and
   say--"Cur me," which in the Latin signifies, "Why me?"

   "Why was I made to hear Your voice, And enter while there's room;

   When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come?"

   All the while David had a deep sense of his personal unworthiness. He
   did not know his own heart fully--no man does so. But he knew enough of
   himself to make him base in his own sight. For he could never think
   himself worthy of the choice of God and all that it involved. Our heart
   adores and wonders as we think of the election of God. As we rise in
   the assurance of the Divine choice, we sink in our valuation of
   ourselves.

   IV. A SENSE OF DIVINE ELECTION FOSTERS A FEELING OF HOLY BROTHERHOOD.
   There is David arrayed as a common Levite. He is down among the people
   and he is leading them in the holy dance before the Ark of the Lord.
   David, why, you ought to have had too much self-respect to be acting
   so! Kings should keep themselves to themselves. Dignities should be
   worn with decorum. Yes, but David does not feel that he is in the least
   degraded by associating with the people of the Lord.

   It is wonderful how democratic the Doctrines of Grace are and how
   aristocratic they are, too. The chosen are all kings and when we mix
   with the poorest of them we are kings with kings. Free Grace strips the
   proud but it adorns the humble. If we can fare as God's people fare, we
   are well content. We despise not one of the least of Christ's little
   ones. David was the Lord's servant, like the rest of them and he was
   not ashamed to show it. No, he rejoiced that it was so and said, "O
   Lord, I am Your servant. I am Your servant and the son of Your
   handmaid; You have loosed my bonds." Specially had the bonds of pride
   been broken from him and he had been made to feel it a joy to be
   numbered with the least of the people of God.

   David honored the most humble of the Lord's chosen. For when Michal
   talked about what the handmaids of his servants would say, he answered,
   "Of the maidservants which you have spoken of, of them shall I be had
   in honor." To be esteemed by them was a cheer to him. I would rather
   have the esteem of the maidservant who loves the Lord than the respect
   of her mistress who is a stranger to the Divine life. It is better to
   have the love of the poorest man in the workhouse if he is a child of
   God, than to have honor from the most eminent of those who know not the
   Lord.

   We do not measure you, my Hearers, by the amount of your money or the
   breadth of your acres--to us there are only two classes--the Lord's
   people and the Lord's enemies. To which class do you belong? If you are
   not among His believing people, may the Lord have mercy upon you and
   bring you to His feet. But if you are among the heirs of Divine Grace,
   we value you above the gold of Ophir. How beautiful it is to see the
   learned and the illiterate, the great and the lowly made one family by
   the Grace of God! It is marvelous what power this has had in the
   Christian Church.

   And I pray its power may be felt more and more until everything like
   caste and class is abolished in the Church of God and we shall become
   Brethren, indeed, and of a truth. As the chosen of God, our names are
   written in the same book, we are redeemed with the same blood, we are
   called by the same Spirit, we are quickened by the same life and hope
   soon to meet in the same Heaven. This is the true confederation, the
   union of hearts in the common Lord. As the elect of God, we break away
   from the world, but we come together in one body in Christ.

   V. I have been quick upon that point, for time is flying with six wings
   and I want to dwell a minute upon this point.

   A SENSE OF BEING CHOSEN OF GOD STIRS A DESIRE FOR THE SERVICE OF GOD.

   Such service will be personal. Look at David. He must serve God
   himself. He cannot let the priests and Levites do it. He must take a
   turn as a Levite himself. Lots of people allow their ministers to serve
   God for them, or they subscribe to societies that by means of a
   committee they may serve God secondhand. The man that God has chosen
   must have a personal religion and he must offer a personal service. The
   woman who had had much forgiven did not come to Peter and say, "Please,
   Mr. Peter, I have an alabaster box of ointment--will you at some proper
   time or other be pleased to pour it upon the Master?"

   No, she must break the alabaster box and pour out the ointment herself.
   David cannot be satisfied with all that priests and Levites can do for
   him. He must honor the Lord Himself. This personal service will be
   cheerful. "David went and brought up the Ark of God from the house of
   Obededom into the city of David with gladness." Who should be so

   glad as God's elect? If the Lord has chosen me, He has put a chime of
   bells into the belfry of my soul. Let the slaves who are earning their
   salvation serve Him with gloom and terror. As for me, to whom salvation
   has been freely given, I must come into His Presence with thanksgiving
   and into His courts with praise.

   The oil of gladness which is poured upon our Lord Jesus as our Head
   runs down to the least and lowest of us. If you are really chosen of
   God you will take pleasure in what you can do for Him. Your duty will
   be your delight. You cannot do enough for your Lord. You are always
   wanting to do more when you have done most. And gifts which you can
   present and deeds which you can perform are the greatest enjoyments of
   your life.

   This service will be in connection with the great sacrifice. David
   served God by offering sacrifices. All along the way by which he
   brought the ark he left a track of blood, the blood of appointed burnt
   offerings and peace offerings. If you serve God aright, you will be
   forever remembering the Cross and the substitutionary death there
   accomplished for our redemption. You will only hope to be accepted in
   your work of faith through the one great Sacrifice for sin. We need
   more of Jesus in all that we do for our God.

   This service should be thoughtful. David set to work and wrote Psalms
   in honor of the Lord that chose him. He who loves God will take a turn
   at almost everything. He will sing and bless and pray and preach and a
   thousand other things, if he can. I would not like a string of my harp
   to rust. You do not know what is in you yet. Try to do something more
   for your Lord. Write sonnets to the praise and glory of His wondrous
   Grace if you can.

   This service must be obedient. David was careful that day in bringing
   back the ark into the tent in a proper manner. Everything was done
   according to Law. The chosen of God feels bound to be careful of the
   will of Him that chose him. If God commands a thing, it must be done.
   It may be that he belongs to a Church which does not see it. But if he
   sees it, he does not excuse himself by the blindness of others. If he
   believes that the Lord has commanded a thing, although it is said to be
   non-essential and secondary, he obeys. God's precepts bind His chosen.
   They delight to run in the way of His Commandments.

   This service should be practical. See what David did to show his love
   to God. He fed the people of God. Was there ever such a flock? I do not
   know how many millions there were but David fed them all. "Feed My
   sheep," said Christ to Peter. David fed the flock committed to his
   charge that day. Brethren, let us look after the sheep and the lambs
   and never weary of giving them food convenient for them. The Lord has
   chosen us on purpose that we may feed His people.

   This service must be seen at home. If you are chosen of God you will,
   like David, bless your household. You will long to see your sons and
   daughters brought to God. Oh, how you will cry to God, even as Abraham
   did--"O that Ishmael might live before You!" How glad you will be if
   your child turns out to be an Isaac! There will be family prayer in
   your house if you know that God has chosen you. For the Lord might say
   of you what He said of Abraham--"For I know him, that he will command
   his children and his household after him."

   It is one of the marks of God's people that they never set up a tent
   without building an altar. There is no roof to a house if daily prayer
   is neglected. Saints will have God in the house for their children and
   their servants as well as for themselves. May the Lord's choice of you
   impel you to His constant service.

   VI. Now I come to my last point. A SENSE OF DIVINE ELECTION WILL EXCITE
   SACRED ENTHUSIASM. David had an inward delight in God. God was his
   exceeding joy. Personally, I have overflowing joy in the doctrines of
   eternal, unchanging love. It is bliss to know that the Lord has chosen
   me. When I am down very low in spirit, I crave for those old books
   which, like the Lord Jesus, are full of Grace and Truth. You who are at
   ease in Zion can do with the chaffy modern theology. But when your
   heart is heavy, and especially when your conscience is under a sense of
   sin, you will want these two dishes on the table--Free Grace and dying
   love--and you cannot do without them.

   We must have an atoning sacrifice and Free Grace to make us partakers
   thereof. I cannot give up the Doctrines of Grace, for they are my life.
   I do not so much hold them as they hold me. The five fingers of the
   great Doctrines of Grace have enclosed my heart. I can die. But I
   cannot deny the imperishable Truth of God. The doctrine of the eternal
   choice gives forth joy as myrrh and cassia give forth perfume May you
   all know it!

   In David's case his inward peace boiled over in holy excitement. Before
   the ark he was singing, he was harping, he was worshipping and at last
   must show it by the joyful motion of his body. His body danced because
   his soul danced. It was a way of worship well known in Oriental
   countries but we do not find it adopted, except when Miriam took a
   timbrel

   and went forth with the daughters of Israel, saying, "Sing you to the
   Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has He
   thrown into the sea."

   As Michal would not come to lead the way, as she ought to have done,
   David did it himself. I think I hear him as he sings and shouts and
   sings again. I think I see him throwing his whole soul into the joyful
   motion with which he expresses his exulting joy. Election sets the soul
   on fire with enthusiastic delight in God. Certain doctrines would not
   make a mouse move one of its ears. But the grand old Doctrines of Grace
   stir our blood, quicken our pulse and fill our whole being with
   enthusiasm.

   They make me "feel like singing all the time." Free Grace wakes me up
   at night and makes me wish that I were a nightingale. And all day long
   it makes me wish that I were an angel, that I might never cease my
   praise. O my Friends, let us praise the Lord--

   "Come, give all the glory to His holy name, To Him all the glory
   belongs; Be ours the high joy still to sound forth His fame, And praise
   Him in each of our songs." If my salvation were of my own working, I
   might fitly praise myself. If I had a finger in it, I might justly
   praise that finger. If I reached Heaven by my own might and merits, I
   might justly throw up my cap in the golden streets before the cherubim.
   But, Brothers and Sisters, it is all of Divine Grace from first to
   last--and therefore we exult and rejoice and leap for joy as we praise
   and bless the name of God!

   To conclude, David felt so exultant that he wished everybody to know of
   his joy in God. He told all the crowd around of his delight in God. And
   he sang that day, "Declare His Glory among the heathen, His wonders
   among all people." They speak of the narrow, selfish spirit of the
   Hebrews--why David had a missionary spirit and often does it flame out
   in his Psalms. They say that those of us who believe that we are the
   chosen of God are narrow and selfish. We will prove the contrary by our
   Evangelistic zeal. The greatest missionaries that have ever lived have
   believed in God's choice of them.

   And instead of this doctrine leading to inaction, it has ever been an
   irresistible motive power and it will be so again. It was the secret
   energy of the Reformation. It is because Free Grace has been put into
   the background that we have seen so little done in many places. It is
   in God's hand the great force which can stir the Church of God to its
   utmost depth. It may not work superficial revivals but for deep work it
   is invaluable. Side by side with the blood of Christ it is the world's
   hope. How can men say that the doctrine of Distinguishing Grace makes
   men careless about souls?

   Did they never hear of the evangelical band which was called the
   Clapham sect? Was Whitefield a man who cared nothing for the salvation
   of the people? He who flew like a seraph throughout England and America
   unceasingly proclaiming the Grace of God--was he selfish? Yet he was
   distinctly a Free Grace preacher. Did Jonathan Edwards have no concern
   for the souls of others? Oh how he wept and cried and warned them of
   the wrath to come! Time would fail me to tell of the lovers of men who
   have been lovers of this Truth of God. This doctrine first makes sure
   to the man himself that he is the Lord's and then fills him with a
   desire to see myriads brought to bow before the Lord of love.

   Oh, that the Lord would speedily accomplish the number of His elect!
   Oh, that Christ might see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied!
   O my dear Hearers, how I wish that you would all believe in the Lord
   Jesus unto eternal life! If you do not believe in Him yet I pray that
   you may do so this very day and then this very day you may share with
   me the exulting delight that God has chosen you from before the
   foundation of the world. The Lord bless you, for Jesus' sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Charge of the Angel

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JULY 8, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and
   brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the
   people all the words of this life." Acts 5:19,20.

   THE second persecution of the Church, in which all the Apostles were
   put into the common prison, was mainly brought about by the sect of the
   Sadducees. These, as you know, were the Broad School, the liberals, the
   advanced thinkers, the modern-thought people of the day. If you want a
   bitter sneer, a biting sarcasm, or a cruel action, I commend you to
   these large-minded gentlemen. They are liberal to everybody, except to
   those who hold the Truth of God--and for those they have a reserve of
   concentrated bitterness which far excels wormwood and gall.

   They are so liberal to their brother errorists, that they have no
   tolerance to spare for evangelicals. We are expressly told that "the
   high priest, and all they that were with him (which is the sect of the
   Sadducees) were filled with indignation." That which had been done
   deserved their admiration, but received their indignation. Such
   gentlemen as these can be warm at a very short notice when the doctrine
   of the Cross is spreading and God the Holy Spirit is bearing witness
   with signs following. Let them display their indignation, it is
   according to their nature.

   To them the only answer which God gave was spoken by His angel: "Go,
   stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this
   life." Argument will be lost upon them--go on with your preaching. They
   have lost the faculty of believing--go and speak to the people. They
   are so given over to their doubts, that it is like rolling the stone of
   Sisyphus to persuade them to faith. They are so eaten up with
   objections, that to attempt to answer all the questions they raise
   would be as vain as the labor of filling a bottomless tub. Go on with
   your preaching, you Apostles--but address yourselves mainly to the
   people.

   Extend as widely as possible the range of the Truth of God, and thus
   answer the opposition of its adversaries. It is better to evangelize
   than to controvert. The preaching of the Word of Life is the best
   antidote to the doctrine of death. Clearly enough, if they had known it
   and had been capable of seeing it, these blind Sadducees were answered
   at every point when the Apostles were brought out of prison and bore
   witness to their Lord.

   Here was the creed of the Sadducees--they said that "there was no
   resurrection, neither angel, nor Spirit." But these Apostles stood up
   and witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What
   did they make of that? An angel had come from Heaven and had brought
   these Apostles out of prison. Then there were angels. As these Apostles
   were set free while the sentries remained standing before the
   doors--and those doors were afterwards found fastened--if there were no
   Spirit, assuredly materialism had acted in a singular fashion.

   Every item of their negative creed had been made to fall like Dagon
   before the ark. The Lord always arranges Red Seas for Pharaohs. All
   that the Apostles had to do was to go on with their preaching and this
   they did, for "daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not
   to teach and preach Jesus Christ."

   This morning may we be profited while we consider our text and its
   surroundings. May He who spoke by His angel now speak to our hearts by
   His Spirit.

   I. In reviewing the whole story which we read just now, from the
   seventeenth verse to the end of the chapter, my first thought is that
   THE AGENTS EMPLOYED FOR SPREADING THE GOSPEL ARE MEN, AND NOT ANGELS.

   The angel of the Lord opened the prison door and set free the
   preachers, but might not be a preacher himself. He might give the
   ministers their charge, but he had no charge to preach himself. Surely
   the angel who brought them out of prison was quite able to have gone
   and proclaimed the Gospel, and so he might have brought many out of
   their prison spiritually. But no. It must not be. His commission
   permits him to say to the Apostles, "Go and speak to the people," but
   it does not permit him to join in their testimony.

   I think that almost with reluctance the angel of the Lord returned to
   his Master and left the chosen men to go upon their blessed errand. As
   our Lord took not on Him the nature of angels for man's redemption, so
   neither does He employ the agency of angels for man's conversion. I
   feel glad that in the preaching of the Everlasting Gospel angels are
   not our competitors, at this present time at any rate. "Unto the angels
   has He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak." They
   are ministering spirits but they have not received the Holy Spirit
   anointing them to the ministry of Christ.

   This Divine choice of human instrumentality puts honor upon manhood.
   Those redeemed by the blood of Christ are men and their redemption from
   sin by power is to be instrumentally accomplished by men. The great
   fight which began in the Garden of Eden is to be waged by men even to
   the end. The conquest of the revolted world is to be achieved by men
   under the leadership of the all-glorious Son of Man. You see your
   calling, Brethren. I pray you, everyone, to preach the Gospel in your
   vocation--but specially would I plead for zeal with those whose very
   vocation it is to preach the Gospel.

   What a vocation is ours! What can be more honorable? What more
   responsible? To rule empires is a trifle compared with speaking to the
   people all the words of this life. "Lord, what is man, that You are
   mindful of him? And the son of man, that You visit him?" You make him
   higher than the angels in this respect, that out of his mouth You have
   ordained strength because of Your enemies. Such honor have all the
   saints, for they may all either teach or preach Jesus Christ.

   My dear Hearers, you may be yourselves grateful that this ministry is
   committed to men because it is a condescension to human weakness.
   Imperfect as human ministers are, we are better preachers to you than
   angels could be. We cannot sing with their celestial melody, nor charm
   you with their seraphic eloquence--but we have a sympathy with you
   which they cannot feel--seeing they are not compassed with infirmities,
   nor humbled by imperfections. We know your sins, your sorrows, your
   struggles. We know the roughness of the road you travel--for we, too,
   came in at the wicket-gate, and have floundered in the Slough of
   Despond, and scrambled up the Hill Difficulty.

   We can have compassion and give direction learned by experience. I
   suppose an angel would command a very large congregation for a time.
   But after a while you would feel that there was something alien and
   distant about the manner of his teaching. You would be awed rather than
   comforted. A being altogether superior to yourselves would before long
   drive you to cry for your old minister--with lips of clay and heart of
   love. You would prefer our feeble pleadings to the more glorious but
   less brotherly address of an angel from Heaven.

   God's use of the ministry of men is honorable to men and it is
   condescending to men. And surely it is a blow at Satanic pride. The
   Prince of the power of the air might have felt proud to contend with
   angels, finding in them foemen worthy of his steel. But when the
   Arch-enemy sees before him no combatant but a man sent of God, he feels
   like Goliath when he saw David--a youth and ruddy, approaching him with
   a sling and a stone. Disdaining such an adversary, I hear him cry, "Am
   I a dog, that You come to me with staves?"

   Yes, Satan, you are no better than a dog and we come against you in the
   name of Jehovah of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have
   defied. By humble, truth-speaking, earnest men, the Lord turns the
   battle and routs the forces of error, that the old Serpent may still
   feel the foot of the Seed of the woman upon his head. He thought he had
   made an easy prey of man--but it shall be by man that the enemy shall
   be driven back to his infernal den with defeat. By man came death and
   by man came also the resurrection of the dead--which glorious fact is
   proclaimed by man, to the eternal shame of him that has the power of
   death, that is, the devil.

   To work by men must bring special glory to God. The weaker the
   instrument, the more honor to the worker. I like to think whatever I
   may feel driven to believe from Scripture, that the great fight between
   good and evil will be so fought out that the Lord shall conquer by
   feeble men even to the end. The omnipotence of God will be glorified in
   the insignificance of the agents by whom He will achieve the
   everlasting triumph. Those first Apostles brought all the more glory to
   God because they came from the fishers' nets, and were called
   "unlearned and ignorant men."

   The weakness which men despised compelled them to confess that the
   power which they wielded was Divine. The Spirit of God who spoke by
   them found in them no fancied wisdom to obstruct His impulses. If the
   Lord will graciously use us poor ministers to the end it will
   wonderfully illustrate His wisdom and power. Somebody once said that it
   proved the Divinity of our holy religion that it survived
   ministers--and there was a good deal of truth in the remark. How I have
   wondered that this congregation has survived me! And I think we may
   wonder that as a whole the Gospel survives

   its advocates. We are poor tools. I do not refer to you, Brethren from
   America, but I mean all of us in England, and specially myself.

   We are poor tools after all--and if God uses us to save sinners and
   sanctify saints, He must certainly have all the glory of it. Brethren,
   the Lord has used us, blessed be His name! He has used us--we should
   give the lie to manifest facts if we were to deny it. Brethren, the
   Lord means to use us. He has said, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto
   the end of the world."

   I cannot help adding that the employment of men as soul-winners gives a
   tender joy to the heart of Jesus. It pleases the Lord Jesus Christ that
   God should use men--for He Himself is a Man. God, as He is, blessed
   forever, yet is He most truly Man, delighting in humanity and pleased
   to see men called to a work of so much glory and honor. He loves to
   bless men and to see them made a blessing. He delights to see the many
   Brethren used in their measure in the same way as Himself, the
   First-born. The Lord Jesus must take great pleasure in the attempts of
   His servants to seek and to save souls-- for they are learning to be
   shepherds like Himself.

   When our King, Edward III, heard that the Black Prince was having a
   hard battle with the French, he smiled to think that his son was in a
   place where he could show his valor. When he was entreated to send
   reinforcements, he re-fused--for he wished his son to have the
   undivided honors of the day. The Lord Jesus, the Captain of our
   salvation, puts some of His chosen into places of great peril and He
   does not seem to send them all the help they could desire--in order
   that they may prove their faith and consecration and thus earn their
   spurs.

   He takes a brotherly pleasure in the courage and faith which He Himself
   has worked in them. All the valor of Christ's soldiers is given them by
   Himself and all that it achieves is to be attributed to Him. He finds
   joy in seeing them exercise their graces. Like a father delights to see
   his boy take prize after prize at the University, like a friend
   delights to see his friend elected to one honorable position after
   another, so does Jesus rejoice in the honors earned by His servants in
   the field of service. When we save a soul from death, Jesus, the
   Savior, rejoices in the deed. When we thus cover a multitude of sins,
   Jesus, the sin-bearer, sees of the travail of His soul.

   The father in the parable was glad when his prodigal son was found--but
   he would have been more glad still had a brother found him. Our Lord
   Jesus desires to make us happy with that which makes Himself happy, and
   so He sends us out to win souls. All these are good reasons why the
   Lord should employ men and women to spread the Gospel rather than
   cherubim and seraphim. Dear Friends, do you not think that the angels
   must often wonder at us? When they see men eager upon politics and
   negligent of souls, are they not astonished? Do they never say, "We
   wish the great Lord would let us go and speak to perishing souls. We
   would speak with all our hearts"?

   Do they not sometimes say to one another, "What are these men doing? Do
   they disdain their high calling? God has given to them the great
   privilege of preaching and teaching His holy Word but they do not care
   to do it. They speak as if they were half asleep. Where is their zeal
   for God, their love to men, their earnestness for Christ"? Brethren,
   these holy spirits must feel ashamed of us! True, they are our servants
   and bear us up in their hands, lest we dash our feet against a
   stone--but must they not sometimes wish that we were stronger on our
   feet, and were more eager to dash our hands against the enemies of God?

   We are carried as invalids, when we ought to be fighting like
   champions. I charge you by the angels of God who are not permitted to
   touch this holy work--preach the Word, be instant in season, out of
   season. Preach with a vigor worthy of the Divine exercise. Preach the
   Word in some such style as you would expect from those who are bought
   with the precious blood of Jesus.

   So have I spoken to you who are men. As for you, O angel of God, you
   have opened the prison doors and set free the men of God--but you must
   now go back to Him that sent you. Bright Spirit, I dare not offer you
   my pulpit. Feeble as I am, I must do the preaching. Oh, that your Lord
   and mine may help me and enable me to make full proof of my ministry!
   Farewell, angel of God, go your way!

   II. Secondly, THESE MEN ARE TO TEACH THE PEOPLE. All the words of this
   life they are to speak.

   The manner of their teaching is hinted at--they are to do it promptly,
   yes, immediately. "Go," says the angel, "go. Do not linger here. Go at
   once." They did go, so that they were in the temple courts early in the
   morning. The first beams of the sun that were reflected from the golden
   roof met their eyes. The first worshippers in those hallowed courts
   heard the Apostles testifying of Jesus and His love. O dear Servants of
   God, let us run with the glad tidings. "The King's

   business requires haste." The first moment we can get man or woman to
   listen to us, let us speak the Living Word which we have learned at the
   feet of Jesus.

   They were to make this their primary business. "Go," said the angel,
   "before anything else--this is your chief employ." I should have been
   tempted to linger a little just to find out how the angel released the
   prisoners. He had opened the doors, so we are told, but yet they were
   found closed and fastened when the officers came and the sentries had
   not left their posts. Here is a mystery--I should like to clear it up.
   Are there not many such mysteries? But the command is pressing and
   peremptory--"Go, speak to the people."

   Let me tarry. One does not see angels every day. Let me stay and take
   in a more complete idea of the heavenly stranger. Indulge me with a
   little conversation with one who has seen my Lord. There are a great
   many questions which I would hope have answered. Dear fellow-worker, we
   perhaps are tempted to study very deeply into mysterious points which
   do not minister to profit--let us, then, hear the angel say, "Go, speak
   to the people." Let us keep our thoughts to that Gospel which we are
   sent to preach. "The words of this life" will furnish ample scope for
   all our powers. Let us not wander into endless debates which are rather
   for curiosity than salvation and tend rather to gratify our taste than
   to accomplish our life-purpose.

   The first and chief business of the man of God is, "Go, stand and speak
   to the people." However simple the speaking, it may be rather talk than
   oratory. This is our one great business here below. It is clear from
   the text that they were to take a conspicuous place and speak
   boldly--"Go, stand in the temple." Go where the Sanhedrim holds its
   sittings, where the high priest and his Sadducees are on the watch. Let
   not the danger hinder you. Go where all can see you. Stand up and stand
   out. Wherever the people are, there let your voices be heard. Be there
   perseveringly, taking your stand and keeping it till removed by force.

   The object was to make the Gospel known. Therefore, let them go to
   headquarters, let them stand in the chief place of concourse, let them
   be in the resort of the devout, let them challenge the observation of
   pilgrims from every corner of the land. Brethren, it is not ours to
   hide in holes and in corners. Our Gospel is like the sun whose line has
   gone out through all the earth. Let us not speak timidly for we have
   not received the spirit of fear, neither will we hide our candle under
   a bushel. We are to publish the tidings of that life from the dead
   which has brought life for the dead.

   The persons for whom this preaching is designed are mentioned--"Speak
   into the people." "Unto the people"-- that does not mean the poor to
   the exclusion of the rich, nor the many to the exclusion of the few.
   The expression is most comprehensive and embraces both the masses and
   the classes. If the men of the council would hear them, let them speak
   to them. They did so, alas, with small result. This is a truly Gospel
   word of command--for the Gospel is glad tidings to all people--and it
   is to be preached to every creature under Heaven.

   A restricted audience is not an evangelistic idea. Go and speak unto
   the people, then--to all sorts of people--to everybody. Let not a soul
   escape if you can help it, for your mission is to all mankind. O Gospel
   fisherman, spread the great net, which will encompass a great multitude
   of fishes, and with diligence draw it to shore.

   If we take the word "people" in its popular sense, it has a lesson to
   all who teach the Word. Some aim at the intellectual--let us speak to
   the people all the words of this life. A minister whose congregation
   numbers about forty all told rejoiced in the smallness of it because he
   professed that a greater work could be done with a few than with a
   large number. In answer, a friend suggested that he should infer from
   that statement that a greater work could be done with no people at all.
   This reduced the hypothesis to an absurdity.

   "I am sure," said one, "that the better a man preaches, the smaller his
   congregation will become." This shows what a large number of very
   excellent preachers we have in London. But our business is to reach the
   people somehow. To obey the text we must, "Go and speak to the people."
   They need it. Are they not perishing for lack of knowledge? The Gospel
   is adapted to their needs and capacities--it is simple, suitable,
   seasonable, saving. The people will receive it. If the poor have the
   Gospel preached to them they will hear it. God inclines the hearts of
   the multitude to hearken.

   We read of Jesus, that "all the people were very attentive to hear
   Him." Moreover, the people retain the Truth of God when they receive
   it. Note this fact in history--the Reformation in Spain was among the
   nobility and it was the same in Italy--and the work soon subsided. In
   England the common people received the Truth of God from Wycliffe and
   it never died out. If you wanted to burn a haystack, you would set it
   alight at the bottom--and if you want a whole na-

   tion to feel the power of the Gospel, it must first be received by
   laborers and artisans. The martyrs of England were largely taken from
   weavers and such like.

   The people love the man "chosen out of the people." The Bible is their
   charter, the Gospel is their estate, and when they know it, they will
   retain it with heroic constancy. What is more, they will spread it.
   Christ's first preachers were of the people. In the streets of London
   today and in the Sunday schools of England today, you will find that
   the people are to the front in holy work. We are glad to see the noble,
   the great, the rich, the cultured dedicated to our Lord--but, after
   all, our chief hope lies among the people.

   The angel even mentioned the place to which they were to go. "Go, stand
   in the temple." It was the most public place in all Jerusalem.
   Therefore, "Go, stand in the temple" rather than in a private house. It
   was the likeliest place to find attentive hearers. The noise of the
   sheep market and the bazaar would be absent. Those who came early would
   probably be among the most devout. "Go, stand in the temple." But when
   they were bid to stand in the temple it meant that they were to stand
   in any place and every place where an audience could be gathered.

   So they understood it according to the last verse of the
   chapter--"Daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to
   teach and preach Jesus Christ." Fellow workers, our business is to
   speak to the people concerning eternal life--and we must see that we do
   it. If in this great house so many will gather that the utmost capacity
   of my voice is used up, this is the place for me to preach in. But if
   the people will not come here, I must go after them. We must take
   public halls and assembly rooms. We must even hire theatres and music
   halls, or stand in the streets--for we must speak to the people.

   As men enlightened from on High we must carry the light to the eyes of
   men. We must carry bread to the hungry and healing to the diseased. If
   not by one style of speaking, yet by another. We must so speak as to be
   heard--it is of no use to go on droning to empty pews, or holding forth
   to bare walls. We must get at the people. This is what the angel bids
   us do. "Go," said he, "speak to the people all the words of this life."

   III. Thirdly, THIS MESSAGE IS DESCRIBED: "Speak to the people all the
   words of this life." Our teaching, if we are true to Christ, will be
   not only a doctrine, but a life. The high priest conceived that they
   preached doctrine. For he said, "Ye have filled Jerusalem with your
   doctrine." Yet it may as truly be called life, as truth. The Christian
   religion is like Christ--Way, Truth and Life. We have to preach "words
   of life." Truth which brings life, feeds life and perfects life. We are
   to preach all the great Truths which concern eternal life.

   What are the "words of this life"? If I had to give a short list of
   them, I should say, the first word of this life is "Jesus Christ." In
   the forty-second verse we read, "They ceased not to teach and preach
   Jesus Christ." Jesus has the words of eternal life. We preach His
   Deity, His manhood, His offices, His sacrificial death, His
   resurrection and everything about Him. We preach Christ crucified and
   if we did not, we should not speak the words of life.

   The next word to use would be "atonement." There is no preaching "the
   words of this life" except we preach the sacrificial death of the Son
   of God. The Apostles boldly spoke of our Lord's death for they said to
   the council, "Whom you slew and hanged on a tree." They had mentioned
   the precious blood--for the high priest said, "You intend to bring this
   man's blood upon us." Leave out the satisfaction made by Christ for
   sin, leave out the doctrine of a real and effective substitution and
   you have left out of the Gospel "the blood which is the life thereof."
   "The words of this life" are not preached to the people where the Cross
   is put in the background.

   The next word, to my mind, would be "resurrection." This they preached
   very fully, saying, "Him has God raised from the dead." The
   resurrection of Christ secured the justification of Believers and also
   guaranteed their resurrection from the dead by virtue of their union
   with Him. If the resurrection were more fully preached at this time, I
   am positive that it would be a powerful means of conversion.

   Nor could the Apostles forget "regeneration." They would echo their
   Lord's words, "You must be born again." This new birth is possible to
   you for, "He that sat upon the Throne said, Behold, I make all things
   new." Leave out the doctrine of the new birth and you have left out one
   of the cardinal "words of this life."

   Then comes "faith." What a word is this! "Without faith it is
   impossible to please God." "By grace you are saved through faith." He
   who does not preach justification by faith has not begun to preach "the
   words of this life." He that believes in Christ has everlasting
   life--but without faith all is death.

   The sixth out of seven words is "indwelling." The Holy Spirit comes
   into the heart and abides there, working sancti-fication within and
   producing holiness without. "Without holiness no man shall see the
   Lord." And if holiness is not preached as the effect of the indwelling
   Spirit of God, "all the words of this life" are not spoken to the
   people.

   Then comes the doctrine of the eternal life--that the life given by the
   Holy Spirit never dies. "The water that I shall give him shall be in
   him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." This eternal
   life is seen here in the perseverance of the saints--it is seen
   hereafter in their immortality and endless glory. To leave out this
   would be to leave out the grandest of "the words of this life."

   If you desire another outline of the Gospel, I would refer you to
   Peter's little address to the council. Read at the twenty-ninth verse.
   Here is the principle of this life: "We ought to obey God rather than
   men." He who gets this life into him will be under law to God and when
   that law goes counter to the authority of man, man's law will go to the
   wall. God is supreme to the man who has this life--he lives as an
   obedient child of God.

   The next great Truth of God mentioned by Peter is the cause of this
   life. He declared the death of Christ--"Whom you slew and hanged on a
   tree." That followed by His resurrection--"The God of our fathers
   raised up Jesus." That followed by His ascension to glory--"Him has God
   exalted with His right hand." These are historical facts which contain
   vital doctrines. We must keep on hammering away at this--Jesus died,
   rose again, and rose to Heaven to make intercession for us. Because of
   all this, there is life for the sons of men. There is no teaching "all
   the words of this life" unless these three great facts flame out like
   the stars of heaven and are made to be essential to our eternal life.

   Then comes the manner by which we receive this life, namely, as a free
   gift. Jesus is exalted "to give repentance." The gift of God is eternal
   life. Salvation is by Free Grace and Free Grace alone. "This life is
   never an evolution. Spiritual life does not lie dormant within the dead
   heart of man. It is an importation from heaven, an implantation by the
   Spirit. We are quickened by the miraculous working of the Holy Spirit.
   Here we have the beginning of this life, namely, repentance, a sense of
   sin, a turning from it, an abhorrence of it--this is the gift of Jesus
   and the beginning of the new life.

   Then you have the privilege of this life--"forgiveness of sin." He that
   lives in Christ is set free from the guilt of sin by the righteousness
   of Christ. Then comes the evidence of this life--"whereof we are
   witnesses." We speak to you of a life which we have felt. We do not
   talk to you about an imaginary thing. We speak about a fact which we
   have observed, no, a fact which we have felt. A far greater witness is
   the Holy Spirit, who, as He converts and sanctifies men, bears the best
   possible testimony to the truth and life of the Gospel.

   The fruit of this life must also be preached--"whom God has given to
   them that obey Him." There is no life in Christ apart from obedience to
   Christ. Obedience is the sure result of our being made to live by the
   Spirit of God, nor must this ever be forgotten. Thus have I very
   roughly told you what you are to preach.

   IV. But now, fourthly, THE WHOLE OF THE DIVINE MESSAGE MUST BE
   DELIVERED. "Stand in the temple, and speak unto the people all the
   words of this life."

   Dear Brethren, it is forbidden us to omit any part of the Gospel. I am
   very glad it is--for if we were permitted, we should sometimes shirk
   the unpopular parts of it. Yet surely it would be very dangerous to
   omit any part of the Gospel, would it not? It would be like a physician
   giving a prescription to a dispenser, and the dispenser omitting one of
   the ingredients. He might kill the patient by the omission. The worst
   results follow the keeping back of any doctrine--we may not see those
   results--but they will follow. Possibly only the next generation will
   fully display the mischief done by a Truth of God concealed or denied.
   It would be a dangerous experiment for any one of us to make.

   And would it not be presumptuous to leave out a word? If we might take
   away from the testimony, who among us is wise enough to know what to
   omit? It is a thousand mercies that we are not left to pick and choose,
   for this would involve us in responsibilities far too weighty to be
   borne. It is too responsible a business for us to enter upon. Would not
   the liberty be injurious to us? Would it not encourage pride? Should we
   not think ourselves somebody if we were allowed to make a selection of
   the best parts of the sacred message? Surely, he that judges is greater
   than that which is judged. We should soon imagine ourselves to be far
   more nearly infallible than the Holy Scriptures.

   Would not this greatly dishonor God? Would it not suggest that God's
   Gospel is full of superfluities and excrescences, and needs our wisdom
   to make it perfect? Should we not conclude that the Lord was not so
   wise as ourselves if He needed our assistance to adapt His Gospel to
   the occasion? Do you not think it would open a very easy way for
   another Gospel? If we might omit, we might also add--and I feel sure we
   should very soon add a great deal which would neutral-

   ize and paralyze that of the Gospel which remained. If we felt at
   liberty to leave out something, we should naturally omit that which is
   offensive and away would go the tooth and edge of the Gospel.

   That which is offensive in the Gospel is just that which is effective.
   What men oppose is what God uses. If the offense of the Cross had
   ceased, the power of the Cross would have ceased, also. It is not left
   to us to cut and carve the doctrine of Christ--we are to preach "all
   the words of this life."

   Have we done so? That is the question. Have we knowingly concealed
   anything? "Well," says one, "I have not preached all the words of this
   life to the people but I have preached them to a choice company." But
   you are told to preach them all to the people. The doctrine of reserve
   must not be tolerated among Protestants. We must not make that
   philosophical division which is expressed in those two ugly words,
   esoteric, and exoteric. This is abolished by the command to preach to
   the people "all the words of this life." We shall get into no end of
   mischief and dishonesty if we incline to this practice of the Jesuits.

   We want an open Bible for every eye and a plain ministry for every ear.
   We are to preach "the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the
   Truth" in fair proportions and to preach this to the people openly. At
   the present moment there is a great tendency to be obscure upon the
   true and proper Deity of Christ. I enjoyed the commencement of the
   prayer just offered by our dear friend, Dr. John Hall. I enjoyed the
   whole of it but I was greatly touched by his lowly adoration of our
   Divine Lord.

   The Broad men will say that Jesus is Divine but they do not mean that
   He is God. They speak of His Divinity but they reject His Godhead. This
   is juggling with words. I hate deceptive phrases. We believe in the
   Godhead of Jesus and worship Him as God. Christ Jesus is either God or
   an impostor--there is no in between the two. He said that He was God,
   He permitted His disciples to think that He was God. He has left words
   in Scripture which have made millions believe Him to be God--and he
   could not have been a good Man if, as a mere man, He had produced such
   an impression and had taken no pains to remove it.

   There is also a sad tendency to becloud the truth of man's Fall and
   Depravity. If you do not preach man's ruin, you cannot preach "all the
   words of this life." You must be clear about his spiritual death, or
   you will never be right about his quickening into spiritual life.
   Unless you preach the terrible doom of the wicked you will never see
   the greatness of the salvation which comes to us by our Lord Jesus, who
   has "the words of eternal life."

   The work of the Holy Spirit is left too much in the rear by many
   preachers. Have we not heard of late that certain children do not need
   to be converted, that the Divine life is in them at their birth? Have
   they not preached education rather than regeneration, evolution rather
   than conversion? This is not speaking "all the words of this life." It
   is telling "old wives' fables."

   Brethren, have we not also a few about us who will not bear "all the
   words"? If you preach holiness as the fruits of the new life, they say
   you are legal. Verily, the results of this life are among the most
   important of the words which must be spoken to the people. Grace which
   does not make us hate sin is false grace. We must preach repentance
   from dead works and faith which works by love and the people must be
   told that Christ has not come to save men in their sin but from their
   sin. On this we will be clear as the sun at noon.

   If there is any other point of the Truth of God which is kept back, let
   us bring it the more forward. Let us insist doubly upon that which
   others neglect. It needs that the whole Gospel be brought before the
   people, that they may know it and feel its power. It will involve you
   in strife and struggle if you resolve on delivering an all-round
   Gospel--but fear not, the Lord will help you, even He who says to you
   by His angel--"Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the
   words of this life."

   I have done when I have asked what we are doing about this. We who are
   God's people--what are we doing in this matter? Some of us are
   preaching--are we preaching the whole Gospel? Has any doctrine been
   withheld? Let us bring forth things new and old and keep back nothing.
   Let us put every stone into the arch, lest our building come to
   nothing. Have we also preached these Truths as words of life? Have we
   felt the life in them? Have we expected life to come by them? Our
   preaching will be very much what we believe it will be. If we do not
   believe that God is going to bless it, He is not likely to bless it. If
   we do not expect to see life created by the living Word, we shall
   preach dead sermons to dead ears.

   Have we preached as witnesses? Complaint is made sometimes of a
   preacher that he says too much about his own experience. I do not
   believe that he can do so, for our experience is our witness-bearing.
   You can be egotistical and say that

   which is to your own credit, and this is censurable. Bt you can also be
   happily egoistical, and say that which is to God's glory, and that is
   commendable. You may lawfully say, "This is true. I have proved it!"
   This is one great reason why God uses men instead of angels to speak
   the Gospel, because men can support their message by their experience,
   and angels cannot.

   But, beloved Friends, are there not some of you who never tell anybody
   "the words of this life"? In such a congregation ought it to be
   possible to put your finger upon a single regenerated man or woman who
   has never for a whole lifetime spoken to another about the things of
   God? Are such persons regenerated? I will not come round and mark you.
   But, alas, some of you have never even confessed your faith in Christ.
   If you have not obeyed that important command for yourselves, you are
   not likely to have done much for the souls of others.

   But having joined the Church of God, are any of you satisfied to be
   silent? Are you content to let those around you sink to Hell? What?
   Never tell of Christ's love? What? Never speak of salvation to your own
   children and servants? Can this be right? In God's name, wake up! What
   are you left on this earth for? If there is nothing for you to do, why
   are you in this sinful world? You ought to be hurried off to Heaven,
   where you might praise God. No, no, I am afraid I am mistaken. You
   could not praise God in Heaven--you have not learned how. You could not
   join in the song of the redeemed for you have never had a rehearsal.
   Begin, begin, begin at once to praise Jesus in the ears of someone.
   Tell of Jesus and His love to sinners on earth, or how will you be able
   to make it known to angels, and principalities, and powers?

   Could not some of you do more than you are doing? Are there not young
   men who might preach in a street corner or at a cottage meeting? Some
   of our evangelistic societies flag for want of preachers. It ought not
   to be the case. What are you doing? If you could not preach to men and
   women, could you not teach the children? Very many Sunday schools in
   this region are straitened dreadfully for want of teachers. I could
   tell you of Ragged schools on Sunday evenings where multitudes of
   children are turned away because there are no teachers.

   What are you doing? You confess that you are not your own but bought
   with a price by the Lord Jesus--why, then, do you not serve Him? I have
   succeeded to a large degree in routing some of you out--I miss you on
   Sunday evenings-- and a good miss too, since I know where you are and
   that you are out serving God. You take your meal in the morning and
   then you feed others in the after part of the day. The Lord bless you
   in it. You were not created to sit in these pews and listen to
   me--there is something better for a mortal man to do than to be a
   hearer only.

   I charge every Christian man and woman here to listen to what I am
   about to say. Though I am no angel, I repeat in the name of the Lord
   Jesus the command of the heavenly messenger--"Go, stand out boldly, and
   speak unto the people all the words of this life." And may God bless
   you. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Plain Directions To Those Who Would Be Saved From Sin

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JULY 15, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Stand in awe and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed
   and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put
   your trust in the Lord." Psalm 4:4,5.

   DAVID was surrounded with many wicked and cruel enemies. They touched
   him in a tender place when they mocked his religion and so turned his
   glory into shame. They invented all kinds of lies against him. But the
   worst of all was that they said, "There is no help for him in God." As
   much as to say, "God has cast him off. Therefore, let men cast him off.
   He that is forsaken of the Lord is not fit to sit upon the throne of
   Israel. Let us set up Absalom in his place." This was malice, indeed.

   David first made his appeal to God in prayer. Herein he showed his
   wisdom. You can drive a better business at the Mercy Seat than in the
   world's jangling markets. You will get more relief from the righteous
   Lord than from ungodly men. To enter into debate is never so profitable
   as to enter into devotion. Carry not your complaint into the lower
   courts but go at once to the Court of King's Bench, where the Judge of
   All presides. Imitate David and David's Lord, who in the days of His
   flesh with strong crying and tears poured out His soul before the
   Father.

   After David had prayed, he expostulated with his adversaries. The first
   showed his sonship towards God, the second his brotherliness towards
   men. There is nothing of bitterness in the words I have read to
   you--they have a kindly voice in them. If his foes had been at all
   reasonable they would have listened to his pleadings. But it is to be
   feared they were otherwise minded. He urges them to cease from sin and
   he teaches them the way to do so. In four sentences he helps them to
   escape from their evil ways and to become better men. Had God's Spirit
   applied David's words to their consciences, they would have been
   pricked in their hearts and there would have been no need for them to
   be smitten on the cheekbone, that their cruel teeth might be broken.

   Upon these four precepts I would speak this morning as the Holy Spirit
   shall give me utterance, trusting, hoping, believing that many who
   desire a better life may find it while I speak. May God begin with them
   that they may begin with God! I have no confidence in my own
   persuasions. Yet, being called to use them, I trust in Him that sent me
   to make them effectual.

   David mentions four things as helpful towards ceasing from sinning. The
   first is, feel reverent awe--"Stand in awe and sin not." The second is,
   use thoughtful self-examination--"Commune with your own heart upon your
   bed and be still." The third advice is make a right approach to
   God--"Offer the sacrifice of righteousness" and the fourth is the
   greatest of them all--exercise faith--"Put your trust in the Lord."
   Here are four steppingstones across the filthy slough of sin--may you
   mark them well and step from one to the other by the help of God's
   Spirit--till you reach the other shore and stand on safe and clean
   ground!

   I. First, FEEL REVERENT AWE--"Stand in awe." It might be translated,
   "Tremble and sin not." Hardened sinners sin and tremble not. Penitent
   sinners tremble and sin not. Gracious work in the heart usually begins
   with trembling. I cannot believe a man has been saved if he has never
   trembled before God because of the evil of sin. The old house of
   depraved nature shakes before it comes down. The returning prodigal
   must feel, "I am not worthy to be called Your son," or he will never be
   called a son. He seeks his Father's face with much trembling, because
   he has so grievously offended.

   Awe is not a common emotion nowadays. This is a flippant age. Men are
   rather triflers than tremblers. If there is any doctrine which has
   peculiar weight and solemnity about it, they try to pare it down to
   less terrible proportions. Sin is not exceeding sinful to them, nor its
   punishment exceeding terrible. They would not have us know the terrors
   of the

   Lord, though by these very terrors we persuade men. True religion must
   have a savor of awe about it--"My heart stands in awe of Your Word," is
   the expression of one that knows God and is reconciled to Him.

   Let me say, then, to you who have been thoughtless and careless about
   your souls until now--we earnestly desire you to consider these
   words--"Stand in awe." Remember, there is a God--whatever you may
   think, or others may declare, there is a God who made you and in whose
   hand your breath is. There is a God that sits in Heaven, who beholds
   all the sons of men--and however much you may dislike the thought,
   there He is, and there He ever will be--and you will have to deal with
   Him and He with you, before long.

   God is everywhere present, at all times. He has seen all your evil ways
   and heard all your hard speeches. No night is so dark as to hide from
   His eyes. No chamber so retired as to shut Him out. He has even read
   your thoughts and imaginations. He notes all and forgets nothing. All
   things are ever present to Him. The days of your youth and the years of
   your manhood lie open before Him like a book. If men could but realize
   that God is there, how could they dare to sin before His very eyes? If
   at this moment anyone of my hearers who is without Christ could only be
   filled with this one thought, "God, You see me," surely he would stand
   in awe and at least desire to sin no more.

   Well may the preacher speak very solemnly when he feels that he is
   surrounded with God and that God is within him as well as around him!
   Well may his hearers tremble if he feels that all his thoughts are at
   this moment read by God! Stand in awe, I pray you, of God, who is now
   filling this house and is in your own houses. Will you sin in God's
   Presence? Can you blaspheme Him to His face? Will you disobey Him while
   His eyes are fixed upon you? I pray you stand in awe of the eternal
   God, in whom you live and move and have your being!

   Remember that this God, who is everywhere, and sees everything, is your
   Judge. He is pure and holy and cannot bear iniquity. He is angry with
   the wicked every day and will surely visit them for their
   transgressions. Every sinful act shall have its recompense of reward.
   Do not doubt it. The world is all in a tangle now but there will be a
   day when the Lord will draw out a straight thread for each man. Today
   the wicked prosper but God will turn their way upside down. And though
   the righteous are often under a cloud, He will bring forth their
   judgment as the noonday. Men respect an earthly judge. Therefore, I
   pray you, stand in awe of the Judge of all the earth.

   Do not forget, also, that your God is almighty. He has but to will it
   and the strongest of us would be crushed more easily than a moth. There
   is no escaping from the Lord--neither the heights of Carmel nor the
   depths of the sea could afford shelter for a fugitive from the Lord.
   Neither can any resist Him, for none have any power apart from Him. You
   have heard His thunder, and trembled at the bolts of His lightning.
   Behold how dreadful is God in arms! How dare you sin against a God so
   great! Stand in awe. Even holy Job, when he came near to the Lord,
   exclaimed, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my
   eyes see You. Therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."
   How can you feel Him near and not be filled with awe?

   Stand in awe of God because He is infinitely good. To me, personally,
   some little time ago, the Lord drew very near in a most special and
   memorable Providence. As I saw the hand of the Lord stretched out so
   marvelously, I felt my very flesh creep, not with alarm but with a
   joyful awe of One who could work so tenderly and condescendingly for
   His tried servant. I knew that He was God by His marvelously gracious
   care over me and nearness to my soul in adversity. Verily Jehovah is
   God and a great King above all gods. He is to be had in reverence of
   them that are round about Him. I know now why Jacob said at Bethel,
   "How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the House of God
   and this is the gate of Heaven."

   He was filled with a holy dread and solemn awe because God had been so
   near. I therefore say to you--stand in awe of God, because He is
   infinitely great and good. The illustration which I quoted from my own
   personal experience, I could not withhold, because it is, even at this
   hour one of the most vivid recollections of my life. God has dealt with
   me very graciously. Oh, His great goodness! A sense of it is
   overwhelming. We fear and tremble for all the goodness which the Lord
   makes to pass before us. Think of sin forgiven, of righteousness
   imputed, of spiritual life imparted, of that life preserved, supplied,
   nurtured.

   Think of Providence with all mindful foresight and abounding supplies.
   The love of God should make us reverent as angels and humble as
   penitents. If the impudence of pride might dare to insult justice, yet
   it should scorn to injure love. There is forgiveness with God, that He
   may be feared--His Grace, if not His Glory, should command the
   reverence of the most obdurate hearts. I pray you stand in awe of God
   and sin not. If thoughts of this kind could but dwell in men's minds

   they would surely perceive that sin is a great wrong to the Lord and
   they would flee from it, crying like Joseph, "How can I do this great
   wickedness and sin against God?"

   My dear Hearers, stand in awe in reference to a future state. You do
   not doubt the Truth of God which the Holy Spirit has revealed that when
   you die you will not cease to be. There will be a resurrection of the
   dead, both of the just and of the unjust--"for we must all appear
   before the Judgment Seat of Christ." Oh, that all persons would
   remember this wherever they go! I have heard of a soldier--I think he
   was employed in the survey of Palestine--who was in the valley of
   Jehoshaphat, outside Jerusalem, and someone remarked that it was
   reported by some that this valley would be the scene of the Last
   Judgment and in that place the multitudes would be gathered.

   The soldier, hearing this, said, "What a crowd there will be! I shall
   be there and I will sit on this stone." He sat down to realize the
   scene and his imagination acted so powerfully that he seemed to himself
   to be among the throng and to behold the Great White Throne. He was
   seen to swoon and fall to the ground. Do you wonder? If anyone of us
   could, in our inmost souls, behold that scene, should we not be
   overcome? I wish I could so speak this morning that some of you would
   picture that last tremendous day for which all other days were made.
   Behold that "diesirae" that Day of Wrath, that day when justice will
   sit upon the throne! Behold it by anticipation, for it will soon be
   upon you in very deed.

   As surely as you live, you will live again--and for every act on earth
   you must give an account in that last assize. Trifle not, for the Judge
   is at the door. We may hear His trumpets before this day is over. Let
   not this thought be driven from you--rather welcome it and let it abide
   in your minds--if you were to think of nothing else for a time you
   might be justified, since it is of such overwhelming importance that
   you prepare for your final state. Shall a man live and never think of
   the end of life? Can a man think it wise to occupy himself with
   frivolities throughout the whole of his earthly existence? While he is
   shaping his eternal condition, will he do nothing else but sport?

   Will he never think of that day when his position shall be fixed by the
   verdict of the great Judge? O my dear Hearers, do not forget that you
   have to live in a future state and that you will see Him who died upon
   the Cross, seated on the Throne in that day when all nations shall be
   gathered before Him and He shall divide them, the one from the other,
   as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. May the thought of
   the eternal reward also rest on your minds! Hear you, even now, that
   word of the King to the righteous--"Come, you blessed of My Father,
   inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

   Hear, also, that dread sentence to those on his left hand, "Depart from
   Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
   angels." Oh, think of these things and "stand in awe, and sin not"!
   This awe is one of the strongest moral disinfectants--use it largely.
   There is no fear of your having too much of it. He that has no fear of
   God before his eyes sins with a high hand but awe of the Lord leads to
   purity of life.

   II. In the second place, David admonished the ungodly to practice
   THOUGHTFUL SELF-EXAMINATION. "Commune with your own heart upon your bed
   and be still."

   I am not trying, my dear Hearer, to preach a sermon this morning--I am
   longing to take you by the hand and to lead you in the right way. I
   pray the Holy Spirit to make you willing to follow my gentle guidance.
   My dear Friend, you are now asked to think about yourself--"commune
   with your own heart." When once men choose the way of evil they run in
   it with their eyes shut. They do not wish to consider. It is easier to
   go blindly on. They will think about their worldly concerns, their
   profits and losses, their pleasures and amusements. But they refuse
   seriously to consider their condition before God.

   O my Friend, think of what you are and where you are, what you have
   done, what you are doing, what it will all lead to! Are you such a fool
   that you will not consider? Then put on the cap and bells, and wear a
   clown suit and take to your proper trade. And yet, even if you were a
   merry Andrew, it would become you sometimes to be wise as well as merry
   and to take a look into the future, lest you have to take a leap in the
   dark, at last.

   Especially think of the state of your heart. This is the vital point.
   Are you right with God? Do you serve your Maker? Have you truly
   repented of former sin? Have you fled to Christ as your Refuge? Have
   you been born again? Are you the subject of sanctifying grace? "Commune
   with your own heart" upon these essential points--he that would have
   his face clean must look in a glass to see his spots. And he that would
   have his heart clean must gaze into the mirror of God's Word that he
   may discover his secret faults.

   Your heart may be diseased while your cheek seems ruddy with health.
   Look within you, Man, and be not deceived as to the fountain of your
   being. Have you really passed from death to life? Does the Spirit of
   the God of Truth dwell in you? Such questions as these are
   all-important. I pray you answer them as before the living God, without
   partiality or negligence.

   Think by yourself, alone and in quiet. Oh, how I wish I could induce
   you to spend an hour or two closeted with yourself! "Commune with your
   own heart upon your bed"--at that time when companions are out of the
   way--when the jest is silenced and the common talk is hushed. Get by
   yourself, when you think of yourself or it will be an impossible task.
   Choose the hour of night when all is still around you and darkness
   lends its solemnity. You can forego a little natural sleep, if thereby
   you may be aroused from the sleep of spiritual death. The bed and sleep
   are instructive emblems of the grave and death--they may aid you in the
   serious work of examining your hearts.

   Remember that as you put off your clothes and go to your bed, so you
   must put off your body and quit the scene of life's activities. Are you
   ready for that undressing? Make your bed the place of your contrition,
   even as David did when he said, "All the night make I my bed to swim."
   The earth outside has its dews, let your heart have its tears. Think by
   yourself, of yourself and then think for yourself. You have been
   carried away by your companions. You have tried to think as they think.
   The general opinion of the age may have influenced you towards
   indifference. With a family round about you, you have looked at things
   too much in the light of business and personal benefit.

   But it will be wise to lay aside all this. As you will have to die
   alone and to put in a personal appearance at the Judgment Seat of
   Christ, it will be prudent to divest yourself of your surroundings and
   "commune with your own heart." I commend this text most heartily to
   your immediate practice. If you are unsaved--think, rather than sleep.
   The tendency of most men with regard to eternal things is to go to
   sleep and let matters drift--I pray you, don't do it. I dare not let
   you take your rest while all is wrong with you. Sleep, if you like, in
   a house that is on fire. Sleep, if you like, in a ship that is settling
   down and rapidly sinking. But I charge you do not sleep while you are
   an unforgiven man and your soul is nearing the eternal
   judgment--"Commune with your own heart upon your bed"--use your bed for
   seeking instead of sleeping.

   I remember the time when I dared not go to sleep, for fear I might wake
   up in Hell. Many, when under conviction of sin, have at length resolved
   not to sleep until they found Christ. I wish that some such feeling as
   that would steal over you at this moment.

   Keep on thinking till you come to be still. "Commune with your own
   heart upon your bed and be still." Do you know what that means? There
   comes a time with men whom God is saving that all grows quiet within
   them. Their old pleasures and desires are hushed. The voice of the
   outside world is still and they hear in the silence of their souls "the
   still small voice" of conscience. Oh, that you were at this moment
   still enough to hear that warning note! Memory also commences her
   rehearsals--it tells of the past and brings forgotten things before the
   soul, Oh, that all of you would remember and think yourselves that God
   requires that which is past.

   Best of all, God speaks in the soul. It was at night, when young Samuel
   was on his bed, that the Lord said to him, "Samuel, Samuel." And it is
   when the heart at last has grown still that God's voice of mercy is
   heard calling to the man by name. Oh, that in such a case you may have
   Divine Grace to answer, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears"!

   I beseech you, give yourselves space for thought, before thought
   becomes the worm of eternal misery to you. Remember, before you hear
   that voice from Heaven which spoke to the rich man in Hell and said to
   him, "Son, remember." You slaves of fashion and frivolity, think, I
   pray you! You serfs of daily money-grubbing, rest a while and hear what
   God the Lord shall speak to you! You can hardly hear the great bell of
   St. Paul's when the traffic is thundering around but it sounds solemnly
   in the stillness of night. We who live in the more remote suburbs hear
   Big Ben of Westminster at night but we seldom note it amid the stir and
   noise of the day. Do give an opportunity for the eternal voices to
   pierce the clamors of the hour.

   Do, for God's sake and for your soul's sake, hear what wisdom teaches
   concerning everlasting things! O Lord, give Your Grace to my dear
   Hearers, that they may consider their ways and turn unto Your statutes!

   III. Very briefly, let us note that David gives a third piece of
   advice, which in essence means APPROACH UNTO GOD ARIGHT--"Offer the
   sacrifices of righteousness."

   Now, I do not quite know what David, himself, may have intended by it,
   but this is how I interpret it. Come to God. Come to God in His own
   way. Come as Israel came to the Tabernacle in the wilderness, bringing
   their sacrifices with them.

   When they brought their sacrifices, the first thing they did was to lay
   their hand on the victim and make a confession of sin. Come, then, with
   broken and contrite hearts unto the Lord. "The sacrifices of God are a
   broken spirit." Own your shortcomings and transgressions. Do not cloak
   or excuse your sins. Get to your chamber and tell the Lord what you
   have done. Pour out your hearts before Him--turn them upside down, as
   it were, and let all flow out, even to the dregs. Confess your pride
   and unbelief, your Sabbath-breaking, your dishonesty, your falsehood,
   your disobedience to parents, your every breach of the Divine Law.
   Whatsoever you have done amiss, confess it before Him and thus go to
   Him in the only way in which He can receive you, even as sinners owning
   your guilt.

   Go also to the Lord with gracious desires to be rid of sin. Entreat
   reconciliation, saying, "I would no longer be what I have been. I throw
   down the weapons of my rebellion, I pluck out the plumes of my pride. O
   Lord, I stand before You guilty and I pray You will forgive me and then
   rid me of the tyrant evils which now rule me so terribly! Oh, that I
   may sin no more! If I have been a drunkard, help me from this day to
   relinquish the intoxicating cup. If I have been a swearer, wash out my
   mouth. May I, henceforth, speak nothing but that which will be
   acceptable to You! If I have been unchaste, cleanse my mind, that I may
   keep my body pure!" In this way come to God with contrite hearts. How
   much do I long that you may draw near to God with true repentance and
   hearty resolves to conquer sin!

   The main thing, however, is to bring unto the Lord the offering which
   He has Divinely appointed and provided. You know what that is. There is
   one sacrifice of righteousness without which you cannot be accepted.
   Come to God by faith in Jesus Christ. Plead the precious blood of
   atonement and say, "My Lord, for His dear sake who died upon the tree,
   receive Your wanderer and now be pleased to grant me that repentance
   and remission of sins which He is exalted to give."

   My Hearers, am I talking so as to reach your hearts? If not, I do not
   want to talk any longer. I had far rather be silent lest I minister to
   your condemnation. Hearts that have forgotten your Lord till now, oh,
   may His Spirit constrain you to return to Him this day through the
   sacrifice of Jesus! If you come through Christ, you will never be cast
   out. The Father will receive any sinner that pleads the name of Jesus.
   And Jesus is willing that you should plead His name. He died on purpose
   to be the propitiation for our sins--God grant that you may accept Him
   as such!

   Come to your God--this is the great necessity of the hour. Say, "I will
   arise, and go to my Father." If the prodigal had said, "I will arise
   and go to my brother," he would have made a great mistake, for the
   elder brother would have shut the door in his face. Even if his brother
   had been of a kinder sort, he could not have forgiven the
   transgressor--his father alone could do that. Come, then to your God
   with earnest prayer. For it prevails with Heaven. Come also with humble
   praise. For it is much that you are yet alive and not yet cast into the
   pit. Come to your God and Father with the resolve to render Him your
   life's service, saying, "O Lord our God, other lords beside You have
   had dominion over us--but by You only will we make mention of Your
   name!"

   IV. I must now close with the fourth point, which is, in some respects,
   the most important of all--EXERCISE FAITH. When holy awe and thoughtful
   self-communion have led us to seek the Lord, then we are prepared for
   the great precept which follows. It is the command of the Gospel in its
   Old Testament form--"Put your trust in the Lord." In whom should a man
   trust but in his God? It may seem reasonable to trust our fellow
   creature. But, alas, man is a frail thing and to lean upon him ensures
   a fall. It is, therefore, unreasonable to trust in the creature but to
   rely upon the Creator is the dictate of pure reason. May God the Holy
   Spirit, lead you at once to a childlike faith in our faithful God!

   "Put your trust in the Lord." First, trust Him as willing to receive
   you, to forgive you, to accept you and to bless you. Are you
   despairing? Do you say, "There is no hope"? "Put your trust in the
   Lord." Are you saying, "I am without strength and therefore cannot be
   saved"? Why not? "Put your trust in the Lord." Does the Evil One say
   that God will not receive you? "Put your trust in the Lord," who is
   infinitely gracious and full of compassion. He says, "As I live, says
   the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But that
   the wicked turn from his way and live."

   Surely, you may trust in Him whose mercy endures forever. Especially
   trust in the Lord as He reveals Himself in the Person of His Son Jesus
   Christ. In Him you see love written out in capital letters. "Put your
   trust in the Lord" as having provided the one sacrifice for sin whereby
   He has put away forever all the sins of those who believe in Him. God
   is just,

   and the Justifier of him that believes. Believe that the precious blood
   can make you whiter than snow, scarlet sinner as you are. Come with
   that daring trust which ventures all upon the bare promise of a
   faithful God.

   Say, "I will go in unto the King and if I perish I perish." If you do
   not trust in Christ, you must be lost. Therefore come and try the
   Divine way of salvation. The Lord Jesus is God's unspeakable gift,
   freely bestowed on all who by faith receive Him. Dare to grasp what God
   holds out to you as the one hope of your spirit. Put your trust in the
   Lord, I beseech you. By His agony and bloody sweat, by His Cross and
   passion, by His precious death and burial, by His glorious resurrection
   and ascension, I entreat you to trust in the Son of God, who has once
   appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

   Trust in the Lord, next, that by the work of His Holy Spirit He can
   renew you. The glorious Lord, who made the world out of nothing, can
   make something out of you. If you are given to anger, the Holy Spirit
   can make you calm and loving. If you have been defiled with impurity,
   He can make you pure in heart. If you have been groveling, He can
   elevate you. I may be addressing a forlorn man who thinks that nothing
   can be made of him. I tell you, you have no idea what God can do with
   you. He can put heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. He can set you at
   last among the heavenly choristers, that your voice, sweeter than that
   of angels, may be heard among their everlasting symphonies.

   He will even here put you among the children and set you with the
   princes of His people. Believe that the Holy Spirit can create you
   anew, can raise you from your dead condition and can make you perfect
   in every good work to do His will. Put your trust in the Lord for this.
   In fact, "Put your trust in the Lord" for everything. Poor Sinner, when
   you begin to trust God, you will look to Him mainly to put away your
   sin. But when that benefit is received, you may go on to trust Him
   about all your affairs. You may look to Him concerning your poverty,
   your sickness, your bereavements, your children, your business. You may
   trust Him for time, and trust Him for eternity--trust Him about little
   things, trust Him about great things. Once under the shadow of His
   wings you are covered altogether. Nothing is left out in the cold. To
   trust in God is to be your perpetual business, "For the just shall live
   by faith."

   My closing theme is this--it has been asserted by certain of the modern
   school that we preach up salvation by a simple intellectual
   operation--salvation by merely believing a certain doctrinal statement.
   This is their way of stating, or mis-stating, justification by faith,
   which we do assuredly preach and preach most distinctly and
   confidently. We are not responsible for their caricatures of our
   teaching but we would be moved thereby to be more and more explicit. As
   far as faith is an intellectual operation, it is simple enough. But
   simple faith is no trifle. Fire is a simple element but it has a
   measureless power. Connected with faith there are forces of the
   mightiest kind for influencing character and purifying

   life.

   Faith is the surest of all sin-killers--in fact its tendency is to
   extirpate sin. The moral and spiritual change which accompanies faith
   and grows out of it is of the most remarkable kind. Faith's work in the
   soul is something to be wondered at and to be admired to all eternity.
   For, mark--when a man believes in the Lord Jesus Christ--when he
   believes that Jesus so died for him that he is effectually redeemed,
   when he believes that the Lord Jesus has cleansed him and that he is
   saved--the result upon his heart and life cannot be common-place. A
   Divine persuasion operates upon his whole nature--he is filled with
   adoring gratitude and that gratitude breeds an intense love--which
   fervent love sets itself to work for the glory of God by the
   purification of the soul for sin.

   "My Jesus died because of my sin," says the pardoned sinner, "therefore
   no sin shall abide in my heart. Away, O sin! Away, forever." Some
   favorite sin cries, "Let me lodge within you," but he cries, "It cannot
   be, for I love Jesus." Sin slew our Savior--how can we be on friendly
   terms with it? We hate it with perfect hatred. Sin pleads, "Is it not a
   little one?" But the grateful heart sees great evil in a little sin,
   since the great Father abhors all iniquity. If the little sin was not
   the spear which pierced the Lord, it helped to make the crown of thorns
   which tore His blessed brow and therefore away with it, away with it--

   "The dearest idol I have known,

   Whatever that idol is,

   Help me to tear it from its throne,

   And worship only You."

   Nothing creates more indignation and revenge against sin than a
   grateful sense of "Free Grace and dying love." Surely this is no mean
   help towards moral purification. Faith in God is effective for the
   noblest ends upon the soul be-

   cause it elevates the mind. The man who is hoping to be saved by his
   own works and efforts begins on earth and ends there. But the habit of
   looking up to God is in itself a blessing. It is something to have
   learned to look beyond this dunghill of fallen humanity in which no one
   will ever find a pearl. It is something, I say, to wait upon God
   because your expectation is from Him.

   Trust in the sacred Trinity teaches us to be familiar with higher and
   better things than we can find in ourselves or in this poor world. A
   hold of Heaven is a help towards drawing us there. I find that those
   who do not put their trust in the Lord are by no means spiritual men,
   nor men whose conversation is in Heaven. But the faith which they
   despise puts our foot on that ladder the top of which reaches up to
   God.

   Faith in God brings new ideas of God's demands. When we do not know
   God, we read His Law and judge it to be harsh. "This is too strict.
   This is too holy. How can we obey this hard Law?" But when we have
   faith in God, we correct our estimate and judge that these laws of our
   heavenly Father are all meant for our good. He only forbids what would
   harm us and He only commands what is most truly for our benefit. By
   faith we look upon the Law as a loving directory--a chart of life's
   voyage showing what channel to follow and what rock to avoid. "His
   Commandments are not grievous." He takes from us no real pleasure and
   imposes no crushing burden.

   To form so much better an estimate of God's Law is a great moral
   change, is it not? Must it not greatly affect the man's behavior? The
   man who puts his trust in the Lord sees the pleasures of sin in a new
   light. For he sees the evil which follows them by noting the agonies
   which they brought upon our Lord when He bore our sins in His own body
   on the tree. Without faith a man says to himself, "This sin is a very
   pleasant thing, why should I not enjoy it? Surely I may eat this fruit,
   which looks so charming and is so much to be desired." The flesh sees
   honey in the drink but faith at once perceives that there is poison in
   the cup. Faith spies the snake in the grass and gives warning of it.
   Faith remembers death, judgment, the great reward, the just punishment
   and that dread word--eternity.

   Faith sees the end as well as the beginning. Faith, while the feast is
   going on, reminds the revelers of the reckoning. Faith feels that she
   cannot buy the transient joys of earth at the countless cost of an
   immortal soul. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world
   and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his
   soul?" Faith destroys the power of temptation. When Satan says, "You
   are in trouble and here is an easy way of escape--only do a little
   wrong and you will get a great good." "No," says faith, "it is God's
   business to get me out of my trouble and I will not go to the devil for
   his aid." "Ah," says Satan, "everybody else does so!" Faith answers, "I
   have to do with nobody but God and that which is right."

   Ah, Brethren! If Satan should offer us all the kingdoms of this world
   if we would do his bidding, true faith would baffle him by saying,
   "What can you offer me? I have all these things already--for all things
   are mine in Christ Jesus my Lord." When faith is in its true place,
   covering the Believer, all the wicked suggestions of the Evil One are
   caught upon it and quenched by it like fiery darts which fall upon a
   shield. We are preserved from temptation by the buckler of faith.

   Moreover, faith is always attended with a new nature. That is a point
   never to be forgotten. No man has faith in God of a true kind unless he
   has been born again. Faith in God is one of the first indications of
   regeneration. Now, if you have a new and holy nature, you are no longer
   moved towards sinful objects as you were before. The things that you
   once loved you now hate and therefore you will not run after them. You
   can hardly understand it but so it is, that your thoughts and tastes
   are totally changed. You long for that very holiness which once it was
   irksome to hear of and you loathe those very pursuits which were once
   your delights.

   When the Lord renews us it is not half done. It is a total and radical
   change. If there were no work of the Holy Spirit connected with faith
   and if faith were nothing more than human assent to truth, we might be
   blameworthy for preaching salvation through it. But since faith leads
   the van in the graces of the Spirit of God and turns the rudder of the
   soul, we are more and more concerned to place faith where God places it
   and we say without hesitation, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
   you shall be saved."

   Remember you will thus be saved from the power of sin and from the
   practice of sin by being saved from the love of sin. O Brothers and
   Sisters, I am not afraid to preach to you justification by faith alone!
   Look to Jesus and live! I would bid the sinner come to Jesus just as he
   is and take Him to be his complete salvation. We do not preach to you
   the hope of going to Heaven and yet keeping your sins--indeed, till sin
   is stopped, there can be no Heaven. Our Lord Jesus has

   opened a hospital and into it He receives all manner of sick folk. Yet
   He does not receive them that they may continue sick but that He may
   heal them and make them whole.

   He receives the sinful that He may make them holy. He saves men by
   changing their natures and infusing into them a heavenly life. Come,
   then, you leprous in heart, come to Him whose touch can make you clean!
   Come, you with withered limbs, incapable of holy exercise--He can, with
   a word, restore you! Come here, you blind, for He will give you sight!
   Yes, rise, you dead, for He shall give you life! Repentance and
   remission are twin gifts which He is exalted to bestow. Come now to Him
   and receive out of His fullness!

   The thought of death is constantly forced upon me by the largeness of
   this congregation and the fact that there seldom passes a week but what
   some one among you is taken away. Soon your bodies will lie beneath the
   greensward and your souls will be in the eternal state. In due time you
   will stand where your past will be revived. For the books shall be
   opened and you will be judged out of the things which are written in
   those books. What a record you have written within the Book of
   Remembrance, to be read aloud in that day! Oh, you ungodly ones, what
   will you do then? Christ-rejecting Sinner, how will you bear to hear
   those items read before the assembled world?

   If from this pulpit I were to read out certain incidents of your past
   lives, I do not suppose you would get up to go out, for that would
   convict you. But you would want to go very badly. How, then, will you
   endure to have your sins laid bare by the hand of God while every eye
   beholds them? How will you bear that shame and everlasting contempt
   which will be the result of your true character being blazoned abroad?
   How infinitely good it will be if all your past offenses shall be
   blotted out! How joyful to be wholly absolved by the Lord of Pardons!
   If by believing in Christ Jesus you receive a change of nature and live
   a different life and stand at the Last Day accepted in the Beloved,
   what bliss it will be!

   What joy will be yours when Jesus comes, when His smile shall light up
   the universe, and when He shall acknowledge you before the angels of
   God! You were with Him in His humiliation, you shall be with Him in His
   exaltation. You loved Him and served Him here below, you shall sit upon
   His Throne and reign with Him forever and ever. Ah, then, whatever
   little you may have suffered for His sake will be as nothing in
   comparison with the exceeding weight of glory. Whatever struggling of
   heart and pain of soul you felt in escaping from the sin which
   enthralled you will be your joy when the result is seen in your eternal
   perfection. The bliss of beholding the face of our Beloved will be
   Heaven enough for us.

   Even now I feel eager to quit this feeble body at the bare thought of
   being with the Bridegroom of my soul--

   "My eyes shall see Him in that day, The God that died for me; And all
   my rising bones shall say, Lord, who is like to You?"

   May you and I, by God's Grace, behold our Redeemer when He shall stand
   in the latter day upon the earth! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Peter's Restoration

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JULY 22, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And immediately, while he yet spoke, the cock crowed. And the Lord
   turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the
   Lord, how He had said unto him, Before the cock crowed, you shall deny
   Me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly." Luke 22:60-62.

   PETER had fallen terribly. He had denied his Master, denied Him
   repeatedly, denied Him with oaths, denied Him in His Presence, while
   His Master was being smitten and falsely charged. He denied Him, though
   he was an Apostle. Denied him, though he had declared that should all
   men forsake Him, yet he never would. It was a sad, sad sin. Remember
   what led up to it. It was, first, Peter's presumption and
   self-confidence. He reckoned that he could never stumble and for that
   very reason he speedily fell. A haughty spirit goes before a fall. Oh,
   that we might look to the roots of bitter flowers and destroy them!

   If presumption is flourishing in the soil of our hearts today we shall
   soon see the evil fruit which will come of it. Reliance upon our
   firmness of character, depth of experience, clearness of insight, or
   maturity in grace will, in the end, land us in disgraceful failure. We
   must either deny ourselves, or we shall deny our Lord. If we cleave to
   self-confidence, we shall not cleave to Him.

   Immediately, Peter's denial was owing to cowardice. The brave Peter in
   the presence of a maid was ashamed. He could not bear to be pointed out
   as a follower of the Galilean. He did not know what might follow upon
   it--but he saw his Lord without a friend and felt that it was a lost
   cause and he did not care to avow it. Only to think that Peter, under
   temporary discouragement, should play the coward! Yet cowardice treads
   upon the heels of boasting--he that thinks he can fight the world will
   be the first man to run away.

   His sin also arose from his want of watchfulness. His Master had said
   to him, "What, could you not watch with Me one hour?" And no doubt
   there was more meaning in the words than appeared on the surface. The
   Lord several times said to him, "Pray, that you enter not into
   temptation." The words were repeated with deep impressiveness, for they
   were greatly needed. But Peter had not watched--he had been warming his
   hands. He did not pray--he felt too strong in himself to be driven to
   special prayer. Therefore, when the gusts of temptation came, they
   found Peter's boat unprepared for the storm and they drove it upon a
   rock.

   When Peter first denied his Master a cock crowed. Peter must have heard
   that crowing or he would not have communicated the fact to the
   Evangelists who recorded it. But though he heard it, he was an example
   of those who have ears but hear not. One would have thought that the
   warning would have touched his conscience. But it did not. And when the
   cock crowed a second time, after he had committed three denials, it
   might not have awakened him from his dreadful sleep if a higher
   instrumentality had not been used, namely, a look from the Lord Jesus.

   God keep us free from this spirit of slumber, for it is to the last
   degree dangerous! Peter was under the direful influence of Satan, for
   it was a night wherein the powers of darkness were specially active.
   "This is your hour," said Jesus, "and the power of darkness." That same
   influence which assailed the Savior unsuccessfully--for, said He, "the
   prince of this world comes and has nothing in Me"--assailed Peter with
   sad result. For the Evil One had something in Peter and he soon found
   it out. The sparks from Satan's flint and steel fell upon our Lord as
   upon water. But Peter's heart was like a tinder-box. And when the
   sparks fell, they found fuel there. Oh, that we may be kept from the
   assaults of Satan!

   "Lead us not into temptation" is a necessary prayer. But the next
   petition is specially noteworthy--"but deliver us from the Evil One." A
   man never gets anything out of the devil, even if he conquers him. You
   will find in combat with him that even if you win the victory, you come
   off with gashes and wounds of which you will carry the scars to your
   grave. "All the while," says Mr. Bunyan, while Christian was fighting
   with Apollyon, "I did note that he did not so

   much as give one smile." Oh no, there is nothing to smile about when
   the arch-enemy is upon us. He is such a master of the cruel art of
   soul-wounding, that every stroke tells.

   He knows our weak places in the present. He brings to remembrance our
   errors in the past and he paints in blackest colors the miseries of the
   future and so seeks to destroy our faith. All his darts are fiery ones.
   It takes all a man's strength and a great deal more to ward off his
   cunning and cruel cuts. The worst of it is that as in Peter's case, he
   casts a spell over men so that they do not fight at all but yield
   themselves an easy prey. Our Savior said to Peter, "Simon, Simon,
   behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
   but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not." Peter was as much
   under the power of Satan as corn is in the hand of the man who winnows
   it. He went up and down in that sieve like a helpless thing and so
   passed from simple falsehood to plain denials of his Master with oaths
   and curses.

   I desire in this discourse to speak chiefly of Peter's restoration.
   Peter was down. But he was soon up again. One writer says the story
   should rather be called Peter's restoration than Peter's fall. His fall
   was soon over--he was like a little child learning to walk, scarcely
   down before his mother has him up again. It was not a continuance in a
   sin, like that of David, who remained for months without repentance.
   But it was the quick speech of a man carried away by sudden temptation
   and it was followed by a speedy repentance. Upon his restoration we are
   going to meditate.

   It was brought about by two outward means. I like to think of the
   singular combination--the crowing of the cock and a look from the Lord.
   When I come to preach to you it almost makes me smile to think that God
   should save a soul through me. I may find a fit image of myself in the
   poor rooster. Mine is poor crowing. But as the Master's look went with
   the bird's crowing, so, I trust, it will go with my feeble preaching.
   The next time you also go out to try and win a soul for Jesus, say to
   yourself, "I cannot do it--I cannot melt a hard, rebellious heart. But
   yet the Lord may use me. And if there comes a happy conjunction of my
   feeble words with my Lord's potent look, then the heart will dissolve
   in streams of repentance."

   Crow away, poor bird--if Jesus looks while you are crowing, you will
   not crow in vain--but Peter's heart will break. The two things are
   joined together and let no man put them asunder-- commonplace
   instrumentality and the Divine Worker. Christ has all the glory and all
   the more glory because He works by humble means. I trust that there
   will be, this morning, a conjunction of the weakness of the preacher
   with the strength of the Holy Spirit so that stony hearts may be broken
   and God glorified.

   This morning, first, let us look at the Lord who looked. And secondly
   let us look into the look which the Lord looked. And then, thirdly, let
   us look at Peter, upon whom the Lord looked. We will be all the while
   looking--may our Lord look upon us. May His Holy Spirit work with His
   Holy Word!

   I. First, LET US LOOK AT THE LORD, WHO LOOKED UPON PETER. Can you
   picture Him up there in the hall, up yonder steps, before the high
   priest and the council? Peter is down below in the area of the house
   warming his hands at the fire. Can you see the Lord Jesus turning round
   and fixing His eyes intently upon His erring disciple? What do you see
   in that look?

   I see in that look, first, that which makes me exclaim--What thoughtful
   love! Jesus is bound, He is accused, He has just been smitten on the
   face--but His thought is of wandering Peter. You want all your wits
   about you when you are before cruel judges and are called upon to
   answer false charges. You are the more tried when there is no man to
   stand by you, or bear witness on your behalf--it is natural, at such an
   hour--that all your thoughts should be engaged with your own cares and
   sorrows. It would have been no reproach had the thoughts of our Lord
   been concentrated on His personal sufferings. And all the less so
   because these were for the sake of others.

   But our blessed Master is thinking of Peter and His heart is going out
   towards His unworthy disciple. That same influence which made His heart
   drive out its store of blood through every pore of His body in the
   bloody sweat now acted upon His soul and drove His thoughts outward
   towards that member of His mystical body which was most in danger.
   Peter was thought of when the Redeemer was standing to be mocked and
   reviled. Blessed be His dear name, Jesus always has an eye for His
   people, whether He is in His shame or in His Glory.

   Jesus always has an eye for those for whom He shed His blood. Though
   now He reigns in Glory, He still looks steadily upon His own--His
   delight is in them and His care is over them. There was not a particle
   of selfishness about our Savior. "He saved others; Himself He could not
   save." He looked to others but He never looked to Himself. I see, then,
   in our Lord's looking upon Peter, a wondrously thoughtful love.

   I exclaim, next, What a boundless condescension! If our Lord's eyes had
   wandered that day upon "that other disciple" that was known to the high
   priest, or if He had even looked upon some of the servants of the
   house, we should not have been so astonished. But when Jesus turns, it
   is to look upon Peter, the man from whom we should naturally have
   turned away our faces, after his wretched conduct. He had acted most
   shamefully and cruelly and yet the Master's eyes sought him out in
   boundless pity! If there is a man here who feels himself to be near
   akin to the devil, I pray the Lord to look first at him.

   If you feel as if you have sinned yourself out of the pale of humanity
   by having cast off all good things and by having denied the Lord that
   bought you, yet still consider the amazing mercy of the Lord. If you
   are one of His, His pitying eyes will find you out. For even now it
   follows you as it did Hagar, when she cried, "God see me." But oh, the
   compassion of that look! When first I understood that the Lord looked
   on me with love in the midst of my sin, it did seem so wonderful! He
   whom the heavens adore, before whose sight the whole universe is
   stretched out as on a map, yet passes by all the glories of Heaven that
   He may fix His tender gaze upon a wandering sheep and may in great
   mercy bring it back again to the fold. For the Lord of Glory to look
   upon a disciple who denies Him is boundless condescension!

   But then, again, what tender wisdom do I see here! "The Lord turned and
   looked upon Peter." He knew best what to do--He did not speak to him
   but looked upon him. He had spoken to Peter before and that voice had
   called him to be a fisher of men. He had given Peter His hand before
   and saved him from a watery grave when he was beginning to sink. But
   this time He gives him neither His voice nor His hand but that which
   was equally effectual and intensely suitable--He lent him His
   eyes--"The Lord looked upon Peter."

   How wisely does Christ always choose the way of expressing His
   affection and working our good! If He had spoken to Peter, the mob
   would have assailed him, or at least the ribald crowd would have
   remarked upon the sorrow of the Master and the treachery of the
   disciple--our gracious Lord will never needlessly expose the faults of
   His chosen. Possibly no words could have expressed all that was thrown
   into that look of compassion. Why, Brethren, a volume as big as a Bible
   is contained within that look of Jesus.

   I defy all the tongues and all the pens in the world to tell us all
   that our Divine Lord meant by that look. Our Savior employed the most
   prudent, the most comprehensive, the most useful method of speaking to
   the heart of His erring follower. He looked volumes into him. His
   glance was a Divine hieroglyphic full of unutterable meanings which it
   conveyed in a more clear and vivid way than words could have done.

   As I think of that look again, I am compelled to cry out--What Divine
   power is here! Why, dear Friends, this look worked wonders. I sometimes
   preach with all my soul to Peter and, alas--he likes my sermon and
   forgets it. I have known Peter read a good book full of most powerful
   pleading and when he has read it through, he has shut it up and gone to
   sleep. I remember my Peter when he lost his wife and one would have
   thought it would have touched him and it did--with some natural
   feeling. Yet he did not return to the Lord, whom he had forsaken but
   continued in his backsliding.

   See, then, how our Lord can do with a look what we cannot do with a
   sermon! What the most powerful writer cannot do with hundreds of pages
   and what affliction cannot do with even its heaviest stroke. The Lord
   looked and Peter wept bitterly. I cannot help thinking with Isaac
   Williams that there is a majestic simplicity in the expressions here
   used--"The Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter went out and
   wept bitterly." The passage reminds us of that first of Genesis--"And
   God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

   As the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians and troubled the
   Egyptians, so did He now look into Peter's heart and his thoughts
   troubled him. Oh, the power of the Lord Christ! If there was this power
   about Him when He was bound before His accusers, what is His power now
   that He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by
   Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them? In that look
   there was Divinity. The Son of God looked upon Peter--the text does not
   use the name Jesus but it expressly says, "The Lord turned and looked
   upon Peter." That Divine look did the deed.

   Let me beg you to note what sacred teaching is here. The teaching is of
   practical value and should be at once carried out by the followers of
   Jesus. You, dear Friend, are a Christian man or a Christian woman. You
   have been kept by Divine Grace from anything like disgraceful sin.
   Thank God it is so. I dare say if you look within you will find much to
   be ashamed of. But yet you have been kept from presumptuous and open
   sins. Alas, one who was once a friend of yours has disgraced
   himself--he was a little while ago a member of the Church but he has
   shamefully turned aside. You cannot excuse his sin--on the contrary,
   you are forced to feel great indignation against his folly, his
   untruthfulness, his wickedness.

   He has caused the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme and has done awful
   mischief to the cause of righteousness. Now I know what will be
   suggested to you. You will be inclined to cut his acquaintance, to
   disown him altogether and scarcely to look at him if you meet him in
   the street. This is the manner of men--but not the manner of Jesus. I
   charge you, act not in so un-Christlike a manner. The Lord turned and
   looked on Peter--will not His servants look on him? You are not perfect
   like your Lord. You are only a poor sinful creature like your fallen
   Brother. What? Are you too proud to look at the fallen one? Will you
   not give him a helping hand? Will you not try to bring him back?

   The worst thing you can do with a backslider is to let him keep on
   sliding back. Your duty should be your pleasure and your duty is to
   "restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, remembering yourself
   also, lest you also be tempted." O Brothers and Sisters, it is a very
   little thing that has kept some of us from turning aside unto folly.
   One grain more and the scale would have turned in favor of a great
   fall. Our steps have well-near slipped. When we are proud of our sure
   standing, the Lord may well be angry with us for our vanity and He may
   justly say, "How can I endure this pride? I have taken great care of
   this man and watched over him to keep him out of sin and now he takes
   the credit of it all and plays the great man and fancies that he will
   be defiled if he associates with My poor wandering children."

   Which, do you think, is worse in God's sight--the sudden fall into sin,
   or the long-continued pride? Which boasts itself in the presence of the
   Lord and looks contemptuously upon erring ones? It is not my office to
   become a measurer of sins. But I would earnestly enforce this plain
   duty--since our own Lord and Master looked on backsliding Peter, let us
   seek out our wandering Brethren.

   One more lesson--observe what heavenly comfort is here--"The Lord
   turned and looked upon Peter." Yes, Jesus looks upon sinners, still.
   The doctrine of God's omniscience is far oftener set forth in a hard
   way than in a cheering way. Have you ever heard a sermon from, "You God
   see me," of which the essence was--therefore tremble and be afraid?
   That is hardly fair to the text. For when Hagar cried, "You God see
   me," it was because the Lord had interposed to help her when she had
   fled from her mistress. It was comfort to her that there she also had
   looked after Him that had looked upon her.

   There is a dark side to "You God see me." But it is not half so dark as
   it would be if God did not see us. It is true, O Sinner, that God has
   seen your sin and all the aggravations of it. But it is also true that
   as He sees your ruin, your misery, your sadness, He has compassion on
   you. He sees your sin that He may remove it and make you clean in His
   sight. As the Lord looked upon Peter, so He looks upon you. He has not
   turned His back on you. He has not averted the gaze of His pity. He
   sees to the bottom of your heart and reads all your thoughts. You have
   not to go about to find God--He is looking upon you. "He is not far
   from everyone of us." He is within eyesight. You are to look to Him.
   And if you do, your eyes will meet His eyes, for already He looks upon
   you.

   I think we have gathered much from this brief look at the Lord who
   looked upon Peter. I doubt not that had we more time and more insight,
   we should see greater things than these.

   II. Now let us go on to the second point and see whether we cannot
   gather still more instruction. LET US LOOK INTO THE LOOK WHICH THE LORD
   GAVE TO PETER. Help us again, most gracious Spirit!

   That look was, first of all, a marvelous refreshment to Peter's memory.
   "The Lord turned and looked upon Peter." What a sight it must have been
   for Peter! Our dear Master's face was that night all red from the
   bloody sweat. He must have appeared emaciated in body. His eyes weary
   with want of sleep and His whole countenance the vision of grief. If
   ever a picture of the Man of Sorrows could have been drawn, it should
   have been taken at that moment when the Lord turned and looked upon
   Peter.

   By torchlight and the flickering flame of the fire in the court of the
   hall of Caiaphas, Peter saw a vision which would never fade from his
   mind. He saw the Man whom he loved as he had never seen Him before.
   This was He who called him, when he was fishing, to become a fisher of
   men. This was He who bade him spread the net and caused him to take an
   incredible quantity of fishes, insomuch that the boat began to sink and
   he cried out, "Depart from me. For I am a sinful man, O Lord."

   This was He who had made him walk on the water and at other times had
   rebuked the winds and raised the dead. This was He with whom Peter had
   been upon the Mount of Transfiguration! Truly there was a wonderful
   change from the glistening whiteness of the Mount to the ghastliness of
   that sad hour! Though the lines of that reverend face were stained with
   blood, yet Peter could tell that it was the same Lord with whom he had
   enjoyed three years of intimate companionship and tender unveiling. All
   this must, in a moment, have flashed upon poor Peter's mind. And I do
   not wonder that in the remembrance of it all he went out and wept
   bitterly.

   He did love His Lord. His denial was not of the heart but of the
   tongue. And, therefore, as all the grounds of his faith came before his
   mind anew, his heart was broken into a thousand pieces with grief that
   he should have been false to such a

   Friend. Yes, that look awoke a thousand slumbering memories and all
   these called upon the sincere heart of Peter to repent of its
   ungenerous weakness.

   Next, that turning of the Master was a special reminder of His warning
   words. Jesus did not say it in words but He did more than say it by His
   look. "Ah, Peter! Did not I tell you it would be so? You said, 'Though
   all men shall be offended because of You, yet will I never be
   offended.' Did I not tell you that before cock-crowing you would deny
   Me thrice?" No rebuke was uttered. And yet the tender eye of the Lord
   had revealed to Peter his own extreme folly and his Master's superior
   wisdom. Now he saw his own character and perceived his Lord's
   discernment.

   It was a prophecy and like all other prophecies, it was understood
   after it was fulfilled. We read that, "Peter remembered the word of the
   Lord, how He said unto him, Before the cock crowed, you shall deny Me
   thrice." It is clear, then, that our Lord's look was a special reminder
   of His former words--it stirred up Peter's mind by way of remembrance
   and made him see how foolish he had been and how inexcusable was his
   fault.

   Surely it was, also, a moving appeal to Peter's heart. I bid you notice
   just now, in the reading of the chapter, that this story of Peter is
   singularly interwoven into the narrative of our Savior's passion--it is
   so interwoven because it constitutes an essential part of that passion.
   We must not regard it as an accidental incident. It was part and parcel
   of that grief which He had to bear when He stood in our place. It was
   written of old, "Smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered."
   And this scattering of the sheep, of which Peter was a notable
   instance, was one of the bitter ingredients of our Redeemer's mental
   anguish.

   "Lover and friend have You put far from Me," is His complaint in the
   Psalm. When the Savior showed Himself to Peter with all those lines of
   grief upon His face, He seemed to say to him, "Can you deny Me now? I
   am bound for you and do you deny Me? I stand here to be adjudged to
   death for you and do you deny Me? Now is the hour of My agony and do
   you deny Me?" The Lord could not have looked at Peter without creating
   strong emotions in the breast of the weak disciple who now found
   himself in so sad a plight. That look touched very tender cords. There
   was no need for a single word of appeal--that look sufficed to stir the
   deepest part of Peter's nature.

   What do you think that look chiefly said? My thought about it, as I
   turned it over, was this--when the Lord looked upon Peter, though He
   did refresh his memory and make an appeal to his conscience, yet there
   was still more evident a glorious manifestation of love. If I may be
   permitted humbly and reverently to read what was written on my Master's
   face, I think it was this--"And yet I love you, Peter, I love you
   still! You have denied Me but I look upon you still as Mine. I cannot
   give you up. I have loved you with an everlasting love and
   notwithstanding all your ill-conduct towards Me, I am looking for you
   and expecting to receive you. I have not turned My back on you.

   "Behold, I look towards you with tender regard, foreseeing that you
   will yet serve Me and prove the truth of your devotion to Me. Despair
   not, O Peter, for I will receive you again and you shall glorify Me."
   Judging what would break my heart the quickest if I had thus denied my
   Master, it seems to me that I should be most affected by His saying to
   me, "And yet, despite your sin, I love you still." Love is the great
   heartbreaker. Immutable love is that Divine hammer which breaks the
   rock in pieces. Though a man should have sinned himself into great
   hardness of heart, yet almighty love can soften him. Who can resist the
   charms of Divine Grace unchangeable?

   Sharper than a sword is a look of love--more fierce than coals of
   juniper are the flames of love. One said, the other day, speaking of a
   person who has gone awfully astray after having been a preacher of the
   Word, "If I did not believe in the doctrine of unchanging love I do not
   think I dare pray for him. But since I believe that God will bring him
   back again, I pray with humble confidence that he will be restored."
   That which is an encouragement to prayer for others will be a help
   towards our return if we have gone astray. I love to believe that my
   Lord will bring His wanderers back.

   O you who are anxious to return to Him, let this cheer you--"Yet does
   He devise means that His banished be not expelled from Him." This
   doctrine wins men back. There are wicked men who turn it into an
   argument for continuing in sin. But their damnation is just. True men
   will see, in the measureless and unchanging love of Christ, a reason
   which will put wings to their feet when they hasten back to Him from
   whom they have gone astray.

   Again--this look penetrated Peter's inmost heart. It is not every look
   that we receive that goes very deep. I look with eyes of deep affection
   at men from this pulpit and I perceive that they know my meaning. But
   they soon shake it off. But our Savior has an eye to which the joints
   and marrow are visible. He looks into the secret chambers of the soul.
   For His look is a sunbeam and bears its own light with it, lighting up
   the dark places of our nature by its own radiance. Peter could not help
   feeling, for he was pricked in the heart by the arrow of Christ's
   glance.

   How many persons are affected by religion only in the head! It does not
   affect their heart and life. I am grieved when I hear of some of you
   who are regular hearers and take pleasure in my preaching and yet,
   after many years, you are not a bit better. You have had spasms of
   improvement but they have ended in nothing. You go back to the mire
   after you have been washed. You are a hearer of the Gospel and yet a
   drunkard. Your voice is heard in a Psalm but it may also be heard in an
   oath. It is a shocking thing. But I have done my best. I can preach to
   your ears but I cannot look into your hearts. Oh, that my Lord would
   give such a glance at you this morning as should impart light into you
   and cause you to see yourself and to see Him and then the tears would
   fill your eyes!

   One fact must not escape our notice--our Lord's look at Peter was a
   revival of all Peter's looking unto Jesus. The Lord's look upon Peter
   took effect because Peter was looking to the Lord. Do you catch it? If
   the Lord had turned and looked on Peter and Peter's back had been
   turned on the Lord, that look would not have reached Peter, nor
   affected him. The eyes met to produce the desired result.
   Notwithstanding all Peter's wanderings, he was anxious about his Lord
   and therefore looked to see what was done with Him. Even while he
   warmed his hands at the fire, he kept looking into the inner hall. His
   eyes were constantly looking in the direction of the Lord Jesus.

   While he wandered about among the maids and male servants, talking to
   them, fool that he was--yet still he would perpetually steal a glance
   that way to see how it fared with the Man he loved. He had not given up
   the habit of looking to his Lord. If he had not still, in a measure,
   looked to his Master, how would the look of Jesus have been observed by
   him? His eyes must look through your eyes to get to your heart. The
   remainders of faith are the sparks among the ashes of piety and the
   Lord blows on these to raise a fire. If there is a poor soul here that,
   despite his backsliding, can yet feel, "I am trusting in Jesus and if I
   perish, I will perish there," there is hope for that soul.

   If you have given up the outward forms of religion it is a grievous
   fault--but if you still inwardly look to the Crucified, there is
   something in you to work upon. There is an eye which can receive the
   look of Jesus. It is through the eyes that look to Jesus, that Jesus
   looks and lets fresh light and hope into the soul. Oh that you who have
   this lingering faith in the Lord may now receive a look from Him which
   shall work in you a bitter, salutary, saving repentance--without which
   you can never be restored!

   This look was altogether between the Lord and Peter. Nobody knew that
   the Lord looked on Peter, except Peter and his Lord. That Divine Grace
   which saves a soul is not a noisy thing--neither is it visible to any
   but the receiver. This morning, if the Grace of God comes to anyone of
   you in power, it will be unperceived by those who sit on either side of
   you in the pew-- they will hear the same words but of the Divine
   operation which accompanies them they will know nothing--the eyes of
   the Lord will not speak to them as it is speaking to the awakened one.
   Do you know anything of the secret love-look of the Lord Jesus?

   The whole process may not have occupied more than a second of time.
   "The Lord turned and looked on Peter." It took less time to do than it
   takes to tell. Yet in that instant an endless work was done. How soon
   can Jesus change the heart! "He spoke and it was done"--I venture to
   alter that verse and say, "He looked and it was done." Lord, look on
   sinful Peter now! Work a miracle with your eyes! Even here, let some
   sinner look to You because You have looked on him.

   III. Now I must go to my third point--LET US LOOK AT PETER AFTER THE
   LORD HAD LOOKED AT HIM.

   What is Peter doing? When the Lord looked on Peter the first thing
   Peter did was to feel awakened. Peter's mind had been sleeping. The
   charcoal fire had not done him much good, the fumes of it are evil. The
   dust of Satan's sieve had got into his eyes. He was confused with very
   sorrow for his dear Master, whom he truly loved. Peter was hardly Peter
   that night. I think I had better say, Peter was too much Peter, and his
   mind had more of Peter's stone in it, than of Christ's flesh.

   He had forgotten that he was an Apostle. He had forgotten that which he
   had declared when the Lord said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon
   Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto you." Again,
   I remind you how significantly it is written, "The Lord turned and
   looked upon Peter." For it hints that Peter now saw his Lord's Deity
   through the veil of His humiliation and anguish. He had forgotten his
   Lord's Deity and thus he had, in thought, denied his Lord. He was off
   the lines and was in a sleepy state. He was what Paul calls
   "bewitched," and under the influence of a spiritual soporific,
   administered by Satan. The Lord's look brought him to his better self
   and aroused all the spiritual life which had been dormant in
   him--"Peter remembered"--and by this remembrance he was restored.

   The next effect was, it took away all Peter's foolhardiness. Peter had
   made his way into the high priest's hall but now he made his way out of
   it. He had not felt in any danger, though in the worst of company. What
   did he care for the girl that kept the door? Surely he was too much of
   a man to mind her remarks. What did he care for the men that were round
   the fire? They were rough fellows but he had been a fisherman and quite
   able to cope with the priest's bailiffs. But now the brag is gone out

   of him. No sooner had Jesus looked upon him than Peter declined all
   further risks. Now he shows the better part of valor and with great
   discretion quits the dangerous society of the high priest's palace.

   Revival of Divine Grace in the heart is the death of presumption. The
   man who runs risks with his soul is not in a right state of mind.
   Perhaps the Savior's glance conveyed a hint to Peter that he had no
   business where he was. It may have seemed to say to him, "You had
   better be gone from these surroundings." At any rate, that was the
   effect it produced. That palace in which the Lord fared so badly could
   not be a fit place for a disciple. To be warming himself at the fire
   was quite inconsistent for Peter while Jesus was being mocked by His
   enemies. A sight of the Lord Jesus makes many things seem incongruous
   which else might appear right enough. All Peter's daring vanished. He
   turned his back on maids and men and went out into the darkness of the
   night.

   We do not hear of his coming near the Cross--in fact, we hear no more
   of him till the resurrection morning--for Peter was sensible enough to
   feel that he could not trust himself any more. He placed himself in the
   background till his Lord summoned him to the front. I wish that some
   religious professors whose lives have been questionable had grace
   enough to do the same. When I see a man who has sinned grievously
   pushing himself speedily to the front, I cannot believe that he has a
   due sense of the evil he has worked, or of his own unfitness to be in
   the place of peril.

   Above all, shun the place where you have fallen. Do not linger in it
   for a moment. Go out, even though you leave the comfortable fire behind
   you. Better be in the cold than stay where your soul is in danger. Till
   Peter had received from the Lord's own mouth abundant assurance of his
   restoration to his office by the threefold charge to feed the sheep and
   lambs, we do not find him again in the forefront.

   That look of Christ severed Peter from the crowd. He was no longer
   among the fellows around the fire. He had not another word to say to
   them--he quit their company in haste. It is well for Believers to feel
   that they are not of the world! They should flee out of Sodom. The Lord
   has severed us from the multitude by His Divine choice and the
   separation should be our choice.

   Oh, that the arrows of the great Lord would this morning pierce some
   soul even as a huntsman wounds a stag! Oh, that the wounded soul, like
   Peter, would seek solitude! The stag seeks the thicket to bleed and die
   alone. But the Lord will come in secret to the wounded heart and draw
   out the arrow. Alone is the place for a penitent. Out in the darkness
   is far better for you than around the fire where coarse jokes are
   bandied while Christ is mocked. There must be confession and weeping
   alone. If Christ has looked upon you, you must get away from the men of
   the world and indeed from all others. The solitude of your chamber will
   suit you best.

   That look of Christ also opened the sluices of Peter's heart--he went
   out and wept bitterly. There was gall in the tears he wept, for they
   were the washings of his bitter sorrow. Dear Friends, if we have sinned
   with Peter, God grant us grace to weep with Peter. Many will think of
   Peter's wandering who forget Peter's weeping. Sin, even though it is
   forgiven, is a bitter thing. Even though Christ may look away your
   despair, He will not look away your penitence. "He went out and wept
   bitterly." Oh, how he chided himself! "How could I have acted so!" How
   he smote his breast, and sighed, "How can I ever look up? Yet is He
   very precious. That look forgave me. But I can never forgive myself."

   He remembered it all his life and could never hear a cock crow without
   feeling the water in his eyes. Yet I want you to notice that that look
   of Christ gave him relief. It is a good thing to be able to weep. Those
   who cannot weep are the people that suffer most. A pent-up sorrow is a
   terrible sorrow. The Lord touched a secret spring and made Peter's
   grief flow out in floods. And that must have greatly eased him. I have
   frequently heard people say, "I had a good cry, and after that, I was
   able to bear it." People die of bursting hearts when no tears relieve
   them. I thank God for Peter, that he could weep bitterly, for thus the
   Holy Spirit came to him with comfort.

   O Master, look on some poor dry heart here--some poor heart that cannot
   feel its sinfulness but would if it could--and give it feeling! Look on
   the heart which cannot repent, that is crying, "I would, but cannot
   feel contrition." Lord, You did make the rock yield water at the
   smiting of the rod--use Your poor stick of a servant this morning to
   smite the rocky heart and let the waters of repentance flow out.

   And now, to conclude, it made Peter as long as he lived, ashamed to be
   ashamed. Peter was never ashamed after this. Who was it that stood up
   at Pentecost and preached? Was it not Peter? Was he not always foremost
   in testifying to his Lord and Master? I trust that if any of us have
   been falling back and especially if we have wandered into sin, we may
   get such a restoration from the Lord, Himself, that we may become
   better Christians ever afterwards. I do not want you to break a bone, I
   pray God you never may. But if you ever do, may the heavenly Surgeon so
   set it that it may become thicker and stronger than before.

   Courage was the bone in Peter which snapped. But when it was set, it
   became the strongest bone in his nature and never broke again. When the
   Lord sets the bones of His people they never break again--He does His
   work effectually. The man who has erred by anger becomes meek and
   gentle. The man who has erred by drink quits the deadly cup and loathes
   it. The man who has sinned by shame becomes the bravest of the company.

   O Lord Jesus, I have tried to preach YOU this morning, but I cannot
   look with Your eyes. You must look on erring ones Yourself. Look,
   Savior! Look, Sinner! "There is life in a look AT the crucified One,"
   because there is life in a look FROM the crucified One. May Jesus look
   and by His Grace may the sinner look, too! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Peter After His Restoration

   DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, July 22, 1888

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,

   "When you are converted, strengthen your Brethren." Luke 22:32.

   PETER was to be sifted, so our Lord warned him. And Satan was to
   operate with the sieve. Satan had an intense desire to destroy
   Peter--indeed, he would like to destroy all the chosen of God--and
   therefore he desired to sift him as wheat, in the hope that he would be
   blown away with the husks and the chaff. To see a child of God perish
   would bring to the Evil One a malicious joy, for he would have wounded
   the heart of God. If ever the fallen spirit can be happy, he would
   derive happiness from defeating the Grace of God and robbing the Lord
   Jesus of those whom He bought with His blood.

   "Satan has desired to have you"--it would be a satisfaction to him to
   have a Believer in his power. He was anxious to get Peter into his
   clutches, to give him as tremendous a shaking as he could manage. If
   Satan knows, as he no doubt does, concerning any one Believer that he
   cannot quite destroy him, then he is especially anxious to worry him.
   If he cannot devour the chosen, he would at least defile them--if he
   cannot ruin their souls, he would break their quiet. As the Revised
   Version puts it, Satan even asks God to have them that he may sift them
   as wheat. This is a curious statement, for it seems from it that the
   devil can pray. And that his petition may be granted him.

   The margin has it, "Satan has obtained you by asking." The Lord may
   grant the request of the devil, himself, and yet he would not prove
   thereby that he had any love towards him. The Lord's wisdom may grant
   Satan's desire and in the very act overthrow his evil power. Let us
   not, then, stake our faith in the Lord's love upon His giving us the
   precise answer we desire, for what He gives to Satan He may see fit to
   deny to those whom He loves and He may do so because He loves them. It
   is a fact that the Evil One is permitted to test the precious metal of
   God's treasury.

   The story in the Book of Job is no fiction or piece of imagination. It
   is even so that Satan desires to have choice ones of God put into his
   power that he may test them--that he may torment them, that he may, if
   possible, destroy them. The Lord may permit this as He did in the case
   of Job and as He did in the case of the Apostles and especially in the
   case of Peter. He may grant the Tempter's request and allow him to
   touch our bone and our flesh and see whether we will hold to our God in
   mortal agony.

   We are not bound to know God's reasons for what He does or permits. It
   is sometimes sinful to enquire into those reasons. What the Lord does
   is right. Let that be enough for us who are His children. But we can
   see, sometimes, a reason why the saints should be sifted as wheat. For
   it appertains unto wheat to be sifted, because it is wheat. Sifting
   brings a desirable result with it--it is for the saints' good that they
   should be tried. Satan doubtless wishes that God may let the good seed
   fall to the ground and be destroyed. But He overrules it to separate
   the chaff from the wheat, and to make the wheat into clean grain, fit
   for storage in the King's granary.

   Satan has often done us a good turn when he has meant to do us a bad
   one. After all, he is only a dishwasher in God's kitchen to clean His
   vessels. And some of them have received special scouring by means of
   his harsh temptations. God also may find a reason for allowing His
   saints to be tempted of Satan and that reason may have more relation to
   others than to themselves. They may have to be tested for other
   people's good. The testing of their faith is "more precious than that
   of gold that perishes, though it is tried with fire," and part of its
   preciousness is its usefulness.

   The child of God under temptation, behaving himself grandly, will
   become a standing example to those who are around him. "You have heard
   of the patience of Job." But you never would have heard of the patience
   of Job if Satan had not sifted him. This great treasury of instruction,
   the Book of Job, and all the Truth of God taught us by Job's example
   comes to us through God's having permitted Satan to put forth his hand
   and to press the Patriarch so sorely. We also

   may be afflicted--not so much for ourselves--as for others. And this
   may be remarkably the case in the instances of those of you whom God
   makes useful to a large circle of friends.

   You live for others and therefore suffer for others. The whole of your
   lives will not be accounted for by yourselves but by your surroundings.
   As a minister I may have to be tempted because temptation is one of the
   best books in a minister's library. As a parent you may need
   affliction, because a father without a trial can give no counsel to a
   tempted child. Public workers may have to be tried in ways which, to a
   private Christian, are unnecessary. Let us accept remarkable discipline
   if thereby we are qualified for remarkable service. If by the roughness
   of our own road we are trained to conduct the Lord's sheep along their
   difficult pathway to the pastures on the hilltops of Glory, let us
   rejoice in every difficulty of the way. If Apostles and men like Peter
   had to be put into Satan's sieve while they were being trained for
   their lifework, we may not hope to escape.

   Observe, dear Friends, what came before the sifting and went with the
   sifting. Note well that blessed "but." "But I have prayed for you."
   Not, "Your Brethren have prayed for you." Not, "You have prayed for
   yourself." But, "/ have prayed for you." Jesus, that master in the art
   of prayer, that mighty Pleader who is our Advocate above, assures us
   that He has already prayed for us. "I have prayed for you,"
   means--"before the temptation I have prayed for you. I foresaw all the
   danger in which you would be placed and concerning that danger I have
   exercised My function as High Priest and Intercessor."

   "I have prayed for you." What a Divine comfort is this to any who are
   passing through deep waters! You only go where Jesus has gone before
   you with His intercession. Jesus has made provision for all your future
   in a prayer already presented--"I have prayed for you." You may be much
   comforted by the prayers of a minister, or of some Christian man who
   has power with God. But what are all such intercessions compared with
   the praying of your Lord? It were well to have Noah, Samuel and Moses
   praying for us--but far better to have Jesus say, "I have prayed for
   you." Blessed be God, Satan may have his sieve but as long as Jesus
   wears His breastplate we shall not be destroyed by Satan's tossing.

   Notice that the principal object of the prayer of our Lord was, "that
   your faith fail not." He knows where the vital point lies and there He
   holds the shield. As long as the Christian's faith is safe, the
   Christian's self is safe. I may compare faith to the head of the
   warrior. O Lord, you have covered my head in the day of battle, for You
   have prayed for me that my faith fail not. I may compare faith to the
   heart and the Lord holds His shield over the heart that we may not be
   injured where a wound would be fatal. "I have prayed for you, that your
   faith fail not."

   Faith is the standard-bearer in every spiritual conflict. And if the
   standard-bearer fall, then it is an evil day-- therefore our Lord prays
   that the standard-bearer may never fail to hold up His banner in the
   midst of the fray--"I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not."
   If faith fails, everything fails--courage fails, patience fails, hope
   fails, love fails, joy fails. Faith is the root of Divine Grace. And if
   this is not in order, then the foliage of the soul, which shows itself
   in the form of other graces, will soon begin to wither. "I have prayed
   for you, that your faith fail not."

   Learn a lesson from this, my Brethren--that you take care to commend
   your faith unto your God. Do not begin to doubt because you are
   tempted--that is to lay bare your breast. Do not doubt because you are
   attacked--that is to loosen your harness. Believe. "I had fainted,"
   said David, "unless I had believed." It must be one thing or the other
   with us. Believing, or fainting--which shall it be? "Above all, taking
   the shield of faith." Not only taking it so that it may cover all but
   making this the vital point of holy carefulness. Watch in all things,
   but especially guard your faith. If you are careful about one thing
   more than another, above all be careful of your faith. "I have prayed
   for you, that your faith

   fail not."

   Our Savior's pleading goes to the point and thus it teaches us where to
   direct our own desires and our own prayers. He asks for us far more
   wisely than we shall ever learn to ask for ourselves--let us copy His
   petitions. And therefore it follows because of Christ's prayer that,
   though Peter may be very badly put to it, yet he shall be recovered,
   for Christ speaks of it as of an assured fact--"When you are
   converted." As much as to say--When you come back to your old life and
   your old faith, then exercise yourself usefully for your Lord. He
   speaks of Peter's restoration as if it were quite sure to be.

   And is it not quite sure to be? If Jesus, the Beloved of the Father,
   prays for His people, shall He not win His suit with God? He will win
   it! He will uplift Peter from among the siftings where Satan has thrown
   him. We are sure He will, for

   in prospect thereof, He sets him a loving and suitable task--"When you
   are converted, strengthen your Brethren." The establishment and
   confirmation of all the rest are to hinge upon the setting up in his
   place of poor thrice-denying Peter.

   Now, beloved Friends, I may be addressing a number of persons who
   believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as Peter did but they have fallen into
   a bad state and need a new conversion. I am very sorry for you but I am
   by no means staggered at the sight of you, for you belong to a numerous
   class. When sitting to see enquirers I am constantly stumbling on
   backsliders, who come back very sincerely and very truly and feel right
   pleased to find a Christian home again. I meet with many who have been
   outside in the world--some of them for years--attending the House of
   God very irregularly and seldom or never enjoying the light of God's
   countenance.

   They have wandered so that none can tell whether they are the Lord's or
   not, except the Lord Himself and He always knows them that are His. I
   bear happy witness that the Lord brings His own back again. Though the
   Lord's sheep stray, yet the Good Shepherd finds them. Though the Lord's
   children go into the far country--they each one in due time say, "I
   will arise and go to my Father." It is not every prodigal that returns
   but only the prodigal son. In due time, the son returns to the Father's
   house. It is not every bit of stuff that falls on the ground that is
   found again. But the woman's piece of money is sure to be discovered.
   She will not lose it--it is hers and she values it. She sweeps the
   house and makes any quantity of dust until she finds it. The Lord will
   find His own, even though Satan tries to prevent the gracious
   discovery.

   It may be some of you have wandered into error. May you be brought back
   very speedily. And if you are, we are going to say to you tonight,
   "Strengthen your Brethren." Possibly there has been a general decay in
   Divine Grace within your soul. You have lost your joy, your peace, your
   love, your zeal. This is sad--may the Lord restore you in answer to the
   prayer of Him that redeemed you. And then, when you are converted, seek
   to recover your Brethren from the decay of their graces which has also
   injured them. You will not be converted in quite the same sense as you
   were at first but yet you will be turned again to your old life and
   hope and then you are to strengthen your Brethren by aiming at their
   restoration to their first love and earliest zeal.

   Perhaps you have been neglectful. I find that many who were good
   Christian people in the country, always at the House of Prayer and
   walking near to God, will come up to this wicked London to live and the
   change is a serious injury to them. They get lost to Christian society
   and by degrees they become deteriorated by the ungodliness of this
   modern Sodom. Nobody in the street wherein they live ever goes to a
   place of worship and they do not know anybody at the Chapel, or at the
   Church. And so they give up going to public worship and fall into the
   ways and habits of the ungodly world. They are not happy. God's
   children never are happy when they leave their Father.

   If you have ever eaten the white bread of Heaven, you will never rest
   content with the black ashes of earth. If the flavor of Christ's love
   has once been in your mouth, you are spoiled for a worldling. You will
   not make an expert sinner now, for your hand is out of it. Once
   converted, you must be a child of God, or nothing. You are ruined for
   this world. And if the world to come is not yours, where are you? The
   devil himself will not like you long--you are not of his sort. There is
   something about you that will not suit Satan any more than Jonah suited
   the whale. The whale was quite as glad to part with Jonah as Jonah was
   to be set free from the whale.

   I see arrangements for your coming home again. The Lord devises means
   that His banished shall not perish--those tokens of disquiet, those
   starts in your sleep, those horrible forebodings, that inward hunger
   are all pulling at you to come home. You have been trying to feed upon
   the dust which is ordained to be the serpent's meat and if the Lord had
   not loved you, you would have done so. A deceived heart has turned you
   aside but in love to your soul the Lord has made you aware of it and
   your cry is, "I will go and return to my first husband. For then was it
   better with me than now."

   These are tokens by which I am assured that the Lord will bring His own
   back. I rest confident that He will turn them and they shall be turned.
   And I am going to talk to backsliders about what they are to do when
   they do come back again. We are going to take it for granted that they
   will come back and to speak to them now about what it is their
   privilege to attempt under such gracious circumstances. "When you are
   converted, strengthen your Brethren." First, it is the restored man's
   duty. Secondly, he has a special qualification for it. And thirdly, it
   will be a great blessing to him to set about it.

   I. First it is HIS DUTY. He has gone astray and he has been brought
   back--what better can he do than to strengthen his Brethren?

   He will thus help to undo the evil which he has worked. Peter must have
   staggered his Brethren. Some of them must have been quite frightened at
   him. John soon looked after him but then they were not all Johns. Full
   of love, John soon hunted up

   Peter. But the others must have felt that he was a mere reed shaken by
   the wind. It must have staggered the faith of the weaker sort to see
   that Peter, who had been such a leader among them, was among the first
   to deny his Lord. Therefore, Peter, you must build what you have thrown
   down and bind up what you have torn!

   Go and talk to these people again and tell them how foolish and weak
   you were. Warn them not to imitate your example. You must henceforth be
   more bold than anybody else that you may in some measure undo the
   mischief which you have done. Now, think of this, any of you who have
   been cold towards the Lord. You have wasted months and even years, in
   backsliding. Try to recover lost ground. It will be almost impossible
   for you to do it but do at least make a serious attempt. If anybody has
   been staggered by your backsliding, look after him and try to bring him
   back and strengthen him.

   Ask his pardon and beg him to recover the strength of which you helped
   to rob him. This is the least that you can do. If almighty love has
   drawn you back again after sad wanderings, lay yourself out with all
   your heart to do good to those who may have been harmed by your sad
   turnings aside. Am I asking more of you than simple justice demands?
   Besides, how can you better express your gratitude to God than by
   seeking to strengthen your weak Brethren when you have been
   strengthened yourself?

   After our first conversion, you and I were found seeking earnestly
   after sinners like ourselves. We had been newly brought out of the
   house of bondage and we longed to lead other slaves into the liberty
   wherewith Christ makes men free. This, I say, we ought to do when first
   brought to Jesus' feet. But if, to our disgrace, we have turned aside
   and have backslidden--and if, to God's infinite glory, He has restored
   our souls, and made us strong again--then we ought to renew our zeal
   for the salvation of others and we ought to have a special eye to
   backsliders like ourselves. We should say, "Lord, I will show how much
   I thank You for restoring me, by endeavoring to find any that have been
   overtaken in a fault, that I may restore such in the spirit of
   meekness, remembering myself also, since I have been tempted and have
   not stood against the temptation."

   Those of you whom the Good Shepherd has restored should have a quick
   eye for all the sickly ones of the flock and watch over these with a
   sympathetic care. You should say, "This is the field which I shall try
   to cultivate. Because in my spiritual sickness the Lord has been
   pleased to deal so graciously with me, I will, therefore, lay myself
   out to cherish others who are diseased in soul."

   Do you not think, too, that this becomes our duty, because, doubtless,
   it is a part of the Divine design? Never let us make a mistake by
   imagining that God's Grace is given to a man simply with an eye to
   himself. Grace neither begins with man nor ends with him with an object
   confined to the man's own self. When God chose His ancient people
   Israel, it was not merely that Israel might enjoy the light but that
   Israel might preserve the light for the rest of the nations. When God
   saved you He did not save you for your own sake but for His own Name's
   sake, that He might through you show forth His mercy to others.

   We are windows through which the light of heavenly knowledge is to
   shine upon multitudes of eyes. The light is not for the windows
   themselves but for those to whom it comes through the windows. Have you
   ever thought enough about this? When the Lord brings any of you back
   from your backsliding, it is decidedly with this view that you may be
   qualified to sympathize with others and wisely guide them back to the
   fold. All your history, if you read it aright, has a bearing upon your
   usefulness to your fellow men. If you have been permitted, in an hour
   of weakness to grow cold, or turn aside--and if the Lord, in
   unspeakable compassion, has restored you to His ways--surely this must
   be His motive--that you may afterwards strengthen your Brethren.

   By the way, the very wording of the text seems to suggest the duty--we
   are to strengthen our "Brethren." We must do so in order that we may
   manifest brotherly love and thus prove our sonship towards God. Oh,
   what a blessed thing it is when we come back to God and feel that we
   are still in the family! That was the point which we debated with
   ourselves--we feared that we were not the Lord's. Whatever some may say
   about that hymn--

   "It is a point I long to know,

   Often it causes anxious thought." I do not give much for the man who
   has not sometimes had to sing it in the minor key. It is a pity that he
   ever should have to sing it. He will not if he walks before the Lord
   with care and watchfulness. But when he has been a naughty child, when
   his life has not been what it should be, if he does not doubt himself
   we must take leave to doubt for him. How can he help asking--

   "Do I love the Lord or not?

   Am I His or am I not?" I am inclined to say with a good experimental
   writer--

   "He that never doubted of his state,

   He may--perhaps he may too late."

   It is not an ill thing to try yourselves and see whether your faith is
   gold or dross. To have a question about your position in the heavenly
   family is a very painful thing and should not be endured one moment if
   it is in our power to solve the doubt. But if the Lord has brought you
   back as His child, you now know that you belong to the family and it
   will be suggested at once to you to do something for the Brethren.
   Naturally, you will look around to see whether there is any child of
   God to whom you can show favor for his Father's sake. You have injured
   all by your backsliding. And hence it is your duty, when restored to
   the family, to benefit them all by special consecration and double
   earnestness.

   Let it be your delight, as well as your duty, to strengthen your
   Brethren. Prove that you are a Brother by acting a Brother's part. And
   claim your privilege as a child and exercise it as a child should--by
   helping another child that is in need. I think that the text within
   itself contains this argument.

   Let us see to it, dear Friends, if we have been restored, that we try
   to look after our weak Brethren, that we may show forth a zeal for the
   honor and glory of our Lord. When we went astray we dishonored Christ.
   If any of these others go astray they will do the same. Therefore let
   us be watchful that if we can, we may prevent their being as foolish as
   we have been. Let us learn tenderness from our own experience and feel
   a deep concern for our Brethren. If one member of this Church sins we
   all suffer--in our reputation, at any rate. And, especially, the best
   known among us have to bear a great deal because of the inconsistency
   of this person and of that.

   Do you want us to be wounded through you? My Beloved friends, I do not
   think that one of you would wish to cast reproach upon your minister.
   Alas, Christ Himself suffers. His worst wounds are those which He
   receives in the house of His friends. Peter, if you ever denied your
   Master, mind you look well to others who are growing presumptuous as
   you were before your great sin. If you meet anyone who is beginning to
   say, "I will go with you to prison and to death," give him a gentle jog
   and say, "Mind you, Brother, you are going near a nasty hole into which
   I once fell. I pray you take warning from me."

   If you speak experimentally, you will have no cause to boast but you
   will find in your own sin a reason why you should tenderly guard your
   Brethren lest they should cause like dishonor to that dear Name which
   is more precious, I hope, to you than life itself. "When you are
   converted, strengthen your Brethren." It is your duty.

   II. Now secondly, HE HAS A QUALIFICATION FOR IT. This Peter is the man
   who, when he is brought back again, can strengthen his Brethren. He can
   strengthen them by telling them of the bitterness of denying his
   Master. He went out and wept bitterly. It is one thing to weep. It is
   another thing to weep bitterly. There are sweet tears, as well as salt
   tears. But oh, what weeping a sin costs a child of God!

   I recollect a minister speaking very unguardedly--he said that the
   child of God lost nothing by sin except his comfort. And I thought, "Oh
   dear me! And is that nothing? Is that nothing?" It is such a loss of
   comfort that, if that were all, it would be the most awful thing in the
   world. The more God loves you and the more you love God, the more
   expensive will you find it to sin. An ordinary sinner sins cheaply--the
   child of God sins very dearly. If you are the King's favorite, you must
   mind your manners, for He will not take from you what He will take from
   an enemy.

   The Lord your God is a jealous God, because He is a loving God. He has
   such love for His own chosen that if they turn aside, His jealousy
   burns like coals of juniper. May God keep us from ever provoking His
   sacred jealousy by wandering at any time into any kind of sin. Now
   Peter, because he could tell of the bitterness of backsliding, was the
   man to go and speak to anyone who was about to backslide and say, "Do
   not do so, my Brother. For it will cost you dearly." Again, Peter was
   the man to tell another of the weakness of the flesh, for he could say
   to him, "Do not trust yourself. Do not talk about never going aside.
   Remember how I talked about it? I used to be very lofty in my talk and
   in my feelings but I had to be brought down.

   "I felt so sure that I loved my Lord and Master, that I put great
   confidence in myself and could not think that I should ever wander from
   Him. But see, see how I fell? I denied Him thrice before the time
   called cock-crowing." Thus, you see, Peter was wonderfully qualified by
   having known the bitterness of sin and by feeling the weakness of his
   own flesh, to go and strengthen others in these important points. But
   he was also qualified to bear his personal witness to the power of his
   Lord's prayer. He could never forget that Jesus had said to him, "I
   have prayed for you."

   Peter could say to any Brother who had grown cold or presumptuous, "the
   Lord Jesus prayed for me and it was because of His prayer that I was
   preserved from going farther, so that I was led back and delivered from
   the sieve of the Evil One." Do you not think that this would strengthen
   any trembling one when Peter mentioned it? It is wonderful how men and
   women are helped by those who have had a similar experience to
   themselves. Theory is all very well but to speak experimentally has a
   singular power about it. How one can comfort the bereaved if one has
   been bereaved himself!

   But how little can the young and inexperienced provide consolation to
   those who are greatly tried, even though they are anxious to do so! And
   so, Brethren, if the Lord has blessed you and remembered you in His
   great mercy and you know the

   power of the prayer of the great Intercessor, you can strengthen your
   Brethren by reminding them of the perseverance of the Savior's love.

   And could not Peter speak about the love of Jesus to poor wanderers?
   The Lord turned and looked upon Peter and that look broke Peter's heart
   and afterwards the Lord spoke to Peter by the sea and said to him,
   "Feed My sheep and feed My lambs." O Beloved, Peter would always
   remember that, and he would speak of it to any whom he found in a sad
   and weary condition. He would say, "My Lord was very good to me and was
   willing to receive me back. No, He did not wait until I came back but
   He came after me. He sent after me, saying, Go tell My disciples and
   Peter. And when He saw that I was penitent, He never rebuked me, except
   in such a gentle way that I was rather comforted than rebuked by what
   He said."

   Oh, you that have wandered and Christ has restored you, comfort the
   wanderers when you see their tears! When you hear any word of doubt, or
   anything like despair from them, tell them that there is no truth in
   the suggestion of Satan that Christ is unwilling to forgive. Beseech
   them not to slander that dear heart of love which is infinitely more
   ready to melt towards the penitent than the penitent's heart is to melt
   towards it. You know it. You know that you can speak not only what you
   have read in the Bible but what you have felt in your own heart. You
   are qualified, therefore, to strengthen your Brethren.

   And could not Peter fully describe the joy of restoration? "Oh," he
   would say, "do not wander. There is no good in it. Do not go away from
   Jesus. There is no profit to be found there. Come back to Him--there is
   such peace, such rest with Him. Never, never go away again." Peter ever
   afterwards in his Epistles--and we are sure that it must have been the
   same in his spoken ministry--would testify to the love and goodness of
   Christ and urge the saints to steadfastness in the faith. I would
   appeal to any child of God here whether he ever gained anything by
   going away from Christ. No, Brothers and Sisters, the old Proverb says
   that honesty is the best policy, but I will turn it to a higher use and
   say, "Holiness is the best policy."

   Communion with Christ is the happiest life. If you gained all the world
   and did not lose your soul but only lost the light of Christ's
   countenance for a few days, you would have made a poor bargain. There
   is Heaven in every glance of His eye. There is infinite joy in every
   word of His mouth when He speaks comfortably to His servants. Go not
   away from Him. Be like Milton's angel, who lived in the sun. Abide in
   Christ and let His Words abide in you. Closer, closer, closer--this is
   the way to spiritual wealth. To follow afar off and live at a distance
   from Christ, even if it does not make your soul perish, yet it will
   wither up your joys and make you feel an unhappy man, an unhappy woman.
   Therefore, all those who have tried it should bear their witness and
   put their experience into the scale as they thus strengthen their
   Brethren.

   III. And now, lastly, the restored Believer should strengthen his
   Brethren, because IT WILL BE SUCH A BENEFIT TO HIMSELF. He will derive
   great personal benefit from endeavoring to cherish and assist the weak
   ones in the family of God.

   Brother, do this continually and heartily, for thus you will be made to
   see your own weakness. You will see it in those whom you succor. As you
   see how they doubt, or grow cold, or become lukewarm, you will say to
   yourself, "These are men of like passions with myself. I see which way
   I shall drift unless the Grace of God sustains me." It will lead you to
   throw out another anchor and get a fresh hold as you see how they yield
   to the tide. One man is wonderfully like another man, only that other
   men are better than we are. And when we are trying to strengthen them,
   we are not to look upon ourselves as superior beings but rather as
   inferior beings and say, " He fell yesterday, I may fall today. And if
   I do not fall today, I may tomorrow."

   All the weaknesses and follies you see in others, believe that they are
   in yourself and that will tend to humble you. I think that a true
   minister is often excited to better work by what he sees of weakness in
   his people, because he says to himself, "Am I feeding this flock well?"
   Perhaps he thinks to himself, "If I had properly tended them they would
   not have shown all these weaknesses." And then he will begin to blame
   his own ministry and look to his own heart and that is a good thing for
   us all. We very seldom, I think, blame ourselves too, much and it is a
   benefit to us to see our own failings in others.

   But what a comfort it must have been to Peter to have such a charge
   committed to him! How sure he must have felt that Jesus had forgiven
   him, and restored him to His confidence, when the Lord, having asked
   him, "Do you love Me?" said to him, "Feed My sheep and feed My lambs."
   Peter is all right again, or else Christ would not trust lambs to him.
   Peter must be all right, or else Jesus would not put the sheep under
   his care. It is a grand proof of our being fully restored to the Divine
   heart when the Lord entrusts us with work to do for His own dear
   children.

   If you and I are made the means of strengthening our Brethren, what a
   comfort it will be to our hearts! I know that it is not the highest
   form of comfort, for Jesus would say of it, "Rejoice not in this but
   rather rejoice that your names are written in Heaven." But still, to a
   loving child of God, it is no mean consolation to find that God is
   using him. I know, for my own part, that when I go to see our friends
   who are ill and near to die, it is a supreme consolation to see how
   calm they always are, without any exception. Yes, and how joyful they
   generally are--how triumphant in the departing hour!

   Then I say to myself, "Yes, my Master has owned my ministry." The seals
   of fresh conversions are very precious but the surest seals are these
   dying saints who have been nurtured in the Gospel that we have
   preached. They prove the truth of it, for if they do not flinch when
   they stand looking into eternity but even rejoice in the prospect of
   meeting their Lord. Then what we preach is true and our Master has not
   left us without witnesses. So you see that it is a great benefit to a
   man to strengthen his Brethren, because it becomes a comfort to his own
   soul.

   And, Brethren, whenever any of you lay yourselves out to strengthen
   weak Christians, as I pray you may, you will get benefit from what you
   do in the holy effort. Suppose you pray with them. Well, then, you will
   pray a little more than if you only prayed for yourself. And anything
   that adds to your prayerfulness is a clear gain. I wish that you had
   the habit of making everybody pray with you that comes to your house,
   saying to them, "Now we have done our little business, let us have a
   word or two of prayer."

   Some, even of God's people, would look at you as if you were very
   strange! It will do them good to look at you and learn from you the
   blessed habit. With regard to those who are strangers to Divine things
   there will often occur opportunities in which you have put them under
   an obligation, or they have come to you in trouble to ask advice and
   then you may boldly say, "Do not let us part till we have prayed." We
   used to have an old member of this Church who used to pray in very
   extraordinary places. Two women were fighting and he knelt down between
   them to pray and they gave over fighting directly.

   Before a door when there has been a noise in the house he has begun to
   pray. He was better than a policeman for his prayer awed the most
   obstinate. They could not understand it--they thought it a strange
   thing and they did not care to put themselves into direct opposition to
   the man of God. There is a wonderful power in prayer to bless
   ourselves, besides the blessings that it will bring upon others. Pray
   with the weak ones and you will not be a weak one yourself.

   Well, then, your example--if you use your example to strengthen the
   weak--if you carefully say to yourself, "No, I shall not do that
   because, though I may do it, I may do injury to some weak one." If you
   hesitate, if you draw back from your own rights, and say, "No, no, no.
   I am thinking of the weak ones"--you will get good from that
   self-denial. If the poor, trembling, wandering backslider is much upon
   your mind, you will often be very tender how you act. You will look to
   see where your foot is going down next time, for fear of treading upon
   somebody or other. And in that way you will be winning for yourself the
   great gain of a holy carefulness of walk and conversation--no small
   gain to you.

   And again--suppose that in trying to strengthen these weak ones, you
   begin to quote Scripture to them--quote a promise to them--this will
   bless you. Some of you do not know which promise to quote. You do not
   even know where to find it in the Word. But if you are in the habit of
   studying Scripture with a view to strengthening the weak, you will
   understand it in the best way, for you will get it in a practical form
   and shape. You will have the Bible at your fingertips. Moreover, one of
   these days the text that you looked out for old Mary will suit
   yourself.

   How often have we paid Paul with that which we meant to give to Peter!
   We have ourselves fed on the milk we prepared for the babes. Sometimes
   what we have laid up for another comes in handy for ourselves. We
   strangely find that we ourselves have been fed while we were feeding
   others, according to that promise, "He that waters shall be watered
   also himself."

   Now, I have said all this to you that have wandered and come back and I
   want to say it right home to you. May the Holy Spirit speak to your
   inmost souls. You know who you are and how far all this applies to you.
   The Lord bless you.

   But, dear Friends, if you have not wandered, if the Lord has kept you
   these twenty years close to Him and given you the light of His
   countenance all that time, then I think that you and I and any of us of
   that sort, ought to strengthen our Brethren still more. Oh, what we owe
   to Sovereign Grace! To be kept from wandering--what a blessing is that!
   Let us feel that instead of having a small debt to pay, we have a
   greater debt to acknowledge. Let us wake up to strengthen our Brethren.
   I ask this of you, members of the Church, because, in so large a Church
   as this, unless there is a kind of universal mutual pastorate, what can
   we do? You that are converted, I beseech you to strengthen your
   Brethren.

   And then, once more--if all this ought to be done to those who are in
   the family, what ought we not to do for those out-side--for those that
   have no Christ and no Savior? If you are converted yourself, seek the
   salvation of your children, of your own brothers and sisters and of all
   your household. Try to bring in your neighbors to hear the Word. Get
   them, if you can, under the sound of the Gospel. Why should we not fill
   up on Thursday night till the uppermost gallery is full? There are some
   friends up there tonight, and I am glad to see them. May God bless
   them.

   I hope that the day will come when every seat will be occupied there,
   so that when we are preaching the Gospel we may scatter it broadcast
   and find a field upwards as well as downwards where the seed may fall.
   Oh for a blessing! May we meet in Heaven to praise the Lord our God.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Whole-Heartedness of God in Blessing His People

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, JULY 29, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good and I will plant them in
   this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul."
   Jeremiah 32:41.

   WE cannot help looking for the restoration of the scattered Israelites
   to the land which God has given to them by a covenant of salt--we also
   look for the time when they shall believe in the Messiah whom they have
   rejected, and shall rejoice in Jesus of Nazareth whom today they
   despise. There is great encouragement in prophecy to those who work
   among the seed of Israel. And it is greatly needed, for of all mission
   fields it has been commonly represented to be one of the most barren
   and upon the work the utmost ridicule has been poured.

   God has, therefore, supplied our faith with encouragements larger than
   we have in almost any other direction of service. Let those who believe
   work on! Those who believe not may give it up. They shall not have the
   honor of having helped to gather together the ancient nation to which
   our Lord Himself belonged. For be it never forgotten that Jesus was a
   Jew. If we, who are branches of the wild olive, have been engrafted
   into the good olive, how much more easy shall it be, when God wills it,
   that the natural branches, which for a while were cut off because of
   unbelief, should be again grafted into their own native stock?

   God send it speedily! Oh, that it were so even now! May the house of
   Israel look on Him whom they have pierced and turn unto Him with all
   their hearts. At present we have to say and sing--

   "You chosen seed of Israel's race, A remnant weak and small; Hail Him
   who sa ves you by His Grace, And crown Him Lord of all."

   It is a rule, in interpreting the Word of God, that the promises made
   to the natural Israel, so far as they are spiritual, belong to the
   spiritual Israel.

   Believers in Christ are the true seed of Abraham. "Though Abraham is
   ignorant of us and Sara acknowledge us not," after the flesh, yet
   Abraham is the father of the faithful. And they that are faithful
   justly claim him to be their father. They that are of faith are of the
   spiritual seed of Abraham, who believed God and it was counted to him
   for righteousness. The covenant made with Abraham is a covenant made
   with all who are in Abraham, with all the seed born according to
   promise, as was Isaac. And we may lay hold, without doubt or hesitancy,
   upon all the spiritual promises made to the seed of Israel as being
   made to all who, like Israel, know what it is to wrestle with God and
   to prevail.

   I have, therefore, no doubt whatever in taking such a promise as this
   and using it with reference to the whole company of God's elect--those
   peculiar people, whom God has created for Himself, who shall show forth
   His praise. Viewed in that light, we have before us a text of exceeding
   glory, one of those great Scriptures that make me fear and tremble for
   all the goodness which the Lord causes to pass before me. I have
   presumed to handle it, but I do not presume to say that I can take you
   into its innermost meaning. I shall pick up a nugget here and there
   which I find upon the surface. But I am painfully conscious that the
   great gold-mines underneath are not, as yet, within my reach.

   Oh, that we had Divine Grace to dig deeper! Oh, that we had greater
   capacity for comprehending the heights, depths, lengths and breadths of
   the love of God to His people! I am forced to say to each one of you,
   "Silver and gold have I none. But such as I have I give you." I can
   only present to my hearers such as I am able to grasp with my own mind.
   May the Lord bless it!

   I shall say to you, first, consider this text for instruction.
   Secondly, consider it with evidence. And thirdly, consider the
   inferences which naturally flow from it, Oh, that the Holy Spirit may
   take of these deep things of God and show them unto you!

   I. First, CONSIDER OUR TEXT FOR INSTRUCTION. When you do so, the first
   thought is, God blesses His people heartily. "I will rejoice over them
   to do them good and I will plant them in this land assuredly with My
   whole heart." Notice, in passing, that word "assuredly." For it
   confirms the word as full of truth and certainty. There must be no
   doubt here--assuredly banishes it utterly. When the Lord looks upon His
   chosen and opens His liberal hand towards them, assuredly His heart
   goes with His hand. There are some works of God in which His heart does
   not go. He smites the guilty with His left hand. But He says, "As I
   live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies
   but that he turn unto Me and live."

   But when He is dealing with His right hand of loving kindness, His
   heart goes out with His hand. O Beloved, you that receive His Grace may
   know assuredly that besides the blessings which you receive, you also
   have God's whole heart. He blesses you with His whole soul or life. He
   concentrates His nature upon you that He may bless you to the full. He
   is slow to wrath but He is swift to mercy, for He delights in it. When
   He deals out His Grace to His people, then you see the loving God, for
   "God is love." And you see the living God, for He blesses you with His
   whole soul. His Godhead is displayed in the deeds of His love.

   There is a way of doing things and there is another way of doing
   things--a work can be done and done according to rule and no great
   fault can be found with it. But yet it may be done listlessly and as a
   matter of routine. Another worker takes pleasure in his work and throws
   his heart and soul into it. The result will show the difference in
   points which one can hardly mention in words. A painting with a great
   painter's heart and soul in it is a rare treasure. When the worker puts
   himself forth to his utmost, that he may do the work in the noblest
   fashion, the product is most precious. Even so has God determined that
   in the wonders of His Grace, through Jesus Christ, He will show Himself
   more fully than in any other labor to which He has set His hand. No
   other work so clearly displays the heart of Jehovah.

   But then, next, He does this work of blessing His people thoughtfully,
   for it is added, "and with My whole soul." Not only the affections of
   God, speaking after the manner of man, but the great mind and life of
   God is thrown into the work of saving and blessing His people. His
   essence, His soul, is here at home. The design argument, when brought
   to bear upon nature, proves the existence of God. We see in nature
   clear marks of design and a design argues a designer. Much more when
   that argument is brought to bear upon the works of Divine Grace do we
   see the Lord.

   For in the transactions of Divine Grace there is design in everything.
   There is no one act of Grace but has its design of perfecting the
   chosen--not one blessing of the Covenant but has its aim for their
   eternal blessedness. Salvation is full of those thoughts of God which
   are as much higher than our thoughts as the heavens are above the
   earth. What a wonderful thought of God was the purpose to save His
   people at all! When He brought His foreknowledge to bear upon the
   future condition of the chosen, He knew what they would be and provided
   for it. He determined to meet all the difficulties that He knew would
   arise, especially when He saw them ruined in the Fall.

   He determined to undo by the second Adam the mischief worked by the
   first. He saw His chosen dead and determined to give them eternal life
   in His Son. He saw them guilty and condemned to punishment and He
   resolved to remove that condemnation by a Sacrifice. Perhaps the
   grandest thought of all was that God should meet Law by Law and death
   by death--and bring His people, guilty as they were, to bear the
   punishment in the Person of their glorious Substitute. And yet cause
   them never to bear the punishment at all in their own proper
   persons--for they were set free through the one perfect Sacrifice.

   If you would learn God's wisdom to the full, as far as a human mind can
   grasp it, you should study the marvelous system of redemption, that
   whole scheme which begins in election and which will never cease

   "Till all the chosen race Shall meet around the Throne; Shall bless the
   conduct of His Grace, And make His Glory known."

   Can you catch the thought that all the affections of God go out to His
   chosen and that all the thoughts of God concentrate themselves upon
   them?

   Though He upholds high Heaven and rules the universe, though
   illimitable space is filled with the marvels of His power and skill,
   yet is His whole heart and soul with His beloved ones. As a man,
   however wide his business, thinks still continually of his home, so
   does God, however many are His thoughts, consider first and last those
   of whom He says that He has engraved upon the palms of His hands. With
   His whole heart and His whole soul He gives them undivided attention.
   Did not I tell you I could not dive into the depths of this sea? I have
   thought of God's heart as I dared. I have thought of God's soul as best
   I could. But how can I know what is meant by the whole heart and the
   whole soul of the Infinite? Yet all this goes forth when the Lord
   blesses His people, whom He has redeemed unto Himself. He says it
   Himself and so we may dare repeat it--"With My whole heart and with My
   whole soul."

   We notice next, that if that is so, then He employs all His resources
   to bless His elect. When a man is doing a thing with his whole heart
   and with his whole soul, you know that there is nothing in that man but
   what will come out if necessary--there is nothing the man has but what
   he will use it to accomplish his purpose. He counts all things cheap so
   that he may achieve the design which has absorbed him. The Lord our
   God--I speak as a man and with deep reverence--is absorbed in doing
   good to His people--there is nothing that He is, there is nothing that
   He has but what He will bring it to bear upon the design upon which He
   has set His whole heart and His whole soul.

   When the prodigal returned to his father's house, his father, in joy
   over him, did not keep back anything. Had he love in his heart? He
   kissed him. Had he language on his lips? He spoke his love--"Bring
   forth the best robe," says he-- it was always kept locked up by itself.
   But the best robe is for him--"put it on him. Put a ring on his hand."
   Go to the jewel chest and fetch out the rarest treasure. Put shoes on
   his feet--the most costly sandals you can find, bring them here and let
   him be shod right royally. The whole resources of the mansion were
   lavished on him. "Bring here the fatted calf and kill it. And let us
   eat and be merry."

   They had not music every day but the father will not let a single harp
   or timbrel be silent on that day. The tinkling feet of the maidens
   shall keep time to the music--nothing shall be wanting to show forth
   the father's love and joy and make his son rejoice. Behold, what God
   has done for His people! He has given them His all--all the wisdom of
   His Providence shall be theirs while here and all the glory of His
   Heaven hereafter. God has His abode in Heaven--behold, He makes it the
   abode of His chosen forever. Angels are His courtiers--they shall be
   ministering spirits to His elect. The Throne of His Son they shall sit
   upon with Him. The victories of God shall furnish them with palms and
   the delight of God shall find them harps.

   But stop, there is something more than all that! It was little for God
   to give earth and Heaven but He must needs give His Son, the express
   image of His Glory, His other self. Out of the bosom of His love must
   Jesus Christ be taken. For He gave His only-begotten Son, that
   whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.
   Great God, You have all things and You have given all things to Your
   people! You have not held back of Your power, or of Your majesty. For
   we see Your strength, Your sovereignty, Your whole Self, in their
   salvation!

   You have not kept back Your wisdom or immutability. For we see both of
   these in their attaining to eternal glory! You have laid out Your own
   boundless all-sufficiency, that You might bring Your many sons to
   glory. Oh for a well-tuned harp! My soul does magnify the Lord. But how
   can I fitly praise Him?

   The Lord subordinates all other works to that of His love. When a man
   is absorbed by a mighty purpose, he may be doing other things--it may
   be needful that he should. But you will see him bend all other matters
   towards his chief end. He will bring home the sheaves from all the
   fields he tills and lay them up in the garner of his main purpose. Now
   see what God has done. When He made the heavens and the earth, His
   infinite wisdom thought of His people. And when He came to order the
   nations in Providence, "He set the bounds of the people according to
   the number of the children of

   Israel."

   At this hour no king ascends the throne and no dynasty vacates it,
   without reference in God's mind to His ultimate object. Pestilence,
   famine, earthquake, wars--all have some relation to the Church of God.
   All that happens, all that is yet to happen-whether it is the falling
   of the star Wormwood, or the pouring out of the vials, or whatever else
   we dimly see in the mystery of prophecy--all shall move toward the
   grand purpose of almighty love. These events are the bow but His love
   purposes are the arrows. Everything, from the first opening of the
   seals to the complete unfolding of the Book, shall have to do with the
   calling, cleansing, training, preserving and perfecting of those chosen
   ones whom He has given unto His Son.

   In the end, the heavens and the earth that now are shall be rolled up,
   like a worn-out vesture and pass away. But in that day the Lord will
   have respect unto His chosen and for them shall be prepared a new
   Heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. For the Bride of
   Christ, who shall have made herself ready for the marriage supper,
   there shall be a fit dwelling. Everything, whether of creation or
   destruction, mercy or judgment, shall work, like the wheels of some
   vast machinery, to produce good to those who are the people of the
   living God.

   I would add to these thoughts, feeble and superficial as they are, by
   noticing, next, that the Lord gives to His people and for His people
   without stint. He blesses them with His whole heart and with His whole
   soul. Some persons of a halfhearted nature, even if they entertain you
   kindly, yet betray their want of warmth. Others in every little act
   prove their intense heartiness. I recollect when I was able to journey
   through the country preaching, I for several years stayed occasionally
   with a fine old English farmer.

   He used to have a piece of beef upon the table, I do not know how many
   pounds it weighed but it was enormous and I said to him one day, "Why
   is it that whenever I come here you have such immense joints? Do you
   think that I can eat like a giant? If so, it is a great mistake. Look
   at that joint, there," I said, "if I were to take it home, it might
   last me a month." "Well," he said, "if I could get a bigger bit I
   would, for I am so glad to see you. And if you could eat it all, you
   should be heartily welcome. I want everybody that comes here today to
   feel that I will do my very best for you."

   He did not measure my necessities to the half-ounce but he provided on
   a lavish scale. I quote this homely instance of giving heartily to show
   you how, on a Divine scale, the Lord makes ready for His guests. When
   He entertains His people, ah Sirs, He does not give them a measured
   portion of hard, dry bread but He sets forth "fat things full of marrow
   and wines on the lees well refined." The festivals of God are on a
   scale of splendor commensurate with His measureless dominion. When He
   feeds His children--though once they would have been thankful to eat
   the crumbs from His table--He sets them among princes and gives them to
   eat of the king's meat.

   He lays eternity under contribution to provide for the needs, no, for
   the desires, for the joys of His people. We are not straitened in our
   God. He has not arrayed us in coarse garments but He has covered us
   with the robe of righteousness. He has not merely washed us but He has
   put jewels on us as a bride adorns herself with ornaments. He has not
   provided workmen's tenements for us to dwell in but, "in my Father's
   house are many mansions." The Lord has not merely put at our disposal
   the beasts of the earth but His angels are our bodyguards. In the
   Temple of God's love no stone is commonplace. They are all great
   jewels.

   Read in the Revelation how every course is jasper, or sapphire, or
   chalcedony, or emerald. The walls of His temple of Grace are of all
   manner of precious stones, from the foundation to the top stone. But
   even jewels are mere toys compared with the infinite wealth of the
   Divine liberality towards His own chosen. There is no stint supposable
   when the infinite Jehovah gives with His whole heart. How narrow are my
   expressions when I would set forth His illimitable goodness!

   Beloved, another point sets forth most plainly that the Lord blesses
   His people with His whole heart and with His whole soul, for He
   perseveres in it. When did He begin with us?--

   "Before His hands had made The sun to rule the day, Or earth's
   foundations laid, Or fashioned Adam's clay."

   When will He end with us? Never. For our souls are bound up in the
   bundle of life with the soul of the Lord our God. Truly, if He had been
   mindful of our shortcomings He might have found abundant cause for
   casting us off. But He has not dealt with us after our sins.

   I appeal to your own consciences, you that are the people of God--might
   He not many a time have said, "I am weary of you"? But the weariness
   has been on the other side--His love complains of you, "You have been
   weary of Me, O Israel." The Lord has rejoiced to do us good and has
   multiplied His mercies. Are you not surprised with the variety of His
   favors towards you? An old writer says that "God's flowers bloom
   double," for He sends two blessings where there seems but one. But I
   would say they are like the light--they are sevenfold, even as in every
   ray from the sun we have seven colors blended in harmony.

   What sevens and sevens of infinite love are contained in every beam of
   mercy that comes to the redeemed! As every sin is many sins, so every
   pardon is many pardons. As every need contains many needs within it, so
   every supply is many supplies. God blesses us many times every time He
   blesses us. And the wonder of it is that He continues these heaped-up
   mer-

   cies. He has not forgotten His Covenant of day and night. And certainly
   His mercies have been new every morning and fresh every evening. Great
   is His faithfulness.

   Sometimes we think that the Ruler of the Universe has surely set aside
   His Covenant as to seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, cold and
   heat. For this year it is cold in summer-time. But yet our mind is sure
   that His Word will not be violated in this respect. And even so, our
   gracious Lord may for a while answer us roughly and smite us sharply,
   till the blueness of the wound alarms us. But all this is no evidence
   of want of love. Did He not say, "As many as I tenderly love I rebuke
   and chasten"? His Covenant stands secure--there is with God no
   variableness, nor shadow of a turning. He continues, still, to hold
   fast to the purpose of His Grace towards His chosen and He will do so
   even to the end. All glory be unto His name!

   As the Lord perseveres in His work, so He succeeds in it. God is
   determined to make something of His people and He will. He has made a
   great deal more of us now than we ever dreamed that He would have done.
   He has made saints out of sinners, servants out of rebels, children out
   of aliens. Some of you are now being used in His service who were once
   the tools of Satan. Remember what you were once. Do not forget the
   dunghills whereon you grew. Think you of the mire out of which the Lord
   of Love lifted you. What a change He has worked! When you are very
   depressed you ought to recollect that change.

   The Lord has done for you already that which should make you thunder
   out His praise forever. But the Lord is going on to do far more for
   you. He has taken off some of the coarsest surface but He will polish
   you yet to an exceeding beauty. I verily believe, if we could see
   ourselves as we shall be, it would make us laugh for very joy. If we
   could look in some magic glass in which a man could see himself in the
   glorified state, we should sit down and look at it with amazement, till
   we should cry, "Can that be I? Is it possible that I shall ever come to
   such glory and beauty?"

   my Brothers and Sisters, you are only in the egg as yet. You have
   chipped a little bit of it and you have looked out. But the most that
   you have seen is your own shell. Know you not that you have wings? Yes,
   wings which you cannot stretch as yet, for they are bound down by the
   shell. But you shall spread them soon and mount aloft into that clear
   blue where eagles are at home. You shall rise above all visible things
   and reach the serene abodes of the blessed. There shall you--

   "From all this earthly grossness quit,

   With glory crowned forever sit;

   And triumph over death and you, O Time!"

   1 suppose that God's great purpose was to multiply the glory of His
   only begotten Son. For the second Adam there was not found a helpmeet
   and the Lord resolved to fashion for Him a bride, a dear companion. The
   glorious Son rejoiced in the thought and henceforth His delights were
   with the sons of men. To this end the Word was made flesh and dwelt
   among us and we beheld His Glory and for the same purpose we are to be
   made like He. He is the image of the invisible God. But He is also the
   first-born among many Brethren who are all to bear the same likeness.
   "It does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He
   shall appear, we shall be like He. For we shall see Him as He is."

   I think Milton was not far from the truth when he supposed that Satan
   made a great gap among the courtiers of Heaven when he led astray the
   third part of the stars of Heaven, and that God resolved to repair that
   wall of service with living stones more costly and more beautiful than
   those which were removed from their place. Certainly He is doing so. In
   Heaven there sits a Man nearest to the eternal God and we are there
   with Him and made like He--sons and yet servants, servants and yet
   sons. Does not Jehovah bless us with His whole heart and with His whole
   soul? I am getting a little deeper now. Here are waters to swim in.
   What I say is true but it is not the tenth part of the Truth of God.
   Blessed is that promise, "What you know not now, you shall know
   hereafter."

   Closing up this first division, we note that God delights in all that
   He does for His own. We are happy when God blesses us but not so happy
   as God is. We are glad when we are pardoned but He that pardons us is
   more glad, still. The prodigal, going back to his home, was very, very
   happy. But not so delighted as his father, who could say, "This my son
   was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." The father's
   heart was the fullest of delight and it was by far the larger heart, so
   that it could hold more joy. The Lord rejoices over His people, resting
   in His love and joy over them with singing.

   Beloved, you think it impossible that God should delight in you, for
   you do not delight in yourselves. Yet it is true that He "takes
   pleasure in them that fear Him, in them that hope in His mercy." A
   little babe, if it had wit and could look at itself, would say, "How
   inferior I am to my father! What feeble hands! What tottering feet! I
   am a poor, puny, dependent creature." Yes, but that is not the way in
   which the mother thinks of it. She spies out a loveliness in the
   weakness and a beauty in the littleness of her babe. She looks at it
   until her eyes swim with tears lest anything should harm it. She thinks
   it the most beautiful thing that ever was and doubtless it is so to
   her.

   Our God has all the instincts of motherhood and fatherhood blended in
   one. And when He looks upon His Church He calls her "Hephzibah"--"My
   delight is in her." I read not that He delights in the works of nature,
   alone, but He rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth. He does not
   rejoice in the works of His hands so much as in the works of His heart.
   The whole Godhead is at home in blessing those whom everlasting love
   has ordained to everlasting life.

   Brethren, I will say no more. I leave this choice subject with you.
   Unlock this casket and examine the pearls, although you will not be
   able to estimate their full value--"I will rejoice over them to do them
   good and I will plant them in this land assuredly with My whole heart
   and with My whole soul."

   II. Secondly and, I am sorry to say, briefly, CONSIDER THE TEXT WITH
   THE EVIDENCE. I have already given

   you large evidence, and, therefore, I may have to go over the same
   ground again. In order to prove that God does thus bless us with His
   whole heart and with His whole soul, I would remind you that the whole
   Trinity is engaged in the blessing of the chosen. Father, Son and Holy
   Spirit are one in essence and one in this loving object.

   First comes the Father. It was He that chose us--chose us, not because
   He must choose us or not, but freely with "His whole heart." He chose
   us when kings and great ones were passed by. With a deliberate,
   unchangeable, eternal choice, He made us His own. Having chosen us, He
   planned for us. Oh, the plans of Infinite Grace in the council chamber
   of eternity--far-reaching, all-comprehending plans of unfailing love!
   Wisdom from her throne determined the way in which God would lead His
   people and bless His people and sanctify His people and perfect His
   people.

   The great Father then entered into a Divine Covenant with His whole
   heart and His whole soul, pledging His royal Word and then adding His
   oath, that by two immutable things, wherein it was impossible for God
   to lie, we might have strong consolation. That Covenant, ordered in all
   things and sure, is proof of the whole-heartedness of God. Remember,
   also, the gift of His dear Son. Here are two wonders--the gift of
   Christ for the chosen and the gift of the chosen to Christ. The more
   you think of these two mysteries, the more will your mind be overflowed
   with gratitude. "O world of wonders! I can say no less."

   When all this was done for us before we were born, was it not a
   striking thing that the Father should resolve to give us of His own
   life? Seeing we were spiritually dead, "He has begotten us again unto a
   lively hope." This is marvelous! We that are His chosen are also His
   children, partakers of the Divine nature. No, I cannot speak of that.
   That is to be thought of in your inmost souls--and I had almost said,
   dreamed of in your sleep.

   Next, the Lord adopted us, for He does nothing by halves. Regeneration
   gives us the nature of children but adoption gives us the status and
   rights of children. "If children, then heirs, heirs of--what?--Heirs of
   the world? No. Heirs of the world to come? Yes, if you please. But the
   Scripture speaks more largely--"Heirs of God." God Himself has become
   the heritage of His own people and they are "joint-heirs with Jesus
   Christ." Surely I have proved that the Father has blessed us with His
   whole heart and with His whole soul.

   In reference to the ever-blessed Son of God, whom we worship as most
   truly God, we have the same Truth to state. He loved us ages before He
   came to earth as man. Long before He came to earth to bleed and die, He
   visited His people in different forms and was seen by Abraham, Jacob,
   Moses, Joshua and others. In all this He proved how His whole heart and
   His whole soul went out to men. But, lo! the fullness of time is come.
   What do I see yonder? A Babe in a manger! An infant at a woman's
   breast! Thus the Son of the Highest condescends for our sakes. I see
   Him, further on, a humble Man, despised as a Nazarene. With weary feet
   He traverses Galilee and Judea and Samaria, bearing our sicknesses, a
   Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.

   It is He. It is the Son of God! Start not as I lead you unto the garden
   of agony where His groans amaze the angels and the bloody sweat dyes
   all His garment as if He had trod the winepress. It is He whom all the
   heavens adore. Is He not serving us with His whole heart and with His
   whole soul? I see Him bowing His head down to kiss our fallen humanity
   and stretching out His hands on the Cross to embrace the guilty. His
   feet meanwhile fast nailed as though He meant to

   await the latest comer. Yes, it is He--it is He who loved us with an
   everlasting love. Alas, His side was pierced and blood and water
   flowed. Say, did He not bless us with His whole heart and with His
   whole soul? Was there ever one who lived so intensely as Christ did, or
   died with such whole-hearted self-sacrifice?

   Truly, the zeal of God's house had eaten Him up. His whole heart and
   His whole soul went out in our redemption. After He was dead He rose
   again and He was as intent to bless after His resurrection as when He
   fell asleep. He visited His disciples and comforted them. Then He went
   up to Heaven and rejoined the Father's majesty but He changed not his
   mind. Still with His whole heart and with His whole soul He lives for
   us. He is preparing Heaven for us. He has taken possession of our
   celestial estates and He is pleading for us before the Throne. Do you
   not hear His intercession at this hour?

   Every day he continues to promote the interests of His redeemed with
   His whole heart. Moreover, He is hurrying to come to us. "Behold," says
   He, "I come quickly." Always, ever, with His whole heart and with His
   whole soul, this glorious Son of God is blessing His people. All honor
   be to His Divine majesty!

   I must not omit the Holy Spirit, "to whom be all honor and glory." The
   sacred Spirit of all Divine Grace blesses us with His whole heart and
   with His whole soul. He came after us when we went not after Him. When
   we were mad with sin and ravenous after the pleasures of it, He
   followed us, to check us in our headlong career, to beckon us to better
   things, to draw us there and to help us when we began to incline to the
   holy. He gave us life and light and liberty. The most wonderful thing
   about the Holy Spirit is that He should ever deign to dwell in us. Is
   the Holy Spirit within this body?

   Does He dwell within the child of God? It is even so. For a prince to
   reside in a hovel is little condescension compared with the Spirit of
   God dwelling in these vile bodies of ours. Yet He is within us. And,
   being here, He works with all His heart. He quickens, but He leaves not
   that life untaught, for He instructs us. He teaches us to profit, "line
   upon line, precept upon precept." But He is not content with
   teaching--He comforts us. When we are sad, He comes with Divine
   consolations--this is very, very tender of Him. He would not do this if
   He were not befriending us with His whole heart and with His whole
   soul. But He stops not at comforting. He goes on to render aid--"He
   helps our infirmities." Nor is this all--He strengthens us and works in
   us to will and do of His own good pleasure.

   My time is gone and perhaps it is as well, for I have not the grace or
   wisdom to set out all this great matter. But if Father, Son and Holy
   Spirit are found blessing us thus, we see in the sacred Unity in
   Trinity, not only unity of nature but unity of purpose. And the One
   Jehovah is blessing us with His whole heart and with His whole soul.
   How I chatter! My text is majesty, my talk is poverty. One cannot
   preach upon such a text as this. How shall I reach the height of this
   great argument? Here is manna for your souls! It tastes as wafers made
   with honey. Digest it well and let it saturate the secret parts of your
   nature and there let it sweeten spirit, soul and body.

   III. So I close by saying to you--CONSIDER THE INFERENCES WHICH FLOW
   FROM THE TEXT. The first

   inference is one of consolation. Does God bless us with His whole heart
   and with His whole soul? Oh, then, how happy we ought to be! Come, my
   Sister, wipe those tears away! Come, my Brother, you must get out of
   your despondency! You must not be down in the dumps while such a Truth
   as this is before you. This unseasonable weather fills our bones with
   rheumatism and our spirits with depression. But the eternal Truth must
   influence more than the transient weather.

   While meditating on this theme, I said to myself, "Come, come, this
   will not do--with such a subject as this you ought to sing for joy." I
   felt that my preparation for the pulpit ought to be one continuous
   song. The Lord blesses me with His whole heart and with His whole soul,
   what better news can I hear? This sweet assurance is a bath of milk. Of
   the man who believes it we may say, "Butter and honey shall he eat."
   You breathe the perfume of Heaven when you can get at the meaning of
   this text. Oh, the joy that lies asleep in these words, as odors hide
   away in flowers! Come, heavenly wind and wake the slumbering
   joys--constrain the celestial perfumes to flow abroad, that we may
   exult in them.

   Our God does not give us His mercies off-hand, as we see a man fling a
   penny to a beggar. No, no, He blesses us with His whole heart and with
   His whole soul. When the wicked are increased in riches, God's heart
   does not go with the gifts which enrich them--they are as bullocks
   fattened for the slaughter. The Lord does not think much of riches,
   and, therefore, He usually gives them to the ungodly as men give bones
   to dogs. But when He deals with His people, ah, then His heart goes
   with every penny that He gives them, with every crust that He puts on
   their table, with every drink of water that refreshes them, with every
   breath of air which sustains their lives.

   When your pulse beats, it keeps time to the goodness of God. In heights
   or in depths, in brightness or in darkness, God's endless, boundless,
   measureless love is always shining on you. Come, come, I say again,
   sorrow is out of place in this house this day. This is a feast day! Let
   us rejoice with heart and soul, seeing the Lord our God so largely
   blesses us.

   Another inference and I have done--it is one of exhortation. Let us
   love our God with our whole heart and with our whole soul. Let us begin
   with trusting Him with our whole heart and with our whole soul. Lay the
   whole of your burden upon God--tell the whole of your sorrow to your
   Father. Trust Him for the past, the present and the future. Trust Him
   completely, implicitly, unhesitatingly. Then love Him with all your
   heart and soul. We do not half love our God. I think I spy a spark or
   two of love down there in those ashes and among those half-charred logs
   of wood. Come, let us wake up the flames till they blaze again.

   Blow carefully on the drowsy fires. Let us create a great fire and then
   heap on fresh logs. Oh, to love the Lord with something like His own
   love! Let us also serve Him with our whole heart and our whole soul.
   How often the service that is done for God is slovenly, heartless,
   dull! Let it not be so again. Brothers, if we preach, let us preach
   with our whole heart and with our whole soul. Sisters, if you teach
   your classes, teach them with your whole heart and with your whole
   soul. If all you can do is to give away a tract, give it away with your
   whole heart and with your whole soul.

   He that gives His whole heart and soul to you, great as they are, may
   well claim that you give your whole heart and your whole soul to Him,
   little as they are. May the blessed Spirit lead you to whole-hearted
   consecration and this will be a truly practical sermon! They say, "Put
   the whip into the manger." And that is what I have tried to do. I have
   fed you that you may go the faster. Away, then, you courageous steeds!
   Be strong as oxen and swift as eagles! Fed on such food as this, you
   are bound to do the work of God with energy and perseverance.

   Glorify God's name, seeing He has done all this for you. Oh, that you
   would all feed on this meat! Whosoever believes that Jesus is the
   Christ, is born of God--and being born of God he has God's heart and
   soul engaged for him. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you may take to
   yourself all that I have said. But if you believe not, I fear that you
   will die in your sins. God save you, for Christ's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Rule of the Race

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, AUGUST 5, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto
   Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was
   set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame and is set down
   at the right hand of the Throne of God." Hebrews 12:1,2.

   THE Apostle says, "Let us run." He has in his mind's eye the Olympic
   games, where all the different tribes of Greece were gathered together
   in general assembly to display the prowess of the race. Among the
   athletic exercises were footraces. The Apostle makes this footrace an
   illustration of the Christian life. We must run with patience along the
   appointed course if we would win the prize of our high calling.

   He stands with us at the starting block and earnestly says to us, not
   "Run," but, "Let us run." The Apostle himself is at our side as a
   runner. The presence of such a comrade is most inspiriting. It is good
   doing good things in good company. "Let us run," says he, "with
   patience the race that is set before us." Who will back out of a race
   wherein so great a saint takes his place at our side? You who aspire to
   be associated with the excellent of the earth, press forward side by
   side with an Apostle! "Let us run," from Paul's lip, puts wings upon
   our heels.

   Before we start, with a wave of the hand the Apostle directs us to the
   spectators who throng the sides of the course. There were always such
   at those races--each city and state yielded its contingent and the
   assembled throng watched with eager eye the efforts of those who strove
   for the mastery. Those who look down upon us from yonder heavens are
   described as "so great a cloud of witnesses." These compass us about.
   Thousands upon thousands who have run this race before us and have
   attained their crowns, behold us from their heavenly seats and mark how
   we behave ourselves.

   This race is worth running, for the eyes of "the nations of them which
   are saved" are fixed upon us. This is no hole-and-corner business, this
   running for the great prize. Angels and principalities and powers and
   hosts redeemed by blood have mustered to behold the glorious spectacle
   of men agonizing for holiness and putting forth their utmost strength
   to copy the Lord Jesus. You that are men, now run for it! If there is
   any spiritual life and gracious strength in you, put it forth
   today--for Patriarchs and Prophets, saints, martyrs and Apostles look
   down from Heaven upon you.

   Our Apostle, anxious that we should so run that we may obtain, points
   to certain burdens and impediments which he foresees will hinder us and
   he says, "Let us lay aside every weight." Note how he includes himself,
   so that his warning may not sound like upbraiding. We cannot win if we
   are weighted--the pace will have to be very swift and we cannot get to
   it, or keep it up, if we have weights to carry. Unloaded we shall find
   the race taxing all our powers. But weighted, we shall be doomed to
   failure. Oh, to lay aside all worrisome care, fretfulness, ambition,
   anger, greed and selfish desire! These were never worth the labor they
   have cost us.

   Now that we have become running men, we must have done with them. Down
   they must go till the last ounce is on the ground. Like the Greek
   footman, we would strip. And instead of adding weight, we would
   diminish even our own bulk, that we may fly along the course. O you
   that would win, heed the caution and "lay aside every weight," whether
   it be great or small. And press towards the mark! Run for it, Man! You
   had need do nothing else but run.

   Still attentively considering us, the Apostle notes that even when the
   weights are laid aside there is a garment about us which will assuredly
   twist about our feet and throw us down. Sin, as well as care, must be
   laid aside. It does easily beset us and therefore we must be the more
   careful to be rid of it. Our original sin, our natural tendencies, our
   constitutional infirmities--these must be laid aside as garments
   unsuitable for men who are running the heavenly race. We cannot win
   Heaven and wear sin. Heaven is for the holy--"there shall in no wise
   enter into it anything that defiles."

   Darling sins must go first--these, as they are most loved, will have
   the most power to hinder. Every kind of sin must be watched against,
   struggled against and mastered. "Sin shall not have dominion over you."
   We hope to see all our ten-

   dencies to sin killed and buried--buried so deep that not even a bone
   of a sin shall be left above ground. This will be Heaven to us. Do I
   not hear you say, "May God help us"? This must be a tough race which
   requires such stripping as this. If every weight of care must be laid
   aside and every rag of sin, who is sufficient for these things? How can
   we, poor limping mortals, run in such a race as this?

   Even the starting is beyond us--how much more must perseverance in it
   outreach our strength! See, my Brethren, how we are driven to Free
   Grace--how we are driven to the power of the Holy Spirit? The race
   which is set before us most clearly reveals our helplessness and our
   hopelessness apart from Divine Grace. The race of holiness and
   patience-- while it demands our vigor--displays our weakness. We are
   compelled, even before we take a step in the running, to bow the knee
   and cry unto the strong for strength. We dare not retreat from the
   contest. But how can we begin a struggle for which we are so unfitted?
   Who will help us? To whom shall we look? Does not all this very
   admirably introduce the verse which is specially my text--"Looking unto
   Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith"?

   But the Apostle has not quite done with us, for he warns us to remember
   the rules of the course in these words, "Let us run with patience the
   race that is set before us." You are not to run anyhow, or
   anywhere--you must keep the appointed course, or you might as well
   stand still. The way of God's command, the way of obedience, the way of
   humble trustfulness, the spiritual way, the way of the life given from
   above--this and no other way will do, for this is the race set before
   you! Do you shrink? Does the way seem too mysterious, too contrary to
   the flesh, too trying? All this adds to the force of the
   precept--"Looking unto Jesus." Because the way itself and the rules of
   the running are such as your nature will fight against--therefore look
   the more earnestly to the great Captain of your salvation.

   In a race, a great point is the way in which a man keeps his eyes. He
   cannot run straight who has an eye to this or to that. Straightforward
   is the best running. But he who has his eyes on this and on that will
   run crookedly and waste his strength. Look to the end and then run in a
   direct line. I have read of a competition between certain young plowmen
   who were set to plow for a prize. The most of them made very crooked
   work of it. After they had ended, one of the judges said, "Young man,
   where did you look while you were plowing?" "I kept my eyes well on the
   plow handles, Sir and saw what I had to hold."

   "Yes," the judge said, "and your plow went in and out and the furrow is
   all crooked." He asked the next plowman, "and where did you look?"
   "Well, Sir," he answered, "I looked at my furrow, I kept my eye always
   on the furrow that I was making. I thought I should make it straight
   that way." "But you did not," answered the judge, "you were all over
   the place." To the next he said, "What did you look at?" "Well, Sir,"
   he said, "I looked between the two horses to a tree that stood in the
   ledge at the other end of the field, right in front of me."

   Now that man went straight because he had a fixed mark to guide him.
   This helps us to appreciate the wisdom of the text, "Looking unto
   Jesus." Run--run straight--you cannot run straight except you keep your
   eyes on One who is always the same. "Looking unto Jesus, the author and
   finisher of your faith," you will have a sure preservative from
   wandering. Spiritual plowmen, take heed that you look not back but plow
   a straight furrow towards Jesus on the Throne! Spiritual runners--make
   a covenant with your eyes that you will look only to Him who is the
   great end of all your running! Looking unto Jesus means life, light,
   guidance, encouragement, joy--never cease to look on Him who ever looks
   on you.

   To help us, the Apostle describes the mark to which we are to look in
   four ways. "Look unto Jesus," the Savior, is the sum and substance of
   it all. But He is set forth before us in four lights. First, the Author
   of faith. Secondly, the Finisher of faith. Thirdly, the Pattern of
   faith. And lastly, the Prize, or the end of faith. We must look to
   Jesus Christ in each of these four respects. Oh, for the Holy Spirit's
   help while I speak thereon!

   I. First, then, we are to look to Jesus as THE AUTHOR OF FAITH. The
   Apostle would have us view the Lord Jesus as the Starter of the race.
   When a footrace began, the men were drawn up in a line and they had to
   wait for a signal. Those who were in the race had to look to the
   Starter. For the runner who should get first by a false start would not
   win, because he did not run according to the rules of the race. No man
   is crowned unless he strives lawfully. The Starter was in his place and
   the men stood all waiting and looking.

   At last he dropped his glove, or a handkerchief, and away they went.
   Our word at starting in the Christian life is, "Look unto Jesus." We
   must fix our eyes on "the Beginner of our faith." For if we do not
   begin by looking to Him, however quickly we may hurry along, we shall
   run in vain and labor in vain. To what purpose will your running be if
   the umpire determines that you started improperly?

   The beginning of faith is "looking unto Jesus." Let us consider this.
   We have to look to Jesus, first, by trusting in that which He has
   worked for us. It is described in these words--"Who for the joy that
   was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame." Jesus has
   endured the suffering and shame which were due to us. O Soul, you can
   never start on the road to Heaven unless you look to Him who "endured
   the Cross" on your behalf! Your sin will make you to endure the wrath
   of God forever unless you look to Him who bore our sins in His own body
   on the tree.

   You must get a faith's view of the Lamb of God which takes away the sin
   of the world, or else you have not even begun the heavenward race. Do
   you look upon your own righteousness with pleasure? This is a false
   start for you--"As many as are of the works of the Law are under the
   curse." Do you look to your frames and feelings? You will make a bad
   start with these for they will guide you into a fog in which you will
   lose the track. Look to Jesus, the suffering Savior. He by His bearing
   the Cross has removed your heaviest weights and by His death has
   destroyed your entangling sin. He can renew your nature by His
   resurrection power and save you from the dominion of sin by His
   glorious reign. If you look alone to Him you start well.

   The Greek word for "looking" is a much fuller word than we can find in
   the English language. It has a preposition in it which turns the look
   away from everything else. You are to look away from all except to
   Jesus. Fix not your gaze upon the cloud of witnesses. They will hinder
   you if they take away your eyes from Jesus. Look not on the weights and
   the besetting sin--these you have laid aside--look away from them. Do
   not even look upon the racetrack, or the competitors--but look to Jesus
   and so start in the race.

   What have you to trust to but His blood and righteousness? Beware that
   you set up nothing as a rival confidence. Look off from everything you
   have ever relied upon in days gone by and say to your soul, "None but
   Jesus." You must have a single eye and a single hope. "Christ is all,"
   and He must be all to you, or you are out of the race altogether.

   The instructive original has in it the word "eis," which is translated
   "unto," but in addition has the force of "into." We shall do well if we
   look unto Jesus but better still if we are found "looking into Jesus."
   I want you, when you begin your Divine life, to take care that you look
   to Jesus with so penetrating a gaze that your "unto" grows to an
   "into." Read not only the outside of the volume of His life but loosen
   the seals thereof and read His heart. Dive into the meaning of what He
   has done for you. Look at His enduring the Cross--know what it
   means--and enter into the fellowship of His sufferings.

   Study well the sin-bearing, the curse-bearing, the forsaking and the
   sorrow unto death. Think how the Lord Jesus came under shame for your
   sakes and see how He rose above it all. Look to Him till you are
   familiar with the different views of the one great Sacrifice. Under the
   Law, a poor man brought his two young pigeons and the birds were
   divided in the middle and so offered. A richer man brought a lamb or a
   bullock. This was divided carefully and all its anatomy laid bare--this
   was to be done with the leg, and that with the shoulder--and there was
   an ordinance concerning the fat and the innards.

   Thus some Believers know the details of the sacrifice and we want you,
   dear Friends, to be among this better instructed class. May you discern
   the Lord's body and penetrate into the secrets of His soul and so begin
   your Christian life with an intelligent and instructed faith. This will
   secure better running throughout the rest of the road. Still you must
   look to Jesus only, whether you know little or much. It is not your
   knowledge, but Himself, that must be your one ground of trust. You must
   take Jesus to be Alpha as well as Omega. To you His name stands at the
   head of the book and it is also the Amen which closes it. To your
   experience the Scripture is true--"In the beginning was the Word." You
   begin to run when you look to Jesus.

   But then, dear Friends, we also begin looking unto Jesus because of
   what He has worked in us. I would remind you who are a good way on in
   the course of those first eager paces with which you started
   heavenward. Did you not begin with looking unto Jesus? As you have
   received Christ Jesus the Lord, so continue in Him. The Lord Jesus
   first called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. He sweetly
   inclined us to think upon Himself as the way and made us wishful to
   become heavenly footmen. It was He that quickened us even as of old He
   raised the dead. The Father quickens whomsoever He will and even so
   does Jesus.

   Even now I seem to hear His voice crying, "Lazarus, come forth!" Well
   do we recollect when serious thought, anxious desire, deep repentance,
   lingering hope and trembling faith entered our souls through "looking
   unto Jesus." Did He not give us pardon at our setting out? It was by
   looking to Him that the great load of sin fell from off our conscience.
   With pardon of sin came a great loathing of sin--washed in the precious
   blood we could not wantonly repeat the stains. Our earliest repentance
   and its fruits came from "looking unto Jesus." Our heart of stone had
   been hardened by looking elsewhere, but the vision of the sacred head
   crowned with thorns did the softening work. We looked and were
   enlightened, enlivened, enraged against sin and enamored of Jesus.

   Our first acceptance with God came from looking to Jesus by faith. We
   found ourselves accepted in the Beloved. O my Friend, do you remember
   that rapturous moment when you perceived that the robe of righteousness
   had covered you from

   head to foot and that your filthy raiment had been taken away? You
   cannot forget that time of love. At that moment you felt the love of
   God within your spirit like a consuming fire burning up your sin. You
   also were filled with love to the Lord your God. You wondered how it
   came there till you perceived that you loved Him because He first loved
   jou.

   Then was every evil abhorred of your soul. Then were you ready for any
   holy service. Then self-denial became a pleasure to you. Then you
   forsook the company of the wicked and sought the society of the saints.
   The love of Jesus had started you upon a race which otherwise you would
   not have chosen--you were converted, turned, turned quite round. You
   owned that henceforth you were not your own and could not run towards
   self--you were bought with a price and therefore must run towards your
   Redeemer. A sight of the Crucified did it all.

   Thus, dear Friends, Jesus is the beginner of our race of faith by what
   He has worked for us and by what He has worked in us. Have I any here
   this morning who are about to start for Heaven? Mind that you start
   aright. I pray you, do not fall into any delusion. Do not imagine that
   your life will avail you anything--however good and moral it may have
   been--unless you begin by looking unto Jesus.

   Mr. Bunyan, in his "Pilgrim's Progress," frequently speaks of those who
   tumbled over the wall, or came in by other irregular ways. But they all
   missed the end. As they came in without Christ, so they went out
   without hope. One who came near to the Celestial City, who had not come
   in at the gate, was made to know that there is a back way to Hell, even
   from the gate of Heaven. You must begin with looking unto Jesus, or you
   will end with a fearful looking for of judgment. Does not Jesus say, "I
   am the Beginning"? Would you set up another beginning? He must be the
   first letter of your hope, or else you do not even know the alphabet of
   salvation.

   II. But now, secondly, we must look to Jesus as THE FINISHER OF FAITH.
   As Jesus is at the commencement of the course, starting the runners, so
   He is at the end of the course--the Rewarder of those who endure to the
   end. Those who would win in the great race must keep their eyes upon
   Him all along the course, even till they reach the finish line.

   You will be helped to look to Him when you remember that He is the
   Finisher of your faith by what He has worked for you. For the text
   says, "He endured the Cross, despising the shame and is set down at the
   right hand of the Throne of God." You also shall have Heaven--for He
   has it. You shall sit upon the Throne--for He sits there. Look to His
   passion on the Cross to begin with. Look to His session on the Throne,
   that you may hold on to the end. Look to Jesus as dying for the pardon
   of your sins but as living for the justification of your souls.
   Incarnation and death have led on to intercession and endless

   life.

   Jesus has sat down--He takes His rest because He has completed His
   work. Here on earth He was filled with shame but yonder in Glory He is
   full of honor--for He is set down "at the right hand of God." Here He
   was bound and led captive. There He is King of kings and Lord of lords,
   for He sits at the right hand of the Throne of God. Here on earth we
   see His manhood--born in a manger, living in poverty, dying the
   ignominious death of the Cross. There we adore His Divine Glory--for He
   is "at the right hand of the Throne of God." Think of your Savior as
   your God, clothed with all power and authority. Surely this should urge
   you to quicken your pace and never to become weary or faint.

   You began by looking to Him as a sufferer, persevere by looking to Him
   as a victor. "Be of good cheer," said He, "I have overcome the world."
   In that fact He gives you an assurance of your own victory. The Seed of
   the woman has bruised the serpent's head and therefore the Lord will
   tread Satan under your feet shortly. The death of Christ is our death
   for sin. But the life of Christ is our life unto holiness. The shame of
   Christ was our shame and the triumph of Christ is our triumph.
   Therefore, looking unto Jesus let us run.

   We are helped to run to the end, not only by what Jesus has done for
   us, but by what Jesus is doing in us. Beloved, you that are in the
   middle of the race, remember that Jesus sustains you. Every atom of
   your strength for running comes from your Lord. Look to Him for it. Do
   not take a step in creature strength. Nor seek after any virtue, or
   growth, or progress apart from His life and grace. He says, "From Me is
   your fruit found." He works all our works in us and because He works in
   us to will and to do of His own good pleasure, therefore we work out
   our own salvation with fear and trembling.

   We are not only sustained by looking unto Jesus but we are inspired
   thereby. If we win a glance from His eye, our feeble knees are
   confirmed. We catch our second and third breath as we behold Him on the
   Throne and dash forward again. Those dear eyes of His are to us as
   stars are to the mariner. Jesus says to us, "Come on, I am victorious
   and so shall you be." A sight of the exalted Leader fires the zeal of
   each Believer and makes him run like a young hart.

   Looking unto Jesus you will get correct directions. For, as He sits at
   the finish line, His very presence indicates the way. If our eyes are
   up to Him--as the eyes of a servant to her mistress--we shall run well.
   "Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding,
   whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle." But say with David,
   "You shall guide me

   with Your eye." A look from the eye of Jesus is enough for a saint. And
   if you, my Hearer, are indeed "looking unto Jesus," you will avoid
   crooks and turns and will take the shortest road to holiness and
   eternal glory. Consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners
   against Himself and you will not grow weary--neither will you miss your
   way.

   Look to Jesus, for by that look He draws you. The great magnet up
   yonder is drawing us towards itself. Christ's cords of love give us
   speed. The more in the power of the Holy Spirit you meditate upon our
   Lord's passion on the Cross and His session on the Throne, the more
   will you be drawn towards Him and the faster will you move. "Draw me,
   we will run after You" is the cry of the Old Testament Church and it is
   ours also. Lord, we would look that You may draw.

   While we are running we look to our Lord as the Finisher of faith and
   we see Him leaning forward and holding out the crown--

   "It is His all animating voice That calls us from on high; It is His
   own hand presents the prize To our aspiring eye."

   The sight of the crown removes all weight from our crosses. The race
   ceases to be severe when we see Jesus enthroned. I see Him today at the
   end of the course holding out the wreath to me and saying, "He that
   shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." Oh that you may
   each one see Him and feel that "the crown of glory that fades not away"
   is worthy of a life's running. Thus will Jesus, by holding out the
   reward, become the Finisher of faith.

   When the race is over, Jesus will appear as the Finisher of faith by
   coming forward to crown you with His own right hand. Yes, His hand
   shall award the prize and His lips shall say, "Well done, good and
   faithful servant." Jesus Himself will admit the faithful to the place
   which He has gone to prepare for them. Therefore be of good courage and
   run! Jesus at the end of the race will enthrone us with Himself--"Let
   us run."

   I invite you, taking the sense of the word "looking" which I have
   already hinted at, to turn over in your mind these things. Look away
   from all self-denials, difficulties, labors, sufferings, temptations
   and persecutions. And equally look away from all pleasures, profits and
   preferments and look to Jesus, who has won the race Himself and now
   helps you in the race and holds out the crown at the end of it. Look
   till you begin to look into Him and see somewhat of His inward glory
   and of its out flowing to His redeemed.

   Say to yourself, "All things are in Him for me. All spiritual blessings
   God does bestow upon me according to His riches in glory by Christ
   Jesus. Does the Father bless me in my enthroned Lord? Then my feet
   shall not weary in the heavenward way. Does Jesus lean forward as if He
   would crown me even now? Then I will quicken my pace to come to Him.
   Does the Holy Spirit help my infirmities? Then will I run swiftly in
   His strength."

   Thus I have tried in my own feeble way to set before you Jesus as the
   Author and the Finisher of faith--look to Him and

   run.

   III. Let us next consider our Lord Jesus as THE PATTERN OF OUR FAITH.
   Run, as Jesus ran, and look to Him as you run, that you may run like He
   ran. How did our Lord pursue His course?

   You will see this if you first note His motive--"Who for the joy that
   was set before Him." Jesus had a motive in all that He did. Men do not
   do much if they act from mere feeling and have no underlying design.
   Indeed, a life without an object must be a frivolous, useless life.
   Jesus had before Him the great joy of glorifying the Father in the
   salvation of His chosen. For this He lived, for this He died--it was a
   joy to Him to think of accomplishing this object.

   Beloved, if you want to run your race aright, it must be for the glory
   of God and in the hope of the salvation of your fellow men. These two
   things, blended into one, must be your joy. Oh that this motive took
   possession of our entire being! The chief end of man is to glorify
   God--let it be my chief end, even as it was my Lord's. Oh that I might
   glorify You, my Creator, my Preserver, my Redeemer! To this end was I
   born and for this end would I live in every action of my life.
   Brethren, we cannot run the race set before us unless we feel this. We
   must, like the Savior, seek the glory of God by saving our fellow men.
   Live for this. Live to seek out the wandering sons of men and thus to
   be a shepherd under the Great Shepherd.

   Learn from Him to carry the lambs in your bosom. There is no running
   heavenward unless the service of God is a joy to us. We run in an
   approved fashion when we spend and are spent in glorifying God. May you
   throughout eternity have to rejoice that you were not fruitless! Oh,
   may none of you be written down as "creation's blot, creation's blank."
   But may you all have the joy of glorifying God on earth and finishing
   the work He has given you to do!

   Wherein are we to imitate Jesus? First, we are to copy His endurance.
   He "endured the Cross." Ours is a trifling cross compared with that
   which pressed Him down. But He endured it. He took it up willingly and
   carried it patiently. He never rebelled against it and never
   relinquished it. He bore the Cross till the Cross bore Him and then He
   bore death upon it. He

   could say, "It is finished." Brethren, let us do the same. Are you
   persecuted, are you poor, are you sick?--take up the appointed cross.
   Christ ran with the Cross on His shoulder and so must we run. Do not
   try to escape trouble--the followers of the Crucified must be familiar
   with the Cross. Endure it patiently, joyfully, in the strength of God.

   "Looking unto Jesus," behold His Cross whenever you begin to faint
   under your own. Think of the bloody sweat, the scourging, the wounds,
   the blasphemies of men, the forsaking by God! Behold and see if there
   was ever sorrow like unto His sorrow, or endurance like His endurance.
   Shoulder your little cross and run towards the Crucified.

   Imitate your Lord in His magnanimity. He endured the Cross, "despising
   the shame." Shame is a cruel thing to many hearts. Our Lord shows us
   how to treat it. See, He puts His shoulder under the Cross but He sets
   His foot upon the shame. He endures the one but He despises the other.
   What? Shall His disciples make much of that which He despised? Are you
   such gentlemen, that none may come between the wind and your nobility?
   I wonder when I hear some people say, "I cannot stand being laughed
   at." Does laughter break bones? "But ridicule is very sharp!" Is it? Do
   the wounds bleed? "Well," cries one, "a keen sarcasm from a wit stings
   you!" Does it? Have you no cure for such bites?

   Some of us have in our minds been like Marcus Arethusa who was stung to
   death by wasps. And yet we are none the worse but rather are we all the
   better--for there remains no place whereon a new sting can operate. Oh,
   that some of you, who are so tender, could have thicker skins in this
   respect! I heard of a prayer the other day which I did not quite like
   at first but there is something in it after all. The good man said,
   "Lord, if our hearts are hard, make them soft. But if our hearts are
   too soft, make them hard."

   I know what he meant and I think I can pray that last prayer for some
   of my friends who are so delicate that a sneer would kill them. May the
   Lord harden them till they can despise the shame! Answer shame by
   making it see that you are ashamed of the scorner. Laugh at the
   laughter of fools--despise their despising. With glorious greatness of
   spirit Jesus remained unprovoked amid the cruel taunts of godless men.
   Run through the ribald throng. Shut your ears and run, despising the
   shame.

   Our Savior is to be imitated in His perseverance. For the joy that was
   set before Him He endured the Cross, despising the shame and "is set
   down." He never stopped running till He could sit down at the right
   hand of the Throne of God. And that is the only place where you may sit
   down. My Brother, Satan puts before you a comfortable armchair and he
   says, "Take your ease." No, no! Run till you can sit down at the right
   hand of the Throne of God. There are many dainty little arbors all
   along the Hill Difficulty, with settles and tables. And men, if they
   get into them, are very apt to fall asleep and lose their roll of
   comfortable assurance--therefore, pass these arbors by.

   Runners must not sit down--that were to throw the race away. The only
   running that will save is persevering running. From starting block to
   finish line there must be no pausing. We must practice daily obedience,
   daily holiness, daily service. An off-and-on religion is a false
   religion. We must keep to the running till God gives us rest. Our Lord
   has won the victory. His enthronement "at the right hand of God" has
   well rewarded the Man Christ Jesus for the depth of His shame and
   misery. We must not cease our following of Him till we triumph, too.
   When we have finished our course, then we shall receive our crowns. But
   as yet we must copy the Captain of salvation by running steadily on.

   Our Lord's body bore five wounds and these shall help your memory to
   think of the five virtues in which you are to imitate your Lord. The
   piercing of the right hand is the memorial of His faith. He believed in
   God in the depth of His agony and trusted that He would deliver Him.
   Oh, for more faith! The left hand wound is His patience. He "endured,
   as seeing Him who is invisible," He reviled not again. He said "Your
   will be done." One wounded foot reminds me of His humility and how He
   was obedient to death, even the death of the Cross.

   And that other wounded foot suggests to me His perseverance. His feet
   were nailed to the wood--His soul was joined to His work. Best of all,
   in the great wound in His side I see His love. The spear opened a
   passage to His heart. Love as Jesus loved--loving God and loving men.
   Then shall you triumph as He triumphed and He will crown you as He
   Himself is crowned. God help you so to run.

   IV. Lastly, our text sets before us Jesus as THE PRIZE or END OF FAITH.
   We are to run "looking unto Jesus" as the end that we should aim at. We
   go towards our Lord every step that we take. True faith neither goes
   away from Christ Jesus, nor takes a roundabout road to Jesus. Nor does
   it so much as dream of going beyond Jesus. We have wise men about us
   nowadays who are going a long way beyond the Gospel. The old
   faith--which inspired Apostles, enabled the glorious army of martyrs to
   lay down their lives and produced the noblest of human characters in
   past ages--is not good enough for the superfine sophists of these days.

   This boastful nineteenth century demands a new God, a new Christ, a new
   Heaven, a new Hell, a new Gospel and everything else new--except a new
   heart. But we, Brethren, are not going to run in that direction. We run
   towards Christ and that

   is the good old way, "the way the holy Prophets went." We never expect
   to get beyond the teaching of our Lord Jesus either in this life or in
   the life to come. The end of our conversation is, "Jesus Christ the
   same yesterday, today and forever."

   Now we are to run towards Him, looking unto Him. Looking to Jesus and
   running to Jesus will look well and run well together. The eyes
   outstrip the feet but this also is well. For the feet will thus be made
   to move faster. Look that you may see more of Jesus. I have already
   told you what differences there are in men's perceptions of Christ--now
   I want you to keep on looking and running--that you may be among the
   best instructed, seeing most of Him and in Him. Those who have seen
   most of Jesus have only taken a cupful out of the great ocean of His
   fullness. We who live in this land of murk and cloud may imagine that
   we have seen the sun--for now and then it peeps out through a veil of
   mist.

   But ask an Italian who lives beneath the clear blue sky, where the sun
   is at home and walks the heavens without a veil and he will tell you
   that an Englishman does not see the sun. For myself, the sun seems in
   those regions to brighten my nature and lighten my mind--the lord of
   day talks to my heart and makes it dance for joy. Many a Believer lives
   in a foggy atmosphere of doubts and fears. He sees his Lord now and
   then but it is not half a sight. Oh that we could all dwell under the
   unclouded skies of full assurance and see Jesus more nearly! I urge you
   in your running to come nearer and nearer to Jesus--that you may see
   Him more and more clearly.

   Let us run towards Jesus that we may grow more like He. It is one of
   the virtues of Jesus that He transforms into His own image those who
   look at Him. He photographs Himself upon all sensitive hearts. There
   are no mirrors that I know of which improve the looker's eyes. But this
   mirror of God, as you look into it, enlightens your eyes and beautifies
   your character. As you see Christ you become Christians. O Beloved, our
   lives would not be so faulty, so wrinkled, so uncomely if our eyes were
   more completely taken up with beholding the transcendent charms of the
   altogether Lovely One! It would make us glorious if we saw more of the
   glory of Jesus.

   Run that you may come nearer to Jesus. Seek after more near and dear
   fellowship with Him. He is not far away from us. He is absent as to His
   corporeal frame but He is with us in spirit. He comes very close to us
   at times when He finds us fit for the joy. We remember Him from the
   Hermons and the hill Mizar. We can never forget the golden moments and
   the hallowed places wherein He has manifested Himself unto us as He
   does not unto the world. There are hours when our head is on the bosom
   of Christ. There are times when we sit at His feet and hear His Words
   and looking up behold His beauty and are ravished therewith.

   Run towards Him till you are nearer to Him in communion than up till
   now you have been. This is worth running for. But you will not have it
   without running. Remember how the Spouse in the Song could not find her
   Lord till she had gone through the streets of the city mourning till
   she embraced Him. Keep on looking and running till you are with Him.
   Oh, I talk to you now about being with Him and how soon this may be
   realized in the most literal sense!

   During my ministry in this place it has occurred two or three times
   that when the service has ended dear Friends have attempted to go to
   their homes but they have died in this House of Prayer. What must it be
   to go from this congregation to the assembly above? What a change from
   the poor talk of the preacher to the voice of the Well-Beloved! We do
   not know how near to Jesus on the Throne we may now be. The sea fog is
   around our vessel. Could we see before us, the white cliffs of our
   native shores are almost within reach. Think not that we are far out at
   sea. Within the next week, perhaps, some of us will see the King in His
   beauty.

   We may spend next Sunday in Heaven! Does anybody shrink from such a
   prospect? No--each heir of Heaven says "Amen. So let it be." Then the
   sweat of the race will be wiped away and the sweet of the triumph will
   begin. Then the fatigue and distress will have ended and the rest and
   the glory will have commenced. I would cheer you with the thought that
   you are much nearer the finish line than you think. How soon you may
   sit among the blood-washed throng! You older Brothers and Sisters in
   the course of nature must be there soon--be glad of it. Do not talk
   about being on the wrong side of seventy--you are on the right
   side--for you are so much nearer Heaven.

   Formerly when great ships went to the Indies, the passengers would for
   a while toast the friends they left behind. But when they were in the
   Indian Ocean, they began to drink the health of friends ahead. Though
   comparatively young, I have many, many friends who are in the land
   beyond, to which I am making my way. I salute the glorified. Some of
   the dearest and best people that ever lived were members of this Church
   but they are now safely landed on the celestial shore. They are waiting
   and watching for us. We are coming, Brethren! We will be with you soon.

   Best of all, our Lord is there! Once crowned with thorns, His head is
   now radiant with the diadem of universal dominion. He will come to
   welcome us on that blessed shore. Hasten, O time! Be like a seraph with
   six wings and bear us swiftly to that golden strand where we shall see
   the face of Him we love and shall be--

   "Far from this world of grief and sin, With God eternally shut in."

   Amen. Amen. Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Lord's Supper--a Remembrance Of Jesus

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, AUGUST 19, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "This do in remembrance of Me." Luke 22:19.

   "THIS do"--that is, take bread, give thanks, break it and eat it--take
   the cup, filled with the fruit of the vine, give thanks and drink you
   all of it. "This do." Take care that you do just what Jesus did--no
   more and no less. This act was done at a table where they had been
   eating the Passover. This act was performed at a common meal and was
   not a sacrifice, nor a celebration, nor a function, nor anything more
   than a significant eating of bread and drinking of wine after a devout
   fashion. This do--as often as you break the bread and as often as you
   drink of the cup--remember the Lord Jesus.

   It is this that we are to do and not something else which may be
   supposed to grow out of it. He does not say, "Do something else in
   remembrance of Me--something which you may choose to do, retaining this
   act as the backbone of it. But this do." This which has just been
   done--this in all its simplicity, solemnity and intent.

   Alas, how sadly have men forgotten this! The plain supper has not been
   a grand enough display. To break bread and to drink wine have not
   seemed to them to be sufficiently solemn, or sufficiently gorgeous and
   so they have added all kinds of rites and institutions. That which was
   only a table, they have made into an altar and that which was a supper
   and nothing more, they have changed into a celebration. They do not
   this but they do something else which they have devised and elaborated.

   Imagine Paul or Peter attending mass and observing the various
   genuflections--the moving to and fro, the lifting up and the stooping
   down and all the various operations of the Roman priesthood--too many
   to describe! Paul would pluck Peter by the sleeve and say, "Our Master
   did nothing like this when He took bread and gave thanks and broke it."
   Peter would reply, "Very different this from the guest-chamber at
   Jerusalem!" And Paul would add, "Yes, indeed, my Brother, very
   different this from the time when the first Believers met together and
   broke bread and drank of the cup in common, in remembrance of their
   Lord."

   Whatever other communities may do, be it ours, my Brethren, to stand
   fast by, "This do in remembrance of Me." "This," simply "this," and
   nothing more and nothing less. Bread, not a wafer. Fruit of the vine,
   not the concoction of chemistry inflamed with fiery spirit. We use this
   fruit of the vine in a cup and that cup not reserved but partaken of by
   all. We have before us bread and that not worshipped, as at the
   elevation of the host--but broken and eaten. The Lord and His disciples
   sat at a table and ate--it was a feast and not a sacrifice.

   They reclined and did not kneel. So would we do, because He has said,
   "This do," and not something else. Then, beloved Friends, we shall have
   to be very watchful upon another point, namely, that if we do this, we
   do it for the purpose for which He gave it--namely, in remembrance of
   Him. Jesus never said, "This do, that you may offer an unbloody
   sacrifice." Where in Holy Scripture is there a syllable like it, either
   from our Lord's own lips or from those of the Apostles?

   He never said, "Do this as the perpetual repetition of My death." To my
   mind the very thought is blasphemy, for our Lord claims to have
   finished His work and having died unto sin once, death has no more
   dominion over Him. The Jewish sacrifices, by reason of their
   insufficiency, were often repeated--but "this Man, after He had offered
   one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God."
   They blaspheme the sacrifice of Christ who imagine that any man, call
   him priest or not, can continue, repeat, or complete that sacrifice for
   sin.

   It is finished and our Lord has gone into His Glory. Sin is put away by
   His bearing it in His own body on the tree. This do you in remembrance
   of Christ but not as continuing His sacrifice, which is forever
   perfect. I would not, for my part, on any account adopt the posture of
   kneeling in receiving the Lord's Supper. If it does not actually imply
   worship

   of the bread and wine, it has a tendency to lead us away from
   remembrance of the Person Himself into an adoration of the elements.

   The sacred supper was a feast, not a ceremony. The posture used at the
   feast was that of lying along--the easiest posture into which they
   could put themselves. That is not congruous with our western custom.
   But the analogous position is that of sitting as much at ease as
   possible, which posture I would encourage you to persist in. Let us
   keep the feast as a feast but by no means kneel as though we were
   performing an act of worship before an altar.

   Adoration of the invisible God is always right and proper. But if a
   certain posture seems to take away from the very essence of the
   festival--and a festival it is--and if in addition it encourages
   superstition--then kneel not but sit and do this in remembrance of
   Christ. Do this and nothing else and do it in remembrance and for no
   other purpose. And if any other posture looks another way, abjure it
   and keep close to that for which you have a precedent. The Church of
   Rome prizes the great picture by Leonardo di Vinci and in it all the
   Apostles are seated at the table. Is this at all like the mass? The
   supper is to be eaten in remembrance and for nothing more. But that, as
   we shall have to show you, is no little thing. "This do in remembrance
   of Me."

   Seeing that this is a feast of remembrance, let us ask ourselves a
   question--Do we know the Lord? "This do in remembrance of Me." If you
   know nothing of a person. If you have had no acquaintance with him, you
   cannot remember him. Like a two-edged sword, this simple statement of
   truth sweeps through this audience tonight and divides it in two.
   Whether or not I may come to the Lord's Table must depend upon whether
   I know the Lord Jesus, or do not know Him. If I am a stranger to Him, I
   may not come, for I may only come to remember Him and I cannot come to
   remember Him if I do not know Him. So it is a profanation of this
   blessed institution for any man to draw near to the table who does not
   know Christ already.

   O Sirs, this is no saving ordinance--it was never meant to be. Its
   intent relates only to those who are saved. To know Jesus Christ is
   eternal life. And as you may not come without that knowledge, it is
   clear that you may not come unless you are saved. If any of you dream
   that your participation in your last moments in what is called "the
   sacrament" will save you, you are under a deep delusion. You may as
   well trust to the incantations of a witch as to the performance of any
   ceremony whatever, by whomsoever, in order to convey salvation to you.
   Salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone.

   And that is not worked by the corporeal act of swallowing bread and
   wine. You must be born again. And that is not effected by material
   substances, however consecrated--it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
   Until you have believed in Jesus and so know Him and know His power
   within you and have come to personal dealings with Him--instead of
   getting a blessing from the ordinance--you would eat and drink
   condemnation to yourselves, not discerning the Lord's body. You are not
   capable of discerning that body if you have no faith. Let every man
   examine himself as to his knowledge of our Lord and so let him eat of
   this bread and drink of this cup. If you do not know Him you cannot
   remember Him and therefore hands off from the tokens of remembrance.

   One word--one solemn word here, which I would speak with my whole soul.
   Remember--if you do not know Him--the day will come in which He will
   say to you, "/ never knew you." If there is no personal intimacy
   between you and Christ, He will disown you in the day when He comes in
   the glory of His Father and all His holy angels with Him. It will be
   idle to say, "Lord, we have eaten and drunk in Your presence and You
   have taught in our streets." If you do not know Him, He does not know
   you and there will be simply this reply to all your claim derived from
   external religion-- "Depart from Me, you cursed, I never knew you."

   But, dearly Beloved, if you do know the Lord--and I trust that many
   here do, indeed, know Him--then it is certain that He has manifested
   Himself to you. Wondrous love! Lord, how is it that You will manifest
   Yourself to us? You have looked to Him. You have trusted in Him. You
   have lived upon Him. And all this because He has remembered you in your
   low estate. You remember Him with joy at this moment because of your
   past experience of Him. He is so dear to you that you must remember
   Him. You could not live without Him. He is all your salvation and all
   your desire. Well, then, it is for you to come to this festival and do
   this in remembrance of Him.

   I. My first point shall be that THE MAIN OBJECT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER IS
   EVIDENTLY THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER CHRIST BY IT. Notice this
   particularly. It is not that you should call to mind a doctrine--
   though I would not have you ignorant or unmindful of any Truth of God
   which the Spirit of God has revealed. Neither is it that you should be
   mindful of a precept, though, Beloved, I would have you be careful that
   in all things you do your

   Savior's will. But the essence of your business at His table is, "This
   do in remembrance of Me," that is, of Himself--of His own blessed
   Person.

   Think not of Him as an abstraction! Dream not of Him as a mere idea! Do
   not merely contemplate Him as an historical Personage who was once
   before men and has now passed from off the canvas of history, as
   Confucius, Zoroaster, or the like. No. He ever lives and abides an
   actual, ever energetic force and power among men of every age. Jesus is
   of that Divine Nature which dwells perpetually in the present
   tense--the same yesterday, today and forever.

   Beloved, as you live by Him, you must learn to live in Him and with
   Him, so as to know Him as a Friend with whom you are really familiar.
   The Christ of our dreams is but a dream. We need a real, living,
   personal Christ and it is Jesus Christ Himself that we have to remember
   tonight at this table.

   And if we do this, we shall remember Him, first, with gratitude as our
   Savior. If I have anything of hope, I owe it all to You, incarnate God,
   Son of the Highest and Son of Mary, too. Your love, Your life, Your
   death, Your resurrection, Your power at the right hand of God--these
   must be the pillars of my hope, if hope I have at all--

   "All our immortal hopes are laid In You, our Surety and our Head; Your
   Cross, Your cradle and Your Throne, Are big with glories yet unknown."
   He has saved us, Brethren, and loved us and blessed us with everlasting
   consolation within Himself. Oh, let us think of Him! The streams of
   which you drink are sweet. But think of the fountainhead. Your healing
   is a thing to sing of forever. Remember that you are healed by His
   stripes and think of those cruel scourges, those five wounds, that body
   covered with a bloody sweat, that dear, thorn-encircled brow, those
   eyes all dimmed with blood. Remember Jesus Himself, I pray you, and
   think neither of pardon, nor of justification, nor of sanctification
   apart from Him.

   The streams of love I trace up to the fountain in the heart of Christ
   and remember Him tonight with deepest gratitude. Follow me, my Beloved,
   in this meditation--yes, go before me and get nearer to the heart of
   your Redeemer. You must remember Him, next, with profound reverence as
   your living example--your living and reigning Lord. Know you not that
   as many of you as have been washed in His blood are henceforth God's
   servants, even as He was? You are not to do your own will but His will
   who has redeemed you. His example is to you the embodiment of the
   Lord's will. Do we not sweetly sing--

   "My dear Redeemer and my Lord, I read my duty in Your Word; But in Your
   life the Law appears Drawn out in living characters"? It is yours,
   then, to remember the Lord Jesus that you may follow Him. In sickness,
   remember Him in His patience. When you are persecuted, remember Him in
   His gentleness. In holy service, remember Him with His burning zeal. In
   your times of solitude, remember Him and His midnight prayers. And when
   you are in public and have to bear witness, remember Him and His
   lion-like declarations of the Gospel. Remember Him so that He becomes
   your pattern and you are the reproduction of Himself and so the best
   memorial of Him.

   Thus enabled by the Holy Spirit to remember your Lord with gratitude as
   your Savior, with reverence as your Lord, you will remember Him with
   confidence as your strength. He has not left you in this world to serve
   Him at your own charges and to bear His Cross alone. Remember Him, for
   He remembers you so as to be ever with you. "Lo, I am with you always,"
   says He, "even unto the end of the world." Will you let Him be near you
   unnoticed and unremembered? Never say, "I am lonely." You are not alone
   if you remember Jesus. O widow and fatherless one, say not, "I am
   comfortless." He has said, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will
   come to you."

   Remember Him without ceasing. When you are strong, remember Him. For
   your strength comes from Him. When you are weak, remember him. For He
   can give you the help you need. Oh, that in all times and places Christ
   were All in All to us!--

   "Remember You! Your death, Your shame Our hearts 'sad load to bear! O
   memory, leave no other name But His recorded there!"

   I would have the image of my Lord printed on the palms of my hands,
   that I might do nothing without Him. And I would have it painted on my
   eyes, that I might see nothing except through Him. It were better still
   to have it stamped upon my heart, that my very life might not beat
   except to the music of His name.

   Remember Him, too, Beloved, as your great representative before the
   Throne of God. O Believer, at this very moment Heaven is yours! Jesus,
   your Forerunner, has taken possession of eternal glory in your name.
   The Throne of God has in the midst of it the glorified Man, the
   everlasting Son of God, who is the Covenant Head and Redeemer of His
   people. Never forget Him but keep your eye fixed upon Him, even as He
   keeps His eye upon you. He lives! The great Redeemer lives! He lives to
   plead for you.

   Do not get into the habit of the Romish Church, which exhibits its dead
   Christ everywhere, or its baby Christ in the virgin's arms. Jesus is
   neither of these at this time. "He is not here--He is risen." He lives!
   It is the living Christ that we believe in, the ascended Christ we are
   trusting in, the Christ to come that we are hoping for. There, where He
   pleads with all authority, is our grand hope, for "He is able to save
   them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives
   to make intercession for them."

   Remember Him, once again, as soon to come. Perhaps while yet these lips
   are feebly fashioning halting words concerning wondrous mysteries, the
   trumpet may ring out above all earthly sounds. Even on this Sabbath
   night we may be called to behold the cloud upon which the Son of Man
   has come! "Of that day and hour knows no man." And vain is the folly
   which is perpetually prophesying of that concerning which it knows
   nothing. Yet this is certain--the Lord Jesus will come to judge and to
   reign. "Behold, the Bridegroom comes."

   He said long ago, "Behold, I come quickly." He has been coming in haste
   ever since and He must be drawing very near. Now this is what we are
   always to remember--for His coming will be the manifestation of His
   people as well as of Himself--His coming will witness the reward of His
   saints as well as His own reward. Then shall He shine forth. And with
   Him, "the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
   their Father."

   Alas, we too much forget Him in all these aspects! I fear that we more
   easily forget than remember. And yet the remembrance of One so dear
   should be natural to us. Did you suspect, when you were first
   converted, that you could ever forget Him? "Oh, no," you said--

   "Let the babe forget its mother, Let the bridegroom slight his bride;
   True to You, I'll love no other, Clinging closely to Your side." So we
   said but not so have we done. How often we act as if we had not the
   living Christ to run to! We fret as if Jesus were still lying in the
   sepulcher. We act as if we were going to live here forever and did not
   expect our Lord to come and take us away to be with Him. We act as if
   we had no Master but our own wanton will. We act despairingly as if we
   had no Shepherd to take care of us and no Savior who had redeemed us
   with His precious blood. Come, Brethren, this will never do. It is
   dishonorable to our Lord and disgraceful to ourselves. You see the
   reason why the supper should have been insti-tuted--our treacherous
   memories require it.

   Let us gather to it as to a most needful, though right royal feast. For
   we have need to be reminded of our own dear Lord, who sweetly says to
   us, "This do in remembrance of Me."

   II. And now I take a second point. I want to show you all that THE MODE
   WHICH OUR LORD HAS ORDAINED OF HELPING OUR MEMORIES IS IN ITSELF
   EXCEEDINGLY STRIKING. It could not be more so. If I stood opposite to
   an altar garnished with paper roses and other childish things, and if I
   were to try and perform before you all: some of these cute little
   functions which are considered sacred by the followers of Rome--I
   should need a long time to explain it all to you.

   And when I had done my best, you would not be able to make heads or
   tails of it. I have stood and watched the Catholic priest at the altar
   with the earnest desire to see if there was anything to be learned and
   I could not learn anything. I could not make out what the ornamental
   person was at. I think I have read as much as most people about such
   things. But it does seem to me that if the behavior of the priest at
   the mass is a symbol, it is a very dark one--if it is intended to teach
   the people--they need to know a great deal before they can learn
   anything from it.

   Surely to find anything in the mass, the devout must bring it with
   them, for there is nothing there. But if you look at yonder table, you
   will see before you simply bread and wine. And when you see us
   celebrate the ordinance tonight, you

   will notice that we do nothing but break the bread and eat it and pass
   round the cup and drink. All that is done is extremely simple. And the
   Savior seemed to wish for that simplicity, because He was Himself a
   very simple, unaffected, plain Man.

   All the pomp that He ever had was when He rode through Jerusalem. But
   it was on a colt, the foal of an ass. Even then all the pomp consisted
   in this--the people laid their garments in the road and strewed
   branches along the way in the excess of their joy. Golden ornaments and
   flowers and incense and acolytes are far removed from His plain and
   natural habits. Only fancy some of His disciples rising from the dead
   and stepping into--well--St. Paul's cathedral, which is called
   Protestant but is about as Popish as it very well can be.

   Supposing they walked in there--James and John together--the two sons
   of Zebedee. Perhaps stopping before some of the pretty things, James
   would wonderingly ask, "John, where have we got?" And John would say,
   "We are in a chamber of imagery, a temple of idols. Our Lord Jesus
   would not be happy here." "Why," says James, "it is Paul's Church.
   Fetch him in." Surely when Paul came in and looked at all those images
   and decorations, he would say, "Here I see another Gospel, which is not
   another. But there are some that trouble you and would pervert the
   Gospel of Christ."

   That is putting it mildly. We are getting to have the idolatries of
   Rome set up in the Churches called national. And this is not done by
   those called outwardly and honestly, Romanists, but by those who are
   really so in their hearts, and yet wear the Protestant name. The Lord
   Jesus Christ was just a simple peasant at Galilee and the garment He
   wore was analogous to our common smock frock, a garment "without seam,
   woven from the top throughout." There was not a bit of stateliness or
   affectation about Him. And in all that He ordained you cannot find one
   single pompous ceremony.

   His followers were baptized in water--where did He ordain salt and oil
   and spittle? Where did He bid them make the "sign of the cross" or set
   forth "sponsors"? His followers gathered for worship and sang hymns in
   His praise but where were their "thuribles" and their "crucifers"?
   Where were "the stations of the cross"? Where are all these things in
   the Scriptures? They are inventions of later and darker days, but Jesus
   knew nothing of them--neither did His Apostles and those who followed
   them know nothing of such rubbish.

   It was all plain telling of the dear love of God to men and of how men
   should love one another and love Jesus as their Savior--and that was
   it. Our Lord instituted this simple supper as the memorial of a plain,
   simple, honest Savior who had no gaudy tricks or priest craft about Him
   but was simply a Man among men.

   But, next, our Lord's Supper was intended to be very frequent. "This do
   you, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." He has laid down no
   rule as to when we shall break bread. But the custom was certainly to
   break it on the first day of the week and I think oftener, for it seems
   to me that they broke bread from house to house. It was not a ceremony
   that required a minister or a priest. When Believers were together they
   broke bread in memory of Christ--any two or three of them--and so they
   remembered Him.

   It is most delightful, when traveling, to remember Christ in your own
   room, where two or three Brethren meet together. You have nothing to do
   but to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of Him. I know of
   nothing more sweet or more instructive than this Divine ordinance,
   which grows more impressive the oftener you attend to it. It ought to
   be frequent. Our Scotch friends were wrong--as wrong could be in having
   it so seldom--but they are mending. The frequency of it is to show how
   often we need to be reminded of our dear Lord--for we are prone to
   forget Him. We ought always to remember Him. And therefore an
   institution intended to keep up our memory should be frequently used.

   Since He bids His disciples do it often, there is an instruction in it
   that we should constantly remember Him in our inmost souls. Inasmuch as
   He gave this for a memorial and for nothing else and gave it to all His
   disciples--bidding all His followers, until He should come--do this in
   remembrance of Him, it was to show that we all need to remember Him and
   all need help to do so. We are all forgetful--the best Christian,
   highest in Divine Grace still needs this memorial, for he is apt to
   forget. Backsliding Christians need it, if possible, still more, that
   their failing memories may be revived. Sinners will do well to look
   upon it, for it may be that the memorials of the Lord's death may cause
   them to remember their sins and turn to their Savior.

   But to come a little closer to the table. I want you to notice that
   when our Lord bids us remember Himself--"This do in remembrance of
   Me"--he gives us an ordinance which brings before us His death. Now,
   this, though it looks a very trite saying, is a very important point.
   The bread is His flesh, the wine His blood. They represent those two
   things. But

   they are separated--the bread is not in the wine, nor the wine in the
   bread. The two in separate vessels represent a body with the blood
   separated from it and thus they are the token of death.

   Very well, then. When the Lord says, "This do in remembrance of Me," He
   gives us a memorial of His death--which plainly teaches us that the
   chief point of remembrance in our Lord Jesus is His death. He Himself
   regarded His death as the very center, heart and soul of what He would
   fix on our memories. Therefore those who say that His example is
   everything, or His teaching is everything, do greatly err--for when we
   remember Him, the first thing to be remembered is, "He has redeemed us
   to God by His blood." "Redeemer" is the name to which our memories must
   most tenaciously cling. His blood, His redemption, His atonement, His
   substitutionary sacrifice are always to be kept to the front.

   "We preach Christ crucified," and you believe in Christ crucified. The
   reason of our success under God in this House of Prayer is that we have
   always preached Christ as the atoning sacrifice--the sinner's
   Substitute. And whosoever shall preach this boldly, clearly and
   thoroughly, putting it as the crown of the Gospel system, shall find
   God will bless His preaching. As for you, if you would have comfort and
   joy and peace, cling to the Cross. Look steadily to the accepted
   sacrifice. Never get away from your Lord Jesus. And when you remember
   Him, let His passion be the main thought which rises before you.

   Next, notice another thing--this festival reminds us of the Covenant of
   Grace. Our Lord Jesus Christ, while He bade us remember Himself, said
   of the cup, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood." That is the
   word. Read "testament," if you prefer it. But I feel sure you are
   nearer the sense when you read "the new covenant in My blood." What,
   then? When I am to remember Jesus Himself, I am to take the cup which
   is the token of the Covenant. Ah, Beloved, you cannot know Christ
   thoroughly unless you understand the doctrine of the two Covenants and
   connect Him with the Covenant of Grace.

   You must know that "Covenant, ordered in all things and sure." For the
   cup is to remind you of it, by reminding you of Him. Christ is best
   seen when you see Him in His Covenant relationship. Do you all know
   about that Covenant? You know there was a Covenant made with Adam in
   which we were all included. But that Covenant failed. Father Adam broke
   it and we all lost the blessing which his obedience would have procured
   us. There is another Covenant made with the second Adam--Christ
   Jesus--and because He has kept the Covenant, all that are in that
   Covenant stand forever in

   Him.

   "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" who are in
   Christ. The one Covenant ruined all that were in it--the second
   Covenant saves all that are in it. As we take that cup, we do own and
   accept joyfully our interest in that Covenant which was made with
   Christ, which is established on the sure foundation of His perfect
   obedience. Behold the blood of the EVERLASTING COVENANT! May the Lord
   Jesus be brought to your memory tonight as your Covenant Head and
   Surety. And as you drink of the cup, may you feel confidence and joy in
   Him who is your Surety!

   May your soul sing, "Although my house be not so with God. Yet He has
   made with me an Everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure.
   This is all my salvation and all my desire." You see, then, the oceans
   of instruction which lie in one of the emblems. Lose none of it.

   But there is yet one more thing. It is this. You are taught by this
   institution that the very best way in which you can remember Christ is
   by receiving Him. Oh, the sweetness of that Truth, if you will remember
   it when you come to this table! You are not asked to bring bread with
   you. It is here. You are not asked to bring a cup with you. It is here
   already provided. What have you to do? Nothing but to eat and to drink.
   You have to be receivers and nothing more.

   Well, now, whenever you want to remember your Lord and Master, you need
   not say, "I must do something for Him." No, no! Let Him do something
   for you. "Take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the
   Lord"--

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

   Lord, I cannot love You as I would love You but I can accept Your love.
   Let Your love drop into my heart just now. Lord, I cannot serve You as
   I would but I adore You because You do become my Servant and wash my
   feet as You did your disciples. Lord, I cannot bring You coals of fire
   out of my chilly heart. But here is my heart, come and cast the coals
   of fire of Your own Divine love into it!

   my Brethren, come and receive! Come and RECEIVE! I think this is a very
   sweet intimation to those of you who feel as if you had nothing to come
   with. You do not need to come with anything except your hunger and
   thirst. A man that is invited to a meal need not say, "Oh but I have no
   bread." You are asked to a royal feast and you need not bring bread
   with you. He that invites you to His table will provide you with all
   you want. And when you desire to remember Him, your surest and best
   plan is to enjoy the good things which He sets before you. I have thus
   shown how suitable the ordinance is to help our memories.

   III. Now, lastly, THE OBJECT FOR WHICH WE ARE TO COME, NAMELY, TO
   REMEMBER CHRIST, IS ONE

   WHICH IS IN ITSELF MOST INVITING. Let me show you what I mean. There is
   one here who cries, "I have forgotten my Savior. I did love Him. I hope
   my love has not quite gone but I seem to be very cold. Alas, I have
   forgotten my Lord."

   Where should you go to have that love revived and refreshed? Should you
   not come where you will be helped to remember Him? He says, "This do in
   remembrance of Me." You say that you have forgotten your Lord. Come and
   remember Him again. Do not stay away but come with all the more
   eagerness. Remember Him as you did at first--when you came laden with
   guilt and full of fears--and when you just cast yourself upon your Lord
   and found peace. Come and rest in Him again.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, you that are afraid that your first
   profession was a mistake--come and begin again at the table. We have
   got into midsummer and the plants put out the midsummer shoot--you
   know--I want you to put out new shoots also. What? Do you say that it
   is long since you thought of growing? It is time to think of it again.
   If the spring shoot seems to have grown old, now is the time for a
   midsummer shoot--for a new beginning. Begin with Christ all over again.
   Repent and do your first work. "This do in remembrance of Me." Does not
   that exactly suit you who fear that you have for a while forgotten Him?

   "Oh but I feel so weak." Yes but when a little child is very weak,
   there is still one thing which it can surely do--it can remember its
   mother. Memory is often quickened by our need--it is well when our
   sense of weakness makes us remember where our great strength lies.
   Remember, then, the Lord who is your strength and your song--for He
   also has become your salvation. Now, you poor little weak ones, where
   are you tonight? How gladly would I help you. But what better help can
   you desire than that which your Lord sets before you in these dear
   memorials of His death!

   1 know that some of you have been cruelly pushed about of late. The
   strong ones have said sharp things to you. Your Lord invites you to a
   cheering exercise which shall help you to forget the poor behavior of
   the proud. Poor, timid, trembling, half-believing, half-doubting One,
   and yet truly the Lord's--come to the table, come to remember your
   loving Redeemer! It is painful to remember yourself but it will be
   sweet to remember Him. "Oh," you say, "I cannot forget Him." I am glad
   you cannot. Still, come here and indulge your memory tonight and say--

   "Gethsemane, can I forget, Or there Your conflict see, Your agony and
   bloody sweat, And not remember You? When to the Cross I turn my eyes,
   And rest on Calvary,

   Lamb of God, my Sacrifice,

   1 must remember You."

   There is one more thing I am going to say and I feel half ashamed to
   say it. Some professedly Christian people urge that they cannot come to
   the table because there are certain persons there who, in their
   judgment, should not be allowed to come. Is the Lord's Table to be a
   judgment seat, where we are to revise the verdict of the Church? "I
   cannot," said one to me, "join a Church, because I cannot find one that
   is perfect." No, I said and if you do not join a Church till you do
   find a perfect one, you must wait till you get to Heaven. And, besides,
   my dear Friend, if you ever find a perfect Church they will not take
   you in. For I am sure they would not be perfect any longer if they did.
   One sickly sheep would then have passed into the fold. So it is idle
   for you to be looking out for perfection.

   "But there is a person at communion who acted inconsistently." That is
   highly probable. And he may be wearing your coat and looking out of
   your eyes. If you know of any case of open sin, let the elders of the
   Church be informed and it will be dealt with tenderly and firmly. In so
   large a Church as this there may be cases of evil living not known to
   the

   overseers of the flock. But we invite the co-operation of all in
   maintaining the purity of the entire body and we trust that we have it.
   But now, really, what have you to do with the faults of others when you
   are remembering Christ Jesus?

   Surely this is the most unseasonable time for harsh judgments, or
   indeed for any judgments. I know many a Brother with whom I could not
   agree in certain points but I agree with him in remembering the Lord
   Jesus. I could not work with him in all things. But if he wants to
   remember Jesus, I am sure I will join him in that. It will do him good
   and it will do me good, to think of Jesus. That dear name is so sweet
   to me that I will remember Jesus with the poorest, meanest and most
   imperfect of mortals.

   I am never happier than when I am in your midst, my beloved
   Brethren--and we all sit around the table, because I think of all the
   Lord has done for you and for me. Why, it is not worth while going to
   Heaven alone. A little lost child sits down on the doorstep of a West
   end mansion and cries because it is so lonely--is that to be our
   position in Heaven? Are we to take no friends there with us? Who wants
   to be solitary in the New Jerusalem? But oh, to come with all of you to
   the table and to look into the faces of all God's people and to believe
   that the Lord Jesus Christ is in each one of them!

   They are a poor lot, full of mistakes, full of errors, full of
   infirmities, just like their minister. But the Lord has loved them and
   bought them with His blood. A precious Christ He is--not only to have
   saved me but tens of thousands of His saints everywhere. For there are
   people of His in all Churches, even in the Churches that are most full
   of error. He has redeemed, by His precious blood, His own elect in the
   midst of them all. Why, the sight of you helps me to recollect Jesus
   and to get a better idea of Him--both your Christ and my Christ! And
   not our Christ alone but the Christ of all the myriads redeemed by His
   blood.

   Shall I then set myself up for a judge and say, "No, I will not
   remember my Lord because one of the Brethren does not behave properly"?
   What would you say to your child if he said, "Father, I shall not come
   to see you on your birthday. I shall not join with the rest of the
   family in the usual festival"? Why not? "Because my brother is not what
   he ought to be. And till he mends his ways, I shall not keep your
   birthday." Your father would say, "My dear son, is that any reason why
   you should not remember me? Surely I am not to blame for what your
   brother does. Come to the feast and think

   of me."

   So do I say to you if you have any personal angers and differences--do
   not smother them but end them. Do not come to the table till you have
   got rid of them, for you have no right to come. But end all wrath at
   once. Get rid of every ugly feeling you have towards everybody in the
   world and love all Believers in Christ for Christ's sake. Then come to
   this table and you will find it will help you to remember your Master
   as you shall join with others who remember Him. I think I may say that
   you will not be likely to see anybody at the table worse than yourself.
   So come along and let not pride keep you back. May God's infinite mercy
   bless the Lord's Supper to the Lord's people!

   And as for those that cannot come and remember Him because they do not
   know Him, may they, this night, go home and seek Him. And if they seek
   Him, He will reveal Himself to them. If you desire Christ, Christ
   desires you. If you have a spark of love to Him, He has a furnace full
   of love to you. And if you want to come to Him and trust Him to save
   you, come and welcome. The Lord bless you, for His name's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Crossing the Jordan

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, AUGUST 12, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through
   the host and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals. For
   within three days you shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess
   the land, which the Lord your God gives you to possess it." Joshua
   1:10,11.

   THE story of the passage of the Jordan might instructively be used in
   many ways. It was a very wonderful event. It occurred on the tenth day
   of the first month--on the same day of the year as the passage of the
   Red Sea. Of that glorious miracle it was the fortieth anniversary and
   you may very properly join the dividing of the Red Sea to that of the
   Jordan, for so the Holy Spirit has done in the one hundred and
   fourteenth Psalm--"The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back."

   I am going to use the passage of the Jordan as our forefathers used to
   employ it, namely, as a type of our passage out of this world into the
   place appointed for our rest. Canaan is only measurably a type of that
   better land, for the Canaan-ite was still in the land and Israel had to
   fight many a battle to obtain possession of the country. In our more
   perfect Canaan there are no enemies to encounter, no sins to struggle
   with, and no powers of darkness to conquer. Still, I think the type, if
   imperfect, has been so long established in the Christian Church and has
   yielded so much of edification to godly people, that I may safely use
   it.

   We cannot afford to give up such a hymn as--

   "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,

   And cast a wishful eye

   To Canaan's fair and happy land,

   Where my possessions lie." Nor can we cease to sing with Watts--

   "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

   Stand dressed in living green;

   So to the Jews old Canaan stood

   While Jordan rolled between."

   The Israelites, before they crossed the Jordan, had notice given them.
   The officers went through the host with the message, "Prepare you
   victuals. For within three days you shall pass over this Jordan." The
   Lord often favors His people with notice that the time of their
   departure is at hand. He has fixed the hour of our entrance into rest
   and it can neither be postponed by skill of physician nor hastened by
   malice of foe. No Satanic force can hurl us to the grave before our
   time--

   "Plagues and death around us fly, Till He bids we cannot die."

   In due time there comes a whisper in the ear of the Believer, "Rise up
   and come away." Mr. Bunyan describes the pilgrims as tarrying on the
   shore of that river which parted them from the celestial country until
   a post came to one and another, announcing that the silver cord must be
   loosed and the golden bowl be broken. Father Honest and Mr.
   Ready-to-Halt and Christiana and the rest of them received each one a
   call from the hill country and passed over the black water to the
   golden strand--where the shining ones stood to meet them.

   Perhaps some of us may get no such summons. For we may be taken away on
   a sudden. Many good people daily pray against sudden death and there
   are legitimate reasons for so doing. But to a child of God it is of
   small consequence, for death will never find him unprepared if he is
   living in communion with God. If we walk in the light, as He is in the
   light,

   an abundant entrance will be ministered to us into eternal glory even
   if we should fall dead in a moment. The change would simply mean going
   from the lower room of our Father's house into an upper chamber more
   bright and beauti-ful--but still a part of the same house.

   A few Sunday evenings ago, when I was unable to preach to you, my
   beloved and esteemed friend, Mr. Newman Hall, most generously occupied
   this pulpit and his sermon touched upon Heaven and the joyous entrance
   of the saints into the immortal state. One of our sisters was greatly
   rejoiced by that sermon. She went home and in going into her bedroom
   she fell down and entered in a second into rest. Possibly that sermon
   was to her a stray note from the harps of angels to call her Home. We,
   too, may have such a speedy summons. Or we may have months of waiting.
   What matters? Let the angelic convoy appear when our best Beloved shall
   see fit--it shall be no question of preference with us whether the
   Master shall call us today, tomorrow, or in twenty years.

   Let Him call us at cockcrowing, or at midnight, or midday, we will
   answer Him, "Here am I. For You did call me." We will enter into the
   joy of our Lord and be forever with Him. When God's children have their
   candle lighted for them and they know that it is time to go upstairs,
   they feel glad to end their pilgrimage and rest in Jesus. We are all of
   us much nearer Home than we think. It will be greatly wise to talk with
   our last hours and to anticipate that time when the message shall come,
   "Within three days you shall pass over this Jordan."

   May the Holy Spirit make our meditation profitable in view of our end!
   We shall observe the tenor of this notice. And then observe the sequel
   of this notice. May we have Divine Grace given us to understand what we
   speak and hear and to make use of it for our everlasting benefit.

   I. First, OBSERVE THE TENOR OF THIS NOTICE. Notice that there are three
   leading words in it--"prepare,"

   "pass over," "possess." "Prepare you victuals. For within three days
   you shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land."

   The first word that came to them was, "Prepare." Be in journeying
   order. The soldier carries his rations with him when he has to make a
   quick march--"Prepare you victuals." Children of God, be ready to go
   from this world. Let not your roots strike deep into this earthly soil
   for you must in due time be transplanted. And the more roothold you get
   to this world, the worse it will be for you. Hold everything with a
   loose hand. The soldier in a foreign land must not settle down and
   begin to gather surroundings about him which would naturalize him in
   the country. He is an alien, tarrying till his prince shall call him
   back to the home country.

   You cannot be in exile long. Heaven is prepared to receive you. Be
   ready! Your heart is in Heaven--send your best goods there--where they
   will be safe from moth and rust. Have about you what little things you
   want for spending money but make the best of your way through this
   Vanity Fair. Keep in marching order. Be prepared at a moment's notice
   to start on your way. But inasmuch as he said, "Prepare you victuals"
   did he not mean, "Begin to feed on food of that sort upon which you are
   henceforth to live"?

   The manna would cease in three days and never fall again. After they
   crossed the Jordan, they would feed on the corn of the land. Manna was
   the staple of their wilderness food. But they had eaten other things as
   well, for they had flocks and herds. They were to prepare, not manna,
   for that would not keep above a day but such food as ordinarily they
   would subsist upon when they entered upon their estates. O children of
   God, get good meals of spiritual meat, the kind of meat which you will
   live upon hereafter. Feed much on the love of God and the glorious
   Truths which are laid up in Christ Jesus. Care nothing for the husks of
   human thought and carnal eloquence but take to the solid meat, which is
   to be your dainty nourishment when you dwell in the Presence of God
   forever.

   I wish that professing Christians were more cautious about what they
   feed on. I am afraid that some professors, if they hear a sermon, are
   satisfied whatever the sort may be. They do not care what the doctrine
   may be if a clever man talks prettily and gratifies their ear. Some
   people can eat sawdust and make a meal of shadows. I could almost wish
   it were true of them that they could drink any deadly thing and it
   should not hurt them. For assuredly they do drink very deadly things
   when they go to the tavern of modern thought. But I would say to you
   this morning, feed on Christ, feed on spiritual food, feed on the pure
   Truth of God's Word and feed your souls on nothing else.

   Know the taste of what you eat and let it be as clear and definite as
   that of butter and honey so you may readily refuse the evil and choose
   the good. Joshua meant--Stand ready, for the time is getting very
   short. There is not long to wait. Very soon you will have traversed the
   stream and landed on the far shore. Even now you can catch a glimpse of
   the

   palm trees of Jericho on the other side. But in three days you shall
   gather their fruit. Beloved, how would you feel if you knew that,
   within three days, you must die? Would you welcome the news?

   Are you quite sure that it would please you? Remember the wife and
   family and the business and all that! Can you bear the snapping of the
   ties which bind you to this life? Have you learned so to live in this
   world that you are not of it? Could you cheerfully say, "Forever with
   the Lord. Amen, so let it be"? Oh, that God may keep us so watchful
   that the shortest summons may be long enough!

   The exhortation given in the thirteenth verse is one which may be
   useful also to us. "Remember the Word." It is a grand help for going
   over the Jordan, if we will remember the Word of the Lord. Our faith
   enables us both to live and to die on the promise of God. "Remember the
   Word which Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, The
   Lord your God has given you rest and has given you this land." If a man
   forgets the Word of the Lord and comes to die, he dies in a pitiable
   plight. For without the light of the Word, he takes a leap in the dark.
   If a man can refresh his memory with the grand Truths of the Covenant,
   if he can come to the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God,
   then he may die bravely.

   Israel might go down the shelving banks of the rushing river because
   the Lord had given the nation a promise concerning the other side. I
   said to a dying friend, "Have you no fears"? "Fears!" he said, "How can
   I have any? You have fed me upon such solid food that I am not afraid
   to die. Jesus bore my sins in His own body on the tree and I am
   accepted in Him." Neither will you be fearful, Beloved, if you have
   provided for your journey such food as the Lord has stored up in His
   Word.

   But then he said also, third chapter and fifth verse, "Sanctify
   yourselves." If we knew we were to die in three days, should we not
   wish to put our hearts, our thoughts, our families, into a better
   state? I remember a Sister, by no means superstitious, who, when she
   came to die, was very earnest that all her linen and everything about
   her body, should be white and clean. And I somewhat sympathized in her
   feeling because I knew that it was only the outward expression of her
   inward desire to be purely arrayed as to her spirit. Since we may die
   suddenly, let us purify ourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and of
   the spirit. Let us pray our Lord to wash us again.

   And, as our dear Brother prayed just now, "may the dust of our last
   day's march be taken from our feet!" If there has been any neglect of
   duty let us be quick to perform that which has been delayed. Beloved,
   in the prospect of going Home, sanctify yourselves. May the Holy
   Spirit, the Sanctifier, so cleanse us that we may be meet to be
   partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light!

   The next word was, "Pass over this Jordan." They were not called to
   linger on the brink, nor to sit with their feet in the stream but to
   cross over it. Israel had been forty years in the wilderness and surely
   that was long enough. Some of you have been fifty, sixty, seventy,
   perhaps eighty years in the desert. But when the summons shall come,
   you will have no more marching over the burning sand and no more fear
   of the fiery serpents and scorpions. "Within three days you shall pass
   over this Jordan" will put an end to the wilderness tramping. Life is
   long enough if we have had Divine Grace enough. He lives long that
   lives well. He who has served his God with all his heart will not wish
   to linger a moment after his life-work is done. You are not called to
   linger on the bed of sickness for ages but to pass over to your rest.

   And notice, the call was not to go down into the Jordan to stop there.
   Blessed be God, we are not going down into the grave to be lost there.
   But we make use of it as an open door to Paradise. Our spirit shall
   mount triumphantly to Christ and even the poor body, after it has lain
   a while in the dust, shall rise again in the glorious image of Christ.
   The grave is the refining pot which puts away the dross from the gold.
   Death, before we knew the Savior, was like a vast cavern into which
   there were many footprints but all the tracks led inward--none came
   forth from the gloomy abode of the shades.

   But now, by the power of our Lord's resurrection, looking into the cave
   we perceive that He has pierced the hills of darkness and made a way
   for us to the other side. We go into what looks like a dark den but we
   come out at the other side into the land that flows with milk and
   honey. "You shall pass over this Jordan."

   Our text reads like a promise--"Within three days you shall pass over
   this Jordan." Some of them might have said, "How?" They saw no apparent
   means--no bridge, no pontoons, no ferry. Ah, but says Joshua, "Within
   three days you shall pass over this Jordan." And the word was true. Do
   you say, "I do not see how I am to be helped to die"? The Lord

   will give dying grace in dying moments. He comes in when the need is
   pressing. Those who have wrestled earnestly in life shall march off
   triumphantly in death. Jehovah Shaddai is God All-sufficient.

   He knows how to take you through the river. Let not your heart be
   troubled. It is not yours to make a way through the deep waters--that
   remains with God alone. It is yours to obey--it is His to provide.
   Sometimes you are so foolish as to try your hand at providing and then
   you neglect the obeying and as a consequence you fail both in the
   providing and the obeying. Mind your own business and the Lord will
   perform His Word. Israel marches, Jehovah clears the way--and a
   glorious result is brought about.

   Somebody might have said, "We cannot pass over Jordan, for the current
   is furious and the river is unusually swollen." In the spring, at the
   time of barley harvest, Jordan overflows all its banks and becomes a
   river which only the very strongest of David's heroes could ford. So
   some child of God might say, "But my prospect in dying is darker than
   that of any other Believer. I shall suffer more pain, more depression,
   more poverty. And thus to me Jordan overflows all its banks." Yes, yes.
   But still you shall go over it, for the Lord has said it and none of
   His words shall fail. You shall cross the swollen torrent and smile at
   your own fears.

   While I was thinking this over, I said to myself, "Why did the Lord
   bring His people to Jordan at the time when the snow was melting on the
   Lebanon and therefore the river was more full and the current more
   strong than usual?" There was ample reason. It was then that the early
   harvest was ripening throughout the country. Suppose there had been no
   corn in the fields ready for reaping, how would the children of Israel
   have been fed when they were across the river and the manna had ceased?
   Their food stood in the fields ready to be gathered and immediately
   they ate of the produce of the land.

   God knows the best time for His saints to die. We look at some ugly
   circumstance connected with their departure and we forget other and
   infinitely more important matters which make it a thing to be rejoiced
   in. So you, dear Friend, need not fear to pass over the Jordan though
   it has filled all its banks, since there is a reason for it and a
   graciously sufficient one. God will give you extraordinary help in
   extraordinary trial and glorify Himself in you.

   "Oh," but they might have said, "We cannot pass over Jordan because
   there is Jericho right in front of us and of course the inhabitants
   will call in the Jebusites, who are not far off at Jerusalem and these
   will fetch in the Hivites and the Amorites and all the other nations.
   And these will hotly dispute the passage of the river and it will be
   out of the question to force our way through that torrent and fight up
   the other bank against such foes."

   Such a fear would be most natural. When Caesar tried to land in England
   what did the Britons do? They rushed into the water off Dover to meet
   the Romans and they fought with them in the surf of the sea. It was
   natural that brave men should fight the invaders in the water and not
   suffer them to tread their soil. Do you suppose that the Canaanites
   were less brave than the ancient Britons? Had there not been a spell
   upon them they would have pressed back Israel in the river itself and
   would not have allowed them to enter the land.

   Yet Israel passed over Jordan at the appointed time. God had said "You
   shall go over," and they did go over. And no Canaanite, Hivite, or
   Jebusite, dared to molest them. So the poor child of God sighs, "Alas,
   when I come to die, Satan will meet me, temptations and doubts and
   fears will rush upon me." We read in the third chapter of Joshua,
   sixteenth verse, "And the people passed over right against Jericho."
   Fear not, O trembling heart. God can so deal with evil spirits and with
   the doubts of your own spirit that they shall be still as a stone till
   you have passed over.

   No demon shall dare to peep or mutter. No doubt or fear shall venture
   near. We read, "All the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all
   the people were passed clean over Jordan." Not an arrow or a stone came
   from over the walls of Jericho. Glory be to the name of the Lord! He
   made the hearts of Israel's enemies to melt so that no more courage
   remained in them. Thus far upon the second word, "You shall pass over."

   The third word was "possess." They were to pass the river to possess
   the land which God had given them. We possess nothing here. Those goods
   which we think we possess melt away like an icicle from a hot hand.
   Like birds on the plowed field which are gone the moment we clap our
   hands, so do riches take to themselves wings and fly away. Such things
   are poor stuff to call possessions. But we have on the other side of
   Jordan treasures worth owning. By a Covenant of salt, God has given us
   in Christ Jesus everlasting rest, triumph, happiness, glory.

   There was in Palestine a portion of land for each man of Israel--so is
   there in Heaven a heritage appointed for each one of the Lord's people.
   There is a crown in Heaven that nobody's head can wear but mine, a harp
   that nobody's hand

   can play but mine and a mansion that no man may enter but myself alone.
   I believe the same of each of you, my Brothers and Sisters, who are in
   Christ Jesus. There is a Heaven for all the saints but there is also
   special joy and delight for each one of the redeemed--in my Father's
   house are many mansions. You have to go over Jordan but you are not
   going away from home, you are returning to your Father's house.

   You are not going to a land of toil and poverty, sorrow and death. You
   are going to be forever with the Lord, where no evil can reach you. If,
   then, the message should come to your ear today, "Within three days you
   shall pass over this Jordan," say to yourself, "It is well, for I shall
   behold the face of Him I love and meet with those who are redeemed by
   His

   blood."

   Thus I have spoken to you upon the tenor of this notice. But I hear the
   bell strike the quarter and therefore the voice of time bids me hasten
   on to a second most important matter.

   II. I want you now to OBSERVE THE SEQUEL OF THIS NOTICE, or what
   followed upon the summons. I shall try to show what will follow to you
   who are in Christ, when you receive your notice to depart--what will
   happen to you?

   The first thing that happened to Israel was this--a singular faith was
   bestowed. I can hardly believe that the people under Joshua were the
   children of those unbelieving Jews whose carcasses fell in the
   wilderness. Throughout the early chapters of Joshua, it is recorded
   that they believed Joshua, whatever he said to them. He had strange and
   strong things to utter but they did not doubt or demur. What pleases me
   most is that when he spoke to the Reubenites and told them what they
   had to do, they said, "Whosoever he is that does rebel against your
   commandment and will not hearken unto your words in all that you
   command him, he shall be put to death--only be strong and of a good
   courage."

   Think of that! They took upon themselves to encourage Joshua, saying,
   "only be strong and of a good courage." They admonished the bravest of
   captains--even they who were but of the rank and file. Some of God's
   very poor and tried people are occasionally so full of faith and
   courage that they try to cheer up their minister. The children instruct
   the fathers. I like to see them thus returning the compliment for it
   shows that they are in a happy condition themselves. If their simple
   cheer should seem superfluous to Joshua, yet it showed the honesty of
   their hearts and the fullness of their confidence in God.

   There was not a doubt or a fear throughout the whole camp. Now,
   Beloved, when the children of God come to die, those of them who have
   been poor, trembling things before, receive new courage and strength
   and even minister comfort to those who are stronger than themselves! It
   is brave to see how Mr. Ready-to-Halt puts his crutches away when he is
   going over Jordan. Mr. Feeble-Mind bids them bury his feeble mind in a
   dung-hill, for it would be of no use to anybody. The Lord will give us
   more Divine Grace and we shall wonder at ourselves that we could have
   been aforetime so distrustful.

   "At eventide it shall be light." It is wonderful to see how God's babes
   in Christ shoot up to six feet six in a short time. I do not know what
   change death itself makes in the soul. But I believe that a little
   before death a wonderful advance is often made by the Believer. The man
   of God matures at a marvelous rate--even as these Israelites, who had
   been so prone to murmur--were now filled with a unanimity of faith
   which is perfectly amazing. May God thus brace up our faith when the
   time comes.

   Next, a special assurance was given. See the fifth verse of the third
   chapter--"Tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." When they
   should come to the last day of the three, great wonders would be seen.
   The Lord is always working marvels. But when we come to cross the
   Jordan we shall see His wonders as never before. You have not seen the
   Lord yet, Beloved, as you will see Him as the great Wonder-worker. You
   have had a faint view of your God, sometimes, and this has made you
   feel like David when he danced before the ark. But you shall soon have
   another and a clearer view and then you will long to mount like an
   angel and veil your face in His nearer presence.

   You shall have such wonders revealed to you and in you, both of grace
   and glory, that your soul shall be ravished with delight. You shall see
   Jesus and His love shall be more fully revealed to you. You shall begin
   to hear things which it is not lawful for a man to utter and you shall
   feel glory begun below. Your death day shall be your heavenly wedding
   day and your last day on earth shall be the best day you have ever
   spent on it. When you come close to Heaven in point of time, Heaven
   will come close to you in point of joy. With a strong faith and a
   delightful assurance for that faith to feed upon, you will be blessed,
   indeed.

   Next, note that the people had with them a conquering leader. Joshua
   was at their head to encourage and direct them. When you and I shall
   pass over Jordan we shall have Jesus with us. Joshua is but another
   form of that dear name in which we triumph. He says, "Be of good cheer.
   Because I live, you shall live also." He it is who cries, "When you
   pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers,
   they shall not overflow you." If our Joshua should seem to leave us, it
   will be on the flowery hill-side, or in the gardens of delight. But He
   will not even appear to do so when the dark waters flow at our feet and
   we are called upon to pass through the stream.

   Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ, He never forgets His own. He is
   always with us but He is most clearly so when our last trouble is upon
   us. He is gone away into the hill country to make ready the house where
   we shall shortly be at home. But He will surely come again and receive
   us unto Himself, that where He is, there we may be, also. Therefore, be
   not afraid, for Jesus is with you. Did I hear you say--

   "Oh, if my Lord would come and meet, My soul would stretch her wings in
   haste, Fly fearless through death's iron gate, Nor fear the terror as
   she passed"?

   Yes, Jesus will come and meet you and you shall forget that you are
   dying for the eternal life shall come streaming into your soul. The
   candle of your mortal existence shall expire without much note, for the
   glory of the Lord shall have risen upon you. The moans of expiring will
   be swallowed up in the harmonies of the celestial choirs.

   But what next? The Israelites had a clear guidance afforded them. Read
   the fourth verse of the third chapter. The Ark of the Covenant of the
   Lord went before them and a distance was set between them and the
   priests bearing the ark so that they might show reverence to it and
   might clearly see it as their guide. Thus said Joshua to them, "When
   you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God and the priests,
   the Levites, bearing it, then you shall remove from your place and go
   after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two
   thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that you may know
   the way by which you must go: for you have not passed this way
   heretofore."

   You have been through many experiences but to die will be a new one.
   You have traversed certain roads more than once or twice but this road
   is new to you and can only be trod once. Once and for all you must
   cross this Jordan-- therefore the Divine Presence shall go before you
   and show you the way. The Lord will surely direct your steps. Do not
   begin saying to yourself,. "What shall I do in sickness?" You will be
   guided by Him who bore our sorrows and infirmities. "But what shall I
   do when the pulse is faint and low and the death-sweat beads the brow?"

   Jesus will show you what to do, for He also died. He knows what
   faintness, pain, thirst and fever mean, for He has felt the same. In
   death, Divine Grace will be magnified to the uttermost. Some children
   of God are always delighted at the idea that Christ may come and that
   they shall never die. I would be delighted if the Lord would come at
   once. But as to dying or not dying I do not care a jot. I think that of
   the two, it might be preferable to die, because those who die will have
   a kind of fellowship with Christ in His death which will not be
   experienced by those who never sleep in the tomb.

   They that are alive and remain till His coming will miss the privilege
   of actually passing through the tomb as the Savior did, though even
   they must be changed. Brothers and Sisters, we traverse a road which
   has known the feet of the Crucified. Where should the dying members
   rest but with their dying Head? Why should I fear to sleep where Jesus
   went to bed? Did He not leave the sheets behind? He laid the napkin by
   itself that mourners might wipe their eyes. But He laid the grave
   clothes by themselves, that we might find in the grave a bed well
   furnished for our slumber. Oh, yes, you shall have Divine direction
   when the darkness gathers about you!

   With Israel a forerunner led the way. Was not that a glorious spectacle
   when the priests took up the golden staves and with them lifted the ark
   upon their shoulders and then in stately march carried it down to the
   river? No Israelite had to tread a novel path, or to make a road for
   himself. Our great High Priest has gone down to the river before us and
   has touched its waters with the soles of His feet. "He has tasted death
   for every man." He went into the depths of death and slept three days
   in the heart of the earth. The Ark of the Covenant leads the way and we
   have only to follow.

   Nor did the Forerunner quit the scene, for the Divine Presence
   remained. The priests went on till they came to the river bed and
   descended the hollow, going on to the very center of it. There they
   stopped till all the host had passed over. Hour after hour the priests
   remained with the holy burden on their shoulders--they stood firm on
   dry ground in the midst of Jordan. First came the Reubenites and the
   half tribe of Manasseh marching by in military order and then all the

   other tribes in succession. But the priests remained like statues,
   still bearing the ark, till the last Israelite had gone clean over
   Jordan.

   There stood the emblem of a Covenant God, with its Mercy Seat, its
   sacred Law and the rod of government. The Lord Jesus will go before you
   as your great High Priest, your Propitiation and your Covenant. And He
   will abide with you in the last solemn article until you are safely on
   the shore of the land of promise. The feeblest and least of all the
   host shall climb the celestial hills on the other side and sing of
   everlasting love.

   O Lord, my God, when my last hours shall come, let my eyes behold the
   Lord Jesus and the Covenant ordered in all things and sure--

   "When I tread the verge of Jordan, Bid my anxious fears subside. Death
   of death and Hell's destruction, Land me safe on Canaan's side! Songs
   of praises I will ever give to You."

   In consequence of the priests going down into the river the stream was
   dried up. Wonderful sight it must have been to behold the waters roll
   back, and stand in a congealed heap! No less so if, as some think, the
   torrent rolled back some thirty miles so that the Israelites could look
   right up a long roadway of dry river-bed. At the place where the great
   crystalline heap was piled up what an extraordinary wonder met the eye!
   Thus there was a broad passageway for the multitudes of Israel to go
   marching through and to effect the crossing rapidly.

   Suppose, when you come to die, the Jordan should turn out to be no
   river at all. What if you should go over dry-shod? Why should it not be
   so? It has often been the case with the Lord's chosen. Many make a
   joyful exit. A Sister used to be much troubled about dying. She knew
   where she was going but she dreaded the passage. She died in her sleep
   and in all probability never knew when she passed from the one state to
   the other till she found herself among the angels. Death is a pin's
   prick to many.

   How many sing themselves into glory! And some, who could not sing
   themselves, have made others do so while they forded the stream. Surely
   we misrepresent Death--he is to the Believer no skeleton form but the
   angel of the Lord come to gather the flowers of the Lord's garden.
   Death has lost its terrors. "The sting of death is sin," and that is
   forgiven. "The strength of sin is the Law," and that is fulfilled. The
   black waters have failed, we pass over Jordan dry-shod.

   Then notice, the people were very quick in crossing. Death is short
   work. According to the tenth verse of the fourth chapter, we read--"And
   the people hasted and passed over." They did not hurry because they
   were afraid but they hasted because they were many and would desire be
   all over before the sun went down. They were eager to take possession
   of their country and confident in marching upon Jericho where the first
   of their foes were entrenched. They went through the river at a quick
   march and came upon the other side at the same rate. Of course it would
   take a considerable time with so vast a number to cross, but they were
   all moving on in an orderly and rapid manner.

   After all, what is the act of death? "What?" cries one, "is there not a
   terrible amount of pain connected with death?" I answer--No. It is life
   that has the pain. Death is the end of all pain. You blame death for a
   disease of which he is the cure. You imagine a thing called death which
   does not really exist. In the twinkling of an eye we shall be up and
   away!--

   "One gentle sigh, the fetter breaks-- We scarce can say, 'He's gone,'
   Before the ransomed spirit takes Its mansion near the Throne."

   Therefore, because you will hasten to pass over, you need not be
   alarmed at so short a trial, which will actually turn out to be no
   trial at all.

   We read in the ninth verse of the fourth chapter, that the Israelites
   in traversing the Jordan left a memorial behind. Before they had quite
   passed out of the river bed, a number of chosen men took twelve of the
   great masses of rock which lay in the bottom of the river and piled
   them on end upon each other, to remain as a perpetual memorial that
   Israel had been there. You also will bear your testimony in
   departing--you will set up your memorial for your children after you
   and they shall say, "Our father died in sure and certain hope of being
   with Jesus."

   Perhaps some unconverted ones will be saved, after you are dead and
   gone, by your last testimony. Even if your deathbed should not be so
   bright as some, even its clouds may not be without their effect. A holy
   man had prayed much for his boys and girls but never saw them converted
   and this, with the troubles which grew out of their waywardness, made
   his last hours to be sadly clouded. For this cause he was sorely
   troubled, for he feared that it would confirm his sons in their
   unbelief.

   But mark how the Lord worked! They buried their father and when they
   were met together, the eldest son turned to his brothers and remarked
   upon the sorrows which had weighed down their father at the last.
   "Brothers," said he, "if our father, who was so good a man, was so
   troubled in death, what will become of us when we die?" This most
   reasonable remark was the means of the conversion of the brothers. I
   would like to die in the dark if it would bring all my people to the
   Savior. Would not you? Apart from this, no doubt we shall set up stones
   in the midst of Jordan and witness that the Lord is a faithful God.

   One thing more--they also raised a memorial on the other shore. Twelve
   men took from the river twelve stones and bore them on their shoulders
   before the ark. Can you not see them with their loads and the ark
   coming up after them from the riverbed? They piled these twelve stones
   upon each other in Canaan. You and I, when we get to Heaven, shall take
   our memorials with us and pile them up. We will make known to angels
   and principalities and powers the manifold wisdom and goodness of God
   to us in life and death.

   I hope to begin to preach before long, not to this little congregation
   of six thousand but to countless multitudes of the redeemed in Heaven.
   Myriads of angels will come together to hear how God made a worm to
   thresh the mountains and helped a sinner to declare his love. You will
   stand with your groups about you and shining ones will linger to hear
   of your salvation, your trials, your joys and your achievements, or
   rather of what the Lord has worked for you and by you. And so God will
   be glorified and the other side of Jordan will be adorned with
   memorials to the measureless Grace of

   God.

   You will have to turn this subject over in your meditations--I have
   only been able to give you the rough outline of a sermon. Read the
   whole narrative with care and may God bless it to you!

   But, dear Friends, suppose you are not the people of God. You will have
   to die all the same. One of these times you also will have to pass over
   the torrent. What a different lot will be yours! You will have to leave
   your possessions behind. A sage said to a worldling, when he looked
   over his beautiful gardens, "These are the things that make it hard to
   die." You will have to leave everything which you call your own here.
   And you have no possessions over yonder. You have no Joshua to be your
   leader, no priest to be your forerunner, no God in covenant to hold the
   ground for you--you have, in fact, nothing to overcome the bitterness
   of death. The floods will carry you away. The torrents will hurry you
   to the dead sea.

   Even now, when you are a little ill and in pain, you become dreadfully
   frightened. If in the land of peace wherein you trusted they have
   wearied you, what will you do in the swellings of Jordan? The dark
   stream will not be dry for you. Dare you take the dreadful plunge? Mark
   how the black current rushes down to that dreadful sea of death! Are
   you resolved to be swept down to that place of desolation?

   The Lord have mercy upon you before you are drifted into the abode of
   the accursed! "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
   For he that believes and is baptized shall be saved." So says the
   Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               Sown Among Thorns

   A Sermon

   (No. 2040)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, August 19th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [7]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked
   them"'Matthew 13:7.

   "He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the
   word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches,
   choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful'Matthew 13:22.

   WHEN that which comes of his sowing is unfruitful, the sower's work is
   wasted: he has spent his strength for nothing. Without fruit the
   sower's work would even seem to be insane, for he takes good wheat,
   throws it away, and loses it in the ground. Preaching is the most idle
   of occupations if the Word is not adapted to enter the heart, and
   produce good results. O my hearers, if you are not converted, I waste
   time and energy in standing here! People might well think it madness
   that one whole day in the week should be given up to hearing
   speeches-madness, indeed, it would be if nothing came of it to
   conscience and heart. If you do not bring forth fruit to holiness, and
   the end is not everlasting life, I would be better employed in breaking
   stones on the road-side than in preaching to you.

   Fruit-bearing made the difference appear in the various soils upon
   which the sower scattered seed. You would not so certainly have known
   the quality if you had not seen the failure or success of the seed. We
   do not know your hearts until we see your bearing toward the Gospel. If
   it produces in you holiness and love to God and humanity, then we know
   that there is good soil in you; but if you are merely promising people,
   but not performing people, then we know that the ground of your heart
   is hard, or stony, or thorny. The Word of the Lord tries the hearts of
   the children of men, and in this it is as the fire which distinguishes
   between metal and dross. O my dear hearers, you undergo a test today!
   Peradventure you will be judging the preacher, but a greater than the
   preacher will be judging you, for the Word itself shall judge you. You
   sit here as a jury upon yourselves; your own condition will be brought
   clearly out by the way in which you receive or refuse the Gospel of
   God. If you bring forth fruit to the praise of God's grace, well; but
   if not, however you may seem to hear with attention and may retain what
   you hear in your memories, if no saving effect is produced upon your
   souls we shall know that the soil of your heart has not been prepared
   of the Lord and remains in its native barrenness.

   What fruit have you born hitherto from all your hearing? May I venture
   to put the question to each one of you very pointedly'? Some of you
   have been hearers from your childhood'are you any the better? What long
   lists of sermons you must have heard by now! Count over your Sundays;
   how many they have been! Think of the good men now in heaven to whom
   you once listened! Remember the tears that were drawn from you by their
   discourses! If you are not saved yet, will you ever be saved? If you
   are not holy yet, will you ever be holy? Why has the Lord spent so much
   on one who makes no return? To what purpose is this waste? Surely you
   will have much to answer for in that great day when the servants of God
   shall give in their accounts, and shall have no joy when they come to
   mention you. How will you excuse yourselves before God for having
   occasioned them so much disappointment?

   At this time I will only deal with one class of you. I will not speak
   to those of you who hear the Word, and retain none of it because of the
   hardness of your hearts; such are the wayside hearers. Neither will I
   address myself to those who receive the truth with sudden enthusiasm,
   and as readily quit it when trial befalls them; such are the
   rocky-ground hearers. But I will deal with those of you who hear the
   Word attentively, and, in a sense, receive it into your hearts and
   understandings, so that the seed grows in you, though its fruit never
   comes to perfection. You are religious persons, and to all appearance
   you are under the influence of godliness. You exhibit plenty of leaf,
   but there is no corn in the ear, no substance in your Christianity. I
   cannot speak with any degree of physical vigor to you by reason of the
   infirmity under which I struggle; but what I do say to you is steeped
   in earnest desire that the Lord may bless it to you. An eloquent
   congregation will make any preacher eloquent: help me then this
   morning. If you will give me your ear, you will make up for my
   deficiency of tongue: especially if you give to God your hearts, He
   will bless His truth, however feebly I may utter it.

   First, I desire to talk to you a little about the seed which you have
   received; secondly about the thorns; thirdly about the result.

   I. First a little about THE SEED. Remember, first, that it was the same
   seed in every case. Yonder it has brought forth thirty-fold; it was the
   same seed which was lost upon you. In a still better case, the seed has
   brought forth a hundred-fold; it was precisely the same corn with which
   your field has been sown. The sower went to his master's granary for
   all his seed; how is it that in your case it is all lost? If there were
   two Gospels, we might expect two results without fault in the soil
   which failed. But with many of you to whom I speak there has been only
   one Gospel throughout the whole of your lives. You have been attending
   in this house of prayer, where we have never changed our seed, but have
   gone on sowing the one eternal truth of God. Many have brought forth
   fruit a hundred-fold from the seed which has been scattered broadcast
   from this platform. They heard no more than you have heard, but how
   much better they treated it than you have done! I want you to consider
   this. How covered with briars and thorns must your mind be that the
   Gospel which converted your sister or friend never touched you! Though
   you may be nominally a believer in the Word of God, it has never so
   affected you as to make you gracious and holy. You are still a hearer
   only. How is this? The fault is not in the seed, for it is the same
   which has been so useful to others.

   You have heard the Gospel with pleasure. "Heard it!" You say, "I heard
   it when a little child." Your mother brought you to the house of God in
   her arms. You have heard it and still hear it, though it is rather like
   an old song to you: but is this to be all? I am very grateful that you
   do hear the Gospel, for I hope that one of these days God may cause it
   to grow in you and yield fruit. But still a grave responsibility is
   upon you. Think how favored you have been! How will you answer for this
   privilege if it is neglected and rendered useless by that neglect? Dear
   hearers, if we lived in the heart of Africa and we died without
   believing in a Christ of whom we had not heard, we could not be blamed
   for that. But here we are in the heart of London where the Gospel is
   preached in all our streets, and our blood will be on our own heads if
   we perish. Do you mean to go down to hell? Are you so desperate that
   you will go there wearing the garb of Christians? If you do persist
   ruining your souls, my eyes shall follow you with tears; and when I
   cannot warn you any longer, I will weep in secret places because of
   your perversity.

   Those described in my text were not only hearers, but in a measure they
   accepted the good Word. The seed fell not only on this ground, but into
   it, so that it began to grow. Of you it is true that you do not refuse
   the Gospel, or raise disputes concerning it. I am glad that you have no
   difficulties about the inspiration of Scripture, or the Deity of our
   Lord, or the fact of His atonement. You do not befog yourselves with
   "modern thought," but you avow your belief in the old, old Gospel. So
   far so good; but what shall I make of the strange fact that your
   acceptance of the truth has no effect upon you? It is a very lamentable
   case, is it not, that a person should believe the Gospel to be true,
   and yet should live as if it were a lie? If it is the truth, why do you
   not yield obedience to it? The person knows that there is an atonement
   for sin, but he has never confessed his sin and accepted the great
   sacrifice. Those great truths, which circle about the Cross like a
   coronet of stars, he has seen their beauty and enjoyed their
   brilliance, but he has never allowed their light to enter his heart and
   find a reflection in his moral character. This is evil, only evil. If
   you believe the truth, what do you more than the Devil? No, you are
   behind him, for he believes, and trembles, and you have not gone so far
   as the trembling. It should be so, that every great truth which is
   believed should influence the mind, sway the thoughts, and mold the
   life. This is the natural fruitage of great spiritual truth. The
   doctrine of grace, when it takes possession of the mind and governs the
   heart, produces the purest results; but if it is held in
   unrighteousness, it is a curse rather than a blessing to have a head
   knowledge. Is it not a dreadful thing to believe God's revelation
   without receiving God's Spirit? This is to accept a well, but never to
   drink of the water; to accept corn in the barn, and yet die of hunger.
   God have mercy upon the possessors of a dead faith!

   The seed sown among thorns lived and continued to grow. And in many
   people's minds the Gospel of divine truth is growing after a fashion:
   they understand it better, can defend it more valorously, and speak of
   it more fluently. Moreover, it does influence them in some form and
   degree, for gross vices are forsaken. They are decent imitations of
   believers: you can see the shape of an ear: the stalk has struggled up
   through the thorns until you can see its head, and you are led to
   expect corn. But go to that apparent wheat-ear, and feel it: there are
   the sheaths but there is nothing in them; you have all the makings of
   an ear of wheat, but it will yield no grain. I would speak to those
   before me who, perhaps, have been baptized and are members of the
   church; I want to ask of them a question or two. Do you not think that
   there is a great deal of empty profession nowadays? Do you not think
   that many have a name to live and are dead? "Yes," say you, "I know a
   neighbor whom I judge to be in that condition." May not another
   neighbor judge the same of you? Would it not be well to raise the
   question about yourself? Have you really believed in the Lord Jesus?
   Are you truly converted from sin and self? Turn that sharp eye of yours
   homeward for a while. Examine your own actions, and judge your
   condition by them. Put yourself into the crucible. O my God, what if I
   should be a preacher to others, and should be myself a castaway! Will
   not every deacon and elder, and every individual church member, speak
   to himself after the same fashion. You will go to your Sunday school
   class this afternoon; will you be teaching the children what you do not
   know? You mean to go to a meeting this evening and talk to others about
   conversion; will you be exhorting them to that which you have never
   yourself experienced? Will it be so? You do not need fine preaching,
   but you do need probing in the conscience. A thorough examination will
   do the healthy no harm, and it may bless the sick. "Lord, let me know
   the worst of my case," is one of my frequent prayers, and I suggest it
   to you.

   So much then about the seed: it was good seed, it was sown, it was
   received by the soil, it grew and promised well, but yet in the end it
   was unfruitful. No doubt multitudes, who receive Christianity, become
   regular attendants at our place of worship, and are honest in their
   moral character; but Christ is not all in all to them. He holds a very
   secondary place in their affections. Their wheat is overshadowed with a
   thicket of thorns, and is so choked that it comes to nothing. Their
   religion is buried beneath their worldliness. Sad will their end be.
   God in mercy save us from such a doom!

   II. But now, secondly, I would speak a little about THE THORNS. They
   are by Matthew described as "the care of this world, and the
   deceitfulness of riches." Luke adds, "and pleasures of this life," and
   Mark still further mentions, "the lusts of other things." I suppose
   that the sower did not see any thorns when he threw the handful of
   corn; they had all been cut down level with the surface. He probably
   hoped that it was all good ground, and therefore he sowed it little
   suspecting that the thorns were in possession.

   Note well that thorns are natural to the soil. Since the fall these are
   the firstborn children of the ground. Any evil which hinders religion
   is not at all an extraordinary thing'it is what we ought to expect
   among fallen human beings. Grace is an exotic; thorns are indigenous.
   Sin is very much at home in the human heart and, like an ill weed, it
   grows apace. If you wish to go to heaven, I might take a little time to
   show you the way, and I would need to stir you up to diligence; but if
   you must go to hell'well, "easy is the way to destruction"'it is only a
   little matter of neglect. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great
   salvation?" Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our
   fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation. If
   any of you are being injured by the cares of the world and the
   deceitfulness of riches, I am not astonished; it is natural that it
   should be so. Therefore, be on your guard against these mischiefs. I
   pray you say to yourself, "Come, there is something in this man's talk.
   He is very slow and dull, but still there is something in what he says.
   I may, after all, be tolerating those thorns in my heart which will
   kill the good seed, for I am of like passions and infirmities with
   other people." I beseech you look to yourselves, that you be not
   deceived at the last.

   The thorns were already established in the soil. They were not only the
   natural inhabitants of the soil, but they were rooted and fixed in it.
   Our sins within us claim the freehold of our faculties, and they will
   not give it up if they can help it. They will not give way to the Holy
   Spirit, or to the new life, or to the influences of divine grace,
   without a desperate struggle. The roots of sin run through and through
   our nature, grasp it with wonderful force, and keep up their grasp with
   marvelous tenacity. O my dear hearer, whoever you may be, you are a
   fallen creature! If you were the Pope himself, or the President of the
   United States, or the Queen of England, it would be true of you that
   you were born in sin and shapen in iniquity, and your unregenerate
   heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The
   established church of the town of Mansoul has the Devil for its
   archbishop. Sin has enclasped our nature as a boa constrictor encircles
   its victim, and when it has maintained its hold for twenty, forty, or
   sixty years, I hope you are not so foolish as to think that holy things
   will easily get the mastery. Our evil nature is radically conservative,
   and it will endeavor to crush out every attempt at a revolution by
   which the grace of God should reign through righteousness. Wherefore,
   watch and pray, lest temptation choke that which is good in you. Watch
   earnestly, for grace is a tender plant in a foreign soil, in an
   uncongenial clime, while sin is in its own element, and is strongly
   rooted in the soil.

   Do you know why so many professing Christians are like the thorny
   ground? It is because processes have been omitted which would have gone
   far to alter the condition of things. It was the husbandman's business
   to uproot the thorns, or burn them on the spot. Years ago when people
   were converted, there used to be such a thing as conviction of sin. The
   great subsoil plow of soul-anguish was used to tear deep into the soul.
   Fire also burned in the mind with exceeding heat: as people saw sin and
   felt its dreadful results, the love of it was burned out of them. But
   now we are dinned with braggings about rapid salvations. As for myself,
   I believe in instantaneous conversions, and I am glad to see them; but
   I am still more glad when I see a thorough work of grace, a deep sense
   of sin, and an effectual wounding by the law. We shall never get rid of
   thorns with plows that scratch the surface. Those fields grow the best
   corn which are best plowed. Converts are likely to endure when the
   thorns cannot spring up because they have been plowed up. Dear hearer,
   are you undergoing today a very severe conviction of sin? Thank God for
   it. Are you in awful trouble and anguish? Do not think that a calamity
   has happened to you. May God Himself continue to plow you, and then sow
   you, and make sure work in you for years to come! So you see these
   thorns were natives, and old-established natives, and it would have
   been well had they been cut up.

   The thorns were bound to grow. There is an awful vitality in evil.
   First the thorns sent up a few tiny shoots. These shoots branched out,
   and more and more came to keep them company, until the wheat stood as a
   lonely thing in a thicket of briars, and was more and more overtopped
   and shadowed by them. The thorns aspired to the mastery, and they soon
   obtained it; that done, they set to work to destroy the wheat. They
   blocked it up, crowded it out, and some of the thorn shoots twisted
   around it, and held the wheat by the neck until it was choked.

   The thorns sucked away all the nutriment from the wheat, and it was
   starved, for there is only a certain quantity of nourishment in the
   soil, and if the thorns have it, the wheat must go without it. There is
   only a certain amount of thought and energy in a person; and if the
   world gets it, Christ cannot have it. If our thoughts run upon care and
   pleasure, they cannot be eager about true religion: is not that clear?
   That is the way in which those thorns served the wheat; they starved it
   by devouring its food, and they choked it by keeping off the air and
   sun; the poor thing became shriveled and weak, and quite unable to
   produce the grain which the sower expected of it. So it is with many
   professing Christians. They are at first worldly, but not so very
   worldly. They are fairly religious, though by no means too zealous.
   They seek the pleasures of the world, but by no means quite so much as
   others we could name. But very soon the thorns grow, and it becomes
   doubtful which will win, sin or grace, the world or Christ. Two masters
   there cannot be, and in this case it is especially impossible since
   neither of the contending powers will brook a rival. Sin has sprung
   from a royal though evil stock, and if it be in the heart, it will
   struggle for the throne. So it came to pass that the tares, being
   tolerated, choked the good seed.

   Let me describe these thorns a little. Putting together Matthew, Mark,
   and Luke, we find that there were four sorts of thorns. The first is
   called "the care of this world." This assuredly comes to the poor; they
   are apt to grow anxious and mistrustful about temporal things. "What
   shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?"
   This trinity of doleful questions much afflicts many. But anxiety comes
   to rich people also. Care dwells with wealth as well as with poverty.
   "How shall I get more? How shall I lay it up? How shall I still
   increase it?"'and so on. It is "the care of the age" which we are most
   warned against. Each age has its own special fret. It is not a care for
   God'that is not the care of any age; but the care of the age is some
   vanity or another, and as a standing thing it is the ambition to keep
   up with your fellows, to be respectable, and to keep up appearances.
   This is the care which eats as does a canker in the case of many. Grim
   care turns many a black hair white, and furrows many a brow. If you let
   care grow in your soul, it will choke up your religion: you cannot care
   for God and for mammon too. "We must have care," says one. There is a
   care which is proper, and there is an anxiety which is improper. That
   is proper care which you can cast upon God'"Casting all your care upon
   him; for he careth for you." That is an improper care which you dare
   not take to God but have to bear yourself. Take heed of anxiety; it
   will eat the heart out of your religion.

   There were others who felt "the deceitfulness of riches." Our Lord does
   not say "riches," but "the deceitfulness of riches." The two things
   grow together: riches are evermore deceitful. They deceive people in
   the getting of them, for people judge matters very unfairly when a
   prospect of gain is before them. The jingle of the charming guinea, or
   of "the almighty dollar," makes a world of difference to the ear when
   it is hearing a case. People cannot afford to lose by integrity and so
   they take the doubtful way, and either sail near the wind or speculate
   until it amounts to gambling. They would not endure the idea of such
   conduct were it not that the hope of gain deceives them. Our line of
   conduct ought never to be ruled by gain or loss. Do right if the
   heavens fall. Do no wrong, even though a kingdom should be its reward.
   People turn to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," a wonderful book, and
   there they find certain laws which I believe to be as fixed and
   unalterable as the laws of gravitation; led on by the deceitfulness of
   riches, people make these laws into an excuse for grinding the faces of
   the poor. They might as well take people to the top of a rock, fling
   them down, and dash them to pieces, and then cry out, "This is the
   natural result of the law of gravitation." Of course, the law of
   gravitation operates remorselessly, and so will the law of supply and
   demand. We must not use either of these laws as a cover for cruelty to
   the poor and needy, yet many do so through "the deceitfulness of
   riches."

   Riches are very deceitful when they are gained, for they breed in men
   and women many vices which they do not themselves suspect. One man is
   purse-proud, but he thinks he is humble. He is a self-made man and
   worships him that made him. Is it not natural that a person should
   worship his maker? In his heart he thinks: "I am somebody. I came up to
   London with half-a-crown in my pocket, and now I could buy a whole
   street!" People ought to respect someone of that kind, ought they not,
   even though he may have made his money by very queer practices? It
   little matters how you make money nowadays; only get it, and you will
   have plenty of admirers and the deceitfulness of riches will enable you
   to admire yourself. With pride comes a desire for wealthy society and
   vain company, and thus again religion receives severe injury. There is
   apt to grow up in the mind an idolatry of this world and its treasures.
   "I don't love money," says one. "You know it is not money that is the
   root of all evil, but the love of it." Just so; but are you sure that
   you do not love it? Your thoughts run a good deal after it. You hug it
   rather closely and you find it hard to part with it. I will not accuse
   you, but I would have you awake to the fact that riches worm themselves
   into a person's heart before he is well aware of it.

   You may perceive the deceitfulness of riches if you note the excuses
   which people make for getting so much and withholding it from the cause
   of God. "They intend to do a great deal of good with it." Did you hear
   the Devil laugh? I am not speaking of many dear people in this place
   who are doing a great deal of good with their means, but I am speaking
   of those who are simply living to accumulate wealth, and who say that
   they will one day do a great deal of good with it. They say so. Will it
   ever be more than saying? I fear that in this thing many rich people
   deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using
   them; making bricks, but never building. All they will get with it will
   be a corner in "The Illustrated London News" to say that they died
   worth so much. O sirs, how can you be content thus to have your good
   things choked? Wherever this deceitfulness of riches is allowed the
   upper hand, it chokes the good seed. A person cannot be eager to get,
   and eager to keep, and eager to increase, and eager to become a
   millionaire, and at the same time be a true servant of the Lord Jesus.
   As the body grows rich, the soul grows poor.

   Luke tells us of another kind of weed, namely, "the pleasures of this
   life." I am sure that these thorns play a dreadful part nowadays. I
   have nothing to say against recreation in its proper place. Certain
   forms of recreation are needful and useful; but it is a wretched thing
   when amusement becomes a vocation. Amusement should be used to do us
   good "like a medicine"; it must never be used as the food of the
   individual. From early morning until late at night some spend their
   time in a round of frivolities, or else their very work is simply
   carried on to furnish them funds for their pleasures. This is vicious.
   Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by
   perpetual trifling. Pleasure, so called, is the murderer of thought.
   This is the age of excessive amusement. Everybody craves for it, like a
   babe for its rattle. In the more sober years of our fathers, men and
   women had something better to live for than silly sports. The thorns
   are choking the age.

   Mark adds, "and the lusts of other things." I will not enumerate all
   those other things, but all things except the things of Christ and of
   the Father are "other things." If anybody spends his life on any
   object, however good, short of the glory of God, the good seed is
   choked by the inferior object. One person is eminently scientific, and
   he will do well if his science is used for holy purposes, but it can be
   used to choke the seed. Another person is a great proficient in the
   arts, and he does well if the arts are used as a mule for Christ to
   ride upon, but if art is to ride upon Christ, then it is ill enough. I
   met with a clergyman many years ago who was going a long distance to
   find a new beetle. He was a great entomologist, and I did not blame him
   for it, for to a thoughtful person entomology may yield many profitable
   lessons. But if he neglected his preaching to catch insects, then I do
   not wonder that a parishioner would wish that the beetles would nibble
   his old sermons, for they were very stale. I call it choking the seed
   when any inferior pursuit becomes the master of our minds, and the
   cause of God and truth takes a secondary place. The seed is choked in
   our souls whenever Christ is not our all in all. You see my drift: be
   it what it may'gain, glory, study, pleasure'all these may be briers
   that will choke the seed.

   Mr. Jay was never more pleased than when at Bristol he had a note sent
   up to him which ran as follows: "A young man, who is prospering in
   business, begs the prayers of God's people that prosperity may not be a
   snare to him." Take care that you look thus upon your prosperity. My
   dear friend Dr. Taylor, of New York, speaks of some Christians nowadays
   as having a "butterfly Christianity." When time, and strength, and
   thought, and talent are all spent upon mere amusement, what else are
   men and women but mere butterflies? "Society" is just a mass of idle
   people keeping each other in countenance. O dear hearers, surely we did
   not come into this world to play away our days! I do not think we came
   into this world either to slave ourselves to death, or to rust away in
   laziness. We have come here as a man enters into the porch that he may
   afterward enter the house. This life is the doorway to the palace of
   heaven. Pass through it in such style that you may enter before the
   King with holy joy. If you give your minds and thoughts to these
   passing things, be they what they may, you will ruin your souls, for
   the good seed cannot grow.

   III. So I close in the last place by noticing THE RESULT. The seed was
   unfruitful.

   These briers and thorns could not pull the seed up, or throw it away.
   It remained where it was, but they choked it. So it may be that your
   business, your cares, your pleasures have not torn up your religion by
   the roots'it is there still, such as it is. But these things suffocate
   your better feelings. Someone that is choked is not good for much. If a
   thief gets into his house, and he desires to defend his property, what
   can he do while he is choked? He must wait until he gets his breath
   again. What an amount of choked religion we have around us! It may be
   alive. I do not know whether it is or not; but it looks very black in
   the face. God save you from having your religion choked!

   I have already told you it was drained of all its sustenance. Look at
   many Christians; I call them Christians for they call themselves so. A
   boy in the streets, selling mince pies, kept crying, "Hot mince pies!"
   A person bought one of them, and found it quite cold. "Boy," said he,
   why did you call these pies hot?" "That's the name they go by, sir,"
   said the boy. So there are plenty of people that are called Christians,
   but they are not Christians'that's the name they go by; but all the
   substance is drained out of them by other matters. You see the shape of
   a Christian, the make of a Christian, and some of the talk of a
   Christian, but the fruit of a Christian is not there. That is the
   result of the choking by the thorns of care, riches, pleasure, and
   worldliness in general.

   What life there was in the wheat was very sickly. Let me remind certain
   persons that their spiritual lives are growing weak at this time.
   Morning prayer this morning, how long did it take? Do not grow red in
   the face. I will say no more about it. You are not coming out tonight,
   are you? Half a Sunday is enough worship for you. Would you not like to
   live in some country place where you did not need to go out to a place
   of worship even once? Bible reading, how much do you do of that? Family
   prayer, is that a delight to you? Why, numbers of so-called Christians
   have given up family religion altogether. How about week-day services?
   You are not often at a prayer-meeting. No, the distance is too great!
   Thursday night service? "Well, well, you see I might come, but there
   happens to be a lawn tennis party that night." Will you come in the
   winter'? "Yes, I would, but then a friend drops in, and we have an
   evening at bagatelle." How many there are in this condition! I am not
   going to judge them, but I remember that an eminent minister used to
   say, "When weekday services are forsaken, farewell to the life of
   godliness." Such people never seem to bathe in their religion, but they
   give themselves a wetting with the end of the towel; thus they try to
   look decent, but they are not inwardly cleansed.

   As to confessing Christ before men and women, many fall altogether. If
   you were pushed into a corner, and were asked if you are a Christian,
   you would say, "Well, I do go to a place of worship," but you are by no
   means anxious to own the soft impeachment. Our Salvation Army friends
   are not ashamed of their religion; why should you be? Our Quaker
   friends used to wear broad brims, but they are very properly giving up
   their peculiar garb. I hope it is not to be to you an indication that
   you may conceal your religion and be as much as possible like the
   world. Do you hope to be soldiers and yet never wear your regimentals?
   This is one of the marks of feeble religion.

   When it comes to defending the Gospel, where do you see it in this age?
   I hoped that many would be found among Baptists who would care for the
   truth; but now I come to the conclusion that it is with many, as with
   the showman when asked which was Wellington, and which was Bonaparte:
   "Whichever you please, my little dears. Pay your money, and take your
   choice!" Free will or free grace, human merit or Christ's atonement, it
   does not matter now. New theology or old theology, human speculation or
   divine revelation'who minds? What do they care whether God's truth
   stands or the Devil's lies? I am weary of these drivellers! The thorns
   have choked the seed in the pulpits and in the churches as well as in
   private individuals. Oh, that God would return! Oh, that His Spirit
   would raise up among us people who believe indeed, and prove the power
   of their belief!

   The fruit of much modern piety is nil. I sat down one day with three or
   four old Christian men. We had no sooner met than we began to speak of
   the providential dealings of God with His people. We related instances
   of answers to prayer, and we spoke of the sovereign grace of God, and
   His faithfulness to His saints. When we had gone a little forward in
   the conversation, one remarked how he had enjoyed the talk. "Alas!"
   said he, "nobody talks about God now. His providence and His readiness
   to hear prayer are seldom mentioned now. The talk is all about the
   markets, and the weather, and Home Rule, and Mr. Gladstone, and
   Disestablishment, but little enough about the Lord Jesus Christ." That
   witness was true. In old times the Lord's people spoke often one to
   another, and the Lord stood at the window and listened:'"The Lord
   hearkened, and heard it." He liked their talk so well that He said He
   would print it'"A book of remembrance was written before him for them
   that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name." Where do you get
   experimental Christian talk now'? The thorns choke holy communion upon
   the best things.

   Fervent prayer! Mighty prayer! Where do you meet with it? Thank God, we
   have some brothers and sisters here whose prayers could unlock the
   windows of heaven, or shut them up; but it is not so with many. Go to
   the prayer-meetings of most of the churches. What poor things! Of
   course I find in country places that many drop the prayer-meeting
   during hay-time and harvest. In London they do not drop the
   prayer-meetings in summer because they are too small to need dropping.
   They take up the fragment of a prayer-meeting and mend with it the
   worn-out lecture, so that it becomes neither lecture nor prayer
   meeting. How can we expect a blessing when we are too lazy to ask for
   it? Is it not evidence of a dying religion when, to cover their
   carelessness about meeting for prayer, we even hear ministers doubting
   the value of prayer-meetings and calling them "religious expedients"?

   Where do you meet with intense enjoyment of the things of God? The
   spiritual life is low when there is little delight in holy service. Oh,
   for the old Methodistic fire! Oh, to feel our hearts dance at the sound
   of Jesus' name! Oh, to flame up like beacon fires, and blaze toward
   heaven with holy ecstasy! It is a sorrowful day when religion goes
   abroad without wearing her ornaments of joy. When an army has left its
   flag behind, it has evidently given up all idea of victory.

   If there is a declension in spiritual life, we cannot expect to see
   deeds of holy consecration. Oh, for men and women who bring their
   alabaster boxes to Jesus! I am glad when I hear this kind of
   lamentation. "My dear sir, I have not done for the Lord what I ought to
   have done. I have been a believer now for many years, but I have not
   given to His cause what I ought to have given; tell me what I can do."
   There are hopeful signs in such inquiries and therefore they are well,
   but it would be better to begin early and avoid such regrets.

   I would put it to you, my dear hearer, have you been fruitful? Have you
   been fruitful with your wealth? Have you been fruitful with your
   talent? Have you been fruitful with your time? What are you doing for
   Jesus now? Salvation is not by doings, you are saved by grace, but if
   you are so saved, prove it by your devoted life. Consecrate yourself
   anew this day wholly to your Master's service. You are not your own,
   but bought with a price, and if you would not be like these
   thorn-choked seeds, live while you live, with all-consuming zeal.

   "Well," says one, but there are the thorns." I know there are. They
   were here when our blessed Lord came among us, and they made Him a
   cruel crown. Are you going to grow more of them? May I urge you to give
   up cultivating thorns'? They are useless; they come to no good.
   Whatever the pursuit is, short of the glory of God, it is a thorn and
   there is no use in it. It will in the end be painful to you as it was
   to your Lord. A thorn will tear your flesh, aye, tear your heart.
   Especially when you come to die will these thorns be in your pillow.
   Even if you die in the Lord, it will grieve your heart to think you did
   not live more to Jesus. If you live for these things, you will rue the
   day, for they are like thorns, painful in the getting, painful in the
   keeping, and painful in the extraction. You who have had a thorn in
   your hand know what I mean. Worldly cares come with pain, they stay
   with pain, and they go with pain.

   Still, there is a use for thorns. What is that use? First, if you have
   thorns about you today, make a child's use of them. What does a child
   do? If he gets a thorn in his finger, he looks at it, and cries. How it
   smarts! Then he runs off to his mother. That is one of the sweet uses
   of his adversity, it admits him to his mother at once. She might say,
   "What are you coming in for? Run about the garden." But he cries,
   "Please, mother, I've got a thorn in my finger." This is quite enough
   argument to secure him the best attention of the queen of the house.
   See how tenderly she takes out the little dagger! Let your cares drive
   you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads
   you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it
   will be a benefit. Thus make good use of the thorns.

   Another service to which thorns may be put is to make a hedge of them,
   to keep the goats of worldly pleasure from eating the young shoots of
   your graces. Let the sorrows of life keep off temptations which else
   might do you serious mischief.

   May we meet in heaven! Oh, may we all meet in heaven! What a
   congregation I have addressed this morning! I feel overawed as I look
   at you. From the ends of the earth have many of you come. The Lord
   bless you! Strangers are here in vast numbers, for the most of our
   regular hearers are at the seaside. I may never see you again on earth.
   May we all meet in heaven, where thorns will never grow! May we be
   gathered by the angels in that day when the Lord shall say, "Gather the
   wheat into my barn"! Amen. So let it be.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Matthew 13:1-23.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'916, 643, 30.
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus Known by Personal Revelation

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, AUGUST 26, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

   "When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His
   disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they
   said, Some say that You are John the Baptist: some, Elijah. And others,
   Jeremiah, or one of the Prophets. He said unto them, But whom do you
   say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ,
   the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him,
   Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it
   unto you but My Father which is in Heaven." Matthew 16:13-17.

   THIS is one of the earliest places in the New Testament in which we
   find any mention of the Church. Jesus says, in verse eighteen, "I will
   build My Church." It is very significant that our Lord should connect
   with the Church the right idea of Himself. In our text we have the test
   question which must be put to everyone who is to be admitted into the
   assembly of the Lord--"Whom do you say that I am?" The first question
   to be put to one who would join the Church is, "What do you think of
   Jesus?" You cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly of
   Him.

   If you do not begin aright with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the
   living God, you will not go on aright, and your joining of any visible
   Church will be a mistake which will be injurious both to yourself and
   the Church. Beloved, let it be with you first, Christ, then the Church.
   There is a certain style of preaching in which the Church is the
   leading idea-- meaning, to a great extent, by "the Church," the priest,
   as the dispenser of ordinances and the voice of God. But as for us, our
   chief word is not "Church," but "Christ," and not even the Church of
   Christ, but Christ as very God of very God--the Son of the Highest.

   First Christ, the Root, then the Church, the outgrowth. First Christ,
   the Builder, then the Church, which is His building. The most important
   question is not, "To which part of the Church do you belong?" but, "Do
   you belong to Christ, who is the Son of the living God?" This must be
   decided by that other question, "Whom do you say that I am?" If you
   know Christ, if you rest in Christ, if Christ is to you "the Way, the
   Truth and the Life"--above all, if Christ is "formed in you the hope of
   glory"--your connection with the true Church, the Church of God's
   election and redemption, is clear and certain.

   In putting the question about Himself, our Lord made a distinction
   between two classes of persons, who are named as "men," and as His
   disciples. He enquired, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"
   These "men" formed their judgment of Christ according to flesh and
   blood--they went upon the ground of carnal reasoning. Or else they
   followed current opinion. They went upon natural and not upon
   spiritual, grounds. They discerned nothing of spiritual things-- their
   judgment was that of flesh and blood. What conclusion did they arrive
   at while guided by flesh and blood?

   The conclusions were varied--"Some say that You are John the
   Baptist--some, Elijah. And others, Jeremiah, or one of the Prophets."
   Error is multiform. Truth is one. A thousand lies will live together
   and tolerate each other, especially at this time, when errorists are
   all crying out, "Cast in your lot with us. Let us all have one purse."
   A thousand false gods will stand together in the Pantheon. But if the
   ark of the true God enters Dagon's temple, Dagon must come down on his
   face and be dashed to pieces. Jehovah is God, alone, and will not allow
   a rival. Truth is of necessity intolerant of error. Do not
   misunderstand me--I believe in the fullest religious liberty and that
   conscience owes allegiance to none but God--but I speak of
   principles--holiness cannot endure sin, righteousness cannot bear
   injustice and truth cannot consort with error. "What concord has Christ
   with Belial?"

   The results today of the judgments of men about Christ are very many.
   But they agree in this--they contradict the one and only Truth. Today,
   some say, "He is a good man," others say, "No. But He deceives the
   people." Some say that He is Divine, though not actually God. Others
   that He has become God, though He was not always so. And a third
   company think Him a Divine man. Some agree that His teachings were
   admirable for the occasions on which He delivered them but that they
   are somewhat stale in this advanced age. Others ridicule His teachings
   as altogether impracticable. The doctrines of flesh and blood
   concerning Jesus are very various.

   They were also contradictory. For, if Jesus were John the Baptist, He
   could not be Jeremiah. Certain spirits contradicted all the opinions
   which are registered in our text, for they called Him master of the
   house Beelzebub. The Apostles quoted to their Lord the best things that
   had been said of Him--they hardly liked to foul their mouths with the
   baser titles. Flesh and blood make many guesses but they settle upon no
   one--the enemies of the Lord are at war with each other. In this case,
   as in others, the false witnesses did not agree.

   The judgments of men here recorded are respectful to our Lord Jesus. It
   is usual nowadays to speak very respectfully of Him--if there can be
   any respectfulness in words which deny His Godhead. Today they rend the
   seamless vesture of the Crucified. They retain His example and profess
   to value it. But His sacrifice they fling aside as a rag of
   superstition. They dare to deny His miracles while they applaud His
   precepts--they will have nothing to do with the doctrine of the Cross.
   But with the self-denial of the Cross they affect to be enamored. Our
   Lord will not thus be divided. Those who take not a whole Christ take
   not Christ at all.

   Whether the conclusions of flesh and blood are respectful to Jesus or
   not, they are every one of them wrong. In the favorable summary here
   given, not one conjecture of men is correct. Jesus was not John the
   Baptist, nor Elijah, nor Jeremiah, nor one of the Prophets. Assuredly
   He was not Beelzebub. Men did not know what Jesus was. They neither
   knew Him, nor His Father. The character of Jesus is much too hard a nut
   for philosophic teeth to crack. Men wonder at Him and, as the case may
   be, they admire or abhor Him. But who among them can declare His
   generation, or read the enigma of His Person? He is spiritual and they
   are carnal. He is holy and they are "sold under sin."

   The brightness of His Glory blinds them. The pure in heart shall see
   God. But those who are in love with evil cannot see the fullness of the
   Godhead dwelling bodily in Jesus. They guess and reason and blunder.
   Jesus is to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. The
   conclusions of flesh and blood are unblessed. No blessing is attached
   to any of the various notions which men hold concerning the Son of Man.
   But that judgment which came by Revelation from the Father made Simon
   Peter blessed and our Lord beheld and declared the blessing. Gazing at
   Jesus as if he were John the Baptist, or Elijah, brought no blessing
   with it. And if Jesus is not known by the Revelation of the Holy
   Spirit, He is not known as a well-spring of blessedness to the soul.

   If you know no more of Christ than the world knows, than the learned
   know, than the philosophical know--you have not found the blessing. If
   you know no more of Christ than you have found out for yourselves, even
   by reading the Word of God, unaided by the Father, you are not blessed.
   If you know no more of Jesus than flesh and blood has revealed to you,
   it has brought you no more blessing than the conjectures of their age
   brought to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who remained an adulterous and
   unbelieving generation.

   There was a handful of people in the world in the Savior's day who were
   known as His disciples. To them He put the question, "Whom do you say
   that I am?" They were disciples, that is, learners. They were not so
   much "thoughtful men," as the cant phrase now is, as learners. They
   received what He imparted to them. His, "Verily, verily," being to them
   better than reasoning. As disciples, they were also servants--they
   learned obedience. They knew Jesus by following in His steps. Put these
   two things together--learners and servants--and you will see how
   different they were from the men of the world.

   "Men" were not learners, for they already knew. They were not obedient,
   for they followed their own devices and boasted that they were never in
   bondage unto any man. The chosen of God received by Divine Grace that
   humble spirit which confesses its ignorance and is willing to learn.
   That yielding spirit which lays aside its own will and is eager to obey
   its Lord. Judge, dear Hearers, to which you belong, whether you are
   "men," boasting of your intellect, guided by "flesh and blood," or
   whether you are "His disciples," who judge after the Spirit and are
   taught of the Father.

   Consider whether the Father has revealed the Son unto you. If you
   belong to this latter class you are among the blessed. The benediction
   of the Savior falls like morning dew upon your hearts at this
   time--"Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not
   revealed it unto you but My Father which is in Heaven."

   You have now fully before you the subject of our morning's meditation.
   May the Spirit of God guide us into it!

   I. Our first observation is this--THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE DISCIPLES OF
   JESUS DIFFERS FROM THAT OF THE WORLD.

   It is more serious, more thoughtful, more personal. Men of the world
   said, "We do not know who Jesus may be. He is a very remarkable
   Person--He disturbs the quiet of the age and He is certainly out of His
   element among us. We do not know who He may be and we do not
   particularly care." Herod came to the hasty conclusion that John the
   Baptist was risen from the dead. Others said, "It is very likely
   Elijah, who was to appear before the coming of the Messiah." A third
   party, hearing of His sorrows, thought that he might be Jeremiah come
   back to life.

   He might be some other Prophet but it did not matter which. The
   disciples had arrived at their conclusion solemnly, thoughtfully,
   carefully, each one for himself. And when the Savior said to them,
   "Whom do you say that I am?" they would any one of them have spoken,
   only they had fallen into the habit of making Peter the foreman and
   mouthpiece of the twelve, and so he spoke first and said very properly
   and positively, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." To my
   mind these words have a tone of deep solemnity. Evidently the man means
   what he says, values the Truth he speaks and attaches deep importance
   to it.

   The replies of the world were flippant and frothy. But the answer of
   the Apostles was devout and deliberate, for they judged the subject to
   be one of the highest importance. Now, Beloved, what do you think of
   Jesus? Is His name a weighty matter with you? Do you see that your view
   of Him is the test of your state? Have you weighed it well? Is He God?
   Is He the sent and anointed of the Lord? Has He washed you in His
   blood? Have you taken Him to be your All in All? Personally, for
   yourself, have you done this and done it with care and deliberation?
   Will you repeat your choice this morning? Well, then, in this you are
   what a disciple should be.

   In the next place, the disciples' knowledge is more definite, more
   clear, more assured. If you had asked the outsiders about Jesus, they
   would have said, "Well, perhaps He is John the Baptist, or perhaps He
   is Jeremiah." But their notions were all in the clouds--they could not
   make Him out. They saw that Jesus was a mysterious Person, a holy
   Person, a compassionate Person, a wonder-working Person. But who He
   might be they could not make out. But to the disciples, Jesus was known
   and His personality was distinct. They knew enough to say for certain,
   "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

   I will not enlarge upon this but come to close grips with you. Do you
   believe in Jesus by an inward discernment of Him? Is He to you, clearly
   and distinctly, the Son of Man and the Son of God? Is He to you,
   definitely, your Savior, whom God has set forth to be the propitiation
   for your sins? Is He your Surety, Substitute and Sacrifice? Beware of a
   misty religion! Beware of that which is without form, for it is sure to
   be void! Beware of that which is undefined and indefinable, because
   there is nothing solid in it! Beware of the religion which cries with
   the poet laureate, "Behold, we know not anything"!

   This may suit brutes but will never satisfy men. Let the things visible
   go. They should go, for they are only a daydream. But I pray you, as
   Rutherford says, "tighten your grips" upon eternal things. Realize the
   Christ and hold Him fast. Make sure work with Him. Know what you do
   know concerning Jesus. Have no secondhand information, no hypothesis,
   no inference. But say, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living
   God"--not the Son of a mere abstraction but of Jehovah, who lives,
   thinks and acts. A disciple's knowledge, then, differs from the common,
   windy knowledge of men, in that it is definite, clear, assured.

   Thirdly, this knowledge of the disciples was unanimous. Outside the
   circle Jesus was a dozen things. Inside the circle he was only
   one--"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Beloved, men
   sometimes talk to us of the divisions in the Christian Church and it is
   a pity there should be even the semblance of a division there. But I am
   bold to say that there is no real division in the true Church of Jesus
   Christ. Those who are really taught of the Father believe one doctrine
   concerning Jesus. If I were to lead upon this platform a representative
   of any one Christian denomination who was spiritually in Christ, his
   opinion of the Lord Jesus would be the same as mine.

   A thousand of us would each one say, "He is the Christ, the Son of the
   living God." Put Believers on their knees, where they talk to Christ,
   rather than of Christ and they all say the same thing. Peter was
   answering his Lord when he made the confession now before us. When we
   speak to one another we are warped by party forces but when we speak to
   our Master we all speak the same language--

   "The saints in prayer appear as one,

   In word and deed and mind;

   While with the Father and the Son

   Sweet fellowship they find."

   All the spiritual in the world are one. We believe in Jesus Christ as
   Man, as God, as Messiah, as Redeemer, as He by whose merit and precious
   blood we are saved. We alike glorify Jesus, on whom all our hopes are
   fixed. Glory be to His name forever and ever. Brethren, we, without
   exception, join in the general verdict of the Church of God concerning
   Jesus Christ--"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"!

   Furthermore, the true disciples' knowledge of Christ differs from that
   of men in that it is permanent. The verdict of men concerning Jesus is
   changeable as the wind. In one age Jesus was hounded down as the
   Nazarene, the blasphemer. By-and-by men would set up His statue in the
   Pantheon among the gods. In one age, His teachings were held to be
   deeply philosophical and the Gnostics began to mystify them at a great
   rate--at another period they were denounced as visionary, or ridiculed
   as absurd.

   Christ is sometimes up in the market and sometimes down in the
   market--but, mark you, He is not in the market at all. He can neither
   be bought nor sold. They say well of Him one day, they speak ill of Him
   another day--what matters it what they say? He needs no honor from them
   and He fears not their dishonor. Unless they will believe in Him as
   Lord and Savior, it is of no importance what they think of Him. Till
   they submit to Him as their Prophet, Priest and King, their thoughts of
   Him are vain. As dogs bay the moon and yet the moon shines on, so do
   men howl at Jesus, or cringe at His feet. But He shines on in steadfast
   light.

   True Believers have always the same idea of Christ. They grow in the
   extent of their knowledge, they grow in the depth of their convictions.
   But when they begin with Him, He is the Son of the living God to them
   and when they know Him best, He is still both Christ and God. In every
   country and in every age, during every phase of the world's fickle
   thought, the disciples of Jesus hold fast by His Messiahship and
   Godhead and on this rock they build their hopes.

   The belief of disciples differs from the notions of "men," in that it
   is more glorifying to Jesus. Men make Him John the Baptist. But that
   earnest man was not worthy to unloose the latchets of His shoes. They
   make Him Elijah, the Prophet of fire, as if He would call fire from
   Heaven upon men to destroy them. Whatever they judge Jesus to be, they
   do not agree to sing with the virgin, "My soul does magnify the Lord
   and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." As for me, my tongue can
   never speak a thousandth part of the praises my heart adjudges to Him
   and, alas, my heart does not worship Him a thousandth part as much as
   He deserves.

   When I have striven with all my might to extol Him in my discourse, I
   feel ready to bite my tongue for being so slow and slack. I go home,
   saying to myself, "A pretty herald of your King are you! You did
   conceal His excellence instead of commending it to the eyes of men."
   Brethren, "words are but air and tongues but clay," and our Master's
   glories are too great to be set forth by such poor means. Oh, that we
   knew how to extol Him! Away, you men of the world, with your comparison
   of Him to this or that mortal--you are blind as bats! As well might you
   compare the sun to glow-worms.

   Come, angels and archangels and help us with your burning words! No,
   even you must fail. Jesus is infinite, incomparable. The brightness of
   the Father's glory is not to be set forth by our words. Once more, the
   knowledge which disciples have of Christ differs from that of the world
   in that it is more influential. The world is not influenced by
   believing on Jesus as John the Baptist. But we are greatly influenced
   by believing that He is the Son of God. This takes possession of our
   heart, our head, our eyes, our hands, our feet, our body, our soul and
   our spirit. This Son of God is Lord over us. He sits supreme upon the
   throne of our hearts, and our lives show that He rules and governs our
   thoughts. Is it not so?

   This is no inert opinion but a living, active principle. I leave these
   things with you that you may search yourselves and see whether you
   belong to the mass outside, guessing and blundering. Or whether you are
   of the inner circle, who are taught of the Father and therefore know
   the Son.

   II. Secondly and this is a very important point--THE KNOWLEDGE OF
   CHRIST POSSESSED BY TRUE DISCIPLES IS RECEIVED IN A SPECIAL WAY. "Flesh
   and blood has not revealed it unto you."

   Beloved, if we know the Savior aright, we have not learned it by the
   instruction of other men. Peter had heard others speak but he did not
   know Jesus as the Christ till the Father revealed Him. Paul tells us
   concerning the Gospel that he neither received it of man, neither was
   he taught it, but he received it by the Revelation of Jesus Christ. I
   grant you that God uses men to instruct us. But all the Prophets and
   Apostles could not teach us Christ if the Father did not reveal His Son
   in us personally. Holy men are the pens but God Himself must write with
   them, or they will write nothing on our hearts. God must reveal Jesus
   to us, or we shall never see Him, however faithful the minister may be.

   Nor had Peter found out the nature and glory of the Lord Jesus by his
   own reasoning. These were the flesh and blood by which Jesus is never
   made out. No doubt, as he read the Old Testament, he said--"This
   prophecy and that are fulfilled in Jesus." But, even that would not
   have sufficed to make Jesus known to him as Christ and God. The Father,
   who sent Jesus to us, must also make Jesus known to each one of us, or
   we shall remain in ignorance of Him. Man cannot, by searching, find out
   God, no, not even God in Christ Jesus. Peter came to the conclusion
   that Jesus was the Son of the living God because the Father in Heaven
   made him to see and know that it must be so.

   We do not even discover Christ merely by reading the letter of the Word
   of God. God teaches us saving Truth through Holy Scripture and by our
   devout meditation. But these operate not of themselves effectually but
   only as He is at the back of them. You might go on hearing, reading,
   and thinking--and yet never discern the Lord's Christ. The true
   disciple's knowledge of Christ comes not through flesh and blood but by
   Revelation of the Spirit, who is sent of the Father.

   Can you follow me experimentally in this? Has the Father revealed
   Christ to you by a birth in you? You can never know the Father till you
   become a son. You can never know the Son till you are yourself a son. A
   spiritual faculty must be created in us, by which we are enabled to
   perceive the Son of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh,"
   and nothing more--and flesh cannot discern spiritual things. "That
   which is born of the Spirit is spirit," and spirit alone can enter into
   the spiritual world and understand spiritual things. "You must be born
   again." You must be begotten again of the Father; otherwise Jesus
   Christ will be as little known to you as the light of the sun is known
   to dead men.

   Moreover, the Father must also purify us. As we have already heard,
   "the pure in heart shall see God." It is only when the Father by the
   Holy Spirit purifies the mental eye, by cleansing the heart and life,
   that we are able to understand and perceive the true nature, work and
   offices of the Lord Jesus Christ. Regeneration must be followed up by
   sanctifica-tion if we would obtain edification in the things of Christ.
   "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord"--he may have the Lord set
   before him but he cannot see Him without holiness.

   He may hear about Jesus, he may read about Jesus but he cannot see Him
   as Christ and God unless his nature is sanctified. There must be a
   character given corresponding in a measure to that of Christ before we
   can perceive Christ. Do not misunderstand me. You can believe Christ to
   be Divine, you can believe Him to be sent of God. You can believe all
   this as a matter of orthodoxy and be lost today and lost forever. To
   know Jesus as the Christ, to know Him so that you are acquainted with
   Him even as you are acquainted with a friend--must be given you of the
   Spirit of God or you will never attain it. Flesh and blood cannot
   reveal this to you.

   Let me refresh the memories of God's people. Have there not been times
   with you when the Son of God has been revealed in you with power?
   Certain of these occasions have happened when you were in trouble--you
   found no rest till you thought of Jesus, your Lord and God, and then
   your peace was like a river. The storm raged till you saw Jesus walking
   on the waves and bidding them be still. And then you said, "Truly this
   is the Son of God." Remember when you were burdened with sin--you can
   never for get that! You were crushed to the earth under your load of
   guilt and Jesus was revealed as the Sin-bearer. And as you kissed His
   pierced feet He spoke pardon to you and you knew that He was God. Had
   He not said of old, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the
   earth: for I am God and there is none else"?

   At times my heart has been so full of joy that I could hardly have
   endured more. Jesus has been Heaven within my heart. In standing alone,
   contending for the faith, I have enjoyed a sweet content in the sole
   fellowship of my Lord. In His Presence, anxieties and fears have fled
   away and questions have been solved once and for all in a peaceful
   sense of infinite love. Son of the Highest, You are revealed to me in
   Your own light and I am glad!

   This Revelation of Christ must be given to each one of you, or else you
   will miss the blessedness to which Simon Peter had attained. I am
   obliged to be brief where I should like to enlarge. But time will not
   tarry, even when we are spending

   it best. May you enjoy a personal Revelation in your souls by which the
   Divine Revelation in this Book shall be made your own forever.

   III. Thirdly, THIS KNOWLEDGE HAS ITS OWN PECULIAR MARKS! It comes not
   by flesh and blood but by the teaching of the Father and it has
   characteristics all its own.

   First, it has this mark--it comes with an infallible certainty to the
   heart. If you read of Jesus in books, or hear of Him from ministers, it
   is well. But if the Father reveals Him to you, it is infinitely better.
   For then no shadow of suspicion rests upon the testimony. The witness
   of God cannot be questioned. Men must not wonder that we grow indignant
   when the glorious Truths concerning our Lord are questioned. For to our
   hearts they are not in the region of things to be disputed. There is
   constructive blasphemy in discussing those facts concerning the Son of
   God which the Father has revealed to us.

   When such questions do cross our minds, they are exceedingly painful to
   us and we chase them out as thieves which defile the temple of the
   Lord. But when the Father is revealing Jesus as the Christ, the
   intruders do not come near. They could not. There is no doubting when
   the Father is witnessing to the heart. Doubts cannot come--as fire
   among stubble burns up the dry straw, so does the Father's witness
   consume questioning.

   "Oh," says one, "but the Father has never spoken to me in that way." I
   am sorry for you. Ask Him to do so. I am glad that you confess your
   want of such an experience. But it is a very serious want. The Lord
   must deal with you--His Spirit must come into contact with your
   spirit--there must be an inward illumination by the Holy Spirit, or
   else you will never be truly blessed. It was not only what Peter knew
   but the way in which he came to know it which made Peter blessed. Truth
   thus revealed comes with a force far transcending the arguments of pure
   reason. Notwithstanding the precision of mathematical demonstrations, I
   venture to assert that what the Holy Spirit writes on the soul is even
   more sure to him who receives it. The demonstration of the Spirit is
   the most certain of demonstrations. To the illuminated mind the witness
   of the Father is absolute certainty. Oh for more of it!

   In the next place, this knowledge has this peculiar mark--it is
   attended with sacred operations. When the Father reveals Christ to a
   man, He at the same time reveals the man to himself. This discovery of
   the sin and ruin of self leads on to humiliation, contrition,
   repentance and renewal. The man is moved to desire holiness, to long to
   be like Jesus. And this is a blessed fruit of knowing Jesus. All manner
   of holy and blessed work goes on in the heart at the time when Jesus
   becomes known--faith, hope, love, patience, zeal and joy in the Holy
   Spirit come with a discovery of the glories of Jesus. He is that living
   and incorruptible Seed which lives and abides forever and from Him
   there grows up in the soul all those holy fruits which are well
   pleasing unto God. If you have Christ, you have the new birth, you have
   the heavenly life, you have holy aspirations and you are on the way to
   the attainment of perfection.

   There also comes with this Revelation a remarkable restfulness. The
   mind before flitted about like a bat at eventide. But now it rests like
   the dove when she was clasped in Noah's hands and taken into the ark.
   Get a Revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in your soul from the Father
   Himself and "the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall
   keep your heart and mind." I cannot describe that peace. Indeed, I can
   describe nothing--I must leave you to feel it for yourselves. We read
   in the Gospels that after our Lord had spoken to the winds and waves,
   "there was a great calm." It was not only "a calm," but "a great calm."

   Did you ever feel that profound serenity, that unbroken rest? Even
   desire, at such a time, seems to sleep. You could not wish for more.
   You remember nothing grievous and you foresee nothing alarming. You
   have all things in Christ Jesus your Lord--and you feel like singing
   all the time. This is one of the marks of the Revelation of Christ in
   the soul--it brings an inward repose which is the pledge and earnest of
   the heavenly rest.

   There is this one more mark about it--that this conviction of the
   Godhead and glory of Christ abides forever. The man who has obtained
   his religion from other people may have it taken away by other people.
   But he who has received it from the Father holds it by a tenure which
   cannot be broken. That which we have learned from the Father will never
   be unlearned. Nothing can erase what the Holy Spirit has engraved.
   Beloved, I beseech you, beware of a homemade religion, cobbled on your
   own lap stone.

   Equally, beware of a religion which is a sort of patchwork, made up by
   the kind contributions of Christian friends, and none of it your own.
   Beware of that oil which you borrow--you must go to them that sell and
   buy for yourselves. No man among you can drink from my pitcher, you
   must go to the wellhead, each one for himself. Jesus stood and cried,

   "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." There is no safe
   religion in the world but that which comes through a personal
   application to Jesus and a reception of Him for yourself. In this
   matter, God Himself must reveal Jesus to you. For He Himself says, "No
   man can come unto Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him."

   The Spirit must take of the things of Christ and show them to us--or we
   shall never receive them. Everyone that has been taught of the Father
   comes to Jesus and comes to Jesus to remain--all short of that is
   temporary and delusive. Get the better part by sitting at the feet of
   Jesus and it will never be taken from you. But religion which does not
   come by a personal Revelation is a mere mirage--there is no reality
   about it and it will disappear like a dream of the night.

   IV. Lastly, THIS KNOWLEDGE SECURES PECULIAR PRIVILEGES TO ITS
   POSSESSOR. What says the Lord

   Jesus? "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not
   revealed it unto you but My Father which is in Heaven." How was he
   blessed?

   Simon Peter was blessed, first, because he had eternal life. How do we
   know? Our Savior said, "This is life eternal, that they might know You
   the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." "This is life
   eternal"--if you know Jesus as sent of God, you have eternal life. The
   knowledge of Him is life eternal. You read about Julius Caesar, Mark
   Anthony and the like. But you certainly do not know them. You cannot
   know them. You know about them in proportion to your scholarship but
   you do not know them as living persons, or as sent of God to you.

   They are dead and gone long ago and to you they never had an existence
   or a mission. At this hour you know something about the President of
   the United States. But you do not know him. With regard to the Lord
   Jesus Christ, you not only know a great deal about Him but I trust you
   know HIM. Do you know Jesus Himself? Have you ever spoken to Him? Has
   He ever spoken to you? Have you ever leaned your head on His bosom? Do
   you know His heart? Does he know your heart by your having told your
   heart to Him? Is He a Friend, an Acquaintance, a Brother to you? This
   is life eternal. This kind of knowledge is revealed to us by the
   Father. Flesh and blood cannot make us friends of Christ. The Apostles
   knew Christ after the flesh, yet this was not the cause of their
   blessedness but the Father gave them a Revelation which brought eternal
   life with it.

   Again--Peter was blessed because this knowledge was an evidence that he
   was a peculiarly favored man. What a question is that, "Lord how is it
   that you will manifest Yourself unto us and not unto the world?" The
   world does not know Christ, it cannot know Him. It is to His chosen
   that He reveals Himself--the rest believe not and therefore see Him
   not. To His chosen He comes and speaks with them as a Friend with
   friend. He takes them apart and looks into their hearts and hearkens to
   their sorrows. And in return opens His heart and says to each one of
   them, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."

   What a favor to be so instructed of the Father as to know the Son! If
   you know Christ, the Father foreknew you. "Whom He did foreknow, He
   also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son." If you
   know Christ, your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, you are
   in the family register of Heaven and you shall, by-and-by be with Him
   where He is. Well did the Savior say, "Blessed are you."

   He that knows Christ is in a favored position wherever he is. In every
   condition he is blessed. You are very ill--you are blessed in being
   ill. You are prospering in the world--if you know Christ, your
   prosperity is blessed. Do you lament that you are going down in the
   world? Mourn not, for your adversity is blessed. You are very
   simple-minded and have not much education. Never mind, you are blessed
   if you know Christ--His knowledge is the most excellent of the
   sciences. Are you well-instructed? Rejoice not in all knowledge but
   glory in this one thing--that you know Jesus and are blessed. Does the
   world curse you? Fret not. Does the devil snuff at you? Tremble not but
   resist him. Jesus says you are blessed and I know that he whom Christ
   blesses is blessed and none shall reverse the Word.

   I close, desiring that every man among you may know this blessedness to
   the full. If you do know it, it will qualify you for honorable service.
   Peter was the man who knew and confessed the Lord's Christ as the Son
   of the living God and he was not only blessed himself but he was chosen
   to be one of the first stones of the Church whose foundation courses
   were then being laid. Peter was described by his Lord as a piece of
   rock and on that rock would the Lord build His Church. Peter was to
   have the keys, because in his faith in the Savior God he already
   possessed the key of all Gospel

   Truth.

   Having received the word by a Revelation from the Father, he became a
   fit person to be built into the Church at its first founding. He who
   clings to Christ for himself is the man to help others. Unless you do
   first of all know Christ by the

   distinct revealing of God, what can you do? So you would run, would
   you? Wait till you are sent! And you are not sent yourself if you do
   not know Jesus Christ whom God has sent. So you would deliver a
   message, would you? Wait till you know it! And you do not know it
   unless you have a personal knowledge of Christ as God's Messiah and as
   the Son of

   God.

   I may be speaking to some young Brother who thinks about preaching, or
   to some Sister who looks forward to teaching in the Sunday school--do
   not set up to teach what you do not know. If you have never been taught
   of the Father, wait till you have been. Pray that you may now be taught
   of the Lord. He that would teach a trade but has never practiced it,
   will make a fool of himself. And he that would go and tell of a Christ
   he has never known is foolish even to think of it. Go home and pray the
   Father to reveal His Son Jesus Christ to you. Then, when you go out to
   speak, you will speak with confidence.

   Men, perhaps, will say, "He is very dogmatic." But a brave confession
   is much needed nowadays. You must be sure of something, or you will
   teach nothing worth learning. A man must have a fulcrum, or fixed
   point, or his lever is useless-- if everything is uncertain to you, one
   thing alone is certain, namely, that you had better let the matter
   alone till you have found out something certain. If you have no
   foundation for yourself, you cannot build up others. Therefore, do,
   first and foremost, cry to God, "Lord, reveal Your Son in me!" It is a
   prayer I would have you all put up--"O Lord God, the giver of Christ,
   shine into my heart, that I may see Your unspeakable gift! By Your Holy
   Spirit enable me to know who and what Jesus is, that I may accept Him
   as You have proposed Him to me. You did give Him out of Your bosom,
   give Him into mine. Enable me to speak of Him, as of One whose glory I
   have beheld, whose power I have felt."

   Do not suppose, my Hearers, that you will find out the Lord Christ by
   your own wit and wisdom. Young man, do not say, "I will be a student, I
   will by my own ability discover this Son of Man." Remember that Jesus
   can only be seen by His own light. Only Godhead can teach us Godhead.
   Christ is a Book in which no man can read unless Christ Himself shall
   spell the words to him. Jesus is His own Interpreter. He is the Door
   but He is also the Key. He is to be seen but He supplies the light in
   which He is to be seen.

   Jesus came forth from God and the power to know Jesus also comes forth
   from God, so that all comes from God. And unto God let us return it,
   adoring Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Maintenance of Good Works

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 2, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived,
   serving many lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful,
   and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our
   Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we ha
   ve done but according to His mercy He sa ved us, by the washing of
   regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit; which He shed on us
   abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. That being justified by His
   Grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
   This is a faithful saying and these things I will that you affirm
   constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to
   maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men."
   Titus 3:3-8.

   LAST Thursday evening my sermon was based upon the contrast in the
   second chapter of Ephesians, between the expressions "not of works" and
   "created in Christ Jesus unto good works." I tried to show the true
   place of good works in connection with salvation. Many of you were not
   present then and I felt that the subject was of such extreme importance
   that I must return to the same line of thought in this greater
   congregation. I shall endeavor by another text which contains the same
   contrast, to set before you the usefulness, the benefit, yes, and the
   absolute necessity for our abounding in good works if indeed we are
   saved by faith in Christ Jesus.

   Let us come at once to our text. Our Apostle tells us that we are to
   speak evil of no man but to show meekness unto all men. And he adds
   this as an all-sufficient reason--we ourselves also were sometimes like
   the very worst of them. When we look upon the world today, it pains us
   by its folly, disobedience and delusion. He that knows most of this
   modern Babylon, whether he observes the richer or the poorer classes of
   society, will find the deepest cause for grief. But we cannot condemn
   with bitterness--for such were some of us. Not only can we not condemn
   with bitterness but we must look upon our sinful fellow creatures with
   great compassion--for such were some of us.

   Yes more--we feel encouraged to hope for ungodly men, even for the
   foolish and disobedient--for we ourselves also were, not long ago, like
   they. We feel that we must give the thought of our heart and the energy
   of our lives to the great work of saving men out of gratitude to the
   Lord our God, who, in His kindness and love, has saved us. "I am a
   man," said one, "and everything that has to do with men concerns
   me"--but the child of God adds to this, "I am also a sinful man and owe
   my cleansing to the loving favor of the Lord. I was in the same mire of
   sin as these are in--and if I am now washed in the laver of
   regeneration and renewed by the Holy Spirit, I owe it all to Sovereign
   Grace and am bound by love to man and love to God to seek the cleansing
   and renewal of my fellow men."

   Eyes that have wept over our own sin will always be most ready to weep
   over the sins of others. If you have judged yourselves with candor, you
   will not judge others with severity. You will be more ready to pity
   than to condemn, more anxious to hide a multitude of sins than to
   punish a single sinner. I will give little for your supposed
   regeneration if there is not created in you a tender heart which can
   truly say--

   "My God, I feel the mournful scene; My heart yearns over dying men; And
   gladly my pity would reclaim, And snatch the firebrands from the
   flame."

   With this feeling towards mankind at large, we are led to consider the
   Divine remedy for sinfulness and to look with pleasure upon what God
   has devised for the creation of holiness in a fallen race. He at first
   created man a pure and spot-

   less being. When He placed Adam in the garden He made a friend of him.
   And though Adam has fallen and all his race are depraved, God is still
   aiming at the same thing, namely, to create holy beings, purified unto
   Himself, to be a peculiar people zealous for good works. What has the
   Lord done? What is He still doing to this end? How far have we
   participated in those processes of Divine Grace which work towards this
   glorious design?

   I ask your attention this morning while I speak, first, of what we
   were. And here let the tears stand in your eyes. Secondly, of what has
   been done for us--and here let Divine Grace move in your hearts. And,
   thirdly, of what we wish to do--and here let care be seen in your
   lives.

   I. First, Beloved, let us think for a few minutes only OF WHAT WE ONCE
   WERE. Think, I say, with tears of repentance in our eyes. "For we
   ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving
   many lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating
   one another." The Apostle does not say, "You yourselves," as if he
   spoke to Titus and the believing Cretans but we ourselves, thus
   including himself. Beloved Apostle, you do humbly present to us this
   bitter cup of confession, drinking of it yourself with us and putting
   yourself on a level with us--"We ourselves also." Come, then, pastor,
   elders, deacons, and members of the Church--you that have served your
   Lord for many years--hesitate not to join in this humiliating
   confession.

   A threefold set of evils is here described. The first set consists of
   the evils of the mind--"We were sometimes foolish, disobedient,
   deceived." We were foolish. We thought we knew and therefore we did not
   learn. We said, "We see," and therefore we were blind and would not
   come to Jesus for sight. We thought we knew better than God. For our
   foolish heart was darkened and we imagined ourselves to be better
   judges of what was good for us than the Lord our God. We refused
   heavenly warnings because we dreamed that sin was pleasant and
   profitable. We rejected Divine Truth because we did not care to be
   taught and disdained the lowly position of a disciple sitting at Jesus'
   feet.

   Our pride proved our folly. What lying things we tried to believe! We
   put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter-- darkness for light and
   light for darkness. In thought, desire, language and action "we were
   sometimes foolish." Some of us were manifestly foolish for we rushed
   headlong into sins which injured us and have left that in our bones
   which years have not been sufficient to remove. Every lover of vice is
   a fool at large. O my Brothers and Sisters, I suppose you have no
   photograph of yourself as you used to be. But if you have, take it down
   and study it and bless God that He has made you to differ so greatly
   from your former self!

   In addition to being foolish we are said to have been disobedient. And
   so we were, for we forsook the commands of God. We wanted our own will
   and way. We said, "Who is the Lord, that we should obey His voice?"
   There is a touch of Pharaoh about every one of us. Obedience is
   distasteful to the obstinate. And we were such. "I knew," said God,
   "that you were very obstinate and had an iron sinew." Our necks by
   nature refused to bow to the yoke of our Creator. We would, if we
   could, be the lords of Providence for we were not content with the
   Divine allotment. We wished that we were the legislators of the
   universe, that we might give license to our own lusts and no longer be
   hampered with restrictions.

   To the holy Law of God we were disobedient. Ah, how long some of us
   were disobedient to the Gospel! We heard it as though we heard it not.
   Or when it did touch the heart we did not allow its influence to
   remain. Like water, which retains no mark of a blow, so did we
   obliterate the effect of the Truth of God. We were determined not to be
   obedient to the faith of the Lord Jesus. We were unwilling to yield God
   His due place either in Providence, Law, or Gospel. Paul adds that we
   were deceived, or led astray. As sheep follow one another and go away
   from the pasture, so did we follow some chosen companion and would not
   follow the Good Shepherd. We were deceived.

   Perhaps we were deceived in our thoughts and made to believe a
   lie--certainly we were deceived in our idea of happiness. We hoped to
   find it where it did not exist--we searched for the living among the
   dead. We were the dupes of custom and of company. We were here, there,
   and everywhere in our actions--no more to be relied upon than lost
   sheep. Children of God, remember these errors of your minds. Lay them
   upon your consciences and let your souls plead guilty to them. For I
   feel assured that we have all, in some measure, been in this triple
   condition--foolish, disobedient, deceived.

   The next bundle of mischief is found in the evil of our pursuits. The
   Apostle says we were "serving many lusts and pleasures." The word for
   "serving" means being under servitude. We were once the slaves of many
   lusts and pleasures. By lusts we understand desires, longings,
   ambitions, passions. Many are these masters and they are all tyrants.
   Some are

   ruled by greed for money. Others crave for fame. Some are enslaved by
   lust for power--others by the lust of the eye. And many by the lusts of
   the flesh. We were born slaves and we live slaves until the great
   Liberator emancipates us. No man can be in worse bondage than to be
   enslaved by his own evil desires.

   We were also the bond slaves of pleasure. Alas, alas, that we were so
   far infatuated as to call it pleasure! Looking back at our former lives
   we may well be amazed that we could once take pleasure in things we are
   now ashamed. The Lord has taken the very name of our former idols out
   of our mouths. Some who are now saints were once the slaves of
   drunkenness or of "chambering and wantonness." Some were given up to
   evil company and rioting or to pride and self-seeking. Many are the
   evils which array themselves in the silken robes of pleasure that they
   may tempt the hungry heart of man.

   Once we took pleasure in those sins which are now our misery as we look
   back on them. O my Brethren, we dare not deny our base original! Today
   we drink from the well of holiness and not of undefiled pleasures which
   delight our souls. But we blush as we remember that not too long ago
   foul and putrid pools seemed sweet to our vitiated taste. Like
   Nebuchadnezzar in the failure of his mind we fed among beasts in the
   madness of our sin. Unlike the Egyptians, who loathed to drink of the
   river when God had smitten it with His curse, we took all the more
   delight in draughts of unhallowed pleasure because it yielded a fearful
   intoxication to know that we were daring to defy a Law.

   Do not let me talk about these things this morning while you listen to
   me without feeling. I want you to be turning over the pages of your old
   life and joining with Paul and the rest of us in our sad confession of
   former pleasure in evil. A holy man was likely to carry with him a book
   which had three leaves in it but never a word. The first leaf was black
   and this showed his sin. The second was red and this reminded him of
   the way of cleansing by blood--while the third was white--to show how
   clean the Lord can make us. I beg you just now to study that first
   black page. It is all black. And as you look at it, it seems blacker
   and blacker. What seemed at one time to be a little white, darkens down
   as it is gazed upon, till it wears the deepest shade of all. You were
   sometimes erring in your minds and in your pursuits. Is not this enough
   to bring the water into your eyes, O you that now follow the Lamb
   wherever He goes?

   The Apostle then mentions the evils of our hearts. Here you must
   discriminate and judge, each one for himself, how far the accusation
   lies. He speaks of "living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one
   another." That is to say first, we harbored anger against those who had
   done us evil. And secondly, we lived in envy of those who appeared to
   have more good than we had ourselves. The first sin is very
   common--many abide year after year in the poisonous atmosphere of an
   angry spirit. All are not alike in this, for some are naturally easy
   and agreeable. But in all of us there is that proud spirit which
   resents injuries and would revenge them. Men may sin against God and we
   are not indignant. But if they sin against us--we are very angry.

   To the spirit of Christ it is natural and even delightful to
   forgive--but such is not the spirit of the world. I have heard of men
   who would not forgive their own children and of brothers who were
   implacable towards each other. This is the spirit of the devil. Revenge
   is the delight of the wicked but to do kindness in return for injury is
   the luxury of a Christian. One main distinction between the heirs of
   God and the heirs of wrath is this--the unregenerate are in the power
   of self and so of hate--but the regenerate are under the dominion of
   Christ and so of love. You may judge yourself by this--whether your
   prevailing spirit is that of wrath or of love--if you are given to
   anger, you are a child of wrath. And if you are full of love, you are a
   child of God whose name is Love.

   God help us to stamp out the last spark of personal animosity! Let us
   remove the memories of injury, as the incoming tide washes out the
   marks on the sand. If any of you have disputes in your family, end them
   at once, cost what it may. How can you love God whom you have not seen
   if you do not love your brother whom you have seen? Divine Grace makes
   a great change in this respect in those who by nature are malicious.

   The other form of evil is envy of those who seem to have more of good
   than we have. Frequently envy attacks men because of their wealth. How
   dare they have luxuries when we are poor? At other times envy spits its
   venom against a man's good repute when he happens to be more praised
   than we are. How can any man venture to be better thought of than we
   are? Truly this is the spirit of Satan--the spirit which now works in
   the children of disobedience. The child of God is delivered from envy
   by the Grace of God. And if it ever does arise, he hates himself for
   admitting it. He would wish to see others happy even if he were unhappy
   himself.

   If he is in the depths of poverty he is glad that everybody is not so
   pinched as he is. If he has received unjust censure he is willing to
   hope that there was some mistake. And he is glad that everybody is not
   quite so unfairly dealt with. He rejoices in the praise of others and
   triumphs in their success. What? Do you wince at this and feel that you
   have not reached it so far? May Divine Grace enable you to get into
   this spirit for it is the spirit of Jesus! Beloved, sin takes different
   shapes in different people but it is in us all. This darkness once
   beclouded those who today shine like stars among the godly. Sin is
   often restrained by circumstances and yet it is in the heart.

   We ought not to take credit to ourselves because of our freedom from
   evils into which we had no chance of falling. We have not been so bad
   as others because we could not be. A certain boy has run away from
   home. Another boy remained at home. Is he, therefore, a better child?
   Listen--he had broken his leg and could not get out of bed. That takes
   away all the credit of his staying at home. Some men cannot sin in a
   certain direction and then they say to themselves, "What excellent
   fellows we are to abstain from this wickedness!" Sirs, you would have
   done it if you could, and therefore your self-praise is mere flattery.
   Had you been placed in the same position as others, you would have
   acted as others have done--for your heart goes after the same idols.

   Sin in the heart of every man defiles everything that he does. Even if
   an ungodly man should do what in itself might be a good action there is
   a defilement in his motive which taints it all. You cannot draw pure
   water from a foul well. As is the heart, such is the life. Listen to
   this, you that have never passed under the processes of Divine Grace.
   See what you are and where you are if left to yourselves and cry to the
   Lord to save you.

   II. Now for a more cheerful topic. We are now to think OF WHAT HAS BEEN
   DONE FOR US. And here let us feel the movements of Divine Grace in our
   hearts. What has been done for us?

   First, there was a Divine interposition. "The kindness and love of God
   our Savior toward man appeared." Man was in the dark--plunging onward
   to blacker midnight every step he took. I do not find, as I read
   history, any excuse for the modern notion that men are longing for God
   and laboring to find Him. No, the sheep were never seeking the Shepherd
   but all were going astray. Men everywhere turn their backs to the light
   and try to forget what has been handed down by their forefathers--they
   are everywhere feeling after a great lie which they may raise to the
   Throne of God. We do not, by nature, long after God nor sigh for His
   holiness. The gracious Lord came in uncalled for and unsought and in
   the bounty of His heart and in the great love of His nature He
   determined to save man.

   Methinks I hear Him say, "How shall I give you up?" He sees mankind
   resolved to perish unless an almighty arm shall intervene. And He
   interposes in fullness of pity and power. You know how, in many ways,
   the Lord has intervened on our behalf. But, especially you remember how
   He came down from Heaven, took our nature, lived among us, mourned our
   sin and bore it in His own body on the tree. You know how the Son of
   God interposed in that grand Avatar, that marvelous incarnation in
   which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Then He broke what
   would otherwise have been an everlasting darkness.

   Then He snapped the chains which would have fettered our humanity
   throughout all the ages. The love and kindness of God our Savior which
   had always existed, at length "appeared," when God, in the Person of
   His Son, came here, met our iniquities hand to hand and overcame their
   terrible power--that we also might overcome. Note well that there was a
   Divine salvation. In consequence of the interposition of Jesus,
   Believers are described as being saved--"not by works of righteousness
   which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us."

   Hearken to this. There are men in the world who are saved--they are
   spoken of not as "to be saved," not as to be saved when they come to
   die but saved even now--saved from the dominion of the evils which we
   described under our first head--saved from folly, disobedience,
   delusion and the like. Whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ whom
   God has set forth to be the Propitiation for sin is saved from the
   guilt and power of sin. He shall no longer be the slave of his lusts
   and pleasures. He is saved from that dread bondage. He is saved from
   hate--for he has tasted love and learned to love. He shall not be
   condemned for all that he has ever done, for his great Substitute and
   Savior has borne away the guilt, the curse, the punishment of sin--yes,
   the sin itself.

   O my Hearers, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning you
   are saved! As surely as once you were lost, being led astray--so surely
   are you now saved, if you are a Believer, being found by the great
   Shepherd and brought back again upon His shoulders. I beg you to get
   hold of this Truth of God that according to His mercy the Lord has
   saved us who believe in Jesus. Will you tell me, or rather tell
   yourselves, whether you are saved or not? If you are not saved you

   are lost. If you are not already forgiven you are already condemned.
   You are in the ruin of fallen nature unless you are renewed by the Holy
   Spirit. You are a slave to sin unless your liberty has been procured by
   the great ransom. Examine yourselves on these points and follow me in
   the next thought.

   There was a motive for this salvation. Positively, "According to His
   mercy He saved us." And negatively, "Not by works of righteousness
   which we have done." Brethren, we could not have been saved at the
   first by our works of righteousness. For we had not done any. "No,"
   says the Apostle, "we were foolish, disobedient, deceived," and
   therefore we had no works of righteousness and yet the Lord interposed
   and saved us. Behold and admire the splendor of His love, that "He
   loved us even when we were dead in sins." He loved us and therefore
   quickened us. God does not come to men to help them when they are
   saving themselves--He comes to the rescue when they are damning
   themselves.

   When the heart is full of folly and disobedience the good God visits it
   with His favor. He comes, not according to the hopefulness of our
   character, but according to His mercy. And mercy has no eye except for
   guilt and misery. The Grace of God is not given according to any good
   thing that we have done since our conversion--the expression before us
   shuts out all real works of righteousness which we have done since
   regeneration--as all supposed ones before it. The Lord assuredly
   foreknew these works but He also foreknew our sins. He did not save us
   according to the foreknowledge of our good works--these works are a
   part of the salvation which He gave us.

   As well say that a physician healed a sick man because he foreknew that
   he would be better. Or that you give a beggar an alms because you
   foresee that he would have the alms. Works of righteousness are the
   fruit of salvation and the root must come before the fruit. The Lord
   saves His people out of clear, unmixed, undiluted mercy and Grace and
   for no other reason. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I
   will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not
   of him that wills, nor of him that runs but of God that shows mercy."

   Oh how splendidly is the Grace of God seen in the whole plan of
   salvation! How clearly is it seen in our cases, for "we ourselves also
   were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived," yet He saved us, "not
   by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His
   mercy"! Will not some self-convicted sinner find comfort here? O
   despairing one, does not a little hope come in by this window? Do you
   not see that God can save you on the ground of mercy? He can wash you
   and renew you according to the sovereignty of His Grace? On the footing
   of merit you are hopelessly lost--but on the ground of mercy there is
   hope.

   Observe, next that there was a power by which we were saved. "He saved
   us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit;
   which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior." The
   way in which we are delivered from the dominion of sin is by the work
   of the Holy Spirit. This adorable Person is very God of very God. This
   Divine Being comes to us and causes us to be born again. By His eternal
   power and Godhead He gives us a totally new nature, a life which could
   not grow out of our former life, nor be developed from our nature--a
   life which is a new creation of God. We are saved not by evolution but
   by creation. The Spirit of God creates us anew in Christ Jesus unto
   good works.

   We experience regeneration which means being generated over again, or
   born again. Remember the result of this as set forth in Covenant
   terms--"A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put
   within you--and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and
   I will give you an heart of flesh." This great process is carried out
   by the Holy Spirit. After we are regenerated He continues to renew us.
   Our thoughts, feelings, desires and acts are constantly renewed.
   Regeneration as the commencement of the new creation can never come
   twice to any man but renewal of the Holy Spirit is constantly and
   perpetually repeated.

   The life once given is revived--the light once kindled is fed with holy
   oil which is poured upon it continually. The newborn life is deepened
   and increased in force by that same Holy Spirit who first of all
   created it. See then, dear Hearers, that the only way to holiness is to
   be made anew and to be kept anew. The washing of regeneration and the
   renewing of the Holy Spirit are both essential. The name of Jesus has
   been engraved in us--even on our hearts--but it needs to be cut deeper
   and deeper lest the letters be covered up by the moss of routine, or
   filled up by the bespattering of sin. We are saved "by the washing of
   regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit"--one process in different
   stages. This is what our God has done for us--blessed be His name!
   Being washed and renewed we are saved.

   There is also mentioned a blessed privilege which comes to us by Jesus
   Christ. The Spirit is shed on us abundantly by Jesus Christ and we are
   "justified by His Grace." Both justification and sanctification come to
   us through the medium of

   our Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is shed on us abundantly
   "through Jesus Christ our Savior." Beloved, never forget that
   regeneration is worked in us by the Holy Spirit but comes to us by
   Jesus Christ. We do not receive any blessing apart from our Lord Jesus.
   In all works of the Spirit, whether regeneration or renewal, it is the
   Lord Jesus who is putting forth His power, for He says, "Behold, I make
   all things new."

   The Mediator is the conduit through which Divine Grace supplies us
   daily with the water of life. Everything is by Jesus Christ. Without
   Him was not anything made that was made either in Grace or in nature.
   We must not think it possible for us to receive anything from God apart
   from the appointed Mediator. But, oh, think of it!--in Jesus Christ we
   are today abundantly anointed by the Holy Spirit. The sacred oil is
   shed upon us abundantly from Him who is our Head. We are sweet to God
   through the Divine perfume of the Holy Spirit who comes to us by Jesus
   Christ. This day we are just in the sight of God in Christ's
   righteousness, through which we are "justified by Grace."

   Jehovah sees no sin for which He must punish us. He has said, "Take
   away his filthy garments from him and set a fair miter upon his head."
   And this is done. We are accepted in the Beloved. Since Jesus has
   washed our feet, we are "clean every part"--clean in the double sense
   of being washed with water and with blood and so cleansed from the
   power and guilt of sin. What a high privilege is this! Can we ever
   sufficiently praise God for it?

   Once more--there comes out of this a Divine result. We become today
   joint-heirs with Christ Jesus and so heirs of a heavenly estate. And
   then out of this heirship there grows a hope which reaches forward to
   the eternal future with exceeding joy. We are "made heirs according to
   the hope of eternal life." Think of that! What a space there is between
   "foolish, disobedient, deceived"--right up to "heirs according to the
   hope of eternal life"! Who thought of bridging this great gulf? Who but
   God? With what power did He bridge it? How but by the Divine power and
   Godhead of the Holy Spirit? Where was the bridge found by which the
   chasm could be crossed? The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ who loved us
   and gave Himself for us, has made a way over the once impassable deep.

   I have thus very briefly set before you an outline of the work of
   Divine Grace within the human heart. Do you understand it? Have you
   ever felt it? Do you feel the life of regeneration pulsing within you
   this morning? Will you not bless God for it?--

   "We raise our Father's name on high, Who His own Spirit sends To bring
   rebellious strangers near, And turn His foes to friends."

   III. We will now speak on WHAT WE WISH TO DO. And here let us show care
   in our lives. Mark well these words, "This is a faithful saying and
   these things I will that you affirm constantly, that they which have
   believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things
   are good and profitable unto men."

   "Be careful to maintain good works." This precept is full in its
   meaning. In another Scripture you are told to be careful for nothing
   but here you are bid to be careful to maintain good works. We read,
   "casting all your care upon Him. For He cares for you"--but do not cast
   off your care to maintain good works. You have a number of cares about
   you-- slip a bridle over their heads and train them to plow in the
   field of good works. Do not let care be wasted over food and raiment
   and such temporary matters--these may be left with God. But take sacred
   cares upon you--the cares of holy and gracious living. Yoke your best
   thoughts to the care of holiness--"be careful to maintain good works."

   What are good works? The term is greatly inclusive. Of course we number
   in the list works of charity, works of kindness and benevolence, works
   of piety, reverence and holiness. Such works as comply with the two
   tables of command are good works. Works of obedience are good works.
   What you do because God bids you do it, is a good work. Works of love
   to Jesus done out of a desire for His Glory--these are good works. The
   common actions of everyday life, when they are well done, with a view
   not to merit but out of gratitude--these are good works. "Be careful to
   maintain good works" of every sort and kind.

   You are sure to be working in some way--mind you that your works are
   good works. If you have commenced well, be careful to maintain good
   works. And if you have maintained them, go on to increase them. I
   preached last Thursday night as now--salvation by Divine Grace and by
   Grace alone. And if I know how to speak plainly, I certainly did speak
   plainly then and I hope I do so now. Remember, you are saved by grace
   and not by works of righteousness. But after you are saved there comes
   in this precept, "Be careful to maintain good works."

   This precept is special in its direction. To the sinner--that he may be
   saved we say not a word concerning good works, except to remind him
   that he has none. To the Believer who is saved, we say ten thousand
   words concerning good works--beseeching him to bring forth much fruit,
   that so he may be Christ's disciple. There is all the difference
   between the living and the dead--the living we arouse to work--the dead
   must first receive life. Exhortations which may most fittingly be
   addressed to the regenerate may be quite out of place when spoken to
   those who are under the power of unbelief and are strangers to the
   family of Divine Grace.

   The voice of our text is to them that have believed in God--faith is
   presupposed as the absolutely indispensable foundation of good works.
   You cannot work that which will please God if you are without faith in
   Him. As there is no coming to God in prayer without believing that He
   is and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, so
   there is no bringing any other sacrifice to Him without a faith
   suitable to the business in hand. For living works you must have a
   living faith and for loving works you must have a loving faith.

   When we know and trust God with holy intelligence and sacred confidence
   we work His pleasure. Good works must be done freely--God wants not
   slaves to grace His Throne. He seeks not from us the forced works of
   men in bondage. He desires the spontaneous zeal of consecrated souls
   who rejoice to do His will because they are not their own but bought
   with the precious blood of Jesus. It is the heartiness of our work
   which is the heart of it. To those who have renewed hearts, this
   exhortation is addressed--"Be careful to maintain good works."

   This precept is weighty in importance, for it is prefaced thus--"This
   is a faithful saying." This is one among four great matters thus
   described. It is not trivial. It is not a temporary precept which
   belongs to an extinct race and a past age. "This is a faithful
   saying"--a true Christian Proverb--"that they which have believed in
   God might be careful to maintain good works." Let the ungodly never say
   that we who believe in Free Grace think lightly of a holy life. O you
   who are the people of my care, I charge you before God and the holy
   angels that in proportion as you hold the Truth of doctrine, you follow
   out the purity of precept! You hold the Truth of God and you know that
   salvation is not of man, nor of man's work--it is not of merit--but of
   mercy, not of ourselves but of God alone.

   I beseech you to be as right in practice as in doctrine, and therefore
   be careful to maintain good works. Dogs will open their mouths but do
   not find bones for them--the enemies of the faith will laugh at it but
   do not give them ground of accusation. May God the Holy Spirit help you
   so to live that they may be ashamed--having no evil thing to say of
   you!

   I am afraid that this precept of being careful to maintain good works
   is neglected in practice, or else the Apostle would not have said to
   Titus, "These things I will that you affirm constantly." Titus must
   repeat perpetually the precept which commands the careful maintenance
   of good works. Beloved, I fear that preachers often think too well of
   their congregations and talk to them as if they were all perfect, or
   nearly so. I cannot thus flatter you. I have been astounded when I have
   seen what professing Christians can do. How some dare call themselves
   followers of Jesus I cannot tell! It is horrible. We condemn Judas but
   he is to be found in many.

   Our Lord is still sold for gain. He still has at His heels sons of
   perdition who kiss Him and betray Him. There are still persons in our
   Churches who need to have the Ten Commandments read to them every
   Sabbath Day. It is not a bad plan of the Church of England--to put up
   the Ten Commandments near the communion table where they can be clearly
   seen. Some people need to see them, though I am afraid when they come
   in their way, they wink hard at some of the Commands and go away and
   forget that they have seen them. Common morality is neglected by some
   who call themselves Christians.

   My Brethren, such things ought not to be but as long as they are, so we
   must hear Paul saying--"I will that you affirm constantly that they
   which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works."
   Certain people turn on their heel and say, "That is legal talk. The
   preacher is preaching up works instead of Divine Grace." What? Do you
   dare to say that? I will meet you face to face at God's right hand at
   the Last Day if you dare to insinuate so gross a libel. Dare you say
   that I do not preach continually salvation by the Divine Grace of God
   and by the Divine Grace of God only? Having preached salvation by Grace
   without a moment's hesitation, I shall also continually affirm that
   they which have believed in God must be "careful to maintain good
   works."

   This, mark you, is supported by argument. The Apostle presses home his
   precept by saying--"These things are good and profitable unto men." He
   instances other things which are neither good nor profitable, namely,
   "Foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about
   the Law." In these days some are occupied with questions about the

   future state instead of accepting the plain testimony of Scripture and
   some give more prominence to speculations drawn from prophecy than to
   the maintaining of good works. I reverence the prophecies. But I have
   small patience with those whose one business is guessing at their
   meaning.

   One whose family was utterly unruly and immoral met with a Christian
   friend and said to him--"Do you quite see the meaning of the Seven
   Trumpets?" "No," answered his friend, "I do not. And if you looked more
   to your seven children the seven trumpets would suffer no harm." To
   train up your children and instruct your servants and order your
   household aright are "things which are good and profitable unto men." A
   life of godliness is better than the understanding of mysteries. The
   eternal Truth of God is to be defended at all hazards but questions
   which do not signify the turn of a hair to either God or man may be
   left to settle themselves.

   "Be careful to maintain good works" whether you are a babe in Grace or
   a strong man in Christ Jesus. A holy household is as a pillar to the
   Church of God. Children brought up in the fear of God are as
   cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace. You, husbands
   and wives that live together in holy love and see your children serving
   God, you adorn the doctrine of God our Savior! Tradesmen who are
   esteemed for integrity, merchants who bargain to their own hurt but
   change not, dealers who can be trusted in the market with uncounted
   gold--your acts are good and profitable both to the Church and to the
   world! Men are won to Christ when they see Christianity embodied in the
   good and the true.

   But when religion is a thin veneer or a mere touch of tinsel they call
   it "humbug." And rough as the word is, it is worthy of the contemptible
   thing which it describes. If our religion comes from the very soul, if
   our life is the life of Christ in us and we prove that we have new
   hearts and right spirits by acting the honorable, the kindly, the truly
   Christian part--these things are good and profitable unto those who
   watch us--for they may induce them to seek for better things.

   I pray you, my Beloved, be careful to maintain good works. I thus stir
   up your pure minds by way of remembrance-- if your minds were not pure
   I would not stir them up--for it would be of no use to raise the mud
   which now lies quiet. I stir you up because I am not afraid to do so
   but am sure that it will do you good. You will take home this
   exhortation and you will say, each one to himself, "What can I do more
   for Jesus? How can I walk more worthy in my profession? How can I be
   careful to maintain good works?" So may God bless you!

   You who do not believe in God. You who have not come to trust in His
   dear Son--I am not talking to you. To you I must say, first, that you
   must be made new creatures. I do not talk to a crab-tree and say, "Bear
   apples." It cannot. The tree must first become good before the fruit
   can be good. "You must be born again." You will never be better till
   you are made new creatures. You must be spiritually slain and then made
   alive again. There must be an end of you and there must be a beginning
   of Christ in you. God grant that this may happen at once and may you
   immediately believe in the Lord Jesus! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Blood of the Lamb, the Conquering Weapon

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 9, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And they o vercame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of
   their testimony. And they loved not their lives unto the death."
   Revelation 12:11.

   WHEREVER evil appears, it is to be fought with by the children of God
   in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit. When evil
   appeared in an angel, straightway there was war in Heaven. Evil in
   mortal men is to be strived against by all regenerate men. If sin comes
   to us in the form of an angel of light we must still war with it. If it
   comes with all manner of deceivableness of unrighteousness we must not
   parley for a single moment but begin the battle at once--if we belong
   to the armies of the Lord. Evil is at its very worst in Satan
   himself--with him we fight. He is no mean adversary. The evil spirits
   which are under his control are, any one of them, terrible foes. But
   when Satan himself personally attacks a Christian, any of us will be
   hard put to it.

   When this dragon blocks our road, we shall need heavenly aid to force
   our passage. A pitched battle with Apollyon may not often occur. But
   when it does you will know it painfully--you will record it in your
   diary as one of the darkest days you have ever lived. And you will
   eternally praise your God when you overcome him. But even if Satan were
   ten times stronger and more crafty than he is, we are bound to wrestle
   with him--we cannot for a moment hesitate, or offer him terms. Evil in
   its highest, strongest and proudest form is to be assailed by the
   soldier of the Cross and nothing must end the war but complete victory.

   Satan is the enemy, the enemy of enemies. That prayer of our Lord's,
   which we usually render, "Deliver us from evil," has the special
   significance of "Deliver us from the Evil One," because Satan is the
   chief embodiment of evil and in him evil is intensified and has come to
   its highest strength. That man had need have Omnipotence with him who
   hopes to overcome the enemy of God and man. He would destroy all godly
   ones if he could. And though he cannot, such is his inveterate hate
   that he worries those whom he cannot devour with a malicious eagerness.

   In this chapter the devil is called the "great red dragon." He is great
   in capacity, intelligence, energy and experience. Whether or not he was
   the chief of all angels before he fell I do not know. Some have thought
   that he was such and that when he heard that a man was to sit upon the
   Throne of God, out of very jealousy he rebelled against the Most High.
   This also is conjecture. But we do know that he was and is an
   exceedingly great spirit as compared with us. He is a being great in
   evil--the Prince of Darkness--having the power of death. He shows his
   malice against the saints by accusing the Brethren day and night before
   God. In the Prophets we have the record of Satan standing to accuse
   Joshua the servant of God. Satan also accused Job of serving God from
   mercenary motives--"Have not You made an hedge about him and all that
   he has?"

   This ever active enemy desires to tempt as well as accuse--he would
   have us and sift us as wheat. In calling him the dragon, the Holy
   Spirit seems to hint at his mysterious power and character. To us a
   spirit such as he is must ever be a mystery in his being and working.
   Satan is a mysterious personage though he is not a mythical one. We can
   never doubt his existence if we have once come into conflict with him.
   Yet he is to us all the more real because so mysterious. If he were
   flesh and blood it would be far easier to contend with him. But to
   fight with this spiritual wickedness in high places is a terrible task.
   As a dragon he is full of cunning and ferocity.

   In him, force is allied with craft. And if he cannot achieve his
   purpose at once by power, he waits his time. He deludes, he deceives.
   In fact, he is said to deceive the whole world. What a power of
   deception must reside in him, when under his influence the third part
   of the stars of Heaven are made to fall and myriads of men in all ages
   have worshipped demons and idols! He has steeped the minds of men in
   delusion so that they cannot see that they should worship none but God,
   their Maker. He is styled "the old serpent." And this reminds us how
   practiced he is in every evil art.

   He was a liar from the beginning, and the father of lies. After
   thousands of years of constant practice in deception he is much too
   cunning for us. If we think that we can match him by craft we are
   grievous fools for he knows vast more than the wisest of mortals. And
   if it once comes to a game of policies, he will certainly clear the
   board and sweep our tricks into the bag. To this cunning he adds great
   speed so that he is quick to assail at any moment, darting down upon us
   like a hawk upon a poor chick. He is not everywhere present. But it is
   hard to say where he is not.

   He cannot be omnipresent--but yet by that majestic craft of his--he so
   manages his armies of fallen ones that, like a great general, he
   superintends the whole field of battle and seems present at every
   point. No door can shut him out, no height of piety can rise beyond his
   reach. He meets us in all our weaknesses and assails us from every
   point of the compass. He comes upon us unaware and gives us wounds
   which are not easily healed.

   But yet, dear Friends, powerful as this infernal spirit certainly must
   be, his power is defeated when we are resolved never to be at peace
   with him. We must never dream of terms or truce with evil. To suppose
   that we can let him alone and all will be well is a deadly error. We
   must fight or perish--evil will slay us if we do not slay it. Our only
   safety will lie in a determined, vigorous opposition to sin, whatever
   shape it assumes, whatever it may threaten, whatever it may promise.
   The Holy Spirit, alone, can maintain in us this enmity to sin.

   According to the text it is said of the saints, "They overcame him." We
   are never to rest until it is said of us also, "They overcame him." He
   is a foeman worthy of your steel. Do you refuse the conflict? Do you
   think of turning back? You have no armor for your back. To cease to
   fight is to be overcome. You have your choice between the two--either
   to gird up the loins of your minds for a life-long resistance--or else
   to be Satan's slave forever. I pray God that you may awake, arise, and
   give battle to the foe. Resolve once and for all that by the Grace of
   God you will be numbered with those who overcome the archenemy.

   Our text brings before us a very important subject for consideration
   What is the conquering weapon? With what sword did they fight who have
   overcome the great red dragon? Listen! "They overcame him by the blood
   of the Lamb." Secondly, how do we use that weapon? We do as they did
   who overcame "by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their
   lives unto the death."

   I. First, WHAT IS THIS CONQUERING WEAPON? They overcame him by "the
   blood of the Lamb."

   The blood of the Lamb signifies, first, the death of the Son of God.
   The sufferings of Jesus Christ might be set forth by some other figure
   but His death on the Cross requires the mention of blood. Our Lord was
   not only bruised and smitten but He was put to death. His heart's blood
   was made to flow. He of whom we speak was God over all, blessed
   forever. But He condescended to take our manhood into union with His
   Godhead in a mysterious manner. He was born at Bethlehem a babe. He
   grew as a child, He ripened into manhood and lived here among us,
   eating and drinking, suffering and rejoicing, sleeping and laboring as
   men do. He died in very deed and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of
   Arimathea.

   That death was the grand fact which is set forth by the words "the
   blood of the Lamb." We are to view Jesus as the Lamb of God's
   Passover--not merely separated from others, dedicated to be Israel's
   memorial and consecrated to Divine service but as the Lamb slain.
   Remember that Christ viewed as living and not as having died, is not a
   saving Christ. He Himself says, "I am He that lives and was dead." The
   moderns cry, "Why not preach more about His life and less about His
   death?" I reply, Preach His life as much as you will but never apart
   from His death. For it is by His blood that we are redeemed.

   "We preach Christ." Complete the sentence--"We preach Christ
   crucified," says the Apostle. Ah, yes, there is the point. It is the
   death of the Son of God which is the conquering weapon. Had He not
   poured forth His soul unto death, even to the death of the Cross--had
   He not been numbered with the transgressors and put to a death of
   shame--we should have had no weapon with which to overcome the dragon
   prince. By "the blood of the Lamb," we understand the death of the Son
   of God. Hear it, O men! Because you have sinned, Jesus dies that you
   may be cleared from your sin. "He His own Self bare our sins in His own
   body on the tree" and died that He might redeem us from all
   unrighteousness.

   The point is His death and, paradoxically, this death is the vital
   point of the Gospel. The death of Christ is the death of sin and the
   defeat of Satan and hence it is the life of our hope and the assurance
   of His victory. Because He poured out His soul unto death, He divides
   the spoil with the strong.

   Next, by "the blood of the Lamb" we understand our Lord's death as a
   substitutionary sacrifice. Let us be very clear here. It is not said
   that they overcame the archenemy by the blood of Jesus, or the blood of
   Christ, but by the blood of the

   Lamb. And the words are expressly chosen because, under the figure of a
   lamb, we have set before us a sacrifice. The blood of Jesus Christ,
   shed because of His courage for the truth, or out of pure philanthropy,
   or out of self-denial conveys no special Gospel to men and has no
   peculiar power about it. Truly it is an example worthy to beget
   martyrs. But it is not the way of salvation for guilty men.

   If you proclaim the death of the Son of God but do not show that He
   died the Just for the unjust to bring us to God, you have not preached
   the blood of the Lamb. You must make it known that "the chastisement of
   our peace was upon Him," and that "the Lord has laid on Him the
   iniquity of us all," or you have not declared the meaning of the blood
   of the Lamb. There is no overcoming sin without a substitutionary
   sacrifice. The lamb under the old Law was brought by the offender to
   make atonement for his offense and in his place it was slain.

   This was the type of Christ taking the sinner's place, bearing the
   sinner's sin and suffering in the sinner's place and thus vindicating
   the justice of God and making it possible for Him to be just and the
   Justifier of Him that believes. I understand this to be the conquering
   weapon--the death of the Son of God set forth as the propitiation for
   sin. Sin must be punished--it is punished in Christ's death. Here is
   the hope of men.

   Furthermore, I understand by the expression, "The blood of the Lamb,"
   that our Lord's death was effective for the taking away of sin. When
   John the Baptist first pointed to Jesus, he said, "Behold the Lamb of
   God, which takes away the sin of the world." Our Lord Jesus has
   actually taken away sin by His death. Beloved, we are sure that He had
   offered an acceptable and effectual propitiation when He said, "It is
   finished." Either He did put away sin, or He did not. If He did not,
   how will it ever be put away? If He did, then are Believers clear.
   Altogether apart from anything that we do or are, our glorious
   Substitute took away our sin, as in the type, the scapegoat carried the
   sin of Israel into the wilderness.

   In the case of all those for whom our Lord offered Himself as a
   substitutionary sacrifice, the justice of God finds no hindrance to its
   fullest flow--it is consistent with justice that God should bless the
   redeemed. Near nineteen hundred years ago Jesus paid the dreadful debt
   of all His elect and made a full atonement for the whole mass of the
   iniquities of them that shall believe in Him, thereby removing the
   whole tremendous load and casting it by one lift of His pierced hand
   into the depths of the sea. When Jesus died, an atonement was offered
   by Him and accepted by the Lord God so that before the high court of
   Heaven there was a distinct removal of sin from the whole body of which
   Christ is the Head.

   In the fullness of time each redeemed one individually accepts for
   himself the great atonement by an act of personal faith but the
   atonement itself was made long before. I believe this to be one of the
   edges of the conquering weapon. We are to preach that the Son of God
   has come in the flesh and died for human sin and that in dying He did
   not only make it possible for God to forgive but He secured forgiveness
   for all who are in Him. He did not die to make men savable but to save
   them. He came not that sin might be put aside at some future time but
   to put it away then and there by the sacrifice of Himself. By His death
   He "finished transgressions, made an end of sin and brought in
   everlasting righteousness."

   Believers may know that when Jesus died they were delivered from the
   claims of Law and when He rose again their justification was secured.
   The blood of the Lamb is a real price which did effectually ransom His
   elect. The blood of the Lamb is a real cleansing which did really purge
   away sin. This we believe and declare. And by this sign we conquer.
   Christ crucified, Christ the Sacrifice for sin, Christ the effectual
   Redeemer of men--we will proclaim everywhere, and thus put to rout the
   powers of darkness.

   II. I have shown you the sword. I now come, in the second place, to
   speak to the question, How DO WE USE IT? "They overcame him by the
   blood of the Lamb."

   When a man gets a sword, you cannot be quite certain how he will use
   it. A gentleman has purchased a very expensive sword with a golden hilt
   and an elaborate scabbard--he hangs it up in his hall and exhibits it
   to his friends. Occasionally he draws it out from the sheath and he
   says, "Feel how keen is the edge!" The precious blood of Jesus is not
   meant for us merely to admire and exhibit. We must not be content to
   talk about it and extol it and do nothing with it. But we are to use it
   in the great crusade against unholiness and unrighteousness, till it is
   said of us, "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb."

   This precious blood is to be used for overcoming and consequently for
   holy warfare. We dishonor it if we do not use it to that end. Some, I
   fear, use the precious blood of Christ only as a quietus to their
   consciences. They say to themselves, "He made atonement for sin,
   therefore let me take my rest." This is doing a grievous wrong to the
   great sacrifice. I grant you that the blood of Jesus does speak better
   things than that of Abel and that it sweetly cries, "Peace! Peace!"
   within the

   troubled conscience. But that is not all that it does. A man who wants
   the blood of Jesus for nothing but the mean and selfish reason, that
   after having been forgiven through it he may say, "Soul, take your
   ease, eat, drink and be merry-- hear sermons, enjoy the hope of eternal
   felicity, and do nothing"--such a man blasphemes the precious blood and
   makes it an unholy thing.

   We are to use the glorious mystery of atoning blood as our chief means
   of overcoming sin and Satan--its power is for holiness. See how the
   text puts it--"They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb"--these
   saints used the doctrine of atonement not as a pillow to rest their
   weariness but as a weapon to subdue their sin. O my Brothers, to some
   of us, atonement by blood is our battle-ax and weapon of war by which
   we conquer in our struggle for purity and godliness--a struggle in
   which we have continued now these many years. By the atoning blood we
   withstand corruption within and temptation without. This is that weapon
   which nothing can resist.

   Let me show you your battlefield. Our first place of conflict is in the
   heavenlies and the second is down below on earth. First, then, my
   Brothers and Sisters who believe in the blood of Jesus, have to do
   battle with Satan in the heavenlies. And there you must overcome him
   "by the blood of the Lamb." "How?" you say. I will lead you into this
   subject. First, you are to regard Satan this day as being already
   literally and truly overcome through the death of the Lord Jesus. Satan
   is already a vanquished enemy. By faith grasp your Lord's victory as
   your own since He triumphed in your nature and on your behalf.

   The Lord Jesus Christ went up to Calvary and there fought with the
   Prince of Darkness, utterly defeated him and destroyed his power. He
   led captivity captive. He bruised the serpent's head. The victory was
   the victory of all who are in Christ. He is the representative seed of
   the woman and you who are of that seed and are in Christ actually and
   experimentally, you then and there overcame the devil by the blood of
   the Lamb. Can you get a hold of this tog? Do you not know that you were
   circumcised in His circumcision, crucified on His Cross, buried with
   Him in Baptism and therein also risen with Him in His resurrection? He
   is your federal Head and you, being members of His body, did in Him
   what He did.

   Come, my Soul, you have conquered Satan by your Lord's victory. Will
   you not be brave enough to fight a vanquished foe and trample down the
   enemy whom your Lord has already thrust down? You need not be afraid,
   but say, "Thanks be to God which gives us the victory through our Lord
   Jesus Christ." We have overcome sin, death and Hell in the Person and
   work of our great Lord. And we should be greatly encouraged by that
   which has been already worked in our name. Already we are more than
   conquerors through Him that has loved us. If Jesus had not overcome the
   enemy, certainly we never should have done so. But His personal triumph
   has secured ours.

   By faith we rise into the conquering place this day. In the heavenlies
   we triumph, as also in every place. We rejoice in our Lord Jesus
   Christ, the Michael of the angels, the Redeemer of men. For by Him we
   see Satan cast out and all the powers of evil hurled from their places
   of power and eminence.

   This day I would have you overcome Satan in the heavenlies in another
   sense--you must overcome him as the Accuser. At times you hear in your
   heart a voice arousing memory and startling conscience. A voice which
   seems in Heaven to be a remembrance of your guilt. Hark to that deep,
   croaking voice, boding evil! Satan is urging before the Throne of
   Justice all your former sins. Can you hear him? He begins with your
   childish faults and your youthful follies. Truly a black memory. He
   does not let one of your wickednesses drop out. Things which you had
   forgotten he cunningly revives. He knows your secret sins, for he had a
   hand in most of them.

   He knows the resistance which you offered to the Gospel and the way in
   which you stifled conscience. He knows the sins of darkness, the sins
   of the bedchamber, the crimes of the inner chambers of imagery. Since
   you have been a Christian he has marked your wickedness and asked, in
   fierce sarcastic tones, "Is this a child of God? Is this an heir of
   Heaven?" He hopes to convict us of hypocrisy or of apostasy.

   The foul fiend reveals the wanderings of our hearts, the deadness of
   our desires in prayer, the filthy thoughts that dropped into our minds
   when we have been at worship. Alas, we have to confess that we have
   even tolerated doubts as to eternal verities and suspicions of the love
   and faithfulness of God! When the Accuser is about his evil business he
   does not have to look far for matter of accusation, nor for facts to
   support it. Do these accusations stagger you? Do you cry, "My God, how
   can I face You? For all this is true and the iniquities now brought to
   my remembrance are such as I cannot deny. I have violated Your Law in a
   thousand ways and I cannot justify myself."

   Now is your opportunity for overcoming through the blood of the Lamb.
   When the Accuser has said his say and aggravated all your
   transgressions, be not ashamed to step forward and say, "But I have an
   Advocate as well as an Accuser.

   Jesus, my Savior, speak for me!" When He speaks, what does He plead but
   His own blood? "For all these sins I have made atonement," says He,
   "all these iniquities were laid on Me in the day of the Lord's anger
   and I have taken them away." Brethren, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's
   dear Son, cleans us from all sin. Jesus has borne the penalty due to
   us--He has discharged for us upon the Cross all our liabilities to the
   justice of God and we are free forever, because our Surety suffered in
   our place.

   Where is the Accuser now? That dragon voice is silenced by the blood of
   the Lamb. Nothing else can ever silence the Accuser's cruel voice but
   the voice of the blood which tells of the infinite God accepting, in
   our behalf, the sacrifice which He Himself supplied. Justice decrees
   that the sinful shall be clear, because the accepted Substitute has
   borne his sin in His own body on the tree. Come, Brother or Sister, the
   next time you have to do with Satan as an accuser in the heavenly
   places, take care that you defend yourself with no weapon but the
   Atonement. All comfort drawn from inward feelings or outward works will
   fall short.

   The bleeding wounds of Jesus will plead with full and overwhelming
   argument and answer all. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
   elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ
   that died, yes rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right
   hand of God, who also makes intercession for us." Who, then, shall
   accuse the child of God? Every accuser shall be overcome by the
   invincible argument of the blood of the Lamb.

   Still further, the Believer will have need to overcome the enemy in the
   heavenly places in reference to access to God. It may happen that when
   we are most intent upon communing with God, the Adversary hinders us.
   Our heart and our flesh cry out for God, the living God. But from one
   cause or another we are unable to draw near unto the Throne. The heart
   is heavy, sin is rampant, care is harassing and Satanic insinuation is
   busy. You seem shut out from God and the Enemy triumphs over you. You
   feel very near the world and very near the flesh and very near the
   devil--you mourn your miserable distance from God. You are like a child
   who cannot reach his father's door because a black dog barks at him
   from the door.

   What is the way of access? If the foul Fiend will not move out of the
   way, can we force our passage? By what weapon can we drive away the
   Adversary so as to come to God? Is it not written that we are made near
   by the blood? Is there not a new and living way consecrated for us?
   Have we not boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus?
   We are sure of God's love when we see that Christ died for us. We are
   sure of God's favor when we see how that Atonement has removed our
   transgressions far from us. We perceive our liberty to come to the
   Father and therefore we each one say--

   "I will approach You--I will force

   My way through obstacles to You;

   To You for strength will have recourse,

   To You for consolation flee!"

   Pleading the propitiation made by the blood of the Lamb, we dare draw
   near to God. Behold, the evil spirit makes way before us. The sacred
   name of Jesus is one before which he flees. This will drive away his
   blasphemous suggestions and foul insinuations better than anything that
   you can invent. The dog of Hell knows the dread name which makes him
   lie down--we must confront him with the authority and especially with
   the Atonement of the Lamb of God. He will rage and rave all the more if
   we send Moses to him--for he derives his power from our breaches of the
   Law and we cannot silence him unless we bring to him the great Lord who
   has kept the Law, and made it honorable.

   We next must overcome the enemy in prayer. Alas, we cannot always pray
   as we would! Do you ever feel, when you are in prayer, as if something
   choked your utterance--and, what is worse--deadened your heart? Instead
   of having wings as of an eagle to mount to Heaven, a secret evil clips
   your wings and you cannot rise. You say within yourself, "I have no
   faith and I cannot expect to succeed with God without faith. I seem to
   have no love. If I have any, my heart lies asleep and I cannot stir
   myself to plead with God. Oh, that I could come out of my closet,
   saying, 'Vici! Vici!'--'I have overcome! I have overcome!' But, alas,
   instead I groan in vain and come away unrelieved. I have been half
   dead, cold and

   1 cannot hope that I have prevailed with God in prayer."

   Whenever you are in this condition fly to the blood of the Lamb as your
   chief remedy. When you plead this master argument you will arouse
   yourself and you will prevail with God. You will feel rest in pleading
   it and a sweet assurance of success at the Mercy Seat. Try the method
   at once. This is the way in which you should use this plea. Say, "My
   God, I

   am utterly unworthy and I admit it. But, I beseech You, hear me for the
   honor of Your dear Son. By His agony and bloody sweat, by His Cross and
   passion, by His precious death and burial, I beseech You hear me! O
   Lord, let the blood of Your Son prevail with You! Can You put aside His
   groans, His tears, His death, when they speak on my behalf?"

   If you can thus come to pleading terms with God upon this ground, you
   must and will prevail. Jesus must be heard in Heaven. The voice of His
   blood is eloquent with God. If you plead the atoning sacrifice, you
   must overcome through the blood of the Lamb.

   Thus have I spoken of overcoming in the heavenlies. But I shall have to
   show you how you must contend against the Evil One in a lower sphere,
   even on this earth. You must first overcome in the heavenly places
   before the Throne. And when you have been thus triumphant with God in
   prayer, you will have Divine Grace to go forth to service and to defeat
   evil among your fellow men. How often have I personally found that the
   battle must first be fought above! We must overcome in order to
   service. Many a score of times of late I should not have ventured into
   this pulpit had it not been for power at the Mercy Seat. Those who know
   the burden of the Lord are often bowed down and would not be able to
   bear up at all were it not for having in secret battled with their
   enemy and won the day.

   I have been bowed down before the Lord and in His Presence I have
   pleaded the precious blood as the reason for obtaining help and the
   help has been given. Faith, having once made sure that Jesus is hers,
   helps herself out of the treasury of God to all that she needs. Satan
   would deny her but in the power of the blood she takes possession of
   Covenant blessings. You say to yourself, "I am weak but in the Lord, my
   God, there is power--I take it to myself. I am hard and cold but here
   is tenderness and warmth and I appropriate it. It pleased the Father
   that in Jesus should all fullness dwell and by virtue of His precious
   blood, I take out of that fullness what I need and then with help thus
   obtained I meet the enemy and overcome him."

   Satan would hinder our getting supplies of Divine Grace wherewith to
   overcome him. But with the blood mark on our foot we can go anywhere.
   With the blood mark on our hand we dare take anything. Having access
   with confidence, we also take with freedom whatsoever we need and thus
   we are provided against all necessities and armed against all assaults
   through the atoning sacrifice. This is the fountain of supply and the
   shield of security--this, indeed, is the channel through which we
   receive strength for victory.

   When we really feel the power of the precious blood of Christ we
   overcome the great enemy by laying hold upon the all-sufficiency of
   God. Thus, being victorious in the heavenlies, we come down to the
   pulpit or to the Sunday school class made strong in the Lord and in the
   power of His might. Having overcome Satan at the Throne of Grace, we
   see him like lightning fall from Heaven even before our feeble
   instrumentality. We speak and God speaks with us. We long for souls and
   God's great heart is yearning with us. We entreat men to come and the
   Lord also pleads with them to come so that they no longer resist.
   Spiritual power of a holy kind rests upon us to overcome the spiritual
   power of an evil kind which is exerted by Satan, the world and the
   flesh.

   The Lord scatters the power of the enemy and breaks the spell which
   holds men captive. Through the blood of the Lamb we become masters of
   the situation and the weakest among us is able to work great wonders.
   Coming forth to the service of God in the power of our victory in
   Heaven gained by pleading the blood of the Lamb we march on conquering
   and to conquer and no power of the enemy is able to stand against us.

   It is time that I now showed you how this same fight is carried on on
   earth. Among men in these lower places of conflict saints overcome
   through the blood of the Lamb by their testimony to that blood. Every
   Believer is to bear witness to the atoning sacrifice and its power to
   save. He is to confirm the doctrine. He is to emphasize it by earnest
   faith in it. And he is to support it and prove it by his experience of
   the effect of it. You cannot all speak from the pulpit but you can all
   speak for Jesus as opportunity is given you. Our main business is to
   bear witness with the blood in the power of the Spirit. To this point
   we can all testify. You cannot go into all manner of deep doctrines or
   curious points but you can tell to all those round about you that
   "There is life in a look at the Crucified One."

   You can bear witness to the power of the blood of Jesus in your own
   soul. If you do this you will overcome men in many ways. First, you
   will arouse them out of apathy. This age is more indifferent to true
   religion than almost any other. It is alive enough to error but to the
   old faith it turns a deaf ear. Yet I have noticed persons captivated by
   the Truth of Substitution who would not listen to anything else. If any
   discourse can hold men, as the ancient mariner detained the wedding
   guest, it is the story of Divine Love, incarnate in the Person of
   Jesus, bleeding and dying for guilty men. Try

   that story when attention flags. It has a fascination about it. The
   marvelous history of the Son of God, who loved His enemies and died for
   them--this will arrest them.

   The history of the Holy One who stood in the sinners' place and was in
   consequence put to shame and agony and death--this will touch them. The
   sight of the bleeding Savior overcomes obduracy and carelessness. The
   doctrine of the blood of the Lamb prevents or scatters error. I do not
   think that by reasoning we often confute error to any practical
   purpose. We may confute it rhetorically and doctrinally but men still
   stick to it. But the doctrine of the precious blood--when it once gets
   into the heart--drives error out of it and sets up the throne of Truth.
   You cannot be clinging to an atoning sacrifice and still delight in
   modern heresies.

   Those who deny inspiration are sure to get rid of the vicarious
   atonement because it will not allow their errors. Let us go on
   proclaiming the doctrine of the great sacrifice and this will kill the
   vipers of heresy. Let us uplift the Cross and never mind what other
   people say. Perhaps we have taken too much notice of them already. Let
   the dogs bark, it is their nature to. Go on preaching Christ crucified.
   God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of the Lord Jesus
   Christ!

   We also overcome men by softening rebellious hearts. Men stand out
   against the Law of God and defy the vengeance of God. But the love of
   God in Christ Jesus disarms them. The Holy Spirit causes men to yield
   through the softening influence of the Cross. A bleeding Savior makes
   men throw down their weapons of rebellion. "If He loves me so," they
   say, "I cannot do other than love Him in return." We overcome men's
   obduracy by the blood, shed for many for the remission of sins.

   How wonderfully this same blood of the Lamb overcomes despair. Have you
   ever seen a man shut up in the iron cage? It has been my painful duty
   to talk with several such prisoners. I have seen the captive shake the
   iron bars but he could not break them, or break from them. He has
   implored us to set him free by some means. But we have been powerless.
   Glory be to God, the blood is a universal solvent and it has dissolved
   the iron bars of despair, until the poor captive conscience has been
   able to escape. How sweet for the desponding to sing--

   "I do believe, I will believe, That Jesus died for me"! Believing that,
   all doubts and fears and despairs fly away and the man is at ease.

   There is nothing, indeed, dear Friends, which the blood of the Lamb
   will not overcome. For see how it overcomes vice and every form of sin.
   The world is foul with evil like a stable which has long been the lair
   of filthy creatures. What can cleanse it? What but this matchless
   Stream? Satan makes sin seem pleasurable, but the Cross reveals its
   bitterness. If Jesus died because of sin, men begin to see that sin
   must be a murderous thing. Even when sin was but imputed to the Savior
   it made Him pour out His soul unto death. It must, then, be a hideous
   evil to those who are actually and personally guilty of it. If God's
   rod made Christ sweat great drops of blood, what will His axe do when
   He executes the capital sentence upon impenitent men! Yes, we overcome
   the deadly sweetness and destructive pleasures of sin by the blood of
   the Lamb.

   This blood overcomes the natural lethargy of men towards obedience. It
   stimulates them to holiness. If anything can make a man holy, it is a
   firm faith in the atoning sacrifice. When a man knows that Jesus died
   for him, he feels that he is not his own but bought with a price and
   therefore he must live unto Him that died for him and rose again. In
   the Atonement I see a motive equal to the greatest heroism--yes, a
   motive which will stimulate to perfect holiness. What manner of persons
   ought we to be for whom such a sacrifice has been presented! Now are we
   quickened into intensity of zeal and devotion. See, dear Brothers, how
   to use the blood of the Lamb in this lower sphere while contending with
   evil among men.

   But I must close with this. It is not merely by testimony that we use
   this potent Truth. We must support that testimony by our zeal and
   energy. We need concentrated, consecrated energy. For it is written,
   "They loved not their lives unto the death." We shall not overcome
   Satan if we are fine gentlemen, fond of ease and honor. As long as
   Christian people enjoy the world, the devil will suffer little at their
   hands. They that overcame the world in the old days were humble men and
   women, generally poor, always despised. They were never ashamed of
   Christ. They only lived to tell of His love and died by tens of
   thousands rather than cease to bear testimony to the blood of the Lamb.

   They overcame by their heroism. Their intense devotion to the cause
   secured the victory. Their lives to them were as nothing when compared
   with the honor of their Lord. Brethren, if we are to win great
   victories we must have greater

   courage. Some of you hardly dare speak about the blood of Christ in any
   but the most godly company. And scarcely there. You are very retiring.
   You love yourselves too much to get into trouble through your religion.
   Surely you cannot be of that noble band that love not their own lives
   unto the death!

   Many dare not hold the old doctrine nowadays because they would be
   thought narrow and bigoted and this would be too galling. They call us
   old fools. It is very likely we are. But we are not ashamed to be fools
   for Christ's sake and the Truth's sake. We believe in the blood of the
   Lamb, despite the discoveries of science. We shall never give up the
   doctrine of atoning sacrifice to please modern culture. What little
   reputation we have is as dear to us as another man's character is to
   him. But we will cheerfully let it go in this struggle for the central
   Truth of Revelation. It will be sweet to be forgotten and lost sight
   of, or to be vilified and abused, if the old faith in the
   substitutionary sacrifice can be kept alive.

   This much we are resolved on, we will be true to our convictions
   concerning the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus. For if we give up this,
   what is there left? God will not do anything by us if we are false to
   the Cross. He uses the men who spare not their reputations when these
   are called for in defense of the Truth of God. Oh to be at a white
   heat! Oh to flame with zeal for Jesus! O my Brothers and Sisters, hold
   to the old faith and say, "As for the respect of men, I can readily
   forfeit it. But as for the Truth of God, that I can never give up."
   This is the day for men to be men. For, alas, the most are soft
   creatures. Now we need backbones as well as heads. To believe the Truth
   concerning the Lamb of God and truly to believe it--this is the
   essential of an overcoming life. Oh for courage, constancy, fixedness,
   self-denial, willingness to be made nothing for Christ! God give us to
   be faithful witnesses to the blood of the Lamb in the midst of this
   ungodly world!

   As for those of you who are not saved, does not this subject give you a
   hint? Your hope lies in the blood of the Lamb--

   "Come, guilty souls and flee a way, Like doves, to Jesus' wounds."

   The atoning sacrifice, which is our glory, is your salvation. Trust in
   Him whom God has set forth to be the propitiation for sin. Begin with
   this and you are saved. Every good and holy thing which goes with
   salvation will follow after. But now, this morning, I pray you accept a
   present salvation through the blood of the Lamb. "He that believes in
   Him has everlasting life."
     __________________________________________________________________

All At It

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching
   the Word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached
   Christ unto them." Acts 8:4,5.

   "Then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same Scripture, and
   preached unto him Jesus." Acts 8:35.

   "THEY that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word."
   God intended that His Church should be scattered over the world. There
   was a tendency in our humanity at first to remain together. Hence the
   first gray fathers endeavored to build a central tower, around which
   the race should rally. But God confounded their language and scattered
   them from Babel, that they might people all the world. Jerusalem was at
   first the central point of Christianity. The Church there was highly
   favored with its twelve Apostles and a multitude of minor lights. And
   the tendency would have been to keep the center strong.

   I have often heard the argument, "Do not have too many out-stations,
   keep up a strong central force." But God's plan was that the holy force
   should be distributed--the holy seed must be sown. To do this the Lord
   made use of the rough hand of persecution. The disciples could not stay
   in Jerusalem--Saul made them run for their lives, or, if they did not,
   he shut them up in prison. And prisons in those days were so foul and
   noisome as to be the vestibules of the grave.

   One went this way and one went the other way. And the faithful were
   scattered. In every Church where there is really the power of the
   Spirit of God, the Lord will cause it to be spread abroad, more or
   less. He never means that a Church should be like a nut shut up in a
   shell. Nor like ointment enclosed in a box. The precious perfume of the
   Gospel must be poured forth to sweeten the air. Just now we have little
   of that form of persecution which drives men from home. But godly
   people are scattered through the necessity of earning a livelihood.
   Sometimes we regret that certain young men should have to go a
   distance. But should we regret it?

   We lament that certain families must migrate to the colonies. Does not
   the Lord by this means sow the good seed widely? It is very pleasant to
   be comfortably settled under an edifying ministry but the Lord has need
   of some of His servants in places where there is no light. In many ways
   the great Head of the Church scatters His servants abroad. But they
   ought of themselves to scatter voluntarily. Every Christian should say,
   "Where can I do the most good?" and if he can do more good anywhere
   beneath the sun than in the land of his birth, he is bound to go there,
   if he can. God will have us scattered. And if we will not go afield
   willingly, He may use Providential necessity as the forcible means of
   our dispersion.

   The Lord's design is not the scattering in itself but scattering for a
   purpose. He intended that, being scattered, the saints of Jerusalem
   should go everywhere preaching the Word. Upon this I am going to speak
   at this time.

   I would call your attention to the translation in the Revised Version,
   where Philip is said to have "proclaimed" the Word. The word "proclaim"
   is not quite so subject to the modern sense which has spoiled the word
   "preach." "Preach" has come to be a sort of official term for
   delivering a set discourse--whereas Gospel preaching is talking,
   discoursing and telling of the Gospel in any way, we are to make known
   the Word of the Lord.

   I. In handling my subject, I shall call your attention, first, to THE
   UNIVERSALITY OR THE WORK OF EVANGELIZING.

   Of course I mean its universality among Believers. "They that were
   scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word." They. That is,
   all the scattered. There does not appear to have been any exception.
   You thought it would have read, "Then the Apostles went everywhere
   preaching the word." They were the people who did not go at all. For
   the twelve remained at headquarters as yet. But the rest went
   everywhere preaching the Word. Generals may have to stand still in the
   center of the battle to direct the forces. But in this battle all the
   common soldiers marched to the fight. This was to be a soldiers'
   battle. And of that sort all the battles of the Cross ought to be.

   Observe then, first, that in this there were no professional
   distinctions. It is not said that the ministers, being scattered
   abroad, went everywhere proclaiming the Word. But the whole of the
   scattered. Scarcely anything has been more injurious to the kingdom of
   Christ than the distinction between clergy and laity. No such
   distinction was ever laid down by the Spirit of God. "You are God's
   inheritance"--all God's saints are God's inheritance. And we should
   regard ourselves as such. "You are a royal priesthood." "He has made us
   unto our God kings and priests." As in Heaven there is no temple
   because it is all temple, so in the Church of God there is no
   priesthood because it is all priesthood.

   We have among ourselves a distinction between ministers and others. But
   you are all to minister. There are many ministries of one form and
   another--and though God gives to His Church Apostles, teachers,
   pastors, Evangelists, and the like, yet not by way of setting up a
   professional caste of men, who are to do the work for God while others
   sit still. I have before used the following parable--In olden times a
   certain host had conquered wherever they went forward in one mass. But
   it came to pass that they thought themselves so exceeding strong that
   they said, "Let not every man go to war. Let us choose a few and make
   this few into a select standing army."

   They picked out their champions and sent them to the war. These
   continued the conflict with difficulty. Many of them fell in the fight.
   No provinces were added to the kingdom and things were at a standstill.
   They had followed a fatal policy. The true method was for the whole of
   them to march to battle. This is the true and only policy of
   Christianity-- all Christians soldiers of the Cross and all on active
   service. Every converted man is to teach what he knows. All those who
   have drunk of the Living Water are to become fountains out of which
   shall flow rivers of Living Water.

   We shall never get back to the grand old times of conquest until we get
   back to the old method of "all at it." In proportion as we come, in any
   one Church, to individual service--nobody dreaming of doing his work by
   proxy but each one serving God for himself--in that proportion, under
   the blessing of God, we shall come back to the old success.

   Observe, next, that there were no professional exceptions. Philip is
   mentioned as going down to Samaria to preach. But Philip was originally
   set apart to attend to the distribution of the alms of the Church. It
   is good for every man to attend to his own special office. But where
   that office ceases to be needful, let him get to that work which is
   common and constant. The time had come when there was no need for the
   deacon to sit in the vestry, for the poor people were all scattered.
   What does the deacon do? As the work to which he was appointed has come
   to an end, he keeps to the work for which every Christian is appointed
   and he proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

   No one of us, then, can be exempted from the work of spreading the
   Gospel because we are engaged in some other work. Good as it is, though
   it may be very intimately connected with the kingdom of Christ, yet it
   does not exonerate us from the work of endeavoring to bring sinners to
   Christ in some way or other. Stephen, the deacon, began first to bear
   testimony. And when he died, Philip, the next on the roll, stepped into
   his place. One soldier falls and another steps forward. All are to
   proclaim the Word and no one is exempted by another form of service,
   Oh, that the Lord's people everywhere would note this!

   Observe that there were no educational or literary exceptions. It is
   thought nowadays that a man must not try to proclaim the Gospel unless
   he has had a good education. To try and preach Christ and yet to commit
   grammatical blunders is looked upon as a grave offense. People are
   mightily offended at the idea of the Gospel being properly preached by
   an uneducated man. This I believe to be a very injurious mistake. There
   is nothing whatsoever in the whole compass of Scripture to excuse any
   mouth from speaking for Jesus when the heart is really acquainted with
   His salvation. We are not all called to "preach," in the new sense of
   the term, but we are all called to make Jesus known if we know Him.

   Has the Gospel ever been spread to any extent by men of high literary
   power? Look through the whole line of history and see if it is so. Have
   the men of splendid eloquence been remarkable for winning souls? I
   could quote names that stand first in the roll of oratory, which are
   low down in the roll of soul-winners. Those whom God has most honored
   have been men who, whatever their gifts, have consecrated themselves to
   God and have earnestly declared the great Truths of God's

   Word. Men who have been terribly in earnest and have faithfully
   described man's ruin by sin and God's remedy of Divine Grace--men who
   have warned sinners to escape from the wrath to come by believing in
   the Lord Jesus--these have been useful.

   If they had great gifts, they were no detriment to them. If they had
   few talents, this did not disqualify them. It has pleased God to use
   the base things of this world, and things that are despised for the
   accomplishment of His great purposes of love. Paul declared that he
   proclaimed the Gospel, "not with wisdom of words." He feared what might
   happen if he used worldly rhetoric, and therefore, he refused the
   wisdom of words. We have need to do so now with emphasis. Let us trust
   in the Divine energy of the Holy Spirit and speak the Truth in reliance
   upon His might, whether we can speak fluently with Apollos, or are slow
   of speech, like Moses.

   I say, then, to you, my dear Friend, who unhappily may be lacking in
   education, do not therefore stop your testimony to our Lord. Rescue the
   perishing. What if you are not a great theologian? If you understand
   the plan of salvation you are sufficiently instructed to be a good
   witness for your Lord. Oh, that the Holy Spirit may make you such! A
   blacksmith can shoe a horse, though he has never studied astronomy. He
   might be none the worse smith if he were familiar with the stars. But I
   fail to see that he would be much the better as a smith. Warn men to
   escape from the wrath to come and believe in Jesus--and you can do this
   just as well though no science has puzzled you.

   As there were no exceptions on account of educational defects, so were
   there no exclusions on account of sex. Men and women were to spread
   abroad the knowledge of Jesus. We read that, "As for Saul, he made
   havoc of the Church, entering into every house and haling men and women
   committing them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad"
   (and these must have been men and woman) "went everywhere preaching the
   Word." There are many ways in which women can fittingly proclaim the
   Word of the Lord and in some of these they can proclaim it more
   efficiently than men.

   There are minds that will be attracted by the tender, plaintive,
   winning manner in which the sister in Christ expresses herself. A
   Christian mother--what a minister is she to her family! A Christian
   woman in single life--in the family circle, or even in domestic
   service--what may she not accomplish, if her heart is warm with love to
   her Savior? We cannot say to the women, "Go home, there is nothing for
   you to do in the service of the Lord." Far from it, we entreat Martha
   and Mary, Lydia and Dorcas and all the elect sisterhood, young and old,
   rich and poor, to instruct others as God instructs them. Young men and
   maidens, old men and matrons, yes--and boys and girls who love the
   Lord--should speak well of Jesus and make known His salvation from day
   to day.

   You see, dear Fiends, how the Lord gave to all His people the holy work
   of making Jesus known to men. How well they carried it out! Within a
   hundred years after the death of our Lord, His name had been made known
   to all the known world. But I do not know how many years it will take
   to make Christ known at the rate of our present movement. A few men are
   set apart for missionaries and directed with complicated machinery and
   good people feel easy about the heathen. I find no fault with what is
   done. My fault is that we are not doing a hundred times as much in ways
   more spontaneous.

   If the Church of God should once wake up, it will be as the sea when it
   returns to its strength after a long ebb. The Lord send it--send it
   now! But He will only bless the world in His own way. And one of His
   conditions is that the whole Church should move. We must come back to
   the primitive custom--every Christian must be a herald of the Cross.

   II. Secondly, having asked you to notice the universality of the work,
   will you please to notice THE NATURALNESS OF IT. That word "therefore,"
   at the commencement of the fourth verse, says a great deal to me.
   "Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching
   the Word"--as if it followed as a sort of natural consequence, that
   being scattered they went everywhere preaching the Word. Does not this
   show us that they could not think of following any other course?

   They that were scattered might have said, "Clearly our duty is to hold
   our tongues. We have got into great trouble at Jerusalem because we
   preached Christ. We must now look to our own safety and the comfort of
   our families. And in these foreign countries we had better live godly
   lives and go to Heaven on the sly, but we need not again expose
   ourselves to the dangers of persecution." They did not thus argue. It
   is not said, "Therefore they that were scattered abroad slunk away and
   held their tongues." No, they never thought of that.

   We do not find that they even said, "This Gospel of ours is evidently
   not in accord with the spirit of the age. The scribes and Pharisees all
   differ from us and we must endeavor to win them by altering our tone."
   They did not dream of

   cutting off the angles of the Truth of God, nor of inserting pleasant
   fragments of popular thought to please the powers that be. But they set
   forth "the Word" in its pure simplicity and the Cross of Christ, which
   is an offense to so many. They never said, "The old Gospel did very
   well when Jesus was here. But you see He has gone and circumstances
   alter cases and alter gospels and we had better adapt our teaching to
   the period."

   They did not so, because of the fear of the Lord. They did not endeavor
   to mend the Gospel but they went everywhere proclaiming it. They
   preached the Word as they received it. They set forth the kingdom as
   their King had revealed it. Ah, dear Friends, if you are true to the
   Lord Jesus Christ you have to spread the Gospel somehow and it must be
   the old, old Gospel. You must not dare to think of denying the light to
   those around you. Would you leave men to perish for lack of knowledge?
   Dare you have their blood on your garments?

   These persecuted ones "went everywhere preaching the Word." Why was it
   so natural for them to do it? Their obligations pressed upon them. They
   each one of them said, "I have been saved and I must see others saved.
   I am bound to tell of the blood of Jesus and its power to wash away
   sin. The curses of the ages will fall upon me and the wails of lost
   souls will come up into my ears as long as I exist, if I do not make
   known the Gospel."

   Brethren, God's way of saving the unconverted is through His Church.
   And if the Church neglects its work, who is to do it? Our Lord means to
   bring in the rest of His chosen through those who are already called.
   But if these stand aside and are untrue to their calling, how is the
   work to be done? I know the work is of God alone--still He uses
   instruments. If you do not tell the Gospel, you are leaving your fellow
   men to perish. Yonder is the wreck and you are not sending out a
   life-boat! Yonder are souls starving and you give them no bread!

   Well, if you are resolved to be thus inhuman, at least know what you
   are doing. You that are taking no share in this great work of spreading
   the Gospel are willfully allowing men to go down to Hell and their
   blood will be required at your hands. These first Believers dared not
   incur such guilt, and therefore, away they went, preaching the Word.

   I think, too, that their wonderment compelled them. They had seen the
   man Christ Jesus and they had communed with Him. They had beheld His
   Godhead in His miracles and they had adored Him. They had seen Him
   nailed to the Cross. They had, many of them, beheld Him alive after He
   was risen from the dead, and they could not help telling so great a
   marvel. Here was God come down among men. Here was the Redeemer of men
   suffering to the death to rescue men from eternal ruin. And they could
   not help telling abroad this miracle of love. They were like children,
   who, when they hear a bit of startling news, must tell it. Good men
   that they were, their wonderment and their joy were equal and they
   could not hold their peace.

   When ancient Believers were shut up in prison, they began to sing the
   Gospel until the prisoners heard them. They had something to sing about
   and they must sing it. If they took them out of the temple by force,
   behold, the moment the prison doors were opened, they were found
   standing in the same place telling the same story. If you and I felt
   that blessed amazement which we ought to feel when we think of Free
   Grace and dying love, silence would be impossible.

   The principal reason for their constant proclamation of Jesus was that
   they were in a fine state of spiritual health. They went everywhere
   preaching the Word when scattered abroad because they had proclaimed it
   when at home. You will never make a missionary of the person who does
   no good at home. If you do not seek souls in your own street, you will
   not do so in Hindustan. If you are of no use in Whitechapel, you will
   be of no use in the Congo. He that will not serve the Lord in the
   Sunday school at home, will not win children to Christ in China.
   Distance lends no real enchantment to Christian service. You who do
   nothing now, are not fit for the war, for you are in sad health.

   The Lord give you spiritual health and vigor, and then you will want no
   pressing but you will cry at once, "Here am I, send me!" O my Friends,
   go at once to your families, to your workshops and declare the name of
   Jesus! Oh, for more spiritual life! This is the root of the matter. If
   we were living more fully in the power of the Holy Spirit our witness
   would be borne without constraint. It would be as natural to us to
   spread the Gospel as to breathe. We should be under holy impulses which
   would demand our witness-bearing. If we could not speak the Word of the
   Lord, it would be as fire in our bones. We should become weary with
   withholding. Lord, give us more and more this spiritual life!

   Surely, also, the times must have urged them onward with hurried step
   as messengers for Christ. For Jerusalem was soon to be destroyed. This
   made them quick in their movements, that the last warning might come to
   all their countrymen. You know what the times are now! I am no Prophet.
   But as we read, week by week, the appalling crimes that are

   chronicled by the press--if ever Christian men should be in earnest
   they should be in earnest now. All the signs of the times arouse us to
   look for the coming of our Lord. No token tends to quiet us but all to
   awaken us.

   We must work at double quick rate. And if anyone among us has done
   nothing at all, it is time for him, as a good servant, to gird up his
   loins to work and to watch, "for in such an hour as he thinks not the
   Son of Man comes." I have been praying all the while that I have been
   speaking this morning--yes, praying more than preaching--that God may
   distinctly lay His hand on every Brother and Sister in this place and
   constrain you to proclaim this Gospel of Jesus in every place to which
   you can go.

   III. Thirdly, carefully notice THE JOYFULNESS OF THIS WORK. "They were
   scattered abroad." But as "they

   went everywhere preaching the Word," the calamity became a blessing.
   Their work took the sting out of their banishment. The housewife had to
   leave her comfortable little home and tramp to a strange country--the
   man of business had to sell his stock and quit his position. Those were
   hard times beyond question. Fancy that happening to us! What distress
   would spread over this congregation if you had to run for your lives!

   But then they said to themselves, "It is all right. As we live to
   spread abroad the knowledge of Jesus, we shall do this wherever we go.
   Our flight shall be a mission." This changed the aspect of affairs. By
   the persecution they received express marching orders to quit home and
   take to foreign service. Was not this a comfort? For myself, I always
   like to know the Lord's will clearly. Suspense kills me. If I have any
   question about what my course should be, I am worried more than I can
   tell. Even distress is a relief when it shuts you up to one course.

   Persecution became both a direction as to their course and an occasion
   for getting to work. As they must go elsewhere, they would talk of
   salvation by faith in Jesus to the people among whom they might be
   called to sojourn and so tell the story of redemption to people who
   were totally ignorant of it. This made them feel it was a good thing
   after all that they were scattered abroad. Dear Friends, if your heart
   is set on a purpose and there comes a crash which spoils your comfort,
   you hardly lament it if it promotes your chief design in life.

   If you are possessed with the idea that you, as a Christian, must live
   only to serve Christ and to win souls, then anything which happens,
   however painful, will be welcomed if it places you in a better position
   for your holy life work. That is the place in which you can serve the
   Lord better. So that the tried people of God at Jerusalem must have
   felt devoutly comforted as they saw that God was helping them to answer
   the great purpose of their lives and was pushing them forward by
   pushing them out.

   Their exile would be a help in gaining attention. For when they came to
   a place, the people would enquire, "Why are these Jews coming here?"
   And the answer would be, that they had been forced from home because
   they believed in one Jesus, who was called Christ, who had died for
   men, so that by faith in Him they might be saved. For love of this
   Savior they had been driven from their native land. The people may not
   have thought them wise, but doubtless they would be interested in their
   story and thus made aware of their faith. Curiosity would ask of yonder
   Jewess, "How came you to be here, Naomi?" And Naomi would tell the
   story of the crucified Savior.

   "And you, Benjamin, what drove you from Palestine?" He, too, would have
   to narrate the life and death of the Nazarene and so Jesus would be
   made known. Persecution thus opened men's minds to enquire and served
   the purpose of advertising the Gospel. Thus the Lord set up pulpits for
   His servants wherever they went and provided congregations for them.
   What Satan intended for evil, the Lord turned for good. What better
   could have happened than for all these holy men and women to be driven
   abroad to disseminate the ever blessed Word?

   This, as they thought of it, made them bear their exile without
   repining. An all-absorbing purpose turned sorrow into joy. I cannot
   conceive of anything so calculated to reconcile them to their
   banishment as the prospect of glorifying God the more. The martyr
   spirit is just the spirit of witness-bearing overcoming all love of
   self and even care for life.

   Moreover, as they told the story and it made their own hearts glow with
   holy fire, their spirits were refreshed and their souls made glad.
   Jesus seemed still to be near them--yes, He was with them. They found
   the surest remedy for their grief in His sacred fellowship--no, the
   grief itself became gladness! If you want to get rid of low spirits,
   preach the Gospel. To take Christ's yoke is to find rest unto your
   souls. If you are in the very dust, go and tell a weary one of
   salvation by Jesus--you will thus raise yourself, even if your message
   is rejected. Here is a balm, which, while it heals the wound to which
   it is applied, also perfumes the hand which applies it. The exiles were
   made to feel at home when they saw God working with them in Greece and
   Rome, even as He had done in Jerusalem.

   I may add that, if they were led to see that they were now made like
   their Lord in suffering, they would have comfort in that fact. If they
   now remembered what He said concerning the grain of wheat, which must
   be cast into the ground and die, or it could not bring forth fruit,
   they would now feel that they were having fellowship with Him in His
   sufferings. This was enough to make them a happy body of men and women.
   They were scattered but not saddened. Theirs was not the scattering of
   a retreat but of an advance all along the line. And so it yielded them
   joy and not distress. I entreat you, try active service as a solace for
   sorrow.

   IV. Notice, fourthly, THE SUPREMACY OF THIS WORK. "They that were
   scattered abroad went everywhere

   preaching the Word." I suppose they did something for a living. I do
   not know what their handicrafts might be. But each one had a calling
   and followed it industriously. We are not told what they did. It is
   incidentally mentioned, further on in history, that the Apostle Paul
   made tents--but you never read anywhere in the Bible that Paul went
   everywhere tent making. He did make tents but that was not his
   vocation--his business was to save souls. He made tents in order that
   he might not be indebted to the people. But winning souls was Paul's
   business.

   The scattered did not go abroad for the purpose of trade. They did not
   say, "We will go to such a place, because there we can make the best
   profits." They chose their way with the one purpose of spreading the
   Gospel. To preach Christ was their one vocation which, like Aaron's
   rod, swallowed up all other rods. Proclaiming Christ was their one
   purpose, passion and profession--all else might go. I wonder how many
   Christian people here could have their biographies condensed into this
   line, "He lived to make Christ known."

   Might it not be said of one, he lived to open a shop and then to open a
   second? Or of another, he lived to save a good deal of money and take
   shares in limited liability companies? Or of a third, he lived to paint
   a great picture? Or of a fourth, he was best known for his genial
   hospitality? Of many a minister it might be said--he lived to preach
   splendid sermons and to gain credit for fine oratory. What of all
   these? If it can be said of a man, "He lived to glorify Christ," then
   his life is a life. Every Christian man ought so to live. Oh that my
   memorial might be--"He preached Christ crucified"!

   You fall short of your design in life if Jesus is not as much your
   object as He is your confidence. Make your tents, sell your goods,
   paint your pictures if you will--but do all this in order that you may
   fulfill your higher and truer life--for which you were bought with
   blood and quickened by the Spirit of God.

   We note the supremacy of this work, not only because it swallowed up
   all their trades but because it obliterated all trace of caste. See
   Philip. He is a Jew but he goes to Samaria. "Philip, what made you go
   to Samaria? Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Brethren, when it
   comes to preaching Christ, we have dealings with everybody--Jews,
   Turks, infidels, cannibals. The Jew goes to Samaria for Christ and the
   Samaritans accept the Messiah of the Jews. Later Philip is called down
   south to journey along a desert way and there he meets an Ethiopian,
   probably a black man.

   Ah well, white men were not particularly anxious for the company of
   Ethiopians but Philip gets up into his chariot and rides with him.
   Black and white make a fine mixture when the book of the Prophet Isaiah
   lies between them. What a beautiful picture this would make! Philip and
   the eunuch riding together reading of the Lord Jesus in the Hebrew
   Prophets. All the paltry differences of sect, politics, nationalities
   and races go to the winds as soon as we are possessed with a desire to
   win souls.

   "Oh but the poor are so dirty!" Let us show them how they can be
   cleansed. "But the slum is so foul!" Yet for the love of Jesus we will
   enter it to carry His saving health among the people. What is more, we
   shall not only be willing to work for the poor and fallen, but we shall
   work with them. You, a person of taste and culture, will join hands
   with the illiterate worker and while you are half amused at his
   blunders, you will be charmed by his zeal. You will not despise him but
   you may even feel humbled as you see how, with less knowledge than
   yourself, he often shows more spiritual wisdom and energy. You will
   take a brotherly pride in such a man.

   Caste is gone when Christ is come. Oh, that we might feel the supremacy
   of our holy service more and more! Christ must be made known! Sinners
   must be saved! Heaven must be filled! And before these necessities
   everything else must be as nothing. Are you not of this mind--do you
   feel this way?

   See, also, the supremacy of their purpose in the fact that they were
   willing to be at the beck and call of the Holy Spirit and to go
   anywhere. Philip was getting on splendidly at Samaria and the Church
   grew under his care. Surely he ought to stop there, he is evidently the
   man for the place! But he does not stop there. Philip has a call, not
   to a larger

   Church but to the road through the desert and away he goes to talk to
   one person. The genuine soul-winner has his inward directions and he
   follows the guidance of the Spirit of God. Here, there, anywhere,
   everywhere he goes, where the hope of conversions tempts him.

   When a sportsman goes out after game, he does not know which way he
   will go, neither does he bind himself in that matter. If he is stalking
   deer, he may have to go up the mountain side, or down the glen, across
   the burn, or away among the heather. Where his sport leads him, he
   follows. And so it is with the genuine soul-winner--he leaves himself
   free to follow his one object. He does not know where he is going but
   he does know what he is going after. He lays himself out for the
   winning of souls for Jesus. On the railway he speaks to anyone who
   happens to be put in the same carriage. Or in the shop he looks out for
   opportunities to impress a customer. He sows beside all waters and in
   all soils. He carries his gun at half-cock, ready to take aim at once.
   That is the man whom God is likely to bless.

   Note yet one thing more--the supremacy of this work was seen in the
   fact that these good people were quite willing to submit. Philip has
   done a great work at Samaria but he sends for the Apostles Peter and
   John to come down from Jerusalem. Some few earnest workers have been
   impatient of discipline but the best of them are the most orderly
   people in the world. Some Brethren are just as ready to obey Church
   authority as if they were the least of all saints, instead of being the
   most successful of the Brotherhood.

   It is not well when our Philips are too big to work in connection with
   the mother-Church. I have never found them so. The idle are
   troublesome. The laborious are loving. Philip turns into nobody just as
   readily as before he had been everybody. Peter and John come upon the
   scene and seem, as it were, to run away with his laurels. But Philip
   makes no complaint, for in fact there were no laurels for any of them.
   All the glory was given to Jesus. Whether it were Philip, or Peter, or
   John, the Lord, alone, was magnified. Blessed is that man who knows how
   to subside. Oh, that there were thousands of workers of this kind
   willing to come to the front and lead the way and just as willing to
   step aside, if thereby the cause might advance!

   V. Thus have I brought this matter before you and I shall now beg you
   to observe THE SPECIALTY OF THIS WORK. I have shown you its
   universality, its naturalness, its joyfulness and its supremacy. And
   now we will dwell upon its specialty. Philip is set before us as a
   specimen of those who were scattered abroad. A sample shows the whole.
   What did Philip make prominent? "Philip went down to the city of
   Samaria and preached Christ unto them." That is all he had to
   preach--he preached the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ. But when
   Philip had to instruct an educated nobleman, did he dwell on the same
   subject as that which he brought before common Samaritans?

   Read the thirty-fifth verse. "Then Philip opened his mouth and began at
   the same Scripture and preached unto him Jesus." Here we have the same
   subject as before--to the Samaritans--Christ. To the Ethiopian--Jesus.
   See, then, what we have to do. We have to tell over and over again what
   we know so well--that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
   Himself--not imputing their trespasses unto them. The Savior lived here
   a life of holy obedience and then died, "the Just for the unjust, to
   bring us to God." We preach that this Jesus made atonement for sin so
   that whosoever believes in Him has eternal life and shall never come
   into condemnation.

   We declare that Jesus rose again and that this new life He bestows on
   those who trust Him. We proclaim that He has gone into Heaven to take
   possession of the inheritance for His people and to plead for them
   before the Throne. And that those who are in Him shall one day be with
   Him and behold His Glory. In a word, we preach Jesus as the Lamb of
   God, which takes away the sin of the world.

   This is the old, old story. It is a very simple story but the telling
   of it will save people. Keep to that Gospel. Many have lost faith in
   it. It is hoped that people will now be saved by new socialistic
   arrangements, by moral precepts, by amusements, by societies and what
   not. Let the Church of God be glad when anything is done which helps
   temperance, purity, freedom and so forth. But her one business is to
   preach CHRIST. Stick to this, my Brethren. If all the shoemakers in
   London were to take to making bracelets for the Queen, she would be
   badly decorated.

   But where should we be? Let the cobblers stick to their lasts. You that
   are sent to preach Christ, if you take to doing something else and
   become philosophical, socialistic, philanthropic and all that, what is
   to become of the spiritual nature of men? Keep to your work. Go and
   preach Christ to the people. I have not lost faith in the old Gospel.
   No--my confidence in it grows as I see the speedy failure of all the
   quackeries of succeeding years. The methods of the modern school are a
   bottle of smoke.

   Christ crucified is the only remedy for sin. Keep to the Gospel of
   "believe and live." "Whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has
   everlasting life." If this Gospel does not uplift the race, nothing
   will. This is the only medicine which the great Physician has given to
   us to administer to sin-sick souls. Keep to it. "There is none other
   name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." We want
   no advance, we dream of no improvement upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

   In closing, I would call your attention to two little words in the
   fifth verse. "Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached
   Christ," allow me to put the next two words in capitals--"UNTO THEM."
   Read the thirty-fifth verse. "Philip opened his mouth and began at the
   same Scripture and preached UNTO HIM Jesus."

   Somebody said to Mr. Moody--"How are we to get at the masses?" He
   replied, "Go for them." The expression is forcible, "Go for them." Go
   for them in the name of Christ. Go right at them. Do not only preach
   Christ but preach Christ unto them. Preach Jesus to the individual man.
   It is the work of the Church of God, as much as lies in us, to bring
   Christ home to the people's knowledge, thought, belief, conscience and
   heart. Preach it unto them. If I stand here and preach before you, what
   is the good of it?

   But if I preach UNTO YOU, there is practical use in it. When you go out
   of this place, I pray you will look for a man or a woman and speak unto
   him, or unto her, Jesus the Christ. Come to close dealings. I fear that
   some of you fathers have not yet prayed with your boys and some of you
   mothers have not yet taken your girls apart and talked with them about
   eternal things. Have you? You say, "I am so retiring." Then retire and
   pray. But love your children enough to speak to them of Jesus.

   You sisters, have you spoken to your brothers about Jesus? Have some of
   you wives yet spoken to your ungodly husbands about the Christ? This is
   the point. If we will each one speak for our Lord, we shall see results
   that will perfectly astound us. If, during the next few months, this
   Church would fully wake up and if every member would feel, "I have
   something to do and I must do it," we should then see a glorious
   harvest.

   When my Brethren Fullerton and Smith hold special services in this
   place, as they will do in the beginning of November, you will help to
   get in the people and to crowd the place. And when they preach, you
   will pray and watch and look up the enquirers and we shall have great
   times. If you will go after people at their houses and give them your
   own personal testimony in loving earnestness, the Holy Spirit will
   bless you. Oh, may God arouse us to this! I say again, I have not
   preached this morning half so much as I have prayed. For every word
   that I have spoken I have prayed two words silently to God.

   Oh, that the Lord would hear me and bless us in an unusual degree! If
   the Lord will fill you with His Spirit, the opening of yonder front
   doors and your going out will be like the bursting of a bomb-shell in
   London. If you are all in earnest, your existence will be like the
   shining of the sun in the heavens. Oh, how I long that God may be
   glorified! For His Truth's sake I have been "abundantly filled with
   reproach." But I would gladly accept a sevenfold baptism of it so that
   his kingdom would come. May the Lord make bare His holy arm in the eyes
   of all the people! Amen and Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Further Afield

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 23, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary that the
   Word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing you put it
   from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn
   to the Gentiles. For so has the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set
   you to be a light of the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation
   unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were
   glad and glorified the Word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained
   to eternal life believed." Acts 13:46-48.

   DEAR friends, last Sabbath morning I tried to stir YOU up to sacred
   activity. I heard from many that they felt thoroughly motivated and I
   know of some who at once commenced to speak for Christ. I wish I could
   hope that our whole company kept step together in this. If what is said
   on the Sabbath were really carried out, what splendid advances we
   should make! But if not, it is as though a commanding officer spoke to
   his troops and the men did not march according to orders. However, I am
   thankful for what was done and for the many of you who did keep step
   together in an earnest march to conquer the powers of sin by making
   known the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

   "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word,"
   and I hope that you, as you scattered to your various abodes, did go
   everywhere teaching the Word of God according to your capacity. If so,
   you have already come far enough to have met with individuals upon whom
   your warnings and invitations have been spent in vain. I thought it
   would be well for us this morning to go with Paul to Antioch, in
   Pisidia, and just see how he was treated there and what he did when he
   met with an ill reception from the Jews.

   By God's Grace may we not be discouraged if our message has been
   refused, but might we be instructed by the example of Paul and Barnabas
   as to what we should do. And may we be comforted by the success which
   their perseverance achieved. The Jews of Antioch, after having heard
   Paul with considerable attention, made up their minds to refuse Jesus,
   the Son of David, and not to accept Him as their Messiah and Savior.

   I. Our first point for consideration will be that THE REJECTION OF
   CHRIST IS A VERY SOLEMN BUSINESS. It has been a very solemn business
   for the Jewish nation. The history of the Jews since their rejection of
   our Lord may be written in blood and tears. No Gentile should read it
   without ten thousand blushes, for they have been evilly treated by all
   the nations, though through them the greatest blessing that ever came
   to men has come to us. Never should we forget that our Redeemer is of
   the seed of Israel. Yet, when the chosen people rejected Jesus
   deliberately, from that day a history of woe and sorrow began, which
   has gone on even to this day.

   To the deep disgrace of Christendom, so called, there still remain
   countries in which they regard a Jew's life as of less value than that
   of a dog and only force holds them back from massacre. They are still a
   people scattered and poor in many parts of the earth, although in
   others they take the lead in wealth. Oh, that they had received the
   Messiah, I shall not attempt to picture what would have been their
   history if they had accepted the Son of David as their Lord. It is not
   so--

   "Oh, would our God to Zion turn! God with salvation clad, Then Judah's
   harp should music learn, And Israel be glad."

   I am bound to talk about a people nearer home, about some here present,
   who have refused the Savior. Perhaps they will say, at the very outset,
   "We have not done so, we will receive Him one day." Yes, but you refuse
   Him now. If you do not now believe in Him, you have up till now
   rejected Him. This you have done as they did at Antioch, against the
   evidence of honest men. They doubted whether Christ had really risen
   from the dead, although His resurrection was attested

   by hundreds of true witnesses. His rising from the dead was a great
   miracle. But if He did not rise from the dead we have a far greater
   wonder to account for--Why did these hundreds of persons declare
   themselves to be eyewitnesses of His rising?

   Those who declared that they had seen Him alive after His crucifixion,
   how came they to agree in such a statement and to persist in it so
   unanimously? They were simple folk, who had associated with Jesus for
   years. And they identified Him, after His rising, as the same Person
   who died. They were not ingenious enough to have invented such a story.
   They could have no reason in spreading the statement if they had not
   believed it, for they suffered for it. They were not gainers in any
   form, except as to spiritual things. They were thrust into prison and
   scourged and banished and most of them were slain for bearing this
   witness.

   Some of them died by deaths too cruel to be described. But they none of
   them ever recanted, or admitted that they might be mistaken. Hundreds
   of witnesses asserted that this Jesus, whom they saw dead upon the
   Cross, did really rise again. And their belief of this fact filled them
   with a burning enthusiasm, which, while it produced in them a holy
   character, also caused them to speak with a marvelous boldness and full
   assurance which amazed their adversaries. They spoke earnestly, like
   men who felt that it was their life's work to bear witness to a Divine
   fact.

   But the unbelievers set aside the testimony of these honest men. My
   unconverted Hearer, if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and
   in the work which was crowned by His rising from the dead, you set
   aside the witness of Apostles, saints and martyrs. The number of
   martyrs has been very great from that day till now but you set aside
   the testimony borne by their lives and death. You also impute
   foolishness or deceit to your dearest friends, some of whom are with
   God and who died in the faith, exhorting you to believe in Jesus
   Christ. Indeed, you make all of us who preach the Gospel to be liars.
   And we are not so.

   You do not think so badly of us when we speak in everyday life--only
   when we tell you glorious things, which we have tasted and handled, of
   the good Word of God. We speak out of our experience of the power of
   Christ's blood when we pray you to accept His atoning sacrifice and
   yield yourselves to Him. We have no motive in persuading you to faith
   but that of love to your souls. We shall not be gainers by your
   conversion, nor losers by your ruin. But we love you, and therefore
   pray you believe those necessary Truths, without which you can never
   enter the kingdom of Heaven.

   These people next did violence to Christ Himself and His precious
   blood. It does seem amazing to those of us who love Jesus and worship
   Him that any should reject Him. He comes so tenderly, so meekly, the
   Lamb of God! All that He does is so generous, so self-denying, that we
   marvel that you refuse Him. "He takes away the sin of the world"--why
   does the world despise Him? What has He done that you should refuse to
   become His disciples and accept His salvation? Do you not know that you
   do despite to His blood?

   To me there is a great sanctity about the blood of man. I saw last
   Wednesday the Prayer Book which Bishop Juxon held in his hand as he
   stood by the side of Charles I on the scaffold at Whitehall. Two spots
   of blood are on the page wherein he was reading the prayers, as the axe
   fell upon the monarch's neck. I have no reverence for Charles I but I
   have reverence for drops of blood. I looked at them and they were no
   theme of jest for me--the blood of a man is sacred.

   But what shall I say of the blood of the Son of God! God Himself,
   incarnate, in some mysterious manner taking into union with Himself our
   humanity and shedding His blood to redeem us! What is to be said of
   this? Look with reverence upon that precious blood. Can you think that
   this blood was shed to wash away sin, and yet trifle with it and go
   your way to your farm and to your merchandise, forgetful altogether of
   this amazing sacrifice? God grant that you may not be guilty of the
   blood of Christ! It is an enormous guilt and it lies on every
   unbeliever who has heard of Jesus and has rejected His great salvation.

   These people had to do despite to all the marvels which lie wrapped up
   in the Gospel. To us, my dear Hearers, who believe in Jesus, the Gospel
   is the most wonderful thing that can ever be. The more we know of it,
   the more astounded we are at it. It is a compound of Divine and
   infinite things. When we study it, we go from wonder to wonder. Here we
   behold the heart of God and hear the voice of His infinite tenderness,
   His infallible wisdom, His stern justice and His supreme beneficence.
   How can all this be rejected by you? Surely, you do not know what is in
   the Gospel, or you would hearken to its every tone.

   I sat yesterday with two tubes in my ears to listen to sounds that came
   from revolving cylinders of wax. I heard music, though I knew that no
   instrument was near. It was music which had been caught up months
   before and now was ring-

   ing out as clearly and distinctly in my ears as it could have done had
   I been present at its first sound. I heard Mr. Edison speak--he
   repeated a childish ditty. And when he had finished he called upon his
   friends to repeat it with him. And I heard many American voices joining
   in that repetition. That wax cylinder was present when these sounds
   were made and now it talked it all out in my ear.

   Then I heard Mr. Edison at work in his laboratory--he was driving nails
   and working on metal and doing all sorts of things and calling for this
   and that with that American tone which made one know his nationality. I
   sat and listened and I felt lost in the mystery. What of all this? What
   can these instruments convey to us?

   But oh, to sit and listen to the Gospel when your ears are really
   opened! Then you hear God Himself at work. You hear Jesus speak--you
   hear His voice in suffering and in Glory and you rise up and say, "I
   never thought to have heard such strange things! Where have I been to
   be so long deaf to this? How could I neglect a Gospel in which are
   locked up such wondrous treasures of wisdom and knowledge, such
   measureless depths of love and Divine Grace?" In the Gospel of the Lord
   Jesus, God speaks into the ear of His child more music than all the
   harps of Heaven can yield. I pray you, do not despise it. Be not such
   dull, driven cattle that when God has set before you what angels desire
   to look into, you close your eyes to such glories and pay attention to
   the miserable trifles of time and sense.

   This rejection of the Gospel of Christ is the more grievous because it
   is a decided act of the will. When a man refuses to be saved it is his
   own act and deed. Nothing in Scripture will support us in throwing the
   blame elsewhere. The devil himself cannot refuse Christ for a man. Man
   must do that for himself. Only you can bolt the door against yourself.
   There is a will in man and it is a sadly perverse will, so that the
   Savior said of it, "You will not come to Me, that you might have life."
   The not coming of which the Lord complains is a direct act of the man's
   own will. You choose to sin--you choose to remain uncleansed from
   guilt. You choose to abide under the wrath of God.

   You have deliberately chosen to be without Christ for years--and
   therein you are choosing your own destruction. This is a fearful thing.
   It made me feel, when I was preparing my sermon, as if I must spend all
   the time over this first head. For I cannot willingly leave a single
   soul to be of the number of whom it is written, "You put it from you."
   How can we bear to see you thus commit soul-suicide?

   Notice! We have here the rejection of Christ regarded as a man's own
   verdict upon himself. No man can claim a fairer jury than to let his
   own faculties sit in judgment upon himself. Listen! "You judge
   yourselves unworthy of everlasting life." This, then, is your own
   verdict, you who refuse the Gospel. You have not yielded to Christ and
   you are not saved. And thus you have "judged yourselves unworthy of
   everlasting life." In the legal sense there is no worthiness in any
   man. Our conscious unworthiness is our only worthiness for mercy and
   that consciousness is worked in us by Divine Grace.

   But in looking at the whole picture, you have felt that you were not
   the men to believe in Christ, you were not the women to be saved. You
   felt, rather, that you were the kind of people who should spend your
   zeal in attending the theater or the dance. You felt that you best
   answered the end of your being when you did your daily labor, or opened
   your shop and saved a little money. You felt that you were not called
   upon to think of more high and heavenly things. You judged yourselves
   worthy to live a temporary life and then, like beasts, to die and be no
   more. An eternal destiny of glory and immortality you have not judged
   yourselves worthy to obtain.

   Remember, this is your own verdict upon yourself. If your verdict had
   run, "I am an immortal being. I shall outlive the sun and moon and I
   would therefore be prepared for my supreme destiny. I can only be so
   prepared by linking myself with the eternal Son of God, who, as the
   chief of men, shows us our manhood united to the Godhead. Only He gives
   those who are in Him to rejoice in God their Father," this would have
   led you to lofty aspirations. This conclusion you have not arrived at
   but you have brought in the verdict, "unworthy of eternal life," which,
   being interpreted, means--worthy to die.

   I fear that your verdict will have to stand. How terrible will it be
   when the Lord will set His seal to your own judgment and say--"You are
   unworthy of eternal life--this is your own judgment upon yourself. You
   were not willing to be quickened into spiritual life. You shall remain
   in eternal death"! It will be Hell to a man to have his own voluntary
   choice confirmed and made unchangeable. Oh, that this judgment may not
   fall upon you! O Sirs, I dread above all things that throughout
   eternity you will be left to your own free wills, to continue in that
   condition of alienation from God which you have chosen, reaping what
   you have sowed! If you deliberately prefer sin to Christ and let go
   pardon, everlasting life and Heaven, who is to blame? Will you not
   curse yourselves to all eternity? And will not this be Hell?

   Once more--this sad, this wretched putting from them of everlasting
   life, greatly grieves the Spirit of God. Paul and Barnabas were moved
   by it to speak in deep solemnity. In those godly men the Spirit of God
   largely dwelt and in them He revealed His thoughts. They had come to
   Antioch in pure love to souls. And they had hoped better things of
   their countrymen than to see them reject the Savior. As an audience,
   they had been most attentive while Paul recited the history of Israel
   and he and Barnabas hoped that many would have believed on the Son of
   David.

   And when they found that the frequenters of the synagogue had become
   envious and jealous because the Gentiles were so eager to hear the
   Word, then Paul and Barnabas were grievously wounded. The Spirit of God
   is much more tender than the soul of Paul or Barnabas and He is sorely
   grieved when He sees Jesus rejected. It is His office to win for Jesus
   the love of men and He is vexed when men turn their backs on the loving
   Lord. What must the Holy Spirit have to bear from the multitudes of men
   and women who are putting the Gospel away from them! In no one case is
   it a trifle to Him but in every instance He is grieved, even as of old
   it was written--"They rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit."

   O gracious Spirit of God, still bear with wayward men! We beseech You,
   still have pity upon the ungodly, for madness is in their hearts. Still
   enlighten their darkness and melt the hardness of their hearts, for
   Jesus' sake.

   There stands the case. They put everlasting life from them and judged
   themselves unworthy of it. What an unhappy state of things! It is too
   painful for me. I cannot speak longer upon it--I must hasten to my
   second point.

   II. THIS REJECTION OF CHRIST BY SOME LED TO A MORE EXTENDED EFFORT.
   When Paul and Barnabas found that their message was rejected, what did
   they do? They met the Jews with this bold sentence, "Seeing you put it
   from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn
   to the Gentiles."

   In consequence of the ill-manners of the Jews they did not turn away
   from their work. It never entered their minds to give up their ministry
   because it did not succeed among these Jews. They did not say, "Lo, we
   turn away from preaching Jesus--we will speak no more in the name of
   the Lord." Neither, my Brethren, may we speak thus. I know the heart
   grows sick when tender testimony is rejected. The constant reiteration
   of the same Gospel to ears that will not hear becomes wearisome work.
   It needs great faith to go on from day to day plowing a rock. Oh, shall
   we always have to cry to you in vain! Will you always be so perverse?
   Yet we dare not cease to plead with you. We cannot give you up.

   We overcome the suggestion of our weariness, "I will speak no more in
   the name of the Lord." For love of you, the Gospel is as fire in our
   bones and we cannot cease to warn every man and plead with every man
   for Jesus. Instead of turning from the work, these holy men addressed
   themselves to those who had been somewhat neglected--"Lo, we turn to
   the Gentiles."

   Beloved, if you have been mainly laboring with the children of godly
   parents and these refuse, turn to the slum children. If you have tried
   to bless respectable people and they remain unsaved, try those who are
   not respectable. If those to whom it was natural and necessary that the
   Word should first be spoken have put it away from them, turn to those
   who have been left out in the cold. Take the Lord's hint in this
   Apostolic history and distinctly turn to those people who are not yet
   Gospel-hardened. Turn to those who have not been brought up under
   religious influences but have been looked upon as without the camp.

   That, I believe, is the Lord's mind towards the Church of today. Let
   her break up fresh soil and she will have richer harvests. Let her open
   new mines and she shall find rare riches. We too often preach within a
   little circle where the message of life has already been rejected
   scores of times. Let us not spend all our time in knocking at doors
   from which we have been repulsed. Let us try elsewhere. During this new
   week and throughout the rest of our lives, let us seek after the
   neglected, the utterly irreligious, the worldly and profane.

   Be not amazed--I mean just what I say! Let the infidel and the
   superstitious be the object of our prayers. Let the frivolous and
   worldly be spoken with. This seems to me to be the parallel of Paul's
   conduct when he turned to the Gentiles who were given up to idols and
   served different lusts and were viewed as quite beyond the line of
   Divine Grace.

   They enlarged the scope of their ministry under Divine command. They
   said, "We turn to the Gentiles. For so has the Lord commanded us."
   Their change of aim was not a freak of fancy. If you now turn your
   chief thoughts to the most neglected part of the community, you will
   have this as your warrant, "So has the Lord commanded us." It was right
   to begin with Chapel-goers and Church-goers and those instructed in the
   faith--it was necessary to begin with the children of the godly. But if
   they put it from them and count themselves unworthy of eternal life, it
   is now imperative upon us that we look after others.

   O my Brethren, let us try to do so! Let us turn our energies towards
   getting in the people who are not familiar with the courts of the
   Lord's house, nor with the Gospel of His Son--for so has the Lord
   commanded us. There is this happy and yet unhappy circumstance to urge
   us on--the outsiders are by far the larger number. What were the Jews
   in number as compared with the Gentiles? If you work for Christ among
   those who are in our religious circles and fail to win them, the field
   is the world and the larger part of that field has never been touched
   as yet.

   We have labored for London. But if London counts itself unworthy of
   eternal life, let us think of Calcutta, Canton and the Congo. If these
   near ones will not reward our endeavors, let us be of enterprising
   spirit and do as traders do, who, when they find no market at home,
   strike out new lines. This is precisely what the text would teach us.
   Let us launch out into the deep and let down our nets for a draught. If
   we cannot catch fish in the shallows, great shoals of fish are in the
   deeps and if we will launch out we shall come back with our boats
   loaded with the living freight.

   The result of the rejection of Christ by some was the expansion of the
   sphere of the godly workers. It reminds us of the parable--they that
   were bid were not worthy. Therefore, go out into the highways and
   hedges and as many as you find bid to the supper.

   III. Thirdly, please notice that THIS ENLARGEMENT OF EFFORT WAS
   ENCOURAGED BY THE PROMISE

   OF GOD. "For so has the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set you to be
   a light of the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation unto the ends
   of the earth."

   Let us notice this--God has set Jesus to be a light, and a light He
   must be. God's appointment is no empty thing. No man thinks of setting
   up a light if nobody will ever see it. And if God has appointed Christ
   to be a light, depend upon it some are to see that light. But all men
   are blind by nature. Alas, it is even so. But if God has set His Son to
   be a light, I conclude that He is about to open the eyes of the blind,
   that they may see this light. If I saw a wise man going into a blind
   asylum, laying on gas or making preparation for the electric light, I
   should feel sure that he had a view to people who can see. And if none
   but blind people could come into the building, I should conclude that
   he anticipated a time when the poor blind folks would find their eyes
   again and would be able to use the light.

   So, as the Lord has set Jesus to be a light, you may be sure that He
   means to open blind eyes. Jesus will enlighten the people, souls will
   be saved. God has set His King upon the holy hill of Zion and He has
   not set Him there for a King without intending to give Him a kingdom.
   God will not allow His Son to be a Savior who never saves, a Redeemer
   who does not redeem. Our Lord is set to enlighten every class. The Jew
   no longer has a monopoly on the light of Heaven. God has not appointed
   His Son to save a few dozen people who go to a particular meeting
   house. He has set Him to be a light to the nations and He means He
   shall be so. This encourages us to labor among all classes. Jesus is a
   fit light for the upper ten thousand and some of them shall rejoice in
   that light--he is equally set to be a light to the teeming millions and
   they shall rejoice in Him, too.

   What God has appointed must be carried out. Jesus is yet to be a light
   to outcast people--to the persons of whom we have never thought
   favorably, the classes whom even philanthropy has felt ready to
   abandon. This is God's set purpose concerning His Son Jesus and His
   omnipotence will carry it out. We are further told that our Lord Jesus
   is set to be salvation. Be you therefore sure that He will save. If
   Jesus is set for salvation, men shall be saved. Let us believe in
   Christ's power to save. We have only a spattering of faith in Him. Why
   do you not talk of Jesus to that fellow who swears in the street? You
   say that it would be of no use. What is this but distrust of the
   Gospel?

   Why do you not test the power of the glad tidings upon persons of bad
   character? Is it not that you think the Gospel would be of no use in
   such a case? You think that some quarters of the town cannot be reached
   by the Truth of God-- thus you have a local Christianity--a God of the
   hills and not of the valleys--a religion in which the power varies
   according to longitude and latitude. God forgive our unbelief and at
   the same time kill it!

   The great Father has set Christ Jesus to be "salvation unto the ends of
   the earth." So then, if any are further off than others, they are
   especially included. If any seem so far gone that they stand on the
   verge of creation, out of the reach of civilization and charity--these
   are the people whom Jesus is set to save. He can save to both ends of
   the earth and all that lies in between. To the most debauched,
   depraved, drunken and desperate, Jesus is set to be salvation. From
   that poverty which has been brought on by vice and that degradation
   which is the consequence of sin, Jesus can uplift mankind.

   Where even the image of manhood seems obliterated and the brute reigns
   supreme, the Lord Jesus can set the superscription of God. To the lost,
   Jesus is set to be a Savior. The triumphs of the Gospel at the first
   were largely among the

   lowest of the low. Slaves and outcasts embraced Christianity and rose
   to holiness. It was by such that the Lord overthrew the idols of Greece
   and Rome. The Lord can work such wonders again and He will. Only let us
   believe it and tell out unceasingly the Gospel of Jesus in the
   unlikeliest places and the promise will be fulfilled--"I have set you
   to be a light of the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation unto
   the ends of the earth."

   IV. Observe, in the fourth place, that THIS ENLARGEMENT OF EFFORT WAS
   ENCOURAGED BY SPEEDY

   SUCCESS--"And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and
   glorified the Word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal
   life believed. And the Word of the Lord was published throughout all
   the region."

   First, the Gentiles were glad. Could you not see their eyes sparkle as
   they learned that Jesus was their salvation? They sat in the synagogue,
   where they were only tolerated, the Jews looking very jealously at
   them. But now they heard good news, for the living God had thought of
   them and sent to them salvation. No more would they care for the dark
   eyes of the Jews. They smiled as they saw the door of Divine Grace set
   open before them. Paul and Barnabas must have felt glad to address so
   glad a congregation. We little guess with what joy the message of mercy
   would be received by those who had never yet heard it.

   Go and see what it will do. How I should like a congregation of people
   who have never heard of Jesus Christ before! I should expect to have a
   blazing time of it, like the man who set light to a straw stack and
   found that he had a world of fire before him in no time. To hear of
   salvation by the blood of Jesus for the first time must be a sensation
   indeed! As for many of my hearers, they have heard of Jesus so long
   that the topic is stale. I feel you will never accept the Savior but
   will die in your sins. Those who have never heard of Jesus at all often
   hear the Gospel with great interest and believe unto eternal life.

   The Gentiles accepted the Word. They did not sit down and quibble and
   raise questions and so forth. But it is written, "they were glad and
   glorified the Word of the Lord." This is more than many ministers do.
   Look at our divines now! What are they doing? They are not glorifying
   the Word of God but taking the glory from it. According to some of them
   the Word of God in His Book is full of blunders--how much less
   trustworthy must it be as it is preached! The shepherds are now
   destroying the pastures. Holy Scripture, according to them, is not
   infallible. The sure word of testimony is no longer sure according to
   modern ideas. With these I have no fellowship. O my Soul, come not into
   their secret! Let us loathe such dishonoring of the Word of God. Let us
   get far away from all pretense of communion with these enemies of our
   faith.

   Get among the poor, the lowly, the sinful. Tell them the glad news of
   pardon bought with blood. I warrant you, they will not turn critics and
   quibble and find fault. But they will, many of them, believe unto
   eternal life. The man who has grown accustomed to luxuries is the man
   who turns his meat over and picks off a bit here and a bit there--this
   is too fat and that is too gristly. Bring in the poor wretches who are
   half-starved. Fetch in a company of laborers who have been waiting all
   day at the docks and have found no work and in consequence have
   received no wage.

   Set them down to a joint of meat. It vanishes before them. See what
   masters they are of the art of knife and fork! They find no fault--they
   never dream of such a thing. If the meat had been a little coarse, it
   would not have mattered to them. Their need is too great for them to be
   dainty. Oh, for a host of hungry souls! How pleasant to feed them! How
   different from the task of persuading the satiated Pharisees to partake
   of the Gospel! Go for them, Beloved! Lay yourselves out to reach poor,
   needy souls. They will come to Jesus, though the self-righteous will
   not. A great success awaits those who will again "turn to the
   Gentiles." Oh, for such a turning on the part of all who love the
   Gospel of Free Grace!

   V. I finish with the fifth point. THIS ENLARGEMENT AND ALL ITS BLESSED
   RESULTS, WERE ORDAINED

   IN THE PURPOSE OF GOD. The record runs thus--"They were glad and
   glorified the Word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal
   life believed." Attempts have been made to prove that these words do
   not preach predestination. But these attempts so clearly do violence to
   language that I will not waste time in answering them. A great
   discussion has been carried on between those who believe in the free
   will of man and others who believe in the Free Grace of God. There is
   no real reason for this dispute, except when the man who believes in
   free will denies God's freedom in Divine Grace, or when the man who
   magnifies Free Grace denies that man has any will.

   It is possible for both parties to be wrong--and, in a measure, for
   both to be right. Beloved, I used the first part of my text fairly and
   I was not afraid to acknowledge the existence of free will, and to
   deplore its doings. Now I read, "as many as were ordained to eternal
   life believed," and I shall not twist the text. But I shall glorify the
   Grace of God by as-

   cribing to it every man's faith. Those who believed in Jesus believed
   in Him because they were ordained unto eternal life. I will not take
   away a jot of what I believe to be the Truth of God on either side of a
   debate.

   From the Word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to
   bottom--and salvation is all of Divine Grace, from first to last. He
   that perishes chooses to perish. But he that is saved is saved because
   God has chosen to save him. Though some cannot make these statements
   agree, they are nevertheless equally true--"You have destroyed
   yourself. But in Me is your help found."

   We believe that the Lord knows them that are His and knows them before
   they are openly manifested, so that He says of a certain place, "I have
   much people in this city." Do you think that the Lord does not
   foreknow? How, then, can He prophesy? If God foresees a certain thing
   is to be, why, then, it must be. And has not this all the ingredients
   of predestination? Moreover, "whom He did foreknow, He did
   predestinate." Is it not God that gives the disposition to believe? If
   men are disposed to have eternal life, does not He, in every case,
   dispose them? Is it wrong for God to give Grace? If it is right for Him
   to give it, is it wrong for Him to purpose to give it?

   Would you have Him give it by accident? If it is right for Him to
   purpose to give Grace today, it was right for Him to have purposed it
   before this date. He is a God that changes not, and what He performs
   today is not the purpose of today but the purpose of all eternity--"For
   known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world." God
   knows and God appoints those who shall believe and be saved.

   But please note this fact--God can effect His purpose with man without
   violating his will. He can leave man a man, with full use of his
   faculties and yet turn his mind as He pleases. The will is never more
   free than in conversion and yet it is never more under subjection to
   Divine power. I do not know how the Lord governs the will--if I did
   know, I should be God. God does not new-create men as a baker makes
   loaves of bread, or a potter makes vessels, by manual skill and force.
   No, He treats men as men--He deals with free agents as free agents. And
   yet He has as much power over them as the baker over the dough, or the
   potter over the clay.

   His supreme will acts Omnipotently and yet works with a holy delicacy
   which never violates the attributes of the mind. He makes men as much
   free agents in repentance, faith and holiness, as they were when they
   ran greedily into sin. He makes His people willing in the day of His
   power and thus glorifies His wisdom, His power and His love. God has a
   purpose to save those whom He gave to His Son Jesus and all these must
   come to Jesus for that salvation. I want you to believe this when you
   are at work for your Lord.

   When I have come into this pulpit on a Thursday night, I have thought,
   "It is very wet and I shall not have many people." But I have said to
   my friends in the vestry, "We shall have a picked congregation. God
   will send those whom He means to bless." I do not come here and preach
   a "perhaps." What is to be done by preaching the Gospel is determined
   from before all time and it will be accomplished. If I were dependent
   upon the will of my hearers and there were no supreme power over their
   wills, I should preach with a faint heart.

   But he that preaches the Gospel with omnipotence at the back of him has
   a blessed and fruitful service. Is not this cheering for the preacher?
   We shall not labor in vain, nor spend our strength for nothing. Heaven
   and earth shall pass away but the Gospel shall not fail. Men may rage
   against the Gospel and think to defeat its purpose. But the counsel of
   the Lord shall stand. All that the Lord intended in creation and in
   Providence and in Grace will be assuredly accomplished to the last jot
   and tittle.

   In the Kingdom of Grace there shall be nothing to mar the glory of the
   Lord's triumph when the record has been fully written. This is a great
   comfort to the worker. Let him be always abounding in the work of the
   Lord, for as much as his labor is not in vain in the Lord. Bowed to the
   earth with horror at the guilt involved in the willful rejection of the
   Lord Jesus by our hearers, we nevertheless triumph in the firm
   conviction that God, who sends us, will go with us and that His purpose
   shall stand. We believe in the sovereignty of God, not only in His
   right to do as He wills with His own Grace but also in His power to do
   so.

   Our text is equally full of comfort to the obedient hearer. For if you
   believe, it follows that you are ordained unto eternal life. If you
   believe the Gospel of Truth--if you believe in the Divine sense of
   trusting the Lord Jesus Christ--if you cast your guilty souls on Jesus
   and look to Him as lifted up, even as the brazen serpent was lifted in
   the wilderness-- you are ordained unto eternal life. Trouble not
   yourself about election but rather encourage yourself with it. This is
   sure evidence of your election, that you believe in Jesus. For "as many
   as were ordained to eternal life believed." If you be-

   lieve, you are ordained to possess on earth the holy life which
   temptation cannot destroy and to enjoy forever that heavenly life which
   eternity will not exhaust. Faith gives you a life in Christ which can
   no more die than the eternal Lord on whom it rests. Oh, that the sweet
   constraint of almighty love may lead trembling souls to trust Jesus at
   once and live forever!

   I wish especially to speak to any here present who are not familiar
   with the Gospel. I speak to rank outsiders, to people who know nothing
   of these things. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
   saved"--saved at once. "But I never go to a place of worship." I mean
   exactly you, my Friend. "But I have been a swearer." I am thinking of
   the blasphemer. "But I have been an awful drunkard." To you I speak
   this Gospel. "Alas," cries one, "I shrink from your eyes. I crept in
   here this morning but I am a daughter of shame." I say to you, even to
   you--"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that
   Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

   You are aimed at in the mission of Jesus. Trust Him and you are saved.
   "But I have been violent against the Gospel." You are the very man that
   I am especially looking for. I prayed for you before I came to this
   place--for I prayed that Saul of Tarsus might this day become Paul the
   Apostle. I long to win, by this sermon, some outrageous enemy of God--
   that he may become a fervent friend of Jesus. You are as black as a
   crow, and almost as bad as the devil--therefore I long to see you
   converted at once, to become a leader in the Church of God.

   Oh, for a batch of great saints made out of great sinners! Oh, that
   your energy, now used to fight against God, may be subdued by Sovereign
   Grace and employed in defending and spreading the Gospel of Jesus!
   Shall it be so, my Friend? Oh, that some woman that is a sinner would
   come and wash our Lord's feet with tears and wipe them with the hairs
   of her head! Come, you with long hair, unbind your tresses and honor
   them by this service. If they have been a net in which to entangle
   precious lives, make them a towel for your Savior's feet.

   Come, Sinners, come to Him who loves you! Bring them, O Lord! Hear us,
   O Jehovah, as we entreat You to save them by the blood of Your Beloved
   Son! Hear us now, we beseech You and save myriads! Amen and Amen and
   Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

Consolation From Resurrection

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 30, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them
   from death: O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your
   destruction: repentance shall be hid from My eyes." Hosea 13:14.

   This verse stands in the midst of a long line of threats. Like a rock
   of mercy, it rises in the midst of a sea of wrath. Hence many critics
   have felt bound to see in it a continuation of threat. I am quite
   content to accept the united authority of the Authorized and the
   Revised Versions, and to believe that the mind of the Holy Spirit is
   fairly expressed in the grand old Bible of our fathers. I regard our
   text as a promise overflowing with delight.

   While it does stand as a rock apart, this gracious Word is far from
   being the only one in the book of the Prophet Ho-sea. In the torrent
   bed of this Prophet's denunciations we find dust of the gold of
   promise. Hosea, in his style is jerky and abrupt--he says exactly what
   you do not think he is going to say. The Holy Spirit, speaking through
   him, interjects promises in the midst of threats, in wrath remembering
   mercy. If any should think that this passage is exceptional, let them
   read the rest of Hosea's prophecy. Let them pause for a minute over the
   eleventh chapter, resting at the eighth verse--

   "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." Where was ever greater tenderness
   than this? When you get to the twelfth chapter, at the ninth verse, a
   still small voice is heard in the midst of the thunder--"I that am the
   Lord your God from the land of Egypt will yet make you to dwell in
   tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn

   feast."

   The fourteenth chapter is all of love and mercy--"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 iniquity and
   receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips." Hear
   the gracious Word, verse four--"I will heal their backsliding, I will
   love them freely: for My anger is turned away from him." So that our
   text, in its Christian interpretation, is not contrary to the general
   method of this prophecy. To find it here is very surprising. But it is
   after the manner of the Holy Spirit, when speaking by the Prophet
   Hosea.

   Israel was coming to its very worst. The people were to be carried to
   Babylon and from there to be scattered to the ends of the earth. Yet
   the Lord, in His great love, lets them know that this was not to be a
   final and entire destruction. He would not utterly cast away the people
   whom He did foreknow, nor allow death to hold them in bondage forever.
   He would open their graves and bring them out and make them to know
   Jehovah. Therefore, He drops in this Word of promise when it was least
   expected.

   I. I shall ask you this morning, first, to CONSIDER THE FACT WHICH IS
   HERE USED AS A FIGURE. The resurrection of the dead is here employed as
   a figure of that which the Lord was about to do for His people. At one
   time salvation from sin is called a creation and creation is a fact.
   Here it is resurrection from the dead and that also is sure to be
   accomplished in due time--we have the first fruits of it already.
   Brethren, there will be a special resurrection for those who are in
   Christ Jesus. "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the
   just and unjust."

   But for the members of the body of Christ there is a resurrection from
   among the dead. These are the many that sleep in the dust of the earth
   who shall awake to everlasting life (Daniel 12:2). They rise because
   they are one with Christ in His resurrection. His resurrection is the
   proof and the guarantee that they also shall rise in the day of His
   appearing. "If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. But
   the Spirit is life because of righteousness" (Rom. 8:10). Their bodies,
   which were redeemed as truly as their souls, is left during this life
   under mortgage to nature.

   Therefore they suffer pain and weakness and ultimate death and
   decay--but their bodies, I say, being a part of the purchase of the
   precious blood, shall be raised again from the dead. That which is sown
   in weakness shall be raised in power. That which is covered with
   dishonor by the very fact of death and decay shall be raised in
   splendor, made like unto the glorious body of Christ. This is no poetic
   fiction but a literal matter of fact, even as was the resurrection of
   the Lord Jesus. We hear our Redeemer say, "Your brother shall rise
   again," and we accept it literally. Our dear ones whom we have laid in
   the grave shall come again from the land of the enemy. Concerning
   ourselves, also, we believe, as we just sang--

   "Sweet Truth to me, I shall arise, And with these eyes My Savior see."

   We accept the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as the
   Revelation of Christianity. The immortality of the soul was seen before
   the appearing of our Lord in a dim and cloudy manner. But the
   resurrection of the dead was not discoverable by the light of nature
   and when it was at first preached, men called the preacher a "babbler."
   They could not understand that such a thing could be. The philosophy of
   human nature rejected the resurrection, and rejects it still. Only by
   the Revelation of Christ do we know that the dead shall rise again.

   This resurrection is connected with redemption--"I will ransom them
   from the power of the grave." A ransom is the paying of a price for
   something. There was a price paid for us, to deliver us from the death
   which is the desert of sin. You know who paid it and how He paid it.
   Remember how He opened wide His hands and poured forth more than gold.
   Remember how His side was pierced by the spear, that the deep mines of
   His life--wealth--might be emptied out for us. Jesus our Lord has paid
   the ransom price.

   Now are we "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
   body" (Rom. 8:23). Another word is used in the parallel sentence of our
   text--"I will redeem them from death." It refers to the redemption of
   an inheritance by the next-of-kin. "I know that my Redeemer lives" is
   the ground of Job's confidence as to his resurrection and
   justification. My next-of-kin, to whom the right of redemption belonged
   in equity, has stepped in and has fully redeemed both my soul and my
   body. What a blessed Truth of God is this, that the ransom of the body
   is paid so that this corruptible must put on incorruption and this
   mortal must put on immortality!

   Though the body remains for a while subject to vanity, yet the term of
   this subjection will soon run out, the ransom being already paid.
   Regeneration has liberated the soul and resurrection will do the like
   for the body before long. The margin has it, "I will ransom them from
   the hand of the grave: I will redeem them from death." O Beloved, we
   come into the grave's hand, as it were, and firm is the grip of the
   sepulcher. But our God says, "I will redeem them from the hand of the
   grave." The grave holds the bones of the saints as with the grasp of an
   iron hand. But the redemption of our Lord Jesus will open the giant
   fist and set the prisoners free. Glory be to God for the sure hope of
   resurrection!

   No mass of stone, nor superincumbent clay shall keep down these bodies
   of ours when our Savior's angels shall "their golden trumpets sound."
   Beloved, there remains nothing due upon the estate of our bodies for
   which they can be detained in the dust when the Lord Jesus comes to
   awaken them from their long sleep. They shall freely rise to be
   reunited with the disembodied but happy spirits to which they belong.
   We look for a resurrection from among the dead. "But the rest of the
   dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is
   the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that has part in the
   first resurrection: on such the second death has no power" (Rev. 20:5,
   6).

   This, according to our text, is worked entirely by Divine power. It
   must be so. For how could the dead contribute to their own lives? How
   can bodies which have been dissolved in the sepulcher reconstruct
   themselves? Here you have in the text the Divine Personality asserting
   itself four times--"I will ransom them," "I will redeem them." "O
   death, I will be your plagues." "O grave, I will be your destruction."
   Here we have "I will" four times. Who but He that made can remake? But
   all things are possible to the Creator. We have heard many objections
   raised to the doctrine of the resurrection. Let them object as long as
   they please.

   Grant us a God and nothing is impossible or even difficult. With a God
   who can work miracles nothing becomes incredible. Whatsoever the
   eternal God decrees concerning the resurrection of His elect He will
   readily accomplish. For He is abundantly sufficient for it. What a
   triumph will the resurrection be for the Lord God! He has been pleased
   to give the special honor of it to His own dear Son. By the risen
   Christ we shall be raised again from the dead. We shall sing hallelu-

   jahs to Him that was slain. He by death has destroyed death and by His
   resurrection has torn away the gates of the grave. This is our Lord's
   doings and we adore Him because of it.

   Observe, next, that by the resurrection, death itself is transformed
   and totally overcome. He says, "O death, I will be your plagues," as if
   death were personified and then itself plagued--its own arrows of
   pestilence being shot into itself. Beloved, death no longer kills but
   rather admits to a larger life. It no more destroys but rather it
   perfects--I mean not of itself but through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is
   no longer death to die. It is no longer punishment to the Believer but
   a dismissal from banishment.

   You that are in your sins will die in your sins, and to you, death is
   death, indeed. But to the child of God, death is so altered that he who
   has the power of death, that is, the devil, is sore vexed. He is
   plagued by seeing the joy with which the Believer dies. It is a grand
   thing to see a man dying full of life--the river of his mortal life
   comes to an end but only by widening into the ocean of the Glory-life
   above. Satan gloated over the mischief which he had worked by death.
   But lo, it is through death that Jesus has destroyed him and delivered
   His people.

   God makes His dying people to be like the sun, which never seems so
   large as when it sets. All the glories of midday are eclipsed by the
   marvels of sunset. Watch the west! See how the clouds are mountains of
   gold and the skies are seas of fire. All the tapestries of Heaven are
   hung out to welcome the returning hero of the day to its rest beyond
   the western sea. So does the dying saint light up his dying chamber
   with heavenly splendor as he sets upon this world to shine in another.
   Thus the Lord plagues death, leaving the monster powerless to harm or
   even terrify the Believer.

   As for the sepulcher, it is destroyed. "O grave, I will be your
   destruction." No grave shall detain one of the redeemed. The tomb is--

   "No more a morgue, to fence The relics of lost innocence; A place of
   ruin and decay The imprisoning stone is rolled away." The grave is our
   bedchamber, which our Lord Himself has furnished for us by leaving in
   it His own grave clothes. It is a retiring-room whose odor is most
   sweet to love. For--

   "There the dear flesh of Jesus lay, And left a blessed perfume."

   Death, you are not death! Grave, you are no grave! The names remain,
   but the nature of the things has altered altogether.

   To close this first subject--this resurrection will abolish death and
   every possibility of it in the future. I notice that certain persons,
   in their anxiety to suck the meaning out of the word "everlasting," so
   as to avoid everlasting punishment, have questioned the everlasting
   nature of Heaven. They have even gone the length of hinting that they
   are not quite clear that if Believers get to Heaven they will always
   remain there. Yes, and this is what it comes to. Nothing is safe from
   these revolutionists. They would tear away every Covenant blessing from
   the children of God in their zeal to make the punishment of sin a
   trifle.

   To do honor to their own intellect, they would sacrifice the eternal
   blessedness of those washed by the blood of Christ! But it is not so.
   Jesus has said--"Because I live, you shall live also." As long as
   Christ lives we must live--as long as Christ is in Heaven we must be
   with Him where He is, to behold His Glory. So long as God is God His
   children, partakers of the Divine nature, must live forever and be
   forever blessed. Raised from the dead and taken up to Christ's right
   hand we shall henceforth fear no second death. When sun and moon grow
   dim with age and earth's blue skies are rolled up like a worn-out
   vesture, we shall enjoy an age like the years of God's right hand, like
   His own eternity. The great I AM shall be the bliss of every soul whom
   Christ has redeemed from the grave and this shall know no end.

   To this the Lord sets His seal. Do you want to see the red wax and the
   Divine impression on it? Look at the close of the text, "Repentance
   shall be hid from My eyes." There does Jehovah declare His unalterable
   decree--it must and shall be even so. That His saints shall rise from
   the dead is the immutable decree of God. In all this, let us rejoice.
   Our future is bright with glory. These things are revealed to faith but
   they are not to be seen of the eye, nor even conceived in the heart,
   nor pictured by the imagination--

   "I know not, oh,

   I know not, what joys await us there!

   What radiance of glory! What bliss beyond compare!"

   This much, however, we do know, that there is to be a rising for us,
   even as our Lord has risen and we shall be satisfied when we awake in
   His likeness. Constantly in Scripture is this resurrection used as the
   figure of God's delivering and blessing His people. And especially as
   the figure of regeneration or the giving of a new and spiritual life to
   those who were by nature dead in trespasses and sins. I intend to use
   it so in our next line of thought.

   II. In the second place, IN THESE WORDS LIE AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO LOOK
   FOR DELIVERANCE OUT OF GREAT TROUBLES. The encouragement comes in this
   way--God, who will surely raise His people from the dead by His own
   power, can and will as surely raise them from every kind of trouble and
   apparent destruction. If there can be any comparison of ease with
   omnipotence, it must be easier to raise Job from his dunghill, than to
   raise Job from his grave. If God, therefore, shall restore us from the
   sepulcher, He can certainly restore us from sickness, from poverty,
   from slander, from depression of spirit, from despair. That is
   clear--who shall doubt it?

   God will delight to work the work of our deliverance. If He takes
   pleasure in raising a dead body, He will assuredly take pleasure in
   raising from their distresses those in whom He delights. The Lord
   rejoices in our joy. He does not afflict willingly but He blesses us
   joyfully. Therefore, we may rest assured that He will turn again, and
   have compassion, and raise us up from our despondency.

   The ends and designs for which the Lord afflicts us are very gracious
   and we may expect that He will end the affliction when those designs
   are accomplished. When the Lord puts us into the furnace it is to
   refine us. And as soon as the dross is consumed He will bring forth the
   pure gold. He puts us under chastisement for our profit. And when that
   profit is accomplished, He will break the rod. We may assuredly expect
   that He who brings up dead bodies from the grave will bring His
   distressed people up from their troubles, when those troubles have
   worked their lasting good.

   And now, to come to the text, we must traverse the same ground
   again--this deliverance comes through redemption. Beloved, He that
   redeemed Israel from all iniquity will also redeem Israel from all his
   troubles. That redemption price of the Lord covers every necessity of
   His people and supplies every mercy that they will need between here
   and Heaven. Do not, therefore, doubt or despair, because your troubles
   seem as if they would slay you, for the Angel who has redeemed your
   body from death will redeem you from all evil. He that will bring your
   body from the grave will love you up from the pit of trouble, even when
   you are ready to perish.

   Redemption covers all and secures from every danger. He that died for
   you, lives for you and cares for you. You shall be supplied, not only
   with Divine Grace and glory but with food and raiment. "Your bread
   shall be given you; your waters shall be sure." Oh, rest in the Lord;
   especially confide in the redemption of Jesus. Let the precious blood
   speak peace to you. For if He has bought your soul, He has bought all
   that goes with it and all that is needed for this life as well as the
   next. As well our temporal as our eternal concerns come under the
   protection of the blood, The Paschal lamb, whose sprinkled blood
   shielded the house wherein the Israelite was sheltered, also became to
   him food for his journey. He who provides Heaven will provide all
   necessaries on the road there.

   This deliverance will also be God's work. I have shown you that it was
   so in resurrection, concerning which the great "I will" is so prominent
   in the text. Now, if you are in great trouble, do not run to friends
   and acquaintances, nor reckon up your own strength--but make direct
   resort to God who quickens the dead. He that brought again from the
   dead our Lord Jesus is He that can and will deliver you. He will raise
   up your mortal body without the help of man or of angel. And He can,
   apart from created strength, upraise you from your present woe. He is
   the God of salvation and unto Him belong the issues from death. His
   name is Shaddai--God All-Sufficient--trust Him fully.

   When He made the heavens, who was there to help Him? What aid does He
   need in rescuing His servants? Oh, learn to wait only upon the Lord! Do
   not think that I am talking mere words. No--trust in God must be real
   and practical and it must be simple and unmixed. "My Soul, wait only
   upon God. For my expectation is from Him." Oh, how sweet it is to rest
   on God's bare arm! Long have I known what it is to trust in God and at
   the same time to repose on the help of many friends. But now I know
   what it is to rest in Him unmoved when forsaken of many. I cling to
   that dear arm and find it all the help I need.

   And now I will henceforth abide in my confidence in that lone arm. And
   should deserters all return and ten thousand friends rally to my side,
   I will not spare them a particle of my reliance but still cry, "My
   Soul, wait only upon God." Be-

   hold the great hero of the conflict with the powers of darkness treads
   the winepress alone and of the people there is none with Him--let us
   associate none with Him in our faith. If you rest on God, alone, as the
   Rock of your salvation, you need never fear. Often does the Lord
   afflict us to this end, even as Paul says, "But we had the sentence of
   death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God
   which raises the dead."

   When the Lord delivers His people, His work is singularly complete, for
   He triumphantly turns evil into good. We shall yet exult over that
   which now casts us down. That which threatened to kill us shall
   increase our life and we shall hear our Lord say to it, "O death, I
   will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction." He will
   turn mourning into dancing, loss into gain, sorrows into joys. He will
   enrich you by your impoverishment. He will make you strong out of
   weakness. He will give you health by means of sickness. And fullness by
   emptying you.

   Does the Adversary threaten to destroy you? You shall be more than a
   conqueror. Are you led away in bonds? You shall lead your captivity
   captive. Those who seek your ruin will unconsciously be doing the best
   thing that could be done for you. Their malice shall bruise your spices
   and cause their aroma to flow out. He that by shameful death wins
   greater glory, shall by your afflictions increase your greatness and
   comfort you on every side. The Lord will not only prevent the powers of
   evil from doing you harm but He will cause you to damage their empire
   by your patience. You shall be the plague of Satan and the destroyer of
   his strongholds. That which seemed to be the death and burial of your
   hope shall be the overthrow of your fears.

   The Lord will do this so completely that He will make you sing
   concerning it. In the book of Hosea the Lord declared a fact in plain
   language. But when the work was done, the Lord, by His servant Paul,
   made it into a song for His chosen in that famous chapter of the
   Corinthians--"O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your
   victory?" Let us catch the spirit of this lyric and translate it thus!
   "O poverty, where is your penury? O sickness, where is your misery? O
   weakness, where is your loss? O slander, where is your sting?" We shall
   before long look back upon all our afflictions with gladness and bless
   the Lord for them as for our chief blessings.

   We may yet feel like that great saint who, when he recovered from
   sickness, cried, "Take me back to my sick bed again, for there have I
   enjoyed such fellowship with Christ as I never knew before." We may yet
   have to say, as certain saints of the Church of Scotland said, "Oh,
   that we were meeting among the moors and the hills once more. For never
   had the bride of Christ such fellowship with the Bridegroom as when she
   met Him in secret places." The Lord knows how to lift us high by that
   which cast us low and to make Psalms for our stringed instruments out
   of the dirges which drowned our music. The God of the resurrection has
   delivered, does deliver, and will deliver His people.

   III. Time fails me and therefore I must hurry on, else I had loved to
   linger and expand. SEE HERE A DECLARATION THAT GOD WILL SAVE HIS CHOSEN
   FROM THEIR DEATH IN SIN. He that will raise our bodies from the grave
   will, according to His Everlasting Covenant, raise His chosen from
   their death in sin.

   This must be so. If the Lord did not raise His people's souls from
   their death in sin, a resurrection of their bodies would be a curse
   rather than a blessing. Resurrection will be no benefit to those who
   die unregenerate. My Hearers, you will all rise from the grave. But I
   fear that some of you will rise to shame and everlasting contempt. That
   is an awful passage which I quoted just now from the Book of
   Daniel--think much of it. Therefore since God will not have His people
   rise to shame and everlasting contempt He will make their souls to rise
   first into newness of holy life. This regeneration must come to all of
   you, if you are to be partakers of the glory of Christ hereafter. You
   must be quickened, though you were dead in trespasses and sins. That
   fact suggests a question to each heart--have you received the Divine
   life?

   If you are, indeed, made alive unto God, you will agree with me that
   this resurrection comes to us entirely through redemption. There is no
   quickening a dead soul, except by the process here described--"I will
   ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from
   death." Did the Law of God, when you heard it, ever quicken you? No, it
   slew you. "When the commandment came, sin revived and I died." It made
   your death more apparent to you but it brought you no life. Did the
   eloquence of men, or human persuasion ever raise you from spiritual
   death?

   You listened to it and you listened but you listened in vain. You were
   moved with human affections but these human affections passed away like
   the morning dew. Beloved, life only came to you when you received
   Christ Jesus, your Redeemer. Well do I remember when I first looked
   unto Him and lived! The life and the look came together. There is no
   receiving eternal life apart from believing in Him who is the Life.
   There is no life except by looking unto Jesus. Your up-

   lifted eye must be fixed on the uplifted Savior crucified as the
   redemption of His people--life only comes to us through His redeeming
   death.

   God Himself only makes us live by Christ Jesus. He is the Life. You
   cannot yourself create life. Nor can you renew it, except by coming to
   your Lord's dear wounds again. Oh, that we could dwell on Calvary! Oh,
   that we never turned our eyes away from the Cross! Let me be crucified
   with Christ so as never to part from perpetual, conscious union with
   Him. In Him we died unto sin, in Him we were redeemed from death and
   the curse and in Him we live forever. Our resurrection from spiritual
   death is always connected with the precious blood once shed for many
   for the remission of sins.

   You will follow me in this also--quickening is always the Lord's work.
   Here He may repeat the "I will" of the text all the four times. We
   spoke of resurrection as solely the work of God--so must the
   implantation of spiritual life be the work of the Spirit of God and of
   Him alone. Never let us dream that we can make ourselves alive unto God
   or that we can quicken our unconverted friends. You could not make the
   simplest insect--how could you make a new heart and a right spirit?
   This is the finger of God--no, this needs the arm of God, as it is
   written--"to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" The full power of
   God is needed to beget faith's life within the soul of man.

   Further, keep up the parallel between regeneration and resurrection as
   seen in the text and notice that whenever the Lord raises His dear ones
   from the dead and makes them live, it is a great plague to death. He
   that has the power of death must often be grievously annoyed when he
   sees a dead sinner begin to live unto God. "I did reckon on him," says
   he. "I wrapped him up in the cerements of drunkenness, I shut him up in
   the dark sepulcher of ignorance. And yet he is alive!" "I did reckon on
   the debauched man," says he, "I saw him rotting in lasciviousness. He
   was so far gone in lust that he was given over by his friends. But my
   great enemy, Jesus Christ, has come here and made even the corrupt to
   live!"

   Again and again the Adversary has to feel that Christ is his plague and
   that He will be his destruction. When Jesus raises men from the dead He
   shows who is Master and makes the Adversary know that his dominion is
   soon to fall. As in his lifetime on earth the Lord overcame both the
   devil and death by a word, even so it is now and His name is thereby
   greatly glorified. Those who are made alive, how greatly do they plague
   the enemy of souls when they begin to talk aloud of Free Grace and
   dying love? When black sinners show themselves washed in the blood of
   the lamb, when lips that used to curse, begin to sing hallelujahs and
   tongues that talked infidelity, begin to proclaim the testimony of the
   true faith, how the Prince of Darkness is afflicted! How the sepulchers
   of sin are destroyed!

   Right well does the poet say--

   "Satan rages at his loss, And hates the doctrine of the Cross." This
   work once done is an abiding work. I point again to the seal at the
   bottom of the text. "Repentance shall be hid from My eyes." God
   resolves that they shall live for He has redeemed them and His
   redemption price is too precious to be wasted. He has ransomed them
   from the grave and they shall never return to their grim prison again.
   They shall live to plague Satan but they shall not live to be overcome
   by him. What the Lord has done He will not suffer sin, death or Hell to
   undo. Nothing shall lead Him to repent of His design, or turn from the
   purpose of His heart.

   Jesus lifts His hand and says, "I give unto My sheep eternal life. And
   they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My
   hand." Man's work is superficial and therefore soon disappears. All
   that nature spins, nature un-ravels--all that is woven in the loom of
   human excitement will be rent to pieces by the hand of time and trial.
   But surely I know that what God does He does forever and it stands fast
   without a change. Oh, that He would this morning come and quicken dead
   souls! Pray, dear Brothers and Sisters, that it may be so!

   The Lord will do as He wills. Does He not say, "I will have compassion
   upon whom I will have compassion"? Oh, that He would have compassion on
   this great congregation at this moment and give them life! We heard the
   cry of human weakness just now when our sister was taken in a fit. I
   doubt not that our Lord heard it, too, and pitied the bodily
   infirmity--how much more will He hear the voice of our spiritual need
   and have pity upon our death in sin!

   IV. What little time you can yet afford me, I will use in stating THAT
   HERE WE HAVE AN ASSURANCE THAT

   THE LORD CAN DELIVER FROM ANY OTHER FORM OF DEATH. I ask you now to
   think of a few matters very briefly.

   The Jews--as an organized nationality are dead. They are a people
   scattered and divided under the whole Heaven. Truly might they say, as
   in the Prophet Ezekiel, "Our bones are dried and our hope is lost: we
   are cut off for our parts."

   We have no instance in history of a nation dying and coming to life
   again. Assyria, Babylon, these had their day and they failed and passed
   away. Where are they now? Can these empires live again? Persia, Greece,
   Rome--these vast dominions died morally and then they ceased to be a
   living power. Can they ever be restored? Impossible.

   But because her God lives, Israel can never die. Israel will be a
   nation, yet again, and a glorious one. Restored to her own land and
   rejoicing in her own Messiah, who is "the glory of His people Israel,"
   it shall be seen that the Lord has not cast off His people. It seems
   impossible. Our missions are, to a large extent, a failure. They become
   the ridicule of the ungodly because so little success attends them. Yet
   shall all Israel be saved. Shall not their restoration be as life from
   the dead? It shall. And because it will be like life from the dead, He
   that will raise dead bodies will raise poor Israel yet. The seed of
   faithful Abraham, who believed God that He could raise up Isaac from
   the dead, shall be raised out of their low estate. A nation of priests
   shall they be unto Him who of old made them the keepers of His oracles.
   O lovers of the seed of Abraham, be comforted concerning them.

   In the next place, suppose the Church at large should decline to a
   spiritual death--and I am sure it does so just now--what then? The
   faults which are now so apparent may only be the beginning of worse
   evils. Brethren are prophesying that the Jesuits will ruin us and
   others that Rationalism will eat out the heart of the Church. I think
   both these sets of prophets have a good deal to say for themselves. The
   signs of the times are much with them. But suppose error should become
   rampant in all our Churches, as it may. Suppose those who bear
   testimony should grow fewer and their voices should be less and less
   regarded, as they may be.

   Suppose at last the true Church of Christ should scarcely be
   discoverable and that men should bury it and dance a courtly dance upon
   its grave and say, "We have done with these believers in atonement. We
   have done with these troublesome evangelical doctrines." What then? The
   Truth will rise again. The eternal Gospel will burst her sepulcher.
   "Vain the watch, the stone, the seal." Let us take comfort in the fact
   that God, who will raise the dead, will also raise up buried Truth and
   incarnate it again in a living Church, even though the world should
   exult that both doctrine and Church are down among the dead.

   Some of you, perhaps, from the country, may happen to belong to
   Churches which have come near to death's door. That which is true of
   the Church at large is true of any individual Church. Have faith in
   God. He can trim the expiring lamp. Even to Laodicea, which He spewed
   out of His mouth, the Lord came, knocking at the door. They talk about
   shutting the doors of the Chapel. Has it come to that? Prayer Meetings,
   are they given up? Gospel preaching, have you almost forgotten the
   joyful sound? The Sunday school, has that become a farce? Does
   everything seem dead? Cry to the living God. Do not say to yourself,
   "Can these dry bones live?" They can, if the living God intervenes.

   God, who made Ezekiel see the dry bones stand up as a great army, can
   make you see it. Be of good confidence. Have hope for Zion, for the
   Lord will restore her in answer to your cries. Take pleasure in her
   stones and favor her dust, for the time to favor her, yes, the set time
   has come. "When the Lord shall build up Zion He will appear in His
   Glory." Suppose I am now speaking to some child of God, who says, "I
   can believe all this. But, alas, I feel dead myself." We do sometimes
   faint and are full of fears and cry, "Will the Lord cast us off
   forever? And will He be favorable no more?" We trust we do really love
   the Lord. But we get very dull at times and cry out--

   "Dear Lord and shall we always live At this poor, dying rate-- Our love
   so faint, so cold to You, And Yours to us so great?"

   We feel as if we could not pray. There is no singing in us. And we feel
   as if we could not feel. At times we are so dull and stupid that we
   cannot think ourselves to be enlightened of the Lord at all. For my own
   part, "I am more brutish than any man" at times, in my own esteem.

   Be our case as it may, let not faith waver because feelings change.
   When you are down in the dumps remember that as the Lord will raise
   your dead body He can certainly revive your fainting heart. Trust in
   Him to restore your soul. This very morning, I hope, is ordained to be
   a resurrection morning to you. Before you leave this House of Prayer I
   hope the silver trumpet of the Gospel will be heard like the trumpet of
   the resurrection and you will say to yourself, "I will leave my grave,
   for I live unto God." By God's Grace, leave the vaults and come into
   the upper air of trust and thanksgiving.

   A man, finding himself imbedded in the snow, discovered, to his horror,
   that he could not move his feet, for they were frozen. Nor his hands,
   for they were stiff with cold. He would have given himself up,
   therefore, as certainly doomed

   to die, but he found that he could speak and here was hope. His tongue
   was not frozen so he began to call aloud. And he did not call long
   before helpers came and dug him out and thawed him back to life. If you
   cannot do anything else, my dear Friend, do cry aloud. Cry, "O God,
   help me! O Lord quicken me!"

   Do any of you say, "Well, I never get into so sad a state. I am always
   lively"? I am very glad to hear it, if it is true. But I have heard
   that the statues in St. Paul's Cathedral are never afflicted with
   rheumatism. And the reason is because they have no life. I am just a
   little afraid that you also may have no changes and no fears because
   you have no spiritual life. God knows whether it is so or not. Look to
   it. I would sooner have the rheumatism and be alive than be without
   pain and be a statue. The most painful life is preferable to the
   stillest death.

   But O you dying saints of God--you poor, fainting, perishing
   Believers--take hope this morning, for the Holy Spirit will revive you,
   even as Jesus says, "He that lives and believes in Me, though he were
   dead, yet shall he live."

   Lastly, let us have that same hope about our unconverted friends. We
   want to see them born again during this week of special services. Let
   us begin by knowing what they are and what is their condition. Do not
   say, "I hope my boy will be saved, because I do not see much evil in
   him." Your boy is as spiritually dead by nature as anybody else's boy.
   "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." And however good your flesh
   may be, it is only flesh and only flesh has come of it.

   I beg you to regard every soul that is not begotten unto God as being
   dead in sin, else you will not go to the bottom of things and you will
   not go the right way to work. Next, go to the Lord and Giver of life
   and say, "Lord, I cannot make this dear child live. I cannot bring my
   unconverted husband to You. I will do all I can by teaching, persuasion
   and example. But O my Lord, I look to You to give the spark of Divine
   life."

   Go to God with your anxiety for dead souls and cry, "Lord, quicken
   them!" In dependence upon the Spirit of God, preach the Gospel which is
   the vehicle of Divine life and you shall see them live. Have faith
   about those who are laid on your heart. God grant your faith a full and
   speedy reward, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                 No Compromise

   A Sermon

   (No. 2047)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, October 7th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [8]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be
   willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again
   unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him,
   Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again. The LORD God of
   heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my
   kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto
   thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee,
   and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman
   will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this
   my oath: only bring not my son thither again."'Genesis 24:5-8.

   Genesis is both the book of beginnings and the book of dispensations.
   You know what use Paul makes of Sarah and Hagar, of Esau and Jacob, and
   the like. Genesis is, all through, a book instructing the reader in the
   dispensations of God towards man. Paul saith, in a certain place,
   "which things are an allegory," by which he did not mean that they were
   not literal facts, but that, being literal facts, they might also be
   used instructively as an allegory. So may I say of this chapter. It
   records what actually was said and done; but at the same time, it bears
   within it allegorical instruction with regard to heavenly things. The
   true minister of Christ is like this Eleazar of Damascus; he is sent to
   find a wife for his Master's son. His great desire is, that many shall
   be presented unto Christ in the day of his appearing, as the bride, the
   Lamb's wife.

   The faithful servant of Abraham, before he started, communed with his
   master; and this is a lesson to us, who go on our Lord's errands. Let
   us, before we engage in actual service, see the Master's face, talk
   with him, and tell to him any difficulties which occur to our minds.
   Before we get to work, let us know what we are at, and on what footing
   we stand. Let us hear from our Lord's own mouth what he expects us to
   do, and how far he will help us in the doing of it. I charge you, my
   fellow-servants, never to go forth to plead with men for God until you
   have first pleaded with God for men. Do not attempt to deliver a
   message which you have not first of all yourself received by his Holy
   Spirit. Come out of the chamber of fellowship with God into the pulpit
   of ministry among men, and there will be a freshness and a power about
   you which none shall be able to resist. Abraham's servant spoke and
   acted as one who felt bound to do exactly what his master bade him, and
   to say what his master told him; hence his one anxiety was to know the
   essence and measure of his commission. During his converse with his
   master he mentioned one little point about which there might be a
   hitch; and his master soon removed the difficulty from his mind. It is
   about that hitch, which has occurred lately on a very large scale, and
   has upset a good many of my Master's servants, that I am going to speak
   this morning: may God grant that it may be to the benefit of his church
   at large!

   I. Beginning our sermon, we will ask you, first, to THINK OF THE
   SERVANT'S JOYFUL BUT WEIGHTY ERRAND. It was a joyful errand: the bells
   of marriage were ringing around him. The marriage of the heir should be
   a joyful event. It was an honourable thing for the servant to be
   entrusted with the finding of a wife for his master's son. Yet it was
   every way a most responsible business, by no means easy of
   accomplishment. Blunders might very readily occur before he was aware
   of it; and he needed to have all his wits about him, and something more
   than his wits, too, for so delicate a matter. He had to journey far,
   over lands without track or road; he had to seek out a family which he
   did not know, and to find out of that family a woman whom he did not
   know, who nevertheless should be the right person to be the wife of his
   master's son: all this was a great service.

   The work this man undertook was a business upon which his master's
   heart was set. Isaac was now forty years old, and had shown no sign of
   marrying. He was of a quiet, gentle spirit, and needed a more active
   spirit to urge him on. The death of Sarah had deprived him of the
   solace of his life, which he had found in his mother, and had, no
   doubt, made him desire tender companionship. Abraham himself was old,
   and well stricken in years; and he very naturally wished to see the
   promise beginning to be fulfilled, that in Isaac should his seed be
   called. Therefore, with great anxiety, which is indicated by his making
   his servant swear an oath of a most solemn kind, he gave him the
   commission to go to the old family abode in Mesopotamia, and seek for
   Isaac a bride from thence. Although that family was not all that could
   be desired, yet it was the best he knew of; and as some heavenly light
   lingered there, he hoped to find in that place the best wife for his
   son. The business was, however, a serious one which he committed to his
   servant. My brethren, this is nothing compared with the weight which
   hangs on the true minister of Christ. All the Great Father's heart is
   set on giving to Christ a church which shall be his beloved for ever.
   Jesus must not be alone: his church must be his dear companion. The
   Father would find a bride for the great Bridegroom, a recompense for
   the Redeemer, a solace for the Saviour: therefore he lays it upon all
   whom he calls to tell out the gospel, that we should seek souls for
   Jesus, and never rest till hearts are wedded to the Son of God. Oh, for
   grace to carry out this commission!

   This message was the more weighty because of the person for whom the
   spouse was sought. Isaac was an extraordinary personage; indeed, to the
   servant he was unique. He was a man born according to promise, not
   after the flesh, but by the power of God; and you know how in Christ,
   and in all that are one with Christ, the life comes by the promise and
   the power of God, and springeth not of man. Isaac was himself the
   fulfillment of promise, and the heir of the promise. Infinitely
   glorious is our Lord Jesus as the Son of man! Who shall declare his
   generation? Where shall be found a helpmeet for him? a soul fit to be
   espoused unto him? Isaac had been sacrificed; he had been laid upon the
   altar, and although he did not actually die, his father's hand had
   unsheathed the knife wherewith to slay him. Abraham in spirit had
   offered up his son; and you know who he is of whom we preach, and for
   whom we preach, even Jesus, who has laid down his life a sacrifice for
   sinners. He has been presented as a whole burnt-offering unto God. Oh!
   by the wounds, and by the bloody sweat, I ask you where shall we find a
   heart fit to be wedded to him? How shall we find men and women who can
   worthily recompense love so amazing, so divine, as that of him who died
   the death of the cross? Isaac had also been, in a figure, raised from
   the dead. To his father he was "as good as dead," as said the apostle;
   and he was given back to him from the dead. But our blessed Lord has
   actually risen from an actual death, and stands before us this day as
   the Conqueror of death, and the Spoiler of the grave. Who shall be
   joined to this Conqueror? Who is fit to dwell in glory with this
   glorious One? One would have thought that every heart would aspire to
   such happiness, and leap in prospect of such peerless honour, and that
   none would shrink back except through a sense of great unworthiness.
   Alas! it is not so, though so it ought to be.

   What a weighty errand have we to fulfil to find those who shall be
   linked for ever in holy union with the Heir of the promise, even the
   sacrificed and risen One! Isaac was everything to Abraham. Abraham
   would have said to Isaac, "All that I have is thine." So is it true of
   our blessed Lord, whom he hath made Heir of all things; by whom also he
   made the worlds, that "it pleased the Father that in him should all
   fulness dwell." What a dignity will be put upon any of you who are
   married to Christ! To what a height of eminence will you be uplifted by
   becoming one with Jesus! O preacher, what a work hast thou to do
   to-day, to find out those to whom thou shalt give the bracelet, and
   upon whose face thou shalt hang the jewel! To whom shall I say, "Wilt
   thou give thy heart to my Lord! Wilt thou have Jesus to be thy
   confidence, thy salvation, thine all in all? Art thou willing to become
   his that he may be thine?"

   Said I not truly that it was a joyful, but a weighty errand, when you
   think what she must be to whom his master's son should be espoused? She
   must, at least, be willing and beautiful. In the day of God's power,
   hearts are made willing. There can be no marriage to Jesus without a
   heart of love. Where shall we find this willing heart? Only where the
   grace of God has wrought it. Ah, then, I see how I may find beauty,
   too, among the sons of men! Marred as our nature is by sin, only the
   Holy Spirit can impart that beauty of holiness which will enable the
   Lord Jesus to see comeliness in his chosen. Alas! in our hearts there
   is an aversion to Christ, and an unwillingness to accept of him, and at
   the same time a terrible unfitness and unworthiness! The Spirit of God
   implants a love which is of heavenly origin, and renews the heart by a
   regeneration from above; and then we seek to be one with Jesus, but not
   till then. See, then, how our errand calls for the help of God himself.

   Think what she will become who is to be married to Isaac? She is to be
   his delight; his loving friend and companion. She is to be partner of
   all his wealth; and specially is she to be a partaker in the great
   covenant promise, which was peculiarly entailed upon Abraham and his
   family. When a sinner comes to Christ, what does Christ make of him?
   His delight is in him: he communes with him; he hears his prayer, he
   accepts his praise; he works in him and with him, and glorifies himself
   in him. He makes the believing man joint-heir with himself of all that
   he has, and introduces him into the covenant treasure-house, wherein
   the riches and glory of God are stored up for his chosen. Ah, dear
   friends! it is a very small business in the esteem of some to preach
   the gospel; and yet, if God is with us, ours is more than angels'
   service. In a humble way you are telling of Jesus to your boys and
   girls in your classes; and some will despise you as "only Sunday-school
   teachers"; but your work has a spiritual weight about it unknown to
   conclaves of senators, and absent from the counsels of emperors. Upon
   what you say, death, and hell, and worlds unknown are hanging. You are
   working out the destinies of immortal spirits, turning souls from ruin
   to glory, from sin to holiness.

   "'Tis not a work of small import

   Your loving care demands;

   But what might fill an angel's heart,

   And filled the Saviour's hands."

   In carrying out his commission, this servant must spare no exertion. It
   would be required of him to journey to a great distance, having a
   general indication of direction, but not knowing the way. He must have
   divine guidance and protection. When he reached the place, he must
   exercise great common-sense, and at the same time a trustful dependence
   upon the goodness and wisdom of God. It would be a wonder of wonders if
   he ever met the chosen woman, and only the Lord could bring it to pass.
   He had all the care and the faith required. We have read the story of
   how he journeyed, and prayed, and pleaded. We should have cried, "Who
   is sufficient for these things?" but we see that the Lord Jehovah made
   him sufficient, and his mission was happily carried out. How can we put
   ourselves into the right position to get at sinners, and win them for
   Jesus? How can we learn to speak the right words? How shall we suit our
   teaching to the condition of their hearts? How shall we adapt ourselves
   to their feelings, their prejudices, their sorrows, and their
   temptations? Brethren, we who preach the gospel continually may well
   cry, "If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." To seek
   for pearls at the bottom of the sea is child's play compared with
   seeking for souls in this wicked London. If God be not with us, we may
   look our eyes out, and wear our tongues away in vain. Only as the
   Almighty God shall lead, and guide, and influence, and inspire, can we
   perform our solemn trust; only by divine help shall we joyfully come
   back, bringing with us the chosen of the Lord. We are the Bridegroom's
   friends, and we rejoice greatly in his joy, but we sigh and cry till we
   have found the chosen hearts in whom he will delight, whom he shall
   raise to sit with him upon his throne.

   II. Secondly, I would have you CONSIDER THE REASONABLE FEAR WHICH IS
   MENTIONED. Abraham's servant said, "Peradventure the woman will not be
   willing to follow me unto this land." This is a very serious, grave,
   and common difficulty. If the woman be not willing, nothing can be
   done; force and fraud are out of the question; there must be a true
   will, or there can be no marriage in this instance. Here was the
   difficulty: here was a will to be dealt with. Ah, my brethren! this is
   our difficulty still. Let me describe this difficulty in detail as it
   appeared to the servant, and appears to us.

   She may not believe my report, or be impressed by it. When I come to
   her, and tell her that I am sent by Abraham, she may look me in the
   face, and say, "There be many deceivers nowadays." If I tell her that
   my master's son is surpassingly beautiful and rich, and that he would
   fain take her to himself, she may answer, "Strange tales and romances
   are common in these days; but the prudent do not quit their homes."
   Brethren, in our case this is a sad fact. The great evangelical prophet
   cried of old, "Who hath believed our report?" We also cry in the same
   words. Men care not for the report of God's great love to the
   rebellious sons of men. They do not believe that the infinitely
   glorious Lord is seeking the love of poor, insignificant man, and to
   win it has laid down his life. Calvary, with its wealth of mercy,
   grief, love, and merit, is disregarded. Indeed, we tell a wonderful
   story, and it may well seem too good to be true; but it is sad indeed
   that the multitude of men go their ways after trifles, and count these
   grand realities to be but dreams. I am bowed down with dismay that my
   Lord's great love, which led him even to die for men, should hardly be
   thought worthy of your hearing, much less of your believing. Here is a
   heavenly marriage, and right royal nuptials placed within your reach;
   but with a sneer you turn aside, and prefer the witcheries of sin.

   There was another difficulty: she was expected to feel a love to one
   she had never seen. She had only newly heard that there was such a
   person as Isaac, but yet she must love him enough to leave her kindred,
   and go to a distant land. This could only be because she recognized the
   will of Jehovah in the matter. Ah, my dear hearers! all that we tell
   you is concerning things not seen as yet; and here is our difficulty.
   You have eyes, and you want to see everything; you have hands, and you
   want to handle everything; but there is one whom you cannot see as yet,
   who has won our love because of what we believe concerning him. We can
   truly say of him, "Whom having not seen, we love: in whom, though now
   we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
   of glory." I know that you answer our request thus: "You demand too
   much of us when you ask us to love a Christ we have never seen." I can
   only answer, "It is even so: we do ask more of you than we expect to
   receive." Unless God the Holy Ghost shall work a miracle of grace upon
   your hearts, you will not be persuaded by us to quit your old
   associations, and join yourselves to our beloved Lord. And yet, if you
   did come to him, and love him, he would more than content you; for you
   would find in him rest unto your souls, and a peace which passeth all
   understanding.

   Abraham's servant may have thought: She may refuse to make so great a
   change as to quit Mesopotamia for Canaan. She had been born and bred
   away there in a settled country, and all her associations were with her
   father's house; and to marry Isaac she must tear herself away. So, too,
   you cannot have Jesus, and have the world too: you must break with sin
   to be joined to Jesus. You must come away from the licentious world,
   the fashionable world, the scientific world, and from the (so-called)
   religious world. If you become a Christian, you must quit old habits,
   old motives, old ambitions, old pleasures, old boasts, old modes of
   thought. All things must become new. You must leave the things you have
   loved, and seek many of those things which you have hitherto despised.
   There must come to you as great a change as if you had died, and were
   made over again. You answer, "Must I endure all this for One whom I
   have never seen, and for an inheritance on which I have never set my
   foot?" It is even so. Although I am grieved that you turn away, I am
   not in the least surprised, for it is not given to many to see him who
   is invisible, or to choose the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto
   life. The man or woman who will follow God's messenger to be married to
   so strange a Bridegroom is a rare bird.

   Moreover, it might be a great difficulty to Rebekah, if she had had any
   difficulties at all, to think that she must henceforth lead a pilgrim
   life. She would quit house and farm for tent and gipsy life. Abraham
   and Isaac found no city to dwell in, but wandered from place to place,
   dwelling alone, sojourners with God. Their outward mode of life was
   typical of the way of faith, by which men live in the world, and are
   not of it. To all intents and purposes Abraham and Isaac were out of
   the world, and lived on its surface without lasting connection with it.
   They were the Lord's men, and the Lord was their possession. He set
   himself apart for them, and they were set apart for him. Rebekah might
   well have said, "That will never do for me. I cannot outlaw myself. I
   cannot quit the comforts of a settled abode to ramble over the fields
   wherever the flocks may require me to roam." It does not strike the
   most of mankind that it would be a good thing to be in the world, and
   yet not to be of it. They are no strangers in the world, they long to
   be admitted more fully into its "society." They are not aliens here
   with their treasures in heaven, they long to have a good round sum on
   earth, and find their heaven in enjoying it themselves, and enriching
   their families. Earthworms as they are, the earth contents them. If any
   man becomes unworldly, and makes spiritual things his one object, they
   despise him as a dreamy enthusiast. Many men think that the things of
   religion are merely meant to be read of, and to be preached about; but
   that to live for them would be to spend a dreamy, unpractical
   existence. Yet the spiritual is, after all, the only real: the material
   is in deepest truth the visionary and unsubstantial. Still, when people
   turn away because of the hardness of holy warfare, and the spirituality
   of the believing life, we are not astonished, for we hardly hoped it
   could be otherwise. Unless the Lord renews the heart, men will always
   prefer the bird-in-the-hand of this life to the bird-in-the-bush of the
   life to come.

   Moreover, it might be that the woman might not care for the covenant of
   promise. If she had no regard for Jehovah and his revealed will, she
   was not likely to go with the man, and enter upon marriage with Isaac.
   He was the Heir of the promises, the inheritor of the covenant
   privileges which the Lord by oath had promised. His chosen would become
   the mother of that chosen seed in whom God had ordained to bless the
   world throughout all the ages, even the Messiah, the seed of the woman,
   who should bruise the serpent's head.

   Peradventure the woman might not see the value of the covenant, nor
   appreciate the glory of the promise. The things we have to preach of,
   such as life everlasting, union with Christ, resurrection from the
   dead, reigning with him for ever and ever, seem to the dull hearts of
   men to be as idle tales. Tell them of a high interest for their money,
   of large estates to be had for a venture, or of honours to be readily
   gained, and inventions to be found out, they open all their eyes and
   their ears, for here is something worth knowing; but the things of God,
   eternal, immortal, boundless these are of no importance to them. They
   could not be induced to go from Ur to Canaan for such trifles as
   eternal life, and heaven, and God.

   So you see our difficulty. Many disbelieve altogether, and others cavil
   and object. A greater number will not even listen to our story; and of
   those who do listen, most are careless, and others dally with it, and
   postpone the serious consideration. Alas! we speak to unwilling ears.

   III. In the third place, I would ENLARGE UPON HIS VERY NATURAL
   SUGGESTION. This prudent steward said, "Peradventure the woman will not
   be willing to follow me unto this land: Must I needs bring thy son
   again unto the land from whence thou camest?" If she will not come to
   Isaac, shall Isaac go down to her? This is the suggestion of the
   present hour: if the world will not come to Jesus, shall Jesus tone
   down his teachings to the world? In other words, if the world will not
   rise to the church, shall not the church go down to the world? Instead
   of bidding men to be converted, and come out from among sinners, and be
   separate from them, let us join with the ungodly world, enter into
   union with it, and so pervade it with our influence by allowing it to
   influence us. Let us have a Christian world.

   To this end let us revise our doctrines. Some are old-fashioned, grim,
   severe, unpopular; let us drop them out. Use the old phrases so as to
   please the obstinately orthodox, but give them new meanings so as to
   win philosophical infidels, who are prowling around. Pare off the edges
   of unpleasant truths, and moderate the dogmatic tone of infallible
   revelation: say that Abraham and Moses made mistakes, and that the
   books which have been so long had in reverence are full of errors.
   Undermine the old faith, and bring in the new doubt; for the times are
   altered, and the spirit of the age suggests the abandonment of
   everything that is too severely righteous, and too surely of God.

   The deceitful adulteration of doctrine is attended by a falsification
   of experience. Men are now told that they were born good, or were made
   so by their infant baptism, and so that great sentence, "Ye must be
   born again," is deprived of its force. Repentance is ignored, faith is
   a drug in the market as compared with "honest doubt," and mourning for
   sin and communion with God are dispensed with, to make way for
   entertainments, and Socialism, and politics of varying shades. A new
   creature in Christ Jesus is looked upon as a sour invention of bigoted
   Puritans. It is true, with the same breath they extol Oliver Cromwell;
   but then 1888 is not 1648. What was good and great three hundred years
   ago is mere cant to-day. That is what "modern thought" is telling us;
   and under its guidance all religion is being toned down. Spiritual
   religion is despised, and a fashionable morality is set up in its
   place. Do yourself up tidily on Sunday; behave yourself; and above all,
   believe everything except what you read in the Bible, and you will be
   all right. Be fashionable, and think with those who profess to be
   scientific'this is the first and great commandment of the modern
   school; and the second is like unto it'do not be singular, but be as
   worldly as your neighbours. Thus is Isaac going down into Padan-aram:
   thus is the church going down to the world.

   Men seem to say'It is of no use going on in the old way, fetching out
   one here and another there from the great mass. We want a quicker way.
   To wait till people are born again, and become followers of Christ, is
   a long process: let us abolish the separation between the regenerate
   and unregenerate. Come into the church, all of you, converted or
   unconverted. You have good wishes and good resolutions; that will do:
   don't trouble about more. It is true you do not believe the gospel, but
   neither do we. You believe something or other. Come along; if you do
   not believe anything, no matter; your "honest doubt" is better by far
   than faith. "But," say you, "nobody talks so." Possibly they do not use
   the same words, but this is the real meaning of the present-day
   religion; this is the drift of the times. I can justify the broadest
   statement I have made by the action or by the speech of certain
   ministers, who are treacherously betraying our holy religion under
   pretence of adapting it to this progressive age. The new plan is to
   assimilate the church to the world, and so include a larger area within
   its bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they make houses of prayer to
   approximate to the theatre; they turn their services into musical
   displays, and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical
   essays'in fact, they exchange the temple for the theatre, and turn the
   ministers of God into actors, whose business it is to amuse men. Is it
   not so, that the Lord's-day is becoming more and more a day of
   recreation or of idleness, and the Lord's house either a joss-house
   full of idols, or a political club, where there is more enthusiasm for
   a party than zeal for God? Ah me! the hedges are broken down, the walls
   are levelled, and to many there is henceforth, no church except as a
   portion of the world, no God except as an unknowable force by which the
   laws of nature work.

   This, then, is the proposal. In order to win the world, the Lord Jesus
   must conform himself, his people, and his Word to the world. I will not
   dwell any longer on so loathsome a proposal.

   IV. In the fourth place, NOTICE HIS MASTER'S OUTSPOKEN, BELIEVING
   REPUDIATION OF THE PROPOSAL. He says, shortly and sharply, "Beware thou
   that thou bring not my son thither again." The Lord Jesus Christ heads
   that grand emigration party which has come right out from the world.
   Addressing his disciples, he says, "Ye are not of the world, even as I
   am not of the world." We are not of the world by birth, not of the
   world in life, not of the world in object, not of the world in spirit,
   not of the world in any respect whatever. Jesus, and those who are in
   him, constitute a new race. The proposal to go back to the world is
   abhorrent to our best instincts; yea, deadly to our noblest life. A
   voice from heaven cries, "Bring not my son thither again." Let not the
   people whom the Lord brought up out of Egypt return to the house of
   bondage; but let their children come out, and be separate, and the Lord
   Jehovah will be a Father unto them.

   Notice how Abraham states the question. In effect, he argues it thus:
   this would be to forego the divine order. "For," says Abraham, "the
   Lord God of heaven took me from my father's house, and from the land of
   my kindred." What, then, if he brought Abraham out, is Isaac to return?
   This cannot be. Hitherto the way of God with his church has been to
   sever a people from the world to be his elect'a people formed for
   himself, who shall show forth his praise. Beloved, God's plan is not
   altered. He will still go on calling those whom he did predestinate. Do
   not let us fly in the teeth of that fact, and suppose that we can save
   men on a more wholesale scale by ignoring the distinction between the
   dead in sin and the living in Zion. If God had meant to bless the
   family at Padan-aram by letting his chosen ones dwell among them, why
   did he call Abraham out at all? If Isaac may do good by dwelling there,
   why did Abraham leave? If there is no need of a separate church now,
   what have we been at throughout all these ages? Has the martyr's blood
   been shed out of mere folly? Have confessors and reformers been mad
   when contending for doctrines which, it would seem, are of no great
   account? Brethren, there are two seeds'the seed of the woman, and the
   seed of the serpent'and the difference will be maintained even to the
   end; neither must we ignore the distinction to please men.

   For Isaac to go down to Nahor's house for a wife would be placing God
   second to a wife. Abraham begins at once with a reference to Jehovah,
   "the God of heaven"; for Jehovah was everything to him, and to Isaac
   also. Isaac would never renounce his walk with the living God that he
   might find a wife. Yet this apostasy is common enough nowadays. Men and
   women who profess godliness will quit what they profess to believe in
   order to get richer wives or husbands for themselves or their children.
   This mercenary conduct is without excuse. "Better society" is the
   cry'meaning more wealth and fashion. To the true man God is first'yea,
   all in all; but God is placed at the fag-end, and everything else is
   put before him by the base professor. In the name of God I call upon
   you who are faithful to God and to his truth, to stand fast, whatever
   you lose, and turn not aside, whatever you might gain. Count the
   reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt. We
   want Abraham's spirit within us, and we shall have that when we have
   Abraham's faith.

   Abraham felt that this would be to renounce the covenant promise. See
   how he puts it: "The God that took me from my father's house sware unto
   me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land." Are they, then, to
   leave the land, and go back to the place from which the Lord had called
   them? Brethren, we also are heirs of the promise of things not seen as
   yet. For the sake of this we walk by faith, and hence we become
   separate from those around us. We dwell among men as Abraham dwelt
   among the Canaanites; but we are of a distinct race: we are born with a
   new birth, live under different laws, and act from different motives.
   If we go back to the ways of worldlings, and are numbered with them, we
   have renounced the covenant of our God, the promise is no longer ours,
   and the eternal heritage is in other hands. Do you not know this? The
   moment the church says, "I will be as the world," she has doomed
   herself with the world. When the sons of God saw the daughters of men
   that they were fair, and took them wives of all which they chose, then
   the flood came, and swept them all away. So will it again happen should
   the world take the church into its arms: then shall come some
   overwhelming judgment, and, it may be, a deluge of devouring fire. The
   covenant promise and the covenant heritage are no longer ours if we go
   down to the world and quit our sojourning with the Lord.

   Besides, dear friends, no good can come of trying to conform to the
   world. Suppose the servant's policy could have been adopted, and Isaac
   had gone down to Nahor's house, what would have been the motive? To
   spare Rebekah the pain of separating from her friends and the trouble
   of travelling. If those things could have kept her back, what would she
   have been worth to Isaac? The test of separation was wholesome, and by
   no means ought it to be omitted. She is a poor wife who would not take
   a journey to reach her husband. And all the converts that the church
   will ever make by softening down its doctrine, and by becoming worldly,
   will not be worth one bad farthing a gross. When we get them, the next
   question will be, "How can we get rid of them?" They would be of no
   earthly use to us. It swelled the number of Israelites when they came
   out of Egypt that a great number of the lower order of Egyptians came
   out with them. Yes, but that mixed multitude became the plague of
   Israel in the wilderness, and we read that "the mixt multitude fell a
   lusting." The Israelites were bad enough, but it was the mixed
   multitude that always led the way in murmuring. Why is there such
   spiritual death to-day? Why is false doctrine so rampant in the
   churches? It is because we have ungodly people in the church and in the
   ministry. Eagerness for numbers, and especially eagerness to include
   respectable people, has adulterated many churches, and made them lax in
   doctrine and practice, and fond of silly amusements. These are the
   people who despise a prayer-meeting, but rush to see "living waxworks"
   in their schoolrooms. God save us from converts who are made by
   lowering the standard, and tarnishing the spiritual glory of the
   church! No, no; if Isaac is to have a wife worthy of him, she will come
   away from Laban and the rest, and she will not mind a journey on
   camel-back. True converts are never daunted by truth or holiness'these,
   in fact, are the things which charm them.

   Besides, Abraham felt that there could be no reason for taking Isaac
   down there, for the Lord would assuredly find him a wife. Abraham said,
   "He shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto
   my son from thence." Are you afraid that preaching the gospel will not
   win souls? Are you despondent as to success in God's way? Is this why
   you pine for clever oratory? Is this why you must have music, and
   architecture, and flowers, and millinery? After all, is it by might and
   by power, and not by the Spirit of God? It is even so in the opinion of
   many. Brethren beloved, there are many things which I might allow to
   other worshippers which I have denied myself in conducting the worship
   of this congregation. I have long worked out before your very eyes the
   experiment of the unaided attractiveness of the gospel of Jesus. Our
   service is severely plain. No man ever comes hither to gratify his eye
   with art, or his ear with music. I have set before you, these many
   years, nothing but Christ crucified, and the simplicity of the gospel;
   yet where will you find such a crowd as this gathered together this
   morning? Where will you find such a multitude as this meeting, Sabbath
   after Sabbath, for five-and-thirty years? I have shown you nothing but
   the cross, the cross without the flowers of oratory, the cross without
   the blue lights of superstition or excitement, the cross without
   diamonds of ecclesiastical rank, the cross without the buttresses of a
   boastful science. It is abundantly sufficient to attract men first to
   itself, and afterwards to eternal life! In this house we have proved
   successfully, these many years, this great truth, that the gospel
   plainly preached will gain an audience, convert sinners, and build up
   and sustain a church. We beseech the people of God to mark that there
   is no need to try doubtful expedients and questionable methods. God
   will save by the gospel still: only let it be the gospel in its purity.
   This grand old sword will cleave a man's chine, and split a rock in
   halves. How is it that it does so little of its old conquering work? I
   will tell you. Do you see this scabbard of artistic work, so
   wonderfully elaborated? Full many keep the sword in this scabbard, and
   therefore its edge never gets to its work. Pull off that scabbard.
   Fling that fine sheath to Hades, and then see how, in the Lord's hands,
   that glorious two-handed sword will mow down fields of men as mowers
   level the grass with their scythes. There is no need to go down to
   Egypt for help. To invite the devil to help Christ is shameful. Please
   God, we shall see prosperity yet, when the church of God is resolved
   never to seek it except in God's own way.

   V. And now, fifthly, observe HIS RIGHTEOUS ABSOLUTION OF HIS SERVANT.
   "If the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be
   clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again."

   When we lie a-dying, if we have faithfully preached the gospel, our
   conscience will not accuse us for having kept closely to it: we shall
   not mourn that we did not play the fool or the politician in order to
   increase our congregation. Oh, no! our Master will give us full
   absolution, even if few be gathered in, so long as we have been true to
   him. "If the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt
   be clear from this my oath; only bring not my son thither again." Do
   not try the dodges which debase religion. Keep to the simple gospel;
   and if the people are not converted by it, you will be clear. My dear
   hearers, how much I long to see you saved! But I would not belie my
   Lord, even to win your souls, if they could be so won. The true servant
   of God is responsible for diligence and faithfulness; but he is not
   responsible for success or non-success. Results are in God's hands. If
   that dear child in your class is not converted, yet if you have set
   before him the gospel of Jesus Christ with loving, prayerful
   earnestness, you shall not be without your reward. If I preach from my
   very soul the grand truth that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will save
   my hearers, and if I persuade and entreat them to believe in Jesus unto
   eternal life; if they will not do so, their blood will lie upon their
   own heads. When I go back to my Master, if I have faithfully told out
   his message of free grace and dying love, I shall be clear. I have
   often prayed that I might be able to say at the last what George Fox
   could so truly say: "I am clear, I am clear!" It is my highest ambition
   to be clear of the blood of all men. I have preached God's truth, so
   far as I know it, and I have not been ashamed of its peculiarities.
   That I might not stultify my testimony I have cut myself clear of those
   who err from the faith, and even from those who associate with them.
   What more can I do to be honest with you? If, after all, men will not
   have Christ, and his gospel, and his rule, it is their own concern. If
   Rebekah had not come to Isaac she would have lost her place in the holy
   line. My beloved hearer, will you have Jesus Christ or not? He has come
   into the world to save sinners, and he casts out none. Will you accept
   him? Will you trust him? "He that believeth and is baptized shall be
   saved." Will you believe him? Will you be baptized into his name? If
   so, salvation is yours; but if not, he himself hath said it, "He that
   believeth not shall be damned." Oh, do not expose yourselves to that
   damnation! Or, if you are set upon it; then, when the great white
   throne shall be seen in yonder skies, and the day of wrath has come, do
   me the justice to acknowledge that I bade you flee to Jesus, and that I
   did not amuse you with novel theories. I have brought neither flute,
   harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, nor any other kind of music to
   please your ears, but I have set Christ crucified before you, and
   bidden you believe and live. If you refuse to accept the substitution
   of Christ, you have refused your own mercies. Clear me in that day of
   all complicity with the novel inventions of deluded men. As for my
   Lord, I pray of him grace to be faithful to the end, both to his truth,
   and to your souls. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Genesis 24.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'166, 928, 884.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Life-Long Occupation

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 14, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God
   continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name."
   Hebrews 13:15.

   IT is instructive to notice where this verse stands. The connection is
   a golden setting to the gem of the text. Here we have a description of
   the Believer's position before God. He has done with all carnal
   ordinances and has no interest in the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law.
   Brethren, as Believers in Jesus, who is the substance of all the
   outward types, we have, henceforth, nothing to do with altars of gold
   or of stone--our worship is spiritual and our altar spiritual--

   "We rear no altar, Christ has died;

   We deck no priestly shrine."

   What then? Are we to offer no sacrifice? Very far from it. We are
   called upon to offer to God a continual sacrifice. Instead of
   presenting in the morning and the evening a sacrifice of lambs and on
   certain holy days bringing bullocks and sheep to be slain, we are to
   present to God continually the sacrifice of praise. Having done with
   the outward, we now give ourselves entirely to the inward and to the
   spiritual. Do you see your calling, Brethren?

   Moreover, the Believer is now, if he is where he ought to be, like his
   Master, "without the camp." "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without
   the camp, bearing His reproach." What then? If we are without the camp,
   have we nothing to do? Are we cut off from God as well as from men?
   Shall we fume and fret because we are not of the world? On the
   contrary, let us the more ardently pursue higher objects and yield up
   our disentangled spirits to the praise and glory of God.

   Do we come under contempt, as the Master did? Is it so, that we are
   "bearing His reproach"? Shall we sit down in despair? Shall we be
   crushed beneath this burden? No, verily--while we lose honor ourselves,
   we will ascribe honor to our God. We will count it all joy that we are
   counted worthy to be reproached for Christ's sake. Let us now praise
   God continually. Let the fruit of our lips be a still bolder confession
   of His name. Let us more and more earnestly make known His Glory and
   His Grace. If reproach is bitter, praise is sweet--we will drown the
   drops of gall in a sea of honey.

   If to have our name cast out as evil should seem to be derogatory to
   us, let us all the more see to it that we give unto the Lord the glory
   due unto His name. While the enemy reproaches us continually, our only
   reply shall be to offer the sacrifice of praise continually unto the
   Lord our God. Moreover, the Apostle says that, "Here we have no
   continuing city." Well, then, we will transfer the continuance from the
   city to the praise--"Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God
   continually." If everything here is going, let it go. But we will not
   cease to sing. If the end of all things is at hand, let them end. But
   our praises of the living God shall abide world without end.

   Set free from all the hamper of citizenship here below, we will begin
   the employment of citizens of Heaven. It is not ours to arrange a new
   Socialism, nor to set up to be dividers of heritages. We belong to a
   kingdom which is not of this world, a city of God eternal in the
   heavens. It is not ours to pursue the dreams of politicians but to
   offer the sacrifices of God-ordained priests. As we are not of this
   world, it is ours to seek the world to come and press forward to the
   place where the saints in Christ shall reign forever and ever.

   You see then, Brethren, that the text is rather an unexpected one in
   its connection. But when properly viewed, it is the fittest that could
   be. The more we are made to feel that we are strangers in a strange
   land, the more should we addict ourselves to the praises of God, with
   whom we sojourn. Crucified to the world and the world crucified to us,
   let us spend and be spent in the praises of Him who is our sole trust
   and joy. Oh, to praise God, and still to praise Him--and never to be
   taken off from praising Him--let the world do what it may!

   This morning my great business will be to stir you up, dear Friends, as
   many of you as have been made kings and priests unto God by Jesus
   Christ, to exercise your holy office. I shall, to that end, first,
   concerning the Christian, describe his sacrifice. Secondly, examine its
   substance. Thirdly, commend its exercise. And fourthly, commence it at
   once.

   I. First, then, concerning a Believer, let me DESCRIBE HIS SACRIFICE.
   "By Him, therefore,." See, at the very threshold of all offering of
   sacrifice to God, we begin with Christ. We cannot go a step without
   Jesus. Without a Mediator we can make no advance to God. Apart from
   Christ there is no acceptable prayer, no pleasing sacrifice of any
   sort. "By Him, therefore"--we cannot move a lip acceptably without Him
   who suffered without the gate. The great High Priest of our profession
   meets us at the sanctuary door and we place all our sacrifices into His
   hands, that He may present them for us.

   You do not wish it to be otherwise, I am quite sure. If you could do
   anything without Him, you would feel afraid to do it. You only feel
   safe when He is with you and you are "accepted in the Beloved." Be
   thankful that at the beginning of your holy service your eyes are
   turned towards your Lord. You are to offer continual sacrifice, looking
   unto Jesus. Behold our great Melchizedek meets us! Let us give Him
   tithes of all and receive His blessing which will repay us a
   thousand-fold. Let us never venture upon a sacrifice apart from Him,
   lest it be the sacrifice of Cain, or the sacrifice of fools. He is that
   Altar which sanctifies both gift and giver--by Him, therefore, let our
   sacrifices both of praise and of almsgiving be presented unto God.

   Next, observe that this sacrifice is to be presented continually. "By
   Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God
   continually." Attentively treasure up that word. It will not do for you
   to say, "We have been exhorted to praise God on the Sabbath." No, I
   have not exhorted you to such occasional duty. "Continually," says the
   text and that means seven days in a week. I would not have you say, "He
   means that we are to praise God in the morning when we awake and in the
   evening before we fall asleep."

   Do that, my Brethren, unfailingly. But that is not what I have to set
   before you. "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God
   continually"--"continually"--that is to say, without ceasing. Let us
   make an analogous precept to that which says, "pray without ceasing,"
   and say, "praise without ceasing." Not only in this place or that place
   but in every place, we are to praise the Lord our God. Not only when we
   are in a happy frame of mind but when we are cast down and troubled.
   The perfumed smoke from the altar of incense is to rise towards Heaven
   both day and night, from the beginning of the year to the year's end.

   Not only when we are in the assembly of the saints are we to praise
   God, but when we are called to pass through Vanity Fair, where sinners
   congregate. Bless the Lord at all times. Not alone in your secret
   chamber, which is aromatic with the perfume of your communion with God.
   But yonder in the field and there in the street. Yes, and in the hurry
   and noise of the Exchange, offer the sacrifice of praise to God. You
   cannot always be speaking His praise but you can always be living His
   praise. The heart once set on praising God will, like the stream which
   leaps down the mountain's side, continue still to flow in its chosen
   course.

   A soul saturated with Divine gratitude will continue, almost
   unconsciously, to give forth the sacred odor of praise which will
   permeate the atmosphere of every place and make itself known to all who
   have a spiritual nostril with which to discern sweetness. There is no
   moment in which it would be right to suspend the praises of God--let
   us, therefore, offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. This
   should be done, not only by some of us--pastor, elders, deacons and
   special workers--but by all of you.

   The Apostle says, "Let us." And therein he calls upon all of us who
   have any participation in the great sacrifice of Christ to go with Him
   without the camp, and then and there to stand with Him in our places
   and continually offer the sacrifice of praise unto God. You see, then,
   that the two important points are--always and always through Christ.

   The Apostle goes on to tell us what the sacrifice is--the sacrifice of
   praise. Praise, that is, heart-worship, or adoration. Adoration is the
   grandest form of earthly service. We ascribe unto Jehovah, the one
   living and true God, all honor and glory. When we see His works, when
   we hear His Word, when we taste His Grace, when we mark His Providence,
   when we think upon His name, our spirit bows in the humblest reverence
   before Him and magnifies Him as the all-glorious Lord. Let us abide
   continually in the spirit of adoration, for this is praise in its
   purest form.

   Praise is heart-trust and heart-content with God. Trust is adoration
   applied to practical purposes. Let us go into the world trusting God,
   believing that He orders all things well, resolving to do everything as
   He commands, for neither His

   Character, nor His decrees, nor His Commandments are grievous to us. We
   delight in the Lord as He is pleased to reveal Himself, let that
   Revelation be what it may. We believe not only that God is but that He
   is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek Him--let us so praise
   Him that we shall not be baffled if our good work brings us no
   immediate recompense. Let us praise Him for we are satisfied that He is
   not unrighteous to forget our work of faith.

   Let us praise Him by being perfectly satisfied with anything and
   everything that He does or appoints. Let us take a hallowed delight in
   Him and in all that concerns Him. Let Him be to us "God, our exceeding
   joy." Do you know what it is to delight yourselves in God? Then, in
   that continual satisfaction, offer Him continual praise. Life is no
   longer sorrowful, even amid sorrow, when God is in it, its soul and
   crown. It is worth while to live the most afflicted and tried life, so
   long as we know God and taste His love. Let Him do what seems Him good,
   so long as He will but be a God to us and permit us to call Him our
   Father and our God.

   Praise is heart-enjoyment. The indulgence of gratitude and wonder. The
   Lord has done so much for me that I must praise Him, or feel as if I
   had a fire shut up within me. I may speak for many of you, for you also
   are saying, "He has done great things for us." Brethren, the Lord has
   favored you greatly--before the earth was, He chose you and entered
   into Covenant with you--He gave you to His Son and gave His Son to you.
   He has manifested Himself to you as He does not to the world. Even now
   He breathes a child-like spirit into you, whereby you cry, "Abba,
   Father."

   Surely you must praise Him! How can you ever satisfy the cravings of
   your heart if you do not extol Him? Your obligations rise above you as
   high as the heavens above the earth. The vessel of your soul has
   foundered in this sea of love and gone down fifty fathoms deep in it.
   High over its masthead the main ocean of eternal mercy is rolling with
   its immeasurable billows of Divine Grace. You are swallowed up in the
   fathomless abyss of infinite love. You are absorbed in adoring wonder
   and affection. Like Leah when Judah was born, you cry, "Now will I
   praise the Lord."

   Have you not, in addition to this, the praise of heart-feeling, while
   within you burns an intense love to God? Could you love anyone as you
   love God? After you have poured out the stream of your love upon the
   dearest earthly ones, do you not feel you have something more within
   which all created vessels could not contain? The heart of man yields
   love without stint and the stream is too large for the lake into which
   it flows so long as we love a created being. Only the infinite God can
   ever contain all the love of a loving heart. There is a fitness for the
   heart and a fullness for its emotions when Jehovah is the heart's one
   object of love.

   My God, I love You! You know all things--You know that I love You.
   Instead of quibbling at the Lord because of certain stern truths which
   we read concerning Him, we are enabled in these to worship Him by
   bowing our reason to His Revelation. That which we cannot understand we
   nevertheless believe and believing, we adore. It is not ours to arraign
   the Almighty but to submit to Him. We are not His censors but His
   servants. We do not legislate but love. He is good, supremely good in
   our esteem--and infinitely blessed of our hearts. We do not consider
   what He ought to be. But we learn what He is and as such we love and
   adore Him. Thus have I gone roundabout the shell of praise. But what it
   really is you must each one know for himself.

   The text evidently deals with spoken praise--"Let us offer the
   sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips
   giving thanks to His name." Or, as the Revised Version has it, "the
   fruit of lips which make confession to His name." So, then, we are to
   utter the praises of God and it is not sufficient to feel adoring
   emotions. The priesthood of Believers requires them to praise God with
   their lips. Should we not sing a great deal more than we do? Psalms and
   hymns and spiritual songs should abound in our homes. It is our duty to
   sing as much as possible. We should praise as much as we pray.

   "I have no voice!" says one. Cultivate it till you have. "But mine is a
   cracked voice!" Ah, well, it may be cracked to human ears, and yet be
   melodious unto God. To Him the music lies in the heart, not in the
   sound. Praise the Lord with song and Psalm. Some few godly men whom I
   have known have gone about the fields and along the roads humming
   sacred songs continually. These are the troubadours and minstrels of
   our King. Happy profession! May more of us become such birds of
   Paradise! Hear how the ungodly world pours out its mirth! Oftentimes
   their song is so silly as to be utterly devoid of meaning. Are they not
   ashamed? Then let us not be ashamed. Children of God, sing the songs of
   Zion and let your hearts be joyful before your King. "Is any merry? Let
   him sing Psalms."

   But if we cannot sing so well or so constantly as we would desire, let
   us talk. We cannot say that we cannot talk. Perhaps some might be
   better if they could not talk quite so much. As we can certainly talk
   continually, let us as con-

   tinually offer to God the sacrifice of praise by speaking well of His
   name. Talk of all His wondrous works. Let us abundantly utter the
   memory of His great goodness. Let us praise the Lord for His goodness
   and for His wonderful works to the children of men. Many whom you judge
   to be irreligious would be greatly interested if you were to relate to
   them the story of God's love to you.

   But if they are not interested, you are not responsible for that--only
   tell it as often as you have opportunity. We charge you, as Jesus did
   the healed man, "Go home to your friends and tell them how great things
   the Lord has done for you." Speak, and speak, and speak again, for the
   instruction of others--for the confirmation of those who have faith and
   for the routing of the doubts of those who believe not. Tell what God
   has done for you. Does not our conversation want more flavoring with
   the praise of God? We put into it too much vinegar of complaint and
   forget the sugar of gratitude.

   This year, when the harvest seems to have been snatched from between
   the jaws of the destroyer, our friends say, "Well, things look a shade
   better." And I am glad to get them up even as high as that. Hear the
   general talk--"Things are very bad. Business is dreadful. Trade never
   was so bad." When I was a boy things were very bad, never were so bad.
   And I think ever since they have been so bad that they could not be
   worse and yet somehow people live and even farmers are not all turned
   to skin and bone. Surely, surely, we had better mend our talk and speak
   more brightly and cheerily of what God does for us!

   How can we offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually if we
   perpetually rail at His Providence? Christian men, if you are ever
   driven to a murmur, let it be the momentary mistake of your extremity.
   But come back again to contentment and gratitude which is your proper
   and acceptable condition. Hear the word of the Lord, which says,
   "Neither murmur you, as some of them also murmured and were destroyed
   of the destroyer." Praise means this--that you and I are appointed to
   tell of the goodness of God just as the birds of spring wake up before
   the sun and begin singing and singing and singing, all of them, with
   all their might.

   Become the choristers of God. Praise the Lord evermore, even as they do
   who with songs and choral symphonies, day without night, circle His
   Throne rejoicing. This is your office and it is a holy and a privileged
   one.

   "Well," says one, "I cannot force myself to praise." I do not want you
   to force yourself to it--this praise is to be natural. It is called the
   fruit of the lips. In the Book of Hosea, from which the Apostle quotes,
   our version reads, "The calves of our lips." Whether the word is
   "calves" in the Hebrew original or not, is a matter in dispute. But the
   translators of the Septuagint certainly read it "fruit," and this seems
   more clear and plain. The Apostle, quoting it from the Greek
   translation, has endorsed it as being correct. These lips of ours must
   produce fruit. Our words are leaves--how soon they wither!

   The praise of God is the fruit which can be stored up and presented to
   the Lord. Fruit is a natural product--it grows without force--the free
   outcome of the plant. So let praise grow out of your lips at its own
   sweet will. Let it be as natural to you, as regenerated men and women,
   to praise God as it seems to be natural to profane men to blaspheme the
   sacred name of Jesus Christ.

   This praise is to be sincere and real. The next verse tells us we are
   to do good and communicate and joins this with praise to God. Many will
   give God a waterfall of words but scarce a drop of true gratitude in
   the form of substance consecrated. When I am pressed with many cares
   about the Lord's work I often wish that some of my Brethren would be a
   little more mindful of its pecuniary needs. I should be much relieved,
   if those who can spare it, would help different portions of our home
   service. It should be the joy of a Christian to use his substance in
   his Master's service. When we are in a right state of heart we do not
   want anybody to call upon us to extract a subscription from us but we
   go and ask, "Is there anything that needs help?"

   Is any part of the Lord's business in need just now? The great works,
   such as the Orphanage and College, are provided for. But I often sigh
   as I see lesser agencies left without help, not because friends would
   not aid if they were pressed to do so, but because there is not a ready
   mind to look out for opportunities. Yet that ready mind is the very fat
   of the sacrifice. I long to see everywhere Christian friends who will
   not need to be asked, but will make the Lord's business their business,
   and take in hand some branch of work in the Church, or among the poor,
   or for the spread of the Gospel.

   Brothers and Sisters, let your gift be an outburst of a free and
   gracious spirit which takes delight in showing that it does not praise
   God in word only but in deed and in truth. In this Church let us excel
   in generous gifts. As the year ripens

   to its close, see that everything is provided in the house of the Lord
   and that there is no lack in any quarter. This practical praising of
   the Lord is the life-office of every true Believer. See you to it.

   II. We will, secondly, for a few minutes EXAMINE THE SUBSTANCE OF THIS
   SACRIFICE. "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually."
   To praise God continually will need a childlike faith in Him. You must
   believe His Word, or you will not praise His name. Doubt snaps the
   harp-strings. Question mars all melody. Trust Him, lean on Him, enjoy
   Him--you will never praise Him otherwise. Unbelief is the deadly enemy
   of praise. Faith must lead you into personal communion with the Lord.
   It is to Him that the praise is offered and not to our fellow men.

   The most beautiful singing in the world, if it is intended for the ears
   of musical critics, is worth nothing. Only that is praise which is
   meant for God. O my Lord, my song shall find You! Every part of my
   being shall have its attribute to sing. I will sing unto the Lord, and
   unto the Lord, alone. You must live in fellowship with God, or you
   cannot praise Him. You must have also an overflowing content, a real
   joy in Him. Dear Brothers and Sisters, be sure that you do not lose
   your joy. If you ever lose the joy of religion, you will lose the power
   of religion.

   Do not be satisfied to be a miserable Believer. An unhappy Believer is
   a poor creature. And he who is resigned to being so, is in a dangerous
   condition. Depend upon it, greater importance attaches to holy
   happiness than most people think. As you are happy in the Lord you will
   be able to praise His name. Rejoice in the Lord, that you may praise
   Him.

   There must also be a holy earnestness about this. Praise is called a
   sacrifice because it is a very sacred and solemn thing. People who came
   to the altar with their victims came there with the hush of reverence,
   the trembling of awe. We cannot praise God with levity. He is in Heaven
   and we are upon the earth--He is thrice holy and we are sinful--we must
   put off our shoes in lowly reverence and worship with intense adoration
   or else He cannot be pleased with our sacrifices. When life is real,
   life is earnest--and it must be both real and earnest when it is spent
   to the praise of the great and ever-blessed God.

   To praise God continually, you need to cultivate perpetual gratitude,
   and surely it cannot be hard to do that! Remember, every misery averted
   is a mercy bestowed. Every sin forgiven is a favor granted. Every duty
   performed is also a grace received. The people of God have an
   inexhaustible treasury of good things provided for them by the infinite
   God and for all this they should praise Him. I pray you, be not only a
   little grateful but overflow with it. Let your praises be like the
   fountains of waters which are abundantly supplied. Let the stream leap
   up to Heaven in bursts of enthusiasm. Let it fall to earth again in
   showers of beneficence. Let it fill the basin of your daily life and
   run over into the lives of others and from there again in a waterfall
   of glittering joy, let it still descend.

   In order for this kind of praise you will need a deep and ardent
   admiration of the Lord God. Admire the Father-- think much of His
   love--acquaint yourself with His perfections. Admire the Son of God,
   the altogether lovely One. And as you mark His gentleness, self-denial,
   love and Grace, suffer your heart to be wholly enamored of Him. Admire
   the patience and condescension of the Holy Spirit, that He should visit
   you and dwell in you and bear with you. It cannot be difficult to the
   sanctified and instructed heart to be filled with a great admiration of
   the Lord God.

   This is the raw material of praise. An intelligent admiration of God,
   kindled into flame by gratitude and fanned by delight and joy, must
   ever produce praise. Living in personal converse with God and trusting
   Him as a child trusts its father, it cannot be difficult for the soul
   continually to offer the sacrifice of praise to God through Jesus
   Christ.

   III. I have been very brief upon that point because I want, in the
   third place, to COMMEND THIS BLESSED EXERCISE.

   "Offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually," because in so doing
   you will answer the end of your being. Every creature is happiest when
   it is doing what it is made for. A bird that is made to fly abroad
   pines in a cage. An eagle would die in the water, even as a fish that
   is made to swim perishes on the river's bank. Christians are made to
   glorify God. And we are never in our element till we are praising Him.
   The happiest moments you have ever spent were those in which you lost
   sight of everything inferior and bowed before Jehovah's throne of light
   with reverent joy and blissful praise.

   I can say it is so with me and I doubt not it is so with you. When your
   whole soul is full of praise you have at last reached the end that your
   heart is aiming at. Your ship is now in full sail--your car is on the
   tram-lines. Your life moves smoothly and safely on. This is the groove
   along which it was made to slide. Before, you were trying to do what
   you were not made to do. But now you are at home. For the praise of God
   your new nature was fashioned and it finds rest therein. Keep to this
   work. Do not degrade yourself by a less Divine employment.

   Praise God again, because it is His due. Should Jehovah not be praised?
   Praise is the rent which He asks of us for the enjoyment of all
   things--shall we be slow to pay? Will a man rob God? When it is such a
   happy work to give Him His due, shall we deny it? It blesses us to
   bless the Lord. Shall we limit God in the measure of His Glory? He does
   not limit us in His goodness. Come, my Brother, my Sister, if you have
   become sorrowful of late, shake off your gloom and awake all your
   instruments of music to praise the Lord! Let not murmuring and
   complaining be so much as mentioned among saints. Give unto the Lord
   the glory due unto His name. Shall not the Lord be praised? Surely the
   very stones and rocks must break their everlasting silence in
   indignation if the children of God do not praise His name.

   Praise Him, dear Brethren, continually, for it will help you in
   everything else. A man full of praise is ready for all other holy
   exercises. Such is my bodily pain and weakness that I could not have
   forced myself to preach this morning if I had not felt that I must come
   here to bid you praise God. I thought that my pain might give emphasis
   to my words. I do praise the Lord--I must praise Him. It is a duty
   which I hope to perform in my last moments, the Holy Spirit helping me.
   So you see praise helps me to preach. Whenever you go forth to any
   service, even though it be not better than taking down the shutters and
   waiting behind the counter, you will do it all the better for being in
   the spirit of praise and gratitude.

   If you are a domestic servant and can praise God continually, you will
   be a comfort in the house. And if you are a master and are surrounded
   with the troubles of life--if your heart is always blessing the Lord,
   you will keep up your spirits and you will not be sharp and
   ill-tempered with those around you. Come, Brethren, this is both food
   and medicine--this praising the Lord. You birds of Heaven, strange to
   say, this singing will plume your wings for flight! The praises of God
   put wings upon pilgrims' heels, so that they not only run but fly.

   This will preserve us from many evils. When the heart is full of the
   praise of God it has not time to find fault and grow proudly angry with
   its fellows. Somebody has said a very nasty thing about us. Well, well.
   We will answer him when we have got through the work we have in hand,
   namely, praising God continually. At present we have a great work to do
   and cannot come down to wrangle. Self-love and its natural irritations
   die in the blaze of praise. If you praise God continually, the
   vexations and troubles of life will be cheerfully borne. Praise makes
   the happy man the strong man. The joy of the Lord is your strength.

   Praising God makes us to drink of the brook by the way and lift up the
   head. We cannot fear while we can praise. Neither can we be bribed by
   the world's favor, nor cowed by its frown. Praise makes men, yes,
   angels of us--let us abound in it. Brethren, let us praise God because
   it will be a means of usefulness. I believe that a life spent in God's
   praise would in itself be a missionary life. That matronly sister who
   never delivered a sermon, nor even a lecture in all her days, has lived
   a quiet, happy, useful, loving life--and her family has learned from
   her to trust the Lord.

   Even when she shall have passed away, they will feel her influence, for
   she was the angel of the house. Being dead, she yet will speak. A
   praiseful heart is eloquent for God. Mere verbiage--what is it but as
   autumn leaves--which will be consumed in smothering smoke? But praise
   is golden fruit to be presented in baskets of silver unto the dresser
   of the vineyard.

   Praise God, Brethren, because this is what God loves. Notice how the
   next verse puts it--"With such sacrifices God is well pleased." Would
   we not do anything and everything to please God? It seems too good to
   be true that we can impart any pleasure to the ever-blessed One. Yet it
   is so, for He has declared that He is well pleased with the praises and
   the gifts of His children. Therefore let us withhold nothing from our
   dear Father, our blessed God. Can I please Him? Tell me what it is, I
   will do it straight away. I will not deliberate but without reserve
   make haste. If I deliberate, it shall be that I may make the service
   twice as large, or perform it in more careful style. For if I may
   praise Him, it shall be an honor, yes, it shall be Heaven to me.

   To close this commendation, remember that this will fit you for Heaven.
   Our hymn expresses a frequent aspiration-- "I would begin the music
   here and so my soul should rise." You can begin the music here--begin
   the hallelujahs of glory by praising God here below. Think of how you
   will praise Him when you see His face and never, never sin. Exceedingly
   magnify the Lord even now and rehearse the music of the skies. In Glory
   you may rise to a higher key but let the song be the same even here.
   Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him more and more! Rise on rounds of
   praise up the ladder of His Glory till you reach the top and are with
   Him to praise Him better than ever before.

   Oh, that our lives may not be broken but may be all of one piece--one
   Psalm, forever rising, verse by verse, into the eternal hallelujahs!

   IV. I have brought you thus far and so I come to the closing point,
   which is, LET US COMMENCE AT ONCE. What does the text say? It says,
   "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually." The Apostle does
   not say, "By-and-by get to this work, when you are able to give up
   business and have retired to the country, or when you are near to die."
   But now, at once, he says, "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise."

   Listen! Who is speaking? Whose voice do I hear? Ah, I know, it is the
   Apostle Paul. He says, "Let us offer the sacrifice of praise"! Where
   are you, Paul? His voice sounds from within a low place. I believe he
   is shut up in a dungeon. Lift up your hand, O venerable Paul! I can
   hear the clanking of a chain. Yes, Paul cries, "Let us offer the
   sacrifice of praise. I, Paul the aged, in prison in Rome, wish you to
   join with me in a sacrifice of praise to God." Amen. We will do so.

   Paul, we are not in prison and we are not all aged and none of us are
   galled with chains on our wrists. But we can join heartily with you in
   praising God this morning. And we do so. Come, let us praise God--

   "Stand up and bless the Lord,

   You people of His choice;

   Stand up and bless the Lord your God,

   With heart and soul and voice." You have heard Paul's voice, now hear
   mine. Join with me and let us offer the sacrifice of praise. Brothers
   and Sisters, we have known each other for many a year and we have
   worked together in different ways for the Lord. As a Church and people
   we have received great favors from the Lord's hand. Come, let us join
   together with heart and hand to bless the name of the Lord and worship
   joyfully before Him. With words and with gifts let us offer the
   sacrifice of praise continually. If I were to select certain of the
   members and call upon them one by one, I should say, "Come, Brother
   So-and-So, let us offer the sacrifice of praise." I am sure that the
   Brother would get up and unite with me very cordially, as in a
   brotherly duet we praised the Lord our God.

   1 will not at this present call upon any of you--but if I did say,
   "Sister So-and-So, let us offer praise to God," many of you would
   reply, "Ah, Pastor! if nobody else can praise Him, we can and we will."
   Well, well, kindly take it as done, so far as the outward expression is
   concerned. But inwardly let us at once offer the sacrifice of praise to
   God by Jesus Christ. Let us stir one another up to praise. Let us spend
   today and tomorrow and all the rest of our days in praising God. If we
   catch one another a little grumbling, or coldly silent, let us, in
   kindness to each other, give the needful rebuke.

   Grumbling and silence will not do. We must praise the Lord. Just as the
   leader of an orchestra taps his baton to call all to attention and then
   to begin singing, so I this morning beseech you and bestir you to offer
   the sacrifice of praise unto the Lord.

   The Apostle has put us rather in a fix--he compels us to offer
   sacrifice. Did you notice what he said in the tenth verse? He says, "We
   have an altar." It is not a material altar but a spiritual one. Yet "we
   have an altar." May the priests of the old Law offer sacrifice on it?
   Answer--"Whereof they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle."
   They ate of the sacrifices laid on the altars of the old Law but they
   have no right here. Those who keep to ritualistic performances and
   outward ceremonials have no right here. Yet we have an altar.

   Brothers and Sisters, can we imagine that this altar is given us of the
   Lord to be never used? Is no sacrifice to be presented on the best of
   altars? We have an altar--what then? If we have an altar, do not allow
   it to be neglected, deserted, unused. It is not for spiders to spin
   their webs upon. It is not meet that it should be smothered with the
   dust of neglect. "We have an altar." What then? "Let us offer the
   sacrifice of praise to God continually." Do you not see the force of
   the argument. Practically obey it.

   Beside the altar we have a High Priest. There is the Lord Jesus Christ,
   dressed in His robes of glory and beauty, standing within the veil at
   this moment, ready to present our offerings. Shall He stand there and
   have nothing to do? What would you think of our great High Priest
   waiting at the altar, with nothing to present which His redeemed had
   brought to God? No, "by Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of
   praise to God continually." Bring here abundantly, you people of God,
   your praises, your prayers, your thank offerings and present them to
   the Ever-blessed!

   Well may you do so if you will read the connection. For the passage
   brings before you many things which should compel you to praise God.
   Behold your Savior in His passion, offered without the gate! Gaze upon
   His five bleeding

   wounds, His sacred head so wounded, His face so full of anguish, His
   heart bursting with the agony of sin! Can you see that sight and not
   praise God? Behold redemption accomplished, sin pardoned, salvation
   purchased, Hell vanquished, death abolished and all this achieved by
   your blessed Lord and Master! Can you see all this and not praise Him?
   His precious blood falling on you and making you clean, bringing you
   near to God, making you acceptable before the infinite holiness of the
   Most High! Can you see yourself thus favored and behold the precious
   blood which did it and not praise His name?

   Yonder in the distance, seen dimly, perhaps, but yet not doubtfully,
   behold "a city that has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God."
   White-robed, the purified are singing with their golden harps and you
   will soon be there. When a few more days or years are passed, you will
   be among the glorified. A crown and a harp are reserved for you. Will
   you not begin to praise God and glorify Him for the Heaven which is in
   store for you? With these two sights so wonderfully contrasted--the
   Passion and the Paradise--Jesus in His humiliation and Jesus in His
   Glory, and yourself a sharer in both these wondrous scenes--surely if
   you do not begin to offer the perpetual sacrifice of thanksgivings and
   praise unto God you must be something harder than stone. God grant us
   to commence this day those praises which shall never be suspended
   throughout eternity!

   Oh, that you who have never praised God before, would begin now! Alas,
   some of you have no Christ to praise and no Savior to bless. Yet you
   need not so abide. By faith you may lay hold upon Jesus and He then
   becomes yours. Trust Him and He will justify your trust. Rest in the
   Lord and the Lord is your rest. When you have trusted, then waste no
   time but at once commence the business for which you were created and
   redeemed and called. Fill the censer with the sweet spices of gratitude
   and love, and lay on the burning coals of earnestness and fervency.

   Then, when praise begins to rise from you like pillars of smoke, swing
   the censer to and fro in the presence of the Most High, and more and
   more laud, bless and magnify the Lord that lives forever. Let your
   heart dance at the sound of His name and let your lips show forth His
   salvation. The Lord anoint you this day to the priesthood of praise,
   for Christ's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Driving Out the Canaanites and Their Iron Chariots

   DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 12, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots
   and though they are strong." Joshua 17:18.

   WHEN the children of Israel had come to Canaan and by God's good care
   had entered into the land that flowed with milk and honey they were not
   immediately at rest. The Canaanites were there--there in possession,
   there in strong cities--which seemed to be walled up to Heaven. And
   they had to drive out these Canaanites before they could possibly
   possess the country. In fact, this was the reason why they were sent
   there. The Canaanites had been outlawed by God. They had been guilty of
   such horrible offenses that He had adjudged their race to destruction.

   It was necessary for the purity of the world that ancient races which
   had become so horribly depraved should be removed from it and the
   Israelites were brought to the land as the Lord's executioners--to
   smite the Canaanites and exterminate them. Some have dared to speak of
   it as a hideous massacre. But being commanded of the great Judge who
   has the power of life and death it is to be solemnly regarded as a
   terrible execution for which there was a stern necessity.

   We may rest well assured that He who commissioned His officers to slay
   had the most urgent reason for the employment of their swords. God knew
   best what was needful for the morals of the world and He came to the
   conclusion that the iniquity of the Amorites was full and that they
   could not be longer endured. The Israelites could not, therefore, enter
   upon their inheritance without first driving out the aboriginal races,
   since these had become the adversaries both of God and man.

   You will see, then, dear Friends, that Canaan is hardly a full type of
   Heaven. It may be used so in a modified sense. But it is a far better
   emblem of that state and condition of soul in which a man is found when
   he has become a Believer and by believing has entered into rest--but
   not into an absolutely perfect deliverance from sin. He has come to
   take possession of the Covenant heritage but finds the Canaanite of sin
   and evil still in the land--both in the form of original sin within and
   of temptation from without. Before he can fully enjoy his privileges he
   must drive out his sins. It is absolutely needful--before he can
   experience the blessings of the Covenant of Grace fully--that he should
   contend with the iniquities and evils which are within him and around
   him.

   He must drive out the various tribes of enemies which, for a long time,
   have been dwellers in the land of his nature. No doubt many young
   Christians think that when they are converted the warfare is all over.
   No--the battle has just begun. You have not come to the finish
   line--you have only come to the starting block. You have entered upon
   the land in which you will have to fight and wrestle and weep and pray
   until you get the victory. That victory will be yours but you will have
   to agonize to obtain it. He that has brought you into this condition
   will not fail you nor forsake you. But, at the same time, not without
   strong contentions and earnest strivings will you be able to win your
   inheritance.

   Be not deluded with the idea that you may sit down at your ease--the
   very reverse will happen to the true heir of Heaven. I speak at this
   time to many who understand the meaning of spiritual warfare and I
   scarcely need remind them that they are called to be men at arms and
   not men at ease. I speak to some, perhaps, who do not yet understand
   much of warfare. But they will know before long, for no Believer's
   sword will long sleep in its scabbard. Sin is a powerful en-emy--and if
   you are a child of God, you will have to fight against it. If you are
   an heir of the true Canaan--you are born first to a heritage of warfare
   and ultimately to the vast inheritance of unbroken and everlasting
   peace--

   "The land of triumph lies on high, There are no fields of battle there;
   Lord, I would conquer till I die,

   And finish all the glorious war."

   Our text is a speech of war to the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim.
   Joshua said to them, "You are a great people and have great power--you
   shall not have one lot only." But he told them when he gave them two
   lots they would have to drive out those who were then in
   possession--"You shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron
   chariots and though they are strong." May the Holy Spirit prepare us
   for our life-struggles by the meditations of this hour!

   I. Our first reflection shall be--WE MUST DRIVE THEM OUT. It is a
   command from God--"You shall drive out the Canaanites." Every sin has
   to be slaughtered. Not a single sin is to be tolerated. Off with their
   heads! Drive the sword into their hearts! They are all to die. Not one
   of them may be spared. The whole race is to be exterminated and so
   buried that not a bone of them can be found. Here is a labor worthy of
   all the valor of faith and the power of love.

   They must all be driven out, for every sin is our enemy. I hope we have
   no enemies in this world among our fellow men. It takes two to make a
   quarrel. And if we will not contend there can be no contention. We are
   neither to give nor to take offense. But if it is possible, as much as
   lies in us, we are to live peaceably with all men. I trust that we have
   forgiven everybody who has ever harmed us and would desire to be
   forgiven by all against whom we have done anything wrong. But every
   sin, every evil, of every shape, is our true enemy--against which we
   are to wrestle to the bitter end. You cannot say to any sin, "You may
   dwell in my heart and be my friend." It cannot be your friend--evil is
   our natural and necessary enemy and we must treat it as such.

   The Seed of the woman will never find a friend in the seed of the
   serpent any more than Eve found a friend in the serpent that beguiled
   her. Any pretense of friendship with iniquity is mischievous. If you
   are a friend of sin, you are not a friend of God. All sorts of sins are
   our enemies and we are to hate them with our whole soul. If you can say
   of any sin, "I do not hate it," then you may gravely question whether
   you were ever born again. One of the marks of a child of God is that,
   although he sins, he does not love sin. He may fall into sin but he is
   like a sheep which, if it tumbles into the mud, is quickly up
   again--for it hates the mire.

   The sow wallows where the sheep is distressed. Now we are not the swine
   that love the slough, though we are as sheep that sometimes slip with
   their feet. Would to God that we never did slip! What a misery sin is
   to us! Evil is the worst of evils to godly men. The Lord send us all
   the sorrow He pleases--if He will but prevent our ever falling into
   sin, the greatest of our griefs will be non-existent. Every sin hates
   us and we hate every sin. There is no sin, dear Friends, that can help
   you in any case whatever--it will seriously harm and hinder you. Sin is
   that ill wind which blows nobody any good. There is no beauty in sin.
   There is no comfort in sin. There is no strength in sin. There is
   nothing whatsoever good in sin.

   From the crown of its head to the sole of its foot, sin is all bruises
   and putrefying sores. There is nothing to be said in its favor. And I
   am sure that no heir of Heaven would take up its cause and plead for
   it. It is evil, only evil and that continually. While you hate sin, sin
   hates you. It will do you all the hurt it can. It will never be
   satisfied with the mischief that it has worked in you. It will try to
   lead you farther and farther into danger so as to bring you down to
   Hell. Sin would utterly destroy you if it could and it certainly could
   and would, if the Grace of God did not prevent it. Proclaim, then, a
   ceaseless warfare against all sin. Cry, "war to the knife with sin!"

   The Canaanites war with you--take care that you war with them. Up with
   the blood-red banner! Draw the sword and never sheath it again. So long
   as there remains sin in our heart, or in our life, or in the world, it
   is to be fought against to the death. Again, we should contend against
   all these Canaanites and drive them out--for sin is our Lord's most
   cruel enemy. Jesus abhors all evil and evil in every shape persecuted
   Him. All sorts of sins He bore in His own body on the tree. From our
   sins, all of which were laid upon Him, came the lashings of His back,
   when the whip plowed deep furrows. From our sins came the bloody sweat
   that covered Him from head to foot.

   From our sins came the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the
   vinegar and gall and the dread death of agony. Sin--oh, how our Lord
   loathes it! In putting it away from us He drank of that cup from which,
   for a moment, He started, saying, "If it is possible, let this cup pass
   from Me." "He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be
   made the righteousness of God in Him." And this it was which caused Him
   such an agony. Sin to Jesus was horror, torment, death. Jesus abhors
   sin with all the force of His holy nature. Saved by Jesus will you not
   hate sin as He did? Would any person here lay up in his drawer as a
   treasure the knife with which his father was murdered?

   Our sins were the daggers that slew the Savior. Can we bear to think of
   them? Oh, that our tears might flow at the very thought of our horrible
   conduct towards our Lord, whom we slew by our sins--and may we never,
   never, never indulge any of all our iniquities--for no one of them is
   innocent of the murder of our best Beloved. They conspired to take away
   His life. Let us execute them at once--

   "Oh, how I hate those lusts of mine That crucified my God; Those sins
   that pierced and nailed His flesh Fast to the fatal wood! Yes, my
   Redeemer, they shall die; My heart has so decreed-- Nor will I spare
   the guilty things That made my Savior bleed.

   While with a melting, broken heart, My murdered Lord I view, I'll raise
   revenge against my sins, And slay the murderers, too."

   Remember, Brethren, we cannot have Christ and have one sin reigning in
   our hearts. We come to Christ as sinners but when we receive Christ we
   hear Him say, "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Sin may look into
   our nature, as it does, with its tempting witcheries. Sin may ride
   through our nature, as it does, trampling down all that is good. Sin
   may lurk in our nature, as it does, ready to plot against the King of
   kings. But it cannot reign in our nature, for it has come under another
   sovereignty--Christ is on the throne. "Grace reigns through
   righteousness unto eternal life" within our nature at this present
   time. It is not possible that we could set a single sin on any
   throne--even though it should be lower than Christ's throne-- neither
   can we obey the lusts thereof.

   Our Lord Jesus will not share His dominion even with an angel--much
   less with a sin. If you have iniquity enthroned in your heart you must
   be lost. There is no hope for you. You may have Christ and quit your
   sin. But you can not have Christ and hug your sin. Christ shall help
   you to slay your sin. But if you say, "No, but I will indulge this
   evil," even though you add, "Is it not a little one?" you will perish
   in your iniquity. If there is one darling sin that you would spare,
   Christ and your soul will never agree. There can be no peace between
   you and Christ while there is peace between you and sin.

   I have known men give up drunkenness and when they have signed the
   pledge they have thought, "Now I am somebody." And they have gone on
   with some other habit which was quite as bad. I am glad enough to see
   you total abstainers. But that will not save you. Drunkards cannot
   enter Heaven. Neither can liars, nor thieves, nor fornicators, nor
   unbelievers. You have driven out one Canaanite but how about the rest?
   One man has said, "I cannot bear prodigality. The extravagant
   expenditure of that young profligate is abominable." Just so, but is
   not avarice abominable also? I do not suppose that you ever would spend
   too much money--for you are a mean old tightwad. You would never be
   tempted to waste your money--for you love it too much. Extravagance is
   not in your line. But you may as surely be ruined by covetousness and
   greed as by prodigality.

   Covetousness may be a better sort of vice for your pocket, but it will
   be not better for your soul when you have to stand before the judgment
   bar of God. One man loathes hypocrisy but then he is cruel, hard and
   unforgiving. Another man will never swear but he will lie as fast as a
   horse will gallop. I have known a man hate lying and yet he has been
   given to lechery. I have known another who has been perfectly pure from
   fleshly sin but then he has been as proud as Lucifer himself. And pride
   will destroy a man as much as any other form of sin. The fact is, the
   whole nest of unclean birds must be thrown to the ground. All the eggs
   of the cockatrice must be crushed. Let us pray--

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

   Suppose that one of our missionaries were to come back from India and
   say, "I have achieved a great marvel among the natives. All through one
   of the districts I went and preached and worked wonders. I found them
   worshipping gods made of the mud of the Ganges. I showed them the folly
   of it and they broke their mud gods to pieces. And some of them had
   wooden gods and I induced them to burn them all. But there were some
   beautiful gods--gods of marble and of gold and of silver and I had not
   the heart to meddle with them--for they were so artistic, so valuable
   and so venerable. Why one of them had eyes of diamonds! And another had
   about his wrist a bracelet of rubies."

   Alas, Mr. Missionary! We see no reason for your self-congratulation. So
   you left the people worshipping those precious gods, did you? What good
   have you done? None whatever. It is evidently as evil an idolatry to
   worship a god of gold as it is to worship a god of mud. Now if we come
   among you and so deal with vice and improve the education and morals of
   the masses

   that we elevate the people, what have we done if we end there? We have
   taken away one set of sins but have left others. We have broken the mud
   gods but if we leave the gold and silver gods, what good have we done
   as before the sight of the Lord?

   Many men have been delivered from the bottom rank of lusts and so far,
   so good. But then the higher ranks of spiritual wickedness in high
   places have been left untouched and what has been the net result?
   Something for this world but nothing for the next. Something for
   morality but nothing for spirituality. In the long run we shall not
   have done much even for morals-- for the most loathsome of vices
   flourish side by side with great apparent refinement. Even the King of
   Sodom was a perfect gentleman. Many an infamously unclean person is a
   man honored in society because of his cultured mind. Sins of all sorts
   must go when Divine Grace takes possession of the soul.

   Bring out the golden calf! This costly idol must be ground to powder
   and strewed upon the water. The golden calf is as detestable before the
   Lord as the most beggarly gods of wood. One form of enmity to God is as
   obnoxious to His Law as another. Sin in satin is as great a rebel as
   sin in rags. You may wash sin in perfume but it smells none the
   sweeter. Remember, also, dear Fiends, that a man cannot be free from
   sin ifhe is the servant of even one sin., Here is a man who has a long
   chain on his leg--a chain of fifty links. Now suppose that I come in as
   a liberator and take away forty-nine links but still leave the iron
   fastened to the pillar and his leg in the one link which is within the
   iron ring--what benefit have I brought him?

   How much good have I done? The man is still a captive. If you had a
   bird here--say, a canary--and it was all free except one leg, it would
   not be a free bird then, would it? "It is only held by a single bit of
   cotton," you say. Still the bird is not at liberty--it cannot fly as it
   pleases. As long as a man is held a captive by a single vice--no matter
   how small it is--he is still in bondage to iniquity. If just one sin
   binds him, masters him--he is not the Lord's free man. He is still a
   slave in the worst form of slavery--he is under the dominion of evil.
   Hence, you see, I spoke not too harshly, when I said, "Down with them
   all!" They must all be conquered, every one. Not one single sin must be
   allowed to occupy the love of our heart and the throne of our nature.

   There are certain sins that, when we begin to war with them, we very
   soon overcome. These Israelites, when they were up in the mountains and
   in the woods soon got at the hill country Canaanites and destroyed
   them. But down in the plain--where there was plenty of room for horses
   and chariots--the Israelites were puzzled what to do. For some of these
   Canaanites had chariots of iron which had scythes fixed to the axles
   and when they drove into the ranks of an army, they mowed down the
   people as a reaping machine cuts down the standing corn. For a while
   this seems to have staggered the Israelites altogether. It was a
   terrible business to think about and fear exaggerated the power of the
   dreadful chariots.

   Dread made them powerless till they, by God's Grace, plucked up the
   courage. And when they once mustered up courage they found that these
   chariots were not nearly so terrible as they were supposed to be. There
   were ways of managing and mastering them--if Israel would but trust in
   God and play the man. When a man is converted by Divine Grace certain
   sins are readily overcome--they fly away at once, never to return. I
   hardly recollect, after talking with thousands of converts, hearing any
   Brother or Sister say that they found it difficult to give up swearing.
   I have often heard people express their wonder that though they had
   never, for years, used a single sentence without an oath, yet, from the
   moment of their conversion, no profane word ever escaped their lips.

   I remember one who said, having been a profane swearer of the worst
   kind, that some years after his conversion a hogshead rolled on his toe
   and an ill word escaped him for which he was nearly broken-hearted. But
   that during all his life beside, since his conversion, he never
   remembered that such a folly and sin had come near him. Swearing is a
   kind of Canaanite that is soon settled off--driven out and slain. So it
   is with many other forms of evil. We get our sword at their throats
   quickly and by God's Grace we are clean rid of all temptation to return
   to them. Such sins, though once powerful, are left dead on the field of
   battle.

   Glory be to God! Goliath's head is off. Sisera has the nail through his
   temple. Eglon is stabbed to the heart. The enemies of God and of our
   souls are dead. I know that some of you could bear testimony that your
   favored sins became so disgusting to you that you have never had a
   temptation to wander in that direction. And if a desire towards them
   has crossed your mind you have revolted against it and cast it away
   from you with indignation.

   But certain other sins are much tougher to deal with. They fight back
   and some of them seem to have as many lives as a cat. There is no
   killing them. When you think that you have slain them, they are up and
   at you again. They may be said to have chariots of iron. These sins are
   sometimes those which have gained their power--their chariots of
   iron--through long habit. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
   leopard his spots?" No, he never shall but the Grace of God can. The
   Grace of God has taken all the spots out of many leopards and all the
   black out of crowds of Ethiopians. But occasionally old, deep-seated
   habits come up again from their graves by a hideous resurrection.

   Did you never catch yourselves with a snatch of an old song coming to
   your memory when you have been in prayer? When you have drawn very near
   to God, have you not been suddenly startled with the remembrance of a
   filthy thing into which you once plunged? Terrible is the power of
   habit which has long held sway. It is not easy to uproot the oak of
   many a year's growth. These habits make chariots of iron into which
   your sins mount and they become terrible enemies to our holy desires
   and fervent resolves.

   Some sins get their chariots of iron from being congenial to our
   constitution. Certain Brothers and Sisters are sadly quick-tempered.
   And as long as they live they will have to be on their guard against
   growing suddenly angry and speaking unadvisedly. They are quick and
   sensitive and this might not in itself be a serious evil. But when sin
   wields that quickness and sensitiveness, evil comes of it. How many a
   sincere child of God has had to go for years groaning, as with broken
   bones, because of the quickness of his temper! As for these
   constitutional sins, you must not excuse them. I beseech you mark what
   I say about this--for many are ruined by supposing that their
   constitutional faults are hardly faults at all but unavoidable
   accidents.

   You must not say of any sin, "I cannot help it." You have to help it.
   You must not say, "Oh but it is natural to me." I know that it is
   natural--that is the very reason why you have to be doubly on your
   guard against it. Everything that is of nature--yes, and of your fallen
   nature when it is at its best--has to be put under the feet of Christ
   that Divine Grace may reign over every form of evil.

   Frequently the chariot of iron derives its force from the fact that a
   certain sin comes rushing upon you on a sudden and so takes you at a
   disadvantage. If a man had notice of a temptation he might be able to
   overcome it. But temptations never give us notice--can we expect them
   to do so? The sailor does not expect to have notice of every gale of
   wind that blows upon him. The soldier in battle does not reckon to have
   notice of every bullet that is coming his way. By what apparatus could
   we be kept aware of every advance of the Evil One? The very essence of
   temptation often lies in the suddenness of it--we are carried off our
   feet before we are even aware of it. Yet we must not say because of
   this, "I cannot help it."

   For we ought to be all the more watchful and live all the nearer to God
   in prayer. We are bound to stand against a sudden temptation as much as
   against a slower mode of attack. We must look to the Lord to be
   preserved from the arrow which flies by day and the pestilence which
   walks in darkness. We are to cry to God for Divine Grace. Let the gusts
   of temptation come how they may and when they may--we may always be
   found in Christ--resting in Him, covered with His Divine power.

   Dear Friends, sometimes these sins get power from the fact that if we
   do not yield to them, we may incur ridicule on account of them. Many a
   true Believer who could burn at the stake cannot bear to be laughed at.
   Many persons are remarkably sensitive to a jest or a sarcasm. They
   could bear to be flogged more easily than to be ridiculed. So the
   powers of darkness assail them with sneers and jeers and flouts and
   gibes. These are to them as chariots of iron. I have no doubt that our
   soldier friends who are about to be baptized tonight will have a hard
   time of it in that respect. I pray God to strengthen them in the
   barracks and make them like men in armor who cannot be wounded by sword
   or arrow.

   I would not, if I could, prevent any of you from being persecuted in
   your measure. Should not soldiers fight? I would stay the persecution
   for the sake of the persecutor. But for the sake of you who have to
   bear it, I would hardly lift a finger to screen you because the trial
   is an education of the utmost value. We shall never see champions if
   there is no fighting. Brothers and Sisters, some of us have lived in
   warfare so long that we should be half afraid if we were long free from
   assault. We have been called pretty nearly every name--and if there
   remain any other forms of abuse, we are waiting for their filthiness to
   be poured on our head.

   Yet our slanderers and revilers have not broken a single bone. They
   have not hurt our faith, nor blighted our hope, nor chilled our love,
   nor stopped our communion with God. Indeed, we are the better for the
   fire--the anvil and the hammer with which our enemies have been good
   enough to work upon us. More closeness to God, more confidence in
   Him--and more joy in Him often come to the child of God when he is most
   under fire. Still the trial of cruel mockings makes sin seem to have
   chariots of iron.

   Perhaps one of the things that is worst of all to a Christian is that
   certain sins are supposed to be irresistible. It is a popular error and
   a very pernicious one. "These chariots of iron," the Israelites said,
   "it is of no use to try to contend with them." So they gave up the
   plains to the Canaanites. It is a sad calamity when a Christian person
   says, "I can keep straight in everything except that. Do not touch me
   there. You must allow me a great deal of latitude in that direction.
   Please make large allowances for my peculiar constitution." All such
   pleading is mischievous. Listen to me, my Sister. I will make
   allowances for you. But I beseech you, do not make any allowance for
   yourself. My Brother, I implore you, do not take out a license to sin.

   But for you to make an allowance for yourself will be most injurious to
   your soul. You have to overcome and destroy the sin for which you claim
   toleration.

   Mark that! You must not--you dare not--allow ANY sin to master you! And
   if you know that it does overpower you, do not therefore claim that you
   may indulge it, but draw an inference of the opposite sort. Because it
   has mastered you, concentrate your entire strength upon its utter
   destruction. Sin must come down--let not your eyes spare it. The
   Canaanite must be driven out--the finest and fairest of the race must
   fall by the sword. We cannot enter Heaven with a single sin remaining
   in us, for "they are without fault before the Throne of God." Before we
   can pass the pearly portal every spot and wrinkle must be removed from
   us. See your calling, Brethren. Look at it well. Do you not need
   heavenly strength? Will you not seek the Holy

   Spirit?

   II. I now turn to the second head. I have said that we must drive them
   out. The second head is that THEY CAN BE DRIVEN OUT. I do not say that
   we can drive them out but I say that they can be driven out. It will be
   a great miracle but let us believe in it. For other great wonders have
   been worked. Note first that you and I have been raised from the dead.
   Is it not so? "You has He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and
   sins." If a dead man has been raised, then anything can be done with
   the man who is now made alive.

   Do not tell me that there is a spot on the face of newly-risen Lazarus
   that cannot be washed away--I do not believe it. Do not tell me that
   there is a bent finger that cannot be straightened--after having seen
   the dead man live--I am certain that the living man can be perfected.
   He that could raise Lazarus from the dead can cause his grave clothes
   to be unbound, can raise him beyond his imperfections and infirmities,
   can make him perfect in every good work to do His will. It CAN be done.
   The raising from the dead is the evidence that it can be done.

   You have also by Divine power been led to believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as the result of
   Divine Grace within your heart, what is there that you cannot do?
   Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is a very simple thing, you say. I
   know it is, but still it is the greatest thing a man ever does. "What
   shall we do," they said to Jesus, "that we might work the works of
   God?" And He said, "This is the work of God"--this is a God-like work,
   the highest kind of work that ever can be done--"that you believe on
   Him whom He has sent." If you have been enabled to believe you can be
   enabled to be holy. He that led you to exert faith can lead you, by
   faith, to overcome any and every iniquity.

   In the next place, you have already conquered many sins. Look at the
   heaps of Canaanites that you have killed. Begin at the beginning, where
   God began with you in the work of Grace in your soul--is there not a
   wonderful difference between what you were then and what you are now?
   Were there not sins entrenched in your nature, like the Canaanites in
   their walled cities? But Jericho fell flat to the ground. Hosts upon
   hosts of unbelief and iniquities dwelt within your daily life but you
   have driven them out. By God's Grace you have resisted temptation and
   escaped from lusts and risen above doubts. You have overcome through
   the blood of the Lamb. You can say, "O my soul, you have trod down
   strength." He that has helped you so far can surely help you even to
   the conclusion of the fight. Do not doubt that the almighty power of
   Divine Grace which has achieved so much, can achieve much more. Be
   strong and very courageous--the Lord of Hosts, Himself is at your side.

   Have you not seen other Christians conquer? Oh, let your memory charge
   you now with Brothers and Sisters in whom you saw great infirmities and
   sins at the commencement of their spiritual career. How they have
   grown! How they have vanquished inbred sin! The tears come into my eyes
   when I think of certain members of this Church--some in Heaven and some
   still among us. I remember what they used to be and what they are now
   and I can hardly believe that they are the same persons. Fierce tempers
   have been tamed, strong passions have been bound, black melancholy has
   been chased away. When they first joined the Church they were good,
   useful, sound men but the pear was very hard.

   I should not have liked to put my teeth into it--they were stern,
   self-willed and obstinate. The fruit was not only hard but sour--for
   with all their zeal they were tart, sharp and the reverse of gentle.
   But now, how mellow they are! What a sweet smell of ripeness there is
   about them! How ready they are to be taken to the great feast above!
   What God has done for them He can do for you. He can get that hardness
   out of you. That greenness, that sourness--He can graciously remove.
   Every man among us has to wear out at least one pair of green slippers.
   And when he has worn them out--then he puts on something better by way
   of traveling gear and has his feet "shod with the preparation of the
   Gospel ofpeace." We generally begin with a fool's boots at first, but
   God, who makes the foolish wise, makes men of us at last. He who trains
   the babes till out of their mouths He brings forth mighty witness to
   His Word can do the same with us.

   Beloved, we have been talking about what can be done and what cannot be
   done. Have we thought about it? We are dealing with the Almighty. And
   with Him all things are possible. I think I see the battle now going
   on. The enemy seems to prevail and the timid hearts of the soldiers of
   the Cross sink within them. Listen! You have not yet drawn upon your
   reserves. Do you

   not know that there is eternal power within the Godhead waiting to help
   you in your struggle against all evil? Call up your reserves! Entreat
   your great Ally to send reinforcements in this hour of need. Beseech
   the Lord to give you more Divine Grace. And as you have received life
   at His hands, pray that you may receive it yet more abundantly.

   Does any man know how holy he can be? "It does not yet appear what we
   shall be." God give us grace to pray and watch and believe and
   expect--and may the prayer of my dear Brother Williams be fully
   answered, for he just now prayed that "the weakest among us may be as
   David and David as the angel of God." God help us to feel that the
   Canaanites can be driven out.

   III. And then we close with our third head and that is, THEY SHALL BE
   DRIVEN OUT. They must be driven out. They can be driven out. They shall
   be driven out. They shall be driven out. That is a speech for a
   monarch. "Must" is for the king and "shall" is for the King of kings.

   Well, well--we venture to say it--because we only give the echo of His
   sovereign tones. This is what Christ died for. He loved the Church and
   gave Himself for it that He might sanctify and cleanse it by the
   washing of water by the Word--that He might present it unto Himself a
   glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing--but
   that it should be holy and without blemish. Christ died to save His
   people, not from some of their sins but from all of their sins. His
   precious blood cleans from all sin. His perfect atonement secures
   perfection to His saints. The death of sin is guaranteed by the death
   of Christ. Let us pray tonight fervently--

   "Let the water and the blood, From Your riven side which flowed, Be of
   sin the double cure Cleanse us from its guilt and power." Brethren,
   this is what Christ lives for. Up in Heaven He pleads for us and "He is
   able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He
   ever lives to make intercession for them." The desire of His heart is
   that we may be kept from sin. "Holy Father, keep them through Your
   Word." He pleads that though Satan may desire to have them and sift
   them as wheat they still may be preserved. Christ in Heaven is the
   pattern of what we shall be and He will not fail to mold us after His
   own model. We shall one day be perfectly conformed to His image and
   then we shall be with Him in glory. Our Lord's honor is bound up with
   the presentation of all His saints in spotless purity to Himself in the
   day of His glorious marriage.

   This is what the Holy Spirit is given for. He is not given to come into
   our hearts and comfort us in our sins but to deliver us from all evil
   and to comfort us in Christ Jesus. He quickens, He directs, He helps,
   He illuminates. He does a thousand things. But, chiefly, He sanctifies
   us. He comes into the heart to drive out every other power that seeks
   to have dominion there. By the living Spirit of God, who dwells in you,
   as God within His temple, I charge you cry to Him that every Dagon may
   be broken, every altar of Baal cast down, every golden calf ground to
   powder.

   Brothers and Sisters, let us never from this time forth write out a
   pass for any sin to come and go in our hearts. We will have no licensed
   sin, no place in which evil may claim a lodging. We will not have a
   spare bed for iniquity, nor give it a room, even in the barn or the
   outhouse. Do not let us idly say, "I cannot get over that sinful
   habit." You CAN get over it--you MUST get over it. Do not say, "I will
   draw the line there. I really must tolerate that one particular fault."
   Do not tolerate it! It will ruin you. How dare you say, "I must drink
   so much poison." Touch it not. Oh, that the poison of iniquity may
   never come near your lips, however sweet it may seem to the carnal
   taste!

   This is the very object of the Gospel which we preach to you. And we
   have preached in vain unless you are striving against sin. Ours is a
   holy Gospel and if it does not make you holy, it has done nothing for
   you. This, especially, is the meaning of the ordinance of Baptism for
   which the pool is now open before you. It is one of the meanings of
   Believer's Baptism that you are henceforth buried with Christ--dead to
   your old sins and risen with Christ in newness of life. What a farce it
   is if you are still living in sin! I shall thank God that I baptized
   none of you if I see you still alive unto sin as you used to be. If you
   and I are unholy, we stab religion in its vital parts and murder our
   profession. When we make up our minds that we will allow any sin within
   us, we do to that extent deny to Christ the travail of His soul.
   Nothing grieves the Spirit of God like unholiness. And nothing pleases
   Christ like seeing His disciples walking in His footsteps.

   1 wish that I were able to speak more instructively upon such a subject
   as this. But I speak to myself and I feel the effect of the Truth of
   God as I utter it. I pray that I may speak to all here present with
   practical result. I doubt not that I address many dear Brethren who are
   far in advance of myself and to them I say, "Go on, dear Friends, from
   strength to strength. And may the Lord help you to tread all the powers
   of darkness down and win the day speedily." But I speak to others that
   are far behind me. And I am sorry that they are so--for I am very far
   from having attained--although I press forward with all my heart.

   If you are living children of the living God, lay hold upon that
   promise, "By little and by little, I will surely drive them out." If
   you cannot conquer all the Hivites and Jebusites today--at least down
   with one and then with another. May the mighty Grace of God--without
   which you can do nothing--help you to keep your sword out of its
   sheath, driving at the very heart of sin with your utmost strength
   until the last sin shall lie dead at the feet of Christ and you shall
   be perfectly happy because He has made you perfectly holy.

   There is no fear of your stopping here upon this sin-deified earth if
   you have once reached the point of perfection. This is a poor world for
   the completely sanctified. God does not leave His ripe wheat out in the
   fields too long--He takes the sheaves home to His barn when they are
   quite ready. We shall soon be with Him where He is when we are made
   like He. The Lord grant it, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                   A Paradox

   A Sermon

   (No. 2050)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, November 4th, 1888, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [9]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "When I am weak, then am I strong."'2 Corinthians 12:10.

   The expression is paradoxical, and seems somewhat singular; yet it was
   the experience of the apostle Paul, a man of calm spirit, by no means
   fanciful, a wise man, and far removed from a fanatic. It was the
   experience of one who was led of the Spirit of God, and therefore it
   was a gracious experience: the experience of one who was a father in
   Israel, who could safely bid us to be imitators of him, even as he
   imitated the Lord Jesus Christ; and therefore it was a safe experience.
   If we are weak, so was Paul; and if, like him, we are strong in our
   weakness, we shall be in the best of company. If the same things be
   seen in us which were wrought in the apostle of the Gentiles, we may
   join with him in glorying in infirmities, because the power of Christ
   doth rest upon us, and we may count ourselves happy that with such a
   saint we can cry, "When I am weak, then am I strong."

   I. Perhaps I can expound the text best if I first TURN IT THE OTHER WAY
   UP, and use it as a warning.

   When I am strong, then am I weak. Perhaps, while thinking of the text
   thus turned inside out, we shall be getting light upon it to be used
   when we view it with the right side outwards, and see that when we are
   weak, then we are strong.

   I am quite sure that some people think themselves very strong, and are
   not so. Their proud consciousness of fancied strength is the indication
   of a terrible weakness. We have among us certain persons who think that
   they can do all that is needful for their own salvation whenever they
   please to do so. They can perform all sorts of good works, or at least
   quite enough to carry them to heaven. Their first idea is that they are
   to be saved by their own doings; and they really expect to be so saved.
   They may admit that they have a few faults and flaws in their
   character; but these are so trifling as to be hardly worth mentioning,
   and God Almighty is too merciful to be very particular. Their lives
   have been excellent, their tempers amiable, their manners courteous,
   their spirit generous, and they quite believe that by keeping on at the
   same pace they will win the prize: if they do not, who will? The ship
   of their character is in fine condition; they have no leaks which the
   pumps cannot keep down; their sails are not rent, and they hope to sail
   into the haven of peace with a glorious cargo of merit, having an
   abundant entrance, and hearing a loud, "Well done!" Ah, my friend! that
   consciousness of legal strength is a mere delusion, and it will have to
   be taken out of you. There is no going to heaven that way'by self and
   the works of self. Your error is a common one, but it is fatal. I have
   seen many epitaphs of persons, placed by the mistaken kindness of
   friends upon their tombstones, which I felt sure would have been
   sufficient to shut them out of heaven if they had been true. These
   departed worthies do not appear to have been sinners at all: their
   virtues were superlative, their faults non-existent. Such wonderful
   people would appear from their epitaphs to have flown up to the gates
   of heaven upon the wings of their own virtues, and to have entered
   there without a passport of mercy, as burgesses by their own right of
   the New Jerusalem. I wonder how they would behave themselves in heaven,
   if they were really admitted there! All the rest are singing, "We have
   washed our robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"; but
   these needed no washing, and so they would be likely to strike up a
   little song by themselves, and sing, "Our robes never needed washing;
   we kept them white as snow." What a discord that would create in the
   music of the skies! What a division of character and feeling would be
   found among celestials! I cannot see how there could be any harmony of
   sentiment amongst sinners saved by grace and righteous ones who owed
   nothing to mercy, nothing to the atoning sacrifice.

   No, my strong and virtuous hearer, you are under a grave delusion.
   There is a great similarity between your talk and the talk of that
   religious individual who went up to the temple in our Saviour's days,
   and, standing before the thrice-holy God, dared to say, "God, I thank
   thee that I am not as other men are." He was not justified that day,
   nor will you be. A poor tax-gatherer, despised by himself, and an
   off-cast from his own people, stood in the temple at the same time, and
   all that he dared to say was, "God be merciful to me a sinner." This
   unworthy sinner when to his house justified, while the other worthy
   person was not accepted. If you think yourselves strong enough to
   procure heaven by your own efforts, you are ignorantly insulting the
   cross of Christ, for you seem to insinuate that your virtues can avail
   you without Jesus. If you really mean this, there is no more venom of
   rebellion against God in your self-righteousness than in the outward
   vice of those who make no pretence to godliness. For you to put your
   works in the place of Jesus is a blasphemy against the Saviour's blood
   and righteousness. Why needed Christ to die if men could save
   themselves? Why need he bleed upon the cross if your merits will
   suffice to gain you a place among the blessed? There is a fatal
   weakness in the claim of that man who thinks himself strong enough to
   force his own passage to the throne of God; that weakness lies in the
   pride which insults the Crucified, the disloyalty which prefers itself
   to the royal Saviour.

   "Perish the virtue, as it ought'abhorred,

   And the fool with it who insults his Lord."

   Listen to me a moment, and quit your fancied strength: you, my hearer,
   cannot keep the law of God, for you have already broken it. How can you
   preserve a crystal vase entire when you have already dashed it to
   atoms? You must now be saved by the merits and the strength of another,
   or not at all; for your own merit is out of the question, through past
   failure. That strength of yours, upon which you dote so much, is
   perfect weakness. May the Lord show you this, and make you faint at
   heart on that account; for then you shall be strong, with real and
   saving strength! Now your imaginary strength is making you really weak,
   and that boasted merit of yours is shutting you out from true
   righteousness. He that is strong in the notion of merit is weak even to
   utter folly before the God of truth.

   "Yes," we hear you reply, "there is a gospel way of salvation. We know
   that there is, for you preach it continually. You tell us that men must
   repent, and believe the gospel; that they must be renewed in the spirit
   of their minds, and must both overcome sin, and follow after holiness."
   Yes, I do say all that; but what do you say to it? Is it really so that
   you find here a ground for your own strength? Do you say, "I feel that
   I can repent whenever I please, and believe in Jesus when I choose?"
   Ah! then I must assure you that when you are strong in that way, you
   are weak. I never yet knew anybody repent who gloried in his power to
   repent; I never yet knew a man heart-broken for sin who boasted that he
   could break his own heart when and where he pleased. "What!" cries one,
   "surely I can believe in Jesus Christ when I please!" I have not denied
   that statement, have I? But I tell you that your notion of power to
   believe is your weakness; and I would rather by half hear you cry, with
   deep solemnity, "Oh, that God would give me faith! Lord, help my
   unbelief!" Your sense of inability to believe in Christ would be a far
   better token for good, in my judgment, than your present flippant talk
   about believing when you like. Men who are in earnest talk not so:
   whatever their strength may be, they find it little enough in the hour
   of need. I beg to assure you that I have never known a man believe in
   Jesus who trusted that he could so believe; for his trust in his own
   believing kept him from trusting to Jesus; but I have known many a
   poor, struggling soul lie at the cross-foot, and say, "Lord, help me to
   look to Jesus, and live;" and God has helped him to give that look in
   which there is eternal life. While he has been praying, his prayer,
   yes, his weeping prayer, has had in it that very look to Jesus for
   which he was pleading. His sense of inability to believe has made him
   look to Jesus for believing, and he has found it in him.

   You say that you can turn your heart towards God whenever you please. I
   am not going into any dispute with you about your assertion, nor the
   doctrine, which is supposed to support you in your profession of
   strength; but I will say this, that your idea of having personal
   strength, with which to purify and renew your own heart'your idea that
   you can create in yourself a right spirit'your idea that you can raise
   yourself from your death in sin' is to me a prophecy of much evil for
   yourself. where self is conspicuous, I see an omen of mischief, I see
   no good in this fine opinion of yourself; but if I heard you cry,
   "Create in me a clean heart, O God"'if I heard you say, "Lord, quicken
   me out of my death in sin"'if I saw you lying down before the Most
   High, and praying, "Turn me, and I shall be turned"'I should have a far
   brighter hope of you. In your weakness you would become strong; but in
   your present strength, I am sure I see a great weakness, which is
   likely to be your ruin. O dear hearts, your best friend does not lie
   within your own doors. Your hope for better things shines yonder at the
   right hand of God, where the living Saviour has all power given to him
   in heaven and earth. Sinner, if you grow no sweeter flowers than the
   dunghill of your own nature can nourish, you will die amid poisonous
   weeds. If you never drink of better water than the filthy well of your
   own heart will yield, you will perish of thirst, or of a deadly
   draught. Another, and a better helper than one born in your house, must
   come this way. Help must be laid upon one that is mighty, exalted of
   the Lord out of the people, and endowed with divine power and Godhead,
   for only such a Saviour, infinitely good and great, can save a soul so
   lost as yours. When you get down, down, down, into utter weakness, then
   you will be strong, because then you will rest upon the Lord's
   salvation; but as you are strong in your thoughts of yourself, you are
   kept from Jesus, and are weakness itself.

   So far I have spoken by way of warning to unconverted people.

   I desire now to say a word to those who profess to be Christians, and,
   let us hope, are so; but they are, in a measure, erring in the same way
   as those to whom I have spoken. They are remarkably strong: at least in
   their own esteem they are very Samsons, although others fear that the
   Philistines will capture them. By this token may they know their own
   weakness'even by this, that they think themselves strong.

   First, many are wonderfully strong as to knowledge. They know almost
   everything. If in any department they are a little short, they make up
   for it by knowing so much more in the other direction. If they are too
   narrow here, they overlap there. They are knowing men, and need no man
   to tell them so. They are instructed in the faith from pole to pole:
   they know both that which is afar off, and that which is nigh. An
   argument is a pleasure to them. They go into company where the eternal
   verities are denied, and feel a delight in taking sides. They will sit
   where the vital simplicities of God's word are set up like marks for
   boys to throw at; and they like the amusement, for it exercises their
   knowing faculty, and gives them a chance of showing their mental power.
   They are not children, but quite able to think for themselves. They are
   not credulous, but amazingly clear-headed and cultured. I have noticed
   these fine gentlemen have been the first to deny the faith, and to fall
   into all manner of heresies. Do you wonder? Those who are so very sure
   are always the most uncertain. I could instance some that had such
   confidence in themselves that they would have argued with the very
   fiend of hell on any question, for they felt that not even Satanic
   craft could conquer them; but at this present moment the prince of
   darkness holds them in his power. They hold no controversy with the
   devil now, for they are very largely agreed with him in assailing the
   gospel of God's grace. They have gone entirely over to the denial of
   everything that is gracious and holy and scriptural, and the main cause
   of their apostasy is their own invincible self-confidence. They were so
   strong that they became weaker than others. O brethren, when we are
   very wise in our own esteem, we are bordering upon fools, even if we
   have not already entered into that company. When we tremblingly sit at
   Jesus' feet, to learn everything afresh, and fresh from him; when we
   shudder at anything that questions his Deity, or lowers his sacrifice;
   when we shut up a book and cast it from us, because we feel that it
   pollutes us with unbelief'then are we wise and strong. When the Word of
   the Lord is enough, then are we in the way of wisdom and strength. The
   man of one book is proverbially a terrible mon; but the man of ten
   thousand books, who can baffle all adversaries and foil all foes, shall
   soon lie wounded on the plain, if he be not slain outright. Let us take
   heed unto ourselves, that we fall not through being headstrong, or
   strong in the head, which is much the same thing.

   Again, I have noticed some professedly Christian people wonderfully
   strong through experience. Their experience has been very extensive,
   and the knowledge it has brought them they consider to be specially
   profound, and, consequently, they are not afraid of temptation, for
   they feel that they are too wise to be entrapped. They are so
   experienced now, that things which young people ought not to think of,
   they can do with impunity'so they foolishly dream. They can go just so
   far, and then stop, for they are fitted with the patent brakes of
   prudence. They are such good mountain climbers that they can stand on
   the edge of a precipice, and look over, and even hang over, without
   fear of their ever being giddy and falling over. Of course they would
   not advise other people to go quite so far as they may safely go; but
   then, what is temptation to other men is no temptation to them. Their
   vessel is so tight and trim, and they understand navigation so
   perfectly, that they rather like a tempest than not, just to show how
   well their vessel can behave in a storm. Ah me! When you next read the
   list of wrecks, you may expect to see the name of their ship among the
   castaways. Old birds may not be caught with chaff, but they can be shot
   with a gun. No one is out of danger, and no one is more in danger than
   the man who is carnally secure. Those who feel that their experience,
   be it what it may, only teaches them that the farther they can keep
   from temptation the better, these are in a better state. When
   experience drives us to pray with emphasis the prayer "Lead us not into
   temptation," then it is working aright. In the idea of strength and
   wisdom lurks an awfully perilous weakness; but in a sense of personal
   weakness dwells a real strength. If you are extremely jealous,
   conscientious, and watchful, many will tell you how weak you are; but
   you are, in reality, a strong man, because of your fear to encounter
   evil influences: in that fear lies one essential element of holy
   strength. While he that rather braves temptation, because he feels so
   strong, shall find, it may be to his everlasting sorrow, how great his
   weakness is; he that shuns the appearance of evil, because of conscious
   weakness, shall find therein his security and strength. Oh, let none of
   us, because we are getting gray, suppose that we are vulnerable to sin!
   Let us not dream that because we have been church-members so many
   years, or even because we have sustained a long and useful ministry, we
   are therefore beyond gun-shot of the enemy, or without necessity to
   seek daily strength for daily duty. My brethren, we cannot perform the
   smallest duty aright apart from the help of God; neither can we be
   secure against even the grossest sin, apart from the perpetual guard of
   him that keepeth Israel. If we, in our self-conceit, write ourselves
   down among the mightiest, and forget our entire dependence upon
   heavenly grace, we may be left to prove, by unhappy experience, that
   pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

   Let us note another point. I have known certain Christian people who
   thought themselves singularly strong in the matter of wisdom and
   prudence. They have been gifted with clear insight and a measure of
   shrewdness, and have, therefore, felt that their judgment on most
   subjects was that of an umpire. Have you ever noticed that the raw
   material of a very grossly foolish person is a cautious individual? The
   cunning are the readiest dupes when craft is busy in taking its prey.
   So, too, a wise man is needed if there is to be exhibited the worst
   form of folly. If we were called upon to select a man who, as to his
   life as a whole, perpetrated the greatest folly, we should mention
   Solomon. Yet he was the wisest of man. Yes, the cream of wisdom, when
   curdled, makes the worst of folly. Was ever man so insanely
   enthusiastic in vain pursuits as this master of all knowledge? Then,
   brethren, whenever we feel sure of our own superior intelligence, let
   us suspect ourselves of weakness. Let the same fear come upon us when
   we feel sure about our way, so sure that we think we need not pray
   about it, or in any manner wait for divine direction. Beware of those
   matters in which you think you cannot err. Men who have been wise in
   great difficulties have blundered fearfully where all was simple. The
   Israelites thought that the men who came to them begging for a league
   of brotherhood could not deceive them. It must be safe to be on good
   terms with these interesting strangers. Why, look, their shoes are
   well-nigh worn from their feet, and patched and clouted to the last
   degree! Their clothes, which we doubt not were new when they left their
   distant homes, are now threadbare, and their biscuit, which they took
   fresh from the oven, is stale with age. It is evident, upon the face of
   it, that they must have come from a very remote part of the world, and
   therefore a treaty with them will not interfere with the divine
   command. There can be no need to pray about a case so clear. Thus the
   Gibeonites overreached them, as we also shall be overreached when we
   are so exceeding sure of our course. Brethren, let us not be wise as to
   dispense with our heavenly Counsellor and Guide. Would not that be the
   height of madness? It is a salutary thing to feel that your case
   requires you to trust the helm of your ship with the divine Pilot. It
   is even a blessed thing to feel that you are shut up to faith, and must
   by absolute trust in God throw the responsibility of your action upon
   him. I will give you an instance. Abraham, the father of the faithful,
   is placed in a peculiar position. God has commanded him to take his son
   Isaac, and offer him for a sacrifice. Here is a terrible puzzle. Here
   was enough to stagger any human mind. Surely it could not be right for
   a father to slay his son! How could it be wise to kill the son in whom
   all the promises of God were vested? The more you think of the case
   from a father's standpoint, the more it will perplex you. Abraham could
   not make any thing out of it by his judgment, but he met it all by
   faith. All that he could say to Isaac was, "My son, God will provide
   himself a Lamb." He was thus saying to himself, "The Lord will get me
   out of this difficulty." He had no wisdom with which to conjecture how
   the affair would end: he had to cease from guessing, and just trust in
   his God. Abraham made no mistake in this. Oh that we could do the same!
   Observe that same Abraham when he goes down to Egypt. His wife is
   exceedingly beautiful, and he fears that the king of Egypt will kill
   him in order to obtain his wife; what will he do? I can see a great
   many ways in which he might have warded off that evil. He was not
   called upon to go to Egypt at all, if he thereby risked his wife's
   honour; or, if he must go, he should have gone boldly, acknowledging
   his wife, and trusting both her and himself with the Lord. Instead of
   that, the patriarch begins by inducing Sarah to join with him in
   equivocation. "Say thou art my sister." She was in some sense his
   sister; but it was using a word in a double sense for a deceitful
   purpose, and it was a pitiful thing for Abraham to do. Nor was it a
   prudent scheme after all: in fact it was the cause of the very trouble
   which it sought to prevent. Sarah would not have been taken away from
   Abraham at all if Pharaoh had known that she was his wife; so that the
   wise was snared by his own craftiness. The Lord graciously delivered
   him, but in that very act left a root of bitterness behind to be his
   future plague. Pharaoh gave to him women- servants, and I doubt not
   among the rest was Hagar, who became the object of sin, and the source
   of sorrow to the household. In the fancied strength of Abraham, by
   which he emulated the craft of other Orientals, he displayed his
   weakness; but in the other case, where no wit or wisdom could assist
   him, he cast himself upon the Lord, and in his weakness he behaved like
   the grand man that he really was. Brothers, let us confess ourselves
   fools, that we may be wise; for otherwise we shall fall into that other
   condition, of professing ourselves wise, and becoming fools. Let us
   ignore our wisdom, even if we have any. God alone is wise: he that
   trusteth either his own heart or head is a fool. Lean not to thine own
   understanding, but lean wholly upon the Lord; so shalt thou be
   established.

   Further, dear friends, we shall often find that our strength will lie
   in patiencein extreme weakness which yields itself up to the will of
   God without the power or will to murmur. We sang in our hymn just now'

   "And when it seems no other chance or change

   From grief can set me free,

   Hope finds its strength in helplessness,

   And, patient, waits on thee."

   I am sure that in reference to power, either to do or to suffer
   rightly, we are not strong when we compliment ourselves upon our
   ability; and we are strong when, under a sense of absolute inability,
   we depend wholly upon God. That sermon preached in the glory of our
   oratory turned out to be mere husks for swine; while that discourse
   which we delivered in weakness, with a humble hope that God would use
   it, proved to be royal meat for the Lord's chosen. That work which you
   performed in the vigour of your unquestioned talent came to nothing,
   while that quiet act which you washed with your tears, and perfumed
   with your prayers, will live and yield you sheaves. Creature strength
   brings forth nothing which has life in it: only the seed which the
   Creator puts into the hand of our weakness will produce a harvest. It
   is well to be nothing: it is better still to be "less than nothing." We
   ought to dread a sense of capacity, for it will render us incapable;
   but a sense of utter incapacity apart from God is a fit preparation for
   being used by the Lord. "Unto them that have no might he increaseth
   strength."

   So it is in bearing as well as acting. If we say concerning sickness,
   "I shall never be impatient. I can bear it like a stoic." What if that?
   You will then have done no more than many have done before you, with no
   great gain to themselves or to others. But if, bowing your head before
   the Lord, you wait his sovereign will, and say, "Lord help me. If thy
   left hand shall smite me, let thy right hand sustain me. I am willing
   to drink this bitter cup, saying, 'Not as I will, but as thou wilt.'
   Lord, help me!"'you shall bear up triumphantly, and come out of the
   furnace refined, to the praise and the glory of your God. When you
   fancy that you are strong to suffer, you will fail; but in conscious
   weakness you will be enabled to play the man.

   I have now done with the text, as I have turned it upside down. May God
   bless it to any here who feel high and mighty, by causing it to put
   them in their proper place.

   II. Now, let us take our text THE RIGHT WAY UPWARDS. "When I am weak,
   then am I strong." "When" and "then" are the two pivots of the text'the
   hinges upon which it turns.

   "When I am weak." What does that mean? It means when the believer is
   consciously weak, when he painfully feels, and distinctly recognizes
   that he is weak, then he is strong. In truth, we are always weak,
   whether we know it or not; but when we not only believe this to be the
   fact, but see it to be the fact'then it is that we are strong. When it
   is forced home upon us, that we are less than nothing and vanity'when
   our very soul echoes and re-echoes that word, "Without me ye can do
   nothing."'then it is that we are strong.

   When he is growingly weak. Yes, for he sees his own weakness more and
   more clearly as he advances: as he grows stronger in faith he is much
   more conscious of the weakness of the flesh. I talked about my weakness
   from this platform five-and- twenty years ago; but I stand here and
   tremble under it now to a far greater degree than I did in my younger
   and more vigourous time. I knew it three-and-thirty years ago, when I
   first spoke to you, but I did not know it as I know it now. I was then
   weak, and I owned it: but I am now weak, and groan about it almost
   involuntarily. Yes, and I sometimes sing because of my weakness,
   learning to glory in my infirmities because the power of Christ doth
   rest upon me. When we are growingly weak, when we become weaker and
   weaker, when we seem to faint into a deeper swoon than ever as to our
   own strength, till death is written upon every power that we once
   thought we had, and we feel that we can do absolutely nothing apart
   from the Holy Spirit, then we are strong indeed.

   We are strong, too, when we feel painfully weak. It is well when we
   mourn because we are so weak, and cry out to ourselves, "My weakness,
   my weakness, woe unto me! When I would do good, evil is present with
   me. When I would rise to heaven, the body of this death detains me. I
   would do great things for God, but I have no might. Alas for my
   weakness!" At such a time we are really rising, and are bringing most
   glory to God. These are growing pains'agonies such as none know but the
   truly and growingly spiritual. A painful weakness is strength. It may
   seem a paradox, but it is true.

   We are strong when we are contritely weak. When we confess that much of
   our weakness is our fault'a weakness which we ought to have
   overcome'even then we have in that weakness a real strength. The sort
   of weakness that makes a man say, "I cannot be any stronger, I am doing
   my best," is not strength but folly; but that weakness which makes you
   lament your failures and deplore your shortcomings, has in it a holy
   stimulus and force. That weakness which makes you dissatisfied with all
   you are and all you do, is goading you on to better and stronger
   things. If you feel that even when most earnest you have not prayed as
   you could wish, there is evidently strength in your desires, and your
   desires are prayers. If after any service you pour forth showers of
   penitential tears because the service was imperfect, there is evidently
   a strong soul of obedience within you. When you can neither repent, nor
   believe, nor love as you wish to do, you are repenting, believing, and
   loving with a strength which is more true than apparent. It is the will
   with which we act which is the strength of the action; and when the
   will is so powerful that it makes us mourn because we cannot find how
   to perform its bidding, then are we strong according to the divine
   measurement of strength. Contrite weakness is spiritual strength.

   When a man is thoroughly weaknot only partially, but altogether
   weak'then is he strong. When apart from the Lord Jesus, he is utter
   weakness, and nothing more'then it is that he is strong. Let me
   persuade you to make a full confession of weakness to the Lord. Say,
   "Lord, I cannot do what I ought to do: I cannot do what I want to do: I
   cannot do what I used to do: I cannot do what other people do: I cannot
   do what I mean to do: I cannot do what I am sure I shall do: I cannot
   do what I feel impelled to do; and over this sinful weakness I mourn."
   Then add, "Lord, I long to serve thee perfectly, yet I cannot do it.
   Unless thou help me I can do nothing aright. There will be no good in
   my actions, my words, my feelings, or my desires, unless thou continue
   to fill me with thine own holy energy. Lord, help me! Lord, help me!"
   Brother, you are strong while you plead in that fashion. You can do all
   things through Christ who strengtheneth you; and he will strengthen
   you, now that you are emptied of self. How true it is, "When I am weak,
   then am I strong!"

   I have brought out the "when." Now lend me your ears and hearts for
   just a minute, while I bring out the "then." "Then am I strong." When
   is that?

   Why, a man is strong when he is consciously weak, because now he has
   reached the truth. He really is weak; and if he does not know that he
   is so, he is under the influence of a falsehood. Now a lie is a thing
   of weakness. Lying strength is all fluff and foam: a mere appearance, a
   mockery, a delusion. Nothing hinders from getting the reality like
   contentment with a mere appearance. The true heart is heartily sick of
   shows and shams, and it cries, "Lord, help me to get rid of these
   shadows! Help me to come at the truth! Help me to deal with realities!"
   When you are made to feel your utter weakness you are on sure ground of
   truth' unpleasant truth, no doubt, yet sure truth. You are now on safe
   ground touching fundamentals, and making sure work. What you now do
   will be soundly done. All the while that we keep building on a sandy
   made-up foundation, we are piling up that which will, in all
   probability, come down even faster than we put it up. While the rotten
   rubbish remains on the spot, you cannot do anything worth doing; but if
   that accumulation can be carted away, there will seem to be a great
   hole, but you will get down to the real bottom, and get a foundation;
   and then what you build will be worth putting up, because it will
   stand. Therefore, a man becomes strong when he is consciously weak,
   because he is on the truth, and is not being flattered by false hopes.

   Next, he will be strong because he will only go with a commission to
   support him. He will not be eager to run without being sent. He says
   within himself, when he proposes a service to himself, "No, I am too
   weak to undertake anything of my own head." He will wait for a call.
   This is not the kind of man that will climb up into a pulpit, and from
   a dizzy brain pour out nonsense. He will not crave to lead, for he
   feels that he needs much help even to follow. He feels himself too weak
   to set up for a master in Israel. This is not the kind of man that will
   venture into argument with sceptics for the fun or for the glory of the
   thing. Oh, no; he is too weak for that. He says, "If I am called to
   defend the faith, I will do it in God's strength, hoping that it will
   be given me in the same hour what I shall speak. If I am called to
   preach, I will preach, and nobody shall stop me; for the Lord will be
   with my mouth. But, you see, until the man is conscious of his own
   weakness, he will run without being sent; and there is nobody so weak
   as that man. No one so weak as the man who has no commission from God,
   and no promise of help from him. Such a man will be thinking of this,
   and thinking of that, and running for this, that, and the other,
   because he has a lot of waste energy which he wants to use somewhere or
   somehow. Could we once see him consciously weak we should hear him say,
   "Here am I, send me!" in answer to the question, "Whom shall I send?"
   Then he would not go a warfare at his own charges, but he would draw
   upon the all-sufficiency of God, and find himself equal to every
   emergency.

   The man who is consciously weak is strong, next, because of the holy
   caution that he will be sure to use. He will be on his guard, because
   he does not feel able to cope with adversaries. He will ask for a
   convoy for his little barque, for he is aware of pirates. If this weak
   man has to pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, depend upon
   it he will carry in his hand the weapon of All-prayer, like a drawn
   sword. The man that has strength goes hurrying on over hedge and ditch,
   and soon comes into mischief; but the consciously weak pilgrim keeps to
   the high-road, and travels carefully; and hence he is strong. Fear is a
   notably good housekeeper: she may not keep a luxurious table, but she
   always locks the doors at night, and takes care of all under her
   charge. Holy caution begets prudence; and prudence, by fostering
   vigour, and crying for heavenly aid, becomes strength.

   Moreover, when a man is weak, then is he strong, because he is sure to
   pray, and prayer is power. The man who laments his weakness is sure to
   cry to the strong for strength. The more his weakness presses on him,
   the more he will pray. While he can do without his God he will do
   without his God; but when his own weakness becomes utter and entire,
   and he is ready to perish, then he turns unto his Lord, and is made
   strong. The utterly weak cry out unto God as nobody else does. He is
   too weak to play at praying: he groans, he sighs, he weeps. In his
   abject weakness he prevails, as Jacob did. He wrestled all night; but
   now at last the angel has touched the hollow of his thigh, and made his
   sinew shrink, and he cannot wrestle any longer. What will he do now? He
   falls; and as he falls he grasps his antagonist, and holds him fast,
   crying, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me." As much to say,
   "I cannot wrestle with thee, I cannot try another fall; but I can and
   will hold thee fast. The dead weight of my weakness makes me hold thee
   as an anchor holds a ship. I will not let thee go except thou bless
   me."

   The weaker a man is in himself the stronger he is in prayer, if he
   makes use of his weakness as an appealing argument'"Lord, if I were
   strong, thou mightest leave me. Do not leave me, for I am weakness
   itself. I am the feeblest child in all thy family, leave me not,
   neither forsake me. If thou leavest any, leave not thy poor dying
   infant, that can hardly wail out its griefs." Weakness, as a plea with
   God in prayer, becomes a source of strength.

   When we are weak we are strong, again, because then we are driven away
   from self to God. All strength is in God, and it is well to come to the
   one solitary storehouse and source of might. There is no power apart
   from God. As long as you and I look to the creature, we are looking to
   a cracked, broken cistern, that holds no water; but when we know that
   it is broken, and that there is not a drop of water in it, then we
   hasten to the great fountain and well-head. While we rest in any
   measure upon self, or the creature, we are standing with one foot on
   the sand; but when we get the right away from human nature because we
   are too weak to have the least reliance upon self whatever, then we
   have both feet on the rock, and this is safe standing. If thou
   believest in the living God, and if all thine own existence is by
   believing, thou livest at a mighty rate. But if thou believest in God
   in a measure, and if, at the same time, thou trustest thyself in a
   measure, thou art living at a dying rate, and half the joy which is
   possible to thee is lost. Thou are taking in bread with one hand, and
   poison with the other: thou art feeding thy soul with substance and
   with shadow, and that makes a sorry mixture. When the shadow is clean
   taken away, and thou hast nothing but the substance, then art thou a
   strong man, fed upon substantial meat.

   Last of all, dear friends, I believe that, when a man is weak, he
   becomes strong to a large extent, because his weakness compels him to
   concentrate all his faculties.

   A sense of weakness brings out all the forces of a resolute spirit, and
   leads him to call in all the energy within his reach. When I have
   preached to you in extreme weakness, as I have often done, when I have
   afterwards read the sermon, I have been much more satisfied with it
   than I have been with others in which I felt more pleasure at the time.

   God helps us most when we most need his help; and, besides that, the
   man himself is, by his weakness, forced to use himself right up. When a
   man feels himself to be rather a large vessel, he puts in the tap
   somewhere near the top, and only a small supply flows out to the
   people; but when he is, in his own feelings, like a poor little cask
   with only a small supply in it, he puts the tap right down at the
   bottom, and permits all that is in the barrel to flow forth. Many a
   poor, weak brother, who says all the little that he knows, give forth
   more instruction than the learned divine who only favours his people
   with a small portion of his vast stores. When a man, in serving God,
   spends himself to the last farthing, he will often far more enrich his
   hearers than the man of ten talents who uses his resources with a
   prudent parsimony. Dear brother, it will often be a good thing for you
   to feel, "Now, God helping me, I must do my very utmost at this time. I
   have so little ability that every faculty within me must be wide awake,
   and serve God at its best." Thus your weakness will arouse you, and set
   you on fire, and, by the blessing of God, it will be the means of
   gaining you strength.

   Very well, then, let us pick up our tools and go to our work rejoicing,
   feeling'Well, I may be weaker, or I may be stronger in myself, but my
   strength is in my God. If I should ever become stronger, then I must
   pray for a deeper sense of weakness, lest I become weak through my
   strength. And if I should ever become weaker than I am, then I must
   hope and believe that I am really becoming stronger in the Lord.
   Whether I am weak or strong, what matters it? He who never fails and
   never changes will perfect his strength in my weakness, and this is
   glory to me. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Setting Jesus at Nothing--Treating Him with Contempt

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1888, BY C. H.
   SPURGEON,

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 2, 1888,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And Herod with his men of war set Him at nothing." Luke 23:11.

   IT is your Lord whom Herod set at nothing! Once worshipped of angels
   and all the heavenly host, He is treated with contempt by a ribald
   regiment. In Himself "the brightness of His Father's glory and the
   express image of His Person." But now set at nothing by men not worthy
   of the name. Soon to reassume all His former glory with the Father and
   to descend in infinite splendor to judge the earth in righteousness and
   reign as King of kings--and yet here He is set at nothing! It is a
   sight of horror and of shame. How could angels bear to see it? This
   paltry prince and his rough retinue made nothing of Him who is All in
   All. They treated Him as beneath their contempt.

   The most contemptible flouted Him. The mean soldier in the petty army
   of a petty prince made unholy mirth of Heaven's high Lord and earth's
   Redeemer. What a sorrowful and shameless business! May we be helped to
   sorrow over it! These wretches were of our race. May we mourn because
   of Him! When the thorns of grief and repentance are at our breast, may
   God grant that they may act as lancets to let out the foul blood of our
   pride, for we, too, are partakers in this tremendous crime, since our
   sin involved our Savior in the necessity of bearing this barbarous
   scorn.

   Herod himself treated Him with contempt. In this loathsome being I see
   the most likely person to think nothing of the Lord Jesus. Let me just
   say a word or two about this member of a detestable family, that I may
   see whether his like can be found here tonight. I will not give you any
   history of this Herod. It is not worth while. This "fox" is not worth
   unearthing. The page of history is stained by the Herodian name. I will
   give you enough concerning him to help you to answer the question--Are
   you like he? Have you set Christ at nothing? Have you treated Christ
   with contempt?

   I. This shall be our first enquiry--WHO IS THE MOST LIKELY PERSON TO
   TREAT OUR LORD WITH CONTEMPT?

   Herod was a man who had once heard the Word of God. Yes, heard it with
   a measure of attention and apparent benefit. We read, "Herod feared
   John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy and observed him. And
   when he heard him, he did many things and heard him gladly." According
   to the margin, Herod "kept him or saved him"--preserving him from those
   who would have laid violent hands upon him. But he broke away from his
   respectful regard of John and now that Jesus stands before him, his
   memory of the Baptist does not restrain him from mocking the Baptist's
   Lord. He had silenced that eloquent tongue and now he had no care to
   listen to anything which might further bestir his conscience.

   We often find that the greatest despisers of Christ are those who
   formerly were hearers and readers of His Word but have turned from it.
   An apostate Methodist is a scoffer--a runaway Baptist is an infidel. It
   looks as if men must have some knowledge of the Truth of God to be able
   to fight against it in the most malicious way. The viper must be warmed
   in the man's bosom that he may have strength to bite him. Is not this a
   wretched business? Am I talking to any here who not so many years ago
   were regular attendants upon a faithful ministry but who have grown
   weary of it and given it up? I do not know what reason you give. But I
   suppose the real reason is that you love the world better than Christ
   and so you have left His people and His Word.

   It troubles your conscience that you have done so and now you try to
   conceal your uneasiness by picking holes in your former minister and
   finding fault with the Truths of God which he preached to you. I know
   the tricks and manners of apostates. Wanting an opiate for your
   consciences, you invent a fault in the Gospel, or try to disbelieve it
   altogether.

   What an unhappy thing that the hopeful hearer should decline into a
   hopeless despiser! Herod heard John but he ridiculed Jesus. See to what
   unconverted hearers may come?

   If I look at Herod again, I see in him a man who, after hearing the
   Word faithfully preached, had distinctly done violence to his
   conscience. He heard John until John came home to him about the woman
   with whom he was living in an incestuous union. Herodias would have
   killed John at once--and though Herod did not dare to go so far as
   that, he shut him up in prison. A filthy lust must not be
   rebuked--Herod imprisons his reprover. He knew that John was right and
   he trembled at his rebuke. But he could not give up his sin and so he
   put the servant of God in a dungeon. He was held fast, as many a man
   before, and since has been held fast, by an evil woman.

   She demanded of him that at the very least the man of God should be
   cast into prison. How dare he speak against what the prince chose to
   do! How dare a peasant censure so great a man as Herod about his
   personal life! So, instead of bowing before the supreme authority of
   right and listening to the voice of truth as uttered by the Lord's
   Elijah, he must exercise his royal power and lay his reprover by the
   heels. The man who could do this was in training for the more daring
   act of setting the Lord Jesus at nothing.

   First despise the man, and then the Master. First do violence to your
   better self and then scoff at godliness. My Friend, do you remember
   that night when you distinctly decided for the devil? Do you recollect
   when, after having the evil set before you and seeing it and counting
   the cost, you decided to continue in it? Then you turned with
   bitterness upon the honest reprover whose rebuke you had aforetime
   endured. Perhaps it was your wife upon whom you turned with anger. What
   hard words you said to her for the gentle remark she ventured to make!
   It was an effort for you. You gave conscience an awful wrench. And
   therefore you put yourself into a passion and talked like an insulted
   man.

   Or was it your brother? It may be you left his society in order to be
   free from his remarks. Was it your child, or your friend? You could not
   put them in prison. But you were determined that you would not bear any
   more of their protests. You abused and silenced them. Not because you
   thought they were wrong, but because they made you feel that you were
   wrong. By all this you have prepared yourself to treat the Lord with
   contempt. And we cannot wonder that you do so.

   This man also had yielded to sinful companions and had committed a
   gross sin as the result of it, for when Herodias danced and he promised
   to give her whatsoever she desired, she asked the head of John the
   Baptist on a platter. And he, not liking to break his word in the
   presence of the assembled guests and not willing to stand out against
   the woman with whom he lived in unhallowed intercourse, yielded and the
   Baptist's head was taken from his shoulders. Ah, well, you may not have
   sinned quite in that way. But you, too, once had better thoughts and
   higher aims. Your companions were too many for you and drove all good
   out of you.

   I do not mention this that you may dare to cast the blame upon others
   of that which was really your own act and deed. If there had been a
   spark of true manhood in you, you would have resisted the suggestion of
   those enemies in the garb of friends. But you are soft and plastic,
   like wax, in the hand of evil. Instead of being as you ought to be,
   like granite towards evil and like wax towards good you now feel as if
   you had gone too far to turn back. You are now fixed in an evil estate.
   A black sin seems to bar the way to repentance. Truly, even now, you
   will be welcomed to the bosom of mercy, but you are not anxious enough
   for it. It is a long lane that has no turning, but you seem to have got
   into such a lane and you are driven along it by evil forces.

   This is the man that thinks nothing of Christ--the man who thinks so
   much of drinking and dancing and of the companions which such things
   have brought around him. Of course he does not think anything of
   Christ, for His ways would take from him these vile associates. How
   should he value the holy Jesus? Will swine ever think much of pearls?
   It is vain that we set before you beauties for which you have no eyes,
   hopes for which you have no heart. Jesus cannot be valued by a man of
   Herod's sort, who puts so high a value upon the opinion of those who
   sit with him at his banquets.

   Once more--the man who thinks nothing of Christ is the man that means
   to go on in sin, even as Herod did. The die was cast--his mind was made
   up for evil. He would be very glad to hear Christ--he has no objection,
   still, to go to a place of worship and listen to a preacher. He would
   be very pleased to see a miracle--he would join in a revival, for he
   would be glad to enjoy something sensational--but he does not mean to
   give up the sin in which he lives, nor the company which eggs him on in
   it. He does not mean to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right
   eye. Not he! He is too fond of the vice, too much ensnared by his
   passions.

   And so, as he gives his heart to his lust, he takes away his heart from
   Christ. No, he treats religion with derision, because it is opposed to
   his bent and inclination. What a sad thing! I generally find when man
   speaks against the Lord Jesus, that if you follow him home he would
   rather not have you go indoors for fear his inner life should be known.
   He does not want you to see the skeleton in the closet. I have so often
   met with this fact in actual life that when I have heard a man speak
   bitterly of my Master, I have formed my opinion and have not been
   wrong. A little enquiry has revealed so much that I have said, "It is
   not at all surprising that such a man should speak evil of Christ. It
   is as natural to such a man to talk against Christ as for a dog to
   bark."

   When a bad fellow once praised Socrates, that philosopher said, "I
   wonder what I can have been doing amiss, that such a man should speak
   well of me." If lustful lips praised the Savior, one might begin to be
   afraid. But when they denounce and deride Him, we feel that it is the
   only homage which vice can pay to Purity.

   This, then, is the man who sets Jesus at nothing. I wonder whether he
   is here tonight! Possibly it is a woman who is doing this. Women fall
   into precisely the same evils as men from their own side of the house
   and the same remarks apply to both sexes. You who once were hearers,
   you who once were impressed, you who did willful violence to
   conscience. You who persist in sin, you who are the slaves of evil
   company and dare not do right for the life of you, for fear of
   ridicule-- you are the kind of people of whom Herod was a sad
   specimen--you set Jesus at nothing. You treat my Master in contempt.

   II. Having tried to find out Herod, let us now answer a second
   question--ON WHAT GROUND DID HE TREAT OUR LORD WITH CONTEMPT?

   Men have some reason or other for their acts, although often those
   reasons are most unreasonable. Before we consider the unhallowed
   reasons for this great crime, let us do homage to the name of the Son
   of God. O Lord Jesus, even in Your lowest humiliation You are worthy of
   all reverence. To Your friends You are all the more dear and the more
   honored because You were greatly despised. You, bound and brought a
   prisoner before the tetrarch, are free to rule our hearts. You were
   charged with sedition but we fall at Your blessed feet and proclaim You
   King of kings! Herod sets Him up as the butt of his ridicule and makes
   nothing of Him. As Herbert puts it--

   "Herod and all his bands do set Me light, Who teach all hands to war,
   fingers to fight, And only the Lord of Hosts and might. Was ever grief
   like Mine?"

   I suppose that part of the reason why he and his men of war made
   nothing of our Lord was because of His gentleness and patience. Our
   Lord had no sword and none of the temper of men who wear weapons. His
   visage was not like the face of a man of war--it was marred with grief
   but not with anger. Worn with sorrow but not with battle. He was the
   lamb and not the lion, the dove and not the eagle and therefore the
   fighting men despised Him.

   If he had any weapons they were His tears and His almighty love. But
   these the Herodian ruffians utterly despised. All unarmed He stood
   before them and when He was reviled He reviled not again. You know how
   men of muscular strength and physical bravado value men by their
   muscles and bones and think nothing of those who are feeble in arm and
   body. The Savior, in His emaciation and faintness, must have seemed a
   poor creature to these ruffians. The Christian religion teaches us to
   be meek and gentle, to forgive injuries and even to give up our own
   rights rather than to inflict wrong.

   Such precepts savor of cowardice to the blustering world.
   Non-resistance they cannot hear of. They do not like the word
   "Forgive." "Surely," they say, "a worm will turn?" Thus they think so
   little of Christ that they prefer an earthworm's example to that of the
   Lord. The sweet savor of gentle forbearance, which the spirit of Jesus
   breathes into the hearts of His people, is held in contempt by many.
   They call it cant and hypocrisy because it is so alien to their nature,
   so inconsistent with their ideas of manly conduct.

   Furthermore, our Lord was ridiculed by Herod because He refused to
   gratify his curiosity and amuse his love of sensation. The wicked Herod
   virtually said to the holy Jesus, "Come, work us a miracle. We hear
   that you did deliver from death, now release yourself from our hands.
   We hear that you did multiply loaves and fishes and feed multitudes.
   Give us a banquet here. You can do all things, so reports say of
   You--come, do some little thing that we may see and believe. Did not
   Moses work miracles before Pharaoh? Work a miracle before us."

   There stands our Lord, with all power in His hands but He will not lift
   a finger for His own deliverance and Herod's amusement. O blessed
   Jesus, it is the same still, You will not dazzle nor amuse and
   therefore men prefer any charlatan to You. Herod then begins to
   question Him. He asks Him this and that and the other, with many a jest
   rolled in between. But he receives no answer. He who answered blind
   beggars when they cried for mercy is silent to a prince who only seeks
   to gratify his own irreverent curiosity. Then the men-at-arms laugh at
   their silent victim. "Why," they say, "the man is dumb. Either He can
   say nothing for Himself, or He is obstinate and ill-mannered. He speaks
   not when He is spoken to.

   Has He lost His wits?"

   Thereupon they multiply their profane jests and make nothing of the
   silent One. I do not doubt that often men turn away from the faith
   because their curiosity is not gratified and they see nothing marvelous
   in it. A Gospel for the age! A brand new Gospel every year might suit
   them. But the old is stale--they know all about it and sneer at it.
   Plain Gospel is too plain for them. They desire adornment, or at least
   mystery and the pomp which veils the unknown. They would rather go
   where there are gorgeous ceremonies and mutterings in an unknown tongue
   amid the smoke of incense and the harmony of music. The simple Gospel
   of, "Believe and live," does not suit them. For it seems fit only for
   the poor and uneducated--thus they treat Jesus with contempt.

   Moreover, the royal claims of Jesus excited their scorn. I think I hear
   the "Aha! Aha! Aha!" of Herod as he said, "Call Him a King? You could
   find such kings as this in every street of Jerusalem. Talk of a kingdom
   for Him! Go to the pool of Bethesda and fetch up some poor wretch who
   lies waiting there for the moving of the water and call him a king!
   King? What hosts are at Your command? What kingdom do You govern? What
   laws can You make? Here! Put the white robe upon Him. Let Him at least
   look like a monarch. Yes, that old robe will do! Is He not every inch a
   King?"

   Then the soldiery took up the jest! How bitterly, how derisively did
   they make His royalty the football of contempt! Thus today the world
   makes nothing of the royalty of King Jesus. A nominal king He may be
   but as a real king they will not have Him. Those who would be in the
   dust before the mean prince have no esteem for Him. There is no pomp
   about the pure religion of Jesus. There is no glory of philosophy about
   His teaching. And so they set Him and His cause at nothing. Ah, me,
   what will a rebellious people do in the day when He appears to claim
   His throne and punish sedition?

   Then, too, they denied His prophetic office. "Look!" said Herod, "He
   will not speak. I have asked Him twenty questions and He will not
   answer one of them. This is a pretty Prophet! John was the voice of one
   crying in the wilderness but this man has no voice at all. A dumb
   Prophet! Why, He is mute as a fish and has nothing to say for Himself."
   With such unhallowed merriment did Herod and his men of war treat the
   Lord with contempt. How they provoked Him! But He stands in the majesty
   of His self-government, quiet to the end. Here was an Omnipotence which
   restrained the lips of Omnipotence. It was a wondrous power, that
   God-like patience which enabled indignant Holiness to withhold its word
   of condemnation.

   The Prophet proved His commission by His silence. And yet He provoked
   their scorn, so that they set Him at nothing. At this time, because the
   Christian faith is silent upon a great many questions, certain men
   deride it. When men come to it with captious questions they receive no
   answer and they are irritated thereby. When they idly demand a miracle
   and it does not yield to their desires, they have fresh jeers for it.
   "You preach up the faith of Christ as the only true and Divine
   religion--let us see it work wonders. Where are your miracles? We have
   asked you fifty questions about the past and the future and you do not
   reply. Where is the ground for your boastings?" Thus they make nothing
   of Christ and disdain His claim to teach with authority.

   Those, I suppose, were the grounds upon which Herod and such as Herod,
   make light of Christ. Poor grounds they are, and such as will fail to
   justify them before the bar of God.

   III. Now, dear Friends, let us consider--DO MEN NOW SET OUR LORD AT
   NOTHING? DO MEN NOW

   TREAT OUR LORD WITH CONTEMPT?

   Herod is dead and buried and there is no sort of reason why we should
   not let him rot into oblivion. I therefore speak to you and try to
   discover whether you are setting Christ at nothing. Are you treating
   our Lord with contempt? I fear there are such. Who are they?

   Some set Him at nothing for they will not even consider His claims.
   "Oh," they say, "we have plenty else to think about besides religion.
   What is there in it which will fill our pockets? There is nothing at
   all in it worth a moment's attention." How do they know? They do not
   know. Nothing in it? God gives His own Son to die for guilty men and
   there

   is nothing in it? The highest thoughts of God are set forth in the
   Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and you do not think it worth while
   even to consider what God has therein revealed?

   A man goes to a bookstall and turns over a book. It is a novel--he
   reads a page and would like to buy it. But suppose it is a book upon
   the glories of Christ. Does he read, then? Does he wish to buy it? No.
   It is one of those dry theological books and he shuts it up. He will
   make no bid for a volume on so dull a subject. He would like to know of
   Alexander the Great or even of Tom Thumb but for the world's Redeemer
   he cares nothing. He makes nothing of Christ--he treats our Lord with
   contempt.

   Do I not convict some here present tonight? They have never set apart
   one solitary hour in their lives to the honest and candid consideration
   of the claims of Jesus, the Divine Savior. If it is so, you have,
   indeed, made Christ very cheap. And if you perish for lack of Him, your
   blood is on your own heads! If this is the medicine that will heal your
   disease, and you huff at it, and will not even hear of the cures it has
   worked, who is to blame if you perish? Who is to save the man who will
   not listen when salvation is put before him? Yet the great mass of our
   fellow citizens are of this kind.

   In London there are millions who make so little of Christ that they
   will not even come to hear what His ministers have to say about Him,
   nor read their Bibles, nor show the least interest in the matter. In
   many a house in London, Mahomet is practically as much esteemed as
   Jesus. Ah me,

   There are many others who prefer their business to Jesus. They would
   not mind giving some little attention to the Lord Jesus but then they
   are too busy just now. They say that they really cannot afford the
   time. O my busy Hearer! You will have to find time to die before
   long--why not think of that solemn certainty? You are very busy and yet
   you find time to eat. Have you no time to feed your soul? You find time
   to put on your dress, have you no time to dress your souls? You seek
   out the surgeon when you are ill. Have you no time to seek out a Savior
   for your sin-sick soul? Ah, it is not that--you have the time but you
   have not the heart.

   Others prefer amusements to the Lord Jesus. "Well," says one, "we must
   have recreation. In my spare time I like a game." I know that. I am not
   for denying you healthy recreation but everything should be in order
   and I claim first place for Jesus Christ and His salvation. What? Is it
   not worth while to give up a sport to seek Jesus? Do you think a game
   of cards more important than seeking the pardon of your sin? An evening
   at the theater or the music hall--do you really think so little of
   Jesus that you can live without Him and satisfy your mind with these
   poor things? Can you suffer the paltry amusements of the world to stand
   before the Lord Jesus?

   Yet it is so with some of you--I wish it were not. My Master's blood
   and righteousness, the salvation of a soul from Hell, the preparing of
   a heart for Heaven--these are laid away in the lumber-room--to allow
   the childish pleasures of a vain world to engross your thoughts. You
   will know better one day. God grant you may learn wisdom while yet it
   may be of use to you. Too late! What awful words! May you even now feel
   that if the Son of God has lived and died for men, it is of the first
   importance that you put business and pleasure in their proper places
   and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

   Another sort of persons make nothing of Christ because they profess to
   see nothing profound and philosophical in the faith which He has
   revealed. These are the Greeks, to whom the doctrine of the Cross is
   foolishness. O foolish Greeks! These wise men will not hear some of us
   because we can be understood by the people. "Anybody can understand
   you," they say, "you speak after the manner of the crowd and what you
   say is simple enough to be clear to the most ignorant. We like
   something deeper, something too profound to be readily grasped. We are
   above commonplace people and need something more intellectual and
   philosophical."

   A man of note once said to me, "Why do you keep on preaching to those
   thousands at Newington? Preach so that the mob will leave you and the
   elite will support you." To whom I answered that if one man's soul was
   of less value than another, his was of the least value who could talk
   so slightingly of others. Those who make no pretense to culture are
   often far more sensible people than those who affect superiority. The
   man who thinks that he is intellectual and talks in that fashion is a
   miserable snob, and has scarcely a soul at all.

   When a man despises the multitude, he deserves to be despised himself.
   But, my dear Sir, if the salvation of Christ is very simple and very
   plain, is it not so much the better? Have you not enough of
   philanthropy to make you feel that if you could have a Gospel only for
   the elite, it would be a matter of deep regret? Is not a Gospel for the
   multitude the thing to be desired? Do you not desire the vast mass to
   be saved? I hope you do. But I fear you make nothing of Christ when

   you despise His Gospel because you imagine that it is not deep enough
   and philosophical enough for you. The most profound science in the
   world is the science of the Cross! Christ Himself is the highest
   wisdom, for He is the wisdom of God.

   Others treat Christ with contempt because they confide in themselves.
   They think themselves quite good enough without a Savior. If they are
   not quite perfect, they believe that they can make themselves so and be
   saved without an atoning sacrifice, or a new heart, or union to Christ.
   They are doing their best and they make no doubt, whatever, that they
   will find their way to Heaven as well as others. Do you thus think? You
   are in grave error.

   There was a learned Romanist who once ventured to say that if salvation
   could only be had on terms of Free Grace, he would not have it. Do you
   know what happened? Why, he did not have it--that was all. And that is
   what will happen to you--if you will not have salvation as a free gift
   of Divine Grace, without any merit wherewith to purchase it--then you
   must go without it and perish in your sin. For the terms of Free Grace
   will never be altered to suit the pride of the human heart.

   If any man sets up his righteousness in the place of Jesus Christ, the
   sin-removing Lamb, why then he has made nothing of Christ and the Lord
   will make less than nothing of him. Alas, that any man should be so
   profane as to think himself so good that he does not need God's Grace
   and the atoning blood! Such pride treats the Lord Christ with contempt
   and will bring sure destruction upon the man who is guilty of it.

   I have no doubt that there are many, also, who treat Christ with
   contempt because they have no conscience whatever as to His present
   claims upon them. O dear Sirs, if you did but know His kindness to the
   sons of men, even to His enemies and how He sought them with His tears
   and then bought them with His blood, you would feel forced to love
   Him--

   "Surely Christ deserves the noblest place In every human heart." Truly
   know Jesus and you must love Him.

   But some men do not think that they owe Him anything, or are in any
   need of Him. It is nothing to such that He died, for they did not
   require His death to save them--in their judgment they are not lost.
   Those who are of this mind will leave this Tabernacle tonight and will
   go back to the world just as they came in, practically saying, "Whether
   Jesus lived or whether He died and whatever He did or was, I care
   nothing, for I owe Him nothing." And yet you owe Him everything. You
   had not been here tonight if it were not for the mercy which has spared
   you and which has come to you through Him. The axe would have had you
   down long ago but for His intercession.

   There had been no Gospel to set before you tonight if it had not been
   for the death agony of the Lord Jesus. You owe the very opportunity of
   hearing the Gospel and the opportunity of accepting it to His dying
   love. Oh, that you had a conscience which would make you just towards
   Jesus! Oh, that you felt that you were bound to love Him and live for
   Him, because of all that He has done for guilty men!

   As they have no conscience of His claims upon them, so many have no
   fears concerning the day of His appearing. Whether you believe it or
   not, Jesus, as your Judge, is at the door. He said, years ago, "Behold,
   I am coming quickly." He is still coming and must soon arrive to
   commence the last dread session of justice. What matters it how many
   more years may elapse? They will fly like the wind. The day will come
   when Heaven and earth shall be ablaze. The thick darkness will lower
   down--

   "And, withering from the vault of night, The stars shall pale their
   feeble light." The hour will come when the earth and sky will rock and
   reel and pass away, rolled up like a worn-out vesture. Then shall the
   trumpet ring out exceeding loud and long--"Awake, you dead and come to
   judgment!" How will you endure that voice which shall disturb the
   stillness of the sepulcher? "Come to judgment! Come to judgment! Come
   to judgment!" How it will peal forth! None of you will be able to
   resist the call. From your beds of dust you will start up amazed to a
   terrible awakening. From the sea, from the land, from the teeming
   cemetery, from the lonely grave, men will rise, and all of them stand
   before Christ!

   In that day you will see nothing but the Great White Throne and Him
   that sits upon it. You will be unable to close your eyes, or to turn
   your gaze elsewhere. There will He sit and you will know Him by His
   scars--

   "How resplendent shine the nail-prints! Every eye shall see Him move."

   Still shall the trumpet thrill out the summons, "Come to judgment! Come
   to judgment! Come away!" And you must come, whether you will or not.
   And if you have despised the Lord as Savior, you will tremble before
   Him as Judge. You will then hear His voice, which in itself is sweeter
   than the harps of Heaven but to the ungodly it will be more full of
   thunder than the crash of tempest--"Depart! Depart! Depart!"

   O my Hearer, what will then become of you? The prospect is
   terrible--but you have no concern about it. To die, to rise, to be
   judged, to be condemned--you take no account of it. Like Herod, you set
   him at nothing. Like Herod, you treat Him with contempt. How dare you
   do so? How dare you despise the great Judge? Ah, my Lord, have mercy
   upon them! Have mercy upon them now and turn them from doing to You and
   to themselves this grievous wrong of making nothing of the Lord of All.
   They set Him at nothing!

   This is very heavy preaching to me. If it is as painful to you to hear
   as to me to speak, you will be glad when I have done. I pray that these
   solemn words may long remain upon your hearts. Oh, that they might
   bring you to Jesus at once by the power of the Holy Spirit!

   IV. But I close with this--WHAT DO BELIEVERS SAY ABOUT THEIR LORD?
   Herod made nothing of Him--

   what do we make of Him? Well, we say, first, that we mourn and lament
   that there ever was a time when we ourselves made nothing of the
   glorious One. It is many years ago with some of us. But we cannot
   forget it, nor cease to bewail it. There were a certain number of years
   in our lives in which it was nothing to us that Jesus should die.

   O my dear Hearers, perhaps some of you have been lately converted after
   forty, or fifty, or sixty years of sin. Repent with all your hearts
   that you were Herods so long. Christ has forgiven you. But can you
   forgive yourselves? No. I think that you still smite on your breast and
   say, "Lord, I grieve that ever I lived a moment without acknowledging
   You as my Lord--that I ever ate a meal or drew in a breath without
   bowing before You." Lord, bury those years in forgetfulness which we
   spent in forgetfulness of You!

   Next, it is now our grief that any others should set the Lord Jesus at
   nothing. It must be a great grief to any man here if she who lies in
   his bosom treats the Lord with contempt. Dear woman, I know what your
   daily burden must be if the husband who is so dear to you does not love
   your Savior whom you love with a higher love. What an anguish it is to
   nourish and bring up children and see them refuse our Lord! I have no
   greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the Truth. And no
   greater sorrow than to see them running into evil ways.

   Could we really see the heart of an unregenerate man or woman it would
   cause us the utmost distress. If we felt as we ought to feel, if there
   were only one unconverted person in this Tabernacle, we should make a
   Bochim of it till that heart was yielded to Christ. If there existed
   only one man or woman who did not love the Savior. And if that person
   lived among the wilds of Siberia and it were necessary that all the
   millions of Believers on the face of the earth should journey there and
   plead with him to come to Jesus before he could be converted, it would
   be well worth all the zeal and labor and expense of all that effort.

   One soul would repay the travail in birth of myriads of zealous
   Christians. Lord, we cannot bear it that there should go on existing
   men and women who make nothing of the bleeding Son of God! It is an
   awful thing--as awful as Hell itself! Out in that street tonight think
   of the thousands who will be hunting for the precious life. Walk along
   our crowded thoroughfares and think of the myriads even of this city
   who live and die without God and without hope, making nothing of Jesus
   and you will feel a heartbreak which will make life a burden. I could
   wish that you felt that heartbreak for their sakes and for Christ's
   sake.

   But then, dear Friends, what do we make of Christ ourselves now? Well,
   that I cannot tell you, except it is in one word--Christ is All. Herod
   made nothing of Him. We make everything of Him--

   "All my spacious powers can wish,

   In You do richly meet;

   Nor to my eyes is light so dear,

   Nor friendship half so sweet."

   Could any of you who love my Lord tell me what you think of Him? I am
   sure that you would break down in the attempt. For my own part, I
   always fail in the glad endeavor--

   "When my tongue would hope to express

   All His love and loveliness,

   Then I lisp and falter forth

   Broken words not half His worth."

   If we could give every drop of our blood for Jesus. If we could be
   burnt at a slow fire for a century for Him, He deserves all our
   suffering and all our life. Could our zeal know no respite, a whole
   eternity of service would not adequately set forth what we think of
   Him.

   I close with this practical thought. Sometimes Believers show their
   love and their appreciation of their Master by special acts of homage.
   Herod, you see, when he made nothing of Him, said, "Here, bring out
   that glittering white robe of mine and put it on Him, that we may heap
   contempt upon Him. He calls Himself a King! Let us pay Him homage!"
   They mocked Him, and they put the robe upon Him and then sent Him back
   to Pilate. Now, I want you to imitate Herod in the opposite direction.
   Let us do our Lord special honor tonight. Let us crown Him. As soon as
   we have opportunity, let us make some special offering of our substance
   to His cause.

   Let us set apart a season for adoration and reverent worship. Let us
   resolve that for His sake we will speak well of His name to somebody to
   whom we have not yet spoken. It may be that some of you can sing a hymn
   to Jesus with choice music, or write a glorious verse for His dear
   sake. Go, take your pen and dip it in your heart and write a fresh
   tract in honor of His blessed name. Herod set Him at nothing but let us
   set Him on high in our best manner. Set Him at the highest figure that
   your thought and your imagination can reach.

   It may be that some Brother here could preach about his Lord and yet he
   has not opened his mouth from timidity. Come, try, my Friend. Shake off
   your bashfulness. It may be that some Sister here might teach women, or
   get together a class of youngsters and glorify Christ by instructing
   them. I long to undo what Herod did and pay the Well-Beloved a
   recompense for His shame. Oh, how would I honor Him! But what am I?
   What can one person do? Come, all of you, my Brethren, and help to cry
   "Hosanna!"

   Alas, what are we all together? The music has no volume in it, compared
   with what He deserves. Come, all you saints and worship Him! And what
   are all the saints on earth? Come, you in Heaven, who bear the palm,
   redeemed, perfected and white-robed as you are--come, worship Him who
   washed your robes in His own blood! And what are all they? Even the
   armies of the redeemed suffice not. Come, all holy ones and praise
   Him--

   "Angels, assist our mighty joys! Strike all your harps of gold! But
   when you raise your highest notes, His love can never be told."

   Therefore do I summon all things that are to praise the Lord, without
   whom was not anything made. I charge all living things to adore Him who
   is the resurrection and the life. Let space become one great mouth for
   song. Let time unceasingly flow with hallelujahs. Let eternity become
   an orchestra to the praise of Jesus who was mocked of Herod and his men
   of war. Glory be to His name! Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"On His Breast"

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1888,

   BY C H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Now there was leaning on Jesus 'bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus
   loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it
   should be of whom He spoke. He then lying on Jesus 'breast said unto
   Him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, He it is to whom I shall give a
   sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it
   to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon." John 13:23-26.

   PICTURE the Lord and His Apostles at the holy Supper. A world of
   interest centers here. Two figures, strangely different, met in this
   scene--met, shortly afterwards to part and never to meet again. To look
   upon them, they seemed equally disciples of Jesus and from the position
   which one of them occupied, as leaning on the Lord's bosom and the
   other as the treasurer of the Master's little store, they seemed to be
   equally trusted and honored followers of the great Lord. You might not
   have known, by mere sight, which was the better man of the two--John or
   Judas.

   Most probably you would have preferred the gentle manners of John. But
   I should suppose--for our Lord never chose a man to an office unless he
   had some qualification--you would also have admired the calm prudence
   of Judas and his quiet business tact. No doubt you would have thought
   that he made an excellent treasurer and you would have been glad that
   your Master, with so little to spare, had lighted upon so vigilant a
   guard and so prudent a manager. They sat at the same table, engaged in
   the same exercises and looked much the same kind of men. None of us
   would have guessed that one of them was John the Divine and the other
   was Judas the devil.

   One of them was the seer of the Apocalypse, the other was the son of
   perdition. No doubt there are strange mixtures of character in this
   very house tonight. There will come to this Table the disciple whom
   Jesus loves. Him we will welcome, saying, "Come in, you blessed of the
   Lord." Alas, there may come here a son of perdition. Him we cannot
   chase away, for we cannot read his heart. For a time both may act and
   even feel alike. They may even wear well for years. Apparently they may
   be equally sincere. And yet the day will come when to the right, in his
   love and his integrity, the faithful disciple will wend his way up to
   his Master's bosom forever.

   And to the left, the hypocrite will go to his dreadful end and to that
   Hell which must receive such traitors as he. There is something very
   solemn about this meeting of such strangely different characters in one
   common act and in the society of the same Divine Lord. John is here. Is
   Judas here? Let the question be started and passed round, "Lord, is it
   I?" He is the least likely to be the traitor who is nearest to his
   Lord's heart. He who occupies such a place as John did is not the
   betrayer. Oh that we might be fired with a loving ambition to be the
   disciple whom Jesus loved, leaning on Jesus' bosom!

   For then, though we ask the question, "Lord, is it I?" it will not
   linger long upon our hearts. For His love, shed abroad within them,
   shall answer every question of self-examination and we shall cry,
   "Lord, You know all things, You know that I love You." Let that stand
   as an introduction. Glance at yourself and your Brethren at the table
   and say-- How far shall we be like our Lord and the twelve? Will Peter
   and James and John and Judas all live over again in the assembly of
   tonight for the breaking of bread? And now our remarks will be very
   simple.

   I. And the first is this--SOME DISCIPLES ARE SPECIALLY LOVED OF THEIR
   LORD. We believe in the doctrine of election but the principle of
   election goes to be carried farther than some suppose. There is an
   election in the midst of the election and another within that. The
   wider circle contains the inner and a still more select circle forms
   the innermost ring of all. The Lord had a people around Him who were
   His disciples. Within them He had twelve. Within the twelve He had
   three. Within the three He had one disciple whom He loved. And I
   suppose that what took place

   around His blessed Person on earth takes place on a larger scale around
   His adorable Person which is the center of His Church both militant and
   triumphant.

   Probably our Lord's attachment to John was partly a human one. And so
   far as it were human, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet
   now after the flesh we know Him no more. Any merely human affection
   which our Lord Jesus bore for John may have passed away. There may,
   also, have been such affection in Jesus toward John as there would be
   in any eminent Christian towards another Christly Believer--in anyone
   whom the Lord made to be a leader of His Church, towards such-and-such
   a member of that Church in whom He could see most of the lovely
   characteristics of Himself. I cannot but think that it was so.

   But it strikes me that our Lord Jesus loved John in some measure more
   than the rest, in the entirety of His character, as Jesus Christ, the
   Son of God as well as the Son of Man. We know that He loved all His
   disciples. For when my Brother read the chapter just now, how like
   music did those words sound, "Having loved His own which were in the
   world, He loved them unto the end"! He loved not some of His own. But
   all of them. He loved all His own then and He loves all His own now.
   There is infinite love in the heart of Jesus towards all His people.
   And if there are any degrees in that love, yet the lowest degree is
   inconceivably great.

   The very least member of the Divine family may say, "He loved me and
   gave Himself for me." He loves us beyond all human expression. Beyond
   all human conception. The great heart of the eternal Father, the great
   heart of the eternal Son, the great heart of the ever-blessed Spirit,
   the great heart of the Trinity in unity, beats with love--with love to
   all the elect, to all the redeemed, to all the called, to all the
   sanctified people of God. We are quite sure of this. Yet that love has
   this difference about it, that it is more enjoyed by some on earth than
   by others.

   It is clear, as a matter of fact, that the Divine Love is manifested to
   some more clearly than to others. My beloved Brethren, you must know
   this to be the case. For there are those among us who walk with God,
   who enjoy the light of Jehovah's countenance, at all times. Who, if
   depressed, have the art of rolling their burden upon the Lord and soon
   are delivered from it. You know them, they are the Brethren who feel
   like singing all the while, for Jesus is their Friend, and they rejoice
   in Him. There was one in the Old Testament who was called "a man
   greatly beloved," and there are Daniels on earth even now. Christ has
   among women still His Marys, whom He loves. He loved Martha, too. But
   still there was a special place for Mary.

   Jesus has still His Johns, whom He peculiarly loves. He loves Peter and
   Nicodemus and Nathanael and all of them. But still, there are some who
   know His love more than others, live in it more than others, drink of
   it more than others, reflect it more than others and become more
   conformed to it and saturated with it and perfumed with it, than others
   are. There are first as well as last. All may be of Israel but all the
   tribes are not Judah and in Judah all the men are not Davids. Who shall
   deny that there are degrees in Divine Grace? Have we not among us babes
   and young men and fathers? Have we not first the blade, then the ear
   and then the full corn in the ear? It is so.

   And though I will not argue for degrees in Heaven and, indeed,
   deprecate the spirit in which the doctrine of degrees in Glory is often
   set forth, yet we are sure, for we see it with our eyes, that there are
   degrees of Divine Grace and especially degrees in the enjoyment of the
   love of Jesus. Among those who do really love their Lord and are really
   loved by Him, one star differs from another in the glory of that love.

   Why was John made "that disciple whom Jesus loved"? Certainly it was
   not because he was naturally higher in rank than the others, for he was
   a fisherman, like the most of them. And James was certainly equal in
   birth, for he was his brother. Our blessed Lord did not love John
   because of any excess of talent--albeit that John's Apocalypse and his
   Gospel are, in some respects, the highest parts of revealed Scripture,
   being both the simplest and the most mysterious portions of Holy Writ.
   Yet we should not say that John betrayed evidence of so great a mind in
   itself, naturally, or by education, as Paul had.

   He had as much talent as His Lord gave him but there was nothing about
   him so special that he should for that cause have been loved. And to
   dismiss the thought with a word, Jesus never loves men on account of
   talent and we should be unwise if we ourselves did so. These things are
   external to the man. Our Lord loved John, especially, for a better
   reason than that. Why did our blessed Lord love John better than
   others? I can only reply that He exercises a sovereignty of choice and
   it is not for us to ask the why and wherefore of the movements of the
   sacred heart. Surely, nothing should be left so free as the love of the
   Son of God. Let Him love whom He wills. He has an unquestionable right
   to do so.

   But if we venture reverently to look into the familiar love of Jesus,
   we shall not fail to see that there was about John, through Divine
   Grace, a most loving spirit. Men love those that are like they and
   Jesus, as Man, loved John because the processes of Grace had developed
   in John the image of Jesus. John, like his Lord, had much love. He may
   have lacked some qualities in which Peter and James and others excelled
   but he towered above them all in love. He was full of tenderness, and
   therefore, his Master at once selected him to be His choicest companion
   and His dearest friend. You know the way, then, to the heart of
   Christ--let your own heart be full of love and you will know His love.
   He loves you, you know, altogether apart from anything that is in you,
   of His own rich and Sovereign Grace.

   But for the special manifestation of that love, for your personal
   enjoyment of it, to fit you for such enjoyment, you must have much love
   to Him. You greatly need, not a great head, but a great heart. You must
   have, not more knowledge, but more affection. Not a higher rank in
   society, but a higher rank in the power to love Jesus and to love your
   fellow men. Less of self, and more of Jesus and then you shall enjoy
   more of His love. This being the case, that John had this loving spirit
   and our Lord Jesus Christ loved him more than others, it led on to the
   fact that John was the recipient of confidences from Christ which
   others had not.

   I will show you that farther on. But certainly it seems to me that John
   was made by Jesus His executor and He left him in His will all His
   earthly possessions. You will say to me, "And pray what possessions had
   the Master?" Well, He had one possession of which He was very fond and
   He could not die until He had disposed by His last will and testament
   of that one earthly possession. It was His mother. He loved her and
   must care for her. And there passed a little word, a kind of sign,
   between Him and John at the last moment. Do not think that John would
   have understood what Jesus meant when He said--"Woman, behold your
   son," and, "Son, behold your mother!" if there had not been a quiet
   talk about that matter some time before.

   But Jesus, I doubt not, had told John that the only earthly care He
   had, as Man, was that while He was away slumbering in the grave He
   would have his mother cared for. And so He left her in John's charge.
   If you love Jesus Christ very much He will leave something in your
   charge, depend upon that. And the more you love Him, the more will He
   trust you with some loving commission which He would not trust with
   anybody else. I have known Him leave a dear child of His, some dear old
   saint, for a favored Believer to look after, whom he never would have
   had to look after if Jesus had not said--"I love this dear old saint
   and I shall commit him--I shall commit her--to the custody of such a
   one, because he loves Me and he will take care of this poor one for My
   sake."

   Some of you have nobody to care for. Little know you of Christ's
   trustfulness towards you--He has not trusted you with anything. Do you
   not grieve to think that you lack this token of His special love? As
   sure as ever there is any intimate love between Jesus and any soul, He
   trusts that soul with something to be done, to be endured, to be
   guarded, to be mourned over, or in some way to become a sacred trust.
   Thus love has occupation, proof, and expression, and this she ever
   longs for. I know my Master loves me and I rejoice in His love. And
   sometimes, when I think of this great Church and the College and the
   Orphanage and the many cares the whole service brings into my heart, I
   have said, "Have I begotten all this multitude, that I should carry all
   of them in my bosom and bear their griefs and be troubled with their
   troubles?" and the answer has always seemed to come to me, "You love Me
   and I trust you to look after these souls, to help them and care for
   them, for My sake."

   It is so with you that have classes to look after, or families to care
   for--attend to them, for Jesus' sake. If it is only one little one,
   hear Jesus say, "Take this child and nurse it for Me and I will give
   you your wages." You have a charge, each one. And if you have none, I
   should be afraid you may be Judas, for I cannot think you are John. Had
   there been the love between you and the Lord which existed between John
   and Jesus, Jesus would have whispered into your ear about somebody of
   whom He would say, "Care for him. Care for him for MY sake." And you
   would have answered, "Lord, that I will--the more You give to me to do
   for You, the more happy will I be, because I love You and because this
   trust proves that You do love me."

   There is the first head--we perceive Jesus loves some of His disciples
   more than others.

   II. Now, secondly, we note that THE BELOVED ONES COUNT THIS TO BE THEIR
   GREATEST HONOR. This

   is evidently in the text. For John, who wrote these words, called
   himself, "one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved." And I think three
   times besides he speaks of himself as "that disciple whom Jesus loved."
   He took his name from his Lord's love, which he evidently counted to be
   his greatest honor. This was John's most notable title. As a servant of
   the Queen, having

   distinguished himself in the service of Her Majesty, becomes the lord
   of such-and-such a town and he takes the name of the place as a name of
   honor, so John drops his own birth-given name, as it were, and takes
   this title instead--"that disciple whom Jesus loves."

   He wears it as a Knight of the Garter, or of the Golden Fleece, wears
   the mark of his Sovereign's esteem. He took it for his honor. And yet,
   Beloved, there was not a grain of boasting in it, nor even an approach
   to glorying in the flesh. A sense of love makes us happy but not
   haughty. How can I proudly boast that Jesus loves me? If you are loved
   of Him, you will feel that you so little merit it--indeed, that you so
   altogether demerit it--that you will be amazed to think that He loves
   you and it will never enter into your head that His love is your due.
   You will take the title of love but you will give the honor back to
   Jesus and often you will say--

   "And when I shall die,

   'Receive me,' I'll cry, For Jesus has loved me, I cannot tell why."

   You will not be able to tell why the Lord loves you so. This will be
   the wonder of eternity. But there will be no pride in the experience of
   being dear to the Lord, nor anything to excite self-laudation. You will
   feel that it would be a wicked thing to deny His matchless love but yet
   you will not carnally triumph over others because of it. There would be
   pride in the affectation of a modesty which would doubt the love of
   Jesus but there is no pride in the reception of that love, since you
   yourself are so evidently, so conspicuously undeserving, that no one
   will dream that Jesus could have loved you because there was anything
   good in you.

   Now, had John been proud, he would have altered the title thus. He
   would have said, "That disciple who loved Jesus." This would have been
   true, though not modest. There was, as far as his heart was capable of
   it, a reciprocity of love between John and Jesus. If Jesus loved him,
   he loved Jesus. But John never called himself, "That disciple who loved
   Jesus." No, for he felt as if his own love were altogether unworthy of
   mention in the presence of the love of Jesus.

   Then notice also, as if to show us that there was no pride in taking
   the title, that he does not say, "John was the disciple whom Jesus
   loved." We gather from other facts that it was John. All the traditions
   and beliefs of the early Church went to testify that it was John. We
   have not, any of us, any doubt about the fact that it was John. It has,
   as it were, leaked out. But John nowhere says that he was the man. All
   that he has said is, "That disciple whom Jesus loved." And thus he
   makes the love more conspicuous than the person who received it. We
   know that it must have been John for many reasons. But still he does
   not say so. He hides John behind the love of Jesus, which proves that
   John gloried in the love of Christ but did not boast of it
   egotistically.

   Bengel tells us that John's name means "the love of Jehovah." If you
   look at Cruden's translation, in the list of the meanings of names in
   the Concordance, he puts it "the Grace of God," the grace of Jehovah.
   Bengel reads it "the love of the Lord"--so John just altered the name a
   little and paraphrased it when he wrote, "whom Jesus loved." It would
   go into shorter compass if he put it in the Hebrew and would need but
   little alteration. Sometimes when men succeed to estates, it is a
   condition that they shall change their names--in this case the name was
   very little altered from "the loved one of God" into the "loved one of
   Jesus Christ." And there is no alteration (is there?) in the real
   meaning of it. When he said, "That disciple whom Jesus loved," it was
   John "written large." That is all.

   It was John a little altered under the New Testament dispensation, the
   old name sweetened and perfumed by bringing it near to the sweeter name
   of Jesus Christ his Lord. So precious has its nearness to Jesus made
   it, that perhaps next to the name of Jesus no name is sweeter than that
   of John. As Ivan, or Evan, it has a most evangelical, Gospel, sound. It
   is common in many forms throughout Christendom and many of the noblest
   disciples have worn it, from John Chrysostom to John Calvin and from
   John Bunyan to John Wesley and John Newton. In any case the honor of
   being loved by Jesus is greater than the name John. And happy are they
   who can claim it!

   There are some, then, whom Jesus loves more than others and these men
   always count that love to be their highest honor.

   III. A step farther. A third remark--that THIS SPECIAL LOVE BRINGS SUCH
   MEN SPECIAL PRIVILEGES. It brought to John the first privilege of being
   very near to Jesus, his Lord. At that supper he was nearest to the
   place which Jesus occupied. You know they lay along at the supper
   somewhat in this fashion--leaning upon the left arm, so as to have the
   right with which to help themselves to each dish. Now John lay here and
   Jesus Christ lay just there--so that,

   when John turned a little backward there was the bosom of Jesus for him
   to put his head upon. And I suppose that when John asked the question,
   "Lord, who is it?" he turned his head over and said into his very ear,
   "Lord, who is it?"

   Nobody heard what he said. It was just whispered into the ear of his
   Lord when his head was in that sacred bosom. And the answer was not
   heard by anybody except John. But his position of being nearest was
   brought about by his being best loved. He was nearest in fellowship
   because dearest in love. Now, Beloved, if you are best loved by Christ,
   you live nearest to Him. I am sure of it. If you love Him best and He
   loves you best, you will be more in prayer than others. You will spend
   more time alone with Jesus than other Christians do. You will abound in
   petition and praise. You will read His Word with greater diligence. You
   will drink it in with greater delight.

   You will live for Him, too, with greater consecration. Your whole time
   will be spent in His company. When you are at your work in the house,
   or the field, or the shop, you will still be with Him. If you are
   better loved than others, your daily song will be--

   "The day is dark, the night is long, Unblest with thoughts of You, And
   dull to me the sweetest song, Unless its theme be You."

   "He feeds among the lilies," and keeps near the pure in heart. Our
   Well-Beloved's delights are with those who delight in Him. You will be
   close to Jesus if you are dear to Him. The two things go together. If
   you are living far away in the cold regions of broken fellowship, then
   I am sure you have but very little conscious enjoyment of the love of
   Jesus Christ your Lord. The dearest must be the nearest. That is the
   first privilege.

   The second was the privilege of using and receiving tokens of
   endearment. He leaned his head on Jesus' bosom, looking up into His
   face. And Jesus looked down on him. There was mutual endearment, for
   Jesus loved Him and he loved Jesus. And that night, when the blessed
   Master was in trouble, He wanted His friend with Him and felt a need
   for John, though he could not help Him much. Jesus felt a need of
   John's society and sympathy and it made Christ's bosom all the easier
   to have John's beloved head on it. As for John, it must have been a
   Heaven below to be thus in the bosom of his Lord. He mentions it three
   times, you see--twice in this passage and once in the last chapter of
   his Gospel, where there was no necessity for mentioning it.

   He had such a remembrance of his head having once been laid on his
   Lord's breast, that he must put it in when he is speaking about Peter
   and himself. He says, "The disciple which also leaned on His breast at
   supper and said, Lord, which is he that betrays you?" He must needs
   repeat the charming fact, for it was such a delight to him. O Beloved,
   we cannot now touch the bosom of Jesus after the flesh, for He is gone
   up on high. But there are still most sweet endearments of spirit
   between the Lord Jesus and His loving disciples. I must not tell abroad
   the secrets of love, for these things are for those that know them and
   not for all comers. Choice passages between true hearts are not to be
   published in the street, lest they become the theme of ridicule.

   Pearls are not to be cast before swine. But believe me, at this moment
   we have, or at least we can have, such intimate enjoyment of the love
   of Jesus, that even if He were here and we could lean our heads upon
   His bosom, the endearment could not be more certain, more sweet, or
   more ravishing to our delighted souls. In very truth we have fellowship
   with Jesus and that fellowship is no dream or fancy. We speak no
   fiction, neither do we repeat what others have experienced but we speak
   of things which we have personally enjoyed. And we know that there is
   an intimate communion which is one of the private privileges of those
   whom Jesus loves much, for it has been our privilege. I hope very many
   of you know this choice blessing of living in the immediate enjoyment
   of your Savior's love. May you never lose it!

   Then is there a third benefit, not only of nearness and endearment but
   of confidence towards the Lord. For it was a bold thing, surely, for
   John to lean his head on Christ's bosom. Our Lord did not say, "No,
   John. No. I am your Master and your Lord. Do you do this to Me as if I
   were your equal?" No. The meaning of that blessed text, "Him that comes
   to Me I will in no wise cast out," runs in other directions besides
   that which we generally think of. If you come to Jesus in the most
   intense manner, He will not repulse you. If your head shall come into
   His bosom, He will not cast your head out. If you can get your very
   heart into His heart and come closer to Him than even John dared to
   do--if you carry that coming beyond all previous comings--yet Jesus
   neither will, nor can, resent the nearest approaches of anyone of His
   believing people.

   We lose a great deal of Christ's loving fellowship because we are so
   formal and distant towards Him. We seem to think that He came among men
   to show them their distance from God and not to be as a Brother to
   them, to reveal God to them. Jesus seeks to reach our hearts, He stoops
   to our littleness. Let us pluck up courage to draw near to Him. Well
   does our hymn put it--

   "Let us be simple with Him, then,

   Not backward, stiff, or cold;

   As though our Bethlehem could be

   What Sinai was of old."

   Lean on him. Lean on the bosom of the Christ of God who loves us and
   has given Himself for us. Make a confidant as well as a confidence of
   your Lord. Put all the weight of your care, all the weight of your
   whole self, and all that concerns you upon Him and then recline with
   delight upon His bosom.

   There was a gracious confidence given to John, which he rightly used
   towards his Lord. Surely there was a great liberty given to him. Some
   would have said he took a liberty in thus leaning where no head of king
   or emperor might aspire to rise. He was the most honored of all human
   beings. But surely he took great liberties. No, he did not, for the
   Lord Himself gave him access with boldness. Great love has privileges
   which make her boldest advances no intrusion. Love has the key of all
   the rooms of the Father's house. Love has the range of Paradise. Love
   may read the very heart of God. Love may come where she wills and go
   unchallenged.

   John said to our Savior, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus looked down at him
   and said, as if He did not want the others to know at all, "He it is to
   whom I shall give a sop." He had just to watch a little while. I do not
   know but it is not improbable that Judas was next at the table--John
   here, then Jesus and then Judas. Very likely Judas was pretty close to
   the Lord. For if a man has your purse you want him near you, so as to
   tell him what you wish to have done with the money. So, when Jesus just
   turned over and gave a sop to Judas, John knew the meaning of the act.
   Judas had had his conscience disturbed, I should think, by the
   utterance of the Savior, when He said, "He that eats bread with Me has
   lifted up his heel against Me," and by the question of each of the
   others, "Lord, is it I?"

   Judas himself asked that question for a time. But he grew calm again
   and became reassured and thought he should not be found out. Then the
   Lord dipped a piece of meat, according to the Oriental custom, in the
   sauce of the dish and passed it to him. Even then Judas possibly
   thought, "This is an act of great friendship. He evidently has the
   utmost confidence in me and has not found me out." Little did he know
   that the sop was the token of the discovered traitor. Then Judas said,
   "Lord, is it I?" thinking he should get a pleasant answer, but Jesus
   answered that it was even he and added, "What you do, do quickly."
   There that matter ended. But John was thus the recipient of friendly
   confidence on the part of Christ--he told to Jesus his heart and Jesus
   told him His heart. He had liberty to go to Christ.

   Ah, Brethren! Do you ever feel in prayer as if you were tied up and
   could not pray? The best of saints will be bound about some things.
   People come and ask you to pray for this and pray for that. But you
   cannot so pray unless you have liberty from the Throne. If God gives
   the prayer of faith, you can pray it--but you cannot pray that prayer
   at your own will. He that can most often pray the prayer of faith, he
   that can see farthest into Christ's mysteries, he that can read the
   riddles of this Divine Samson, is the man whose heart loves Jesus best
   and whose head lies most in the bosom of his Lord. Be sure of this--if
   you love much, you shall know the secret of the Lord--for it is with
   them that fear Him He will show His Covenant.

   Now a step farther and a very little more and we have done. This
   creates special knowledge. I merely give it as a head to help your
   memories, for I have already dwelt upon it as a matter of fact. The
   special privileges of love lead on to a special knowledge of Christ. I
   do not think that any other Evangelist notices Christ's emotion at the
   supper in the matter of His spirit as John has done. He writes, "When
   Jesus had thus said, He was troubled in spirit," and so on. John was so
   close to the Lord, with his head on His breast, that he could tell, by
   the heaving of His bosom, that he was troubled. The mind of God is not
   so revealed to any man now that he can set up to foretell the future
   like a Prophet. But, mark you, the choice ones among the saints have
   intimations of the mind of God about many things.

   Those who live at court can often foresee the king's movements when
   others cannot. It is my firm conviction that favored Believers have
   tokens, warnings and hints from above. Did not the Lord say, "Shall I
   hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" Even the choicest spirits may
   not understand the Lord's meaning all at once. But if any man can read
   anything of the future, it is he that puts his head where all eyes grow
   clear and all hearts become pure, even upon the

   breast of Jesus. Oh, to know Christ! The day will come when the saints
   of God who are great classics, mathematicians, or astronomers--and
   there have been godly men skilled in all the sciences--the day, I say,
   shall come when these will count all they know of science to be of
   little worth compared with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
   Jesus their Lord.

   Brethren, we value knowledge, culture, science. But when we put them at
   their highest market price, what are they as compared with the
   knowledge of Jesus? This is my one ambition--that I may know Him and
   may comprehend with all saints what are the heights and depths and
   lengths and breadths and know the love of Christ which passes
   knowledge. If you love your Lord, you shall know of His doctrine. If
   you live near Him, you shall understand His feelings. If His secret is
   with you, you shall know what Prophets and kings desired to know and
   what angels desire to look into. The Lord bless you and bring each one
   of you who are His people into this happy condition.

   I have done, when I notice two things. The first is this--that the
   favored position which John occupied did not screen him from the
   necessity of asking the question, "Lord, is it I?" There really was no
   suspicion of him, nor any reason for such suspicion. But his heart was
   in a right state and, therefore, he felt it necessary to say, "Lord, is
   it I?" as well as any of the rest. And I make this remark because the
   very persons who do not say, "Lord, is it I?" are those who ought to
   say it. If you are enjoying more of God's love tonight than ever you
   did in your life, yet do not profess to have climbed above the need of
   self-examination, when the question comes, "Are you really one of His?"
   do not chase it away, as if it were an impertinence?

   Entertain the enquiry till you can satisfy it with a sufficient answer.
   Some professors can afford to sneer at holy anxiety. May I never be of
   their number! I have heard them ridicule the question--

   "Do I love the Lord or no? Am I His, or am I not?"

   Now, I do not hesitate to say that every man who loves the Lord has had
   to ask that question. And has had to ask it all the more because the
   truth and fervency of his love have made him jealous of himself. He has
   such an overwhelming sense of what his love ought to be and he has such
   a consciousness of shortcoming, that he is quite sure to say, "Do I
   love the Lord?" It is not your bold talker that is your true lover
   after all. There is a confidence which is fatal--

   "He who never doubted of his state, He may--perhaps he may too late."

   If you say, "I am rich and increased in goods and have need of
   nothing," while you are naked and poor and miserable, it will be a sad
   deception and the awakening out of it will be sadder still. But if you
   say, "Oh that I loved my Redeemer more! Oh that I served Him better!
   But I do love Him. My heart is His and He does love me," then you have
   answered the question of, "Lord, is it I?" and you may go your way
   contented.

   The other remark, with which I finish, is this--that John's nearness to
   Christ did not authorize him to make answer to his fellow disciples,
   nor to judge any of them. Time was when John might have sat in judgment
   over them. Did he not desire to sit upon a throne judging the twelve
   tribes of Israel with his brother James? But now that he has his head
   in his Lord's bosom, he is not anxious to judge, but far otherwise. His
   Brethren keep asking, "Lord, is it I?" Peter makes signs to him.
   Fishermen have ways of their own of talking to one another. Peter seems
   to say, without the use of words, "Pray ask the Master." John does not
   presume to make a guess as to the traitor's name but he softly says,
   "Lord, who is it?" He asked that question of his Lord. But he did not
   himself pitch upon Judas.

   No, he might, perhaps, have laid his suspicions upon someone else who
   would have been innocent. It was wise to refer the matter to the Lord.
   Some say that they live very near to Jesus. It is an evil sign when men
   speak of their own attainments. These are the people who, in the next
   breath, begin to condemn others. But this is not after the manner of
   the beloved John. Some professors affirm that they are going to have a
   particularly fine place in Glory, all by themselves. I do not quite
   understand their theory but I am sure I do not grudge any of my
   Master's servants any special honor they may desire. As far as I
   understand them, there is to be a separate place in the kingdom for
   them, and we poor, ordinary Christians are to be saved--but we must
   take a lower room. So let it be. We will rejoice in the promotion of
   our Brethren.

   As for myself, if it should ever come to pass that I should have the
   privilege of living in some first avenue in Heaven among the
   aristocracy of the skies, I think I should prefer another quarter. I
   have kept company on earth with such a poor lot of Brethren and I have
   learned to love them so well that I would rather abide with them in
   their inferior Heaven

   than rise with the cream of the cream into the upper places. I like to
   be with God's people of the poorer class and of the more struggling and
   afflicted sort. I like to be with God's people who wrestle hard with
   sins and doubts and fears. If I get spoken to by my very superior
   Brethren, I find that I have very little pleasant fellowship with them,
   for I know nothing about their wonderful experience of freedom from
   conflict and complete deliverance from every evil tendency.

   I have never won an inch of the way to Heaven without fighting for it.
   I have never lived a day but I have had to sorrow over my
   imperfections. I sometimes get near to God but at that time I weep most
   about my faults and failings. Although I have thus spoken after the
   manner of men, I do not believe in these superior beings, nor in their
   superior Heaven--but even if I did, I would sooner follow with the
   flock than run ahead with the greyhounds.

   These Brethren judge us and condemn us. They say that we do not
   understand "the mystery of the kingdom," or something or other. We know
   Jesus Christ, however--both theirs and ours. We will not deny their
   piety and grace but bless God that they have so much of them. We hope,
   however, to get to Heaven the same as they and into Glory the same as
   they. And we will be glad if so the Lord will enable us. Do you find
   the spirit of self-exaltation and of condemning others coming over you
   at times? Conquer it at once by the Holy Spirit's power. Let us cease
   to judge where we are forbidden to do so. Let us contend earnestly for
   the Truth of God--but as to the hearts of men--let us leave that to
   Jesus.

   I close by saying--you remember what Jesus said to Peter? Peter was
   always a little too fast and he therefore ventured to peer into things
   which did not concern him and so he said to Jesus, as he looked at
   John, "Lord and what shall this man do?" He did not think badly of
   Brother John--I should have been ashamed of Peter if he had done so.
   But still he said, "What shall this man do?" Our blessed Lord replied
   to him, "What is that to you? Follow you Me." So, when you feel
   inclined, because you are growing in Divine Grace and becoming
   somebody, to say, "Lord and what shall this poor member do? And what
   shall this imperfect Brother be? What shall that poor, blundering new
   convert do?"-- remember the words of Jesus--"What is that to you?
   Follow you Me."

   Mind your Master and mind yourself and let your Brethren stand or fall
   to their own Lord, as you must. Now, come and lay your head in your
   Lord's bosom and never mind Peter. May God bless you, for Christ's
   sake!
     __________________________________________________________________

Concerning Prayer

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST
   23, 1888.

   "Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer and attend to the voice of my
   supplications. In the day of my trouble I will call upon You: for You
   will answer me." Psalm 86:6, 7.

   WHEN I was reading this eighty-sixth Psalm, I reminded you that the
   title of it is "A prayer of David." It is rightly named "A prayer," for
   it is very especially filled with supplication. There are four other
   Psalms each called by the name Tephillah, or "prayer," but this
   deserves to be distinguished from the rest and known as "the prayer of
   David," even as the ninetieth Psalm is known as "the prayer of Moses."
   It savors of David. The man of sincerity, of ardor, of trials, of
   faults and of great heart, pleads, sobs and trusts through all the
   verses of this Psalm.

   Note one thing about this remarkable prayer of David--it is almost
   entirely devoid of poetry. Men use grand, studied, rapturous and
   poetical expressions in their praises. And they do well. Let God be
   praised with the noblest thoughts as well as the most charming music.
   But when a man comes to prayer--and that prayer is out of the depths of
   sorrow-- he has no time or thought for poetry. He goes straight at the
   matter in hand and pleads with God in downright plainness of speech.
   You shall notice that in happy prayers, in times of joy, men use
   similes and metaphors and tropes and symbols and the like. But when it
   comes to wrestling with God in times of agony--there is no beauty of
   speech--parable and prose are laid aside.

   The man's language is in sackcloth and ashes. Or, better still, it
   stands stripped for wrestling, every superfluous word being laid aside.
   Then the cry is heard, "I will not let You go, except You bless me."
   That is not poetry, but it is a great deal better. Throughout this
   Psalm David is a plain-dealer, speaking with God in downright earnest.
   He has got his grip of the Covenant angel and he will not let him go.
   Men cannot study where to put their feet prettily when they are
   wres-tling--they have to do the best they can to hold their ground and
   fling their antagonist. In such a prayer-Psalm as this there is no
   studying of language--it is the pouring out of the heart as the heart
   boils over--the utterance of the desires as they bubble up from the
   sod's deeps with an entire carelessness as to the fashion of the
   expression.

   This ought to be a hint to you when you pray. Do not study how to
   arrange your words when you come before the Lord. Leave the expression
   to the occasion--it shall be given you in the same hour what you shall
   speak. When your heart is like a boiling geyser, let it steam aloft in
   pillars of prayer. The overflowing of the soul is the best praying in
   the world. Prayers that are indistinct, inharmonious, broken, made up
   of sighs and cries and damped with tears--these are the prayers which
   win with Heaven. Prayers that you cannot pray, pleadings too big for
   utterance--prayers that stagger the words and break their backs and
   crush them down--these are the very best prayers that God ever hears.

   So you say, dear Friends, that you cannot pray. You are so troubled
   that you cannot speak. Well, then, copy the beggars in the street. They
   must not beg, for that is contrary to law. But a man sits down and
   writes on a spade, "I am starving," and he looks as white as a sheet.
   What a picture of misery! He is not begging. Not he. But the money
   comes dropping into the old hat. So, when you cannot pray, I believe
   that your silent display of utter inability is the best sort of
   praying. The blessing comes when we sit down before the Lord and in
   sheer desperation expose our spiritual need. I am not going to dwell
   longer upon that matter but will simply show you what was the nature of
   David's prayer.

   There are two things which David must have when he prays--two great
   things after which he strains with his whole heart. The first is
   personal dealings with God. Read that sixth verse--"Give ear, O Lord,
   unto my prayer. And attend to the voice of my supplications." And, in
   the second place he must have personal answers from God. He is not
   content to

   pray without prayer having some practical result. So, the seventh verse
   is, "In the day of my trouble I will call upon You: for You will
   answer."

   I. First, then, David in his prayer sought, beyond all things, to have
   PERSONAL DEALINGS WITH GOD. To my mind that is the distinction between
   prayer before conversion and prayer after it. I often bring that out
   when I am seeing enquirers who have been religiously brought up. This
   is the sort of dialogue we hold--"You used to pray, did you?" "Yes,
   Sir. I could not have gone to sleep if I had not said my prayers." "Was
   there any difference between that kind of praying and what you now
   practice?" The reply usually is, "Well, Sir, I do not now call the
   first, praying, at all. I used to say some good words that I had been
   taught but I did not say them to anybody. Now I speak to God and I have
   the feeling that He is hearing what I say and that He is present with
   me in my room."

   It is the realization of that second Person as really present, the
   consciousness of the Divine Presence, which makes prayer real. What can
   be the good of going through a form of prayer? Can there be any charm
   in a set of sentences? If you are not speaking to God, what are you
   doing? I should say that a prayer would do as much good repeated
   backwards as forwards, if it is not spoken to God. We have heard of
   instances of grown persons keeping on saying the prayer which their
   mother taught them and asking that God would bless their father and
   mother, after they had been dead twenty years. All sorts of
   absurdities, I do not doubt, have come from the long-continued and
   thoughtless repetition of mere words.

   I am not now speaking against the use of a form of prayer if you feel
   that you can pray with it. But the point is that you must be speaking
   to God, and you must have personal dealings with the Invisible One, or
   else there is nothing whatever in your prayer, whether it be composed
   on the spot, or repeated from memory. Note well that David, while he
   thus sought to have dealings with God--to come to close grips with the
   Lord in the act of prayer--was not presumptuously bold. He perceives
   the condescension of such fellowship on God's part. This may be seen in
   the Psalm.

   If you have the Psalm open before you, kindly begin with the first
   line--"Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me." As if he said, "You are so
   high that unless You shall stoop and stoop very low, You can not
   commune with me. But, Lord, do thus stoop. Bow down Your ear. From Your
   lofty Throne, higher than an angel's wing can reach, stoop down and
   listen to me--poor, feeble me." This is what we must have in order to
   true prayer. Our prayer must climb to that great ear which hears the
   symphonies of the perfected and the hallelujahs of cherubim and
   seraphim.

   Is there not something very wonderful about this, that we--who are both
   insignificant and unworthy--should be able to speak to Him who made the
   stars and upholds all things by the Word of His power? Yet this is the
   essence of prayer--to rise in human feebleness to talk with Divine
   Omnipotence. In nothingness to deal with All-Sufficiency. You cannot
   venture upon this without the Mediator, Christ. But with the Mediator,
   what a wonderful fellowship a worm of the dust is permitted to enjoy
   with the infinite God! What condescension there is in a sinner
   communing with the thrice-holy Jehovah, Seek after this communion.
   Nothing can excel it.

   As you further read in this Psalm you will notice that David, in order
   to obtain this high privilege, pleads his need of it. He cries, "I am
   poor and needy"--as much as to say, "Lord, come to me, let me have
   personal conversation with You, for nothing else will serve my turn. I
   am so poor that You alone can enrich me. I am so feeble, that You alone
   can sustain me. You have made me--Lord, forsake not the work of Your
   own hands! I, Your child, am full of wants, which You, only, can
   supply. Oh, deal with me in great compassion!" Virtually his plea is--

   "Do not turn a way Your face, Mine's an urgent, pressing case." Now, is
   not this very encouraging--that your claim upon God should lie in your
   need? You cannot say to God, "Lord, look at me and commune with me, for
   I am somebody'" But you may say, "Lord, commune with me, for I am
   nobody'" You may not cry, "Lord, help me, for I can do much." But you
   may cry, "Lord help me, for I can do nothing." Your need is your most
   prevalent plea with God. When you are desiring to pray such a prayer as
   consists in closeness with God, it is great condescension on His part
   to draw near to you. But He will condescend to your needs and come
   near--because your misery needs His Presence. God will not condescend
   to your pride but He will bow His ear to your grief.

   If you set up a claim to merit, He will turn His back upon you. But if
   you come to Him with a claim of necessity, which is merely a beggar's
   claim when he asks for alms--an appeal to the charity of God's
   sovereign love--then He will

   turn about and hear your prayer. Come, my Heart, are you not encouraged
   to come near to God, seeing He has respect to your low estate and
   pities your sorrows? Read on and you will find that David, in order to
   come into dealings with God, next pleads his personal
   consecration--"Preserve my soul. For I am holy."

   By this I understand him to mean that he belongs to God. That he is
   consecrated and dedicated to the Divine service. Should not the priest
   handle the golden bowl? Should not the priest enter into the holy
   place? And should not God, therefore, come and deal with the man who is
   dedicated to His use and set apart to His service? My dear Brothers and
   Sisters, can you say tonight that you live for God? Do you recognize
   that you are not your own but bought with a price? Well, there dwells
   an argument in that fact--a reason why the Lord God should come and
   take hold of you and link Himself with you. You are the vessels of His
   sanctuary, you are the instruments of His Divine service, you are
   consecrated to His honor and you may expect Him therefore, to touch you
   with His hand, to employ you in His work and to identify Himself with
   you in your circumstances and necessities.

   Moreover, David, anxious to use every argument, pleads his trust--"Save
   Your servant that trusts in You." This is a conquering plea--"Lord, my
   sole reliance is on You. Come to me, then, and justify the confidence
   which You Yourself have inspired." "Without faith it is impossible to
   please God." But when God has given us faith, then we may be quite sure
   that we do please Him. And if we please Him, then, like Enoch, who
   pleased Him, we shall walk with Him. You may expect, in prayer, to find
   God drawing near to you if in very deed you are holding to Him as the
   one ground of your confidence. Brethren, are you sure that you trust in
   God? You answer, "Yes." Ah, then let me say to you that you shall have
   a reward and that reward will probably be that you will be taught to
   trust Him more.

   That you may rise to a larger faith you will probably suffer greater
   troubles than you have up to now known. The reward of service is more
   service. A good soldier, who has fought through many battles and won
   many victories, shall be sent out to the wars next time his master's
   forces want a captain. You, having already trusted, shall have your
   faith further tried in order that you may glorify God and so arrive at
   a greater faith. Do you not see that faith largely lies in the
   realization that God is and that God is near? And if you so realize God
   when you bow the knee in prayer you may expect to have sweet closeness
   with Him.

   Many years ago I trusted God about many things and I found Him true.
   But of late I have had to take a step in advance and trust God wholly
   and alone in the teeth of all appearances. I have been called almost
   literally to stand alone in contending against error. And in this I
   have distinctly taken a nearer place in prayer with the God whom I
   serve in my spirit. It is very well to rest on God when you have other
   props but it is best of all to rest on Him when every prop is knocked
   away. To hang onto the bare arm of God is glorious dependence. And he
   that has once done it cannot think of ever going back to trust in men
   again.

   "No," says he, "I tried man once and he failed me. I had you with me
   and I trusted God in you. But now that you have turned from me, I will
   trust God alone without you--even though you now come back to the man
   you deserted." Dependence upon the Lord creates a glorious independence
   of man. Verily, it is true, "Cursed is the man that trusts in man and
   makes flesh his arm." But verily, verily, it is true, "Blessed is the
   man that trusts in the Lord and whose hope is the Lord." Part of that
   blessedness will be found in the communion which such a man enjoys with
   God whenever he approaches Him in prayer.

   Still, following the same line, notice that David pleads for God's
   Presence because he is God's servant. He says here, "Save Your
   servant." A servant has liberty to enquire as to his master's will and
   he is justified in asking to see his Lord. If he is employed upon his
   master's business, he says, "I want orders. I wish to tell my master my
   difficulties and to seek from him a supply for those necessities which
   his service will bring upon me." You feel that he has a good and
   sufficient plea when he urges this request. Even so, if you can
   honestly feel that you are spending your strength in the Lord's
   service, you, also, may lawfully expect that when you draw near to Him
   in prayer your Master will speak to you as His servant and He that has
   sent you will commune with you.

   David urges yet another reason why just now he should see God, namely
   that he is always in prayer--"I cry unto you daily." The Lord will hear
   your prayer, my dear Hearer, tonight, if you never prayed before--I am
   quite sure of it. But I am still more sure that if you have been long
   in the habit of prayer, it is not possible that the Father of Mercies
   should cease to hear you. Oh, the sweet delights of constancy in
   prayer! The habit of prayer is charming--but the spirit of

   prayer is heavenly. Be always praying. Is that possible? Some have
   realized it, till the whole of the engagements of the day have been
   ablaze with prayer. God bring us each one into that condition!

   Then we need not barely hope that He will have communion with us, for
   we shall be already enjoying His Presence and His fellowship. Blessed
   are we when prayer surrounds us like an fog. Then we are living in the
   Presence of God. We are continually conversing with Him. May such be
   our lot! May we climb to the top of the mount of communion and may we
   never come down from it!

   David also tells the Lord that when he could not attain to the nearness
   he desired, yet he struggled after it and strained after it. Is not
   this the meaning of the expression, "Rejoice the soul of Your servant,
   for unto You, O Lord, do I lift up my soul"? As much as if he said,
   "Lord, when I cannot climb the hill of fellowship, I labor to do so. If
   I cannot enter into Your Presence, I groan until I do so." We ought
   either to be rejoicing in the Lord, or pining after Him! Ask God to
   make you miserable unless His conscious Presence makes you happy.
   Unless His love is shed abroad in your heart to be the beginning of
   Heaven, may you mourn His absence as a very Hell to your soul! Often I
   pray--

   "Oh, make my heart rejoice, or ache;

   Resolve each doubt for me--

   Lord, if it be not broken, break;

   And heal it if it be."

   We want one of the two--either to commune with God, or else to sigh and
   cry till we do so. We must hunger and thirst after righteousness if we
   are not filled. To be in a state of content without fellowship with God
   would be a terrible condition, indeed.

   Now, when a man's daily cries and inward strivings are after God, he
   may certainly expect that God in prayer will have sweet communion with
   him. But again, I ask, does it not seem extraordinary that you and I,
   insignificant persons, who can have no claim upon the great Maker of
   the universe, should yet be permitted to come to His courts? Yes, even
   to come to Himself through Christ Jesus and speak with Him as a man
   speaks with his friend? Do not think that Abraham, when he stood before
   the Lord and pleaded with Him, as one man does with another, was
   singularly favored above the rest of the elect family. It was a high
   favor, I cannot tell you how great. But such honor have I the saints.
   There are occasions with all His people when the Lord brings them very
   near and speaks with them and they with Him--when His Presence is to
   them as real as the all-pervading air and they are as much rejoiced in
   it as in the presence of father, or wife, or child, or friend.

   Still, David, conscious of the great privilege which he sought, was not
   content without pleading the master argument of all--he pleads the
   great goodness of the Lord. Read it in verse five--"For You, Lord, are
   good." As much as to say--If You were not good You would never listen
   to me. I am, as it were, a noxious insect which a man might far sooner
   crush than speak with. And yet You are so good, my God, that instead of
   stepping on me, You lift me up and talk with me. Who thinks of an angel
   talking with an ant? That would be nothing.

   Here is Jehovah speaking with a creature which is crushed before the
   moth. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. And He will
   show them His Covenant." He lets an unworthy creature spill out its
   heart to Him and He bows his ear and listens as earnestly as if there
   were no other voice in Heaven to command His thought. He gives His
   whole attention to the feeble cry of an unworthy one. Such an amazing
   fact could not happen unless it were written, "For You, Lord, are
   good."

   Ah, but besides that, there is sin in us. I can understand the great
   God forgetting our littleness and bowing down to it. But for the holy
   God not to be held off by our sinfulness--this is a greater wonder
   still. But then the verse says, He is "ready to forgive." Ah, yes! When
   some of us think of what we were, we must be drowned in amazement that
   ever we should be permitted to commune with God. Yonder is a man who
   could once swear at an awful rate and now God listens to his voice in
   prayer! Another was a Sabbath-breaker, a neglecter of the Word of God,
   a despiser of every holy and pure thing and yet he is now permitted to
   come into intimate friendship with the Most High. It is very marvelous,
   is it not?

   Remember, none ever washed Christ's feet except a woman that was a
   sinner. Our Lord selects those that have been the greatest sinners to
   come into the nearest communion with Himself. It may be He has raised
   up some Sister here--who was once a tempter of others--to become a
   mighty intercessor in prayer for the salvation of others. It may be
   that some Brother here, who once was--ah, but he is ashamed to remember
   what he was--has now become mighty in supplica-

   tion--and, like Elijah, can open or shut the windows of Heaven. Oh, the
   strangeness of Almighty Grace! Let God's name be magnified forever and
   ever!

   Thus I have enlarged on the first thought--that in prayer it is vital
   to us really to speak with God. Before I leave it, I want to pass a
   question round the place. Do you, my dear Hearers, all pray so as to
   speak with God? If not, what does it mean? If you merely repeat good
   words, what is the use of it? You might as well stand on a hill and
   talk to the moon as kneel down and hurry through the Lord's Prayer and
   then think that you have prayed. I tell you, you might better do the
   first than the second, for you would not insult God in that
   case--whereas you do insult Him in every one of those holy words which
   you use without thought, heart and faith.

   Think how you would like your own child every morning to come to you
   and repeat a certain set of words without meaning anything thereby. You
   would say, "There, child, there, I have heard that often enough. Come
   to me no more with your empty noise." You would not care for vain
   repetitions. But when your boy or girl says, "Father, I need such a
   thing, please give it me," you hearken to the child's words. It may be
   that you have not enough of this world's goods to be very anxious that
   your children should come with large petitions. But if you were
   sufficiently rich, you would say, "That is right, dear child. Is there
   anything else you want? Tell me what it is. I will right gladly give
   you all things that are needful for you."

   You would wish your child's request to be an intelligent one and then
   you would gladly attend to it. If your prayer does not come from your
   heart it will not go to God's heart. And if it does not bring you near
   to God so that you are speaking to Him, you have simply wasted your
   breath. You have done worse than nothing, for in all likelihood you
   have daubed your conscience over with the notion that you have prayed
   and so you have even done yourself serious harm by a flattering deceit.
   Oh, that God would save you from being so foolish!

   II. And now I come to the second point and I pray God to give me
   strength to speak upon it and give you Divine Grace to hear it. Not at
   any great length but with much earnestness I have to remind you that
   David, in his prayer, desired PERSONAL ANSWERS FROM GOD. When we pray,
   we expect God to hear us, even as David says, "In the day of my trouble
   I will call upon You: for You will answer me."

   I must not speak for all Christians in this matter. But I may speak for
   myself and for many dear Brethren in the faith--and I must boldly say
   that we expect the Lord to hear our prayers. No, we are sure that He
   does so. We hear our fellow Christians say, when we tell them of
   instances in which God has heard our prayers, "How very extraordinary!"
   And we look at them and say, "Extraordinary?" Has it become an
   extraordinary thing for God to be true to His own Promise? I like
   better the remark of the good old lady, who, when her prayer was
   answered, was asked, "Does it not surprise you?" She said, "No, it does
   not surprise me. It is just like Him."

   If anyone of you had a promise from a friend that, upon your sending in
   a note, he would give you such-and-such a thing--if you sent the
   request and he fulfilled his promise, would you say, "I am greatly
   surprised at his action"? No, no--you believe that your friend means
   what he says and you look for him to keep his word. O child of God,
   deal with God on those terms. The wonder was that He should make the
   promise at all! But when He has made the promise, it is not wonderful
   that He should keep it--He expects you to ask and He waits to give.

   A promise is like a check. If I have a check, what do I do with it?
   Suppose I carried it about in my pocket and said, "I do not see the use
   of this bit of paper, I cannot buy anything with it," a person would
   say, "Have you been to the bank with it?" "No, I did not think of
   that." "But it is payable to your order. Have you written your name on
   the back of it?" "No, I have not done that." "And yet you are blaming
   the person who gave you the check? The whole blame lies with yourself.
   Put your name on the back of the check, go with it to the bank and you
   will get what is promised to you."

   A prayer should be the presentation of God's promise endorsed by your
   personal faith. I hear of people praying for an hour together. I am
   very pleased that they can. But it is seldom that I can do so and I see
   no need for it. It is like a person going into a bank with a check and
   stopping an hour. The clerks would wonder. The common sense way is to
   go to the counter and show your check and take your money and go about
   your business. There is a style of prayer which is of this fine
   practical character. You so believe in God that you present the
   promise, obtain the blessing and go about your Master's business.

   Sometimes a flood of words only means excusing unbelief. The prayers of
   the Bible are nearly all short ones--they are short and strong. The
   exceptions are found in places of peculiar difficulty, like that of
   Jacob, when he cried--

   "With you all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day."
   As a general rule, faith presents its prayer, gets its answer and goes
   on its way rejoicing.

   We expect our God to answer our prayer all the more surely when we are
   in trouble. David so expected--"In the day of my trouble I will call
   upon You: for You will answer me." Trouble is sent to make us pray.
   When we pray, the prayer becomes the solace of our trouble. And when
   the prayer is heard, it becomes the salvation out of our trouble. Many
   of you would be out of trouble quickly if you prayed. "Sir, I have been
   doing my best." And what is your best? A better thing than your best is
   to wait upon the Lord. Often and often trial has to rap our fingers to
   make us let go our harmful confidences and turn to the Lord. With our
   vain-confidence we are like a madman with a razor--the more we grasp
   it, the more it cuts us.

   Drop the deadly self-trust--trust in God and look to Him and your
   deliverance will speedily come to you. If you should have no answer at
   any other time, you will assuredly be heard in the time of trouble if
   you trust in the Lord. Now, if we expect God to answer us, we do so on
   very good grounds. There are certain natural reasons. I was turning
   over in my mind the question, "Why do I pray? Why have I any reason to
   believe that God hears me?" And I thought to myself," Well, on natural
   grounds I have a right to believe that God will hear prayer, or
   otherwise why is prayer commanded?" The Scripture is full of prayer. It
   is an institution of the old Covenant, as well as of the new and yet it
   is a piece of folly if God does not hear it.

   "Oh," says somebody, "but it does you good to pray, even though there
   may be no such a thing as God's hearing prayer." It might do an idiot
   good to pray when he knew there was no hearing of prayer on God's part.
   But not being an idiot myself, I could not perform such a stupid
   exercise. I would as soon sit on a five-barred gate and whistle to the
   hills as offer prayer if I did not hope to be heard. If there is no God
   that hears prayer, I shall not pray--nor will any other rational being.
   Show prayer to be unheard of God and you have shown it to be a folly.
   Show prayer to be a folly and who will pursue it? Does God invite us to
   pray? Does He command us to pray? Are there many injunctions of this
   kind-- "Men ought always to pray and not to faint"? "Pray without
   ceasing," and so on?

   Then prayer must be heard of God. How would it be with you if you said
   to a number of poor people, "Come round to my gate tomorrow and I will
   relieve your distresses"? Would you not intend to relieve their
   distresses when you said so? I cannot imagine that you would be so
   diabolical as to keep on saying, "Come to my house. Whenever you are
   hungry, come to my table. Whenever you need clothes, come to my door
   and ask." All the while saying to yourself, "But I do not intend to
   give you anything. You may come and ring the bell as long as you like.
   It will be fine exercise for you but I shall take no notice of your
   appeals."

   It would be a most shocking and disgraceful mockery of misery. God will
   not serve us in that fashion. The very institution of prayer gives us
   the assurance that God intends to hear and to answer.

   Observe, again, that prayer has been universal among all the saints.
   There have been saints of different molds and temperaments but they
   have all prayed. Some of them have been, like Heman and Asaph, masters
   of song and they have prayed. Others could not sing but they have all
   prayed. Today you may meet with all sorts of Christians, holding many
   kinds of doctrines--but they all pray. And what is most curious, they
   all pray alike, too. You can scarcely detect a difference when they
   pray--

   "The saints in prayer appear as one, In word and deed and mind."

   A man may preach doctrine contrary to the Grace of God. But get him on
   his knees and he prays to God for Divine Grace, as heartily as John
   Calvin himself. We are one at the Mercy Seat. Whatever doctrinal views
   we may hold--when we plead with the living God, in the power of the
   Holy Spirit--we are poured into one mold. How is this? If, all the ages
   through, saints have prayed, have they all been fools? Have they all
   exercised themselves in a way that was utterly useless and absurd? Do
   not believe it!

   Note again, that the more godly and holy a man is, the more he prays.
   You never heard yet that a man began to backslide, or that a sober man
   became a drunkard through praying too much. Did you ever hear of a
   person becoming unkind to his wife, ungenerous to the poor, negligent
   of public worship, or guilty of grievous sin through being too much in
   prayer? No. The case is the reverse. As the man loves God more and
   becomes more like Christ, he takes greater

   delight in prayer. That cannot be an idle and useless exercise which
   the best of men have followed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

   If there is a possibility of error, we err in the best of company--for
   yonder comes the Lord Jesus Himself from His lonely haunt with the
   burrs of the heather from the mountainside sticking to His garments. He
   has spent all night in agonizing prayer. He will not open His mouth to
   preach to the multitude till first of all He has received a new
   anointing from His Father's hand in secret fellowship with Heaven. Our
   Master and His best disciples have abounded in prayer.

   Well, dear Friends, these are natural reasons. And there are a great
   many more, if you will think them out. But, if you turn to Scriptural
   reasons, why was there a Mercy Seat if there is nothing in prayer? Why
   does the Throne of Grace still remain as a permanent institution, of
   which Paul says, "Let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace," unless
   there is a reality in it? Tell me, why is Christ the way to the Mercy
   Seat? Why is He Himself the great Intercessor and Mediator if there is
   nothing in prayer? The Holy Spirit helps our infirmities in
   prayer--surely there must be something effectual where He lends His
   aid.

   What? Is He, after all, helping us to do a thing which produces no
   result?--helping us to present petitions which will never reach the ear
   of God? Tell that to the philosophers. We are not so credulous. Once
   more--we know that God hears prayer because we have met with multitudes
   of His people who can tell of answers to prayer. What is more, we are
   ourselves among that number. Looking back on my diary, I find it
   studded with answers to prayer. Often when I have talked with friends
   of an evening, telling them a few cases in which God has heard my cries
   in time of need, they have said, "Have you written these down?" "Well,
   no, I cannot say that I have." "Oh," says one, "pray do not let such
   facts be lost."

   I have to reply that many cases of answered prayer are quite beyond the
   belief of average people. I know them to be true but I do not expect
   others to believe my tale. When William Huntington wrote his "Bank of
   Faith" some people called it a "Bank of Nonsense." I could write twenty
   "Banks of Faith" and every word should be as sure as an honest man
   could write. But the only result would be that people would say, "Oh,
   well, you know that is the result of the good man's fanaticism." The
   moment that the moderns do not like to believe a thing they call it
   fanatical. If we were put into a witness-box tomorrow, our testimony
   would have weight with the court. But yet, the moment we talk about
   God's hearing prayer--oh, then we are romancing, and our witness is not
   to be received.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, we bear a true witness--whether men receive
   it or not. I solemnly declare that no fact is better proved by my
   experience than this--that the Lord hears the prayers of His believing
   people. You, each one, will know for himself, or herself, whether there
   is a God that hears prayer. Does He answer your petitions? Brethren,
   you are sure that He does and at the asking of the question you bow
   your heads and say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." My dear Brother,
   William Olney, sits here among us--have we not prayed him twice back
   from the gates of the grave? He lives as an instance of answered
   prayer. There is not a stone or a beam about this great Tabernacle but
   has been an answer to our prayers.

   In days when, as a congregation, we were few and feeble, we ventured on
   the serious enterprise of building this great house and we prayed it up
   stone by stone, to the praise and glory of God. If we who worship
   beneath this dome did not believe in prayer, the stones out of the
   walls would cry out against us.

   But I hear a voice saying, "There are so many difficulties about prayer
   being heard." Are there? The farther I go in this life, the more
   difficulties I am informed of, though I should not have discovered them
   myself. I am assured that there are great difficulties about eating,
   breathing and sleeping. As to the very air, I do not know what it is
   not full of--it teems with the seeds of disease and the wonder is that
   we live at all. But we do live, do we not? And we shall eat our suppers
   tonight despite the difficulties in connection with food.

   As to the difficulties connected with prayer, they are altogether
   philosophical difficulties and by no means practical ones. If you are
   philosophers, you may weary your heads about them. But if you are
   simple, practical people, you may pray and receive the blessing. "Yes
   but the power of prayer with God supposes that God may change." Well,
   our doing anything supposes that, but it is a mere supposition. Your
   even walking home tonight might raise a difficulty as to the decrees of
   God. But it is a non-existent difficulty. After you have entertained it
   as long as you like, you will find that you have entertained a shadow.

   Suppose that you leave off supposing and just do as God tells you and
   see whether it does not work. When you find that it does practically
   work, let other people enjoy the difficulties. I do not eat meat. But
   if I did, I should always feel quite satisfied to let my dogs have the
   bones--the meat would satisfy me. If there are any difficulties about
   prayer, the dogs may have them--I mean the philosophers. But as for us
   simple Christian people--we are satisfied with the meat of the precious
   fact that prayer brings every blessing from above. We pray and God
   hears us and that is enough for us. Our God does not change His will,
   and yet He wills a change in answer to prayer.

   I have done when I have made this further remark. I cannot expect any
   man to believe that he can commune with God, or that God will, in very
   deed, hear his prayer and grant him his desire, unless he has been led
   personally to try it. But if, by the Spirit of God, he has been led to
   seek after God and to draw near to God, I shall have no need of further
   arguments with him. That man has now entered upon a new life in which
   he will be capable of understanding new things. Until he does enter
   upon that life, he is spiritually deaf and blind. And what can he know
   about spiritual realities?

   Our Lord has said to us, "You must be born again." When we are born
   again, the life within turns toward the life of God and has fellowship
   with God and God answers it and the desire of the godly one is granted.
   Oh, the honor of communion with God! Happy beings who enjoy it! How
   unspeakable the privilege of pouring out your hearts before God!
   Delight yourselves therein before you fall asleep this night. Oh, the
   holy quietude which it brings! You have not an ounce of care to carry
   because all your burden is in prayer and supplication--laid on Him that
   cares for you!

   Oh, the love that dwells in the heart of the man who draws near to God
   in prayer! You cannot love God at a distance. You must draw nearer and
   nearer, or love will not rest. As when one comes into the sunshine, he
   feels the warmth, so when we come nearer to God we have more joy in
   Him. Keep near to God. Abound in prayer. Let your supplications be
   instant and constant, and you will be sure that the Father Himself
   hears your cries!

   Oh, that some here who never prayed would begin at once! Trust in
   Jesus, the Intercessor, and let that trust show itself by pleading the
   merit of His blood in earnest prayer. Oh, that you would now begin that
   holy life of prayer which shall lead up to the eternal life of praise
   at the right hand of God. Amen.

   On the wing, November 19, 1888. DEAR FRIENDS--After reading this sermon
   carefully, I add these words. In all my sickness, weakness, conflict
   and pain, the prayer-hearing God has been with me and not one word of
   His promise has failed. Blessed be His name! And now I am sufficiently
   recovered to begin my journey to the place where I take rest and
   change. I go beneath a canopy of prayers. Will the reader join in
   asking that for the sake of my work I may soon recover strength and
   return to my field of service? I have more confidence in prayer than in
   the balmy air and the rest--means are only good when the God of Means
   makes them so. I leave my heart with dear ones at home and with my
   congregation of hearers and readers. The Lord be with you! Yours
   heartily, C. H. SPURGEON.
     __________________________________________________________________

   Judgments and No Repentance--Repentance and No Salvation

   PREACHED AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 25, 1887.

   "They repented not to give Him glory." Revelation 16:9.

   IN reading this chapter, dear Friends--this very terrible chapter--you
   must have been struck, I think, with the forces of God. How great are
   the armies of the Lord of Hosts! As the mighty Jehovah smote Pharaoh
   with overwhelming plagues, so does the Lord in this awful portion of
   the Apocalypse deal with the ungodly. Seven angels stood forth, each
   one with his vial full of the wrath of God, to be poured out upon the
   earth. Seven executioners were needed and seven were present--a perfect
   number for the accomplishment of the Divine purpose.

   Behold, the angels of God are innumerable! "The chariots of God are
   twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as
   in Sinai, in the holy place." Our Lord Jesus Christ, even in His
   humiliation, said, "Think you that I cannot now pray to My Father and
   He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels?" The
   shining ones march in great armies and God accomplishes many of His
   purposes by them, without our observing it. Are not their great doings
   all written in the book of the wars of the Lord, which as yet no man
   has read? If there were no other powers at His disposal, Jehovah, as
   the Lord of all angels, would still be fitly called the Lord of Hosts.

   What power resides in these mysterious beings! With what energy does
   the Lord clothe them! They are made to fly swiftly on the errands of
   His wisdom. "He makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of
   fire." Here we find one of these angels pouring his bowl upon the earth
   and causing a noisome and grievous sore upon men. Another empties his
   vial on the sea and it becomes as the blood of a dead man. A third
   angel pours out his bowl upon the rivers and the fountains of waters
   are stained as with blood.

   Here one ventures to pour his bowl upon the golden sun--that orb which
   is of this great world both eye and soul-- and the sun, as though its
   flame were re-fed with the most brilliant oil, burns with greater fury
   than ever. And we read, "Men were scorched with great heat and
   blasphemed the name of God, which has power over these plagues." What
   power, then, has God to accomplish His purposes when a single angel can
   do as much as this--and the Lord has myriads of them waiting to do His
   bidding?

   Note yet again, how all men are within the reach of the Divine
   judgments. They proudly fancy that they can escape from God. Many a
   little Pharaoh says, in the hardness of his heart, "Who is the Lord,
   that I should obey His voice?" Boastful worldlings dream that they, at
   any rate, are beyond punishment. They reason their careful forethought
   will secure them against the calamities which others bring upon
   themselves. They are ungodly but still they take good care of
   themselves and keep clear of vice and extravagant wastefulness.

   They are far too prudent to involve themselves in the perils of the
   gamester or the profligate. They prefer safer sins and so they fancy
   that they are out of harm's reach--though they do not acknowledge God.
   Poverty cannot reach them, for they have filled their houses with
   hidden treasure. Sickness cannot hurt them, for they have a vigorous
   constitution. They defy dangers which have thrown down others. They
   boast themselves in the glory of their strength and in the hardness of
   their hearts. These are the men who sit aloft, beyond the reach of the
   arrows of Jehovah.

   What folly! No man is at any moment beyond the reach of vengeance. The
   Lord has but to remember the callous and secure, and immediately the
   joints of their loins shall be loosed and fearfulness shall take hold
   upon them--their proud hearts can fail them in a moment, even though no
   outward sorrow afflict them. In Providence the detectives of God never
   fail to find out the guilty. This angel, you perceive, poured his vial
   on the sun and by way of the sun, with his scorching heat, the proudest
   sons of men were visited. The noble and the great, the rich and the
   healthy, could not bear the increased solar heat--for the day burned as
   an oven.

   We know not by how many doors God can come at the guilty, but come at
   them He will when once His arm is bared for war. When He says, "Ah, I
   will ease Me of My adversaries," who shall withstand Him? This land is
   exceedingly haughty and some of its inhabitants talk as if they were
   demigods. Our insular pride makes us fancy that we shall prosper, come
   what may. But it is not so--we are great debtors to Divine favor and if
   we cease to acknowledge the Lord's hand in our prosperity He may teach
   us humility by sharp methods. God's right hand can find out His
   adversaries.

   And He will punish sin in Britain as surely as He punished sin in Rome,
   or in Nineveh. If Jerusalem did not escape, shall London last forever?
   No country, no city, and no man, however rich, or strong, or great, can
   climb beyond the reach of the Divine hand. In the height or in the
   depth, God is equally present in power--in this state or in the
   next--He is equally able to dispense justice. No ivory throne can lift
   a monarch above Jehovah's rod. No pillar of fame can place a mortal
   beyond His sword. Oh that all of you would have the sense to see this!
   And as you cannot fly from God, fly to Him. As you cannot resist the
   power of His justice, flee to the power of His mercy.

   When He stretches out His arms and invites you to come, turn not your
   backs. Come, like the prodigal, saying, "Father, I have sinned," and He
   will graciously receive you. This terrible chapter takes away all hope
   from men as to their escaping from God when once He girds Himself with
   vengeance and sits down upon His Throne of Justice, to execute
   punishment. Then shall His right hand find out His enemies and overturn
   them with swift destruction.

   One Truth of God, however, comes out of this passage more plainly than
   any other, to my mind. And that is, that judgments, even the most
   terrible of them, do not, in themselves, produce a satisfactory
   repentance in the minds of men. Let me read you two or three verses and
   you will see how clearly this is the case. The punishment drove men
   into still more furious rebellion. In none did it subdue and sanctify
   them. "And men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed the name of
   God, which has power over these plagues: and they repented not to give
   Him glory.

   "And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast.
   And his kingdom was full of darkness. And they gnawed their tongues for
   pain and blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their
   sores and repented not of their deeds." The twenty-first verse is to
   the same effect--"And there fell upon men a great hail out of Heaven,
   every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God
   because of the plague of the hail." The terrors of the Lord produced
   blasphemy but they did not produce repentance.

   I. In considering this subject, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I
   would begin by saying that JUDGMENTS, APART FROM DIVINE GRACE, MAY
   PRODUCE A KIND OF REPENTANCE. It is repentance after a fashion but it
   is not of that holy, healthy, heavenly sort which is worked in the
   renewed heart by the Holy Spirit.

   Judgment may produce a carnal repentance--a repentance that is of the
   flesh and after the manner of the sinful nature of men. In this
   repentance the depravity of the heart remains the same in essence,
   though it takes another form of showing itself. Though the man changes,
   he is not savingly changed--he becomes another man but not a new man.
   The same sin rules in him but it is called by another name and wears
   another coat. The stone is carved into a more sightly shape but it is
   not turned into flesh. The iron is cast into another image but it is
   not transformed into gold.

   This carnal repentance is caused by fear. Does not every thief repent
   of robbery when he is convicted and sent to jail? Does not every
   murderer repent of his crime when he stands under the fatal tree? This
   is the kind of repentance which the terrors of the Lord will work in
   men's minds unless they are altogether hardened and under the special
   dominion of the devil. Travelers in great storms will tremble and,
   trembling, will confess their guilt and begin to pray. But when the
   tempest is over, their trembling, their confession and their prayers
   are also, all over. They shake because of their sins but they are not
   shaken out of their sins.

   Mariners far out at sea, when the laboring boat threatens to go down to
   the bottom, will repent. But such repentance is only a few qualms of
   conscience because they are in dread of death and judgment and Hell. So
   men that lie upon a bed of sickness--when their bones ache and their
   hearts melt and the grave yawns beneath their couch--will often repent.
   And yet, if they could be raised up, they would return to their sins as
   the dog returns to his vomit. This is wretched work. This repentance
   gives no glory to God and leads to no saving and lasting deliverance
   from sin.

   It is fallen nature washed and brushed and rouged--but allowed to
   remain fallen nature, still. The heart is not renewed, the life is not
   regenerated, the mind is not changed. And, therefore, little is done
   that is worth doing. The leopard is caged but there are the spots. The
   Ethiopian is scrubbed but his skin is as black as ever. This repentance
   is the outcome

   of nature under terror and not the fruit of Divine Grace. The thunders
   and the storms and the hail and the noisome sores can produce in men
   nothing more than a fleshly repentance. And flesh repenting is still
   flesh and tends to corruption.

   And hence, again, it is but a transient repentance. They repent but for
   a season. While they see the immediate evil of their sin in its results
   they cry out as if they really hated sin. But their hatred is only a
   little tiff, which lasts for a while and then they make friends with
   their sins, as Pilate made friends with Herod. Their goodness is as the
   morning cloud. And as the early dew it passes away. Even Ahab once
   repented. But, oh, what a poor and short-lived repentance it was! We
   find men turning away from their sin for a time but then going back to
   it with a greater gusto, as men may abstain from food for some hours in
   order to increase their appetite for the banquet which is being
   prepared.

   Beware of that repentance which is not better than the vomit of a
   dog--how can it be acceptable with God? Beware of that repentance which
   comes ofyourself--for it comes of the flesh. And that which is born of
   the flesh is flesh and not better. That which is of the flesh is a mere
   flash--no sooner has it come than it is gone. "All flesh is grass" and
   the flower of it soon withers away. When the Spirit of the Lord blows
   upon the fairest flower of our poor nature it immediately withers
   up--how could it be otherwise with grass?

   It is well that it should be withered up by the Spirit of God. For,
   left to itself, it will wither in a worse style and our destruction
   will be sure. "The Word of the Lord abides forever," but all the
   comeliness of man passes away. Beware, then, of a repentance which
   springs alone from terror--comes up in a night and withers in a
   night--appears and promises but promises only to delude.

   Such a repentance is superficial. It only affects the surface of the
   man. It does not go to the heart, it is hardly more than skin deep. How
   often have we been greatly grieved when we have seen persons in
   poverty, or in sickness, or in some great fright, or under some other
   form of excitement who have professed repentance and avowed it very
   loudly, too? But yet you could see that the repentance did not go deep
   enough to make them give up their sin! Herod was exceedingly sorry that
   he had made an oath which bound him to give John's head in a platter to
   the daughter of Herodias--but he was not so sorry as to break loose
   from his wicked pledge. No. He committed the murder--though he said he
   was exceedingly sorry for it.

   How many there are that are hand and glove with Satan yet speak against
   him, so as to keep up a fair show before others! They take the
   sweetness and the profit of an evil trade and yet condemn the trade
   itself. They derive rent from an ill house but, of course, they are
   grieved that people should use their property for such a purpose! Such
   repentance as that is, to a large extent, sheer hypocrisy. It gives to
   men a kind of rest of conscience, which rest of conscience is injurious
   to them, since it lulls them to sleep and enables them to wake and
   return to their sin as if nothing had happened.

   That repentance which is worth having turns a man inside out and purges
   the innermost part of the soul--killing the love of sin so that even if
   sin could be made profitable and sweet to the man--he could not abide
   it. If sin were buttered and sugared on both sides the true penitent
   would not have it. For he has found that there is a deadly poison in
   its sweetness and therefore he loathes it and leaves it. The really
   repentant one hates sin as sin and turns from it with purpose of heart.
   Beware of a superficial repentance, for the Lord abhors it. God is not
   mocked. He sees the loathsomeness of the ulcer through the film which
   seeks to hide it.

   Once again--the awful fear of God may produce a despairing repentance.
   This is deep enough but then it lacks the element of bringing glory to
   God. It has in it no trace of submission, no touch of faith, no breath
   of love. There is nothing evangelical about it--it is legal all
   through--and therefore, worthless for salvation. It is a kind of
   anticipation of the endless judgment and the wrath to come. But it is
   not a deliverance from there. Take Judas as an example. "I have
   sinned," says he. He flings down the accursed silver for which he had
   sold his Master and his own soul but he goes out to hang himself.

   What an awful thing it is when the Law of God and the terrors of God
   work upon the conscience and arouse all a man's fears and yet he will
   not fly to Christ! The man is so overcome with horror at the prospect
   of the world to come that, like a fool, he rushes upon his fate, even
   as the moth dashes into the flame of the candle. To escape from death,
   he flies to death. To escape from the wrath of God he puts an end to
   his last hope of mercy and rushes into the presence of an angry God.
   This is a dreadful repentance, from which I pray God to save you. It
   works death even in this life and it works the second death in the
   world to come.

   If any of you are under the power of despair at this moment, I pray
   you, do not rest in it. For it is no more a place to rest in than Hell
   itself. The satisfaction of despair, grim and dreadful thing as it is,
   has a sort of fascination for some minds and they begin to be at peace
   in the midnight of hopelessness. They say there is no hope and
   therefore they may as well sin up to the full and get some sort of
   enjoyment out of their rebellion. Under this mad impulse they go from
   bad to worse and sin more than ever. O my Hearer, may God save you from
   this and bring you to be touched with a sense of the love and of the
   Grace of God, wherein there is hope, lest you repent hopelessly and
   unbelievingly and perish in your repentance!

   II. So you see, my Brethren, judgments may produce a certain likeness
   of repentance--but then, secondly, THEY

   DO NOT AND THEY CANNOT OF THEMSELVES PRODUCE A REPENTANCE SUCH AS GIVES
   GOD GLORY.

   "They repented not to give Him glory."

   Now, not giving God glory is a very important omission and one which
   corrupts the whole matter. I would dwell upon it for a minute or two,
   that you may see how great is the failure. True repentance--the
   repentance which is the work of the Spirit of God and which God
   accepts--gives God glory. Here are scales and balances for you
   wherewith you may weigh your repentance before God. Do so with great
   care and jealousy. True repentance gives God glory. And it glorifies
   God in many ways, of which I have not time to tell you in full.

   But I can tell you enough to help you in self-examination. Is yours
   true repentance or not? That is the question. I believe that true
   repentance has as pure and sincere a worship in it as the anthems of
   the glorified above. It is a form of adoration as suitable to sinners
   as the eternal hallelujahs are suitable for perfect beings.

   First, it reverences and adores God's omniscience. It is a confession
   of the fact of God's knowledge and the truthfulness of His statements.
   The man says, "O Lord, I am what Your Word says I am. I am a sinner
   through and through. And I know while I confess my sin that You know
   more about my sin than I do. I lay bare my soul but it never was
   possible for me to hide it from Your inspection. You have seen my
   thoughts and the secret intents of my heart. Before You have I sinned.
   In Your sight have I done evil. You know me altogether and I adore Your
   omniscience."

   Every true penitent is conscious of the Divine eye resting upon him.
   And he, in lowly manner, acknowledges the piercing and discerning power
   of that eye. The real penitent asks that the Lord would reveal to him
   more and more of his true condition--that he may not cloak his sin, nor
   deceive himself in any way--but may be honest and upright before God.
   Such repentance gives glory to the omniscience of God.

   Next, the truly penitent gives glory to the righteousness of God in His
   Law. The man that really hates sin says, "Lord, I do not quarrel with
   Your Law. Your Law is holy and just and good--the fault is with me, for
   I am carnal, sold under sin. No Law could be more exactly right and
   just than Your Law is and in having transgressed against it I am deeply
   guilty and I acknowledge my folly and crime. Whatever becomes of me, I
   dare not impugn the Law which condemns me. I adore its infinite majesty
   and purity." Impenitence rails at the Law as too severe, speaks of
   transgression as a trifle and of future punishment as cruelty. But the
   truly repentant soul admires the Law and champions it even against
   himself! Do you know all this in your own heart?

   Next, the sincerely penitent also adores and glorifies the justice of
   God in His punishment of transgression. I know that when I was under a
   sense of sin I felt that if God did not punish me He ought to do so. I
   could not see how God could be the Judge of all the earth if He did not
   visit my transgressions with infinite wrath. I had no quarrel with the
   most stern Word either of the Old or of the New Testament. I was bound
   under my sense of guilt to bare my back to its scourges and to lay my
   neck upon its block. I said in so many words--"And if my soul were sent
   to Hell, Your righteous Law approves it well."

   This is real penitence--when the man gives glory to the justice of
   God--even though it condemns him. O my Hearer, do you thus repent? Is
   sin really sinful to you? Do you see its desert of Hell? If not, your
   repentance needs to be repented of.

   And next, true repentance glorifies the sovereignty of God in His
   mercy. The man who is deeply conscious of his guilt, says, "Lord, I
   have no claim on You. I have no rights but the right to be punished. I
   have forfeited all claim to favor and reward. If You will freely
   forgive me, if You can justly do so, I will forever adore You for so
   doing. But I cannot say that I have any right thereto. If You will
   pardon me, it must be Your own act and deed, performed on grounds
   within

   Yourself. I know that You have a sovereign right, as King of kings, to
   execute the sentence of the Law, or to condone my offense, if you can
   do it in consistency with justice. I must leave myself absolutely in
   Your hands."

   That man truly, deeply, sincerely, repents who perceives that there is
   justice in the declaration of God, "I will have mercy on whom I will
   have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."
   How some people bite their lips when they hear this sentence! And yet
   they are the very voice of Jehovah, the God whom I adore. He claims to
   be absolute in the realm of Grace, doing as He pleases with His own.
   Let Him do as He wills, for His will is holy love. We can trust
   absolute authority with Him who is the infinitely good and just. In the
   absolute sovereignty of God there is hope for the most guilty of men.
   We do not fully repent of sin until we feel that it is so and confess
   that the Lord has a right to do as He pleases in this matter, whether
   He justly destroys us or graciously saves us.

   Further, I believe that the man has repented to the glory of God when
   he spies out that there is a way by which God can be just and yet the
   justifier of the ungodly--when he sees the Lord Jesus Christ, the
   adorable Son of God coming in our human nature and becoming the
   Substitute for sinners and the Sacrifice for sin. That is true
   repentance which washes the Redeemer's feet with her tears and wipes
   them with the hairs of her head. Those dear feet had not been pierced
   when the woman thus washed them--but they have been pierced now. Let us
   wash the nail-prints with the tears of our repentance at this hour!

   Do you rejoice in Jesus crucified? Do you love Christ? Do you trust
   Him? Do you leap for joy at the very thought that God has set Him forth
   to be a propitiation for sin? This is repentance after a godly sort.
   This is repentance that needs not to be repented of. Repentance makes a
   rainbow with her tears of grief for sin and her glances of hope at the
   love of Christ and His great finished work. Repentance stands at the
   Cross and sees sin forgiven and then repents more than she ever did
   when she could not spy out forgiveness. She says of her sins--

   "I know they are forgiven,

   But now their pain to me

   Is all the grief and anguish

   They laid, my Lord, on You."

   Sin in the anguish of conviction does not so effectually break a heart
   as sin forgiven. A sense of blood-bought pardon soon dissolves a heart
   of stone. Hannibal, it is said, dissolved the rocks of the Alps with
   vinegar. But Christ dissolves our hearts with love. He tells us, "I
   have blotted out your sins. I bore on the Tree the ransom for you. I
   have poured out My heart's blood that you might live." And then it is
   that we hate sin with a perfect hatred and are full of mourning because
   we pierced the Lord. Because evil is so hateful to the heart of Jesus
   we loathe it intensely. This is the repentance which glorifies God. The
   Lord grant such repentance to every one of us!

   Mark you, it glorifies God in one other way--by setting the sinner ever
   afterwards craving after holiness. "The burnt child dreads the fire."
   And the sinner dreads sin when he has been delivered from the flame of
   it by the Lord Jesus. Because Jesus suffered so bitterly, he feels that
   he himself suffered and so feels as much dread of sin as if he had
   himself been made to die through it. The man who knows that his sins
   have been forgiven will never be satisfied with any degree of
   sanctification short of being made like unto Him who took his sin away.
   "He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God
   in Him," and to this result we press forward.

   While that passage relates mainly to our justification, yet the Lord
   Jesus Christ has also an eye to our sanctification. He has redeemed us
   that we may be a people zealous for good works and may in all things
   serve Him who has redeemed us--not with corruptible things, as silver
   and gold--but with His own precious blood. Perfect holiness is our
   aspiration. Oh that it were our attainment! But the very aspiration
   gives glory to the thrice holy God whom we desire to imitate.

   Now, beloved Friends, the judgments of God in and of themselves can
   never work evangelical repentance in a single human heart--

   "Law and terrors do but harden,

   All the while they work alone;

   It is a sense of blood-bought pardon

   That dissolves the heart of stone." You see, then, how a gracious
   repentance glorifies God--do you know anything of such a repentance?
   Answer, I pray you, as before the Lord, whom no man can deceive.

   III. But now, thirdly, I go a step further--THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD APART
   FROM DIVINE GRACE, MAY, THROUGH OUR HARDNESS OF HEART, INVOLVE US IN
   GREATER SIN.

   Listen to me, any of you that have been much tried and afflicted and
   yet have never come to Jesus. I tell you, if God has chastened you very
   much until He is saying tonight, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you?"
   then all this chastening which you have despised involves you in deeper
   sin--because you now sin with a clearer knowledge of what sin really
   is.

   A young man came to London and he fell into vice. He has had to suffer
   very grievously for it and if he has not heartily repented--if he goes
   back again to his folly--there will be sevenfold damnation about his
   evil way in the future. Let him remember this. He cannot sin cheaply
   now. He knows what he is doing and his offense will be distinctly
   willful and therefore rankly offensive. You scarcely knew that it was
   fire at first but you know now--if you go and put your finger into the
   fire again you deserve to be burned.

   A man that has suffered Divine judgment and yet goes back to sin
   increases his guilt because there is the element of defiance in his
   obstinacy. He has come to be like Pharaoh who stoutly resisted Jehovah
   and His Commands. Let the Lord send His plagues--Pharaoh will brazen it
   out with Him. O dear Friend, I hope that you have not yet reached such
   a fearful state of mind. I hope you are not bent on war with the
   Almighty! I trust you will not dash upon the bosses of His shield. Do
   not say, "Sickness may follow sickness but I shall not yield. Loss may
   follow loss but I will not turn from my ways. I am of too tough metal
   to care for such things."

   If so, you have deliberately thrown down the glove of battle to the
   Lord of all the earth. Think of the conflict--do no more. Shall the
   string contend with the fire? Yet such is your ignorant pride in thus
   defying God. This must be the case when judgments do not bring
   repentance for they introduce the element of defiance into the man's
   impenitent perseverance in evil and so make him doubly guilty.

   Moreover, to many lives judgments also introduce the element of
   falsehood. The man vowed that if he recovered from sickness he would
   fear God. He was sick and a saint he would be. But when he got well,
   ah, how much of a saint was he? You know the old Proverb. I need not
   quote it further. Yes, many have lied unto God. Hear it. They have not
   lied unto men but lied unto God in this matter till now their life is a
   continued provoking of God by broken promises and disregarded
   covenants. Ah me, this blackens a life. What? Has your whole life
   become an elaborate lie? Are you every moment acting falsely? Are you
   every hour violating vows and promises made to your God? O Man, what
   will become of you when the God of Ananias and Sapphira comes to deal
   with you?

   I do fear that there are some whose conduct has in it the element of
   deliberate hatred of God. For these have had time now to see which way
   evil goes and yet they follow it. They love sin as sin. They have been
   losers by their misconduct and yet they pursue it. We have often seen
   persons reduced to rags and beggary by their folly and vice and we have
   helped them to begin life again. But in a few days they have been in
   the same destitution through the same drunkenness, or vice, or idleness
   which brought them to the dogs before. They seem incorrigible,
   obstinately set on their iniquities. And all that can be done for them
   by the scourges of God's hand does not affect them in the least for the
   better.

   In this there is an aversion to goodness, a love of evil and a hatred
   of God. "They say unto God, Depart from us. For we desire not the
   knowledge of Your ways." This introduces the element of presumption, of
   deliberation, of resolve. And when men sin so, there is a talent of
   lead in the measure of their iniquity and it weighs exceeding heavily.
   Sins of impetuous passion and of wild juvenile haste are bad enough.
   But there is not in them the element of intense wickedness which is
   evidently present in the deliberate pursuit of sin in the teeth of
   suffering, or in the continuance in evil when its results are daily
   felt.

   On such evenings as these it is strange what sorts of people make up
   the congregation at the Tabernacle. I may be speaking tonight--I do not
   doubt I am--to some that, year after year, against a mother's tears and
   the importunities of friends and the advice of those who have wished
   them well--have still kept on and on in a sinful course which they
   themselves condemn. Knowing better, they persist in wrong. Knowing what
   the end will be, they are madly set upon their own ruin. O Sirs, if you
   choose your own delusions, if you will ride steeplechase to Hell over
   hedge and ditch, if you will be damned--who is to stand in your way and
   what shall be said by way of pity for you?

   O God, have mercy upon such! Many in this city are breaking a father's
   heart and bringing a mother's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
   After all they have endured they still cling to their filthy idols and
   go after their impure lusts. And they will do so until God shall end
   their days in His wrath and summon them to His bar. My heart breaks at
   the

   thought of some of you! Will you never repent and give God glory? Will
   you pursue your follies even into the unquenchable fires? Now this is a
   dreadful thing--that the judgments of God should, through the
   wickedness of men--even lead them to still greater sin.

   IV. Therefore, in the last place--and with this I finish--THE JUDGMENTS
   OF GOD ARE TO BE VIEWED

   WITH GREAT DISCRETION. He who studies them must do it with solemn care.

   Judgments tend to good. Do not forget that. They ought to tend to good
   to you who are exercised by them. How many are aroused to think of
   better things by sickness in their own persons, or sudden death in
   others! National judgments are frequently a ministry of Divine Grace.
   The first year in which I came to London I was greatly struck with the
   access that one had at all hours of day and night to people's houses,
   into which no ministers of Christ had never been welcomed before. I
   remember, at two o'clock one Monday morning, I was in a house, now
   pulled down, close to London Bridge, to see a man who had spent the
   Sunday at Brighton and had come home to die with the cholera.

   Yes, they sent for me at the dead of night often, then. And rich and
   poor--it mattered not, if they found someone willing to come and visit
   them--were eager for you to read and pray with them. Death was all
   around us, making havoc in these streets. Thus did cholera arouse our
   neighbors that they flocked to hear the Word out of very fear, but they
   are not so eager for a visit now. Thus, much benefit may there be in
   the plagues which are shot from the quiver of Providence.

   And judgments do impress some men. Many will come to hear a sermon just
   after a dear baby has died, or a brother, or father has been taken
   away. Death whips the careless into thought. Then there is an
   impression. So far so good, if God makes use of it by His Spirit.
   Judgments may be black horses upon which Christ rides triumphantly to
   the doors of men's minds. Some, no doubt, are sweetly subdued by
   judgments when these are qualified with Grace. The Grace of God working
   with their afflictions, they bow themselves beneath the chastening
   hand. And when they do this, it is good for them that they are
   afflicted. God has sent the black dog to fetch the wandering sheep into
   the fold and it runs to the shepherd through fear of the dog. Thus,
   judgments may do great good by humbling, softening and bringing down. O
   Lord, use them to this end among the afflicted ones around us!

   But still, let it be remembered that these things will not work good of
   themselves. I want you to remember this, because I have known people
   say, "Well, if I were afflicted I might be converted. If I lay sick I
   might be saved." Oh, do not think so! Sickness and sorrow of themselves
   are no helps to salvation. Pain and poverty are not Evangelists.
   Disease and despair are not Apostles. Look at the lost in Hell.
   Suffering has effected no good in them. He that was filthy here is
   filthy there. He that was unjust in this life is unjust in the life to
   come. There is nothing in pain and suffering that, by their own natural
   operation, will tend to purification.

   Place no hope in that direction. If there were a "purgatory" of years
   of pain, it would be only purgative in name, for suffering cannot
   cleanse from sin. Think of the many who are every day suffering as the
   result of their sinful conduct. And yet the more they suffer the more
   they sin. We know many such. You need not take your walks far abroad
   before you will find men plunged in poverty, whose poverty is traceable
   distinctly to their own fault. And in that fault they still continue
   and even grow worse and worse for all they suffer.

   So it is with men that lie dying. You must not suppose that their pain
   is any help to them towards repentance. Poor souls, their anguish
   drives good thoughts out of their minds. Deathbed repentances are hard
   to estimate--we must leave them with God. But it is a sorrowful fact
   that those which seemed to be deathbed repentances have seldom turned
   out to be worth anything when the men have recovered. In fact, I do not
   remember a case in which the person who recovered has been at all what
   he said he would be when he thought that he was on the borders of the
   grave. So you see, suffering is no help to repentance and it may be a
   hindrance.

   Now, what I have to say to you is this--oh, that God would lead you to
   repent now--before any of His judgments fall upon you! Why should we
   not repent at once? Surely we ought to repent of doing wrong when we
   perceive that we are wronging so good a God. He has not cut you
   down--He has not taken away your wife--is this a reason for being
   hard-hearted? It ought to be the other way. He has spared that
   fair-haired child of yours. He has not allowed your business to be
   ruined by your neglect. He has helped you although you have been
   hurting yourself. Well, then, turn to Him.

   Drawn by His love, turn to Him. Say in your heart, "I cannot offend any
   more. I cannot sin against so good, so kind a God as this." Permit me
   also to say to you how much nobler and sweeter a thing it is to be
   drawn than to be driven.

   How much better to come cheerfully and willingly, led by motives of
   love to God, than to be like the bullock that is forced to bear the
   yoke, or the "horse, or the mule, which have no understanding: whose
   mouth must be held in with bit and bridle." Must you be beaten to
   Christ? How much more honorable to turn to God in the cheerful bright
   days that are now yours. Oh, that I could persuade you! If there is any
   right principle in you, you will yield and glorify God by hearty
   repentance.

   And then, again--remember you can repent now so much more clearly than
   in the hour of sickness. God helping you, this is a very good hour for
   repenting. I find that when I am in great pain, I cannot work out a
   case, I say to people, "Oh, don't come to me with your questions.
   There, go and do whatever you like. I shall be sure to say the wrong
   thing-- my judgment is not clear--I am in too much pain." How will you
   acceptably repent when you can hardly keep from crying out with agony?
   How will you rightly repent when the head is aching, when the heart is
   palpitating, when you are gasping for breath, when the death-sweat
   beads your brow? Oh, that you would think of these things now, while
   your intellect is clear and your body is not racked and tortured! God
   help you to do so!

   And do you not see how much more likely it is to be genuine
   repentance--if it is rendered freely? You are not frightened now, and
   are more likely to be your honest self. You are not under terror now,
   and therefore you are not so likely to play the hypocrite. Tonight you
   have come into this place in good health. Happy and cheerful--and God
   has made everything bright about you. What can I better commend to you
   than immediately to seek the Lord? Does not wisdom, herself, speak and
   cry aloud to you now? Forsake sin and turn with purpose of heart to
   Jesus Christ the Savior, whose Spirit is even now working with you
   while these words are being spoken.

   Yield to the sacred pressure of the Spirit of God. That which now
   inclines you to relent is the good Spirit of love and mercy. Bow
   yourself before it, as the wheat ripened for the sickle bows before the
   wind. Give glory to God by yielding to the movements of His Spirit. Cry
   out, I pray, "Lord, I believe. Help You mine unbelief. I would quit my
   sin. Help me to quit it now for Jesus' sake and to give You glory."
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Trial of Your Faith

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, DECEMBER 2, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The trial of your faith." 1 Peter 1:7.

   IT is a great thing if any man can truthfully speak to you, my Brothers
   and Sisters, about "your faith," for all men have not faith and
   wherever faith is found, it is the token of Divine favor. True faith
   is, in every case, the operation of the Spirit of God. Its nature is
   purifying, elevating, heavenly. It is, of all things that can be
   cultivated in the human breast, one of the most precious. It is called,
   "like precious faith," and it is styled "the faith of God's elect."
   Wherever faith is found, it is the sure mark of eternal election, the
   sign of a blessed condition, the forecast of a heavenly destiny. It is
   the eye of the renewed soul, the hand of the regenerated mind, the
   mouth of the newborn spirit. It is the evidence of spiritual life--it
   is the mainspring of holiness--it is the foundation of delight--it is
   the prophecy of glory--it is the dawn of endless knowledge.

   If you have faith, you have infinitely more than he who has all the
   world and yet is destitute of faith. To him that believes it is said,
   "All things are yours." Faith is the assurance of sonship, the pledge
   of inheritance, the grasp of boundless possession, the perception of
   the invisible. Within your faith there lies Glory, even as the oak
   sleeps within the acorn. If you have faith, you need not ask for much
   more, save that your faith may grow exceedingly and that all the
   promises which are made to it may be known and grasped by you. Time
   would fail me to tell of the powers, the privileges, the possessions
   and the prospects of faith. He that has it is blessed. For he pleases
   God, he is justified before the throne of holiness, he has full access
   to the Throne of Grace and he has the preparation for reigning with
   Christ forever.

   So far everything is delightful. But then comes, in this word, which
   somewhat startles and, if we are cowardly, may also frighten--"The
   trial of your faith." Do you see the thorn which grows with this rose?
   You cannot gather the fragrant flower without its rough companion. You
   cannot possess the faith without experiencing the trial. Nor eat the
   lamb without the bitter herbs. These two things are put together--faith
   and trial. And it is of that trial of your faith that I am going to
   speak at this time, as God shall help me.

   It may be, my Brothers and Sisters, that words said at this good hour
   shall comfort you while you undergo the sorer trial of your faith. May
   the Holy Spirit, who nurtures faith and preserves and perfects it under
   its trial, help our thoughts at this hour!

   I. And, first, let me say of it, YOUR FAITH WILL BE SURELY TRIED. You
   may rest assured of that. A man may have faith and be for the present
   without trial. But no man ever had faith and was all his life without
   trial. That could not--must not be. For faith, in the very nature of
   it, implies a degree of trial. I believe the promise of God. So far my
   faith is tried in believing the promise, in waiting for the fulfillment
   of the promise, in holding on to an assurance of that promise while it
   is delayed and in continuing to expect the promise and to act upon it
   until it is in all points fulfilled to me.

   I do not see how that can be faith at all which is not tried by its own
   exercise. Take the very happiest and smoothest lives. There must, at
   any rate, be the trial of faith in taking the promise and pleading it
   before God in prayer and expecting the fulfillment of it. Be not
   mistaken, God never gave us faith to play with. It is a sword but it
   was not made for presentation on a gala day, nor to be worn on State
   occasions only, nor to be exhibited upon a parade ground. It is a sword
   that was meant to cut and wound and slay. And he that has it girt about
   him may expect, between here and Heaven, that he shall know what battle
   means.

   Faith is a sound sea-going vessel and was not meant to lie in dock and
   perish of dry rot. To whom God has given faith, it is as though one
   gave a lantern to his friend because he expected it to be dark on his
   way home. The very gift of faith is a hint to you that you will need
   it--that at certain points and places you will especially require it
   and that--at

   all points and in every place, you will really need it. You cannot live
   without faith--for again and again we are told-- "the just shall live
   by faith." Believing is our living and we, therefore, need it always.

   And if God gives you great faith, my dear Brethren, you must expect
   great trials. For, in proportion as your faith shall grow, you will
   have to do more and endure more. Little boats may keep close to shore,
   as becomes little boats. But if God makes you a great vessel and loads
   you with a rich freight, He means that you should know what great
   billows are and should feel their fury till you see "His wonders in the
   deep." That God, who has made nothing in vain, especially makes nothing
   in the spiritual kingdom in vain. And if He makes faith, it is with the
   design that it should be used to the utmost and exercised to the full.

   Expect trial, also, because trial is the very element of faith. Faith
   is a salamander that lives in the fire, a star which moves in a lofty
   sphere, a diamond which bores its way through the rock. Faith without
   trial is like a diamond uncut, the brilliance of which has never been
   seen. Untried faith is such little faith that some have thought it no
   faith at all. What a fish would be without water, or a bird without
   air, that would be faith without trial. If you have faith, you may
   surely expect that your faith will be tested--the great Keeper of the
   treasures admits no coin to His coffers without testing.

   It is so in the nature of faith and so in the order of its living--it
   thrives not, save in such weather as might seem to threaten its death.
   Indeed, it is the honor of faith to be tried. Shall any man say, "I
   have faith, but I have never had to believe under difficulties"? Who
   knows whether you have any faith? Shall a man say, "I have great faith
   in God but I have never had to use it in anything more than the
   ordinary affairs of life, where I could probably have done without it
   as well as with it"? Is this to the honor and praise of your faith? Do
   you think that such a faith as this will bring any great glory to God,
   or bring to you any great reward? If so, you are mightily mistaken.

   He that has tested God and whom God has tested, is the man that shall
   have it said of him, "Well done, you good and faithful servant." Had
   Abraham stopped in Ur of the Chaldees with his friends and rested there
   and enjoyed himself, where had been his faith? He had God's command to
   leave his country to go to a land which he had never seen, to sojourn
   there with God as a stranger, dwelling in tents. And in his obedience
   to that call his faith began to be illustrious. Where had been the
   glory of his faith, if it had not been called to brave and self-denying
   deeds? Would he ever have risen to that supreme height, to be "the
   Father of the faithful," if he had not grown old and his body dead and
   yet he had believed that God would give him seed of his aged wife
   Sarah, according to the promise? It was blessed faith that made him
   feel that nothing was impossible to God. If Isaac had been born to him
   in the days of his strength, where had been his faith?

   And when it came to that severer test, "Take now your son, your only
   son Isaac, whom you love and offer him for a burnt offering upon one of
   the mountains which I will tell you of." When he rose up early and
   gathered the wood and took his son and went three days' journey,
   setting his face like a flint to obey the Command of God--when at last
   he drew the knife, in faithful obedience to the Divine Command--then
   was his faith confessed, commended and crowned. Then the Lord said,
   "Now I know." As if, even to God, the best evidence of Abraham's faith
   had then been displayed-- when he staggered not at the promise through
   unbelief, reckoning that God could restore Isaac from the dead if need
   be--but that it was his to obey the supreme Command and trust all
   consequences with God, who could not lie.

   Herein his faith won great renown and he became "the Father of the
   faithful," because he was the most tried of Believers and yet surpassed
   them all in childlike belief in his God. If God, then, has given to
   anyone of us a faith which is honorable and precious it has full surely
   been submitted to its own due measure of trial. And if it is to be
   still more precious, it has yet more trials to endure.

   We remember, also, two reasons for the trial of faith. The trial of
   your faith is sent to prove its sincerity. If it will not stand trial,
   what is the good of it? That gold which dissolves in the furnace and
   disappears amid the flame is not the gold which shall be current with
   the merchant. And that faith of yours, which is no sooner tried than
   straightway it evaporates, are you not well rid of it? Of what use
   would it be to you in the hour of death and in the Day of Judgment? No.
   You can not be sure that your faith is true faith till it is tried
   faith. You can not be certain that it is worth having till it has been
   fitly tested and brought to the touchstone of trial.

   It must also be tested to prove its strength. We sometimes fancy that
   we have strong faith when, indeed, our faith is very weak. And how are
   we to know whether it is weak or strong till it is tried? A man that
   should lie in bed week after week and perhaps get the idle whim into
   his head that he was very strong would be pretty certain to be
   mistaken. It is only when he sets about work requiring muscular
   strength that he will discover how strong or how weak he is. God would
   not have us form a wrong estimate of ourselves. He loves not that we
   should say that we are rich and increased in goods and have need of
   nothing

   when we are the reverse. And therefore He sends to us the trial of our
   faith that we may understand how strong or how weak it is.

   And besides that, dear Friends, the trial of our faith is necessary to
   remove its dross. There are many accretions of sordid matter about our
   purest graces. We are apt, ourselves, to add to the bulk of our graces
   without adding to the real value of them. We mistake quantity for
   quality. And a great deal of what we think we have of Christian
   experience and Christian knowledge and Christian zeal and Christian
   patience is only the supposition that we have these graces and not the
   real possession of them.

   So the fire grows fiercer and the mass grows smaller than it was
   before. Is there any loss therein? I think not. The gold loses nothing
   by the removal of its dross and our faith loses nothing by the
   dissipation of its apparent force. Faith may apparently lose, but it
   actually gains. It may seem to be diminished, but it is not truly
   diminished. All is there that was worth having. "Why, a week ago," says
   one, "I used to sing and think that I had the full assurance of faith.
   And now I can scarcely tell whether I am one of God's people or not."
   Now you know how much faith you really possess.

   You can now tell how much was solid and how much was sham. For had that
   which has failed you been real faith, it would not have been consumed
   by any trial through which it has passed. You have lost the froth from
   the top of the cup but all that was really worth having is still there.
   It must be so--for as faith is not born of earthly things--neither can
   earthly things kill it, nor even take from it one true particle.

   Understand, then, dear Friends, that for many necessary purposes there
   is a needs be for trial. Peter says here, "If need be" that there
   should be a trial of your faith. You will get that trial, because God,
   in His wisdom, will give faith what faith needs. Do not be anxious to
   enter into trial. Do not fret if temptation does not come just now. You
   will have it soon enough. Between the day of our new birth and the day
   of our entering into our inheritance, we shall have quite sufficient
   trials of our faith. We need not be uneasy if for a while we are at
   ease, for there are months enough left to the year to give winter its
   full measure of frosts and storms.

   II. Now, secondly, YOUR FAITH WILL BE TRIED IN VARIOUS WAYS. The trial
   of our faith does not come to all persons in the same way. There are
   some whose faith is tried each day in their communion with God. They
   pray this prayer-- "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." That prayer is heard constantly. The visitations
   of the Lord are granted to them and as the Lord comes, He tries them.
   For, believe me, there is no surer trial of our souls than the drawing
   near of God to our souls.

   Apart from any outward affliction, that searching thought, that inward
   feeling which is somewhat more than thought, that holy, secret
   trembling which comes upon our spirit when God draws near, is God's
   constant trial of our graces. If you walk away from God and live
   without fellowship with Him, you may retain in your heart much
   falsehood and fancy that you are full of spiritual gifts and graces.
   But if you draw near to God and walk with Him, you will not be able to
   retain a false opinion of yourself. Remember what the Lord is. Our God
   is a consuming fire.

   I have often reminded you of the way in which people try to improve
   upon the Scripture when they say, "God out of Christ is a consuming
   fire." The Bible does not so speak. It says, "For our God is a
   consuming fire." That is, God in Christ, who is our God, is a consuming
   fire. And when His people live in Him, the very Presence of God
   consumes in them their love of sin and all their pretentious graces and
   fictitious attainments so that the false disappears and only the true
   survives. The presence of perfect Holiness is killing to empty
   boastings and hollow pretences. You need not ask for any of those
   various forms of trial which God sends in the order of Providence--you
   may rest quite satisfied with His Presence, as the most effectual
   purgation. For "His fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His
   floor."

   Whenever Jesus abides with us, "He shall sit as a refiner." Whoever He
   may leave alone in their defilement, "He will purify the sons of Levi."
   It is the Lord Himself that will be as a refiner's fire and like
   fullers' soap. Who may abide the day of His coming? Who that loves
   holiness would wish to escape it? Our prayer should be--"Refining fire
   go through my soul." Yes, let the devouring flame go through me and
   through me yet again, till this earthly grossness shall begin to
   disappear. As Moses soon put his shoes off from his feet when he beheld
   God at the burning bush, so shall we put off the superfluities of our
   supposed spiritual experience and come to the real, naked foot of the
   Truth of God, if we are permitted to stand before God in accepted
   sincerity. Thus you see there is a constant trial of our faith, even in
   that which is its greatest joy and glory, namely its power to make us
   see the Lord.

   But the Lord uses other methods with His servants. I believe that He
   frequently tries us by the blessings which He sends us. This is a fact
   which is too much overlooked. When a man is permitted to grow rich,
   what a trial of faith is hidden away in that condition! It is one of
   the severest of providential tests! Where I have known one man fail
   through poverty, I have known fifty

   men fail through riches. When our friends get on in the world and have
   a long stretch of prosperity, they should invite their Brethren to
   offer special prayer for them, that they may be preserved--for the
   thick clay is heavy stuff to walk upon and when the feet slip into it,
   and it adheres to you, it makes traveling to Heaven a very difficult
   thing.

   When we do not cling to wealth, it will not harm us. But there is a
   deal of stickiness in money. You that have no riches may yet find a
   test in your daily mercies--your domestic comfort, that loving wife,
   those dear children--all these may tempt you to walk by sight instead
   of by faith. Yes, and continued health, the absence of all depression
   of spirit and the long abiding of friends and relatives may all make
   you self-content and keep you away from your God.

   It is a great trial of faith to have much for sight to rest upon. To be
   in the dark--altogether in the dark--is a grand thing for faith. For
   then you are sure that what you see is not seen of the flesh but is in
   very deed a vision of spiritual faith. To be under a cloud is a trial,
   truly--but not one-half so much a trial as it is to have continually
   the light of this world. We are so apt to mistake the light of carnal
   comfort for the light of God, that it is well to see how we fare
   without it.

   One form of this trial is praise. You know how Solomon puts it--"As the
   fining-pot for silver and the furnace for gold, so is a man to his
   praise." A Christian minister may go on preaching very earnestly and
   God will help him, though everybody opposes him. But when the world
   comes and pats him on the back and pride whispers, "You are a fine
   fellow. You are a great man!" Then comes the test of the man. How few
   there are that can endure the warm atmosphere of congratulation! It is
   dangerously relaxing to the spirit. Yes, nobody can keep himself right
   under it, unless the almighty Grace of God shall sustain his

   faith.

   When the soft winds blow they bring with them the temptation, "Now
   preach the doctrines that tickle men's ears!" "Go in to be scientific
   and learned and clever! Get the approbation of the great ones of the
   world and the leaders of advanced thought in the Church." And unless
   you say, "Get you behind me, Satan: for you savor not the things that
   are of God," such a trial of faith may be too much for you. "Oh," says
   one, "that will not fall to my lot." No, no. You will not be a popular
   preacher, perhaps. But then, you may be very acceptable in the company
   wherein you move and worldly people may flatter you to the verge of
   ruin.

   You sing very nicely, do you not? Well, they may want you to sing them
   a song that is not one of the songs of Zion. Because of your natural
   attainments and the amiability of your temper, you may become a great
   favorite with ungodly people. And that is an intense trial to the faith
   of a child of God. The friendship of the world is as much enmity with
   God as it used to be in Apostolic times. It is a bad sign when a
   courtier is in great favor with the king's enemies. Stand up and stand
   out as the servant of God and in whatever sphere you move, make it your
   one and only business to serve your God, whether you offend or please.
   Happy shall you be if you survive the trial of your faith which this
   will involve!

   Another trial of faith is exceedingly common and perilous nowadays and
   that is heretical doctrine and false teaching. There are some who are
   carried away with this wind of doctrine and others carried away with
   the other--and blessed is he who is not offended in Christ. For,
   naturally, the Cross of Christ is offensive to the minds of men. There
   are temptations that rise out of the Gospel itself, yes, out of its
   very depth and breadth. There is a trial of faith in reading the
   Scriptures. You come across a doctrine which you cannot understand and
   because you cannot understand it, you are tempted not to receive it.
   Or, when a Truth which you have received appears to be hard and speaks
   to you in an unlovely fashion, so that your natural feelings are
   aroused against it--this is a trial of your faith.

   Remember how our Lord Jesus lost quite a company of disciples on a
   certain occasion. He had taught a doctrine about eating His flesh and
   drinking His blood. And from that hour many went back and walked no
   more with Him, till the Savior had to say, even to the twelve, "Will
   you also go away?" Truth is not always welcome to our ignorance--or to
   our preju-dice--and herein is a trial of faith. Will we believe
   ourselves or our God? Do we want to believe God's Truth, or do we wish
   to have the Lord's message flavored to our taste? Do we expect the
   preacher to play our chosen tunes and speak our opinions?

   Beloved, it does us good to be well rasped sometimes. To have a word
   come to us, not as a sweet wine but as a purging medicine that shall
   search us through and through and make us enquire before God, "Are we
   true men, or are we aliens?" If we run in the same line with God's
   Truth, we are true. But when we run counter to the Truth of God, we are
   ourselves untrue. It is not the Book that is to be altered--our hearts
   need altering. Happy is that man whose faith can endure the trial of
   the Book. "Is not the Word of the Lord like a fire or a hammer?" This
   is so even to the Lord's own people.

   But the trial of our faith usually comes in the form of affliction. Our
   jealous Lover uses tests that it may be seen whether he has our heart.
   The trial of your faith comes thus--You say, "Lord Jesus, I love you.
   You are my best Beloved." "Well," says the heavenly Lover, "if it is
   so, then the child that nestles in your bosom will sicken and die. What
   will you say then?" If

   you are indeed true in what you have stated concerning your supreme
   love to Jesus, you will give up your darling at His call and say, "The
   Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the
   Lord."

   The Lord is very jealous of our love. I do not mean that He is so
   towards all of you--I speak of His own people. The more He loves us,
   the more He tests us. Whatever it may be with us poor creatures, it is
   always so with Jesus, that His love goes with His jealousy and His
   jealousy with His love. Sometimes He says, "Good woman, I shall take
   away your husband, on whom you lean, that you may lean the more on Me."
   I remember Mr. Rutherford, writing to a lady who had lost five children
   and her husband, said to her, "Oh, how Christ must love you! He would
   take every bit of your heart to Himself. He would not permit you to
   reserve any of your soul for any earthly thing." Can we stand that
   test? Can we let all go for His sake? Do you answer that you can? Time
   will show.

   My Lord sometimes comes to me in this fashion. He says, "I have made
   you to trust Me these many years. I have supplied the wants of your
   work by liberal friends. I am about to remove a generous helper." I go
   to the grave of my friend and the suggestion dogs me, "Who is to
   provide for the Orphanage and the College, after other dear Friends are
   buried? Can you trust God then?" Blessed be the name of the Lord, this
   fiery trial has never even left the smell of fire upon me. I know whom
   I have believed.

   Then a dear Brother, our best worker, our heartiest helper, comes to me
   and says, "Goodbye, dear Pastor. Perhaps I may never see you again on
   earth." He is very ill and about to lie under the surgeon's knife and
   the fear is that he may not rally. I go home and say to myself, "What
   shall I do without this useful man?" And then I have to say, "Do? Do
   what I have done before--trust in the living God." If you once get to
   walk the walk of faith, the Lord will often try you in this way, to see
   whether you come up to your own confession--whether you really trust in
   the Lord and have your expectation from Him alone. Can you truly say--

   "Yes, should You take them all away, Yet would I not repine"?

   If every earthly prop were knocked away, could you stand by the lone
   power of your foundation? God may not send you this or that trial but
   He will send you a sufficient amount of trials to let you see whether
   your faith is truth or talk, whether you have truly entered the
   spiritual world, or have only dreamed of doing so. Believe me, there is
   a great difference between a diamond and a paste gem. So, you see, the
   trials of faith are very varied.

   III. In the third place, YOUR FAITH WILL BE TRIED INDIVIDUALLY. The
   text says, the trial of your faith. O dear Friend, it is an interesting
   subject, is it not, the trial of faith? It is not quite so pleasant to
   study alone the trial of your faith. It is stern work when it comes to
   be your trial and the trial of your faith. You have not gone much into
   that particular department, perhaps. Well, I say again, do not wish to
   do so. Do not ask for trials. Children must not ask to be whipped, nor
   saints pray to be tested. There is a little book which you will have to
   eat and it will be bitter in your mouth, but sweet in your
   stomach--that book is the trial of your faith.

   The Lord Jesus Christ has been glorified by the trial of His people's
   faith. He has to be glorified by the trial of your faith. You are very
   obscure, perhaps, dear Brother. You have but few talents, my dear
   Sister. But, nevertheless, there is a particular shape and form of
   trial that will have to be exercised upon you rather than upon anyone
   else. "Oh," say you, "I know it, Sir. I know it." Well, then, if you
   know it, do not complain of it. Because when you have your own trial
   and the trial of your own faith, you are only treated like the rest of
   the family. What son is there whom the father chastens not?

   You are only treated like the Head of the family. You are only treated
   in the way which the great Father of the family knows is necessary for
   us all. God had one Son without sin but He never had a son without
   trial and He never will have until He has taken us all Home out of this
   world. Why should we expect that God should deal better with us than He
   does with the rest of His chosen? Indeed, it would not be better, after
   all, because these trials are the means of working out our lasting
   good. But if it were not so, who am I, and who are you, that God should
   pamper us?

   Would we have Him put us in a glass case and shield us from the trials
   which are common to all the chosen seed? I ask no such portion. Let me
   fare as the saints fare. I only wish to have their bread and their
   water and love their Father and follow their Guide and find their home.
   We will take our meals with them, whatever God puts upon the table for
   them, will we not? The trial of our faith will be all our own and yet
   it will be in fellowship with all the family of grace.

   IV. YOUR FAITH WILL BE TRIED SEARCHINGLY. It will be no child's play to
   come under the Divine tests. Our faith is not merely jingled on the
   counter like the shilling which the tradesman suspects but it is tried
   with fire. For so it is written, "I have chosen you in the furnace of
   affliction." The blows of the trial of tribulation are not given in
   sport but in awful earnest, as some of us know who have been chastened
   sorely, almost unto death. The Lord tries the very life of our faith.

   Not its beauty and its strength alone but its very existence. The iron
   enters into the soul. The sharp medicine searches the inmost parts of
   the belly. The man's real self is made to endure the trial. It is easy
   to talk of being tried but it is by no means so simple a matter to
   endure the ordeal.

   V. Let me yet further observe, that YOUR FAITH WILL BE TRIED FOR AN
   ABUNDANTLY USEFUL PURPOSE.

   The trial of your faith will increase, develop, deepen and strengthen
   it. "Oh," you have said, "I wish I had more faith." Your prayer will be
   heard through your having more trial.

   Often in our prayers we have sought for a stronger faith to look within
   the veil. The way to stronger faith usually lies along the rough
   pathway of sorrow. Only as faith is contested, will faith be confirmed.
   I do not know whether my experience is that of all God's people. But I
   am afraid that all the Divine Grace that I have got out of my
   comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a
   penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows and pains and
   griefs, is altogether incalculable. What do I not owe to the hammer and
   the anvil, the fire and the file? What do I not owe to the crucible and
   the furnace, the bellows that have blown up the coals and the hand
   which has thrust me into the heat?

   Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best
   book in a minister's library. We may wisely rejoice in tribulation
   because it works patience, and patience, experience, and experience,
   hope. And by that way we are exceedingly enriched and our faith grows
   strong.

   The trial of our faith is useful, not only because it strengthens it
   but because it leads to a discovery of our faith to ourselves. I notice
   an old Puritan using this illustration. He says you shall go into a
   wood when you please but if you are very quiet, you will not know
   whether there is a partridge, or a pheasant, or a rabbit in it. But
   when you begin to move about, or make a noise, you very soon see the
   living creatures. They rise or they run. So, when affliction comes into
   the soul and makes a disturbance and breaks our peace, up rise our
   graces. Faith comes out of its hiding and love leaps from its secret
   place.

   I remember Mr. William Jay saying that birds' nests are hard to find in
   summertime but anyone could find a bird's nest in winter. When all the
   leaves are off the trees the nests are visible to all. Often in the
   days of our prosperity, we fail to find our faith. But when our
   adversity comes, the winter of our trial bares the boughs and we see
   our faith at once. We are sure that we believe now, for we feel the
   effect of faith upon our character. "Before I was afflicted I went
   astray," said David, "but now have I kept Your Word." He found that his
   faith was really there by his keeping God's Word in the time of his
   affliction. It is a great mercy, then, to have your faith tried, that
   you may be sure beyond all manner of question that you are a true
   Believer.

   Besides, when faith is tried it brings God glory. Oh, how it honors God
   when a man can say with a smiling face in prospect of death, "Good-bye,
   dear Sir, I may never see you here again but we shall meet above!" We
   who are in health envy the Brother who has such joy amid sharp pain. I
   went the other day to see a dear Brother who has since then gone above.
   He was swollen with dropsy and was close to the brink of the grave. But
   to hear the song of assurance and the utterances of his joy was most
   sweet and cheering. It made me feel how good God is to His servants. He
   never leaves nor forsakes them when they come to their most painful
   times.

   This trial of our faith does good to our fellow Christians. They see
   how we are supported and they learn to bear their troubles bravely. I
   do not know anything that is better for making us brave than to see
   others believe in Christ and bear up manfully. To see that blind saint
   so happy makes us ashamed to be sad. To see content in an inmate of the
   work-house compels us to be thankful. Sufferers are our tutors. They
   educate us for the skies. When men of God can suffer--when they can
   bear poverty, bereavement or sickness and still rejoice in God--we
   learn the way to live the higher and more Christ-like life.

   When Patrick Hamilton had been burned in Scotland, one said to his
   persecutors, "If you are going to burn any more, you had better do it
   in a cellar, for the smoke of Hamilton's burning has opened the eyes of
   hundreds." It was always so. Suffering saints are living seed. Oh, that
   God might help us to such faith that when we come to suffer in life, or
   to expire in death, we may so glorify God that others may believe in
   Him! May we preach sermons by our faith which shall be better than
   sermons in words.

   My time has gone and I have much to say to you. I wanted to say to you
   about the trial of your faith, dear Friends, that SOME ARE TRIED VERY
   SPECIALLY. Some endure many more tests than others and that is because
   God has a great favor to them. Many men God does not love well enough
   to whip them. They are the devil's children and the heavenly Father
   does not trouble them. They are none of His and so He lets them have a
   happy life and perhaps an easy death--"there are no bands in their
   death, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other
   men, neither are they plagued like other men."

   But they are to be pitied and not envied. Woe unto you that laugh now,
   for you shall weep! Woe unto you who have your portion in this life for
   it shall go ill with you in the world to come! God's children are often
   much chastened because they are

   much loved. "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." Men take most
   trouble with that which is most precious. A common pebble will be let
   alone but a diamond must be fretted on the wheel till its brilliance is
   displayed.

   Some persons are also much tried in their faith because they are very
   fit for it. God has fitted the back for a heavy burden and the burden
   will be sent. He has constituted them on purpose that they should be
   helpful in filling up "that which is behind of the afflictions of
   Christ, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Men build strong
   columns because they are meant to carry great weights. So God makes
   great Christians on purpose that they should bear great afflictions for
   His Glory.

   He does this also because He would have some men do Him a special
   service. What an honor it is to do the Lord a special service! When
   some man in our army behaves himself very grandly and wins a battle,
   what will her Majesty do? Why, she will send for him next time a war
   arises. If any of you are brave in bearing affliction, you shall have
   the honor of enduring more affliction. Does not every soldier court the
   opportunity of service? He that looks over his soldiers says of a
   certain one, "I shall not send him--he is feeble and faint-hearted.
   Yonder veteran is the man for me."

   Do not think that you would be honored by being allowed to ride to
   Heaven on a feather bed. True honor lies in being permitted to bear and
   suffer side by side with Him of the bloody sweat and of the five open
   wounds. This is the reward of the saints--that they should on earth be
   decorated with--

   "Many a sorrow, many a tear." They shall walk with their Lord in white,
   for they are worthy.

   Yes, dear Friends, the Lord often sends us greater trials than others
   because He means to qualify us for greater enjoyments. If you want to
   make a pool capable of holding more water, you dig it out, do you not?
   And many a man has been dug and enlarged by affliction. The
   enlargements of trial enable us to hold more Divine Grace and more
   glory. The more a gracious man suffers, the more he becomes capable of
   entering into fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and so into
   fellowship with Christ in His Glory by-and-by.

   Come, let us be comforted as to the trial of our faith. There is no
   hurt in it. It is all for good. The trial of our faith is entirely in
   the hands of God. Nobody can try us without God's permission. He will
   try us just as much as we ought to be tried and no more. While He tries
   us with one hand He will sustain us with the other. If He gives us
   bitters, He will give us sweets in full proportion. A dear Sister said
   to me this week, "When I used to be in poverty and in trouble, the Word
   of God was much more sweet to me than it is now that I am prospered."

   I do not wonder at it. I have made a similar remark when I have been
   long without an illness. Some of us have cried, "Take me back to my
   sickness again. Take me back to slander and rebuke again." A Scotch
   saint said that when they met in the moss, or by the hillside, and were
   harried by Claverhouse and his dragoons, Christ was present at the
   sacraments in the heather much more than He ever was afterwards when
   they got into their Church and sat down quietly. Our worst days are
   often our best days and in the dark we see stars that we never saw in
   the light. So we will not care a pin what it is that may befall us
   here, so long as God is with us and our faith in Him is genuine.

   Christian people, I am not going to sympathize with you but
   congratulate you upon your troubles, for the Cross of Christ is
   precious. But you that do not love my Lord and Master, if you roll in
   riches, if your eyes stand out with fatness, I mourn over you. Bullocks
   fattened for the slaughter, your joys are but the prelude to your woes.
   Oh, that God would have mercy upon you and that you would have mercy
   upon yourselves and flee at once to Jesus and put your trust in Him!
   Faith in the work, offices and Person of the Lord Jesus is the way of
   salvation. May He help you to run in it at this hour, for His name's
   sake! Amen.

   LETTER FROM MR. SPURGEON.

   DEAR FRIENDS--In answer to a general desire that I should let my
   beloved Readers know of my condition, I will write a line or two each
   week. Owing to extreme weakness it has taken me the whole week to reach
   my sunny retreat but at each stage I have found myself a little better
   and I can now walk a little--a very little. Yet for this I am deeply
   grateful to Him "who restores our life." I hope, by rest in this genial
   climate, to recover tone, strength and freshness of mind and then I
   trust all will be spent, in future days, for God's glory.

   Through the blessing of God upon the labors of Messrs. Fullerton and
   Smith a cheering work is going on at the Tabernacle. I beg my readers
   to pray that the Lord may be glorified among the people in the absence
   of the usual worker and that the printed sermons may speak with power
   when the preacher himself is silent. Yours, dear Friends, in Christ
   Jesus, C. H. Spurgeon.

   Mentone, Nov. 24, 1888.
     __________________________________________________________________

Idols Found Wanting, But Jehovah Found Faithful

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, DECEMBER 9, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, DELIVERED ON THURSDAY
   EVENING, SEPT. 27, 1888.

   "Belbows down, Nebo stoops, theiridols were upon the beasts and upon
   the cattle:your carriages were heavyloaded. They are a burden to the
   weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together. They could not deliver
   the burden but themselves are gone into captivity. Hearken unto Me, O
   house of Jacob and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are
   borne by Me from the belly, which are carried from the womb. And even
   to your old age I am He. And even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I
   have made and I will bear. Even I will carry and will deliver you."
   Isaiah 46:1-4.

   THE confidence of Babylon is buried among her heaps of rubbish for her
   gods have fallen from their thrones. "Bel bows down, Nebo stoops." As
   for us, Beloved, our trust is in the living God who lives to bear and
   carry His chosen, even in Jehovah, the only true Lord. We begin our
   spiritual life by faith in Him, for till faith comes we have no power
   to become the sons of God. Our spiritual life will have to be continued
   in the same way of trust in the Lord, "for the just shall live by
   faith."

   We live by faith upon the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for
   us. We rejoice that we shall never have to change our confidence, for
   our God will never be carried into captivity, nor torn from His Throne.
   Our faith is built upon a rock that can never be moved. Nothing in the
   past has shaken the foundation of our faith. Nothing in the present can
   move it. Nothing in the future will undermine it. Whatever may occur in
   the ages to come, there will always be good reason for believing in
   Jehovah and His faithful Word.

   The great Truths which He has revealed will never be disproved. The
   great promises He has made will never be retracted. The great purposes
   He has devised will never be abandoned. So long as we live, so long
   shall we have a refuge, a hope, a confidence, that can never be
   removed--

   "His sovereign mercy knows no end, His faithfulness shall still endure;
   And those who on His Word depend Shall find His Word forever sure."

   That part of our text which says, "Even to your old age I am He. And
   even to hoar hairs will I carry you," may seem to be a promise made to
   old age. So, indeed, it is. Many a hoary saint has made a soft pillow
   of this precious promise and has rested upon it with delight in the
   days of his decay. But yet the text, if it is rightly read, is a
   promise to the people of God at any and every period between their
   birth and their death. While the Lord does say that He will carry us to
   hoar hairs, yet He begins by telling us that He has carried us from the
   womb and that He will carry us still. All tenses meet in these
   verses--"Hearken, O house of Jacob, which are borne by Me; which are
   carried from the womb. Even to your old age I am He. I have made and I
   will bear. Even I will carry and will deliver you."

   The Lord is good to us in all tenses and in all ways. We shall not,
   alone, consider in our discourse the mercy of God to those who are near
   the end of their pilgrimage but that same mercy to His people
   throughout their wilderness journey--from the day when they first ate
   of the Paschal Lamb and left Egypt--even to that hour when the Jordan
   was dried up and they took possession of the land which flows with milk
   and honey. Our experimental dealings with God make us

   know that He is our gracious Helper from the first to the last. When we
   begin with the Alpha of our life's spelling, we find Him good. And when
   we come to the Omega and faintly pronounce the last letter of life, we
   know still better how gracious He is. Bel and Nebo disappoint their
   votaries but Jehovah is our God forever and ever and He will be our
   guide even unto death.

   I. I shall begin my sermon by calling your attention, first, to the
   background, which is placed behind the brilliant promise which is
   herein given to the Lord's people.

   Observe that FALSE CONFIDENCES PASS AWAY. The Lord has made a full end
   of false gods and their worship. "Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their
   idols were upon the beasts and upon the cattle: your carriages were
   heavy loaded: they are a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they
   bow down together. They could not deliver the burden but themselves are
   gone into captivity." Bel and Nebo were two great gods of Babylon. You
   get the name of Bel in the name of king Belshazzar. And the name of
   Nebo in the name of Nebuchadnezzar.

   They were esteemed to be such great deities that their kings were named
   after them and professed to be their servants. Bel and Nebo stood
   supreme in Babylon. The Babylonian empire which served these deities
   was so strong as to be invincible--it carried its cruel sword into all
   nations and piled up the dead bodies of men in heaps--it was,
   therefore, dreaded in every part of the world. And not without cause.
   What kingdom or empire could stand against it? If you had gone to
   Babylon and seen its mighty walls, its lofty towers, its engines of
   war, its wonders of art, its multitudes of heroes, you would have
   thought that the worship of Bel would endure forever and that the image
   of Nebo would stand there to be adored of mortals as long as the world
   existed.

   But these idols--always a mere deceit--proved themselves powerless in
   the day of trial. Cyrus came, the Euphrates was dried up, the empire of
   Babylon ended and the gods were discredited for all ages. In the ruin
   of Babylon the gods became a prey. The golden images, themselves, were
   too precious to be left standing in Babylon and too little venerated to
   be treated with respect. They were taken off to Persia as spoil and
   became a burden to the weary beasts. Huge images of less costly
   material were dragged down with ropes, dashed in pieces, or buried
   beneath heaps of ruins.

   Ah me, what a melancholy fate for things which were called gods, and
   received the reverence of great nations! Even in these latter days, we
   have had an illustration of "Bel bows down and Nebo stoops," when Mr.
   Layard went to the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh and dragged out those
   huge bulls, which stand today in the British Museum--objects of our
   curiosity but certainly not of our worship. "Bel bows down, Nebo
   stoops." The false gods that reigned supreme over so many myriads of
   men were made contemptible. The Prophet cries, "They stoop, they bow
   down together, they could not deliver the burden but themselves have
   gone into captivity."

   Not only concerning Bel and Nebo but concerning many a set of heathen
   deities, a note of exultant derision may be taken up. "The idols He
   shall utterly abolish." As potters' vessels are broken, so are the gods
   of the heathen ground into dust and treated as nothing. The like thing
   has happened unto false systems of teaching. They have risen and they
   have dominated over the minds of men--but, like Bel and Nebo--they have
   tottered and fallen. They seemed to be established beyond all hope of
   confutation and overthrow, and yet they have passed away!

   If you are at all readers of the history of religious thought, you will
   know that systems of philosophy and philosophical religions have come
   up and have been generally accepted as indisputable and have done
   serious injury to true religion for a time. And yet they have vanished
   like the mirage of the desert. When at their best, they have
   withered--the grass has flowered, the flower has come to its full and
   has fallen beneath the scythe. The gourds have come up in a night and
   have perished in a night. Even those of us who are not aged, yet
   remember two or three different forms of philosophical Divinity which
   preceded this new dreaming, which is just now so loudly cried up.

   Many modern thoughts have come up and have gone down again. Bel has
   bowed down and Nebo has stooped. The boastful "thinkers" carried up
   their elaborate systems into their places with great labor and then
   they carried them away again and buried them with equal labor. What
   philosophers prove one year, philosophers disprove another year. We,
   old-fashioned Christians, have remained unchanged in our fidelity to
   the revealed Truth of God and we have seen Bel go up and Bel go down,
   and Nebo go up and Nebo go down. Yes, we have seen rubbish venerated as
   a precious thing and before long the precious thing carted away as so
   much lumber.

   Like a child's merry-go-round at a fair, heresy is a revolution of the
   old things over and over again. Yet people think it new. The present
   idols of the mind are just as worthless as those of former times. The
   god of modern thought is a mon-

   key. If those who believed in evolution said their prayers rightly,
   they would begin them with, "Our Father, which are up a tree." Did they
   not all come from a monkey, according to their own statement? They came
   by "development," from the basest of material and they do not belie
   their original. If you are not well acquainted with this new Gospel, I
   would not advise you to be acquainted with it. It is a sheer clear
   waste of time to know anything about it at all.

   The moderns are able to believe anything except their Bibles. They
   credulously receive any statement, so long as it is not in the
   Scriptures. But if it is founded on Scripture, they are, of course,
   prepared to doubt and quibble straight away. The credulity of the new
   theologians is as amazing as their skepticism. But we shall see the
   monkey-god go down yet and evolution will be ridiculed as it deserves
   to be. The philosophy of the present, whose aim is to get rid of God,
   has nothing to support it in fact or in nature. It will fly as chaff
   before the wind and in fifty years nobody will own that he ever thought
   of believing it.

   The new religion will be regarded as a craze, an emanation from bedlam.
   And every man will be ashamed to think that he stopped to hear or read
   anything about it. So idiotic is it from beginning to end that it will
   become a standing jest for ages to come, a proverb and a byword to
   mankind. Bel bows down, Nebo stoops already. And, as the Lord Jehovah
   lives, the whole of this thing, which has been so cunningly and
   carefully devised to dethrone Him and cast down His Gospel, shall be
   had in derision. These new gods, newly come up, shall not deliver
   themselves, or their worshippers any more than did the idols of
   Babylon.

   But now, Beloved, it will be just the same with us if we trust in false
   confidences of any sort--for instance, our experiences, or our
   attainments, or our services, or our orthodox belief, or anything else.
   If we set up any confidences apart from our God, we shall soon see the
   end of them. Imagine that any Christian here should be so foolish as to
   rely upon his own works. God forbid we should! What an airy nothing our
   confidence would be! Before long that Bel would bow down and that Nebo
   would stoop, for the hope would be too flimsy to bear the least weight.

   Or, if we should begin to rely upon our own enjoyments--if frames and
   feelings should become our confidence--all would come down and our
   boast would become our burden, our glory our shame. "Bel bows down,
   Nebo stoops"-- sooner or later this will be the end of all false
   trusts. Placing confidence in our inward feelings is like building upon
   a bog, or leaning upon a rush, or feeding upon wind. The idols of our
   feeling are like the mud gods of India--they are utterly worthless and
   they turn to mere clay almost as soon as they are formed. If in our
   daily life we look to an arm of flesh, or practice self-reliance
   instead of God-reliance, or if we trust to friends instead of leaning
   upon the one great Invisible, we shall yet learn with tears the terror
   of that sentence, "Cursed is he that trusts in man, and makes flesh his
   arm."

   "Bel bows down, Nebo stoops"--anything that you make your confidence,
   instead of God, will fail to bear your burden and will itself become a
   burden to you. Instead of its carrying you, you will have to carry it.
   Instead of its taking your load, it will increase your load and become
   at last an intolerable curse. "Little children, keep yourselves from

   idols."

   Beloved in the Lord, think not that this is an unnecessary warning,
   even for you, for you may as easily set up an idol in your heart as
   other men may set up a false system of philosophy, or an idol god.
   Guard against setting up a rival trust to rob the Lord of even a small
   part of your confidence. "My Soul, wait you only upon God. For my
   expectation is from Him." None but Jesus is the ground of
   salvation--none but the Eternal God is the disposer of Providence.
   Trust wholly in Him who loves to be trusted. Let us lean upon our God
   with all our weight and lean nowhere else.

   If we put our confidence elsewhere, our idolatry will come home to us
   and we shall hear the voice of disappointment, wailing bitterly, "Bel
   bows down, Nebo stoops: your carriages were heavy loaded. They are a
   burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together."

   II. Let that stand as the black cloud on which God will paint his
   bright rainbow, while I notice in the second place, that OUR GOD ABIDES
   ALWAYS THE SAME. "Even to your old age I am He." He is always the same
   in Himself and always the same to His people. If you are, indeed, a
   Believer in the Lord and resting in Christ Jesus, He says to you at
   this time with regard to all the future unknown and, perhaps greatly
   dreaded, "Be not afraid, for I am the Lord your God. Even to your old
   age I am He."

   Dear Friends, we rightly expect trials between here and Heaven. And the
   ordinary wear and tear of life, even if life should not be clouded by
   an extreme trial, will gradually wear us out. We shall come, by-and-by,
   if life is spared, to that

   bottom of the hill where the eye grows dim and the ear is heavy and the
   arms are trembling and the strong men bow themselves. Well, what then?
   What says our God concerning the days of decline and decay? He says to
   us, "I AM HE." He will not grow weak. His eye will not be dim. His ear
   will not be heavy. His arm will not be shortened that He cannot help
   us, nor His hand palsied that He cannot deliver us. Change is written
   across the countenance of every mortal but there are no furrows on the
   brow of the Eternal.

   If life should flow ever so smoothly, yet there are the rapids of old
   age and the broken waters of infirmity and the waterfall of disease.
   And these we are apt to dread. But why? Is not the Lord our trust? Is
   it not sure that the Lord changes not? Make this your strong
   confidence. As for you, you youths, you are strong, but boast not of
   your strength. The Lord Jehovah is our strength and our song. As for
   you in the midst of life--tremble not because of your difficulties--"is
   anything too hard for the Lord?" As for you that are sinking into the
   decline of life and know that very soon your tabernacle will be taken
   down, be not afraid, for the Lord has not altered. Has he not said, "I
   am the Lord, I change not"?

   Let this be your delight. In the course of years, not only do we change
   but our circumstances change. Many look forward to trying circumstances
   in the declining days of life. "When I cannot earn my livelihood. When
   I cannot go out to the farm, or stand at the counter, or work on the
   bench, what will become of me then?" Hearken, my Brother, if you are
   where you ought to be, your confidence is in God now--and you will have
   the same God then--and He will still be your guardian and provider. He
   will be under no decay from age, nor decline from weakness. His bank
   will not break, nor his treasury fail. His granary will not be
   exhausted and His bounty will not be worn out.

   Trust in Him for that which is written between the folded leaves of
   destiny, as well as for the page which lies open before you. If the
   infirmities of the body scare you, trust Him. And if the changing
   circumstances of your life alarm you, trust Him. For He must be the
   same though Heaven and earth should be dissolved. He says, "Even to
   your old age I am He." "Ah," you say, "but what I most mourn is the
   death of friends." Yes. That calamity is a daily sorrow to men who are
   getting into years. A new-made grave is with us every day. How many of
   those whom I dearly loved are now with

   God?

   When we near sixty, or pass onward towards seventy, we lament the
   multitude of dear Friends that have fallen like the innumerable leaves
   of autumn. Some of us have now more friends in Heaven than we have on
   earth. The best are going, still going--the messengers with heavy
   tidings follow close upon each other's heels. One of these days we
   think that some friend will cry, "Only I am left." Ah, yes, but the
   Lord says, "I AM HE," as much as to say, "I am left to you and will not
   fail you." Jehovah dies not but still abides the same. If you have only
   viewed your friends as loans from Him-- but Himself as your ultimate
   confidence--then you have acted wisely. When your friends are gone, you
   have not lost the source of all your strength and help and
   comfort--therefore, be not afraid--for the Lord says, "Even to your old
   age I am He."

   Some trouble themselves more than there is need concerning prophetic
   crises which are threatened. One would think from their perpetual
   alarms that the Prophets wrote to afflict us rather than to comfort us.
   "Oh, what shall I do," says one, "if there should be wars and rumors of
   wars and earthquakes in different places, and so forth?" What would you
   wish to do but trust in the Lord even as you do now? I know some good
   people who are much distressed with political prospects, with the
   evident tokens of social disorder, with the increasing tendency to
   break up everything and with the stealthy progress of the superstition
   of Rome.

   Well, you may sit and look out of your windows till you see nothing but
   clouds and darkness, for fancy and fear together can fashion out of
   clouds monsters and portents and alarms. We know so little of the
   future that to worry about it will be the height of folly. Our view of
   the near future may be incorrect--why fret over that which will never
   happen? Certainly, we only see part of the Lord's ways. And if we could
   see the whole we should most probably rejoice where now we grieve. Why,
   then, are we cast down? The Lord Himself says to us, "Even to your old
   age I am He."

   In our days of palsy, Jehovah trembles not. The Lord took care of the
   world before we were here to help Him and He will do it just as well
   when we are gone. We can leave politics, religion, trade, morals, and
   everything else with Him. What we have to do is to obey Him and trust
   Him and rejoice in Him and go on our way rejoicing. He knows the end
   from the beginning and will not allow the flood of human iniquity to
   swell beyond the control of His supreme will. His purpose shall stand
   and He will do all His pleasure. Not even to the extent of the small
   dust of the balance shall the event vary from the decree, or the decree
   vary from the rule of unmingled love.

   "Still," says one, "there are such evil tokens in the Church itself as
   must cause serious apprehension to godly men." Yes, I know it. I have
   had to know it to my personal sorrow. The Church grows old--gray hairs
   are upon her here and there and she knows it not. But never despair of
   the Church of God, for of her it is true, "Even to hoar hairs will I
   carry you. To your old age I am He." The Head of the Church never
   alters. His choice of His Church is not reversed. His purpose for His
   Church is not shaken. The Holy Spirit, as indwelling in the Church, has
   not returned to His rest. He still abides in His Church and works
   mightily.

   Beloved, fear not. We shall see better days and brighter times yet, if
   we have but faith in God and importunity in prayer. Let us not be
   afraid, though clouds should come, for it is written, "Behold He comes
   with clouds." God is the same--there is the cornerstone of our comfort.
   If you are depending upon anything or any person beside your God, woe
   unto you! "Oh," you say, "I used to hear a dear old minister in my
   early days. But I find none like him now. He has gone home. And I feel
   as if I could cry, 'My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the
   horsemen thereof!' " I could make some of you weep if I were to go
   through the list of those holy men who fed you with food convenient for
   you in your younger days.

   Their very names are like music to our ears and honey in our mouth.
   Remember Joseph Irons and Harrington Evans and Watts Wilkinson and
   Rowland Hill and men of that order? Where are the teachers and fathers
   now? But then the point is, the God of these saints is not dead. The
   Great Shepherd of Israel still lives and He leads us still and feeds us
   still and guards us still. And He will guard His flock and guide His
   flock--till He makes us to lie down in the green pastures on the
   hilltops of Glory. Oh, let us bless and praise His name tonight, that
   He gives us this rich comfort, "I am He." Jehovah, eternally the same,
   is the Rock of our salvation.

   III. And now, thirdly, I want to call your attention, in the words
   before us, to the fact that while false confidences pass away, GOD WILL
   FOREVER BE THE SAME. His former mercies guarantee to us future mercies.
   Read the passage before us--He says, "I have made and I will bear. Even
   I will carry, and will deliver you."

   First, you see, He says, "I have made." The Lord, who is your helper is
   He that created you--you certainly could not have created yourself. It
   is well to remember the mercy of God to us in our formation and in the
   first days of our birth and infancy. David was not ashamed to say to
   his God, "You are He that took me out of the womb." The Lord gave us
   birth, or we had never seen the light. When we were born, we could not
   help ourselves in the least degree. Poor helpless, shiftless
   creatures--all we could do was to cry! We shall never again be so weak
   as we were at our birth. Great decrepitude may fall upon us but we
   shall never be so little, so feeble, so puling, so dependent as we were
   when we could not speak and make known our wants, except by a cry.

   We were entirely dependent upon others for everything. We were quite
   helpless and yet we survived. We did not starve then. Yet for years we
   never earned a crust. We did not want for clothing then. And yet we
   could not have fingered a needle if we had been offered a thousand
   pounds. We were taken care of then, and surely God will take care of us
   for all the rest of our lives. We have been nursed through our first
   childhood and we shall be nurtured through our second childhood, should
   it come upon us. We know very little, indeed, about those first three
   or four years, yet the Lord fed us and led us and here we are in proof
   of it.

   Therefore, when He says, "I have made," He takes us back to those early
   days and makes us feel that He that made us to grow and gave us one by
   one the powers of manhood, will not leave us to molder away in old age,
   nor to break up like a wreck upon the rocks of disease. But think,
   Beloved! God made us in another sense. He made us new. Blessed is the
   man that has been twice born and thus twice made! The Lord God has made
   us new creatures in Christ Jesus. He has made us to be His children--we
   have been "begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of
   Jesus Christ from the dead."

   If He has done all this, He does not intend to leave us till He has
   finished the work of Divine Grace with power. A statue thinks nothing
   of the man that made it. But the man who has fashioned a thing of
   beauty of that sort takes a great interest in his handiwork. You that
   are made do not take such interest in your Maker as your Maker takes in
   you. "I have made," says He, "I have made." What He has done to you, in
   making you anew, should breathe into your heart the conviction that He
   will do yet more for you. That is, if there is a true heart in the
   world, God made it and thinks of it--if there is a true Church in the
   world, God made it and keeps it.

   Every Church that is a Church in the Scriptural sense, God has gathered
   to Himself. And of it He says, "I have made." He called the people out
   and knit them together and built them up as a house for Himself to
   dwell in. If He has

   made either heart or Church, He will keep it--He will not forsake the
   work of His own hands. He has used both thought and skill and has
   exercised both power and care for it and He will not desert that which
   has cost Him dearly. God's past mercy in the making of us encourages us
   to believe that He will put forth all His might to bear us on even to
   the end.

   And then, He also tells us, in the next place, that He has carried us.
   And if we have been carried by Him, He will carry us the rest of the
   way. There is a quaint saying of Bishop Hall that God has a very large
   family and not one of His children can run alone. In a certain sense,
   that is true. You know what an armful you have when you have two or
   three children that cannot run alone. What a great care has our
   gracious God since none of His children can run alone without His
   power, His love, His Grace! The Lord has to carry everyone of us every
   moment of our lives. The beginning of a Christian's life is very like
   the latter part of it!

   As to the natural man, we begin with being carried, and if we live long
   enough, we have to end with being carried. So, with the spiritual
   man--we begin with a simple trust--and as we grow in Divine Grace, we
   feel more and more our own weakness and come a second time to a trust
   as simple as at first. But whether we have one childhood or fifty
   childhoods, here is a Father who is ready to carry us, from the first
   even to the last. "I have made and I will bear. Even to hoar hairs will
   I carry you." Of this I am convinced, God will not begin to make and
   carry us and then leave the work unfinished. It shall never be said of
   Him that He began to build and was not able to finish.

   God will not redeem us with the blood of His Son and then lose us. He
   will not suffer Calvary to become a mistake and the Cross to be
   frustrated in its Divine purpose. God will not prepare us for Heaven
   and prepare Heaven for us and not bring us there. He will not store up
   the blessings of the Covenant and then refuse to bestow them, or cast
   off those for whom they were provided. He who has begun a good work in
   us will carry it on and perfect it unto the day of Christ. The past
   guarantees the future, since we have to do with a God who can never
   change.

   But I must not linger on any point, as our time flies. I must notice
   next that, practically, God's mercies through life are always the same.
   If you will look at the text carefully you will not fail to see that it
   is so. God may be said to begin in regeneration the work which we
   experience from His hands--therein He makes us. But all through life He
   is still making us. We are perpetually revolving on the wheel. And He
   is continually fashioning us. He has not yet perfected in us the image
   of Christ. He has only to keep on doing what He has been doing and we
   shall be perfected. His first work in us was resurrection work. And is
   He not daily quickening us, constantly raising us from the dead?

   It was new creation and He is daily creating us anew in Christ Jesus
   unto good works. No new form of mercy is ever wanted. All we need is
   the old mercy repeated and adapted to our case. My dear Friend, you
   will never want anything of God but what you have already had. The
   Divine Grace that saves the young man will save the old man. The
   patience that bore with your follies in youth will bear with your
   weakness in age. Depend upon it, you will require nothing but what you
   have already received. In this matter, the thing that has been is the
   thing that shall be--and there is nothing new under the sun.

   As for this "carrying" of which the text speaks, assuredly that is no
   new thing. As I have already said, the Lord carried us in our infancy.
   Our first spiritual blessing came of our being carried--we were sheep
   going astray and the Shepherd came after us. And when He found us, He
   carried us upon His shoulders rejoicing and brought us home. After that
   we were lambs in the fold and He gathered the lambs in His bosom and
   carried us. Many a rough place have I encountered in my life's
   pilgrimage and I have wondered how I should ever get over it. But I
   have been carried over the rocky way so happily that the passage has
   made one of the most charming memories of my heart. I begin to like
   rough places, even as Rutherford fell in love with the Cross he had to
   carry.

   When the road is smooth, I have to walk. But when it is very rough, I
   am carried. Therefore, I feel somewhat like the little boy I saw the
   other night. His father had been carrying him uphill. But when he
   reached a piece of level road, the boy was a great lump to carry and
   his father set him down and let him walk. Then the little gentleman
   began to pull at his father's coat and I heard him say, "Carry me,
   father! Carry me, father. Carry me again!" Just so. Any sensible child
   of God will still say, "Carry me, Father! Carry me still, I pray you!"
   The Father's answer is, "I have made and I will bear. Even I will carry
   you." Therefore call upon Him and ask that when the road is rough, or
   miry, He carry you. And He will carry you.

   The promise closes with the words, "And I will deliver you." That is no
   new mercy. Have you not been delivered many times already? "The Lord
   that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the
   bear, He will de-

   liver me out of the hand of this Philistine"--so David trusted, and so
   do we. Oh, the deliverances of God's people! Time out of mind He has
   appeared for us. "O my Soul, you have trod down strength!" We have
   overcome through the power of the Lord and have escaped even from
   between the jaws of death. Still He will save us in life and when we
   come to die He will deliver us gloriously. It will only be the same
   mercy again--a repetition of the Covenant guardianship in another form.

   See how Paul puts it, "Who delivered us from so great a death and does
   deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us." See, it is a
   note from the same trumpet, a voice from the same mouth. Therefore,
   Beloved, as you will only want the same mercy repeated, be confident,
   be joyful. Do not dread tomorrow. Do not fear next year. Do not pine
   because of the coming of old age. Do not dread that painful operation
   which seems needful. Do not dread even death, itself. He that made you
   will make you to endure. He that has carried you, will carry you. He
   that has delivered you will deliver you to the end. If it were
   possible, when we get to Heaven, one of the things that we should do
   would be to sit down and laugh at our fears.

   Surely we should laugh, and cry, too. Shall we not say, "How could I
   ever doubt my God? How could I ever have mistrusted my faithful Lord?
   Here I am, after all, sitting among the thrones of the glorified! Why
   did I doubt my God?" That poor old woman in the almshouse, that poor
   man who was bedridden, how different they will be and how they will
   wonder that ever they were so timorous! Hear the sick one say, "I
   feared I should perish in my trouble--but here I am, by God's Grace, as
   bright and glorious, as alert and nimble, as any of them." Hear the
   poor man from his cottage shouting, "Hallelujah, I will sing aloud unto
   the Lord all the more because of the weakness and the poverty through
   which I have triumphantly passed." Blessed be God, we only want a
   continuance of the same mercy as we have already experienced and that
   the Lord promises to us.

   And now, to close, notice in the text two things which are always
   here--the same God and the same mercy. There is nobody else here but
   the Lord, alone with His people. Will you note that? There is nobody
   else here but you and your God. And you are nobody but a poor thing
   that has to be carried. "Even to your old age I am He. Even to hoar
   hairs will I carry you. I have made and I will bear. Even I will carry
   and will deliver you." We have great admiration of angels but we are
   very pleased to see that they are not mentioned in this promise. We
   have many kind-hearted friends, but we are glad to see that they are
   not brought in here. God's great /, and that alone, fills up the whole
   space. And oh, what a blessing it is when we trust in the Lord alone!

   Look, Beloved, when you were made, it was God that made you. When you
   were made new it was God that made you new. It was His Grace, His
   power, His love, His wisdom, His life. Nobody else was there. Up to
   this time, He, alone, has carried you and no other hand has sustained
   you. He has always been sufficient for the task--to bear you and your
   own weight--and your Divinely appointed burden. The Lord has borne you
   up and He has borne you through and He has borne you on. He has borne
   you to this day. He, alone, has done it. Do you not think that He can
   do it in the future? His own right hand and His holy arm have up to now
   gotten Him the victory--can you not trust Him for tomorrow?

   He alone has delivered you and He, alone, can repeat the deliverance.
   You have been, perhaps, as I have often been, stuck in a cleft, where
   nobody could tell you how to get out but yet the Lord found a way of
   escape for you. You were shut up and you could not come forth--and then
   God cleared the way in a moment. What a great Maker of ways is the Lord
   God! His way has been in the sea and His path through the deep waters.
   And there have you rejoiced in Him. He, alone, dried up the sea and
   made a path for His chosen--and ten thousand hands could not have done
   it better. God, alone, is greater than a whole universe of creatures.

   Come, Brethren, let us hear the voice of our experience. O you who have
   known the Lord and His Grace, trust your God, the lonely Champion of
   the righteous, the sole Savior of the sinner, the all-sufficient
   Deliverer of those that cast themselves upon Him. You young people, oh,
   how earnestly I wish that you would begin with my Lord Jesus Christ--
   begin with the great and blessed Father and trust Him, for He will take
   care of you to hoar hairs! What may happen between your youth and your
   age I cannot tell. You may never see old age. I cannot look into the
   palm of your hand and read your destiny. But come and trust my Lord and
   all will be right--for your destiny will be in His hand for time and
   for eternity.

   You in middle life, with your children about you and hard times to
   struggle with. Your God whom you trusted in your youth will not leave
   you now. All between your birth and your death, the God of our Lord
   Jesus guarantees to be

   there. And He promises to remember your seed after you. Trust him. Play
   the man. Do not mistrust your heavenly Father. Doubt yourself as much
   as you like, but do not distrust the Lord who cannot lie. Did you come
   here with a heavy heart tonight? Leave the heaviness behind. Many a
   time a friend has come in on a Thursday evening, I mean a friend who
   does not generally worship here on the Sabbath. He has come in from the
   Exchange, or from the shop, having been a heavy loser in the day and he
   has found such rest of mind at this service that he has been no more
   sad, but has gone home nerved for the conflict.

   How often friends have sent in help for different works because of the
   encouragement they have had while listening to the preaching of the
   Word here! By faith they have been delivered and they have offered a
   sacrifice of thanksgiving unto the Lord God. O my Brothers and Sisters,
   do trust my God! Do not let the world say, "God's own people cannot
   trust Him!" Surely they will think that He is not to be depended on if
   you begin to doubt Him. Trust Him as He deserves to be trusted and rest
   in Him with all your souls--

   "Trust Him, you saints, in all your ways,

   Pour out your hearts before His face;

   When helpers fail and foes in vade,

   God is our all-sufficient aid."

   And you, my aged Brothers and Sisters, to whom I speak with much
   reverence, show to us who are younger where your joy and your peace
   are, that we also may rest in God. He has brought you through seventy
   years of trial! Do you think that He will now forsake you? You are
   eighty, you say, or even getting on to ninety. Well, you have at least
   eighty reasons why you should not distrust your God and Savior. If you
   will read your own diaries you will see that there are eighty million
   reasons why you should trust Him and yet you cannot find one solitary
   reason why you should not do so.

   Therefore, "rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him," and may He
   bless you evermore, for Jesus' sake! Amen.

   LETTER FROM MR. SPURGEON

   DEAR FRIENDS, Although we have had two days of rainy and tempestuous
   weather, I have improved so greatly that I feel like the man who is
   described in Scripture as "walking and leaping and praising God." As I
   cannot quite manage the two former exercises, I desire to be doubly
   abundant in the third. Watts says--

   "When we are raised from deep distress, Our God demands a song; We take
   the pattern of our praise From Hezekiah's tongue."

   That man of God, on his recovery, said, "The living, the living, he
   shall praise you as I do this day." In that spirit I have prepared the
   sermon to which this note is appended. And I have borne therein my
   willing testimony to the faithfulness of God and to the certainty that
   He honors the faith of His people.

   From the Tabernacle I have joyful news of a meeting at which four or
   five hundred persons came together to confess that they had found mercy
   during the late services. What a cordial to one's heart! "Therefore we
   will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life
   in the House of the Lord." Blessed be His name! With my heart's best
   wishes for all my hearers and readers, Their servant for Christ's sake,
   C. H. Spurgeon. Mentone, Dec. 1, 1888
     __________________________________________________________________

The Lord's Own Salvation

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, DECEMBER 16, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, DELIVERED ON THURSDAY
   EVENING, AUGUST 2, 1888.

   "But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah and will save them by
   the Lord their God and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by
   battle, by horses, nor by horsemen" Hosea 1:7.

   GOD is very considerate towards the messengers by whom He delivers His
   Word to men. They are bound to deliver His Word faithfully, whatever
   the tidings may be. Sometimes the burden of the Lord is very heavy. The
   Prophets have to denounce woe upon woe, with terrible monotony of
   threat. And then it is that God hastens to relieve them by giving them
   a gracious Word, so that they may refresh their hearts and not be
   altogether crushed beneath their load. We have an instance here of the
   Lord's care for His heralds. Hosea was bound to say, in the name of the
   Lord, "I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel. But I will
   utterly take them away."

   But when he had said that, with heavy heart and tearful eye, he was
   allowed to add, "But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah." The
   Lord will not let our spirit fail beneath a burden which is all of
   grief. But He will grant us the high privilege of proclaiming Divine
   Grace, as well as publishing judgment. Dear Brethren in Christ, if you
   have to preach God's Word, preach it faithfully and abate no syllable
   of its stern threats. Woe unto him who is afraid to preach the terrors
   of the Lord! Woe unto the man who refuses to put his hand into the
   bitter box and take out the wormwood and gall which make such salutary
   medicine for the souls of men!

   We must at times speak lightning and prove ourselves sons of thunder.
   We must bring on the storm and tempest in the heart of man if fair
   summer-tide discoursing will not touch them. For the most of men there
   is no going to Heaven except by the Weeping Cross. And we must drive
   them that way with God's thundering sentences of judgment. Let us lead
   them by the path of sorrow to the Man of Sorrows, sorrowing ourselves
   because it is so hard to bring them to a godly sorrow. It is at our
   soul's peril that we allow a warning to lie silent. "If the watchman
   warn them not, they shall perish. But their blood will I require at the
   watchman's hands."

   Let us think of that and give ourselves up to our Master's work, even
   when it is heaviest, cheered by the fact that we have to speak of such
   glorious Truths, such precious promises, such a gracious Christ, such a
   free salvation, such full pardon for the very chief of sinners, such
   abundant help for those that have no strength, such fatherly compassion
   to those that are out of the way. Our themes of joy by far outweigh our
   topics of grief and we find the Lord's service a happy one.

   The connection of our text suggests the thought that there is a limit
   to the long-suffering of God. He bade Hosea say, "I will no more have
   mercy upon Israel." He had borne with that guilty people very long and
   overlooked their daring crimes. But He would do so no longer--He would
   give them over to the enemy who would carry them far away so that
   Israel as a distinct monarchy should cease to be. O my Hearers, God is
   very gracious but His Spirit shall not always strive with you. A little
   more sin and you may be over the boundary and God may give you up.
   Stop, I pray you! Do not further provoke. Repent and turn unto the Lord
   with full purpose of heart.

   Having made that observation, I would make another, namely, that the
   Lord makes distinctions among guilty men according to the Sovereignty
   of His Grace. "I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel. But
   I will have mercy upon the house of Judah." Had not Judah sinned too?
   Might not the Lord have given up Judah, also? Indeed He might justly
   have done so, but He delights in mercy. Many sin and righteously bring
   upon themselves the punishment due to sin--they believe not in Christ
   and die in their sins. But God has mercy, according to the greatness of
   His heart, upon multitudes who could not be saved on any other footing
   but that of undeserved mercy. Claiming His royal right He says, "I will
   have mercy on whom I will have mercy."

   The prerogative of mercy is vested in the Sovereignty of God--that
   prerogative He exercises. He gives where He pleases and He has a right
   to do so, since none have any claim upon Him. We are all under His rule
   and by that rule we are under condemnation. And if He should leave us
   there, it would be strictly just. But if any are saved it is an act of
   pure, undeserved Grace for which He is to have all the praise. Note,
   too, that even in the dark times, when whole nations go astray from
   Him, He still reserves unto Himself a people. "I will no more have
   mercy upon the house of Israel. But I will have mercy upon the house of
   Judah and will save them."

   God will have a people even when those who are called His people prove
   unworthy of the name. There never was a night so dark but that God had
   a star shining through its blackness. There never was a desert so
   dreary but God could lead a people through it and make the wilderness
   rejoice. There never shall be a time in which Christ will not have a
   remnant according to the election of Divine Grace who will maintain His
   Truth and the honor of His name. Let us be comforted by this and look
   for brighter and better times, however dark the days may seem to be
   just now. God will save His own and by His own will keep His Glory
   bright among men.

   But now the text brings us to consider this fact, that God will save
   His own people in His own way. He tells us positively how He will save
   the house of Judah and negatively how He will not save them. "I will
   have mercy upon the house of Judah and will save them by the Lord their
   God and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by
   horses, nor by horsemen." God displays His Sovereignty not only in the
   persons saved but in the ways whereby that salvation is worked out.

   The point which we shall consider is God's way of saving His people, as
   instanced in the text. And we remark, first, that oftentimes God puts
   visible means aside in dealing with His people--"Not by bow, nor by
   sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." Secondly, He has
   good reasons for doing this--He acts with infinite wisdom. Thirdly,
   there is a Gospel in this, a Gospel which has special relation to us.
   Oh, for a blessing from the Spirit of the Lord!

   I. First, then, GOD IS PLEASED VERY OFTEN IN WORKING SALVATION, TO PUT
   MEANS ASIDE. He said of Israel, "I will break the bow of Israel in the
   valley of Jezebel." He thus struck out of the hands of His people their
   only defense. They had trusted in their bow and the Lord destroyed it.

   First, the Lord does this in the work of salvation by Divine Grace.
   Salvation is of the Lord alone. Salvation is not of human merit, for
   there is no such thing. Plenty of demerit you can find anywhere and
   everywhere but of merit there is none. "When we have done all, we are
   unprofitable servants: we have done no more than it was our duty to
   have done." But we have not done all. Alas, on the contrary, we have
   done those things which we ought not to have done. And we have left
   undone the things which we ought to have done and there is no health in
   us. In ourselves we have neither health, help, nor hope. We are not, we
   cannot be saved by our works. We dismiss the idea with an honest
   indignation, each one of us for himself.

   Neither are we saved by any good dispositions which lie dormant and
   latent within us, for there are no such things. There is none good, no
   not one. The heart is, in every case, deceitful and desperately wicked.
   Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one. If our salvation
   depended upon our hearts going after God of themselves and the motions
   of our nature ascending towards the Most High of themselves, it would
   be a hopeless case. But Divine Grace waits not for man, neither tarries
   for the sons of men. When we were yet without strength, in due time
   Christ died for the ungodly.

   "You has He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and in sins." The
   first movement is from God to us, not from us to God. As soon expect
   the darkness to create the day as expect the sinner to turn his own
   heart to the Lord. We are saved by the Lord's Grace, not by our works.
   Nor by our feelings, nor by our desires, nor even by our sense of need.
   I believe it is one object of God's infinite wisdom in each individual
   case to make this doctrine clear to the understanding and the heart.
   Certainly it is one object of every faithful ministry. We preach down
   the creature and preach up the Savior. Yet, preach as we may,
   self-righteousness is so natural to man, self-trust is so congenial to
   our proud imbecility, that we cannot get it out of men till the Holy
   Spirit comes.

   Every man his own Savior is the kind of doctrine which is popular. But
   to set aside our own doings is to offend many. I see before me a
   picture which was once before the mind of Isaiah. Our nature seems like
   a rainbow-colored field of grass in the early days of summer. The
   golden kingcups are intermingled with flowers of every hue. What a
   luxuriant garden! Wait a moment! A wind comes--a hot sirocco burns its
   deadly way. "The grass withers, the flower fades: be-

   cause the spirit of the Lord blows upon it: surely the people are
   grass." So have we seen men glorious in their own self-righteousness,
   boastful of their moral purity and we have half thought, surely there
   is something in all this!

   We walk over the same field after the withering work of the Holy Spirit
   has been there and men have been convicted of sin and we see nothing
   but disappointment and hear nothing but confession of failure. We see
   no flowers but dead, withered grass. How soon has the glory departed!
   The comeliness of the field is passed away as in the twinkling of an
   eye! You cannot have forgotten, some of you, when this terrible
   self-withering happened to you. When God's rebukes corrected you, your
   beauty passed away as the moth. Before I was instructed as to myself, I
   thought myself as good a fellow as could be found within fifty miles.
   But when the Spirit of God had revealed me to myself, I thought myself
   the basest creature within five hundred miles. Or, for that matter,
   even outside or inside of Hell itself.

   You may, perhaps, have seen a picture drawn by a cunning artist. It
   represents a lady, very fair and beautiful to look upon. But the
   picture is so contrived that you discover underneath it the form of
   death. That which appeared outwardly so lovely is only a veiled
   skeleton. Just that kind of change the Spirit of God makes upon our
   moral beauty--He turns it into corruption by making us see what we
   really are. The bones of the skeleton of depraved nature stand out
   through the proud flesh of our self-righteous pride. Then we cry to God
   for mercy. Then we give up all idea of saving ourselves. Neither bow,
   nor sword, nor horse, nor horsemen are any longer our confidence. The
   weapons of our self-help are looked upon by us as weapons of
   rebellion--and they really are so.

   And by God's Grace we throw them away and will have nothing further to
   do with them. The man upon whom there is found a bad coin is very
   earnest in declaring that it is none of his--somebody must have slipped
   it into his pocket. He will not own it. A little while ago he thought
   to himself, "What a splendid imitation it is! How well I have cheated
   the Queen!" Self-righteousness is nothing but a piece of counterfeit
   coin. And when all goes well with us, we say, "How well I have done it!
   How splendid is my righteousness!" But when the Spirit of God arrests
   us, then we are anxious to get rid of the very thing wherein we
   gloried. What was our righteousness we reckon to be as filthy rags--and
   we reckon according to the Truth of God.

   Thus God saves us, not by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, nor by
   horses, nor by horsemen but by His Grace, which comes to us freely when
   Jesus is made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and
   redemption.

   It is so in the actual salvation of men and it is often so in their
   calling to this salvation. Was any man ever converted in the way in
   which he expected to be? I hardly think so. I know what you thought
   would happen--at least I know what many expect. They look for an
   interesting incident. They suppose, perhaps, that they will have a very
   wonderful dream. Or that, going to hear a minister, there will be
   something very striking in the sermon which will alarm or depress them,
   so that they will be tempted to commit suicide, or do some other
   outrageous thing. Possibly, on the other hand, they half expect that
   there will happen a sudden death in the family, or sickness upon many
   and that so they will be impressed. Or, possibly, like Martin Luther
   with his friend Alexis, they may be walking out in a thunderstorm and
   Alexis will be killed and they will be aroused in that way.

   I, myself, always looked for something very remarkable but it did not
   come to me. And yet something happened which was more remarkable than
   the most remarkable thing would have been--I simply heard the Gospel
   command, "Look unto Me and be you saved." I looked and I lived! And
   that is all the story I have to tell you. Dear Hearer, that is all the
   story, very likely, you will ever have to tell. You have come in here
   tonight and perhaps you have even desired that something very wonderful
   may take place. Nothing of the sort may happen and yet the infinite
   mercy of God may visit your heart and sweetly melt it. Before you are
   even aware, you may say to yourself--

   "I do believe, I will believe, That Jesus died for me"

   and on a sudden, that change will come over you of which you have so
   often heard--by no means the physical change which you have looked for,
   the extravagant delirium of sorrow struggling with delight.

   You will simply drop into the arms of Christ and rest in His great
   sacrifice and find peace. That will be all. You will not be saved by
   bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, nor by horses, nor by horsemen but by
   a simple trust in the Lord alone. What more do you want? What more can
   you hope to receive? I feel very grateful to God whenever a person
   attributes his conversion to me. I feel both honored and humbled. But
   if you are brought to the Lord Jesus and no word of

   mine shall be used but only that still small voice which speaks in
   solemn silence to the heart, I shall be equally pleased, so long as you
   are saved.

   If hungry souls receive the bread of Heaven, I will not fret because
   they took it from some other hand than mine, Oh, that even now the Lord
   Himself might come like the dew which falls in its own special way and
   may He refresh your hearts unto eternal life and fulfill this word--"I
   will save them by the Lord their God and will not save them by bow, nor
   by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen."

   In the next place, the same thing is true with regard to the progress
   of religion and the work of revivals. Let every man work as he feels
   called to do, provided he follows the rules of his Lord. But we have
   seen revivals of which it was said at the first, "We will get up a
   revival." Revivals can be got up but are they worth the trouble? What
   has been the end of them all? A few years after, the result, where is
   it? I hear an echo say, "Where is it?" I cannot tell you what has
   become of it. In many cases I fear that the disappointed Church has
   become more hard to stir than it was before.

   Brethren, I hopefully believe that there will soon come a deep,
   widespread, lasting revival of religion and it may be it will come just
   as it used to in Apostolic times. How did they act in Jerusalem? What
   did they do throughout Asia Minor? What was the Apostles' plan? I
   cannot find, for the life of me, that they did anything else but preach
   the Gospel, while at the same time they went from house to house and
   held meetings for prayer--and thus the kingdom of Christ came. They did
   not work up a revival but they prayed it down. They simply waited upon
   the Lord in supplication and service. They might have tried other plans
   had they been so unwise as to think of them.

   They would never have tolerated the dodges of the present period, the
   adaptations of the Gospel and the degrading of it by secular lectures,
   entertainments and so forth. They never dreamed of keeping abreast of
   the times with liberal philosophical teaching. But I recollect that
   Paul was so resolutely ignorant as to say, "I determined not to know
   anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Standing all
   together the chosen preachers of the first days could say--"We preach
   Christ crucified." They could all say that and say it emphatically. All
   the men of the College of the Apostles stuck to that theme. And see the
   effect!--

   "Nations, the learned and the rude, Were by these heavenly arms
   subdued, While Satan raging at his loss, Abhorred the doctrine of the
   Cross."

   I wish all the Churches would try this old way again, for it seems to
   me that the world will never be subdued to Christ by the wooden sword
   of reason, but only by the true Jerusalem blade of a Gospel revealed
   from Heaven. Until we take up such methods as our Lord has ordained and
   make our sole confidence to be in the Lord our God, who "will not save
   by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen," we
   shall never see great results. Grand preaching, fine preaching,
   eloquent preaching! Yes--but the Apostle was afraid of it, lest the
   faith of his converts should stand in the wisdom of men. Though he
   could have spoken with the tongue of an orator, he did not use the
   wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be of no effect.

   "But, surely," cries one, "we must have some advancement in theology.
   We ought to know more than our old fathers did." This is the pride of
   our hearts. Would you advance beyond the Apostles? Into what can you
   advance but into the ditch of error? They did not crave for an advance
   in the Apostolic times. But they were satisfied to speak over again,
   "all the Words of this life." They remained true to the "faith once and
   for all delivered to the saints," and they found salvation in this
   primitive Revelation. Why should we go gadding elsewhere? Depend upon
   it--God will not save men by advanced thought, nor by eloquent
   discourses, nor by literary beauties--He "will save them by the Lord
   their God and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle,
   by horses, nor by horsemen."

   I believe that the same great Truth will be made apparent as to the
   establishment of the Truth of God in this land. How my soul has been
   burdened with the many that have turned aside and the few that remain
   faithful to the Covenant God of Israel! These last are not so very few
   as some would make them out to be but yet they are sadly scant in
   number. God has reserved unto Himself seven thousand that have not
   bowed their knee to Baal. Oh, that there were a thousand times as many!
   But we have striven with all our might to bear our outspoken testimony
   for the old faith and we have hopefully thought that many would rally
   to the cry.

   But it is not so, nor, perhaps, is it God's mind that it should be. Men
   of eminence have held their tongues and Brethren once ardent for the
   Gospel have practically gone over to the enemy. I am sure that the Lord
   will confound the adver-

   sary and bring forth His Truth as the noonday. But it may not be as we
   would suggest. He has His own way. Let us watch for Him to make bare
   His arm. Perhaps those who are faithful must stand alone, must bear
   their witness in solitary places and be the objects of general
   derision. Perhaps for many a year the heavenly fire will only smolder
   amidst the ashes. But it is all right--Truth shall hold the crown of
   the causeway, yet, and Christ's own Word shall lift its head from the
   waves that have washed over it and be the fairer for the washing.

   The Truth has God's might with it and it must prevail. He "will save
   them by the Lord their God and will not save them by bow, nor by sword,
   nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." We must be content to
   subside. To be nothing. To be never heard of. To die. So be it, if the
   Truth shall live. This will be better than if we formed a numerous band
   and carried everything by majorities and set up a strong party and won
   the day--for then man might be great and God be forgotten--but now He
   shall be All in All. When you have seen how I fail and those that are
   with me and how plans and efforts are futile, you will all the more
   clearly see what the Lord can do.

   Dear Friends, I would make one other application of these words and I
   trust it may be profitable to you. The text has a voice to God's people
   in the day of trouble. I may be addressing godly people who are in most
   terrible distress. You have faith in God that He will bring you out of
   your affliction. Maintain that faith. And if for a long time no
   deliverance should come, still maintain it. Perhaps you have hopes from
   a certain quarter. Those hopes may come to nothing--that cistern will
   leak. You have another friend to whom you can apply. Yes, you can
   apply. That is all that will happen, for that tank also holds no water.
   When you have tried all the cisterns, be wise enough to recollect the
   Fountain.

   It may be that there will come a day when every door will be fast
   closed and you will see no way of relief whatever. But you will then
   think that there will remain the one Way, which you should have
   followed at the first. In such an hour let my text speak with you--"He
   will save them by the Lord their God and He will not save them by bow,
   nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." What a
   glorious vision is that of Jehovah alone with His own right hand
   getting to Himself the victory! When Israel came out of Egypt, what
   armies vanquished Pharaoh? Who fought on Israel's side to bring them
   out of Egypt? Nobody.

   Then there was no human victor to extol, no human warrior to praise.
   But clear and plain the hymn rang out-- "Sing unto the Lord, for He has
   triumphed gloriously." If there had been an ally with God the glory
   might have been divided. But as it was, the Lord, alone, was exalted in
   that day. When Israel fought with Amole it is evident that the battle
   never depended upon their fighting, for--

   "While Moses stood with arms spread wide,

   Success was found on Israel's side;

   But when through weariness they failed,

   That moment Amole prevailed!" So that the real fighting was done by
   those uplifted hands that brought down the Divine success and made
   Joshua mighty in the battle.

   When Israel crossed the Jordan and came into the promised land to fight
   the Canaanites, the very first conquest was that of Jericho. Did they
   bring battering-rams to the walls? Did they gradually throw down the
   structure with their axes and picks? Oh, no! They compassed the city
   seven days and God made the walls to fall when the people gave a shout.
   In the memorable deliverances of God's people, God has said to the
   second cause, "Stand back. Let My glory come to the front." The bow,
   the sword, the battle, the horses and the horsemen--He has sent them
   all about their business. And then the Lord their God has led the van
   and His enemies have been scattered like the dust of the threshing
   floor.

   When He takes up the quarrel of His Covenant He makes short work of it,
   for "the Lord is a man of war; Jehovah is His name." And when He lays
   bare His arm to defend the cause of His people, He wants no helpers.
   Now can you lean on the Lord? Can you grasp the Invisible? Can you lean
   alone on God and forego all helpers? Can you grasp His bared arm and
   let all other things go? O man of God, if you can, you shall glorify
   God and you shall surely be delivered! If you must have your bow and
   your sword, or else give up hope, then the battle rests with yourself.
   How can you plead the promise

   of God?

   But when you put the bow aside and the sword is hung on the wall, then
   can you go to Him who is better to you than bow and sword and rest in
   Him and He will work gloriously, so that His own name shall be
   magnified and you shall be blessed. I pray the Holy Spirit to apply
   that Truth to any heart here that is heavy by reason of sore conflict
   at this time.

   Oh, for Divine Grace to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him,
   for in His own time and way He will work and none shall hinder Him.

   So much upon our first point, that oftentimes God puts the means aside
   in dealing with His people.

   II. But now, secondly, God has GOOD REASONS FOR THIS. I shall very
   briefly touch upon this theme. The Lord

   is full of wisdom and His doings are ever prudent. He always has good
   reasons for everything but one of the things we should never do is to
   ask why. It is an unreasonable thing to ask God to give reasons for
   what He does. His answer to arrogant questioners is--"May I not do as I
   will with My own?" Oh for Divine Grace to be silent where God is
   silent! Is He not God and we worms of the dust? Who shall presume to
   ask Him why or what He does? Better far to say, "It is the Lord, let
   Him do what seems Him good." If He never gave us a reason for what He
   did, we ought to be well content to leave all with Him, knowing that He
   must do that which is best and wisest.

   But, so far as in humility we may dare to look, we have looked and we
   believe that the Lord's ways are intended, first, to prevent all
   boasting. How prone we are to self-esteem! How wickedly we rob God to
   honor ourselves! If God uses us--if God uses any sort of means--yet
   there is no credit to the means which He uses but to Himself only. I
   read the other day of a certain writer who says, "I wrote the four
   hundred pages of this book with one pen." Where is that pen? Does
   anybody want it? If it were advertised as an exhibition, I should not
   go to see it. I care a deal more for the hand that wrote and for what
   was written, than for the pen with which it was written.

   A common goose-quill it was in the case referred to and no more. Ah,
   how plainly can we see where the quill came from! God uses men for a
   certain purpose, as we use a hammer, or a saw, or an awl. Suppose that
   when we had done with such tools and put them back into the box, they
   all began to cry, "See what we have done! What a sharp saw I was! What
   a heavy hammer I was! Did I not hit the nail on the head?" Such
   boastings would be foolishness. Shall the axe boast itself against him
   that hews? We do not judge that the instrument ought to take credit to
   itself. But it does so in our case whenever it can and this is a great
   injury to us.

   Some of us might have enjoyed a much larger blessing if we had not
   grown top-heavy with the blessing we already enjoyed. God saved a soul
   or two by you, my dear Friend, and you began to rub your hands and
   think that you were something better than an angel. You were running
   away with God's glory and thus ending your own influence. Often this is
   the cause of the drying up of hopeful usefulness. The instrument began
   to exalt itself and so the Lord put up the bow, the sword, the horses
   and the horsemen and then all men saw what powerless things these were.
   Oh, that the Lord may never feel compelled to leave you and me to
   ourselves! Oh, that He may deign to honor us by using us to His Glory.
   I had far rather die than stand a withered tree in the vineyard of the
   Lord and yet, what better should I be if He withdrew the dew of His
   Grace from me?

   Next, He does this to take us off from all reliance upon second causes
   and outward means. You people of God--the process of weaning is, with
   you, often a long and tedious one. But if ever it is accomplished, your
   faith will rejoice, even as Abraham made a great feast at Isaac's
   weaning. My dear Hearers, some of you are not saved yet and I will tell
   you what happens with many of you. You come here on Sabbaths, and to
   Monday Prayer Meetings, and Thursday services and I am glad to see you.
   You also read your Bibles. I am glad of that. You say a thing you call
   a prayer--I do not know whether I am glad about that. But I will tell
   you what you are doing. You are making yourselves quite comfortable, as
   if, by some singular process, salvation would insensibly penetrate you
   by your being found in good company, hearing the Word, and so on.

   Let me remind you that these things were never prescribed as the way of
   salvation. I do not want you to run away from hearing the Word, or from
   the use of the means. But I do want to assure you that, if you trust in
   these means, you will be disappointed in the result. These are mere
   pitchers but they will not quench your thirst if there is no water in
   them. Look to God, not to your minister. Get to Jesus Himself rather
   than to the sacred Book. Remember how the Savior puts it--for this is
   not a wrested reading--"You search the Scriptures. For in them you
   think you have eternal life: but you will not come to Me that you might
   have life." Pass beyond the Scriptures to the Christ whom the
   Scriptures reveal. Do not stay in the porch of the Word but enter the
   house of the Truth itself, which is Christ Jesus.

   It is not singing hymns and saying prayers. It is getting to the Lord
   in praise and really coming to Christ in prayer. I wish you not to stay
   away from any of the services. I wish you to be where the means may be
   blessed to you. But the means, themselves, cannot save you. There is
   nothing in preaching--there is nothing in public service that can
   mechani-

   cally bring salvation to you. And do not expect it. "You must be born
   again!" You must distinctly go to Christ for yourselves. The Lord saves
   men by the Lord Jesus Christ and He will not save them by books and
   Prayer Meetings and sermons any more than He would save Judah by the
   bow, the sword, the battle, the horses and the horsemen.

   The Lord set aside horse and horsemen to bring the people to Himself.
   And often He lays people up so that they cannot get out to hear the
   minister, or He drafts them away to some portion of the country where
   they get no sermon, that then they may go to the God of all true
   sermons and may find salvation in Jesus Christ Himself.

   Again, Beloved, the Lord blesses His people, Himself, that He may
   endear Himself to them. He reveals Himself to them apart from other
   things that they may see Him and know what He can do. You do not know
   to the full what God can do so long as He keeps within the bounds of
   the ordinary means, or you feel that you are well provided for by
   ordinary methods. You are apt to forget that God provides for you
   because your quarterly allowance is received so regularly. Now, suppose
   that your business fails. Ah, then God must provide for you--then you
   will see what God is doing. Suppose that, instead of being in one
   place, you should be kicked about like a football and still the Lord
   should give you rest in Himself--then you will see what He can do.

   When we are in fine feather and everybody is kind to us, we hardly know
   the loving kindness of the Lord, it is so smothered up by secondary
   agencies. When we get quite alone and nobody is kind to us and we
   approach to the Lord in solitary trust and prove His power to comfort
   us, then we know more of what He is in Himself to His people. The night
   reveals the stars and sorrow and loneliness manifest the Lord's
   presence. But, Beloved, God does this to endear Himself to us, that
   seeing more of Him we may love Him more and may say to ourselves, "What
   a gracious God He is to take notice of me, to interpose for me, to
   come, and by His own mighty power, do for me what the ordinary ways and
   means fail to do!" In this way, also, the Lord often gives a double
   blessing--a blessing in the gift, and a blessing in the way of giving.

   Now look at Hezekiah's case. Supposing Hezekiah had gone out to fight
   Sennacherib and had defeated him--a certain number of the inhabitants
   of Jerusalem would have been killed in the battle. But when the Lord
   delivered Hezekiah without a battle, then there were no funerals in
   Jerusalem. Nobody was wounded. Nobody was slain. So frequently God not
   only blesses us by the favor given but by the way in which the gift is
   sent--He saves us from pains which any other method would have
   involved. The Lord often spares us the humiliation of being dependent
   upon a person who would have made his patronage bitter to us.

   If we had received the blessing through some great one, he might have
   crowed over us all the rest of his life. I like that bit in Abraham's
   life when the king of Sodom offered him the property which he had
   captured. Abraham had a right to it, for he had taken it in war. But he
   said, "I will not take from a thread to a shoe-latchet, lest you should
   say, I have made Abram rich." No, no. The servant of the Lord would not
   have a king talk as if he had been the maker of the Lord's own servant.
   God Himself will so help you, so bless you, so carry you through, that
   you shall not have to take off your hat to any king of Sodom. Neither
   shall he be able to go up and down the city and say, "I have made Abram
   rich." God will put the king of Sodom away with the horses and the
   horsemen and double the mercy to you by handing it out with His own
   hand after His own way.

   I think that the Lord does this also to encourage you in all future
   troubles--He has rescued you in a way beyond means, without means and
   even against means! Therefore you cannot be in a condition from which
   He will be unable to rescue you. If you should come to be more
   friendless and more feeble than you now are--what then? Are your
   resources within yourself or dependent upon friends? If so, you are in
   an evil case. But if all your supplies are in the Lord, you are no
   worse off than you used to be. When the Lord strips you bare of your
   own garments then you can go to His wardrobe and put on the raiment
   which He has provided. You cannot wear God's clothes while you glory
   that you are wearing your own. When want has swept your table, then all
   the bread on it will come from your God.

   When the Lord has brought you down to the bare rock, then you can go no
   lower and there is a chance to build a house which will stand against
   flood and wind. Be reliant upon Him who can work by means but can
   equally well work without means whenever it seems good in His sight! In
   such confidence you will find security against all ill weathers. The
   Lord changes not, and therefore you shall not be consumed.

   III. My time is done, or else I was going to say, thirdly, THERE IS A
   GOSPEL IN THIS TEXT for those here present. I can only hint at this in
   a few words.

   The first Gospel is that salvation is possible in every case. Notice,
   "I will save them." What can stand against a Divine "I will"? With God
   nothing is impossible. If there is nothing to help Him, what does it
   matter? He does not need help. He expressly abjures the aid of a
   creature when He says, "I will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor
   by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." My dear Hearer, whoever you may
   be, there is hope in your case--if God saves, then you can be saved. If
   you had to save yourself, you would not be saved. But as there is
   nothing wanted of you--God works salvation with His own right
   hand--your case is hopeful. How clear is this! And how bright with
   comfort!

   Next, salvation is to be sought of God alone. Do not go wandering about
   to the second cause. Go straight to the Lord, Himself, and go at once.
   Straightforward is the best running in the world. Go straightforward to
   your God, your Savior. Let there be no waiting for tears, feelings,
   repentance, sanctification, or anything else. But arise at once and go
   to your God, and for Christ's sake, plead with Him to have mercy upon
   you at this moment. As salvation does not necessarily come through the
   outward means, if I address any here who have neglected the outward
   means, let them come away to God at once, though they have neglected
   His courts, profaned His day and despised His ministers.

   You came in here with no idea of worshipping God but only just to see
   the place and what the preacher is like. Never mind, look to the Lord
   Jesus Christ straight away! With those eyes that are so blinded, look!
   If you cannot see, it may be that in your obedient attempt to look, the
   Lord will give you sight. He does not command you to see but He does
   command you to look to Him and be saved--so that, if you turn your eyes
   towards Jesus, though they be sightless eyeballs-- He will make them
   see. If you will trust in Christ you may cast your guilty soul on Him
   at this moment. Why should you not do so? Then for you the rain will be
   over and gone and you will see the bright light in the clouds. Instead
   of the dark and dismal winter of doubt, you shall have a summertime of
   hope and comfort. These dreary weeks of cold despair shall give place
   to a season in which Heaven and earth shall blend in your experience in
   a joy unspeakable. The Lord grant it, for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.

   LETTER FROM MR. SPURGEON

   DEAR FRIENDS--I am still somewhat like Mephibosheth, who "did eat
   continually at the king's table and was lame on both his feet." But the
   fine summer weather of this place and the complete rest are rapidly
   restoring me. I ask prayer that strength may return in such a way as to
   remain with me, that I may, for a long period afterwards, abide in my
   work. As also that the Divine blessing may rest on the preaching of the
   Word.

   I have great cause for gratitude because of the continual items of news
   which I receive concerning the influence of the sermons. This is a rare
   restorative. May my readers still find in these simple discourses food
   for their souls and comfort for their hearts. When they distribute them
   among the unsaved, may the Spirit of God make them to minister life to
   the spiritually dead.

   I am most happy in being remembered in the prayers of many saints--and
   I would beg for more intercession--not for myself only, but for all who
   truly preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. Yours ever heartily, C H.
   Spurgeon Mentone, Dec. 8th, 1888
     __________________________________________________________________

"Eyes Right"

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, DECEMBER 23, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. DELIVERED ON THURSDAY
   EVENING, JULY 14, 1887.

   "Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before
   you." Proverbs 4:25.

   THESE words occur in a passage wherein the wise man exhorts us to take
   care of all parts of our nature which he indicates by members of the
   body. "Keep your heart," says he, "with all diligence. For out of it
   are the issues of life. Put away from you a disobedient mouth, and
   perverse lips put far from you. Let your eyes look right on and let
   your eyelids look straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet and
   let all your ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the
   left: remove your foot from evil."

   It is clear that every part of our nature needs to be carefully
   watched, lest in any way it should become the cause of sin. Any one
   member or faculty is readily able to defile all the rest, and
   therefore, every part must be guarded with care. We have selected for
   our meditation the verse which deals with the eye. These windows of
   light need to be watched in their incomings, lest that which we take
   into our soul should be darkness rather than light. And they need to be
   watched in their outgoings, lest the glances of the eye should be full
   of iniquity, or should suggest foolish thoughts. Hence the wise man
   advises, "Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look
   straight before you." Have eyes and use them. Using them, take care to
   use them honestly.

   Some persons are always as if they were asleep. They go though the
   world moping about, seeing nothing or seeing men as if they were trees,
   with a sight which is not sight but blindness. The shadows of this
   transient life impress them and that is all--they have never awakened
   yet to the true life and its solemn realities. They have never seen
   anything in very truth--for it is faith that sees and of faith they
   have none. That which is apart from faith is not visible to the soul,
   however clear it may be to the eye. We have thousands around us who
   need to be startled out of that slumber in which they see the fabrics
   of their dreams and the unsubstantial fancies of the hour.

   They say, "We see," but scales are on their eyes. I fear we have such
   in all our congregations, lulled to sleep even by the preacher's tones,
   to whom the fact of coming to their accustomed seat and listening to
   the usual hymns tends rather to confirm them in a sluggard's slumber
   than to stir their souls to action. O you Sluggards, may God awaken you
   by Divine Grace, lest He arouse you by the thunderbolts of His
   vengeance! It is time that your eyes began to look right on and your
   eyelids straight before you.

   Many others are somewhat awake mentally but they are not looking right
   on, neither do their eyelids look straight before them. They are
   staring about them, star-gazing, wondering what will be seen
   next--always ready, like the Athenians, to hear and see some new thing.
   They move, it is true, but it is in a labyrinth which leads to
   nothing--in a circle which ends where it began. They toil and slave but
   it is all in the shadow land--of substantial work they do nothing. An
   active idleness, a diligent laziness is all that their life is made up
   of. For, as yet, they have no purpose--no purpose worth being the aim
   of an immortal soul.

   An arrow will never strike the mark if it travels in a zigzag
   direction. And the man whose life has no aim whatever, who pursues
   this, and then that, and then the other, what will he achieve? Are not
   many like "dumb driven cattle," going, they know not where? They have
   never yet discovered that this life is a preface to a life of a more
   Divine mold. They do not regard the present as the lowly porch of the
   glorious edifice of the future. They have not thought that time is but
   the doorstep of eternity, a thing of small account, save that it is
   linked with the endless ages.

   And so they seek after this, and then after that, and then after the
   other. And always after that which is too poor, too trifling to be the
   object of a mind capable of fellowship with God. How many there are
   whose spirit is agitated by a mere nothing, resembling--

   "Ocean into tempest tossed To float a feather or to drown a fly"! To
   beings who lead such purposeless lives we would address the words of
   the wise man, "Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look
   straight before you." Have something to do and do it. Have something to
   live for and live for it. Get to know the right way and, knowing the
   right way, keep to it with full purpose of heart and concentration of
   faculty.

   O Man, see where you are going and go that way with your eyes open,
   resolutely marking every step as you take it. Look where you ought to
   look and then follow your eyes which shall thus be useful outriders to
   your life and help to make your way safe and wise. When you have sent
   your eyes before you to make sure of the way, it will be safe to
   follow. Look before you leap and only leap when looking bids you do so.
   If a man is to let his eyes look right on and his eyelids straight
   before him, then he is to have a way, and that way is to be a straight
   way--and in that straight way he is to persevere.

   You cannot see to the end of a crooked way. You can only see a small
   part of a way that twists and winds. Choose, then, a direct path which
   has an end which you dare think of and look upon. Some men's lives are
   such that they dare not think of what the end of them must be. They
   would not long pursue their present track if they were forced to gaze
   into that dread abyss which is the only possible close of an evil
   course. The way of transgressors is hard in itself but it is hardest of
   all when we behold their dreadful end. "Surely you have set them in
   slippery places. You cast them down into destruction." You need to have
   a way and a straight way and a way whose end you dare contemplate or
   else you cannot carry out the advice of Solomon, "Let your eyes look
   right on and let your eyelids look straight before you."

   Every wise man will conclude that the best way for a man is the way
   which God has made for him. He that made us knows what He made us for,
   and He knows by what means we may best arrive at that end. According to
   Divine teaching, as gracious as it is certain, we learn that the way of
   eternal life is Jesus Christ. Christ Himself says, "I am the Way, the
   Truth and the Life." And he that would pursue life after a right
   fashion must look to Jesus and must continue looking unto Jesus--not
   only as the Author but as the Finisher of his faith. It shall be to him
   a golden rule of life, when he has chosen Christ to be his Way, to let
   his eyes look right on and his eyelids straight before him. He need not
   be afraid to contemplate the end of that way, for the end of the way of
   Christ is life and glory with Christ forever.

   "It does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He
   shall appear, we shall be like He. For we shall see Him as He is." A
   friend said to me the other day, "How happy are we to know that
   whatever happens to us in this life it is well!" "Yes," I added, "and
   to know that if this life ends it is equally well, or better." Then we
   joined hands in common joy to think that we were equally ready for life
   or death and did not need five minutes' anxiety as to whether it should
   be the one or the other. Brethren, when you are on the King's
   Highway--that way which is a perfectly straight one--you may go ahead
   without fear and sing on the road.

   With all my heart I invite any who have never yet begun to live after a
   right fashion, to take Christ to be the way of life to them. And then I
   entreat them to let their eyes look straight on and their eyelids
   straight before them and to follow Jesus without giving a glance either
   to the right hand or to the left till it shall be said of them, even in
   glory, "These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes."

   I. I shall make my earnest appeals to the heart and conscience by
   beginning with this first exhortation--LET CHRIST BE YOUR WAY. You that
   are young, let Him be your way from your youth. You that have up to now
   gone the wrong road until your hairs have grown gray in the service of
   iniquity, turn, I beseech you, and take to the way of salvation. May
   His Spirit turn you and you will be turned--then will Jesus become your
   way from henceforth.

   If Christ is your way, you will begin first to seek to have Christ.
   "How shall I have Him?" says one. Do you desire Him? Will you accept
   Him? He is yours. The act of accepting Christ secures Christ to us. For
   the Father freely gives Him to all who freely accept Him. Some are
   troubled through ignorant and unbelieving fears and are saying, "I wish
   I could lay hold on Jesus! I wish I knew that Christ were mine!" Are
   you willing to have Him? Who made you willing? Do you desire Him? Who
   made you desire Him? Who but the Spirit of the Lord? Will you now take
   Jesus to be your Savior, to save you from your sin? Then depend on it
   He is yours. There was never any difficulty with Him to give Himself to
   you.

   The difficulty was to bring you to receive Him. And now that you do
   receive Him, remember this--"As many as received Him, to them gave He
   power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
   name." Jesus Himself has said it, "Him that comes to Me I will in no
   wise cast out." And therefore, since you come, you shall never be cast
   out. Jesus has accepted you, for you have accepted Him. But I pray that
   none of you will rest until you have Christ. Let your eyes look right
   on and your eyelids straight before you, till you find Him. Look
   nowhere else but to Him and after Him. Shut yourself up in your
   room--determine not to come out again until you have Him and it shall
   not be long before you find Him.

   Concentrating all your gaze upon the Crucified, light shall come from
   Him, causing the scales to fall from your eyes and you shall see Him,
   even you that could not see. And you shall cry in delight, "He is mine,
   He is mine." Remember how David said to his son, "If you seek Him, He
   will be found of you." Think of the words of the Prophet, "Seek you the
   Lord while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near." When
   you have Christ, the next business of your life must be to know Christ.
   Seek to know more of Him, to know Him better, to know Him more
   practically, to know Him more assuredly. "That I may know Him," said
   the Apostle, after he had been a believer in Him for fifteen years.

   That same man of God speaks of "the love of Christ, which passes
   knowledge," even his knowledge, which was of the fullest sort--so that
   he meant to go on learning more and more of Christ and he did not count
   himself to have attained. Christian Men and Women, you do not know your
   great Master yet. Here have some of us been nearly forty years in His
   service and yet we could not describe Him to our own satisfaction. Why,
   we hardly know the power of the hem of His garment yet. We have not
   descended far down into the mines of His perfections. How little we
   know of our hidden wealth in Christ Jesus!

   Oh, that we studied Scripture more, that we were more teachable and
   waited more humbly upon the Lord for the light of His Spirit from day
   to day! Well says our singer--

   "Hoard up His sacred Word, And feed thereon and grow;

   Go on to seek to know the Lord, And practice what you know."

   In this matter let your eyes look right on and your eyelids straight
   before you. Other men may have their pursuits, this is yours--stick to
   it earnestly. The science of a crucified Savior shines like the moon in
   the midst of the stars as compared with all the other sciences which
   men may know--study it with your whole power of mind and heart. The
   angels on the Mercy Seat of the ark stood always looking downward and
   bending over. Hence the Apostle says, "Which things the angels desire
   to look into." And if they desire to look into the Ark of the Covenant
   and its sacred mysteries, how much more should we!

   When you come to know somewhat of what He is, then go on to obey
   Christ. Is there anything that He has bid you do? Do it. Some
   Christians have never yet been baptized--how will they answer for
   willful neglect of a known duty? Others have been Christians for years
   and yet have never communed at the Lord's Table. Jesus said, "If you
   love Me, keep My commandments." Do they keep His Commandments? It was
   His dying request, "This do in remembrance of Me," and yet they will
   not fulfill it. Even such a tender request they slight, as though it
   were of no importance whatever, as if their Lord was a mere nobody
   whose wishes might well be overlooked.

   What shall I say of many of the biddings of our holy Gospel, many of
   those sweet precepts which are to be used in the family and in the
   business and in the field? What forgetfulness there is of them! What
   refusing to follow Christ! He might come to us and say, "If I am a
   Master, where is My honor?" Truly, it ought to be one of the first
   thoughts of a Christian to find out the Lord's will. And when he knows
   it, obedience should follow immediately. His eyes should look right on
   and his eyelids straight before him. What said the blessed virgin to
   those who were at the feast? Note the words, "Whatsoever He says unto
   you, do it." It was well spoken of the favored mother and it remains as
   a golden precept for us all-- "Whatsoever He says unto you, do it."

   Make no reserve, exercise no choice--obey His command. When you know
   what He commands, do not hesitate, question, or try to avoid it--"do
   it"--do it at once, do it heartily, do it cheerfully, do it to the
   full. It is but a little thing that as our Lord has bought us with the
   price of His own blood, we should be His servants. The Apostles
   frequently call themselves the bond slaves of Christ. Where our
   Authorized Version softly puts it "servant," it really is "bond slave."
   The early saints delighted to count themselves Christ's absolute
   property, bought by Him, owned by Him and

   wholly at His disposal. Paul even went so far as to rejoice that he had
   the marks of his Master's brand on him and he cries, "Let no man
   trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." There
   was the end of all debate--he was the Lord's and the marks of the
   scourges, the rods and the stones were the broad-arrow of the King
   which marked Paul's body as the property of Jesus, the Lord.

   Now, if the saints of old time gloried in obeying Christ, I pray that
   you and I, forgetting the sect to which we may belong, or even the
   nation of which we form a part, may feel that our first object in life
   is to obey our Lord. Not to follow a human leader, or to promote a
   religious or political party. This one thing we mean to do and so
   follow the advice of Solomon as he says, "Let your eyes look right on
   and let your eyelids look straight before you." Beloved, let us
   endeavor to be obedient in the minute as well as in the greater
   matters, for it is in details that true obedience is best seen. Let us
   copy the faintest touches in the life of our great Exemplar.

   That being attended to, remember, if Christ is your way, you have
   further to seek to be like He, not only to do as He did but to be as He
   was. For "as He was, so are we in this world." What a man does is
   important, but what a man is, is all-important. The ring of the metal
   is something but if its ring could be imitated by a base coin, it would
   be nothing. It is, after all, the substance of the metal that decides
   its value. O Man, what are you? If you are a twice-born man, you are a
   partaker of the nature of Christ. But if not, you are under the curse
   which cleaves to the old nature as leprosy cleaves to the leper.

   "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image
   of the heavenly." And we must begin to bear that heavenly image even
   now. As born again into the headship of the Second Adam, we should seek
   to be as much like the Second Adam as we are already by nature like the
   first Adam, through our first birth. The second birth should be as
   operative to produce the image of the second Adam, as the first was to
   produce the image of the first Adam. Alas, "the earthy" is impressed
   upon us very distinctly. We cannot spend an hour without discovering
   the clear stamp of nature's die. Oh, that "the heavenly" could be quite
   as clearly discerned!

   This, therefore, we must aim at, though as yet we have not attained it.
   Here is something to be thought of very carefully, and I charge you by
   the Holy Spirit--let your eyes look right on and your eyelids straight
   before you, that you may be transformed from glory to glory into the
   image of the Lord. God grant that it may be so with everyone of us!

   Now, supposing that we have attended to all this, if Christ is our way
   and our model, there is something more, namely, that we seek to glorify
   Christ, and labor to win others to Him. Here is a grand field for all
   our energies. O Christian people, what are we left in this world for,
   except to bring others to Jesus? Are we not left in this wilderness
   that we may find out more of the good Shepherd's stray sheep and work
   for Him and with Him to bring them in? I fear we forget this. Are not
   some of you indifferent as to whether your fellow men are lost or
   saved? Have not some of you, in your families, come to this pass--that
   you see your brother an infidel, your sister frivolous, your parents
   godless--and yet it does not fret you?

   I think that if I had a godless relative, it would break my night's
   rest, not now and then, but always. A brother, a father, a child
   unsaved! What do you mean by taking your ease? If the spirit of Christ
   is in us, the tears that fell from the eyes of Jesus will find their
   like upon our cheeks. We shall weep day and night because men are not
   gathered unto eternal life. Nor will this be a loss to us, for blessed
   are the mourners in Zion. Blessed are they that mourn because others
   abide in sin and reject the Lord!

   Now, concerning the salvation of our fellow men. We shall never compass
   it unless our eyes look right on and our eyelids straight before us.
   Before we win souls, we must live for souls. We need men and women who
   live to convert others to Christ. The minister had better quit his
   pulpit if it is not his one burning desire to bring hearts to Jesus'
   feet. If a Divine impulse is not upon him, driving him to seek the
   souls of men, let him go elsewhere with his windy periods. Professors
   have little right to be in Christ's Church unless they are passionately
   in earnest to increase His kingdom by the salvation of their fellow
   men.

   O my Brothers and Sisters, on whom is the blood-mark of redemption, I
   charge you concerning this matter to "let your eyes look right on and
   let your eyelids look straight before you"! Seek souls as dogs hunt
   their game--eyes, nostrils, ears all open and every muscle strained.
   Converts are not gained by dreamers. We cannot imitate Jesus as a
   Savior of men by being dull and heartless. In any point in which we
   follow our Lord let us do it with all our soul. Thus much upon the
   first point--let Christ be your way in all things and keep to that way.

   II. Following the text again, only working it a little differently, the
   second exhortation is, SET YOUR EYES ON HIM AS YOUR WAY. If Christ is
   your way and you follow Him to have Him, to know Him, to obey Him, to
   be like He and to glorify Him, then set your eyes on Him as the way.
   Think of Him, consider Him, study Him and in all things regard Him as
   first and last to you.

   First, that you may know the way of life, let your eyes be fixed on
   Him. Soul, are you in the dark? Kneel down and pray and look
   Christ-ward. Saint, are you bewildered? Go by the way of the Cross, the
   way of the Crucified, for that is the true and sure path. Sinner, are
   you burdened? Would you be rid of your burden? Run Christ-ward. Any
   direction given you to go anywhere else will misdirect you. I say not
   to anyone I meet tonight, "Go to the wicket-gate." Neither will I bid
   you look to any light within and run that way. My only direction is,
   "Go to Jesus." You see that Cross and Him who bled thereon! Stand still
   and look that way and your burden shall fall from your shoulders.

   Where Jesus died, you shall live. Where Christ was wounded, you shall
   be healed. "Let your eyes look right on and let your eyelids look
   straight before you." Know the road. You will never know it too
   well--the more you know it, the happier you will be in it. "To Christ!"
   "To Christ!" "To Christ!" That is the sole inscription upon every
   sign-post of the road to Heaven. Keep to the King's Highway. Since
   Christ is the Way, let your eyes be fixed on Him as the way that you
   may follow Him well, may follow Him wholly. Gather up all your
   faculties to go after your Lord. Be not like Lot's wife who longed and
   looked and lingered and was lost. Away, away, away from Sodom,
   altogether away--let no eye steal in that direction.

   Away, away, away to Christ, to Christ alone. All eyes must be for
   Jesus, who cries, "Look unto Me and be you saved." As the plowman looks
   to the end of the furrow and keeps right on, even so must you look only
   to Jesus. What have you to do with anything but Christ, Sinner? I tell
   you that you have nothing even to do with your own sins but to lay them
   down at His feet. He is All. The Beginning and the End. "Let your eyes
   look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you."

   Look alone to Jesus and do this to keep your spirits up. Some men's
   eyes do not look right on and their eyelids do not look straight before
   them for they look back upon that part of the road which they have
   traversed and grow content with that which they have already attained.
   They live in retrospection. When you begin to look back at what you
   have done and rub your hands and say with self-satisfaction, "I
   remember when I did right well," wisdom warns you that this is not the
   right kind of look. What have you to look back upon? Poor, weak
   creature! Forget that which is behind and press forward to something
   better and higher. When you sinful souls get to looking back upon your
   past bad lives, I am glad of that, but still I do not want you to keep
   your eyes always in that direction. You will get no comfort in looking
   into the foul ditch of your own transgressions.

   Look, look, look before you! Look where the Cross stands. Run that way.
   Let your eyelids look straight before you to the atoning
   sacrifice--away from the past, which He will graciously blot out--to
   Jesus only. Some spend much of their time in what is called
   introspection. Now introspection, like retrospection, is a useful thing
   in a measure. But it can readily be overdone--and then it breeds morbid
   emotions and creates despair. Some are always looking into their own
   feelings. A healthy man hardly knows whether he has a stomach, or a
   liver. It is your sickly man who grows more sickly by the study of his
   inward complaints.

   Too many wound themselves by studying themselves. Every morning they
   think of what they should feel--all day long they dwell upon what they
   are not feeling. And at night they make diligent search for what they
   have been feeling. It looks to me like shutting up your shop and then
   living in the counting-house taking account of what is not sold. Small
   profits will be made in this way. You may look a long while into an
   empty pocket before you find a sovereign and you may look a long time
   into fallen nature before you find comfort. A man might as well try to
   find burning coals under the ice, as to find anything good in our poor
   human nature.

   When you look within, it should be to see with grief what the
   filthiness is. But to get rid of that filthiness you must look beyond
   yourself. I remember Mr. Moody saying that a mirror was a capital thing
   to show you the spots on your face. But you could not wash in a mirror.
   You want something very different when you would make your face clean.
   So let your eyes look right on--

   "To the full atonement made, To the utmost ransom paid."

   Forget yourself and think only of Christ.

   Some not only unduly practice retrospection and introspection but they
   carry much too far a sort of circumspection. They look all around
   them--they look upon their past and their present and their fears and
   their doubts--and from all these things they judge their condition and
   decide their state of mind. You recollect Peter. He cried to his Lord,
   "Bid me come unto you on the water." He receives permission. Down the
   side, over the boat, goes Peter. To his intense surprise he is standing
   on a wave. Peter had never done such a thing before in his life as walk
   on the water.

   He might have kept on standing on the wave and he might have walked all
   the way to Jesus if he had kept his eyes on his Master until he reached
   Him. The waters would have borne him up as well as a granite pavement.
   But Peter began to look at the billows and he listened to the howling
   of the wind and then to the beating of his own heart. And down he went.
   And then he had to cry to his Master. "Let your eyes look right on and
   let your eyelids look straight before you"--you can walk the waters all
   the way to the golden shore if you can but stop your eyes looking to
   other things.

   Surely I may use the text as an illustration of that closing of the
   eyes. "Let your eyes look right on." "I understand that," says one,
   "for I trust. But you cannot look with your eyelids." What can that
   mean? Remember that you can shut your eyes with your eyelids to a great
   many things and so cease to see them. And in the matter of faith-sight
   a great many things are best not seen. So when you would otherwise see
   the danger and all the difficulties and the doubts, do not look with
   your eyes but look with your eyelids. Not to look at the difficulties
   at all is all the look they deserve.

   Let your eyelids shut out the view which would create distrust. Do not
   see, do not feel, "only believe." Believe Christ and believe nothing
   else. "Let God be true but every man a liar." If all the sins you have
   ever done should come rolling up like Atlantic billows and if all the
   devils in Hell should come riding on the crests of those waves, howling
   as they come, take no notice of them. Christ has said he that believes
   in Him has everlasting life. Believe in Him and you have the
   everlasting life as surely as Christ is the Christ of God. Draw down
   the blinds and see nothing, know nothing, believe nothing but the
   living Word of the living Savior. "Let your eyes look right on and let
   your eyelids look straight before you."

   You must also let your eyes look right on, dear Friends. For if you
   begin to look two ways at a time, you will miss the Lord Jesus, who is
   your Way. Under the Jewish Law no man who had a squint was allowed to
   be a priest. He is described as one who had "a blemish in his eye." I
   wish they would make a similar law with regard to spiritual sight in
   preachers nowadays, for certain of them are sadly cross-eyed. When they
   preach Free Grace they squint fearfully towards free will. And if they
   look to the atonement, they must needs see in it more of man than of
   Christ. See how they look to Moses and to Darwin, to Revelation and to
   speculation!

   A great many people would gladly be saved but they squint--they look a
   little towards sin and the flesh and the world--and they make provision
   for personal gain and personal ease. In this case they fail to see
   Christ's strait and narrow way of the denial of self and the
   crucifixion of the flesh. If you would have salvation, "Let your eyes
   look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you." Look not
   a little this way and a little that way, or you will never run aright.
   "I could believe that I was a Christian," says one, "if I felt more
   happy. I could trust Christ if I felt my nature changed." That is a
   squint which ruins the faith-look. That is trying to look two ways at
   once. You cannot do it--it will ruin you.

   It would spoil the beauty of the sweetest countenance if we could use
   our eyes to look otherwise than straight on. We have some friends who,
   if they wish to see us, look over there and yet we are not there. Avoid
   this spiritual blemish. It has no advantages--"Let your eyes look right
   on." Look to Christ alone, to Him as your whole salvation. Have nothing
   to do with your good works as a ground of trust, or you are a lost man.
   I charge you, have nothing to do even with your faith and your
   repentance as a ground of trust. Trust not your trust--but trust alone
   in what Christ has done. If you shall trust your best feelings or your
   worst feelings, your prayers or your praises, your almsgivings or your
   consecration in any degree--you have made an antichrist of them.

   Strip yourself of your last rag and let Christ clothe you from top to
   bottom. Be you hungry unto famishing and clean out the last crumb you
   have in the pantry, for then only will you feed on Christ, the Bread of
   Life. Let Him be both bread and wine and make up the whole of a feast
   for you. You shall have salvation surely enough if this is what you do.
   But let not Jesus bring the bread, and carnal confidence the wine--take
   a whole Christ to be all your salvation and all your desire and your
   peace shall be unbroken. Let the Holy Spirit bring you to that oneness
   of trust which makes both eyes meet

   at their proper focus and let that focus be the Lord Jesus. "Let your
   eyes look right on and let your eyelids look straight before you."

   III. But my time has almost expired and I have only to lay emphasis on
   one more matter. LET YOUR EYES DISTINCTLY AND DIRECTLY LOOK TO CHRIST
   ALONE. I have gone over this before, but I need to hammer at it

   again in order to clench the nail. Look not to any human guide but look
   to Christ Jesus alone. We have no faith in priests. But it is a very
   easy thing to fix your faith upon a minister and hear what he says and
   believe it because he says it. I charge you, believe nothing that I
   tell you if it cannot be supported by the Word of God. I am content to
   stand or to fall by this--"To the Law and to the testimony: if they
   speak not according to this Word, there is no light in them."

   I will quote the authority of no other book, whoever may have composed
   it--no ancient book--let it belong even to the earliest days of the
   Church. This one inspired volume is the text-book of our religion.
   Follow Holy Scripture and you have an infallible chart. Our Lord Jesus
   Christ is the one Apostle and High Priest of our profession--follow
   Him. Not even mother or father, or the brightest saint that ever lived
   must divide you from your perfect Guide. "Let your eyes look right on
   and let your eyelids look straight before you," and hear the gracious
   words of Him who bought you with His blood as He cries, "Follow Me."

   Then, again, look to Christ directly and distinctly for yourself. I
   warn you against putting any trust in national religion, or in family
   and birthright godliness. A personal Christ must be laid hold of by a
   personal faith. You must yourself repent, yourself believe, yourself
   get a grip of Him and of none but Him. You must use your own eyes--"Let
   your eyes look right on, and let your eyelids look straight before
   you."

   Again--look not to any secondary aims. Seek first the kingdom of God
   and His righteousness. In seeking Christ make no bargain with gain or
   reputation. Be content to lose all gold and all honor if you may but
   win Christ. To follow religion for self would be a mean act of
   hypocrisy and to leave it for the same reason is equally vile. Let your
   eyes be fixed on following your Lord and as to any worldly
   consequences, bring your eyelids into use, keep them fast closed and go
   right on in implicit obedience to your Lord.

   Forget all things else when seeking Christ and when you have found
   Christ. It is no ill thing for a man, when he is under concern of soul,
   to let his business and everything go till he finds his Savior. I urge
   no one to such a course but I have noticed many converts who have done
   this who have soon found rest. If a captain were busy about the comfort
   of his passengers in their cabins but all the while knew that there was
   a great leak in the ship and it would soon go down and to this he paid
   no heed whatever, you would say to him, "How foolish you are to mind
   the little and neglect the great!" But if he told the passengers,
   "Breakfast cannot be prepared with our usual care, for all hands are
   pumping or repairing the vessel," you could not blame him when you knew
   that every man's help was needed to save the ship from going down.

   In times of extreme danger, secondary things must give place to the
   main thing. If this house were to take fire, you would not stay to sing
   the last hymn, even if I gave it out. May the Holy Spirit lead some of
   you to feel that you must be saved! You must be saved, and therefore
   you must put other things into a second place. Remember how Bunyan
   pictures the man running for his life--when his neighbors called to him
   to stop--he put his fingers in his ears and as he ran he shouted,
   "Eternal life! Eternal life! Eternal life!" That man was a wise man.
   Imitate him. If you have not found eternal life, run for it, with your
   "eyes right on and your eyelids straight before you."

   And, lastly, take care that you continue gazing upon Christ until you
   have faith in Him. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of
   God." Go on hearing the Word of God till faith comes. Do you ask me how
   faith comes? It is the gift of God but it usually comes in a certain
   way. Thinking of Jesus and meditating upon Jesus, will breed faith in
   Jesus. I was struck with what one said the other day of a certain
   preacher. The hearer was in deep concern of soul and the minister
   preached a very pretty sermon indeed, decorated abundantly with
   word-painting. I scarcely know any Brother who can paint so daintily as
   this good minister can.

   But this poor soul, under a sense of sin, said, "There was too much
   landscape, Sir. I did not want landscape. I wanted salvation." Dear
   Friend, never crave word-painting when you attend a sermon. But crave
   Christ. You must have Christ to be your own by faith, or you are a lost
   man. When I was seeking the Savior I remember hearing a very good
   doctrinal sermon. But when it was over I longed to tell the minister
   that there was a poor lad there who wanted to know how he could be
   saved. How I wished he had given half a minute to that subject! Dr.
   Manton, who was usually a clear and full

   preacher of the Gospel, when he preached before the Lord Mayor, gave
   his lordship something a cut above the common citizens and so the
   poorer folk missed their portion.

   After he had done preaching his sermon, an aged woman cried, "Dr.
   Manton, I came here this morning under concern of soul, wanting a
   blessing and I have not got it, for I could not understand you." The
   preacher meekly replied, "The Lord forgive me! I will not so offend
   again." He had overlooked the poor and had thought mainly of my Lord
   Mayor. Special sermons before Mayors and Queens and assemblies are
   seldom worth a penny a thousand. The Gospel does not lend itself to
   show performances. I am not here to give you intellectual treats--my
   eyes look right on to your salvation. Oh that yours may look that way!

   Go after Christ, dear Friend. Seek after Christ with your whole heart
   and soul. Feel that the one thing you must have is to be reconciled to
   God by the death of His Son. Keep on with that cry, "None but
   Christ--none but Christ." Make this your continual litany--

   "Give me Christ, or else I die; Give me Christ, or else I die."

   Then you will soon find Him. "Let your eyes look right on and let your
   eyelids look straight before you," and you shall see the Lord of Grace
   appearing to you through the mist and through the cloud--that same
   Savior who stands in the midst of us even now and cries, "Look unto Me,
   and be you saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is
   none else."

   LETTER FROMMR. SPURGEON

   BELOVED FRIENDS--We are in our measure partaking in the change of
   weather which plunged England from an almost summer heat into cold and
   fog, for we have a cold wind blowing with a force which overpowers the
   warm sun. This has a depressing influence upon many invalids but does
   not affect me. Each day I make a little progress. I could not yet stand
   through a discourse, much less walk a mile. But I can walk further than
   I could a week ago and I am conscious of renewed vigor. I thank God
   that the swelling of the feet is also decreasing and so I may look for
   complete restoration and then for a speedy return to my happy work.

   I hope and pray that this week's sermon may prove useful. Purposely I
   have made it striking and plain, with the design that it should be
   suitable for wide distribution. It contains the Gospel in its
   simplicity, stated in a pleasant manner.

   I have prepared three sermons, as a double number, to close the year
   with and I hope they will be a fit top stone to the thirty-fourth
   volume, which I am glad to have completed. Receive my sincere love in
   Christ Jesus. May all Grace abound towards you. Yours till death, C. H.
   Spurgeon. Mentone, Dec. 13th, 1888
     __________________________________________________________________

The Miracles of Our Lord's Death

   INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S DAY, DECEMBER 30, 1888,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY
   EVENING, APRIL 1, 1888.

   "Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the
   ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top
   to the bottom. And the earth did quake and the rocks rent; and the gra
   ves were opened. And many bodies of the saints which slept, arose and
   came out of the graves after His resurrection and went into the holy
   city and appeared unto many." Matthew 27:50-53.

   OUR Lord's death is a marvel set in a surrounding of marvels. It
   reminds one of a Kohinoor surrounded with a circle of gems. As the sun,
   in the midst of the planets which surround it, far outshines them all,
   so the death of Christ is more wonderful than the miracles which
   happened at the time. Yet, after having seen the sun, we take pleasure
   in studying the planets, and so, after believing in the unique death of
   Christ and putting our trust in Him as the Crucified One, we find it a
   great pleasure to examine in detail those four planetary wonders
   mentioned in the text, which circle round the great sun of the death of
   our Lord Himself.

   Here they are--the veil of the temple was rent in two. The earth did
   quake. The rocks rent. The graves were opened.

   I. To begin with the first of these wonders. I cannot, tonight,
   enlarge. I have not the strength. I wish merely to suggest thoughts.
   Consider THE RENT VEIL, or mysteries laid open. By the death of Christ
   the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom and
   the mysteries which had been concealed in the most holy place
   throughout many generations were laid open to the gaze of all
   Believers. Beginning, as it were, at the top in the Deity of Christ,
   down to the lowest part of Christ's manhood, the veil was rent and
   everything was shown to every spiritual eye.

   1. This was the first miracle of Christ after death. The first miracle
   of Christ in life was significant and taught us much. He turned the
   water into wine, as if to show that He raised all common life to a
   higher grade and put into all Truth a power and a sweetness which could
   not have been there apart from Him. But this first miracle of His after
   death stands above the first miracle of His life, because, if you will
   remember, that miracle was worked in His Presence. He was there and
   turned the water into wine. But Jesus, as man, was not in the temple.
   That miracle was worked in His absence and it enhances its wonder. They
   are both equally miraculous but there is a touch more striking about
   this second mira-cle--that He was not there to speak and make the veil
   rend in two.

   His soul had gone from His body and neither His body nor His soul were
   in that secret place of the tabernacles of the Most High. And yet, at a
   distance, His will sufficed to rend that thick veil of fine twined
   linen and cunning work.

   The miracle of turning water into wine was worked in a private house,
   amidst the family and such disciples as were friends of the family. But
   this marvel was worked in the Temple of God. There is a singular
   sacredness about it because it was a deed of wonder done in that most
   awful and mysterious place which was the center of hallowed worship and
   the abode of God. Look! He dies and at the very door of God's high
   sanctuary He rends the veil in two. There is a solemnity about this
   miracle, as worked before Jehovah, which I can hardly convey in speech
   but which you will feel in your own souls.

   Do not forget, also, that this was done by the Savior after His death
   and this sets the miracle in a very remarkable light. He rends the veil
   at the very instant of death. Jesus yielded up the ghost and, behold,
   the veil of the temple was rent in two. For thirty years He seems to
   have prepared himself for the first miracle of His life. He works His
   first miracle after

   death in the moment of expiring. As His soul departed from His body our
   blessed Lord at that same moment laid hold upon the great veil of His
   Father's symbolical house and rent it in two.

   2. This first miracle after death stands in such a place that we cannot
   pass it by without grave thought. It was very significant, as standing
   at the head of what many call a new dispensation. The miracle of
   turning water into wine begins His public life and sets the key of it.
   This begins His work after death and marks the tone of it. What does it
   mean?

   Does it not mean that the death of Christ is the Revelation and
   explanation of secrets? Vanish all the types and shadows of the
   ceremonial Law--vanish, because fulfilled, and explained in the death
   of Christ. The death of the Lord Jesus is the key of all true
   philosophy--God made flesh, dying for man--if that does not explain a
   mystery, it cannot be explained. If with this thread in your hand you
   cannot follow the labyrinth of human affairs and learn the great
   purpose of God, then you cannot follow it at all. The death of Christ
   is the great veil-render, the great revealer of secrets.

   It is also the great opener of entrances. There was no way into the
   holy place till Jesus, dying, rent the veil. The way into the most holy
   of all was not made manifest till He died. If you desire to approach
   God, the death of Christ is the way to Him. If you want the nearest
   access and the closest communion that a creature can have with his God,
   behold, the sacrifice of Christ reveals the way to you. Jesus not only
   says, "I am the Way," but, rending the veil, He makes the way. The veil
   of His flesh being rent, the way to God is made most clear to every
   believing soul.

   Moreover, the Cross is the clearing of all obstacles. Christ by death
   rent the veil. Then between His people and Heaven there remains no
   obstruction, or if there is any--if your fears invent an
   obstruction--the Christ who rent the veil continues still to rend it.
   He breaks the gates of brass and cuts the bars of iron in sunder.
   Behold, in His death "the breaker is come up before them, and the Lord
   on the head of them." He has broken up and cleared the way and all His
   chosen people may follow Him up to the glorious Throne of God. This is
   significant of the spirit of the dispensation under which we now live.
   Obstacles are cleared. Difficulties are solved. Heaven is opened to all
   Believers.

   3. It was a miracle worthy of Christ. Stop a minute and adore your
   dying Lord. Does He with such a miracle signalize His death? Does it
   not prove His immortality? It is true He has bowed His head in death.
   Obedient to His Father's will, when He knows that the time has come for
   Him to die, He bows His head in willing acquiescence. But at that
   moment when you call Him dead, He rends the veil of the temple. Is
   there not immortality in Him though He died?

   And see what power He possessed. His hands are nailed--His side is
   about to be pierced. As He hangs there He cannot protect Himself from
   the insults of the soldiery but in His utmost weakness He is so strong
   that he rends the heavy veil of the temple from the top to the bottom.

   Behold His wisdom, for in this moment, viewing the deed spiritually, He
   opens up to us all wisdom and lays bare the secrets of God. The veil
   which Moses put upon his face, Christ takes away in the moment of His
   death. The true Wisdom in His dying preaches His grandest sermon by
   tearing away that which hid the most supreme Truth from the gaze of all
   believing eyes. Beloved, if Jesus does this for us in His death,
   surely, we shall be saved by His life. Jesus who died is yet alive and
   we trust in Him to lead us into "the holy places made without hands."

   Before I pass on to the second wonder, I invite everyone here, who as
   yet does not know the Savior, seriously to think upon the miracles
   which attended His death and judge what sort of man He was who, for our
   sins, thus laid down His life. He was not suffered by the Father to die
   without a miracle to show that He had made a way for sinners to draw
   near to God.

   II. Pass on now to the second wonder--"THE EARTH DID QUAKE." The
   immovable was stirred by the death of Christ. Christ did not touch the
   earth--He was uplifted from it on the tree. He was dying, but in the
   laying aside of His power, in the act of death, He made the earth
   beneath Him, which we call "the solid globe," itself to quake. What did
   it teach? Did it not mean, first, the physical universe fore-feeling
   the last terrible shake of its doom? The day will come when the Christ
   will appear upon the earth and in due time all things that are shall be
   rolled up, like garments worn out and put away.

   Once more will He speak and then will He shake not only the earth but
   also Heaven. The things which cannot be shaken will remain but this
   earth is not one of them--it will be shaken out of its place. "The
   earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Nothing
   shall stand before Him. He alone is. These other things do but seem to
   be--and before the terror of His face all men shall tremble and Heaven
   and earth shall flee away. So, when He died, earth seemed to anticipate
   its doom and quaked in His Presence. How will it quake when He that
   lives again shall come with all

   the glory of God! How will you quake, my Hearer, if you should wake up
   in the next world without a Savior? How you will tremble in that day
   when He shall come to judge the world in righteousness and you shall
   have to face the Savior whom you have despised! Think of it, I pray
   you.

   Did not that miracle also mean this--that the spiritual world is to be
   moved by the Cross of Christ? He dies upon the Cross and shakes the
   material world as a prediction that that death of His would shake the
   world that lies in the Wicked One and cause convulsions in the moral
   kingdom. Brothers and Sisters, think of it. We say of ourselves, "How
   shall we ever move the world?" The Apostles did not ask that question.
   They had confidence in the Gospel which they preached. Those who heard
   them saw that confidence. When they opened their mouths they said, "The
   men that have turned the world upside down have come here unto us."

   The Apostles believed in shaking the world with the simple preaching of
   the Gospel. I entreat you to believe the same. It is a vast city
   this--this London. How can we ever affect it? China, Hindustan,
   Africa--these are immense regions. Will the Cross of Christ tell upon
   them? Yes, my Brethren, for it shook the earth and it will yet shake
   the great masses of mankind. If we have but faith in it and
   perseverance to keep on with the preaching of the Word, it is but a
   matter of time when the name of Jesus shall be known of all men and
   when every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue confess that He is
   Christ to the glory of God the Father. The earth did quake beneath the
   Cross. And it shall again. The Lord God be praised for it.

   That old world--how many years it had existed I cannot tell. The age of
   the world, from that beginning which is mentioned in the first verse of
   the Book of Genesis, I am not able to compute. However old it was, it
   had to shake when the Redeemer died. This carries us over to another of
   our difficulties. The system of evil we have to deal with is so
   long-established, hoary and reverent with antiquity, that we say to
   ourselves, "We cannot do much against old prejudices." But it was the
   old, old earth that quivered and quaked beneath the dying Christ and it
   shall do so again. Magnificent systems, sustained by philosophy and
   poetry, will yet yield before what is called the comparatively new
   doctrine of the Cross.

   Assuredly it is not new, but older than the earth itself. It is God's
   own Gospel, everlasting and eternal. It will shake down the antique and
   the venerable, as surely as the Lord lives. And I see the prophecy of
   this in the quaking of the earth beneath the Cross.

   It does seem impossible, does it not, that the mere preaching of Christ
   can do this? And hence certain men must link to the preaching of Christ
   all the aids of music and architecture and I know not what beside, till
   the Cross of Christ is overlaid with human inventions, crushed and
   buried beneath the wisdom of man. But what was it that made the earth
   quake? Simply our Lord's death and no addition of human power or
   wisdom. It seemed a very inadequate means to produce so great a result.
   But it was sufficient, for the "weakness of God is stronger than men
   and the foolishness of God is wiser than men."

   And Christ, in His very death, suffices to make the earth quake beneath
   His Cross. Come, let us be well content in the battle in which we are
   engaged, to use no weapon but the Gospel, no battle-ax but the Cross.
   Could we but believe it, the old, old story is the only story that is
   needed to be told to reconcile man to God. Jesus died in the sinner's
   place, the Just for the unjust, a magnificent display of God's Grace
   and justice in one single act. Could we but keep to this only, we
   should see the victory coming speedily to our conquering Lord. I leave
   that second miracle--wherein you see the immovable stirred in the
   quaking of the earth.

   III. Only a hint or two upon the third miracle--THE ROCKS RENT. I have
   been informed that, to this very day, there are at Jerusalem certain
   marks of rock-rending of the most unusual kind. Travelers have said
   that they are not such as are usually produced by earthquake, or any
   other cause. Upon that I will say but little. But it is a wonderful
   thing that, as Jesus died, as His soul was rent from His body, as the
   veil of the temple was rent in two, so the earth, the rocky part of it,
   the most solid structure of all, was rent in gulfs and chasms in a
   single moment.

   What does this miracle show us but this--the insensible startled. What?
   Could rocks feel? Yet they rent at the sight of Christ's death. Men's
   hearts did not respond to the agonizing cries of the dying Redeemer but
   the rocks responded-- the rocks were rent. He did not die for rocks.
   Yet rocks were more tender than the hearts of men, for whom He shed His
   blood--

   "Of reason all things show some sign,

   But this unfeeling heart of mine," said the poet. And he spoke the
   truth. Rocks could rend but yet some men's hearts are not rent by the
   sight of the Cross. However, Beloved, here is the point that I seem to
   see here--that obstinacy and obduracy will be conquered by the death of
   Christ.

   You may preach to a man about death and he will not tremble at its
   certainty or solemnity. Yet try him with it. You may preach to a man
   about Hell but he will harden his heart, like Pharaoh, against the
   judgment of the Lord. Yet try him with it. All things that can move man
   should be used. But that which does affect the most obdurate and
   obstinate is the great love of God, so strangely seen in the death of
   the Lord Jesus Christ. I will not stay to show you how it is but I will
   remind you that it is so. It was this, which, in the case of many of
   us, brought tears of repentance to our eyes and led us to submit to the
   will of God. I know that it was so with me.

   I looked at a thousand things and I did not relent. But when "I saw One
   hanging on a tree--

   "In agonies and blood,"

   and dying there for me, then did I smite upon my breast and I was in
   bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. I
   am sure your own hearts confess that the great Rock-render is the dying
   Savior.

   Well, now, as it is with you, so shall you find it with other men. When
   you have done your best and have not succeeded, bring out this last
   hammer--the Cross of Christ. I have often seen on pieces of cannon, in
   Latin words, this inscription, "The last argument of kings." That is to
   say, cannons are the last argument of kings. But the Cross is the last
   argument of God. If a dying Savior does not convert you, what will? If
   His bleeding wounds do not attract you to God, what will? If Jesus
   bears our sin in His own body on the tree and puts it away and if this
   does not bring you to God, with confession of your sin and hatred of
   it, then there remains nothing more for you.

   "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" The Cross is
   the rock-render. Brothers and Sisters, go on teaching the love of the
   dying Son of God. Go on preaching Christ. You will tunnel the Alps of
   pride and the granite hills of prejudice with this. You shall find an
   entrance for Christ into the inmost hearts of men, though they are hard
   as adamant. And this will be by the preaching of the Cross in the power
   of the Spirit.

   IV. But now I close with the last miracle. These wonders accumulate and
   they depend upon each other. The quaking earth produced, no doubt, the
   rending of the rocks. And the rending of the rocks aided in the fourth
   wonder--"THE GRAVES WERE OPENED."

   The graves opened and the dead revived. That is our fourth head. It is
   the great consequence of the death of Christ. The graves were opened.
   Man is the only animal that cares about a sepulcher. Some persons fret
   about how they shall be buried. That is the last concern that ever
   would cross my mind. I feel persuaded that people will bury me out of
   hatred, or out of love and especially out of love to themselves. We
   need not trouble about that. But man has often shown his pride by his
   tomb. That is a strange thing. To garland the gallows is a novelty, I
   think, not yet perpetrated. But to pile marble and choice statuary upon
   a tomb--what is it but to adorn a gallows, or to show man's great
   grandeur where his littleness is alone apparent.

   Dust, ashes, rottenness, putridity and then a statue and all manner of
   fine things to make you think that the creature that goes back to dust
   is, after all, a great one. Now, when Jesus died, sepulchers were laid
   bare and the dead were exposed--what does this mean? I think we have in
   this last miracle "the history of a man." There he lies dead--corrupt,
   dead in trespasses and sins. But what a beautiful sepulcher he lies in!
   He is a Church-goer. He is a Dissenter--whichever you please of the
   two. He is a very moral person. He is a gentleman. He is a citizen. He
   is master of his company. He will be Lord Mayor one day. He is so
   good--oh, he is so good!

   Yet he has no Divine Grace in his heart, no Christ in his faith, no
   love to God. You see what a sepulcher he lies in--a dead soul in a
   gilded tomb? By His Cross our Lord splits this sepulcher and destroys
   it. What are our merits worth in the presence of the Cross? The death
   of Christ is the death of self-righteousness. Jesus' death is a
   superfluity if we can save ourselves. If we are so good that we do not
   want the Savior, why, then, did Jesus bleed His life away upon the
   tree? The Cross breaks up the sepulchers of hypocrisy, formalism, and
   self-righteousness, in which the spiritually dead are hidden away.

   What next? It opens the graves. The earth springs apart. There lies the
   dead man--he is revealed to the light. The Cross of Christ does that!
   The man is not yet made alive by Divine Grace but he is shown to
   himself. He knows that he lies

   in the grave of his sin. He has sufficient power of God upon him to
   make him lie, not like a corpse covered up with marble, but like a
   corpse from which the grave digger has flung away the sod and left it
   naked to the light of day. Oh, it is a grand thing when the Cross thus
   opens the graves! You cannot convince men of sin except by the
   preaching of a crucified Savior. The lance with which we reach the
   hearts of men is that same lance which pierced the Savior's heart. We
   have to use the crucifixion as the means of crucifying
   self-righteousness and making the man confess that he is dead in sin.

   After the sepulchers had been broken up and the graves had been opened,
   what followed next? Life was imparted. "Many of the bodies of the
   saints which slept arose." They had turned to dust. But when you have a
   miracle you may as well have a great one. I wonder that people, when
   they can believe one miracle, make any difficulty of another. Once
   introduces Omnipotence and difficulties have ceased. So in this
   miracle. The bodies came together on a sudden and there they were,
   complete and ready for the rising. What a wonderful thing is the
   implantation of life! I will not speak of it in a dead man but I would
   speak of it in a dead heart.

   O God, send Your life into some dead heart at this moment while I
   speak! That which brings life into dead souls is the death of Jesus.
   While we behold the Atonement and view our Lord bleeding in our place,
   the Divine Spirit works upon the man and life is breathed into him. He
   takes away the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh that
   palpitates with a new life. This is the wondrous work of the Cross--it
   is by the death of our Lord that regeneration comes to men. There were
   no new births if it were not for that one death. If Jesus had not died,
   we had remained dead. If He had not bowed His head, none of us could
   have lifted up our heads. If He had not there, on the Cross, passed
   from among the living, we must have remained among the dead forever and
   forever.

   Now pass on and you will see that those persons who received life, in
   due time left their graves. It is written that they came out of their
   graves. Of course they did. What living man would wish to stay in his
   grave? And you, my dear Hearers, if the Lord quickens you, will not
   stay in your graves. If you have been accustomed to strong drink, or to
   any other besetting sin, you will quit it. You will not feel any
   attachment to your sepulcher. If you have lived in ungodly company and
   found amusement in questionable places, you will not stay in your
   graves.

   We shall not have need to come after you to lead you away from your old
   associations. You will be eager to get out of them. If any person here
   should be buried alive and if he should be discovered in his coffin
   before he had breathed his last, I am sure that if the sod were lifted
   and the lid were taken off he would not need prayerful entreaties to
   come out of his grave. Far from it. Life loves not the prison of death.
   So may God grant that the dying Savior may fetch you out of the graves
   in which you are still living. And, if He now quickens you, I am sure
   that the death of our Lord will make you reckon that if one died for
   all, then all died. And He died for all that they which live should not
   live henceforth unto themselves but unto Him that died for them and
   rose again.

   Which way did these people go after they had come out of their graves?
   We are told that "they went into the holy city." Exactly so. And he
   that has felt the power of the Cross may well make the best of his way
   to holiness. He will long to join himself with God's people. He will
   wish to go up to God's house and to have fellowship with the
   thrice-holy God. I should not expect that quickened ones would go
   anywhere else. Every creature goes to its own company, the beast to its
   lair and the bird to its nest. And the restored and regenerated man
   makes his way to the holy city.

   Does not the Cross draw us to the Church of God? I would not wish one
   to join the Church from any motive that is not fetched from the five
   wounds and bleeding side of Jesus. We give ourselves first to Christ
   and then to His people for His dear sake. It is the Cross that does
   it--

   "Jesus dead upon the tree Achieves this wondrous victory."

   We are told--to close this marvelous story--that they went into the
   holy city "and appeared unto many." That is, some of them who had been
   raised from the dead, I do not doubt, appeared unto their wives. What
   rapture as they saw again the beloved husband! It may be that some of
   them appeared to father and mother. And I doubt not that many a
   quickened mother or father would make the first appearance to their
   children. What does this teach us but that if the Lord's Grace should
   raise us from the dead, we must take care to show it? Let us appear
   unto many. Let the life that God has given us be manifest. Let us not
   hide it but let us go to our former friends and make our epiphanies as
   Christ made His. For His Glory's sake let us have our manifestation and
   appearance unto others. Glory be to the dying Savior! All praise to the
   great Sacrifice!

   Oh, that these poor, feeble words of mine would excite some interest in
   you about my dying Master! Be ready to die for Him. And you that do not
   know Him--think of this great mystery--that God should take your nature
   and become a man and die, that you might not die--and bear your sin
   that you should be free from it. Come and trust my Lord tonight, I pray
   you. While the people of God gather at the table to the breaking of
   bread, let your spirits hasten, not to the table and the sacrament but
   to Christ Himself and His sacrifice. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Messages of Our Lord's Love

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   AUGUST 5, 1888.

   "Go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goes beforeyou into
   Galilee: there shall you see Him, as He said unto you." Mark 16:7.

   SEE, Brethren! Jesus delights to meet His people. He is no sooner risen
   from the dead than He sends a message by an angel to say that He will
   meet His disciples. His delight is in them. He loves them with a very
   tender love and He is happiest when He is in their midst. Do not think
   that you will have to entreat and persuade your Lord to come to you. He
   delights in near and dear fellowship. The heavenly Bridegroom finds
   solace in your company if you are indeed espoused to Him. Oh, that you
   were more anxious to be with Him!

   Our Lord knows that to His true people the greatest joy they ever have
   is for Him to meet them. The disciples were at their saddest. Their
   Lord, as they thought, was dead. They had just passed the dreariest
   Sabbath of their lives, for He was in the tomb. And now, to comfort
   them, He sends no message but this--that He will meet them. He knew
   that there would be magic in that news to cheer their aching hearts. He
   would meet them--that would be all-sufficient consolation--"Go into
   Galilee. There shall you see Him."

   If all the sorrows of God's people could be poured out in one vast
   pile, what a mountain they would make! How varied our distresses! How
   diverse our depressions! But, Beloved, if Jesus will meet us, all the
   sadness will fly away and all the sorrow will grow light. Only give us
   His company and we have all things. You know what I mean, many of you.
   Our Lord has made our hearts to leap for joy in sorrowful times. When
   we have been filled with physical pain, His company has made us forget
   the body's weakness.

   And when we have newly come from the grave and our heart has been ready
   to break through bereavement, the sight of the Savior has sweetened our
   bitter cup. In His Presence we have felt resigned to the great Father's
   will and content to say, "It is the Lord: let Him do what seems Him
   good." Until the day break and the shadows flee away forever we want
   nothing but our Well-Beloved's company. "Abide with me! Abide with
   me!"--this is our one prayer. And if we have that fulfilled, all other
   desires may wait their turn.

   My subject is chosen with a view to our coming, as we always do on the
   first day of the week, to this table of communion. I want every child
   of God here to seek after, no, to gain full fellowship with Christ. I
   long to enjoy it myself that I may preach a Savior in whose Presence I
   live. I long for you to enjoy it--that you may hear not my voice--but
   His voice, which is sweeter than the music of angels' harps. Oh, that
   those who do not know our Lord may now come, by His Grace, hungering
   after His surpassing sweetness! He is willing to come to you. A prayer
   will find Him. A tear will draw Him. A look of faith will hold Him
   fast. Cast yourself on Jesus and His open arms will joyously receive
   you.

   But now to the text. I shall take it just as it stands and make five
   observations upon it.

   I. The first is--JESUS, THAT HE MAY MEET HIS PEOPLE, ISSUES INVITATIONS
   AND THE INVITATIONS ARE VERY GRACIOUS--"Go, tell His disciples and
   Peter." "Tell His disciples." The invitation is most gracious as
   directed to them--for "they all forsook Him and fled." On that night,
   that doleful night when He most needed company, they slept. And when He
   was taken off to the hall of Caiaphas, they fled--yes, every one of
   them. There was not a steadfast spirit among them. They all fled.
   "Shame on them!" you say? Yes, but Jesus was not ashamed of them. For
   in one of the first speeches of His glorious life on earth He specially
   mentions them.

   "Tell My disciples"--not picking and choosing here and there a heart
   more faithful than the rest but mentioning the whole cowardly company,
   He says, "Tell My disciples." Brethren, disciples of Christ, Jesus
   would meet us now. Let us hasten to His Presence. Not one among us
   dares plume himself upon his fidelity. We have all at times played the
   coward. We may each one of us hide our faces when we think of our
   Lord's most faithful love to us. We have never acted towards

   Him according to His deserts. If He had banished us--if He had said, "I
   will no more acknowledge this dastardly company," we could not have
   wondered.

   But He invites us all, all who are His disciples--invites us to
   Himself. Will you stay away? Will any of you be satisfied without
   beholding that dear Countenance, more marred than that of any man and
   yet more lovely than the face of angels? Come, all who follow Him, for
   He bids you come. Hear the address of the message--"Tell My disciples."

   But the bounty and beauty of His Grace lay in this--that one had been
   worse than the rest and, therefore, for him there is a special finger
   to beckon him, a special word to call him--"Tell my disciples AND
   PETER." He that denied his Lord--he that cursed as he denied, he who,
   after boisterous self-confidence, trembled at the jest of a maid--is he
   to be called? Yes, "Tell My disciples and Peter." If any of you have
   behaved worse to your Master than others, you are peculiarly called to
   come to Him now. You have grieved Him and you have been grieving
   because you have grieved Him. You have been brought to repentance after
   having slid away from Him and now He seals your pardon by inviting you
   to Himself.

   He bids you not to stand in the background but to come in with the rest
   and commune with Him. Peter, where are you? The crowing of the cock is
   still in your ears and the tear is still in your eyes--yet come and
   welcome--for you love Him. He knows you do. You are grieved that a
   doubt should be put upon your love. Come, He has forgiven you. He has
   given you tokens of it in your broken heart and tearful eye. Come,
   Peter! Come, if nobody else should come. Jesus Christ invites you by
   name before any other. In this place may be Believers who have acted
   strangely and have even forsaken the Lord and they are now bemoaning
   themselves. Go on with your holy sorrow but come to your Lord. Be not
   content till you have seen Him, till you have laid hold upon Him by a
   fresh grip of faith and till you can say, "My Beloved is mine and I am
   His."

   Most tender, then, are the invitations which Jesus issues. Part of the
   tenderness now lies in the lips which deliver the message on the Lord's
   behalf. The women said--Jesus has said to us, by an angel, He will go
   before us into Galilee and there shall you see Him. I am always
   thankful that God has committed the ministry of the Word not to angels
   but to us poor men. As I told you a little while ago, you may grow
   tired of me and my stammering. But yet they are more suitable for you
   than nobler strains might be. I have no doubt that if you had an angel
   to preach to you there would be a very great crowd and for a time you
   would say, "It is wonderful."

   But it would be so cold from lack of human sympathy that you would soon
   weary of the lofty style. An angel would try to be kind--as became his
   heavenly nature--but he would not be kin and you must necessarily miss
   the kindness which comes of kinship. I speak to you as bone of your
   bone and flesh of your flesh--I speak to you as Teacher, for I am a
   teacher. I speak to you as a disciple, for I am a disciple and I dare
   not think myself greater than the least of you. Let us come hand in
   hand to our dear Savior and all together let us pray Him to manifest
   Himself to us as He does not unto the world. This, then, is my first
   point--His invitations are gracious.

   II. Secondly, we see in our text that JESUS KEEPS HIS PROMISE. "I will
   go before you into Galilee." If you turn to Mark 14:27, 28, you will
   see that He told them before He died, "All you shall be offended
   because of Me this night: for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd
   and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that I am risen, I will go
   before you into Galilee." He will be where He says He will be. Jesus
   never breaks a promise. It is a great vexation, especially to us who
   are very busy, when somebody says, "will you meet me at such-and-such a
   place?" "Yes, at what hour?" The hour is appointed. We are there. Thank
   God we never were a half minute behind time when it was possible to be
   punctual.

   But punctuality is a lesson which very few persons as yet have learned.
   We wait and wait wearily and perhaps we leave the place to let our
   dilatory friends know that if they are in eternity we are in time and
   cannot afford to lose any of it. Many people make an engagement and
   break it--as if it were just nothing at all to be guilty of a practical
   lie. It is not so with Jesus--He says, "I will go before you into
   Galilee." And into Galilee He will go. When He promises to meet His
   people He will meet with them without fail and without delay.

   Let us dwell on this appointment for a minute. Why did our Lord say
   that He would go to Galilee? Was it because it was His old haunt and
   being risen from the dead, He desired to go back to the spot where He
   had been accustomed to be--to the lake and to the hillside? Surely
   there is something in that. It was their old haunt, too--they were
   fishermen on that lake and He would take them back to the place where a
   thousand memories would be awakened by their voices, like echoes which
   lie asleep among the hills. Besides it would provide witnesses to His
   identity, for the Galileans knew

   Him well--since there He had been brought up. He would go where He was
   known and show Himself in His former places of resort.

   Perhaps, too, it was because the place was despised. He has risen and
   He will go to Galilee. He is not ashamed to be called the Galilean and
   the Nazarene. The Risen One does not go to the halls of princes but to
   the villages of peasants and fishermen. There was no pride in
   Jesus--not even the smell of that fire had passed upon Him. He was ever
   meek and lowly in heart. Did he not also go to Galilee because it was
   some little distance from Jerusalem so that those who would meet Him
   might have a little trouble getting there? Our Beloved would be sought
   after. A journey after Him will endear His society.

   He will not meet you at Jerusalem, perhaps--at least, not the whole
   company of you. But He will show Himself by the sea in distant Galilee.
   Do you think He went to Galilee because it was "Galilee of the
   Gentiles"--that He might get as near to us Gentiles as His mission
   allowed? He was sent as a Preacher only to the lost sheep of the house
   of Israel. But He traveled to the very edge of His diocese to get as
   near to the Gentiles (I mean to ourselves) as He could. Oh, happy word
   for us aliens!--"I will go before you into Galilee." So He said. And
   when He left the tomb, He kept His Word.

   Now, Beloved, we have His Word for it that He will come and meet us
   where we are met together. "Where two or three are gathered together in
   My name, there am I in the midst of them." And does He not keep His
   Word? How many times in our assemblies, great and small, have we said,
   "The Lord was there!" How frequently have we forgotten preacher and
   fellow worshippers, feeling ourselves in the Presence of a Greater than
   mortal man! Our eyes of faith have seen the King in His beauty,
   revealing His love to us. Oh, yes! He keeps His promise. He comes to
   His people and He never disappoints them. I think this is particularly
   true of the table of communion.

   How often He has met us here! I am compelled to repeat my personal
   testimony. I have never omitted being at the Lord's Table on any
   Sabbath of my life for many years past, except when I have been ill, or
   unable to attend. And I am therefore able to answer the question--does
   not frequency diminish the solemnity of the ordinance? I have not found
   it so. But instead it grows upon me. That broken bread, that poured out
   wine, the emblems of His flesh and blood--these bring Him very near. It
   seems as if sense lent aid to faith. And through these two windows of
   agates and gate of carbuncle, we come very near to our Lord.

   What have we here but Himself under instructive emblems? What do we do
   here but remember Him? What is our business here but to show His death
   until He comes? And so, though we may not have seen Him in converse by
   the way-- for our eyes have been dimmed--yet we have seen Him in the
   breaking of bread. May it be always so! May we prove that Jesus keeps
   His pledge. He will be with us even now. Suppose Jesus had said that He
   would come into this place tonight in literal flesh and blood--you
   would be all sitting in expectation and saying to each other--"When
   will He come?"

   The preacher would be waiting to drop back, or fall upon his knees in
   adoration, while His Master stood in the front. You will not see Him
   so. But may your faith, which is much better than eyesight, realize Him
   as the present Christ near to each one of you. If He were here in the
   flesh, He might stand here and then He might be near to me but far off
   from my friends yonder. But coming in spirit He can be equally near to
   us all and speak to each one of us personally--as though each one were
   the only person present

   III. My third observation is, JESUS IS ALWAYS FIRST AT EVERY APPOINTED
   MEETING. So runs the text-- "He goes before you into Galilee." Remember
   that promise, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name,
   there am I"--not "there will I be." Jesus is there before His disciples
   reach the place. The first to reach the house is He who is first in the
   house. We come to Him--it is not that we meet and then He comes to us.
   But He goes before us and we gather to Him.

   Does it not teach us that He is the Shepherd? He said, "Smite the
   Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after I am risen, I will
   go before you into Galilee." He would take up the shepherd's place
   again and go before the flock. And the sheep would take up the position
   of the flock again--no longer scattered but following at the Shepherd's
   heel. Great Master, come tonight--call Your sheep to Yourself! Speak to
   us, look upon us--and we will arise and follow You.

   Is He not first, next, because He is the center? We gather to Him. You
   must choose a center before you can mark the circumference. When Israel
   traveled through the wilderness, the first place to pitch upon for an
   encampment was the place where the tabernacle and the ark should rest
   and then the tents were set around it. Jesus is our Center. He must
   therefore be first and we rejoice to hear Him say, "I will go before
   you into Galilee." He will take the first place and we

   will cluster about Him as bees around their queen. Do you always gather
   to the name of Christ, Beloved? If you gather to the name of any
   minister, or any sect, you gather amiss. Our gatherings must be unto
   the Lord Jesus--He must be the center and He alone. Let us take note of
   that.

   Next, He goes before us naturally--because He is the Host. If there is
   to be a feast, the first person to be there is the one who provides
   it--the master or mistress who sits at the head of the table. It would
   never do for the guests to be there first and then for the master to
   come hurrying home, crying, "Excuse me--I quite forgot that you were to
   be here at six o'clock!" Oh no, the host must be first! When Jesus bids
   us come to Him and says He will sup with us and we with Him, He will be
   sure to be first, so as to prepare the feast. He goes before us into
   Galilee.

   But surely, the reason why He is first is this--that He is more ready
   for us than we are for Him. It takes us time to get ready for
   communion, to dress our souls and collect our thoughts. Are you all
   ready for the Lord's Supper tonight? Some of you, perhaps, have come
   carelessly here and yet you are members of the Church and mean to stay
   for the Supper. Beloved, try to come with a prepared heart--for the
   communion will be to you very much what you make it. And if your
   thoughts and desires are not right, what can the outward emblems be to
   you? On our Lord's part all things are ready and He waits to receive
   you and to bless you. Therefore He is first at the appointed meeting
   place.

   I may also add that He is much more eager to have fellowship with you
   than you are to have fellowship with Him. It is a strange thing that it
   should be so but so it is. He, the great Lover of our souls, burns with
   a passionate desire to press His people to His heart. And we--the
   objects of such a matchless love--stand back and reward the ardor of
   His affection with lukewarmness. It must not be so on this occasion. I
   have said to my Lord, "Let me either feast upon You or hunger after
   You." I pray that you may have such a burning thirst for Jesus at this
   hour that you must drink of His cup or pine with thirst for Him.

   IV. The fourth observation is this--THE LORD JESUS REVEALS HIMSELF TO
   HIS PEOPLE. How does the

   text run? "He goes before you into Galilee. There shall you see Him."
   The main object is to see Him. He will go to Galilee on purpose that He
   may reveal Himself to them. My dear Brethren, this is what they needed
   beyond all else. Their sorrow was because they thought Him dead. Their
   joy would be because they saw Him alive.

   Their griefs were multiform but this one consolation would end them
   all. If they could but see Jesus they would look their fears away. What
   have you come here for tonight, children of God? I trust that you can
   answer, "Sir, we would see Jesus." If our Master will come and we shall
   feel His Presence, it will not matter how feebly I speak, or how poor
   the service may be in itself. You will say, "It was good to be there,
   for the Lord drew near to us in all the glory of His love." His
   Presence is what you want. And this is what He readily gives. Jesus is
   very familiar with His people.

   Some worship a Savior who sits enthroned above in the stately dignity
   of indifference. But our Lord is not so. Though reigning in Heaven, He
   is still conversant with His people below. He is a Brother born for
   adversity. Spiritually He communes with us. Do you know what the
   company of Christ is? Are you altogether taken up with doctrines about
   Him, or with ceremonies that concern Him? If so, yours is a poor life.
   The joy of the inner life is to know and to speak with and to dwell
   with the Lord Jesus. Do you understand this? I charge you--be not
   satisfied till you come to personal and intimate fellowship with your
   Lord. Short of this, you are short of the privilege which He sees you
   need--for this is His great promise, "There shall you see Me."

   What is more, this sight of Him is what our Lord effectually bestows.
   Jesus not only exhibits Himself but He opens our eyes that we may enjoy
   the sight. "There shall you see Me." He may be manifest and yet blind
   eyes will not see Him. Blessed Master, come and take the scales away
   and make our hearts capable of spiritual perception! It is not
   everybody that can see God and yet God is everywhere. The eye must
   first be cleansed. Jesus says, "There shall you see Me." And He knows
   how to open our eyes so that we do see Him. Our Lord can make this to
   be the absorbing occupation of His people. "He goes before you into
   Galilee"--and what then? "There shall you see Him."

   Why, they went fishing, did they not? Yes but they were called off from
   that. "There shall you see Him." They took a great haul of fish, did
   they not? Yes, yes, yes. But that was a mere incident--the grand fact
   was that they saw Him. I pray the Lord to make the one occupation of
   our lives the SEEING of HIM. May all the lower lights grow dim. Where
   are the stars at midday? They are all in their places but you only see
   the sun. Where are a thousand things when Christ appears? They are all
   where they should be but you only see Him. May the Lord cause all other
   loves to vanish and Himself, alone, to fill our hearts--so that it may
   be true of us, "There shall you see Him"!

   I have thus far proceeded, crying to the Holy Spirit for help and now
   comes the fifth observation, with which we close.

   V. OUR LORD REMEMBERS HIS OWN PROMISES. It was before He died that He
   said He would go before them into Galilee and now that He has risen
   from the dead, He says, by the mouth of His angel, "There shall you see
   Him, as He said unto you." The rule of Christ's action is His own Word.
   What He has said He will perform. You and I forget His promises but He
   never does. "As He said unto you" is the remembrance of all that He has
   spoken. Why does our Lord remember and repeat what He has so graciously
   spoken? He does so because He spoke with foresight and forethought and
   care.

   We make promises and forget them because we did not consider well the
   matter before we spoke. But if we have thought, calculated, weighed,
   estimated, and come to a deliberate resolve before we speak--then we
   earnestly remember what we resolved upon. No promise of our Lord Jesus
   has been spoken in haste to be repented of afterwards. Infinite wisdom
   directs infinite love. And when infinite love takes the pen to write a
   promise, infallible wisdom dictates every syllable.

   Jesus does not forget, because He spoke the promise with His whole
   heart. It is not every tongue that represents a heart at all. But even
   though true people, we say many things which we mean but there is no
   depth of feeling, no potent emotion, no stirring of the heart's center.
   Our Lord, when He said, "You shall be scattered. But after that I am
   risen, I will go before you into Galilee," spoke with a heavy heart,
   with many a melting sigh. And His whole soul went with the promise
   which closed the mournful scene. He has purchased what He
   promised--purchased it with His blood--and therefore He speaks most
   solemnly and with His whole heart. There is no trifling on Christ's
   part with one to whom He makes a promise--and therefore He never
   forgets.

   And once more--His honor is bound up with every promise. If He had said
   that He would go to Galilee and He had not gone, His disciples would
   have felt that He had made a mistake, or that He had failed. Brethren,
   if Christ's promises were to fail, what should we think of them? But He
   will never jeopardize His faithfulness and veracity--

   "As well might He His being quit, As break His promise or forget." Let
   the words of man be blown away like the chaff. But the words of Jesus
   must stand--for He will not tarnish His Truth--which is one of the
   choicest of His crown jewels.

   I want you to turn over this thought in your quietude. Jesus remembers
   all that He has spoken. Let not our hearts forget. Go to Him with His
   Covenant bonds and gracious promises--He will recognize His own
   signature. He will honor His own promises to the utmost and none that
   trust in Him shall complain of His having exaggerated.

   I have done when I have said just this--I am very anxious that at this
   time we should come into real fellowship with Christ at the table.
   Jesus, You have made us hunger after You--will You not feed us? You
   have made us thirst after You--will You not supply that thirst? Do You
   think that our Beloved means to tantalize us? Our hunger is such that
   it would break through stone walls--shall we find His heart hard as a
   stone wall? No. He will clear the way and we on our part will burst
   through all obstacles to come to Him.

   "But," says one, "how can I come to Him? Poor unknown, unworthy one
   that I am?" Such were the disciples at the lake. They were
   fishermen--and when He came to them they had been toiling all night.
   Are you working for Him? Then He will come to you. Expect Him now.
   "Ah," says one, "I have been working without success"--you are a poor
   minister whose congregation is falling off, whose Church is not
   increased by conversions--you have toiled all the night and taken
   nothing. Or you are a Sunday school teacher who cannot see her girls
   converted. Or a Brother who mourns that his boys are not coming to
   Christ.

   Well I see who you are. You are just the sort of people that Jesus came
   to--for they had toiled all night in vain. Are you hungry? Jesus cries,
   "Children, have you any meat?" He comes to you and enquires about your
   hunger--while on the shore He has a fire of coals and fish and bread
   laid thereon. "Come and dine," says He. The table is spread. Come to
   Himself! He is your food, your hope, your joy, your Heaven. Come to
   Him--give Him no rest till He reveals Himself to you and you know for
   sure that it is your Lord who embraces you. So may He do, to each of us
   just now, for His sweet love's sake! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

                       The Evidence of Our Lord's Wounds

   A Sermon

   (No. 2061)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At [10]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   On Lord's-day Evening, December 2nd, 1877.

   "Then said he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands;
   and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not
   faithless, but believing."'John 20:27.

   Among us at this day we have many persons who are like Thomas'dubious,
   demanding signs and tokens, suspicious, and ofttimes sad. I am not sure
   that there is not a slight touch of Thomas in most of us. There are
   times and seasons when the strong man fails, and when the firm believer
   has to pause a while, and say, "Is it so?" It may be that our
   meditation upon the text before us may be of service to those who are
   touched with the malady which afflicted Thomas.

   Notice, before we proceed to our subject in full, that Thomas asked of
   our Lord what he ought not to have asked. He wanted to put our risen
   Lord to tests which were scarcely reverent to his sacred person. Admire
   his Master's patience with him. He does not say, "If he does not choose
   to believe he may continue to suffer for his unbelief." But no; he
   fixes his eye upon the doubter, and addresses himself specially to him;
   yet not in words of reproach or anger. Jesus could bear with Thomas,
   though Thomas had been a long time with him, and had not known him. To
   put his finger into the print of the nails, and thrust his hand into
   his side, was much more than any disciple had a right to ask of his
   divine Master; and yet see the condescension of Jesus! Rather than
   Thomas should suffer from unbelief, Christ will let him take great
   liberties. Our Lord does not always act towards us according to his own
   dignity, but according to our necessity; and if we really are so weak
   that nothing will do but thrusting a hand into his side, he will let us
   do it. Nor do I wonder at this: if, for our sakes, he suffered a spear
   to be thrust there, he may well permit a hand to follow.

   Observe that Thomas was at once convinced. He said: "My Lord, and my
   God." This shows our Master's wisdom, that he indulged him with such
   familiarity, because he knew that, though the demand was presumptuous,
   yet the act would work for his good. Our Lord sometimes wisely
   refuses'saying, "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended"; but at other
   times, he wisely grants, because, though it be too much for us to ask,
   yet he thinks it wise to give.

   The subject for our present meditation is just this: the cure of
   doubts. Thomas was permitted to put his finger into the print of the
   nails for the curing of his doubts. Perhaps you and I wish that we
   could do something like it. Oh, if our Lord Jesus would appear to me
   for once, and I might thrust my hand into his side; or, if I might for
   once see him, or speak with him, how confirmed should I be! No doubt
   that thought has arisen in the minds of many. We shall not have such
   proofs, my brethren, but we shall have something near akin, to them,
   which will answer the same purpose.

   I. The first head of my discourse shall be this: CRAVE NO SIGNS. If
   such signs be possible, crave them not. If there be dreams, visions,
   voices, ask not for them.

   Crave not wonders, first, because it is dishonouring to the sacred Word
   to ask for them. You believe this Bible to be an inspired volume'the
   Book of God. The apostle Peter calls it "A more sure word of prophecy;
   whereunto ye do well that ye take heed." Are you not satisfied with
   that? When a person, in whose veracity you have the utmost confidence,
   bears testimony to this or that, if you straightway reply, "I would be
   glad of further evidence," you are slighting your friend, and casting
   unjust suspicion upon him. Will you cast suspicion upon the Holy Ghost,
   who, by this word, bears witness unto Christ? Oh, no! let us be content
   with his witness. Let us not wish to see, but remain satisfied to
   believe. If there be difficulties in believing, is it not natural there
   should be, when he that believes is finite, and the things to be
   believed are, in themselves, infinite? Let us accept the difficulties
   as being in themselves, in some measure, proofs of the correctness of
   our position, as inevitable attendants of heavenly mysteries, when they
   are looked at by such poor minds as ours. Let us believe the Word, and
   crave no signs.

   Crave no signs, because it is unreasonable that we should desire more
   than we have already. The testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, contained
   in the Word, should alone suffice us. Beside that, we have the
   testimony of saints and martyrs, who have gone before us, dying
   triumphant in the faith. We have the testimony of many still among us,
   who tell us that these things are so. In part, we have the testimony of
   our own conscience, of our own conversion, of our own after-experience,
   and this is convincing testimony. Let us be satisfied with it. Thomas
   ought to have been content with the testimony of Mary Magdalene, and
   the other disciples, but he was not. We ought to trust our brethren's
   word. Let us not be unreasonable in craving after proofs when already
   proofs are afforded us without stint.

   Crave no signs, because it may be you will be presumptuous in so doing.
   Who are you, to set God a sign? What is it he is to do before you will
   believe in him? Suppose he does not choose to do it, are you therefore
   arrogantly to say, "I refuse to believe unless the Lord will do my
   bidding"? Do you imagine that any angel would demean himself to pay
   attention to you, who set yourself up to make demands of the Most High?
   Assuredly not. It is presumption which dares to ask of God anything
   more than the testimony of himself which he chooses to grant us in his
   Word

   It is, moreover, damaging to ourselves to crave signs. Jesus says,
   "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Thomas
   had his sign, and he believed; and so far so good, but he missed a
   blessing peculiar to those who have not seen, and yet have believed. Do
   not, therefore, rob yourselves of the special favour which lights on
   those who, with no evidence but the witness of the Spirit of God, are
   prepared at once to believe in the Lord Jesus unto eternal life.

   Again, crave no signs, for this craving is highly perilous. Translated
   according to many, and I think translated correctly, our Saviour said,
   "Reach hither thy finger, and put it into the print of the nails; and
   become not faithless, but believing," intending to indicate that
   Thomas, by degrees, would become faithless. His faith had grown to be
   so little that, if he continued insisting upon this and that, as a sign
   or evidence, that faith of his would get down to the very lowest; yea,
   he would have no faith left. "Become not faithless, but believing."
   Dear friends, if you began to seek signs, and if you were to see them,
   do you know what would happen? Why, you would want more; and when you
   had these, you would demand still more. Those who live by their
   feelings judge of the truth of God by their own condition. When they
   have happy feelings, then they believe; but if their spirits sink, if
   the weather happens to be a little damp, or if their constitution
   happens to be a little disordered, down go their spirits, and,
   straightway, down goes their faith. He that lives by a faith which does
   not rest on feeling, but is built upon the Word of the Lord, will
   remain fixed and steadfast as the mount of God; but he that craves for
   this thing and that thing, as a token for good at the hand of the Lord,
   stands in danger of perishing from want of faith. He shall not perish,
   if he has even a grain of living faith, for God will deliver him from
   the temptation; but the temptation is a very trying one to faith.

   Crave, therefore, no sign. If you read a story of a person who saw a
   vision, or it you hear another declare that a voice spake to
   him'believe those things, or not, as you like; but do not desire them
   for yourself. These wonders may, or may not, be freaks of the
   imagination. I will not judge; but we must not rely upon them, for we
   are not to walk by sight, but by faith. Rely not upon anything that can
   be seen of the eyes, or heard of the ears; but simply trust him whom we
   know to be the Christ of God, the Rock of our salvation.

   II. Secondly, when you want comfort, crave no sign, but TURN TO THE
   WOUNDS OF OUR LORD. You see what Thomas did. He wanted faith, and he
   looked for it to Jesus wounded. He says nothing about Christ's head
   crowned with glory. He does not say that he must see him "gird about
   the paps with a golden girdle." Thomas, even in his unbelief, is wise;
   he turns to his Lord's wounds for comfort. Whenever your unbelief
   prevails, follow in this respect the conduct of Thomas, and turn your
   eyes straightway to the wounds of Jesus. These are the founts of
   never-failing consolation, from which, if a man doth once drink, he
   shall forget his misery, and remember his sorrow no more. Turn to the
   Lord's wounds; and if you do, what will you see?

   First, you will see the tokens of your Master's love. O Lord Jesus,
   what are those wounds in thy side, and in thy hands? He answers, "These
   I endured when suffering for thee. How can I forget thee? I have graven
   thee upon the palms of my hands. How can I ever fail to remember thee?
   On my very heart the spear has written thy name." Look at Jesus, dead,
   buried, risen, and then say, "He loved me, and gave himself for me"!
   There is no restorative for a sinking faith like a sight of the wounded
   Saviour. Look, soul, and live by the proofs of his death! Come and put
   thy finger, by faith, into the print of the nails, and these wounds
   shall heal thee of unbelief. The wounds of our Lord are the tokens of
   his love.

   They are, again, the seals of his death, especially that wound in his
   side. He must have died; for "one of the soldiers, with a spear,
   pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he
   that saw it bare witness." The Son of God did assuredly die. God, who
   made the heavens and the earth, took to himself our nature, and in one
   wondrous person he was both God and man; and lo! this wondrous Son of
   God bore sufferings unutterable, and consummated all by his death. This
   is our comfort, for if he died in our stead, then we shall not die for
   our sins; our transgression is put away, and our iniquity is pardoned.
   If the sacrifice had never been slain we might despair; but since the
   spear-wound proves that the great Sacrifice really died, despair is
   slain, hope revives, and confidence rejoices.

   The wounds of Jesus, next, are the marks of identity. By these we
   identify his blessed person after his resurrection. The very Christ
   that died has risen again. There is no illusion: there could be no
   mistake. It is not somebody else foisted upon us in his place; but
   Jesus who died has left the dead, for there are the marks of the
   crucifixion in his hands and in his feet, and there is the spear-thrust
   still. It is Jesus: this same Jesus. This is a matter of great comfort
   to a Christian'this indisputably proven doctrine of the resurrection of
   our Lord. It is the keystone of the gospel arch. Take that away, or
   doubt it, and there remains nothing to console you. But because Jesus
   died and in the selfsame person rose again, and ever lives, therefore
   does our heart sweetly rest, believing that "them also which sleep in
   Jesus will God bring with him"; and also that the whole of the work of
   Jesus is true, is completed, and is accepted of God.

   Again, those wounds, those scars of our Lord, were the memorials of his
   love to his people. They set forth his love so that his chosen can see
   the tokens; but they are also memorials to himself. He condescendingly
   bears these as his reminders. In heaven, at this moment, upon the
   person of our blessed Lord, there are the scars of his crucifixion.
   Centuries have gone by, and yet he looks like a Lamb that has been
   slain. Our first glance will assure us that this is he of whom they
   said, "Crucify him; crucify him." Steadily look with the eyes of your
   faith into the glory, and see your Master's wounds, and say within
   yourself, "He has compassion upon us still: he bears the marks of his
   passion." Look up, poor sufferer! Jesus knows what physical pain means.
   Look up, poor depressed one! he knows what a broken heart means. Canst
   thou not perceive this? Those prints upon his hands, these sacred
   stigmata, declare that he has not forgotten what he underwent for us,
   but still has a fellow-feeling for us.

   Once again, these wounds may comfort us because in heaven they are,
   before God and the holy angels, the perpetual ensigns of his finished
   work. That passion of his can never be repeated, and never needs to be:
   "After he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, he sat down on
   the right hand of God." But the memorials are always being presented
   before the infinite mind of God. Those memorials are, in part, the
   wounds in our Lord's blessed person. Glorified spirits can never cease
   to sing, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain"; for every time they gaze
   upon him they perceive his scars. How resplendent shine the
   nail-prints! No jewels that ever gemmed a king can look one-half so
   lustrous as these. Though he be God over all blessed for ever, yet to
   us, at least, his brightest splendour comes from his death.

   My hearer, whensoever thy soul is clouded, turn thou to these wounds
   which shine like a constellation of five bright stars. Look not to
   thine own wounds, nor to thine own pains, or sins, or prayers, or
   tears, but remember that "with his stripes we are healed." Gaze, then;
   intently gaze, upon thy Redeemer's wounds it thou wouldest find
   comfort.

   III. This brings me to my third point, whenever faith is staggered at
   all, SEEK SUCH HELPS FOR YOUR FAITH AS YOU MAY. Though we cannot
   literally put our finger into the print of the nails, and may not wish
   to do so, yet let us use such modes of recognition as we do possess.
   Let us put these to their utmost use; and we shall no longer desire to
   put our hand into the Saviour's side. We shall be perfectly satisfied
   without that. Ye that are troubled with doubts and fears, I give you
   these recommendations.

   First, if you would have your faith made vivid and strong, study much
   the story of your Saviour's death. Read it: read it: read it: read it.
   "Tolle: lege," said the voice to Augustine, "Take it: read it." So say
   I. Take the four evangelists; take the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah;
   take the twenty-second psalm; take all other parts of Scripture that
   relate to our suffering Substitute, and read them by day and by night,
   till you familiarize yourself with the whole story of his griefs and
   sin-hearing. Keep your mind intently fixed upon it; not sometimes, but
   continually. Crux lux: the cross is light. Thou shalt see it by its own
   light. The study of the narrative, if thou pray the Holy Ghost to
   enlighten thee, will beget faith in thee; and thou wilt, by its means,
   be very greatly helped, till, at last, thou wilt say, "I cannot doubt.
   The truth of the atonement is impressed upon my memory, my heart, my
   understanding. The record has convinced me."

   Next, if this suffice not, frequently contemplate the sufferings of
   Jesus. I mean by that, when you have read the story, sit down, and try
   and picture it. Let your mind conceive it as passing before you. Put
   yourself into the position of the apostles who saw him die. No
   employment will so greatly strengthen faith, and certainly none will be
   more enjoyable!

   "Sweet the moments, rich in blessing,

   which before the cross I spend,

   Life and health and peace possessing

   From the sinner's dying Friend."

   An hour would be grandly spent if occupied in turning over each little
   detail, item, and incident in the marvellous death by which you are
   redeemed from death and hell. You will be surprised to find how this
   familiarizing of yourself with it, by the help of the Holy Spirit, will
   make it as vivid to you as if you saw it; and it will have a better
   effect upon your mind than the sight of it would have done; for
   probably the actual sight would have passed away from your mind, and
   have been forgotten, while the contemplation of the sorrowful scene
   will sink deep into your soul, and leave eternal lines! You will do
   well, first, to read and know the narrative, and then to contemplate it
   carefully and earnestly'I mean, not to think of it for a minute or two
   at chance times, but to take an hour or two that you can specially set
   apart on purpose to consider the story of your Saviour's death. I am
   persuaded, if you do this, it will be more helpful to you than putting
   his finger into the print of the nails was to Thomas.

   What next? why, dear friends, the Lord has a way of giving his people
   wonderful realizations. I hope I shall not say anything incorrect when
   I remark that there are times with us when the Lord is present with us,
   and we are strongly impressed with that fact, and therefore we act
   under a sense of that presence as if the divine glory were actually
   visible. Do you know what it is to write a letter to a friend feeling
   as if the Lord Jesus were looking over your shoulder? I know what it is
   at times to stand here and preach, and feel my Lord so near me that if
   I had literally seen him it would not have surprised me. Have you
   never, in the watches of the night, lain quiet when there was no sound
   but the ticking of the watch, and thought of your Lord till, though you
   knew there was no form before you, you were just as certain that he was
   there as if you could see his sorrowful countenance? In quiet places
   all alone'you scarcely like to tell the story'in the lone wood, and in
   the upper chamber'you have said, "If he spake I should not be more
   certain of his presence; and if he smiled upon me I should not be surer
   of his love." These realizations have sometimes been so joyfully
   overwhelming that for years you have been lifted by them beyond all
   power of doubt. These holy summer days banish the frosts of the soul.
   Whenever a doubt is suggested to me about the existence of my Lord and
   Master, I feel that I can laugh the tempter to scorn, for I have seen
   him, and spoken with him. Not with these eyes, but with the eyes of my
   inner life, I have beheld my Lord, and communed with him. Wonder not
   that I am not among the crew of the black, piratical ship of "Modern
   Thought."

   Nor is it merely in seasons of enjoyment that we get these helps, but
   in times of deep distress. Prostrate with pain, unable to enjoy any
   comfort, unable even to sleep, I have seen the soul of the believer as
   happy as if all sounds were marriage peals. Some of us know what it is
   to be right gleesome, glad, and joyous in hours of fierce trial,
   because Christ has been so near. In times of losses and bereavements,
   when the sorrow stung you to the quick, and you thought before it came,
   that you never could bear it, yet have you been so sustained by a sight
   of the sacred head once wounded, and by fellowship with him in his
   sufferings, that you have said, "What are my griefs compared with his?"
   You have forgotten your sorrows and sung for joy of heart, as those
   that make merry. If you have been helped in this way, it will have all
   the effect upon you that ever could have come of putting your finger
   into the print of the nails. If, perchance, you have been given up to
   die, and have, mentally, gone through the whole process of dying,
   expecting soon to stand before the bar of God, and have been happy, and
   even exultant, then you could not doubt the reality of a religion that
   bore you up above the surging billows. Now that you are again restored
   to life for a little longer time, the recollection of your buoyant
   spirits, in what you thought to be your dying hours, will answer all
   the purpose to you, I think, of putting your finger into the
   nail-prints.

   Sometimes the strengthening influence may be afforded under the stress
   of temptation. If ever, young man, you have had a strong temptation
   hurling itself against you, and your feet have almost gone'ay, let me
   not say "young man"; but if ever a man or a woman of any age has had to
   cry out, "God, help me: how shall I escape out of this?" and you have
   turned your eyes and seen your Lord and beheld his wounds; and if you
   have felt at that moment that the temptation had lost all power, you
   have had a seal from the Lord, and your faith has been confirmed. If at
   the sight of your Lord you have exclaimed, in presence of the
   temptation, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"
   after that, you have had the best proof of your Redeemer's power to
   save. What better or more practical proof could you desire?

   In these times, when the foundations of our faith are constantly being
   undermined, one is sometimes driven to say to himself, "Suppose it is
   not true." As I stood, the other night, beneath the sky, and watched
   the stars, I felt my heart going up to the great Maker with all the
   love that I was capable of. I said to myself, "What made me love God as
   I know I do? What made me feel an anxiety to be like him in purity?
   Whatever made me long to obey my God cannot be a lie." I know that it
   was the love of Jesus for me that changed my heart, and made me, though
   once careless and indifferent to him, now to pant with strong desires
   to honour him. What has done this? Not a lie, surely. A truth, then,
   has done it. I know it by its fruits. If this Bible were to turn out
   untrue, and if I died and went before my Maker, could I not say to him,
   "I believed great things of thee, great God; if it be not so, yet did I
   honour thee by the faith I had concerning thy wondrous goodness, and
   thy power to forgive"? and I would cast myself upon his mercy without
   fear. But we do not entertain such doubts; for those dear wounds
   continually prove the truth of the gospel, and the truth of our
   salvation by it. Incarnate Deity is a thought that was never invented
   by poet's mind, nor reasoned out by philosopher's skill. Incarnate
   Deity, the notion of the God that lived, and bled, and died in human
   form, instead of guilty man, it is itself its own best witness. The
   wounds are the infallible witness of the gospel of Christ.

   Have you not felt those wounds very powerful to you in the from of
   assistance in time of duty? You said, "I cannot do it, it is too hard
   for me." You looked to Jesus wounded, and you could do anything. A
   sight of the bleeding Christ has often filled us with enthusiasm, and
   so with power: it has rendered us mighty with the omnipotence of God.
   Look at the church of Christ in all ages. Kings and princes did not
   know what to do with her. They vowed that they would destroy her. Their
   persecuting edicts went forth, and they put to death thousands upon
   thousands of the followers of Christ. But what happened? The death of
   Jesus made men willing to die for him. No pain, no torture, could keep
   back the believing host. They loved Jesus so that though their leaders
   fell by bloody deaths, another rank came on, and yet another, and
   another, till despots saw that neither dungeon, nor rack, nor fire
   could stop the march of the army of Christ. It is so now. Christ's
   wounds pour life into the church by transfusion: the life-blood of the
   church of God is from Jesus' wounds. Let us know its power and feel it
   working within us to will and to do of his good pleasure.

   And as for those who do not trust him, what shall I say? The Lord help
   you to do so at once; for as long as you do not trust him, you are
   under an awful curse, for it is written, "If any man love not the Lord
   Jesus, let him be Anathema Maranatha"'cursed at the coming of the Lord.
   May it not be so with you! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'John 20:18-31.

   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"'785, 937, 282.

   LETTER FROM MR. SPURGEON

   BELOVED READERS,'Thanks be unto God for thirty-four volumes of sermons
   thus completed. May they continue to be blest of God long after the
   preacher and his present readers have entered into rest. The speaker is
   still laid aside by weakness, but the word of the Lord never loses its
   power. His voice can only be heard of a few thousands, but the printed
   page will talk to multitudes. Let us pray that the still small voice of
   the Holy Spirit may sound in the heart of readers for many generations
   to come.

   A book may enclose the spikenard of a truth, which, when forgotten, it
   shall give back to men with all its first perfume. The generation which
   now is may treat the doctrines of grace as if they were worthless, but
   these priceless gems will yet be prized by a more enlightened age, and
   judged to be of infinitely more value than all the tinsel which amuses
   our contemporaries. I am content to preach today to a comparatively
   small circle, since I believe that the truths I deliver are revealed of
   God for the salvation of multitudes innumerable, and that in some
   future day the Lord whom I serve will vindicate every faithful
   testifier of them from the reproach of men. At the same time, I praise
   God that even so many have been found faithful to the ancient faith of
   our fathers. Grace be with them all.

   At the close of the year I salute my brethren, and entreat a place in
   their daily prayers. Ask that I may be allowed to return to my pulpit
   in health, and may see the cause of our Lord prospering everywhere.

   Yours in Christ Jesus,

   C. H. SPURGEON.

   Mentone, Dec. 20th, 1888.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [11]11:31   [12]12:5   [13]24:5-8

   Exodus

   [14]6:1   [15]6:9

   Leviticus

   [16]19:28

   Joshua

   [17]1:10   [18]1:11   [19]17:18

   1 Samuel

   [20]30:20

   2 Samuel

   [21]6:20-22

   Job

   [22]42:5   [23]42:6

   Psalms

   [24]4:4   [25]4:5   [26]48:8   [27]86:6   [28]86:7   [29]119:132
   [30]119:165

   Proverbs

   [31]4:25   [32]24:30-32

   Isaiah

   [33]1:20   [34]45:22   [35]46:1-4

   Jeremiah

   [36]31:34   [37]32:26   [38]32:27   [39]32:41   [40]47:5

   Ezekiel

   [41]11:16

   Daniel

   [42]12:2

   Hosea

   [43]1:7   [44]13:14

   Micah

   [45]7:18-19

   Matthew

   [46]10:30   [47]13:22   [48]16:13-17   [49]22:10   [50]22:11-13
   [51]27:43   [52]27:50-53

   Mark

   [53]1:40-42   [54]5:25   [55]14:27   [56]14:28   [57]16:7

   Luke

   [58]7:11-17   [59]8:43   [60]8:44   [61]22:19   [62]22:32
   [63]22:60-62   [64]23:11

   John

   [65]1:50   [66]5:21   [67]13:23-26   [68]20:27

   Acts

   [69]5:19   [70]5:20   [71]8:4   [72]8:5   [73]8:35   [74]13:46-48
   [75]22:17-21   [76]25:18   [77]25:19

   Romans

   [78]5:16   [79]5:20   [80]8:10   [81]8:23

   2 Thessalonians

   [82]3:5

   Titus

   [83]3:3-8

   Hebrews

   [84]4:12   [85]10:19-20   [86]11:24-26   [87]12:1   [88]12:2
   [89]13:15

   1 Peter

   [90]1:7

   1 John

   [91]5:13

   Revelation

   [92]2:12   [93]2:13   [94]12:11   [95]16:9   [96]20:5   [97]20:6
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [98]11:31   [99]24:5-8

   Exodus

   [100]6:9

   Joshua

   [101]1:10-11   [102]17:18

   1 Samuel

   [103]30:20

   2 Samuel

   [104]6:20-22

   Job

   [105]42:5-6

   Psalms

   [106]4:4-5   [107]48:8   [108]86:6-7   [109]119:165

   Proverbs

   [110]4:25   [111]24:30-32

   Isaiah

   [112]1:20   [113]46:1-4

   Jeremiah

   [114]31:34   [115]32:26-27   [116]32:41   [117]47:5

   Ezekiel

   [118]11:16

   Hosea

   [119]1:7   [120]13:14

   Matthew

   [121]10:30   [122]13:22   [123]16:13-17   [124]22:10   [125]22:11-13
   [126]27:43   [127]27:50-53

   Mark

   [128]1:40-42   [129]16:7

   Luke

   [130]7:11-17   [131]8:43-44   [132]22:19   [133]22:32   [134]22:60-62
   [135]23:11

   John

   [136]1:50   [137]13:23-26   [138]20:27

   Acts

   [139]5:19-20   [140]8:4-5   [141]13:46-48   [142]25:18-19

   Romans

   [143]5:20

   2 Thessalonians

   [144]3:5

   Titus

   [145]3:3-8

   Hebrews

   [146]4:12   [147]10:19-20   [148]11:24-26   [149]12:1-2   [150]13:15

   1 Peter

   [151]1:7

   1 John

   [152]5:13

   Revelation

   [153]2:12-13   [154]12:11   [155]16:9
     __________________________________________________________________

            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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