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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 59: 1913
   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
     __________________________________________________________________

The Divine Discipline

   (No. 3335)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 9,
   1867.

   "As am eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad
   her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings: so the Lord alone did
   lead him, and there was no strange god with him." Deuteronomy 32:11,12.

   MOSES in this Chapter is speaking concerning Israel in the wilderness.
   When the great host came out of Egypt, they were, through the debasing
   influences of slavery--which are not easily or quickly shaken off--not
   much better than a mere mob. They were not at all fitted to march at
   once to take possession of Canaan, nor to take part in the compacts of
   organized social life. Therefore God, instead of taking them by the
   short way along which they might have passed in a very few days,
   ordained it so in His Providence that they should wander about for 40
   years in the wilderness--partly, it is true, as a punishment for their
   unbelief, but also in order that the nation might be trained and
   educated for its future destiny--made as fit as it could be, to be the
   custodian of the oracles of the Truths of God and to be the receiver of
   the Revelation which God intended to give to men.

   If you will read carefully over the history of the children of Israel
   in the wilderness, I think you will see that the practical training
   which God adopted was--if they had been right-minded men--splendidly
   adapted to bring them to the very highest state of spiritual life. In
   some respects it was weak through their flesh, but the method, itself,
   was superlatively excellent. Here was a people taken away from the
   multitude of gods which they had been known to see on every hand in
   Egypt and they were taught to reverence an unseen God for whom they had
   no symbol whatever for some time. And afterwards, when symbolical
   worship in some form was ordained, yet there was still so little of
   symbol that Moses could say, "They saw no similitude." They were
   trained to worship a spiritualGod--in spirit and in truth. They never
   saw Him, but every morning they had the best testimonies of His
   existence, for round about the camp lay the manna like hoarfrost, or
   dew, upon the ground! Their feet grew not weary, neither did their
   garments become old all those years, and thus about their very clothes
   on their bodies and before them on their tables, they had constant
   proofs of the great God existing and caring for the sons of men. The
   whole of their training, while it educated and developed their patience
   and their faith, had also the high purpose of teaching them gratitude
   and to bind them by the cords of love and the bands of a man to the
   service of God. It was not because the training was not wise in the
   highest degree, but because they were children that were corrupters
   and, like ourselves, an evil and stiff-necked generation, that they did
   not learn even when God, Himself, became their Teacher.

   Now in drawing a parallel between the children of Israel and ourselves,
   we shall invite you to notice, first, in the text--the Divine
   Instructor,' 'the Lord alone did lead them." And then the method of
   instruction illustrated--they were trained as an eagle trains the
   eaglet for their flight. First, then, we have--

   I. A DIVINE INSTRUCTOR.

   The Israelites had for their Guide, Instructor and Tutor, in order to
   prepare them for Canaan, none other than Jehovah, Himself! He might
   employ Moses and Aaron and He did also make use of those marvelous
   picture books, if I may so call them, of sacrifice, type and metaphor,
   but still, God, Himself, was their Guide and their Instructor. And it
   is so with us. The Holy Spirit is the teacher of the Christian Church.
   Although He uses this Book, of which we can never speak too highly.
   Although He still uses the ministry of the Word, for which we are
   thankful as for a candlestick which we trust may never be taken out of
   its place, still, our true Teacher is God the Holy Spirit. He instructs
   us in the Truths of God and, meanwhile, it is also God, who, in the
   rulings and guiding of Providence, is our Instructor if we will but
   learn. He is

   teaching us, sometimes by sweet mercies and at other times by bitter
   afflictions, instructing us from our cradles to our graves if we will
   but open our eyes to see and our ears to hear the lessons which He
   writes and speaks. We, alas, are often as the horse and as the mule
   which have no understanding--and will not be taught by the Providential
   teachings, but still we have God to be our Teacher--and it is none
   other than our heavenly Father who is daily training us for the skies.
   If we are, indeed, His children and can say, "Our Father, which are in
   Heaven," we may also go to Him as our Teacher, believing He will,
   notwithstanding all our folly, make us "meet to be partakers of the
   inheritance of the saints in light."

   The text speaks of "the Lord alone." Brothers and Sisters, it is well
   for us that in Providence we are led by "the Lord alone." There is an
   over-ruling hand after all, notwithstanding our follies and our
   willfulness, so that God's purposes are ultimately fulfilled. But I
   wish this were more true to our consciousness--that we are led by "the
   Lord alone." I mean that we waited upon Him at every step of life. I am
   persuaded that the holiest of characters take more matters to God than
   you and I are accustomed to do. I mean they not only consult Him, as we
   do, upon certain great and critical occasions, but those saints who
   live nearest to Christ, go to Him about little matters, thinking
   nothing to be too trifling to speak into the ear of Christ.

   Some things about which they will not even consult their kindest and
   wisest human friends will be matters of consultation between them and
   their Savior. Oh, what mistakes we would escape, what disasters we
   would avoid, if "the Lord alone" did guide us! And if we watched the
   signs of His hands in guiding us, if our eyes were to Him as the eyes
   of the handmaidens are to their mistress, anxious to know the Lord's
   will and always saying to our own self-love, "Down, down, busy will!
   Down proud spirit! What would You have me do, my Master, for Your will
   shall be my will and my heart shall always give up its fondest wish
   when once I understand what Your will is concerning me." Beloved, I am
   afraid that some strange god is often with us, even with us who are the
   people of God! We are united to God and He will gladly teach us--and
   from Him, alone, should we learn! But oftentimes we harbor idolatrous
   thoughts in our heart. All selfishness is idolatry! All repining
   against the Providence of God has in it the element of rebellion
   against the Most High! If I love my own will and if I desire my own way
   in preference to God's way, I have made a god of my own wisdom, or my
   own affection--and I have not been true in my loyalty to the only
   living and true God, even Jehovah! Let us search, look and see if there
   is not some strange god with us. It may be hidden away, perhaps, and we
   may scarcely know it. It may be hidden, too, in that very part of us
   where our dearest affections dwell. Some Rachel may be sitting in the
   tent on the camel furniture under which the false gods are concealed!
   Let us, therefore, make a thorough search and then invite the Great
   King, Himself, to aid us. "Search me, O God, try me, and know my ways,
   and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way
   everlasting."

   The great Truth of God which I want to bring forward, if I can, is
   this--that God in His Providence and in Grace, as far as we have been
   made willing to learn of Him, is educating us for something higher than
   this world! This world is the nature in which we dwell. Sometimes we
   who love the Lord mount up from it with wings as eagles, but we do not
   stay on the wing. We drop again--we cleave to earth. 'Tis our mother
   and it seems as though we can never rise permanently above our kinship
   to it. Very powerful is it in its attraction over us. Down we go again.
   We have not yet learned to keep up yonder where the atmosphere is clear
   and where the smoke of the world's cares will not reach us. But God is
   educating us for the skies! The meaning of these trials of ours, the
   interpretation of our sorrows is this--God is preparing us for another
   state, making us fit to dwell with angels and archangels and the
   spirits of the just made perfect! If this earth were all, then, your
   teachers at school, or your tutors when you passed through college,
   might have sufficed. But this world is but the vestibule to the next
   and if you know, as well as man can teach you, how to play your part
   here with a view only to secular advancement, you are not yet educated
   at all in the highest sense! God Himself must teach and train you, that
   you may be fit to sit among the princes of the royal blood before His
   Throne and to have communion with those celestial spirits who--

   " With songs and choral symphonies Day without night circle His throne
   rejoicing."

   God is teaching you! God alone can do it and He will do it--but take
   care that you put away all strange gods and give yourselves up wholly
   to His guidance, submitting your will and your affections and all parts
   of your spirit and nature to His teaching so that you may be found
   fully ready when He shall say, "Come up here to dwell with Me forever."
   Now, passing from that, we shall notice very briefly, indeed--

   II. THE METHODS OF THE DIVINE INSTRUCTION.

   These methods of Divine instruction are given to us under the very
   poetical picture of the eagle training its young ones for flight. God,
   to accommodate Himself to our poor understandings, sometimes compares
   Himself to a father with children. At other times to a mother with her
   little ones. Sometimes even to an animal. In this case, even to a bird
   of prey, so that we may but learn no depths of condescension are too
   great for the Great Teacher! He compares Himself here, then, to the
   eagle. I suppose that Moses was well acquainted with the eagle's
   natural habits. He describes it, first of all, as stirring up its nest,
   as though the young birds were unwilling to stir from their pleasant
   home. Having from the time of their birth been quiet and happy there,
   they had no anxiety whatever to try the blue unfathomable oceans of the
   air! They had no wish to leave the rocky refuge where they had been
   reared. They feared, perhaps, lest they might fall over the precipices
   and be dashed in pieces. Therefore is it said, "The eagle stirs up her
   nest." She makes it uncomfortable for the little ones so that they may
   be willing to leave it. And that which would have been obnoxious and
   burdensome to them, they may come even to desire, namely, to be out of
   the nest! Someone has quaintly said that the eagle puts thorns into the
   nest which prick the fledglings so that they are anxious to get away!

   Certain it is that God does thus with those He would train for the
   skies. He stirs up their nest. Cannot some of you recollect times when
   your nests were stirred by Providential dealings while you were in sin?
   All things went well with you for a season, but you forgot God. And His
   Son, Jesus, had no attractions for you. But suddenly the child sickened
   or the wife was smitten with death, or trade separated from you, or
   you, yourselves, were ill, or there was a famine in the land. Then it
   was, when you were in need, your nest being thoroughly stirred up, that
   you said, "I will arise and go unto my Father." The land of Goshen was
   like a nest to the Israelites. They had no desire to come out of it,
   but God stirred them up by means of Pharaoh, who kept them in heavy
   bondage, put them to making bricks and then to making bricks without
   straw. And then he slew their male children. In all sorts of ways they
   were made to cry out under the bitter yoke. We know that they loved
   that nest, for they often longed to be back in it. They talked of the
   leeks, the garlic, the onions and the cucumbers which they did eat when
   they were in Egypt, so that the nest seems to have been a tolerably
   downy one to them at one time! But God so stirred it up that they
   longed to be away--and even the howling wilderness seemed a paradise
   compared with the house of bondage. So was it with you! You found that
   the world was not what it seemed to be. Troubles increased,
   Providential afflictions trod on each other's heels and then you turned
   to your God and remembered your sins. And so He stirred up your nest by
   inward trouble under conviction of sin. I know my soul's nest was once
   very soft. I thought I had done no great evil, that I had kept God's
   Commandments from my youth up. But when conviction of sin came, then I
   discovered my heart to be deceitful above all things and desperately
   wicked! Then my sins, like so many daggers, were at my heart, My soul
   was torn in two--I could say with gracious George Herbert--

   "My thoughts are all a case of knives, Wounding my heart"

   There was no rest, no peace, no joy, no comfort to be found. Well, that
   was God stirring up the nest! If there are any of you in that condition
   now--uneasy and troubled about sin, I am glad of it! Your nest is being
   stirred and God grant that you may fly from it and never come back to
   that nest again!

   If all had gone smoothly with you. If sin had always been a sweet
   morsel to your tongue, we might despair of your ever being saved. But
   now you feel the smart of it, I trust it is, in order that you may be
   delivered from the guilt of it and led to find a Savior! Well, since
   that, dear Friends, how many times we have had our nests stirred up! I
   do not know your history, but you do, and I ask you now to look it
   over. Oh, you planned, and planned, and planned, and said, "Now I shall
   live in this house for the next 20 or 30 years, I shall live here,
   certainly, as long as I live anywhere." And now you find yourselves,
   perhaps, 50 or a 100 miles from it. You were in the service of a
   certain kind man and you felt very happy in it, but the firm has broken
   up and where are you now? There is that dear child you have set your
   heart upon. You have said, "What a mercy it will be to see him growing
   up! What a comfort he will be to me!" He is not a comfort to you, but
   just the very reverse, for he is your greatest sorrow! It is God
   stirring up your nest. Whereas a fear years ago you were in good, sound
   health, now the eyes begin to fail, or the ears are giving way, or
   there is some internal complaint, or some constant pain. Whereas years
   ago you were a master, you are now a servant--whereas years ago
   everybody looked up to you, now everybody looks down upon you! It is
   all the stirring up of the nest because you have no abiding city here--
   because you were too prone to say, "My mountain stands firm. I shall
   never be moved!" Therefore God has stirred up your nest and He will do
   it yet again and again! Between now and Heaven how many times will the
   nest of ours be stirred? Oh, blessed be God for it! "Moab is settled
   upon his lees: he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel"--and then
   comes a curse upon him! Sometimes these long periods of prosperity,
   rest and ease are very unhealthy for us poor unworthy and sinful
   beings. If we were more like Jesus. If we were more pure and heavenly,
   we could bear prosperity, but because we are so sinful, I question if
   any of us can bear it long. If the Master shall give some of us outward
   prosperity, He will have to whip us behind the door in private to keep
   us right! We must have some thorn in the flesh, some secret
   grief--there must be some skeleton in the cupboard, some specter in
   some chamber of the house, or else we shall say, "Soul, take your ease,
   you have much goods laid up for many years"--and when we do this, we
   shall be modern fools like the great fool of old! But the gracious Lord
   will not let His people get into that state. Again and again, and yet
   again, against their wishes, and contrary to their expectations, He
   will stir their nest and they shall cry out against it. But if they did
   but only know the meaning of it, or could read the whole of it in the
   light of eternity, they would bless the hand which tears away their
   comforts, seeing Divine Wisdom and Infinite Affection in it all! That,
   then, is the first thing-- God instructs His people to mount aloft by
   stirring up their nests.

   The next picture is the eagle fluttering over her young. What is that
   for? She wants them to mount, my Brothers and Sisters! Well, then, in
   order to teach them to mount, she first mounts, herself--"she flutters
   over her young." She moves her wings to teach them that thus they must
   move their wings, that thus they must mount! There is no teaching like
   teaching by example. We always learn a great deal more through our eyes
   and ears than we do merely through our ears. Those of us who cannot
   preach with our mouths would do well to preach with our lives--which is
   the very best kind of preaching. So God preaches to us. If He would
   have us holy, how holy He is Himself! "Be you holy for I am holy."
   Would He have us generous? How generous is He! "He spared not His own
   Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all." Would He have us forgive
   our enemies? How He delights in mercy, Himself! If we need a picture of
   perfection, where can we get it but in God? "Be you perfect even as
   your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." God shows us His law in His
   holy actions, He being, Himself, the very mirror and paragon of
   everything that is absolutely pure and right. Above all, the Lord has
   been pleased to set us an example of mounting above the world in the
   Person and life of His own dear Son! Oh, how the eagle flutters when I
   look upon the Savior!--

   "Such was Your truth and such Your zeal, Such deference to Your
   Father's will, Such love and meekness so Divine I would transcribe and
   make them mine! Cold mountains and the midnight air Witnessed the
   fervor of Your prayer-- The desert Your temptations knew, Your conflict
   and Your victory, too. Be You my Pattern--make me bear-More of Your
   gracious Image here! Then God the Judge shall own my name Among the
   followers of the Lamb." Beloved, see how our Lord Jesus this day mounts
   to Heaven! There He is--He has gone there that our hearts may follow
   Him! He fluttered to the skies that we might also follow and might rise
   above the world, setting our affections no longer upon the things of
   earth, but upon things above where Christ sits at the right hand of
   God! What way could there be of teaching us tenderness like the
   tenderness of the Savior? What method of teaching us love like the
   display of the love of God in Christ Jesus? Brothers and Sisters, I
   commend you to the picture of the eagle fluttering and thus setting an
   example to its little ones. You may also see before your eyes the great
   Incarnate God teaching you how to mount above the trials and
   temptations of this mortal life and living, even on earth, a celestial
   life!

   This, however, is not all the eagle does. We read in our text that she
   then spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings. I
   suppose this means just this, that spreading her wings she entices her
   young ones to get between her wings upon her back and then she mounts
   and flies towards the sun. It may be fable or not, I do not know, that
   she flies towards the sun to teach her eaglets to bear its blaze. Then,
   when she has mounted to a good height, she suddenly shifts her wings
   and throws the young eaglets off--and there they are on their own
   wings! They begin to descend to

   earth, not able to keep themselves up, but compelled to fly--but before
   they fall on the rocks, she makes a swoop and comes under them and
   catches them on her wings again, gives them a little rest, bears them
   up once more, and then throws them off again, so that they must fly.
   But she takes care that these early trials, for which they are scarcely
   able, shall not end in their destruction, for again she makes another
   swoop and catches them between her wings once again.

   This is the picture of what God does to us again. We must speak of Him
   after the metaphor which He, Himself, uses--He takes us up between
   those mighty wings and bears us as high as we dare go--and only pauses
   because He knows we cannot now bear more. Then, when we have had full
   fellowship and looked the sun in the face, and have had bright
   enjoyment of Heaven, as far as we could bear, He suddenly throws us off
   and makes us try our own wings, and alas, they are very feeble and
   weak, indeed. We then discover our own impotence and we think we shall
   fall like stars and be dashed in pieces! But lo, He comes and
   underneath us are the everlasting wings--and just when we thought we
   should surely come to destruction, we find ourselves safely sheltered
   between the mighty pinions of the Eternal God! Up, again, we mount, and
   before long we are thrown off again--cast away, as it were, for a time.
   His face is hidden from us, or else by some outward trial of Providence
   we are made to try our wings again to see whether our faith will keep
   us up! And by degrees it comes to pass that we learn to fly till we
   love flying and are not satisfied to come back to earth anymore! We are
   loving to fly and often sighing and longing for the day when we shall
   be permitted to--

   "Stretch our wings and fly Straight to yonder worlds ofjoy! Do you not
   sometimes feel as if your wing feathers were come, my Brothers and
   Sisters? Surely you must sometimes feel as though your faith were
   growing stronger and your communion with Christ getting clearer--as
   though you anticipated and felt that the time must be drawing near when
   you could mount to dwell where Jesus is! I am thankful if such is your
   experience, but I should not wonder if you find that all the wing
   feathers which you have got will be all too few for you, for you may
   yet be made to have another descent from between the almighty wings and
   be made once again to see how great your weakness is. One other
   thought, however, occurs to us. There is no doubt that the idea of
   security as well as of teaching is here because when the eagle bears
   her young ones on her wings, if the archer, or in these modern days the
   hunter with his rifle should seek to destroy the eaglets, it is plain
   there is no reaching them without first killing the mother bird. So
   there is no destroying possible to the true people of God. "Greater is
   He that is for us, than all that can be against us." God puts Himself
   between His people and the danger which threatens them--and unless the
   foe should be mightier than God, Himself--which is inconceivable, there
   is no soul that trusts in Him which shall know eternal hurt!

   Oh, how glorious a thing it is to feel, when the light air is all
   around me and I know that if I fall I would perish, that yet I cannot
   fall, for God' s wings bear me up! And to feel that though there are
   hosts of enemies able to destroy me if they can get at me, yet they
   cannot, for they must first get through God, Himself, before they can
   get to the weak soul who hangs upon Jesus and rests alone in Him! Well
   did David say, "In the time of trouble He will hide me in His pavilion:
   in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me: He shall set me up
   upon a rock." You know the threefold figure. The "pavilion" stood in
   the middle of the camp and all the armed men kept watch around the
   royal tent. There was no slaying the man who was hidden in the royal
   pavilion unless the king, himself, were destroyed! And unless Divine
   Sovereignty is overthrown, not one of the elect can perish! Then,
   again, there was "the secret of the tabernacle." That was the Most Holy
   Place into which no one entered but the high priest once a year! And
   there God said He would put His child, so that they must first break
   through and dare the very Shekinah and come before the brightness, the
   destroying brightness, of Jehovah' s face, before they can reach the
   soul that trusts in the Mercy Seat on which the blood was sprinkled!
   Then there is the third figure--"He shall set me up upon a rock"--so
   that the rock, itself, must shake--the Immutability of God, itself,
   must cease to be and God's everlastingness must die before it shall be
   possible for a soul to perish that rests in Him! The eagle takes up the
   eaglets on her wings and bears them--and so in this way does God lead,
   train and guide us for the skies!

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, I shall not detain you longer, except to say
   that if God is training you for the skies--oh, let your hearts go up.
   Grovel not below--

   "Go up, go up, my Heart, Dwell with your God above! For here you cannot
   rest,

   Nor here give out your love Go up, go up, my Heart, Be not a trifler
   here-- Ascend above these clouds, Dwell in a higher sphere! Let not
   your love flow out To things so soiled and dim-- Go up to Heaven and
   God, Take up your love to Him! Waste not your precious stores On
   creature love below-- To God that wealth belongs, On Him that wealth
   bestow."

   You are a stranger here. If you are God's child, then you are a citizen
   of another country! Are there any bands to bind you here? I thought He
   had broken them. Have you never said--

   "The bands that bind my soul to earth

   Are broken by His hand--

   Before His Cross I find myself

   A stranger in the land." Are there loved ones to bind you here?--

   "Your Best-Beloved keeps His Throne

   On hills of light in worlds unknown." All the love you dare to give to
   all below, if you are true to Christ, can be as nothing compared with
   the love which you give to Him! Do you not feel your soul now drawn
   towards Him? At least if you cannot fly on the wings of confidence, fly
   on the wings of desire! A sigh will mount to Him, or He will come down
   to it! Only be not fond of this world. Do not let this thick clay
   cleave to you. You are not earth-born now--you are born from above!
   This corruptible world must not claim you, for you are born-again of
   incorruptible seed! You are not this world's property. You are bought
   with a price by Him who prays for you that you may be with Him where He
   is and behold His Glory. I am ashamed of myself that I who talk thus
   with you should so often grovel here. But this one thing I must say--I
   am never happy except when my soul is up with my Lord. I know enough of
   this to acknowledge that it is my misery to feed upon the ashes of this
   world, to lie among the pots, to serve the brick-kilns of this Egypt!
   There can be no peace between my soul and this world. Oh, I know this,
   for this painted Jezebel has mocked me too often and she has become so
   ugly in my esteem that I cannot endure her! But yet--what shall we say
   of our nature?--We go back again to the Marah, which was bitter for us
   to drink and try to drink from it again! And the broken cisterns which
   held no water before, we fly to again and again! Oh, for more wisdom!
   The Master has taught us and He has been so long a time with us, but we
   have not known Him. Yet may He have patience with us until He has
   taught us to mount above the world and dwell where He is!

   Ah, dear Friends, there are some of you to whom I cannot talk in this
   fashion because you cannot mount. You have nowhere to mount to! Oh, may
   the Master stir up your nests! I pray that He may put the thorns of
   conscience into your pillows tonight. May you recollect those sins
   which God hates and which God will punish--and if you do remember them
   and feel bowed down under their weight--then remember that there is one
   who can help you and who willhelp you, even the Lord Jesus Christ! Look
   to Him in the hour of trouble and He will be your Deliverer! May the
   Lord bless these thoughts to all our souls for Jesus' sake.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: DEUTERONOMY 29:1-21.

   Verse 1. These are the words of the Covenant, which the LORD commanded
   Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides
   the Covenant which He made with them in Horeb. That is the preamble,
   just as in legal documents there is usually some statement of the
   purport and intent of the indenture before the matter is proceeded

   with. These Covenants with God are solemn things and, therefore, they
   are given in a formal manner to strike attention and command our
   serious thoughts.

   2-4. And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them, You have seen
   all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto
   Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land; the great
   trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:
   yet the LORD has not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see,
   and ears to hear, unto this day.You saw all that and yet did not see
   it--you saw the external work, but the internal lesson you did not
   perceive. A very mournful statement to make, but God's servants are not
   sent to flatter man but to speak the truth-- however painful the
   speaking of it may be.

   5, 6. And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes
   have not worn out upon you, and your shoe did not wear out upon your
   foot You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong
   drink: that you might know that I am the LORD your God. Either there
   had been means of frequent renewal of their garments, or else by a
   miracle these garments had never worn out! And the very shoes that they
   put upon their feet on the Passover night were still on their feet--if
   not the same, yet still they were shod, though they trod the weary
   wilderness which well might have worn them till they were bare. "You
   have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink"--a
   nation of total abstainers for forty years! There was no bread in the
   wilderness for them and there was no wine. It may have been obtained as
   a great luxury, as it probably was, for we have reason to believe that
   Nadab and Abihu were slain by fire before the Lord because they were
   drunk when they offered strange fire--but taking the whole people
   around, anything like wine had not crossed their lips for forty years,
   yet there they were, strong and healthy! "That you may know that I am
   Jehovah your God."

   7. And when you came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og
   the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote
   them.People not used to war, either, and feeble folk! Yet they smote
   the great kings and slew mighty kings, for the Lord was with them!

   8, 9. And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the
   Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh. Keep
   therefore the words of this Covenant, and do them, that you may prosper
   in all that you do. This, then, was the Covenant made with the
   nation--that God would be their God and He would prosper them. As He
   had done, so would He do--He would be their protector, defender,
   strength and crown and joy.

   10, 11. You stand this day, all of you, before the LORD your God; your
   captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the
   men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is
   in your camp, from the hewer of your wood unto the drawer of your
   water.This National Covenant embraced all the great men, the captains,
   the wise men, all that were in authority, "your elders, and your
   officers." It took in all their children, for it was a Covenant
   according to the flesh--and their children according to the flesh are
   included. "Your wives," too, for in this matter there was no sex. "The
   stranger also." Here we poor Gentiles get a glimpse of comfort, even
   though from that old Covenant we seem to be shut out. "Your stranger
   that is in your camp" is included. And the poorest and those that
   performed the most menial service were all to be made partakers of this
   Covenant, "from the hewer of your wood unto the drawer of your water."

   12-15. That you should enter into Covenant with the LORD your God, and
   into His oath, which the LORD your God makes with you this day: that He
   may establish you today for a people unto Himself, and that He may be
   unto you a God, as He has said unto you, and as He has sworn unto your
   fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. Neither with you only do I
   make this Covenant and this oath; but with him that stands here with us
   this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here
   with us this day. With the sick that were at home, with the generations
   that were not yet born, for this was intended to be a National Covenant
   in perpetuity to their children and their children's children to the
   end of time. Had they kept it so would it have stood!

   16, 17. (For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt and how we
   came through the nations which you passed by, and you have seen their
   abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which
   were among them). Now you have seen how they worshipped idols. You have
   seen what you must avoid--you have beheld their folly that you may
   escape from it.

   18. Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe,
   whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve
   the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that
   bears gall and wormwood. For the worship of false gods is the cause of
   untold mischief and evil--wherever it is found it is a root that bears
   gall and wormwood--and God would not have it in a single individual,
   man nor woman, no, not in a single family or tribe!

   19. And so it may not happen, when he hears the words of this curse,
   that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace,
   though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to
   thirst. For there were some who so hardened themselves against God that
   they said, "We shall have peace! Let us do what we like--let us worship
   these idol gods more and more and more--let us add drunkenness and
   idolatry to our thirst."

   20. The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and His
   jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are
   written in this book shall lie upon him. Not light upon him, but lie
   upon him--rest there and stay there!

   20, 21. And the LORD shall blot out his name from under Heaven. And the
   LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel. As a
   huntsman separates a stag from the herd that he may hunt it all day, so
   shall God with any idolater that should come among His people with whom
   He made a Covenant that day. Oh, how God hates that anything should be
   worshipped by us but Himself! How indignant is He if anywhere, anything
   takes the supreme place in the human heart which ought to be occupied
   by God alone!
     __________________________________________________________________

Beauty for Ashes

   (No. 3336)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "To give unto them [who mourn in Zion] beauty for ashes." Isaiah 61:3.

   I WOULD remind you that the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ related to
   mourners in Zion. He did not come into the world to exalt those who are
   high, to give greater power to the strong, or to clothe those who are
   already clad in their own righteousness. No! The Spirit of God was upon
   Him that He might preach good tidings to the meek, that broken hearts
   should be bound up, captives redeemed and prisoners released. He came
   with blessings for the poor, not with luxuries for the rich. This ought
   to be a very great subject of thanksgiving to those who are heavy of
   heart. Is it not sweet to think that the Anointed of the Lord came for
   your sakes, that you of the rueful countenance whose eyelids are
   fringed with beaded tears, you whose songs are dirges, you who dwell at
   death's door may be brought forth into the sunlight? Most men choose
   cheerful company whereby they may be entertained, but the Lord Jesus
   evidently selects mourners and delights in those whom He may encourage
   and cheer. Blessed be His name! How meek and lowly is He in all His
   ways! How forgetful of Self and how thoughtful towards His poor
   servants. He looks upon them with pitying eyes and makes untold
   blessings their portion!

   Notice with pleasure that in dealing with mourners, according to the
   text before us, the Lord acts upon terms of exchange or barter. He
   gives them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the
   garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. It is a gracious
   exchange, but it is tantamount to everything being a free gift. "To
   give unto them beauty for ashes" is a free gift because what He takes
   away is of no value and they are glad to be rid of it. In condescending
   compassion He took our ashes upon Himself. Ah, how they once covered
   His sacred head and marred His beauty! He took our mourning. Alas, how
   it made Him the Man of Sorrows in the day of His humiliation! He took
   our spirit of heaviness and as He lay prostrate in the Garden beneath
   the load, He was exceedingly heavy and sorrowful even unto death! He
   took a loss to give us a gain and so it is a barter in which there is a
   double profit upon our side--we lose a loss and the gain is pure gain!
   From our Lord the blessings of love are all of Free Grace and,
   therefore, let Him have all the praise! I am sure that no mourner would
   hesitate to deal with Jesus on these special terms, of which only
   Divine Love could have thought. If you have ashes, will you not be glad
   to exchange them for beauty? If you are mourning, will you not
   willingly cease from weeping to be anointed with the oil of joy? And if
   the spirit of heaviness presses upon you like a nightmare, will you not
   be glad to be set free and to be arrayed in the glittering garments of
   praise? Yes, there could not be better terms than those which Grace has
   invented--we accept them with delight! Poor Mourner, they are
   especially ordained for you, that by a twofold Grace in removing evil
   and bestowing good, you might be doubly enriched and comforted!

   In our present meditation I shall call attention, first, to the
   lamentable condition i n which many of the Lord's mourners are
   found--they sit in ashes, expressive of deep sorrow. Secondly, we shall
   observe the Divine interposition on their behalf, for the ashes are
   removed and, thirdly, we shall notice the sacred gift--"Beauty for
   ashes." Let us begin with--

   I. THE MOURNER'S CONDITION--He is covered with ashes as the emblem of
   his sad estate. Let us now, like Cinderella, sit down among the cinders
   for awhile in order that we may come forth from the ashes with
   something better than glass slippers, adorned with a beauty which shall
   befit the king's courts! The fairy fable which has often made our
   childhood smile shall now be actually realized in our own souls--yes,
   we shall see how far the Truth of God outshines romance! How much
   grander are the facts of God than the fictions of men!

   It seems, from the text, that the righteous are sometimes covered with
   grief Orientals were always excessive in the use of symbols and,
   therefore, if they were in sorrow, they endeavored to make their
   outward appearance describe their inward misery. They took off all
   their soft garments and put on sackcloth--and this they rent and tore
   into rags! And then

   upon their heads, instead of perfumed oil which they were so fond of
   using, they threw ashes--and so disfigured themselves and made
   themselves objects of pity. Ashes were of old, signs of mourning, and
   they continued to be so down to Popish times of which we have a trace
   in the day called, Ash Wednesday, which was the commencement of the
   time of fasting known as Lent. It was supposed that those who commenced
   to fast sat in ashes to begin with. Such symbols we leave to those who
   believe in the bodily exercises and outward rites of will-worship.
   However, God's servants have their spiritual fasts and their heads are
   metaphorically covered with ashes. I will not stop to read you the list
   of the occasions in which the princes of the royal blood of Heaven are
   found sitting in the place of humiliation and distress.

   Suffice it to say that they began their new life among the ashes. Like
   Jabez who was more honorable than his brethren, they were born in
   sorrow. Some of us will never forget our grief for sin--it was a
   bitterness with which no stranger could intermeddle. We shall never
   forget the anguish of our soul and our deep humiliation which no ashes
   could sufficiently symbolize. Like the Patriarch of old, we cried, "I
   abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."

   Repentance since then has always had a large degree of mourning
   connected with it. Sorrow has salted all our penitential tears. It is
   right it should be so and it is equally right that we should never
   leave off repenting. Repentance and faith are two inseparable
   companions--they flourish or decay together like the two arms of the
   human body. If faith could enter Heaven, repentance would certainly
   pass the gate at the same time. That they will not both enter there, or
   something near akin to them, I will not venture to assert quite so
   confidently as some have done. Whether in eternity I shall regret that
   I have sinned and shall still believe in Jesus and find my everlasting
   safety in so doing, I will not positively say--but if I so asserted,
   who could refute the statement? Assuredly we shall mourn for sin as
   long as we are upon the earth and we do not desire to do otherwise.
   Grief for sin and love to Jesus will endure through life--there will
   never come a time when we shall refuse to bathe with tears the pierced
   feet and kiss them with warmest love--

   "Sorrow and love go side by side,

   Nor height nor depth can ever divide

   Their Heaven-appointed bands.

   Those dear associates still are one,

   Nor till the race of life is run

   Disjoin their wedded hands."

   We have to mourn bitterly when we have fallen upon times of strong
   temptation and, alas, of surprising sin. We grieve to confess the fact,
   but it is sadly true that faults have overtaken us. Who among God's
   chosen sheep has not gone astray? In consequence of such sin we have
   had to return to the sackcloth and the ashes--and our heart has sunk
   within us. By reason of our old nature we have transgressed like David
   and then, by reason of our new nature, we have wept like David and
   mourned our broken bones. If a foul spot has defiled our garments, we
   have been led by the Holy Spirit to go at once to Jesus and, while He
   has washed it out with His blood, we have lamented our offense.
   Whenever Believers permit the fires of sin to burn, they are made,
   before long, to cast the ashes of repentance upon their heads and
   shrink into the dust.

   Beloved Friends, we have also covered our heads with ashes on account
   of the sins of others. Parents have been compelled to sorrow very
   grievously for their sons and daughters. The wail of David is no
   unusual sound. "O Absalom, my son, my son! Would God I had died for
   you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Many a woman sits in ashes half her
   life because of her ungodly husband who makes her life bitter to her.
   Many a loving sister pines inwardly because of a profligate brother who
   persists in ruining himself. The crimes of the world are the burdens of
   the saints. We cannot make the ungodly mourn for their guilt, but we
   can and do deeply mourn over their insensibility. How can we bear to
   see our fellow men choosing everlasting destruction, rejecting their
   own mercies and plunging themselves into eternal misery? If Hagar said,
   "Let me not see the death of the child," and if the Prophet's eyes ran
   with ceaseless tears over the slain of his people, shall not we mourn
   in dust and ashes the willful soul-suicide of our neighbors who perish
   before our very eyes with mercy at their doors?

   Moreover, we pity the Christian who does not frequently mourn over the
   depravity of the times in which he lives. Infidelity has in these last
   days stolen the garb of religion so that now we frequently meet with
   volumes in which the fundamentals of the faith are denied, written by
   ministers of churches whose professed creed is orthodox. Our
   grandfathers would have shuddered at reading from a disciple of Tom
   Paine sentiments which pretended ministers of the Gospel have given
   forth to the world! Things have reached a painful pass when those who
   are called to office on purpose to proclaim the Gospel are allowed to
   use their position to sow doubts about it and sap and undermine all
   belief in it. Such conduct is meanness, itself, and it is amazing that
   the churches tolerate it! Only Satan, himself, could have put it into a
   man's heart

   to become a salaried preacher of the Gospel in order to deny its
   fundamental truths! He who does this is Judas Redivivus, Iscariot the
   second! God save us from all complicity with such practical falsehood
   and fraud! But when the child of God sees this and sees besides this,
   ritualism and latitudinarianism spreading on all sides, he feels a
   sympathy with Mordecai of whom we read that "when he perceived all that
   was done, he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went
   out into the midst of the city and cried with a loud and bitter cry."
   It were a happy omen if there were more of this--and especially if many
   could be found to imitate Daniel, who said, "I set my face unto the
   Lord God to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting and sackcloth
   and ashes." We should soon behold the dawn of better days if such ashes
   were commonly found upon saintly heads!

   Yes, the best of God's people must sometimes sit down among the ashes
   and cry, "Woe is me!" When the saints mourn, it will sometimes happen
   that they cannot help showing their sorrow--it is too great to be
   controlled or concealed. Usually a spiritual man tries to conceal his
   soul's distress and he has his Master's command for so doing, for Jesus
   said, "You, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that
   you appear not unto men to fast." In personal trouble we would rather
   bear our burden alone than load others with it and, therefore, we
   endeavor to maintain a cheerful manner even when our heart is sinking
   like a millstone in the flood. As to spiritual depressions, we cannot
   show these to men who know nothing about them--and in the presence of
   the ungodly we are dumb upon such topics. But there are sorrows which
   will have a tongue, concerning which we may even be bidden to speak, as
   says the Prophet, "O daughter of my people, gird you with sackcloth,
   and wallow yourself in ashes." At such times we must express our inward
   grief and then the men of the world begin to ask, "What ails him?" and
   jeeringly cry, "He is crazy! Religion has turned his brain." Note that
   mourning young woman--her mother said only the other night, "What makes
   Jane so sorrowful?" She did not know that her girl was under a sense of
   sin. Your workmates asked you, my good Friend, the other morning, "What
   makes you so dull?" They did not comprehend that their vile language
   had helped to vex your heart, and had wounded you so that your heart
   was bleeding inwardly. As we have joys that worldlings cannot share, so
   have we sorrows which they cannot comprehend--and yet we are obliged,
   now and then, to let them see that we are cast down--even though this
   brings us new reproach! The ashes must sometimes be upon our head and
   we must cry, "They have heard that I sigh. All my enemies have heard of
   my trouble." Do not, therefore, beloved Friends, when you see a
   mournful Believer, condemn him, nor even depreciate him, for his sorrow
   may be a necessity of nature. Yes it may even be a direct result of his
   eminence in Divine Grace. He may, perhaps, love the souls of men more
   than you think. He may have a more tender sense of the sinfulness of
   sin than you have. And, perhaps, if you knew his family trials and if
   you knew the jealousy of his walk with God, or if you knew how the Lord
   has hidden His face from him, you would not wonder at his rueful
   countenance. You might even marvel that he was not more cast down and
   you might be ready to give him your pity and even your admiration,
   instead of your cold censure. Be sure of this, that some of the holiest
   of men have mourned as David did--"I have eaten ashes like bread and
   mingled my drink with weeping."

   Next let us note that such grief disfigures them. I gather that from
   the contrast intended by the words of our text-- "Beauty for ashes."
   Ashes are not beautifiers and mournful faces are seldom attractive. A
   Believer, when he is in a mourning frame of mind wears a marred
   countenance. He is disfigured before his friends--he makes bad company
   for them and they are apt to see his weak points. He is disfigured
   before his fellow Christians--they delight to see a Brother rejoicing
   in the Lord, for this is a manifest token of favor--but sorrow of heart
   is often contagious and, therefore, it is not admired. The mourning
   Christian is especially disfigured in his own esteem. When he looks in
   the mirror and sees his rueful visage, he cries to himself, "Why are
   you cast down, O my Soul? Can all be right within? If it is so, why am
   I thus?" He questions, upbraids and condemns himself. If his eyes were
   not so weakened by tears, he might see a beauty in his sorrow, yet just
   now he cannot, but views himself as a mass of uncomeliness! Nor is he
   altogether in error, for generally with spiritual mourning there is a
   measure of real disfigurement. Unbelief, for instance, is a terrible
   blot upon any man's beauty. Distrust of God is a horrible blotch.
   Discontent exceedingly injures mental and spiritual loveliness. We are
   not lovely when we are unbelieving, petulant, envious, or discontented.
   We are not beautiful when we are distrustful and suspicious,
   self-willed and rebellious! Yet these evils often go with soul-sorrow
   and we may truthfully say that some Christians are not only at times
   very sorrowful, but their beauty is marred by their misery.

   The grief of good men's hearts is often a very expressive one, as the
   language before us suggests. When sorrow puts ashes on its head, what
   does it say? It makes the man eloquently declare that he feels himself
   to be as worthless as the dust and ashes of his house. "I cover my
   head," he says, "with ashes to show that the very noblest part of me,
   my head, my intellect, is a poor fallen earthly thing of which I dare
   not boast. I count the best thing there is in me to be but dust and
   ashes fit only to be cast away." You mourners often thus despise
   yourselves. Well, if it is any consolation to you to know it, I know a
   minister of Christ who the longer he lives, thinks less and less of
   himself, and utterly abhors himself before God. It is a wonder of
   Divine Grace that the Lord should ever have loved us at all, for there
   is nothing in our nature that is lovely. Through our fall there is
   everything in us to be hated by His pure and holy mind, but nothing to
   esteem--and the best of the best, when they are at their best, are poor
   creatures. "Lord, what is man that You are mindful of him?" If the
   Righteous Judge had swept the whole race away at the first with the
   besom of destruction, He would still have been as great, glorious and
   blessed as He is--He only spares us because He is Infinite in mercy!
   When Abraham said, "I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, I that
   am but dust and ashes," he had not too lowly an opinion of himself, for
   even the Father of the Faithful, though a prince among men, was nothing
   in himself but a son of fallen Adam! And nothing but undeserved mercy
   made him to differ from the idolatrous race out of which he was chosen
   and called. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes," is our last memorial--and
   all along we are tending that way by nature, for we are of the earth,
   earthy. When we put ashes on our head, we do but confess ourselves to
   be what we really are!

   The use of ashes would seem to indicate that the fire is out. Men would
   not place burning coals upon their heads, but when they cast ashes
   there, they mean to say, "These ashes from which all fire is gone are
   like ourselves--we, too, are spent, our fire of hope has burned out,
   our joy, our confidence, our strength have all departed from us and
   left us only the black ashes of despair." Is not this suggestive of a
   state of feeling common enough to truly humbled men? Let me ask my
   Brothers and Sisters--Have you never felt as if your coal were quenched
   in Israel? Have you not admitted that, apart from any salvation which
   might come to you from your dear Lord and Savior, you had no hope
   whatever? Have you not felt as if every spark of faith, love, gratitude
   and all that was good, was gone out in darkness? Some of you young
   Christians have never yet stumbled into that slough, and I hope you
   never will, but if you ever do, it may console you if I let you know
   that older saints have been there before you--and have had to cry to
   the Strong for strength or they would have perished! Some of us know
   what it is to feel as if we had not even a spark of Grace left. We
   cry--

   "If anything is felt

   'Tis only pain to find we cannot feel."

   At such times we have felt that if there was any prayer in us it was
   only a prayer to be helped to pray, or to be helped to mourn that we
   could not pray, for our stock was lying dead and our poor husbandry
   yielded us no increase for lack of dew from above. Our soul has been in
   a state of drought! The rain from Heaven has been withheld and the
   earth has broken and chapped beneath our feet, devouring rather than
   nourishing the seed. God's children have their droughts and
   famines--and then dust and ashes are fit emblems of their dry and dead
   condition.

   Ashes, too, as the symbol of sorrow, might also indicate having passed
   through the fire of trial, even as these ashes have been burned. Truly,
   some of God's best servants have been most often through the furnace
   and have been so long in the heat that strength fails them and hope
   well-near expires. They cry to God for patience to endure all His holy
   will, but they feel that their own power is as much spent as if they
   were burnt to nothing but ash and there was nothing more left of them
   upon which the fire could kindle. Is it not a mercy that the Lord looks
   upon such as these--the utterly spent ones who are ready to be blown
   away and to perish, even as smoke and dry ashes are borne away by the
   wind and lost? You who are at ease in Zion know little about these
   terrible feelings, but you should be grateful to God and sympathize
   with those who are more exposed to tribulation. Join with them in
   magnifying the Lord because He promises beauty instead of these ashes
   of the furnace!

   Ashes, also, as you know, are the emblem of death. The Romans placed in
   sepulchral urns the ashes of the dead. We say, "Dust to dust, ashes to
   ashes," when we bury the departed. It is not an uncommon thing for
   tried saints to complain that they are brought into the dust of death
   by a faintness of mind which renders life a difficulty. We come to look
   upon the grave as a refuge and a relief. "Ah," cries one, "they may as
   well bury me, for I am more dead than alive. Well may I heap ashes on
   my head." Like Elijah, they say, "Let me die, for I am no better than
   my fathers." To such depths of grief the best of men have sometimes
   descended. Many of the most peaceful and joyous spirits have joined in
   David's description of himself--"I am as a man that has no strength:
   free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom You
   remember no more: and they are cut off from Your hand."

   But enough of this dolorous ditty, let us now change the subject. We
   have shown you the Believer in the ashes, let us now rejoice that some
   better thing is in store for him! Secondly, there is--

   II. A DIVINE INTERPOSITION. The Lord Himself breaks in upon the
   mourner's misery and makes the most gracious arrangements for his
   consolation. When a man is in sore trouble, he naturally begins to look
   this way and that way

   for deliverance and, thereby, much of the man's mind and heart are made
   manifest. You may readily judge whether you are a child of God or a
   hypocrite by seeing in what direction your soul turns in seasons of
   severe trial. The hypocrite flies to the world and finds a sort of
   comfort there, but the child of God runs to his Father and expects
   consolation only from the Lord's hand! True Grace abides with God and
   submits itself to His will. This is always good for us. Brothers and
   Sisters, if the Lord makes you sick, remain sick till the Lord restores
   you, for it is dangerous to call in any other physician to your soul
   but your Lord. If the Lord frowns, do not ask others to smile, for you
   can derive no joy from that source. If it is God's wrath that breaks
   you, let God's love mend you, or else remain broken--

   "I will not be comforted

   Till Jesus comforts me,"

   is a sweet resolve of a truly penitent soul, for has not the Lord said,
   "I kill and I make alive; I wound, and I heal. I the Lord do all these
   things"? Will you take the healing and the making alive out of
   Jehovah's hand? God forbid! Where you have received your smart, there
   get your sweet. Where you do drink the gall of sorrow, there drink the
   wine of joy, for in the Lord's hand there is abundant mercy to be
   found--and He will end your misery!

   According to the text, the way in which Believers rise out of their
   mourning is through the coming of Jesus. Read the Chapter again. What
   does the Lord say? "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord
   has anointed Me." Yes, Beloved, our hope lies in the mission of Christ,
   in the Person of Christ, in the work of Christ, in the application of
   the blood of Christ to our hearts! We turn our eyes evermore towards
   the hills from where comes our help! Look, O Sinner, always to the
   brazen serpent whatever serpent bites you! Whether it is the old
   serpent, himself, or some smaller serpent of the same brood which lurks
   in the way and bites at the horse's heels, still look to the one
   appointed Cure. Never speculate in healing drugs, but keep to the one
   antidote which never fails! Jesus is the consolation of Israel and let
   not Israel place her hope elsewhere!

   And, mark you, it is Jesus coming in the Gospel which is the mourner's
   hope--for this coming of the Lord is to preach good tidings to the meek
   and so to bind up the brokenhearted. I have little confidence in those
   persons who speak of having received direct Revelations from the Lord,
   as though He appeared otherwise than by and through the Gospel. His
   Word is so full, so perfect, that for God to make any fresh Revelation
   to you or me is quite needless. To do so would be to put a dishonor
   upon the perfection of that Word! In the "most sure Word of testimony"
   there is a release from every difficulty, a plaster for every sore, a
   medicine for every disease! My dear sorrowing Friend, it is very
   dangerous to look for consolation from dreams, or from the opening of
   the Bible upon certain texts, or from fancied voices, or from any other
   of those foolish superstitions in which weak-minded persons seek for
   comfort! Go you to what God has said in the Scriptures--and when you
   find your character described and promises made to such a character as
   your own, then take them home, for they are plainly spoken to you! Go
   not about to look for comfort in the cloud-land of fancy or the
   moonshine of superstition, but believe in the Lord Jesus who comes to
   bless broken hearts in no other way than by preaching to them the glad
   tidings of His Grace!

   You are not to expect the Lord Jesus to speak with you in any other way
   than by the written Word applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit. Look
   for no new Revelation! Drive out the very idea as deceptive! If an
   angel were to come to my chamber and inform me that he brought a
   message from God which would tell me more than is written in the
   Scriptures of Truth, I would not listen to him for a moment, but say,
   "Get you behind me, Satan. The end of these manifestations has come!
   The stars no more appear, for the sun has risen." Our heavenly Father
   has already sent the Lord Jesus and it is written, "Last of all He sent
   His Son." In Christ Jesus there is such a fullness of Truth and Grace
   that all the angels combined could not increase it. He who looks for
   more revelation should beware lest he receive the curse with which the
   Bible concludes--which will certainly come upon any who either add to,
   or take from, the Inspired Words of God! The sum of the matter is
   this--if there is any comfort to be received, it is in Christ. And if
   there are any ashes to be taken away and any beauty to be given, it
   will be through the Lord Jesus in the preaching and reading of the
   Word! This much by way of protest against the superstitions of weak
   minds.

   But now I want you to notice a something which does not appear in our
   English version, but is clear in the Hebrew. It is that the Lord very
   easily makes a change in His people's condition, for the word in the
   Hebrew for ashes is epheer, and the word for beauty is peer The change
   is very slight in the original. Some idea of the similarity of the
   words may be given you in English if I quote from Master Trapp. "The
   Lord promises to turn all their sighing into singing, all their musing
   into music, all their sadness into gladness and all their tears into
   triumph." Perhaps I may myself give you a closer imitation, still, and
   more after the Hebrew model, by saying He turns our mourning into
   morning. In the case before us we might say, "He gives us splendors for
   cinders," beauty for ashes. Now, as readily as we change a word by a
   single letter, so easily does the God of All Comfort alter the state of
   His own people! With Him nothing is hard, much less impossible. From
   the Cross to the crown, from the thorn to the throne, from misery to
   majesty, is but a hand's turn with the Lord! Often does He call His
   people like Mordecai from sitting at the gate to riding upon the king's
   horse, like Joseph from lying in the dungeon to ruling in the land,
   like Job from the dunghill to double wealth, like David from the caves
   of Engedi to the palace in Jerusalem. This He does both suddenly and
   easily, as when a man lights a candle and the darkness departs at once!
   How charming and astonishing the change to pass in a moment from winter
   into summer, from midnight into noon, from storm into profound calm!
   This is the finger of God and it is often seen.

   When you are at your lowest do not conclude that it will be months
   before you can rise. Not so. From the lowest point to the highest you
   will spring at a single leap when the Almighty Helper girds you with
   power! David in the Psalms describes the Lord coming to his rescue in
   haste most marvelous. Out of the depths was he snatched by the flash of
   Jehovah' s power!--

   "On cherub and on cherubim

   Right royally He rode,

   And on the wings of mighty winds

   Came flying all abroad!

   And so delivered He my soul--

   Who is a Rock but He?

   He lives--Blessed be my Rock!

   My God exalted be."

   How joyously he sings! And well he may after so special a rescue. There
   is no slow travelling with God when His people are in sorrow. Before
   they have time to call, He answers them! While they are yet speaking,
   He hears their requests! He hears them chanting "De Profundis," and He
   lifts them to sing aloud, '"GloriainExcelsis." From "Out of the depths"
   their tune changes to, "Glory in the highest." Nor are there slow
   pauses of weary hope, but the Lord works a world of wonders in the
   twinkling of an eye!

   Thus we see how our Lord gives beauty for ashes. We now turn to the
   last point, which is--

   III. WHAT HE BESTOWS INSTEAD OF THE ASHES--beauty. All disfigurement is
   removed. The ashes had

   made the person to be defiled, uncomely to others and unpleasant to
   himself, but all this is removed. Beauty is given and his countenance
   is not marred with dust and grime. His face is bright with joy and
   beaming with hope. No more unpleasant to the eyes, the person has even
   become attractive and delightful! The original Hebrew implies that
   occasions for joy and emblems of joy are also given, for it might be
   read, "A chaplet for ashes." The ashes were on the head and now a crown
   is placed there. The allusion is to the nuptial tiara which men wore on
   their marriage day. The Lord's mourners are to be decked with crowns of
   delight instead of being disfigured with ashes of grief. When does that
   happen to us? Do you recollect when you first obtained a sense of
   forgiveness? How gloriously were you then arrayed! When the father said
   of His prodigal son, "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him. Put
   a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet," that was a high day! And so
   was it with us when we were delivered from our filthy rags and clothed
   in Divine Righteousness! Our ashes were gone, then, and a crown adorned
   our heads. Forgiven! It was a joy of joys! Even now as we look back
   upon it we begin to sing again--

   "Happy day! Happy day!

   When Jesus washed my sins away"

   We went a little farther on in spiritual life and then we discovered
   that we were the children of God! We did not at first know our
   Adoption, but it burst gloriously upon us like a newly kindled sun! Do
   you recollect when you first learned the meaning of the word and
   perceived that Adoption secured eternal salvation? For the heavenly
   Father does not cast His children away, nor can they cease to be the
   objects of His love! How can any child be unchilded? And if still a
   child, he must still be beloved and still an heir! When you once drank
   consolation from that Doctrine, did you not receive a tiara for ashes?
   How lovely a thing it is to be a child of God! "Behold, what manner of
   love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons
   of God!"

   We lived a little longer, and we began to understand the Doctrine of
   Vital Union with Christ. We had not dreamed of it at first. We then
   discovered that there is a vital, actual union between us and
   Christ--that we are married to Him! It is a great mystery, but yet it
   is a great Truth of God. It is all but inconceivable that we should be
   members of His body, of

   His flesh and of His bones--and yet it is even so. That was a heavenly
   day wherein we perceived that we were one with Jesus--"by eternal
   union, one." Then we rejoiced as wearers of a marriage crown and we
   sang

   "My Beloved is mine and I am His." Since then we have learned other
   Truths and on each occasion of being thus taught of the Lord we have
   again obtained a crown for ashes! Another and yet another chaplet has
   adorned our brow. We have felt ourselves to be made priests and kings
   unto God and the beauty of the Lord our God has rested upon us! All
   glory be to His name!

   Let us remark that the contrast of our text is peculiarly suggestive
   because it is not quite what we might expect. The Lord takes away our
   ashes, but what does He give in exchange? The natural contrast would be
   joy, but the Lord bestows that which is better, namely, beauty, because
   that is not only joy to ourselves but to others. "A thing of beauty,"
   as we say, "is a joy forever." A beautiful person gives pleasure to all
   around. Now, child of God, you are not only to have those ashes taken
   away which have disfigured you, but you are actually to become the
   source of joy to others! How pleasant that will be for you who have so
   long touched the mournful string that you have distressed your family.

   Yes, young Friend, you are to make your mother rejoice by telling her
   that you have found peace with God! You are yet to cheer your father' s
   heart, young woman, when you shall say to him, "Father, I have found
   Him in whom you trust and I am trusting in Him, too." Yes, poor
   Mourner, you will yourself be comforting other mourners one of these
   days! You who have been in Giant Despair's castle shall help in pulling
   down the monster's den! You can hardly believe it, but so it shall be!

   In the sense of being a joy to others, many of the Lord's people are
   very beautiful, indeed. You cannot help being charmed with them,
   especially with those of deep experience. Good men are glad of the
   company of those to whom the Lord has given the beauty of Divine Grace.
   Even the ungodly, though they do not confess it, have a respect for the
   majesty of holy characters. There is a charm about Beauty which makes
   her ride as on a lion through the midst of her foes-- every man's hand
   is bound to defend her--and none dare to injure her! The beauty which
   the Lord gives to His people is as a queen among all beauties and sways
   a potent scepter!

   Yes, and when the Lord makes His people beautiful they are a delight
   even to God, Himself, for the Lord rejoices in His works and His works
   of Grace are the noblest labor of His hands and, as being fullest of
   Divine Grace, are most graceful! The Lord delights in His people! We
   read of the Lord Jesus that His delights were with the sons of men, and
   even now, though angelic harps ring out His praises, He loves to be
   here in our Churches and to commune with us as a man speaks with his
   friend. Beloved, cultivate His society! Abide with Him and if He can
   find any cause of delight in you, which is a wonder of wonders, put all
   your delight in Him!

   Let us have this gracious beauty about us and even our heavenly
   Bridegroom will have to say, "Turn away your eyes from Me, for they
   have overcome Me. You have ravished My heart with one of your eyes."
   May we be kept from marring this beauty and be forever so fair that
   even our Lord, Himself, may look and love! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Ears Bored to the Doorpost

   (No. 3337)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 16, 1866.

   "And if the servant shall'plainlysay, Ilove my master, my wife, and my
   children; I will not go out free. Then his master shall bring him unto
   the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the doorpost;
   and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall
   serve him forever" Exodus 21:5, 6.

   THE Jewish people had lived in Egypt and had been themselves slaves.
   They had, doubtless, learned much of art and science in Egypt, but they
   also learned many sinful manners and customs--and among the rest they
   learned the habit of slavery. When God found them and led them out into
   the wilderness to make a nation of them, He did not give them a code of
   laws such as He would give to us in the light of this dispensation, but
   He gave them laws as Jesus Christ, Himself, says, "according to the
   hardness of their heart." He gave them a law suitable to the state in
   which they were. Their ceremonial laws, their political and economic
   laws, were very far from being perfect and were never intended to be
   regarded as perfect. They were not meant for a nation of men as much as
   for a nation of children. The nation was then in its infancy and
   statutes and ordinances were very much in accordance with the infancy
   of the people. Slavery, for instance, was not forbidden. It was not
   even forbidden for a Hebrew to hold his brother Hebrew in bondage! But,
   though it was not forbidden, yet it was so hedged about and limited
   with many regulations and conditions that it must have become very
   difficult, if not almost impossible.

   In the first place, every Hebrew who held his brother in bondage was
   compelled to treat him as he treated himself. There was a law that his
   food and his raiment should be precisely similar to that of his master.
   Then, again, at the end of six full years, the man must go free,
   whatever might be the price at which he was purchased for six years.
   And when he went free, he was not to go out empty, but his master was
   required to give him something out of his barn, out of the winepress
   and out of the flock. In fact, it was a sort of apprenticeship of one
   man to another, with the condition that the servant should be treated
   as one of the family and was to be set up in business when he left. So
   much did the Jews feel that this was not a very profitable kind of
   thing, that it got to be a proverb that, "A Hebrew who buys a Hebrew
   servant, does not buy a servant, but he buys a master." So the thing
   became very seldom practiced at all and this, perhaps, was the best way
   of dealing with the evil. They would have kicked against a law which
   forbade slavery altogether, but they submitted to this one which
   regulated it--and so the thing was kept in such check that it must of
   necessity fall. That, however, again, was not at all a rule for you or
   for me. It was like the putting away of a wife with a writing of
   divorcement, of which the Savior said that "Moses allowed it because of
   the hardness of their hearts." It was not right in itself, but it was
   simply endured because of the low moral state of the people when they
   came as a herd of slaves from Egypt's brick kilns, not having been
   trained and educated to understand the value of liberty as you and I
   happily have been in these later times for these many years.

   But observe that sometimes the Hebrew servant, although free to go
   where he liked at the end of six years, would not go. He had married
   one of his master's female servants. He had children and, besides, was
   so attached to his master and his family that he preferred to stay with
   him. Now, as God did not wish the people to love slavery, but would
   teach them the nobility of liberty, He made this ordinance that a man's
   wish to remain in servitude should be attested by a somewhat painful
   rite--and He made it a law that this rite should be administered to him
   in public before the judges.

   Lest a master should say the servant wished to be with him and then
   bored his ears by force--and so ensured his perpetual service--it was
   commanded that this boring of the ears should always be done in public
   before witnesses and the

   judges. An awl was taken and the man's ears were fastened to the
   doorpost--and then after he must forever remain, though he might change
   his mind, since he had once deliberately chosen to serve his master.

   Leaving, however, this outline of the meaning of this picturesque
   ceremony, I now want to use the passage in its spiritual meaning.

   First, I shall have to remind you that in Psalm 40 our Savior speaks of
   Himself as having had His ears bored. Did you notice the expression in
   the 40th Psalm, "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire: My ears
   have You opened." The Hebrew says, "My ears have You dug." Christ's
   ears, then, were pierced so that He might from His own voluntary choice
   be the Servant of God forevermore. When I have spoken a little upon
   that, I want to speak of some professed servants of God who have never
   had their ears bored. And then, in the third place, I want to go into
   this business of boring some of your ears--and I have no doubt there
   are many here who have had their ears bored in days gone by and who
   will be glad to renew the rite afresh tonight by consecrating
   themselves again unto their Master. First, we have to speak--

   I. OF THE SAVIOR HAVING HAD HIS EARS BORED.

   One would not have dared to apply this to Him if He had not instructed
   His servant David, by the Holy Spirit, to apply it to Himself. "My
   ears," says He, "have You opened." Oh, wonder of wonders! That the King
   of kings should thus come to be the Servant of servants--that He who is
   "God over all, blessed forever" and who thinks it not robbery to be
   equal with God--should take upon Himself the form of a Servant and be
   made in the likeness of sinful flesh and, being found in fashion as a
   Man, should become obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross!
   Our Savior's first appearance, here, was in the servant's place! He was
   the son of a carpenter and He was laid in a manger. When He comes
   forward to begin His active life at thirty--that life is one continual
   service. They would have made Him a king, but He preferred to remain
   the Servant of all. You see this from the first to the last of His
   earthly life, for even in view of the Cross, He took a towel and girded
   Himself, and then a basin and, showing He was still a servant, He
   washed His disciples' feet. He was still a Servant when He was led as a
   sheep to the slaughter. And as the last act of obedience that was
   possible, He bows His head and says, "Not My will, but Yours be done,"
   and He yielded up the ghost. Our blessed Lord might have broken free
   from the servitude whenever He pleased. He claims this for Himself,
   that He was voluntarily a Servant and especially that His obedience and
   Sacrifice unto death were His absolutely willing offering. He says of
   His life, "No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself: I have
   power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it up again." He
   could have gone out free if He would. That host that came to seize Him
   in the Garden would have been no more able to take Him than the
   Philistines were able to take Samson when he snapped the green withes.
   He did but speak to them and they fell backwards--and this proved how
   powerful He was to have delivered Himself. And when He was before
   Pilate, He might even then have escaped. Did He not say, "You could
   have had no power against Me if it had not been given you from above"?
   And even on the Cross when they said, "If He is the Son of God, let Him
   come down from the Cross," He might have leaped in one tremendous
   stride into the midst of His foes and smitten them with lightning
   flashes from those fearful eyes! He might have shaken the earth and
   removed Heaven rather than have died, if so it had been His will. But
   He had given His ears to be bored and He remained His Father's Servant
   even unto death! Willingly, without a struggle, this Victim was laid
   upon the altar. Like the passive lamb, which starts not even when the
   knife is thrust into it, the Savior gave Himself as a Sacrifice for the
   sins of the people--and to the fullest extent was the Servant of His
   Father!

   This is very delightful for us to think upon, especially when we
   remember that our Savior still wears the print of the opened ear Still
   is He in Heaven and there--

   "Looks like a Lamb that has been slain And wears His priesthood still."
   For your sake He does not hold His peace and for Jerusalem's sake He
   does not rest, but still continues to accomplish His Father's good
   pleasure, still interceding for His saints and waiting until the time
   shall come when He shall take His great power and reign and the number
   of His elect shall be accomplished. Still is He the Servant of God and
   the Friend of man--His opened hands, His side and feet bearing the
   marks that like the scars in the ears of the Jewish slave made Him to
   be recognized as a slave forever!

   So is He our Friend and His Father's Servant eternally. Brothers and
   Sisters, there is this to be said which ought to endear the Savior to
   you and to me--that His only motive for so having His ears bored, or
   dug, was His love. What says the servant in the text? "I love my
   master: I love my wife: I love my children." This is what our
   Servant-Savior said. He

   loved His God--never man loved God as Christ did! As God, He loved
   infinitely Him who is One with Him, even His Father. And as perfect
   Man, He loved God with all His heart, soul and strength. He had
   voluntarily become a Servant and He loved His Master. And He also loved
   His spouse. Oh, there was little in her to love, but He thought much of
   her and does think much of her now! The Church is His bride and He sees
   her--

   "Not as she stood in Adam's fall,

   When sin and ruin covered all,

   But as she'll stand another day--

   Fairer than sun's meridian ray." He saw His Character reflected in her.
   He saw her as what she is to be when she is perfect through the Spirit
   and He loved her, oh, with such a perfect, all-constraining love, and
   said--

   "ForherIllgo

   Through all the depths of sin and woe,

   And on the Cross will even dare

   The dreadful weight of wrath to bear."

   He found His spouse in the mire. He brought her up out of it. He found
   her in poverty and He became poor for her sake. He found her in rags
   and He stripped Himself to clothe her. He found her condemned and He
   was condemned for her acquittal. He found her on earth--He came from
   Heaven to bring her up from earth that she might be with Him where He
   is in Heaven forever. Then I love the last word, "I love my children."
   That may be laid hold of by each one of us, for as He is "The
   Everlasting Father," every Believer may regard himself or herself as
   His child! And He loves each one. He could die, but He could not deny
   His people! He could leave Heaven, but could never abandon us! He could
   not be content to be glorified unless His people were, too! He dared
   not be satisfied to sit upon a throne while they might be cast into
   Hell, but He could come down and bring them near to Himself by stooping
   as low as they had become! Let us bless Him! Let us, tonight, extol
   this blessed Servant of God in our hearts, who though King of kings had
   His ears opened because He loved His master, He loved His spouse, and
   He loved His children--and has, therefore, become their Servant
   forever!

   Now I thought, when I was turning over this in my mind, that perhaps
   some troubled conscience here might get comfort out of it, that perhaps
   someone might say, "Oh, well, if Jesus Christ has so given Himself up
   to be the Savior of sinners that He will never give up the work, then
   perhaps He will save me." You know what is meant by nailing the flag to
   the mast. It means that the man means to fight it out. Jesus Christ
   has, so to speak, nailed the flag of mercy to the masthead and He will
   fight it out with the devil! Yes, He will save the meanest of His
   people! He has given Himself up, heart and soul, to be the Savior of
   sinners! It is His business and He will never give it up. So long as
   there is an unsaved sinner, Christ will be seeking him! So long as this
   world has sinners in it, it will be a hunting ground for this glorious
   Nimrod, this "mighty hunter before the Lord," who has come to seek out
   poor wondering souls and bring them to Himself. "He is able to save
   unto the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever
   lives to make intercession for us." His ears being bored for this work,
   the work of intercession will be His as long as He lives! We will now
   pass from that to remark, in the second place--

   II. THAT EVERY GENUINE SERVANT OF GOD IS ONE WHO WOULD NOT ACCEPT HIS
   LIBERTY, OR

   LEAVE OFF BEING THE SERVANT OF GOD, IF HE COULD.

   He has had his ears bored and he means to be, and must be, a servant of
   God as long as he lives. There are, however, a great many professors of
   whom we are going to speak to you, and a great many other men in the
   world, too, who have never had their ears bored to be God's servants at
   all. There are some, in the first place, who hate the very thought of
   being God's servant' 'Serve God!" says one, "who is He? Who is Jehovah
   that I should obey Him?" The mass of men are of Pharaoh's mind--they
   are not going to obey God--they think they are their own masters. I do
   not believe there ever was a man who was his own master, but that every
   man has a master of some kind or other. How many men whose master is
   money--and if money orders them to do anything, however
   outrageous--they would at once do it to obtain the money. No matter how
   dirty the trick might be, there are some men who would do it if it
   promised profit to them and they would not be found out. No matter
   though they were to half starve themselves and lose comfort in their
   houses, how many there are who would suffer much if they might but gain
   gold! Mammon is their master. Some take pleasure to be their
   master--and pleasure is a very hard master, indeed, for the pleasures
   of sin, though they seem to be cheap, are al-

   ways dearly bought. A man never gets his penny's worth for his penny
   when he goes into the lusts of the flesh. There whatever he gets he has
   to pay back again--in his own flesh and bones shall he have to pay back
   every drachma of joy that he wins by unhallowed lust! But, oh, how men
   will bend their necks to many gods and many lords rather than serve
   Jehovah! As for the God that made them, many never think of Him and
   many never think of Him but to mention His name in ribald jest or oath,
   or to despise His authority. Ah, Sinner, God knows how to deal with
   such as you are, for if you sin with Pharaoh, you shall perish with
   Pharaoh! If you say, "I will not serve God," God will take care to make
   you a monument of His Justice, if you will not be a trophy of His
   Grace. "For this purpose," said He to Pharaoh, "have I raised you up,
   that I might show My power in you," and if God does not show His love
   in you, He will show His power by bringing you down one of these days,
   till you shall loathe the things you once loved and curse the day in
   which you dared to think yourselves wiser than God! When a creature is
   out at elbows with its creator, depend upon it, it is also out at
   elbows with itself. Things can never go along well when the wheel of
   our hearts does not cog with the wheel of God's heart. We must come
   down to God's will if we would rise up to happiness and peace!

   But there are many who profess to be the servants of God who have not
   had their ears bored--and this is proved by the fact that some of them
   go out from us after a time. Oh, it is a thing the most vexatious
   beneath the skies--it is the plague of the Church and it is the
   minister's nightmare and specter--that there should be so many hollow
   professors who, nevertheless, are able to maintain a whitewashed
   profession for so many years! Truly, it is but a poor test of
   Christianity to walk uprightly in appearance for 10 or even 20 years,
   for there are inventions nowadays by which counterfeits may be brought
   to such perfection that you can scarcely tell them from the pure gold!

   Through many a crucible will the false thing go and not betray its
   falseness until at last there comes a discovering hour--and then woe to
   the Church of God, but, most of all, woe to the man who duped that
   Church and misled those who trusted him! I am inclined to say to
   everyone of you, "Do not be too sure--search yourself." I am inclined,
   most of all, to say it to myself. I do so like to read a sermon
   sometimes--for I do not often hear one--that seems to give me a ring
   down upon the counter. You know I am often afraid of the jingle,
   whether it will sound like true gold or not, but it is a good thing to
   get a ring. A preacher with a soft and mealy mouth is but of little
   service to a Christian, but the man who sets forth plain and
   unpalatable Truths of God often comforts him because he is able to say,
   "Well, I can stand this searching Truth," and then he goes away
   satisfied that things are right with God. Try yourselves, dear Friends!
   Try yourselves constantly and ask the Lord to search you, and come
   afresh to the blood of Jesus lest you should be mistaken! There was an
   Apostle who turned out to be a Judas--many a minister has been a
   deceiver! Many a Church member and many a Church officer, too, has been
   nothing but a whitewashed sepulcher full of bones and rottenness! Take
   care, dear Hearer, lest your lot should be the same!

   Then there are others who make a very fine profession, who are even
   worse, if possible, than these, for they are religious and irreligious,
   too. I know some of you can carry a hymnbook in your pockets and a
   songbook, too. You can come here, I daresay, on Sunday evenings and
   drop in on a weeknight, but there are some other places of very
   doubtful reputation which know you, too! Oh, yes, I know some who have
   said, "Well, I must give up my seat there because I cannot give up the
   other, for the preacher does give it to me so severely."

   Ah, how the preacher wishes he could give it to you still more
   severely, for of all classes of men that should excite our sorrow and
   our pity, it is the men who are able to stand the Gospel and yet go on
   in their sins! Why, I have known professors in the country who would
   stand up in the singing pew, or sit near, who did not know what time of
   night they came home on Saturday from market! And we know there are not
   a few people who can drink the cup of the Lord and deep draughts of the
   cup of the devil, too, who will sing well when they are here, but will
   also sing a roaring good song at a public dinner. Jolly fellows! They
   are not very particular, but they had better be, or else they will find
   their lot at last particularly severe, for surely none shall so deserve
   the wrath of God as those who knew better! As I heard a poor soul say
   the other day, "Ah, Sir, I sinned in the light," and said it, I hope,
   with a broken heart, too. I thought, "What a thing to be forced to
   say!" Some of you, I hope, will be forced to say it. You have sinned
   knowing that you were sinning--sinned knowing the penalty of sin,
   sinned knowing something about better things, too! Yet have you gone
   like a dog to his vomit--vomited on Sunday, but have gone back to it on
   Monday--and like the sow that was washed on the Sabbath have gone back
   to wallow in the mire for six days! God have mercy upon some of you! I
   would that in His mercy He would

   come and make you keep close to what you profess--and to be no longer
   halting between two opinions, but have your ears bored to be the
   servants of God forever--and not the slaves of sin!

   I think I might make out a pretty long list of people of this sort, but
   I shall only mention one class. There is a great number of young men
   and a greater number of young women who attend this place and we are
   delighted to see you, dear Friends. May your numbers never grow less,
   for we love you and we desire to bless God that so many of you have
   been converted! But I am always fearful about some of you young people,
   lest your religion should in any way depend upon any sort of
   excitement, or your happening to be connected with a really quickened
   and living Church, or happening to be in such an earnest class, as some
   of our classes are, or because you attend upon the ministry in this
   place. I do know some who, when they get away into the country, where
   perhaps the minister is not much more than half alive, they grow cold
   and, by-and-by, and especially if they happen to get married, then the
   zeal which once fired them quite subsides. Now remember that the
   religion that depends upon any man, whoever he may be, or upon any
   woman, or that rests at all upon the company you have to keep, is not
   genuine religion at all! For our religion ought to maintain and will
   maintain its vitality, at least, if not its constant health, be you
   cast into whatever circumstances you may be. Some of you young women,
   perhaps, are going out to service where there are ungodly masters. Now
   you will know whether your Grace is real or not. Some of you young men
   are apprenticed, or obliged to go into situations where you are
   constantly in the midst of those who chaff you and jeer you--now we
   shall know what stuff you are made of! Now we shall see whether you are
   only stony-ground hearers, or whether there is real depth of earth in
   you, for if there is no depth of earth, you will soon wither away! But
   if your conversion was a genuine one, we defy all the wicked men on
   earth and all the devils in Hell to destroy it, for what God has done,
   none can undo! But what comes from man and not from the Spirit of God,
   depend upon it, will be of no use to you in the Day of Judgment.

   Thus there are many servants in God's House who are only there a little
   while and who go out at the end of their six years. But now I am going
   to talk to--

   III. THOSE WHO HAVE HAD THEIR EARS BORED.

   First, I shall bring out the awls. Genuine Christians have had their
   ears bored, that is to say, they are such Christians that they could
   not be anything else. And when they have their choice--and they do have
   it every day, for temptation gives them many an opportunity--they will
   not go out, but are obliged to remain the servants of God. I am now
   going to tell you some of the awls with which God has bored their ears.
   Christian, you have had your ears bored. What was one of the things
   that did it? I think it was past mercies. Forsake the Lord Jesus
   Christ? How can I? He loved me! He bought me--

   "He saw me ruined in the Fall, He loved me, notwithstanding all."

   Some of us were in great distress and Christ gave us peace--we were
   ready to destroy ourselves and He gave us joy and liberty--and since
   that day He has led us into green pastures and beside still waters and
   we have been a happy people! He has supplied us night and day! We
   cannot leave Him! We cannot leave Him!

   He has bored our ears, His Infinite Mercy in the past has fastened us
   to His doorpost. We dare not leave Him--we would not if we could! Do
   not many of you feel that the verse of the hymn is the real truth--

   "A very wretch, Lord, I should prove,

   Had I no love to You"?

   We owe our gracious Master so much that our ears are bored and we
   cannot leave Him. Imagine you see Ignatius standing up in the
   amphitheater when he is told that if he will curse Christ, he shall
   escape, and he says, "How can I curse Him? He has never done me a
   displeasure!" So with us! He has never done us ill. We cannot but speak
   well of His name and cling to Him!

   But I think our ears are bored, also, by a sense of our present
   helplessness. You say, "Leave Him? Ah, but where to?" We cannot do
   without Him! You tell us to do without Christ? As well tell the
   helpless baby that is hanging on its mother's breast to leave its
   mother! And we are more helpless than that infant--there is nothing but
   death lying before us if we leave Him. Brothers and Sisters, what could
   you and I do the next hour if we had no Savior to depend upon, none of
   His Grace to keep us from sin, and none of His love to comfort us in
   affliction? We would be utterly ruined! Leave Him? Ask the young
   husband to forsake his spouse! Ask the man who has hunted after gold
   and won it to throw away his trea-

   sure! But as for us, we cannot leave our Spouse, nor forsake our Divine
   Treasure. Now have we found contentment! Now have we got all that our
   souls can wish for! Never, Jesus, never can we leave You! What could we
   do without You?--

   "To whom or where could we go If we should turn from You?' That is the
   second awl with which to bore our ears.

   Then there is a third awl. Leave Him? How can we, when we think about
   the future? We expect between now and getting to Heaven a great many
   storms--and what could we do without the Captain and Pilot of souls? We
   know there are many giants to fight and dragons to kill--and what could
   we do without our soul's Greatheart to be our champion and protector?
   There are many arrows flying and what could we do without our shield?
   We could not leave our castle and high tower, or, if we did, what might
   not happen to us? Every ill certainly would, if we forsook Him. The
   past, the present and the future are all like sharp awls to bore right
   through our ears and fasten us to Christ!

   Leave Him? Why, the joy He gives us, the satisfaction, the delight,
   make it impossible for us to leave Him! Can a bride forget her
   ornaments? Can it be possible for a nation to put away its gods? Can a
   mother forget her child? All these things might be, but we cannot
   forget Him who is All-in-All to us! Once get the flavor of Christ in
   your mouth and you will never be satisfied with anything short of Him!
   Drink water from the well of Bethlehem and you will be like David-- you
   will say of it again and again--"Oh, that one would give me a drink of
   the water of the well." "My heart is fixed," said David, "my heart is
   fixed." Some people's hearts are flying about like feathers in the air.
   Whichever way the wind blows, they blow, but "my heart is fixed."
   Christ has driven four nails right through it and fastened it to His
   Cross! The spear has gone through my inmost soul--I have no other love
   but He--and I must love Him as long as I live." Thus can the Christian
   speak! The joy which Jesus gives him is the awl that has pierced his
   ears!

   And then, dear Friends, is there not another reason, and a very strong
   one, namely, our hope forever? Leave Christ? Why, then we would have to
   leave Heaven and its happiness! We have great expectations. We
   sometimes hear of people who have "great expectations." Yes, Believers
   have great expectations. We are not watching for dead men's shoes, but
   we are looking for the golden sandals that they wear in the land of the
   living! We are not expecting the legacies of earthly relatives, but we
   are expecting the blessed legacy which Christ has left to all His
   people--to be with Him where He is! Yes, the son of poverty is
   expecting one of the many mansions! The child of tribulation is
   expecting to have every tear wiped away from his eyes! We are expecting
   to hear it said, "Well done, good and faithful servant--enter you into
   the joy of your Lord." Give up Christ? No, the thought of Heaven bores
   our ears yet again. We cannot give Him up! We must still cling to Him
   because "we have respect unto the recompense of the reward." Now all of
   these awls are sharp ones, but I do not suppose they have pierced some
   of you. If, however, any of you have ever felt them piercing your ears,
   I am sure you felt very happy while the boring was going on--and may
   you be pierced by them yet again and again!

   Thus, then, I have shown you the awls, but I cannot pierce your ears.
   The text forbids me, for it says, " the master was to pierce the
   servant's ear." Yes, there is no man can bind a soul to Christ, but
   Christ Himself must do it. There is such a struggle in men's hearts
   against Christ that only the High Priest who knows how to bind the
   Sacrifice, can ever cast the cords of love around us and to His altar
   bind us fast. If, dear Friends, you are afraid of backsliding. If you
   are afraid you should grow cold and turn aside from your Master, bore
   your ears again tonight! Ask Him to open the scars afresh and let you
   feel it until you can have no doubt that it is there! That sweet sermon
   by Mr. Lewis some of you have never forgotten--on the text--"I bear in
   my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." May you feel that you have had
   the Master boring your ears.

   Now, just one word upon what is to be bored, namely, the ears. The
   boring of the ears was the emblem of obedience, for it is with the ear
   that the servant hears. The Christian, then, will be mainly God's
   servant through his ears. We hear God's will and, therefore, do it.
   Some of you have ears that need a little opening, for you know some
   things to be your duty and you profess to be God's servant, but you do
   not attend to them. Your ears, I hope, are bored, but you seem to have
   taken cold in them and you cannot hear the Master's voice! Some of you,
   for instance, know that as Believers you ought to be baptized but yet
   you shrink from it. Others of you know you ought to be united with a
   Christian Church. "They gave themselves first to the Lord, and
   afterwards to the saints by the Word of God." "He that has ears to
   hear, let him hear." The obedient servant only has to hear his Master's
   voice and he runs at once to do His bidding. "Oh," you say, "but it is
   not essential, Sir." No, I know it is not. But still, if you have a
   servant, you do not expect her to say that

   what you tell her to do is "not essential." Try your servant Mary
   tonight. Tell her to do something. She does not do it. You tell her
   again. She does not do it and she says to you, "But, Sir, remember it
   is not essential!" You say to her, "I do not keep servants to argue
   points with me! If they will not do my bidding they must find another
   master."

   Mind the Lord does not say this to you, for if a thing is His will, all
   that you have to do is to do it, asking no questions! I never heard of
   an angel in Heaven asking God why he was ordered to do such-and-such a
   thing. They serve Him there without questioning--and so may His will be
   done by us on earth after the same fashion, "as it is done in Heaven."

   May you be like the high priests whose thumbs and toes were touched
   with blood to show that their active powers were given to the service
   of God. And may you also be like those whose ears were touched with
   blood to show that you hear the Master's will and that your thoughtful
   faculties are given to the attentive observation of what His mind is,
   so that the hands and the feet may be guided as to what you should do!

   Lastly, I want you to notice that when the ear was bored, it was bored
   to the doorpost in the presence of the judges. It was not done in
   secret in some back room! It was done in public with witnesses present.
   If this man is going to devote himself to his master, he must be
   brought right out to the doorpost. "Now then, your ear, Sir. The awl
   must be driven right through it in the presence of spectators." And I
   think consecration to Christ is not a thing to be done in secret. You
   who love the Lord Jesus Christ--acknowledge it! If you are His
   servants, wear His livery. If you are His servants, come out and
   profess to be so! Have your ears bored to the very doorpost, publicly,
   and openly avow yourselves to be on the Lord's side. He asks it and it
   is no more than He deserves! "He that confesses Me before men," He
   says, "Him also will I confess before My Father who is in Heaven."

   I think this man might say, "My master's house is to be my dwelling
   place forever." I know some of us seem to have had our ears bored even
   to the posts of this very House of Prayer! Some of you are never
   absent, whatever service there may be. If it were to rain, I do not
   know how much, I do not think it would thin this congregation much, for
   you love to come up to the House of God. Well, the assembling of
   yourselves together will always, I hope, be a means of profit to
   you--it is always a manifest indication of your retaining your service
   under the good Master! May you thus always keep close to the posts of
   His door and when He comes, may He find you like servants waiting at
   the door for their lord!

   Now, are there any here tonight who would like to have their ears bored
   with the awls which I have mentioned? If so, I would say to them, "If
   your heart is right with God and you are trusting in Jesus, only,
   instead of making a resolution, offer a prayer and let this be the
   prayer--'Lord, while I live and till I die, I desire to be Your servant
   to the utmost of my power. I desire to do Your will or to allow it. I
   give myself up without reserve or limitation. All that I am, all that I
   have, I give up to You. Take me from this night forth and let me not
   offer this prayer as a mere matter of form or hypocrisy, but may I
   offer it heartily and from my inmost soul. Enable me to say I am Your
   servant. Oh, God! Sanctify me, spirit, soul and body, for Your name's
   sake. Amen.'"
     __________________________________________________________________

The Witness of the Lord's Supper

   (No. 3338)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 23, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you do show
   the Lord's death till He comes." 1 Corinthians 11:26.

   THE center of our holy religion is the Cross. The central thought of
   the whole of Christianity is Christ and the great point in Christ's
   history is His Crucifixion. We preach Christ--but more--we preach Him
   Crucified! Beloved, this, which is the keystone or the whole arch of
   our religion, should be more constantly in our minds than it is. It
   should more frequently occupy our meditations. It should engage more
   incessantly our tongues--we should sing of it more often, we should
   pray more in the shadow of it and we should live more under the control
   of the impulses its suggests. In the Cross of Christ let each one of us
   glory and, like the Apostle, say, "God forbid that I should glory save
   in the Cross of Jesus Christ our Lord."

   In order to keep in our mind's eye what, alas, we so easily forget--the
   death of our blessed Lord--He has been pleased to institute the Supper
   which we are about to celebrate. Beneath yon fair white linen cloth we
   have memorials of His passion, full of instruction to those who rightly
   view them. If any in this place should ask, "What mean you by this
   service?" our ready answer shall be according as it is written--"For as
   often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's
   death till He comes" (1 Cor 11:26). We eat bread and drink wine, not
   out of any foolish superstition that these can be transmuted into the
   very flesh and blood of Jesus Christ--a superstition which would be a
   disgrace to a Bushman--a superstition which is a disgrace to those who
   hold it in this enlightened land, and not a disgrace only, but a vast
   sin--a black delusion which is given to them that they may believe a
   lie--whereby they involve themselves in the doom of Hell! We hold no
   such folly. Because we are rational and because we are spiritual, both
   our reason and our spiritual nature revolt against anything so
   atrocious as to believe that the body of Christ--the absolute flesh and
   blood--can be eaten and drank, or that if it could be done, it ought to
   be done, or that it could confer any spiritual benefit upon those who
   could perform so cannibal and revolting an act! We believe in the real
   Presence, but not in the corporeal Presence. We believe that Jesus
   Christ comes to us spiritually and refreshes us, and in that sense we
   both eat His flesh and drink His blood. But as to any such literal
   feast as some believe in, we reject the thought with horror and with
   contempt!

   The great meaning of "The Lord's Supper," as we call it, is that we
   show the Lord's death till He comes. We show it to ourselves and we
   show it, or represent it, to others--to unbelievers who may chance to
   look on. The former of these is, perhaps, the more important. In coming
   to eat of the bread and drink of the wine at this Supper--

   I. WE SHOW THE LORD'S DEATH TO OURSELVES.

   Not, indeed, that this is the exclusive manner of exhibiting the
   passion which our dear Savior endured, or the decease which He
   accomplished, for there are, it must be admitted, other methods of
   showing the Lord's death. One is by this Book, this Inspired Volume
   which contains the record of His Crucifixion--which explains it--which
   enforces upon men the duty of putting their trust in the merit of Him
   who died. Wherever this Bible is opened there is a showing of Christ's
   death! Why, the whole Book is full of it! There is a crimson line of
   atoning Sacrifice running from Genesis to Revelation--

   "Here I behold my Savor's face Almost in every page."

   Every distinct Book of Inspiration is like a mirror reflecting the
   image of Jesus--"as in a glass, darkly," it is true, but still
   sufficiently clear even for these dim eyes of ours. All the Scriptures
   are the swaddling bands of the Child, Christ Je-

   sus, as said Augustine of old--If you would see Jesus, you must search
   for Him in Holy Scripture and, by the light of the Holy Spirit, you
   will not go far until you find Him!

   The Lord Jesus Christ's death is also shown forth in public ministry.
   There are some who are so fond of painted windows because, they say,
   they preach by painting. Brothers and Sisters, we paint by preaching!
   That is the only difference and to paint by preaching is an infinitely
   better thing than to preach by painting! All the methods that are
   adopted to show forth Christ's death throughout all the world are utter
   vanity compared with the ministration of the Gospel. It is not possible
   for the preacher too much to magnify His office. It is God's
   predestinated channel of Grace to the sons of men. "Faith comes by
   hearing, and hearing by the Word of God"--and as we speak, God helping
   us--Christ is set forth, manifestly Crucified among you! How many in
   this place have seen Jesus by what they have heard spoken of Him? The
   eye of the mind has seen Him. 'Twere of little use for the eyes of
   sense to do so. Thousands saw Christ with their natural eyes and
   perished in their sins! But to see Him with the eyes of the
   spirit--this it is that saves. The preaching of the Gospel paints
   Christ to the mind's eyes, not to the natural eyes, so it is the best
   way of depicting Him, for it exactly meets the vision that it is
   intended to impress!

   Still, over and above the showing of Christ's death in the printed Word
   and the Word preached, there comes in this emblematical Supper in which
   we show Christ' s death after a manner I will try to explain. We show
   to ourselves as we come here that Christ was really Incarnate and so
   could die. My Soul, as you take that bread into your fingers, remember
   that it is a thing to be handled and to be touched--a material
   substance. And so, God, the Infinite, took into union with Himself
   actual flesh and blood, such as you have in your own body! A strange
   thing that a pure Spirit should condescend to tabernacle in flesh--and
   yet it is so written--"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and
   we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
   full of Grace and truth." Oh, matchless mystery! He who fills all
   things became an Infant of a span long! He who is Eternal and
   Omnipotent became a humble working Man, putting on the garment without
   seam, suffering, toiling and at last yielding up His life! As each drop
   of wine shall pass your lips and you recognize it as a material
   substance, you show to yourself, O Believer, that Jesus Christ became
   Incarnate. Think of this! Take care that you do not make a God out of
   the manhood, nor a man out of the Godhead. Rest assured that as
   certainly as Christ was God, without diminution of His splendor, so
   certainly He was also Man, pure Man with a Manhood like your own, even
   as He, Himself, said--"Handle Me and see; a spirit has not flesh and
   bones as you see I have." See, then, Brothers and Sisters, your next of
   kin--a sufferer like yourselves--and let the bread and wine remind you
   of Him!

   Then next, the Supper reminds you of your Lord's sufferings. There is
   the bread broken. The wine, the juice of the grape, crushed out with
   pain and labor--poured out. Now remember that Jesus Christ, though not
   a bone of Him could be broken, was broken in spirit--"Reproach has
   broken My heart; I am full of heaviness"--He poured out His soul unto
   death. Let the bread and the wine remind you of the bloody sweat in the
   Garden--of the anguish unto death which He endured in dark Gethsemane
   among the olive trees. Let them bring to your recollection, Beloved in
   the Lord, the scourging at the hands of Pilate and of Herod. Imagine
   you see Him standing patiently there, giving up His back to the smiters
   and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair--hiding not His face
   from shame and spitting. That bread broken and that wine poured out
   should remind you of the journey along the Via Dolorosa, as He went
   fainting beneath the burden of His Cross. They must remind you of the
   Cross and the nails, the grief of being forsaken, the anguish of
   thirst, the bitterness of scorn, the torment of fever and, at last,
   death itself. I do not say that, perhaps you will be able to make the
   whole scene pass before your minds, but I bid you try to do so. Drive
   away every other thought as Christ drove the buyers and sellers out of
   the Temple. Charge your soul to stand with His Virgin Mother at the
   foot of the Cross and pray that His blood may fall upon you, drop by
   drop, that you may be so enchanted by what you see, withal so dreadful,
   but yet so full of bliss, that you may not dare for a moment to let a
   stray thought come in! This and this only, think of! Think of Jesus
   Incarnate and of Jesus suffering!

   But the bread and the wine show more than this. What do I see? Bread,
   the flesh. Wine, the life, the blood. Flesh and blood, then, when
   separated, are both dead so that the cup and the bread together
   distinctly signify the actual death of our Lord. There is no such thing
   as a Lord's Supper with the bread, alone, nor with the cup, alone, nor
   with the bread and wine mingled! They must both be distinct. Without
   shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. And until the blood has
   been poured forth, the flesh still remains and retains its life. But
   put the two, distinctly, and you get the idea of death as clearly as
   you can have it. Now, Beloved, I want you to come close up to this
   Truth of God, that the Lord of

   Glory actually died. For our Savior there was no passing into Heaven by
   a chariot of fire. It is not said of Him, as of Enoch, that "He was
   not, for God took Him." He must die! You dread death. You look forward
   to it frequently with trepidation. But Christ passed absolutely through
   it and the Human Soul and the Human Body of our Savior were torn from
   each other. He actually descended into the abodes of the dead! He bowed
   His head to the great enemy and yielded up the ghost. Had He not so
   died, there had been no ransom paid for you, for God's Law demanded a
   life. The sentence was, "The soul that sins, it shall die." Christ has
   actually died--and let this Supper bring home the thought most sweetly
   to yourselves that Jesus died!

   We have not yet shown Christ's death wholly to ourselves. The spreading
   of that breadand wine on yonder table is a showing to ourselves that
   God has made a provision for human needs. A hungry man coming to that
   Table thinks at once of eating and drinking. He perceives that if it is
   placed there, it is placed there for use. Bread and wine in the
   cupboard may be stored, but bread and wine on the table are evidently
   for use. Now, child of God, catch that thought and hold it. Jesus
   Christ has come into the world, not to withhold, but to give! Not to
   reserve, but to distribute! Not to keep to Himself any good thing, but
   to bestow all that He has upon His people! Come, then, with all your
   great necessities--come to the Savior, for He freely presents Himself
   to all Believers! Great Sinner, do you need great pardon? Jesus will
   give it to you! He puts on the Table the cup. Do you need, Christian,
   great comfort? Come and take it--it is put on the Table! Jesus keeps
   open house for all comers who come by faith to Him. Have you the faith
   to come and trust Him? Then all that Jesus is and has you may be and
   have! Especially you that are His friends, you that have leaned upon
   His bosom--do not stint yourselves, for He does not stint you. You are
   not straitened in Him--if straitened at all, it is in yourselves. Jesus
   puts upon the Table for us, Himself, and, being put there, it is as
   good as an open invitation by a loud voice, saying, "O, you hungry,
   come and feed! O, you thirsty, come and drink!" There is nothing in
   Christ which He will deny to His people! Christ has nothing in Heaven
   or on earth which He will keep back from the Believer that dares to
   come and ask for it! Come, then! Come boldly! The Lord give you access
   unto this Grace!

   And do we not show the Lord's death a little further when, after having
   spread the Supper, we come to eat it? Then we say to ourselves, "Just
   as I must eat this bread, or it will not nourish me, so must I take
   Jesus Christ, personally, by a distinct act of faith and take Him to be
   mine. And as this bread, after I have taken it, incorporates itself
   with me so that there is no distinction between this bread and my body,
   but it helps to build up the structure of my body, so when I take
   Christ and trust Him, He becomes one with me and I become one with Him
   and my life is hid with Him. And He says that because He lives I shall
   live also." Now, is not that a wonderful lesson to teach by so simple
   an action? You eat, you drink, the food becomes assimilated into
   yourselves. You come to Jesus, you trust Him and Christ becomes one
   with you and you become one with Him, so that henceforth you can say,
   "It is no more I that lives, but Christ that lives in me" and, as for
   Jesus, He calls you a member of His body! He calls you a branch from
   His stem! He calls you the spouse and He, Himself, your Bridegroom! Oh,
   sacred union effected by the act of reception which is the act of
   faith!

   And now, beloved Believer, as you first lived by receiving Grace, you
   can only grow in that life by still receiving it! Do not come to this
   Table and say, "What can I bring?" No, but come and say, "What can I
   take away?" Do not say, "Am I worthy?" That question never ought to be
   asked. You are not worthy! But come, unworthy as you are, and take what
   Jesus has provided for unworthy sinners! "Well," says someone, "but we
   are to take heed lest we eat and drink being unworthy." No, you are
   not! There is no such text in all the Bible! You see, you have left out
   a syllable. What it does say is about eating and drinking
   unworthily--and that is with respect to the way of eating it. If you
   come to this table lightly--if you come to it irreligiously,
   profanely--if you come as they did at Corinth, to merely drink. If you
   come to get money by it, as some did in years gone by, to qualify
   themselves for office or to obtain charity--thatwould be to eat and
   drink unworthily! But, unworthy as you are, if your--

   "Hope is fixed on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness,"
   then come, for such as you the Table is spread!

   And when you do come, I do pray you yet once more, do not let unbelief
   keep you back from enjoying all that is to be enjoyed. You know a very
   hungry man does not stand on many manners. If he is told to eat
   everything that is set before him, then his hunger does not permit him
   to stand on niceties, but he eats all he can get. And so may you. Yes,
   and you may carry away what you will, too, with you. You may come and
   get a feast tonight and the sweet remembrance of it in days to come
   will be permitted to you. Believe that Christ does not refuse you
   anything. When you pray, do not ask as if you were getting something
   out of a hard-hearted Being, but come to One whose delight it is to
   give--whose very Glory it is to scatter His mercies among His beloved
   ones--

   "Come, make your needs, your burdens known!

   He will present them at the Throne

   And angel bands are waiting there,

   His messages of love to bear." Thus, you see, in the bread and the
   wine, in the bread and wine separated, in the bread broken and the wine
   poured out, in the two emblems put on a table-- and in these two being
   so partaken of that they become united with the fabric of our body--we
   set forth the whole mystery of the death of Jesus Christ to ourselves.
   May the Spirit of God help us to truly do this!

   Observe now that--

   II. WE ARE TO SHOW CHRIST'S DEATH TO OTHERS.

   As often as we eat this bread and drink of this cup, we do this. We
   show to others the fact that Jesus died. I think historians have taken
   it as one of the best proofs of a fact when some rite has been
   instituted to commemorate it. A pillar with an inscription is not
   always a certain index to truth. Our own Monument, for instance, had a
   record on it that London was burned down by the Catholics--who had no
   more to do with it, certainly, than the Muslims did! The inscription in
   that case was not a record of fact! Yes, and a pillar might be erected
   to record an event which never occurred at all. But, as a general rule,
   large bodies of men will not agree together to continually celebrate
   events which never occurred. Nobody doubts, I suppose, the siege of
   Londonderry, when the prentice boys meet every year to make a noise and
   disturbance. They at least bring before the historian's mind the
   certainty that such an event did occur, for it is still thus recorded.
   Now, our Lord gave us this simple method of breaking bread and drinking
   wine to be our way of setting up our pillar--our mode of keeping up a
   great historical fact--that there was a Man who lived in Judea, who
   professed to be the Son of God, who was the King of the Jews, who lived
   a humble life and died a marvelous death! There is no fact in history
   so well attested as this! So that those who have given up the
   Inspiration of Scripture have seldom touched either the life or the
   death of Jesus, but have conceded both to be facts. And now this very
   night, perhaps, in fifty thousand places, at this moment, this
   commemorative act of eating bread and drinking wine is about to be
   performed in this one country of England. Now that is something by way
   of record, and by this act we help to perpetuate to all generations the
   fact that Jesus died!

   But we do a great deal more than this to others. We assert by coming
   here, tonight, and eating this bread and drinking of this cup, that we
   believe that this Man, Jesus of Nazareth, was the Son of God and the
   Savior of men, and that we go in with Him for everything that is
   involved in the story of His life and death. That is to say, if it is a
   shame for Christ to die upon the Cross, we are willing to bear part of
   the shame. If it is thought to be foolishness to believe in a Crucified
   Man--we are fools and come here to avow it. If it is said to be a
   stumbling block to many that Jesus of Nazareth should be the Son of
   God--we come to declare that it is no stumbling block to us! We accept
   Him as Divine! We trust in Him as the Propitiation for our sins!
   Beloved, when you shall take that bread, you take part with Christ. You
   take lot with Him and, mark you, He often goes up the bleak side of the
   hill--and you will have to do the same with the snow between your
   teeth! And He often lodges in huts and hovels--yes, He has not where to
   lay His head! He has handfuls of the world's filth thrown at Him and
   but little of its gold laid at His feet. He is despised and rejected of
   men--and if you will keep Him company, you must expect to be despised,
   too, and to be as ill-treated as He was--for the servant is not above
   his Master, nor the disciple above his Lord! Whoever follows David must
   go to him in the wild goat tracks of Engedi, or dwell with him in the
   Cave of Adullam. He that would be David's man must share David's needs
   and David's disgraces or else he cannot share his crown. Believers,
   have you counted this cost? You professors who come to this Table and
   who say to the onlookers, "We go with Christ! We are enlisted under His
   banner! We have given ourselves to Him"--have we counted the cost?--

   "Have you counted the cost? Have you counted the cost?

   You followers of the Cross?

   And are you prepared for your Masters sake

   To suffer all worldly loss?

   And can you endure with the virgin band, The lowly and pure in heart,
   Who wherever the Lamb does lead, From His footsteps never depart?'

   Oh, that so counting the cost, you may continue with Him till life's
   journey is over! Thus, you see, you not only assert that Christ died,
   but you communicants assert that He died for you and that you are one
   with Him and will take shares with Him when He comes into His Kingdom!

   You do even more than that. You explain the meaning of Christ's death
   by the mere fact of coming to this Table. "How," you ask, "is that?" In
   eating the bread and drinking the wine, you set forth a sacrifice--a
   libation of blood and a slaughter of flesh--and you say to all the
   world, "Our trust for salvation rests in a Sacrifice! We have no hope
   of being saved by anything that springs of ourselves--we look wholly
   out of self and entirely to the Sacrifice which was offered up on the
   Cross." While some of you sit down to the Table, others of you will be
   onlookers. I do pray, as you look on, if you have never known this
   Truth of God before, learn it now. All your hope of ever entering
   Heaven must lie quite out of yourselves and be concentrated in
   Another--in God's only and own dear Son! While I am stating this fact,
   which is so well known to you that it sounds commonplace, I feel as if
   I could burst into a flood of tears to think that it should grow so
   commonplace and yet be not believed! Does God become Man and die, and
   will you not trust Him? Does my God, that made the heavens and the
   earth, of whom I read that without Him was not anything made that was
   made--does He become a Man and suffer that sinners might live? And is
   it nothing to you, is it nothing to you and will you prefer the tawdry
   pleasures of this world to the solid bliss which He can give you? And
   will you dash yourselves upon the bosses of Jehovah's buckler and run
   upon His glittering spear and ruin yourselves forever rather than close
   in with Christ and kiss the Son lest He be angry? I can understand why
   it is that you do not love my Lord, for once I was so foolish, myself,
   but oh, it is brutish--it is worse than that, it is devilish to despise
   a dying Christ! I know not whether I have not maligned the devil in
   using his name in such a matter as that, for surely, had Jesus died for
   devils, they would not have been such devils as men are who, hearing of
   a Savior and believing the story of His passion, yet turn a deaf ear to
   it and give their souls up to Madame Wanton, or to base-born Mammon, or
   to some other carnal thing which will but delude and destroy them!

   There are some of you I shall never see again. I charge you before the
   Eternal God, as we shall meet at His Last Judgment Seat, think of
   this--that if it is worth God's while to come here and be Incarnate,
   and so to suffer to make Atonement, it is not a thing for you to trifle
   with! But if you do, you will find that the stone which you refused
   will grind you to powder in that day when, like some cliff that is
   loosened from its socket, long quivering there, it shall come rolling
   down upon the heedless traveler to crush him and utterly destroy him!
   God save you, my dear Hearer, stranger to me, and stranger to yourself,
   and stranger to my God! And though you may remain a stranger to me, yet
   may you begin to know something of yourself, tonight, and something of
   my Master, of whom I will say this one thing--If you did but know Him
   you would love Him--

   "His worth if all the nations knew,

   Sure the whole world would love Him too."

   Thus, then, do we show the fact of our participation in Christ's death
   and the meaning of it.

   Does not the voice of ages and of generations after generations speak
   to you now in the constancy and frequency of this celebration? And do
   you not perceive that we move forward to the boundary which shall
   realize the Church's hope? "We do show the Lord's death till He comes."
   Then He is coming! He is coming! I know not when, no, nor know the
   angel of God that is nearest to the Eternal Book when God unfolds the
   leaves. But He is coming! As when the earthquake comes, with divers
   signs and prodigies that make men start, and yet they know not what it
   is, He comes! As the lightning flash that is seen from east to west, He
   comes! As the thief that steals silently through the shadows of the
   night and robs the sleeper, so He comes! The Man that wore the crown of
   thorns is coming with a crown about His brow more glorious than all the
   coronets of earth. He is coming! The Son of Mary is coming to wear no
   more the garment without seam, but wrapped--

   " With rainbow wreath and robes of storm."

   He is coming! The Man that did hang upon the Cross will sit upon the
   Great White Throne--

   "On cherub wings and wings of wind, Appointed Judge of all mankind."

   And you said tonight--you said it and I heard you--that you crucified
   Him and you said that yours were the hands that drove the nails and
   made the hammer fall. You sang just now--

   "Tis I have thus ungrateful been." Now you have confessed it! You who
   have trusted in Him will confess it and yet, thank God that out of a
   fault springs your salvation! But you who have not trusted Him, what
   will you say to Him in that day when He shall come to judge the world?
   You shall look on Him whom you have pierced and you shall weep and wail
   because of Him! Oh, that you would look at His wounds now and trust
   Him, for if you do not, you shall look on them, then, and you shall
   say, "I made those wounds." And that thought will shake you as when a
   lion shakes its prey. That thought will melt your bones as though they
   were but ice in the heat of the sun! And your loins shall be loosed and
   your soul shall sink in dismay. I pray you--I beseech you by the love
   you bear to yourself, and to your soul that can never die--look unto
   Jesus and be saved! Look unto Him now! You must look one day--look
   tonight! You must look, either with repentance and faith, or else with
   terror and despair! Choose which it shall be. Choose now! Young men and
   women who have stepped in here tonight, I pray God that you may have
   Grace to decide for Jesus now. Old men and fathers, maidens and
   matrons, may you also have Grace to say, "I will take Him as my Savior,
   not as my Judge"--

   "But if your ears refuse

   The language of His Grace,

   And hearts grow hard like stubborn Jews,

   That unbelieving race.

   The Lord in anger dressed,

   Shall lift His hand and swear,

   ' You that despise My promised rest

   Shall have no portion there.'"

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: EZEKKIEL 36:16-38.

   Verses 16-20. Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son
   of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled
   it by their own way and by their doings: their way was before Me as the
   uncleanness of a removed woman. Therefore I poured My fury upon them
   for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols
   wherewith they had polluted it and I scattered them among the heathen,
   and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way
   and according to their doings I judged them. And when they entered unto
   the heathen, where they went, they profaned My holy name, when they
   said to them, these are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out
   of His land.All through Scripture we are told that God has great regard
   to the honor of His holy name. "The Lord your God is a jealous God."
   And this is no small blessing to us, for it has so happened that when
   there has been no other reason for mercy, God's regard to His own name
   has found Him a reason for dealing mercifully with His unbelieving,
   undeserving people! See how He had scattered His chosen people. He had
   sent them away into captivity, justly, on account of their sins. But it
   came to pass that wherever they went, whether it was into Persia or
   Babylonia, the people said, "These are Jehovah' s people! These are
   Jehovah' s people and they are gone forth out of His land." What was
   the consequence of this?

   21. But I had pity for My holy name, which the house of Israel had
   profaned among the heathen, where they went. He had pity for His own
   name! He had a reverence and esteem for His own renown and standing,
   even among these heathen nations!

   22, 23. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, thus says the LORD GOD;
   do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel but for My holy name's
   sake, which you haveprofaned among the heathen, where you went And I
   will sanctify My great name, which was profaned among the heathen which
   you have profaned in the midst of them: and the heathen shall know that
   I am the LORD says the LORD GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you
   before their eyes. Brothers and Sisters, what must God think of a
   nation like ours which has come to be called by His name, albeit it so
   little deserves that great

   honor? What, I say, must He think of the fact that if there are any
   vices yet unknown, white men will teach them to the heathen? And when
   the heathen have heard the Gospel, the great sources of doubt are the
   white men--Englishmen! Full often the greatest oppressors will spring
   out of our own nation! Certainly we hold the belt for drunkenness and
   where our fellow countrymen go, the name of Christianity is rendered
   base among the heathen! The Muslims say of such a man, "He has been
   drunk and turned a Christian." I will grant that much that is said is
   said unwisely, untruthfully and slanderously in exaggeration, for these
   men are no Christians! They know not the Lord. It is not a Christian
   country--it is a heathen country, as some of us know, not only by what
   we read, but by what we see and hear! Can you walk the streets without
   hearing blasphemies more black than might be heard in any streets under
   Heaven? This is a heathen country, but yet it has somehow come to be
   thought to be a Christian country and, therefore, its conduct is
   bringing dishonor upon the name of the Most High! Oh, that He would
   have pity upon that name and interpose, and once more establish the
   Truth of God and set up a throne of righteousness and turn the hearts
   of the people to Himself in this country! Oh, that it were so, for His
   great name's sake! He cannot bless us for our own sakes, for we deserve
   nothing but His wrath--but, oh, that He would once again have pity upon
   His holy name that is profaned--and bless this, our land! The Lord goes
   on to say concerning His people--

   24. For I will take you from among the heathen, andgather you out ofall
   countries, and will bringyou into your own land. Now, this stands true
   of Israel after the flesh. It will assuredly be fulfilled in the latter
   days. But it stands even more certain concerning Israel, the true
   Israel, of whom the natural Israel is but the type. Now, we read one
   form of that New Covenant made with God concerning His elect,
   comprehending all that have believed in Christ, or ever shall believe
   in Him. This is the Covenant that He makes with us in these days--

   25, 26. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be
   clean: from all your flthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse
   you. 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. Here is, first of all, full
   justification. "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you." And here
   is, next, regeneration--"A new heart also will I give you, and a new
   spirit will I put within you." These are unconditional promises of that
   Covenant which He has made with His redeemed in the Person of Christ
   Jesus, their Covenant Head! See how majestically it is worded--"I will"
   and, "You shall." There is not an "if" or a "but" all through it!

   27. And I willput My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My
   statutes, and you shall keep My judgments, and do them.Here is
   sanctification! Here is final perseverance! Blessed promises of the
   Covenant of Grace!

   28. And you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers: and
   you shall be My people, and I will be your God. That is the greatest
   promise of all! If a man were to preach a series of sermons upon this
   text during every day in the year, he could never exhaust the fullness
   of its meaning. "You shall be My people, and I will be your God."

   29. I will also save you from all your uncleanness: and I will call for
   the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And,
   spiritually, how true this is--that whenever God saves us from sin, He
   also saves us from every form of famine. No heart was ever left to
   hunger and thirst in vain when it was cleansed from its sin! Our needs
   come out of our sins, but when we walk with God, He lays no famine upon
   us in spiritual things.

   30. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the
   field, that you shall receive no more reproach of famine among the
   heathen. "Then," when I have blessed you thus--when I have fully saved
   you, when I have brought you up from all the places where I have
   scattered you, when I have enriched you and indulged you with mylove--

   31. Then shallyou remember your own evil ways, andyour doings that were
   not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your
   iniquities and for your abominations. Repentance is not the root of
   Grace, but the lily-like flower of it. It is not a thing for the early
   morning of Christian life, alone. Repentance will go side by side with
   faith all through the ways of righteousness till we get to Heaven Gate!
   It is when we have most of mercy that we have most loathing for sin--

   "Law and terrors do but harden All the while they work alone. But a
   sense of blood-bought pardon Soon dissolves a heart of stone!"

   32. Not for your sakes do I do this, says the LORD GOD. Be it known
   unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, Ohouse of
   Israel. There is no man saved for his own sake. There is no man
   redeemed for his own sake. It is for God's own Glory's sake. There is
   no motive so high--there is none so worthy of God, as the making known
   to all generations and all realms the majesty of His love and the
   faithfulness of His Covenant.

   33-36. Thus says the LORD GOD: In the day that I shall have cleansed
   you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the
   cities, and the wastes shall be built. And the desolate land shall be
   tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And
   they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden
   of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become
   fenced, and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about
   you shall know that I, the LORD, build the ruined places, and plant
   that, that was desolate; I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.
   Now, as He will do this, I doubt not, in Palestine, in due season, so
   does He always make the most desolate places to be built when His
   people live near to Him. Let us have courage, Brothers and Sisters,
   about London, about England, about the world! It is very wicked, but if
   we will keep close to God, we are able to overcome this wickedness in
   Christ's name. Let us have comfort about these evil days in which the
   most of men seem to be departing from the Gospel. We can "hold the
   fort" till Christ comes--let us but have courage! God will give us yet
   to see better and brighter days. He was thought to be a good citizen
   who never despaired of his country and he is a good Christian who never
   indulges a dreary thought about the ultimate triumph of Christ and the
   coming of His Kingdom--"for Yours is the Kingdom," even now, "and the
   power and the glory," and so shall it be, forever and ever!

   37. Thus says the LORD GOD; I will yet for this be enquired of by the
   house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like
   a flock. There must be the spirit of prayer and supplication poured out
   first. We shall see Israel restored to her land when Israel is restored
   to the Mercy Seat--and we shall see great prosperity as a Church and
   the blessing of God will rest upon our nation when once God's people go
   up to the top of Carmel with their faces between their knees and cry,
   and cry, and cry again, expecting that yet the heavenly shower shall
   end this long drought of the curse--and the blessing shall come. "I
   will yet be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them."

   38. As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts;
   so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men; and they shall
   know that I am the LORD. And that is the great end of it all--to make
   men know that the I AM is-- that the true and real God is still potent
   among the sons of men and does His will both here and among the armies
   of Heaven. Unto His name be glory forever and ever!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Heart Perfumed

   (No. 3339)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING
   SEPTEMBER 13, 1866.

   "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who
   was given unto us." Romans 5:5.

   As one reads the opening verses of this Chapter, one cannot help
   saying, "What marvelous treasures are those which belong to the people
   of God!" Hezekiah took the Babylonian ambassadors through all his
   varied treasure houses and herein he did evil--but if you can conduct
   your mind through the spiritual treasure houses and the minds of your
   friends in the same direction, you will do well. What is the wealth of
   God's people? Who can count it? It is wondrous and beyond conception!
   The Apostle seems to have taken up a whole handful of brilliants in the
   first verses of this Chapter and he now holds them up, one by one, and
   lets them glitter in the light, no not merely a handful plucked at
   random, but they seem to be striving together, for one follows on after
   the other! "Therefore" is the link which connects justification with
   "peace," and then there is a connection between this "peace" and
   "access," and from this "access" to God we go on to "rejoice in hope of
   the glory of God." And when we have got as far as this string of
   pearls, the Apostle adds, "And not only so," and then he holds up a
   cluster--and when he has spoken of them he adds that "tribulation works
   patience, and patience experience, and"--another, "and"--"experience
   hope," and then another, "and"--"and hope makes not ashamed." And then
   at the end of this string ofjewels he brings up the language of the
   text--"Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
   Spirit who was given unto us."

   I suppose the allusion in the text is to the pouring out of water--the
   love of God being to us like a spring shut up, a fountain sealed until
   the Holy Spirit comes--and then the love of God flows in, a pure and
   crystal stream being shed abroad in our hearts!

   But perhaps another figure may suit us as well tonight. The love of God
   is comparable to precious spikenard, but it is in the alabaster box.
   The Holy Spirit opens that box and then the sweet perfume is "shed
   abroad" in our hearts, not merely "shed," but, "shed abroad." Not only
   poured out as the oil was on Aaron's head, but running down to the
   skirts of his garments and perfuming all the room, just as it did in
   his case.

   Now observe, to some extent we can shed abroad the love of God in this
   house. While the preacher is preaching of it, there will be a sweet
   savor Christ. There is, as it were, a spiritual perfume in the assembly
   of the righteous whenever Jesus Christ is spoken of, for, "Your name is
   as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love You." But the
   text means something more than this. It is the love of God shed abroad,
   not in the assembly, but in the heart. The one is the aggregate, but
   this is the individual and personal sense of it--not in the house, I
   say, but in the heart! The preacher sheds abroad this love when he
   preaches of Christ, but he cannot shed it abroad in the heart. He can
   only speak of it. He cannot bring it home to your own personal
   realization. It must be shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit,
   but if it once gets there, the sweet perfume of it is always recognized
   by your inner man. It is not the preacher--neither is it the letter of
   this Book--it is the Holy Spirit who most graciously comes there to
   shed abroad the love of God in your heart! Oh, see, then, how much we
   are indebted to the third Person of the blessed Trinity! With what
   reverence should we always speak of Him! With what rapture should we
   love Him! With what devotion should we adore Him! The love of God,
   itself, is, even to us, as spikenard unperceived until He brings it to
   the spiritual senses and makes it sweet to us! The love of God is like
   light to a blind eye until the Holy Spirit opens that eye! It is like
   food and raiment to a dead man until the Holy One of Israel comes and
   gives us life to enjoy these mercies. Oh, then, may the Holy Spirit now
   be here in each one of us, to shed abroad the love of God in our
   hearts!

   I shall first, then, and for a very little time, speak of the precious
   ointment which is here said to be shed abroad, namely, the love of God.
   Secondly, upon the shedding of it abroad. Thirdly, upon the blessed
   results of its being shed abroad in the heart and then, fourthly, upon
   some matters which tend to hinder our enjoyment of the shedding abroad
   of this love in our hearts. First, let us speak of--

   I. THE PRECIOUS OINTMENT WHICH IS HERE SPOKEN OF--"the love of God."
   Now, although I have to speak of this, yet it is a thing which, as to
   its essence, is not to be spoken of. It is to be enjoyed and to be
   felt, but no words can convey its unmistakable sweetness!--

   "The love of Jesus, what it is None but His loved ones know." No words,
   either of the pen or the tongue will ever be able to convey it either
   to hearer or reader. We receive the love of God doctrinally and I think
   we do well to do so. We may speak of it in various theological senses.
   We may declare the love of God to be in some respects universal--for,
   "His tender mercies are over all His works" and, "the Lord is good to

   all."

   But we may delight most of all to speak of it in its discriminating and
   distinguishing character, as revealing itself in the full blaze of its
   splendor to those whom He has chosen unto Himself.

   I believe the preacher does well who descants upon this love of God in
   its eternity, who says of it that it is an ancient thing, more ancient
   than the hoary mountains, or the aged sea, who speaks of it as an
   unchangeable and inimitable thing, abiding forever fast to those chosen
   ones who possess it. He does well, I believe, who speaks of it as being
   without an end, who shall declare in God's name that Christ, having
   loved His own who were in the world, loves them to the end and that
   this is but a picture of the great love which is in God our Father
   towards us--that having loved us once, He will never cease to love us,
   but we shall always be the object of His heart's affection. But,
   Brothers, it is very easy to talkdoc-trinally about the love of God,
   but you may not know anything about the love of God when you know all
   that! If I were to give a description of a father's love to some poor
   orphan, here, I dare say I might make him feel envious. I might make
   him desirous to have something of the kind, but it would be quite
   impossible by any mere words to tell him what a father's love really is
   if he had never known it. It would be something like showing a skeleton
   to an angel who wished to see a man. A man is something more than a set
   of bones, nerves, muscles and ligatures--you cannot present the man by
   any description that you may give, however anatomically correct!
   Neither can you describe the love of God by merely doctri-nally giving
   an outline of it, as the theologian would do, for there is vastly more
   there than the mere theologian has ever learned! You know some people
   have a herbarium in which they preserve specimens of various plants.
   Among the Alps you are asked by persons to buy collections of the flora
   of such-and-such districts. Well, you may buy them, and you will be
   interested in them when you get them home, but when you turn over the
   leaves and find the plants dried between the papers, they are nothing
   at all like what they are as they bloom on the Alps! The gentian has
   not the marvelous yellow blooms which startles you as you find it on
   the side of the glaciers. It is a dry, dead thing now--you cannot
   convey to your friends what the flower is really like when at home--to
   know that fully you must take them to see it! So is it with
   theology--it is easy to preserve the living things of the Truth of God
   in a dry form, but you have not really understood them until you have
   seen them in life and known them by experience!

   Again, you may think about the love of God historically and what a
   wonderful topic is here! Begin--where? Well, since there is no
   beginning, begin where you will. Begin with the council chambers of
   eternity! Begin with the purpose, the election, the Covenant, the
   suretyship engagement. Then go on to the love revealing itself in the
   first promise--love sparing guilty man, love manifesting itself by slow
   degrees through the mist and smoke of the Mosaic ritual and, at last,
   bursting into its full splendor upon the Cross in the Person of the
   dying Savior! Then go on to love developing itself in our experience,
   beginning by convincing us of our folly and our danger and proceeding
   until it takes us into the arms of God, and puts us there forever in
   the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision! But, my dear Friends, you know
   reading the story of a battle cannot give you any idea of the battle
   itself! Every man who has heard the sound of the cannon and has marked
   the pain and misery of those who fall beneath the sword of war will
   tell you that no description, however graphic, can ever make you feel
   what a battle is. So with regard to the love of God. You may give the
   history of it with the greatest accuracy, but when you have given it
   all, you do not know what it is unless you have really tasted and
   handled it in your

   own soul's experience! So that if I am to speak of this ointment, I
   know not where I shall find words. I must rather ask that you may have
   it shed abroad in your hearts.

   I think there is a way, too, of speaking of the love of God in such a
   manner as to get none of it I think that arguing over practical Gospel
   Truths is about the surest way of depriving you of the unction and the
   savor of them. I think we ought to treat Divine Truth very much as the
   true mother treated her child when they were before Solomon. Let us not
   rend it. But there are some who rend it anyway, as long as they can
   keep their share of it. Oh, yes, for a hair's breadth of a doctrine,
   for some infinitesimal point, for one Greek article, or a half a word,
   some men would mar the fellowship of the saints and drive away some of
   the best-beloved of God out of their communion! They are like the
   simpletons who, to find out who shall drink a jug of milk, spill it
   altogether and neither of them get a drop of it. They have some choice
   of rare fruit, but they trample it under their feet in a strife as to
   who should eat it! Let us beware of so doing with the love of God--and
   yet we have sometimes felt that we have handled themes connected with
   the love of God in such a controversial spirit as to take the bloom
   from the surface and the very juice from the grape.

   After all, dear Friends, the best we can say of the love of God is just
   this--you must know it and feel it for yourselves. But oh, the wondrous
   love! Angels marvel at it! To think that God should love His sinful
   creatures! You will marvel at it, even in Heaven! When you shall have
   grown accustomed to wonders, this will still strike you as being a
   great marvel. I believe you will--

   "Sing with rapture and surprise His loving kindness in the skies"

   and that when you have dived into the greatest deeps that your
   intellect can bear, you will find the wondrous depth of love both
   beneath and above you! When your faculties shall have been expanded to
   the heavenly size and you shall be elevated to become the peer of the
   angelic host, even thenyou shall feel that the love of God surpasses
   your powers of knowledge and comprehension!

   This, then, is all we will say concerning it, that the love of God is
   the precious ointment. But secondly, the text says--

   II. THIS LOVE OF GOD IS "SHED ABROAD IN OUR HEARTS."

   What does this mean? Does it mean our merely knowing that God is Love?
   We must know that as a preliminary step, but oh, the shedding abroad of
   the love of God is vastly more than that! It does not mean merely
   prizing that love, the coming into a state of desiring after it. When
   we feel that it must be a precious thing to be beloved of God. That is
   a very proper state of mind, but it is not what is meant here. It is
   not even believing in the love of God. That is the Christian's
   privilege and should be his constant position--believing that God loves
   him, resting confident that even under affliction's cross the love of
   God is still the same--and that if God should hide His face, yet His
   heart is not changed. But the love of God shed abroad is more than
   that. It is not even the waiting for visits from God's face. It is a
   sweet thing to sit at Christ' s door and wait until He comes to us. If
   I may not feast at the table, I may be grateful to be allowed to hunger
   and thirst to do it! Next to having Christ, a real longing after Him is
   one of the most precious gifts of the Holy Spirit. But still, a great
   deal more than this is meant here. It is not even remembering former
   love-visits. That is often very consolatory--

   "Our former favors we recount When with Him on the holy mount."

   And we sometimes think on the Hermonites and the hill Mizar, and find
   great comfort in the thought that He did once shine upon us--He did
   once show His love to us and we rejoice greatly. But the shedding
   abroad of His love is more than this. It is not the remembrance of a
   thing, however precious, that is past and gone, but the deep enjoyment
   of something that is now present!

   What is it, then? Well, is it not just this? When the Holy Spirit
   brings home to our souls a sense of the love of God, we no longer
   entertain the slightest doubt--we are assured of God's love to us. We
   are now far past the range of questioning. It is no longer with us--

   "'Tis a point I long to know Oft it causes anxious thought."

   It is there and we know it is there! I called today upon a friend whose
   business calls him to the use of many perfumes. And I was shown into
   his little room where there were various articles with which the
   perfumes were made. Now, I can suppose him to lose one of those pots of
   perfume, but I cannot suppose him to lose it and not know where it is
   when it is shed abroad, for then he cannot help smelling it and
   perceiving it--and then he says, "Why, here it is--the room is filled
   with it." So when the love of God is shed abroad, you do not ask where
   it is! Your heart is filled with it. All your passions and powers are
   flavored and scented with it. It is not, "Where is it?" but, "Here it
   is!" Oh, the joy of saying, "Here it is!" If all the powers of earth
   and Hell combined say that God does not love me, I can deny and refute
   them all, for I feel that love shed abroad in my heart! It is a clear
   perception of the fact that God loves me as a believer in the Lord
   Jesus Christ! It is a persuasion of the Presence of the Holy Spirit, of
   the sealing of the Spirit, of the Spirit bearing witness with our
   spirit that we are born of God!

   And even more than that. It is a thing that we hardly need a witness
   about I t is a consciousness, a perception, of the love of God as it is
   shed abroad in our soul, so that this love of God being shed abroad
   seems to us to mean that it is deeply and intensely enjoyed. Treasure
   it up in the bottle and you do not enjoy the perfume--shed it abroad
   and then all the fragrance fills the room and every nostril is regaled.
   Oh, there are times when we are as full of Heaven as we can hold this
   side of the Jordan! And when we know Christ's love because He kisses us
   "with the kisses of His mouth" and we drink deep draughts of His love,
   it is better than wine! We do not look on at the feast--we feed! We do
   not admire the rich clusters--we take them and drink the nectar
   thereof! We do not look from Pisgah's brow, as did Moses, with the eyes
   of faith--we come to the woods that drop with honey and, like Jonathan,
   we dip our spear into it and feel that our eyes are enlightened as
   doves' eyes. Oh, Christian! You know what this means! You have had it
   in the prayer chamber when you have been alone with God! You have had
   it in the depth of trouble--some of you have had it on a sick bed, some
   in the furnace--and yet so manifestly was Christ with you there that
   the furnace glowed with joy as with the pain you felt! You rejoiced in
   Christ Jesus and as your tribulations abounded, so your consolations
   also abounded. The love of God was enjoyed by you--you felt it, you
   were ravished with it!

   Where the love of God is shed abroad, it fills the whole man. There are
   some perfumes which if you once spill but a few drops of them, you
   would not only know it yourself, but everybody else would know it, too.
   "Gently," said my friend, when he was showing me a certain perfume and
   I was going to pour out a drop, "if you do not want to smell of that
   for a month, do not do that," and as I did not particularly desire to
   smell of anything for so long a time as that, I kept my fingers off! If
   you could once get the love of God shed abroad in your heart, you would
   be flavored by it--and when it is once shed abroad, there, it will be
   there to all eternity! There will be no fear of its being taken away
   from us when it is once fully poured out in all its glorious efficacy
   into our hearts. You must have felt it, my Brothers and Sisters in
   Christ, when from morning till night the whole day was full of the love
   of God! When you woke, you did not know how it was, but instead of a
   care and a fear about the day, you woke with a hymn, a verse, a
   comfortable promise, as though you had put a wafer made with honey
   between your lips when you went to sleep and it had been melting there
   till it had sweetened your mouth and your whole soul! And when you went
   downstairs, it did not matter whether things went cross or not--they
   seemed to you to go well all the day, for your will was, through this
   love of God, brought to His will--and that pleased you which pleased
   Him!

   You were very rich, today, not that you had more than formerly, but you
   had the love of God to sweeten all! You were today kept from using the
   tongue too freely--you did not need to speak about the great many
   things which once had engrossed your conversation because your
   meditation of Him was sweet and you wanted to speak with Him. That day
   persons noticed you--they could not help it. If your face did not
   shine, your conversation did! And if you met with any of God's people
   who had a spiritual taste to appreciate your conversation, they
   remembered that you dropped pearls of soul-enriching from your mouth,
   for you spoke as one who had "been with Jesus and learned of Him."

   Do you remember, too, locking up your heart at night and giving God the
   key? And then when you woke up remembering David's words, "When I wake
   I am still with You"? Perhaps you did not remain with Him long, but,
   whether longer or shorter, it was the best exposition that could have
   been given you of the meaning of our text, "The love of God shed abroad
   in your heart by the Holy Spirit."

   I know this, dear Friend, if you have ever known this, you will thirst
   and hunger after it again! This wine of Heaven is such that if a man
   drinks of it, the more he drinks, the more he needs. If you have ever
   eaten the Bread of Heaven, the

   bread of earth will never satisfy you! If you have ever eaten of the
   bread which drops from Heaven, and on which angels feed, the food of
   common mortals will have lost its sweetness for you! You have been made
   to feast at the "feast of fat things, full of marrow, and of wines on
   the lees well-refined"--you have been taken up from where men grovel
   and where you are, yourself, now groveling--and on the wings of eagles
   you have been made to mount into a clearer atmosphere! And you will
   feel heavily oppressed in the dense smoke of this world and you will be
   wanting to be away with Christ again. Perhaps you are singing--

   "Ah, woe is me that I In Meshech sojourn long! That I in tents do
   dwell, To Kedar which belong!'

   But it shall not always be so. You shall soon see His face if you seek
   after Him and again shall the "love of God be shed abroad in your
   hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us." And now, may God
   help us, while for a few minutes we go over what we have said, and
   ponder--

   III. THE RESULTS OF THIS LOVE BEING SHED ABROAD IN OUR HEARTS.

   I have anticipated some of these already, but we remind ourselves more
   definitely that the love of God in our hearts sweetens everything. It
   sweetens our duties and they become privileges--

   "'Tis love that makes our willing feet In swift obedience move."

   Oh, when you feel that God loves you, how you can watch and pray! Then
   you can fight and wrestle! "All things are possible to him that
   believes," and more than all is possible to him that loves! When the
   heart gets the love of God in it, it--

   "Laughs at impossibilities, And cries, 'It shall be done!"

   A Believer may have the most desperate enterprises and they may involve
   the most serious self-denial, but they will be accomplished with
   readiness when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart. It sweetens
   all our trials. Trials are scarcely trials when we see them coming from
   a Father's hand. The gardener wept, you know, when he found that his
   choicest rose had been cut. But when he knew that it was the Master who
   had taken it, he wept no more, for the Master had a right to it. There
   are no murmurings in the heart of him who can say, "The Lord gave and
   the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." And,
   Beloved, it sweetens, I am certain, all our pursuits. We are very apt
   to think that our engagements in the world are too humble, too
   obscure--and then they become a drudgery when we think so. Do you not
   know that Jesus counts the very hairs of your head and He seems to
   intimate by that, that your very humblest pursuits are the objects of
   His careful observation? He knows where you are, whatyou are and what
   you have to do--and He knows how to sweeten it all! But when the love
   of God is shed abroad in the heart, how cheerfully the poor woman, with
   her eyes all weary and red, plies her needle and how the hard-toiling
   man finds his load grow light! Poverty seems to grow rich and the hut
   and the hovel seem to grow into a mansion--and even rags seem to
   glisten like robes when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart!
   Have you never heard how the martyrs used to sing at the stakes? Why
   was it? Not because the fire was made of roses--they did not find the
   firewood to be less hot to them than they would have been to
   others--but it was because the love of God was shed abroad in their
   hearts and, therefore, they could endure all things for Christ's sake,
   seeing that love was theirs. It sweetens all.

   Then again, it overpowers all other things. There are some perfumes
   that if they were let loose in a room, would overpower and kill all
   others. There may be other sweet scents in the chamber, but just unstop
   this bottle and now where are they? They are all swallowed up, as
   Aaron's rod swallowed up Egypt's rods! When the love of Jesus fills our
   souls we have love towards our dear friends and relatives--God forbid
   that we should not! But still, the love we have to Jesus seems to
   swallow them all up--His love towers above all other loves, like some
   mighty Alp above molehills! Best of all, when this love masters the
   soul, it kills all evil loves. During cholera times, people are very
   anxious to get something that will destroy all noxious vapors and bad
   smells. Ah, there is many a bad odor in our hearts! There is the old
   swamp of natural depravity which is capable of spreading death and
   destruction every time we encounter it. But when the love of God is
   shed abroad in the heart, how effectually it kills this! Then the love
   of sin dies! The loving principle within subdues and

   tramples underfoot all lusts and all corruption--and we rejoice in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and are not daunted by the conflict we feel within.
   This love kills all evil. And how blessedly it destroys all doubt! As I
   have said, when you are smelling a perfume you cannot doubt but that it
   is there. If you go into a field at this time of the year, you might
   walk all down a path and not know that there was any game there, but as
   soon as ever the partridges begin to fly, or the hares begin to run,
   you know immediately that there is game there because you can see it.
   So when our graces are slumbering and we do not know that they are
   there, as soon as ever they get into active exercise, then we discover
   them and we are sure of them! So is it with the love of God. When it
   has been slumbering in our hearts, we have had some doubt--but when it
   is poured out and shed abroad--its fragrance fills the entire man and
   then doubts and fears are given to the winds!

   And where this perfume is, once more, it is quite sure to communicate
   itself from the man, instrumentally, to his fellows. He who has been in
   beds of spices will smell, thereof, and they who sit with their Lord
   will bear away some tokens of His companionship. All the ways of the
   Lord Jesus are full of perfume, because "His garments smell of myrrh,
   and aloes, and cassia." And when your garments smell of the same,
   through having been with Him, you will communicate something of the
   savor, instrumentally, to those whom you meet. God grant you Grace to
   seek this as a holy ambition, that, having the love of God in your
   hearts, it may be as when one has a candle lit and others bring their
   candles to his, and he imparts the light, for it makes him none the
   poorer, while they rejoice therein. And now, to conclude, I think we
   all who love the Lord desire to feel His love shed abroad in our
   hearts, but we sometimes mourn because we do not feel it. What, then,
   is

   IV. THE REASON WHY WE DO NOT FEEL THE LOVE OF GOD SHED ABROAD IN OUR
   HEARTS? May it not be, Brothers and Sisters, because we have restrained
   prayer?The common sin of God's people is slackness in prayer. If there
   is one sin that needs to be preached about more than another just now,
   it is the sin of the omission of secret dealings with God. This is the
   secret of our spiritual leanness, the secret of many of our trials, of
   our lack of joy, our loss of confidence in God.

   Neglect the prayer chamber? Why, the merchant might as well neglect his
   office and counting house! This is the place where you will be
   impoverished if you neglect it. I am persuaded more and more the longer
   I observe myself, and certainly the longer I observe others, that when
   we grow weak on our knees, it is a sign of weakness throughout the
   entire man. How can you expect to know much of the love of God if you
   will not go with Him? If you give no time to meditation, if you have no
   season for searching the Scriptures, if you have no periods for
   communion with God, why wonder if you should miss enjoyment with Him?

   I am persuaded, too, that a great many of us lose a good deal through
   neglecting the means of Grace. I do not think that this applies to the
   most of you as a congregation. I believe there are none who frequent
   the assembling of themselves altogether as much as you do. I have no
   cause to complain. There are some of you who are always here as often
   as the doors are opened--and Prayer Meeting and Lecture Nights are no
   burden to you. You come with willing feet to meet with your God. But it
   is not so with some professors. Step into most of the places of worship
   in London and look at the weeknight service--and in some country places
   they have to give up theirs because there are not enough to come to
   make it worth their while to hold such meetings. There is a sad
   deficiency in some places of a love of the means of Grace. There are
   some professors who, when they get by the seaside, or a little away in
   the country, are always glad of an excuse not to go out to hear the
   Word of God. They know but little of the emotion of David when he
   counted that to be a dry and thirsty land when he could not go up to
   the public worship of God! Brothers and Sisters, we must use the means
   of Grace or else, as we despise them, we must not expect a blessing! We
   must dig the well when we go through the valley of Baca. We must not
   depend upon that well, for it does not, in this case, fill from the
   bottom--it is filled from above! But still, the well must be dug. There
   must be our gracious exertions and then there shall come the Divine
   blessing.

   May we not also say that many Christians lose much joyous fellowship
   with Christ because of idleness?Christ is a worker. If we are idlers,
   we shall not have communion with Him. "The Father," says He, "works
   hitherto, and I work." If your possessions are unconsecrated, if your
   talents are unused, if your time is misspent, you cannot wonder if the
   Lord Jesus Christ should give you the whip! The "whip is for the ass,
   and the rod for the fool's back." Idle Christians must expect to feel
   the whip or the rod, but if we will do what we may for Christ, we shall
   have sweet consolation in the doing of it, and the love of God shall be
   shed abroad in our hearts!

   Worldliness, too, is a bar to the shedding abroad of the love of God in
   our hearts. Those who do as worldlings do, who can be amused and
   interested as they are, must not wonder if the love of God is not shed
   abroad in their hearts. I am very far from desiring to keep Christians
   from certain places of amusement where the amusement is simple, and
   only such as may be derived from social fellowship, science, music and
   so on. But I am satisfied that the frequenting of such places, even the
   very best, must be unfavorable to the piety of the very best Christian.
   You will gain but very little compared with the risk you run of losing
   very much! If these things charm you, it is not likely that Christ will
   charm you longer. If you get worldly, you cannot be spiritual at the
   same time.

   Is it not, also, very probable that our little faith prevents this love
   of God from being shed abroad in our hearts? If we trusted Christ more
   and honored Him more by resting upon the faithful love of His Father,
   would we not find His love shed abroad in us?

   And may it not also be our ingratitude as to past favors We have not
   thanked God enough for the comfortable seasons that we have enjoyed
   and, therefore, He keeps us hungering until we thank Him for what He
   did in days gone by.

   And, dear Friends, is it not because we do not sincerely seek
   conformity to the likeness of our Savior, that we have not, as we
   might, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts? It is even this, my
   Brothers and Sisters, it is even this! If you have ever known the
   sweetness of the love of Christ, you understand that I cannot
   exaggerate when I praise it. It is the sweetest, best and happiest
   thing of which a mortal can sing. It is a bliss which angels might
   envy--the sense of the love of God in a man or woman's heart! Then how
   is it that you and I can endure to be without it? The true wife would
   be grieved, indeed, if she had a doubt as to her husband's love--she
   could not be happy unless she could have an assurance of being its
   possessor. And oh, how is it that we can bear ourselves when we are
   saying, "Does He love me?" How is it we can endure, as some professors
   do, day after day, not to have a word from His lips, or a smile from
   His countenance? Do we really love Him, or is it all mere talk? Has our
   heart any deep affection for Him, or is it only formal profession? Have
   we caught it up from others? Have we stirred merely natural emotions in
   ourselves and then thought we loved Him? Oh, I do hope we may say, "It
   is not so, we do love Him! We would be very wretched if we did not. We
   might sooner wish to die than cease to love Him. He is the Chief among
   ten thousand to our hearts--we feel He is."

   Oh, then, without making vows and resolutions which we shall soon
   break, let us pray, "Oh, Savior, shed abroad Your love in our hearts by
   the Holy Spirit! Oh, God the Father, reveal Yourself in all the
   fullness of Your love to us now and we may never lose a sense of it,
   but have it abiding with us forever!" What a Church would this be if we
   all had fellowship with Christ! Oh, how trivial would the world's
   troubles become! We would then go on serving the Master like seraphs. I
   think we would scarcely rest day nor night, but be always praising and
   blessing His dear name! This place would be a paradise! We would have
   to bless God so continually and our songs might rival those before the
   Throne of God! "The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak,"
   but, "we have a High Priest who can be touched with a feeling of our
   infirmities." Let us draw near to Him with confidence and let this be
   the burden of our prayer, "Abide with me! Continue with me, for Your
   love's sake, Amen."
     __________________________________________________________________

"Take Away the Frogs"

   (No. 3340)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, Entreat the Lord,
   that He may take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and I will
   let the people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord." Exodus
   8:8.

   When it pleases God by His judgments to humble men, He is never at a
   loss for means--He can use lions or lice, famines or flies. In the
   armory of God there are weapons of every kind, from the stars in their
   courses down to caterpillars in their hosts. The dust of the earth, out
   of which man is formed, will at God's command forget its kinship and
   overwhelm a caravan, while the waters will forsake their channels,
   invade the tops of the mountains and drown a rebellious race. When the
   Lord contends against proud men, He has but to lift His finger and
   countless legions throng around Him, all loyal to their Lord and
   valiant for His name! Know you not that the beasts of the field are His
   servants and the stones of the street obey His bidding? Every wave
   worships Him and every wind knows its Lord. If you would war against
   Him, it would be well for you to know what His forces are--consider the
   battle--do no more.

   In the case before us Jehovah has to deal with Pharaoh and He humbles
   him by frogs. Strange! Amazing! One would have thought that such
   despicable means would never have been used. The Lord began with the
   proud monarch by turning the waters into blood, but it may be that
   Pharaoh said in his heart, "What a great man I am! If Jehovah comes
   forth against me, He must needs work a terrible miracle in order to
   conquer." He goes his way to his house unhumbled. This time the Lord
   will deal with him in another style. I grant you that the conflict was
   still sublime in the truest sense, but in Pharaoh's estimation the
   croaking frogs which came up from all the banks of the Nile were a mean
   sort of adversary! From every reservoir and marsh they marched up in
   countless hordes, entering into his chamber and coming upon his bed and
   his kneading trough. He could neither sleep nor eat, nor walk abroad
   without encountering the loathsome reptiles. The Lord seemed by this to
   say, "Who are you that I should do great things to conquer you? I will
   even vanquish you by frogs."

   There was a suitableness in God's choosing the frogs to humble Egypt's
   king, because frogs were worshipped by that nation as emblems of the
   Deity. Images of a certain frog-headed goddess were placed in the
   catacombs and frogs, themselves, were preserved with sacred honors.
   These are your gods, O Egypt! You shall have enough of them! Pharaoh
   himself shall pay a new reverence to these reptiles. As the true God is
   everywhere present around us--in our bedchambers and in our streets, so
   shall Pharaoh find every place filled with what he chooses to call
   Divine! Is it not a just way of dealing with Him?

   The Lord has sure ways of reaching the hearts of proud men and if He
   does not use frogs, today, He can use other means, for He has servants
   everywhere prepared for each emergency. He knows how to reach the rich
   and make them sit by the wayside, like Belisarius, begging for food.
   The strong and healthy man, He can soon place among the invalids and
   make him cry like a sick girl, "Give me a drink, Titinius." Your
   children are about you today--your pride and joy--but He can make you
   childless in an hour. His arrows can pierce through a sevenfold harness
   of steel--no man is so encompassed as to be beyond the reach of the
   Almighty! Let me speak of Pharaoh by way of observation and I will
   begin by remarking that--

   I. IN SORE TROUBLE, THE SERVANTS OF THE LORD ARE GREATLY VALUED.

   "Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron." The frogs had taught him
   good manners and he longs to see the ministers of the Lord. How is
   this? The man was somewhat brought to his senses--and when this
   happens, men begin to value those whom they aforetime despised. Listen
   to this story. There came a man of God to Bethel where king Jeroboam
   was

   setting up the golden calves and he began to cry against the altar.
   Then Jeroboam stretched forth his hand and cried, "Lay hold upon him."
   In a moment the rebel's right arm withered, and hung by his side,
   useless! Then he turned to the man of God, whom he was about to arrest,
   and said, "Entreat the Lord for me." Thus have persecutors been forced
   to crouch at the feet of those whom they would have destroyed! Another
   story will set forth the same truth. King Saul had been forsaken of God
   and the Philistines pressed hard upon him. In his extremity he resorted
   to a woman who professed to deal with the spirits of the dead. With
   whom would he speak? He cries, "Bring me up Samuel." Samuel was the man
   who had most sternly rebuked him! One would have thought that Samuel
   was the last person he would wish to see, but in his need, he asks for
   no one else but Samuel. When ungodly men get into straits, how they
   wish they could consult with one who has gone home, against whom they
   pointed many a jest. They never say, "Bring me up the jolly fellow who
   filled and quaffed the bowl with me." In their tribulation they think
   not of such. They never cry, "Bring me up the wanton with whom I
   sported in sin, that I may again enjoy her company." No, in their
   distress they desire other advisers--they would rather cry, "Bring me
   up my holy mother! Oh, for a sight of her dear, loving face as I saw it
   on her dying bed, when she urged me to follow her to Heaven! Bring me
   up that old friend whom I ridiculed when I turned aside from the ways
   of God! Oh, for an hour with the man of God whom once I scorned!" Do
   you not see that it is the old tale repeated--Pharaoh, when his
   troubles are multiplied, calls for Moses and Aaron!

   This is also to be accounted for by the fact that God puts a mysterious
   honor upon His faithful servants. The painters place halos about the
   heads of the Bible saints--there were no such crowns of light upon
   them, literally, and yet within the legend there slumbers a great
   truth. He who leads an upright, holy, gracious life has a power about
   him which impresses the beholder--his presence in an ungodly company
   has an influence on wicked men like that of Zephon, of whom Milton
   sings in Paradise Lost To the great fallen angel his presence was a
   rebuke. God hedges the good with a dignity which men feel even when
   they are not conscious of it. It was so in the case before us. Moses
   was made to be as a god unto Pharaoh. Pharaoh had said, "Get you unto
   your burdens," addressing Moses and Aaron as if they were slaves! But
   now he sends for them and entreats their prayers on his behalf! This
   was like the case of Joseph. His brothers hated him and sold him for a
   slave--but how different the scene when they bowed before him and
   trembled as he said, "I am Joseph!" The archers had shot at him and
   wounded him, but still his bow abode in strength!

   Remember, too, Jeremiah, whom Zedekiah, the king, treated with great
   indignity till the Babylonians had surrounded the city--and then he
   sent to him and said, "Enquire, I pray you, of the Lord for us." Our
   Lord describes an instance still more remarkable. It belongs to the
   next world, but the same principles rule in all worlds. A poor saint
   was laid at a rich man's door, full of sores. He begged for the crumbs
   that fell from the rich man's table, "moreover, the dogs came and
   licked his sores." The rich man, clothed with purple and fine linen,
   took small note of this saint of God. But what a change happened on a
   day when the beggar died and was carried by angels into Abraham's
   bosom--and the rich man also died and was buried! In Hell the rich man
   lifted up his eyes, and Lazarus had honor before him, for he begged
   that Lazarus might be sent to cool his burning tongue with the tip of
   his finger dipped in water. They had changed places, for God had
   crowned His poor servant with glory and honor! The halo was around the
   head of Lazarus most assuredly.

   A light shone upon the face of Moses and a glory settled upon the brow
   of Jesus. "Such honor have all the saints" in a spiritual sense--and
   the proudest of men shall be made to know it!

   Once more, let me note that this honor is doubtless set on saints that
   they may be of service to ungodly men. God intends, by their means, to
   bless the penitent. When it was wheat harvest and a thunderstorm came
   because Israel desired a king, you remember that while peal on peal the
   dread artillery of God was heard, the people trembled and besought
   Samuel the Prophet to pray for them. And he said, "God forbid that I
   should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you." Holy Samuel's
   prayer was heard for them!

   Much later an earthquake shook the foundations of a prison and loosed
   the bands of the prisoners. Then the jailer woke up in his fright and
   feared that his prisoners had escaped--and that he should have to die
   for it--but there stood Paul, the man whom he had thrust into the inner
   prison, and whose feet he had made fast in the stocks! And the jailer,
   trembling before him, cried out, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
   The answer was given. He was directed to believe and to be
   baptized--and the jailer and his house were saved! If God's servants
   are treated with scorn and harshness they need not fear, for they are
   put just where they are, that unconverted men may be blessed by their
   agency. Like Moses to

   Pharaoh, saints will yet have to say, "Glory over me. I will pray for
   you, or teach you, so that I may but lead you to the

   Savior."

   It is clear that in times of trouble godly men and women are at a
   premium! Secondly, with ungodly men--

   II. IN TIMES OF SORE TRIAL PRAYER ALSO BEGINS TO BE VALUABLE.

   Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron and said, "Entreat the Lord."
   Pharaoh begs an interest in the prayers of good men--this is a fine
   change since the day wherein he said, "Who is Jehovah that I should
   obey His voice?"

   When men are sick and near to die, they send for us to pray with them.
   That old philosopher, Bion, showed much wisdom in his biting sarcasm.
   He was on shipboard and found that among the passengers there were
   certain foul-mouthed desperadoes. While they were venting all manner of
   abominations, a storm came on, and they began to pray! Then Bion cried
   out to them, "Hold your tongues, for if the gods only know that you are
   here, they will sink the vessel! Be quiet, lest your prayers should be
   our ruin." One's thoughts have taken somewhat of that form when we have
   seen men fulfilling the old adage--

   "When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be."

   Such prayers are too often an insult to the holiness of God!

   Why is it that reprobates take to praying when they are in deep
   trouble? Frequently superstition moves them. They regard a prayer as a
   spell or magical charm. So in their folly they send for a minister and
   cry, "Entreat the Lord for me!" Among many Londoners, so dense is this
   superstition that after a poor soul is dead, I have heard relatives
   say, "We sent for the minister and he came and prayed to him." Mark
   that word, "prayed to him"! Does not this discover the ignorance and
   superstition of the people? They do not know the design and object of
   prayer. This superstition needs to be spoken of with great truthfulness
   and fidelity.

   In certain instances the man's hope in prayer is the result of a
   condemning faith. There is a justifying faith and a condemning faith.
   "What?" you say, "does faith ever condemn men?" Yes, when men have
   faith enough to know that there is a God who sends judgments upon them,
   that nothing can remove those judgments but the hand that sent them and
   that prayer moves that hand--there are persons who yet never pray,
   themselves, but eagerly cry to friends, "Entreat the Lord for me." That
   is a measure of faith which goes to increase a man's condemnation,
   since he ought to know that if what he believes is true, then the
   proper thing is to pray himself! It would have been a wonderfully good
   sign if Pharaoh had said, "Join with me, O Moses and Aaron, while I
   pray unto Jehovah that He may take the frogs from me." But, no, he had
   only a condemning faith which contented itself with other men's
   prayers!

   In many instances this desire for prayer is one of the movements of the
   Spirit upon the heart of man. When a poor, afflicted man, in the depth
   of poverty, struck with consumption or laid aside by some other deadly
   disease, desires that a minister would come and pray with him, we will
   never treat such a wish with neglect. While it is our duty to expose
   the superstition which often lurks beneath the wish, we also hope that
   some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel may dwell in it. It is,
   perhaps, the prodigal saying, "I will arise and go unto my Father, and
   I will inquire the way home." I hope it is so.

   Take warning, you that do not pray--you will yet need to pray! There
   will come a time to the most of you when you will not be able to bear
   yourselves without crying unto God. May God, in His Infinite Mercy lead
   you to begin at once! For when it can be said of you, "Behold, he
   prays," it will be the best of news! Beginning to pray is the turning
   point of life! Why not at once set a high price upon that which in
   times of trouble you will seek for with tears? Our third observation is
   this--

   III. IN SORE TROUBLE THE PRAYER IS OFTEN A WRONG ONE.

   The petitions which men offer when they are in distress are often wrong
   prayers. Pharaoh said, "Entreat the Lord, that He may take away the
   frogs from me."

   A fatal flaw is manifest in that prayer. It contains no confession of
   sin. He says not, "I have rebelled against the Lord. Entreat that I may
   find forgiveness!" Nothing of the kind--he loves sin as much as ever. A
   prayer without penitence is a prayer without acceptance. If no tear has
   fallen upon it, it is withered. You must come to God as a sinner
   through a Savior, but by no other way. He that comes to God like the
   Pharisee, with, "God, I thank You that I am not as other men

   are," never draws near to God at all! But he that cries, "God be
   merciful to me, a sinner," has come to God by the way which God has,
   Himself, appointed! There must be a confession of sin before God or our
   prayer is faulty.

   Pharaoh's prayer dealt only with the punishment''Take away the frogs!
   Take away the frogs! Take away the frogs!" That is his one cry. So we
   hear the sick exclaim, "Oh, Sir, pray that I may get well." The
   drunkard begs that he may be helped out of his poverty. The impenitent
   sinner cries, "Pray that my child may not be taken from me." It is not
   wrong to pray, "Take away the frogs." We should all have prayed so if
   we had been surrounded by such pests. The evil is that this was the
   whole of his prayer. He said not, "Take away my sins," but, "Take away
   the frogs." He did not cry, "Lord, take away my heart of stone," but
   only, "Take away the frogs." Perhaps I am addressing those who are in
   poverty, sickness, or distress and all they are crying about is, "Lord,
   take away the frogs! Deliver me from my poverty, my trouble, my hunger,
   my disgrace, my punishment!" Now, if you have brought yourself into
   evil by a vicious life, your prayer must not be, "Take away the disease
   and the poverty," but "Take away the sin." The drunkard's prayer must
   not be, "Lord, take away the result of my intoxication," but, "Remove
   from me the poisoned cup." Lay the axe at the root and cry, "Lord, take
   the sin away." Alas, most of the prayers of men in trouble are only
   like Pharaoh's selfish prayer, "Take away the frogs." The Lord did hear
   his petition, but nothing came of it. The frogs were gone, but flies
   came immediately after and all sorts of plagues followed in rapid
   succession--and his heart was still hardened.

   When ungodly men are under a sense of Divine Wrath they turn not to God
   aright--their prayer is devoid of spiritual requests. When Cain had
   murdered his brother, did he express a regret? No. He only murmured,
   "My punishment is greater than I can bear." Esau sold his birthright.
   Did he repent of the sin of having been a profane person, and seek
   pardon carefully? Not he! He sought carefully with tears to get back
   his birthright, but he found no place for repentance in his father
   Isaac! The blessing had gone to Jacob and on Jacob it must remain.
   Another telling case is that of Simon Magus. When Peter told him that
   he was in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, he
   replied, "Pray you to the Lord for me that none of these things which
   you have spoken come upon me"--that was all he cared about. He
   expressed no desire to be delivered from his evil way, but only to be
   screened from the consequences of it! Every knave cries out against
   punishment--but he is attaining to honesty who entreats to be freed
   from his pilfering habits! Our last remark is that--

   IV. THE SINNER IN HIS SORE TROUBLES IS VERY APT TO MAKE GREAT PROMISES.

   Pharaoh cried, "Take away the frogs and I will let the people go, that
   they may do sacrifice unto the Lord." In this way one of you talked
   when you were down with fever, or when you were likely to lose your
   employment through your folly. You said, "Please God, if You let me
   escape this once, I will be a very different man." Such promises are
   generally boastful. Notice here the proud language of Pharaoh. "I will
   let the people go." He does not long talk in this fashion, but now he
   is a great king and he gives his royal word, "I will let the people
   go." Some folks are very big when they promise God, "Iwill do this and
   I will do that." But you cannot, my Friend! You reply that you are
   going to have a new heart and a right spirit. Are you looking to create
   them yourself? You talk as if you were! I think you said that you were
   going to "turn over a new leaf," but a new leaf in a bad book may be
   worse than the old leaf! But you are going to be entirely new, are you?
   Are you to do all this yourself? You are greatly mistaken--true
   conversion does not begin by talking of what "I' will do! It begins in
   casting ourselves upon the Lord and begging Him to work all our works
   in us!

   But this man's promises were all a lie. I daresay that for the moment
   he meant them--but he did not keep his word, for he did not let the
   people go. "When Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his
   heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said." Has not that
   been the case with many others? You promised "faithfully," as you said.
   You pledged yourself that it would be so, but it is not so. Stand still
   awhile and hear a message from the Lord--"You have not lied unto men,
   but you have lied unto God." Let that sentence pierce the innermost
   heart of your conscience! "You have lied unto God." Remember Ananias
   and Sapphira and what followed upon their falsehood? Be astonished that
   it has not followed upon yours, for you made the promise before
   witnesses in the Presence of the Lord Himself!

   Mark well that in all this, Pharaoh increased his guilt His vows heaped
   up his transgressions. He forgot his promises, but God did not. They
   were laid by in store against him--and the blows of God upon him fell
   heavier and heavier until, at last, Jehovah drowned him and his chosen
   captains in the Red Sea! Oh, Sirs, if God comes to deal with you in
   this fashion, what will become of you? Your promises are filed in
   Heaven to be witnesses against you! God reaches out these promises of
   yours at this hour and holds them up before your eyes. And what does
   your conscience say? If you had

   promised a kind friend and broken your word, it would have been base
   enough, but you have been ungrateful to your God in whose hands your
   breath is, and whose are all your ways! Let a sense of guilt overwhelm
   you and, in the name of Jesus Christ, ask mercy of your God!

   I will tell you how God deals with His own children and then leave you
   to infer how He will deal with you if you are not His children. A
   certain man, to all appearances, feared God. Yes, and did so with a
   sincere heart. He was once an earnest Christian, a member of the Church
   and a worker in the service--faithful to his light and fervent in
   spirit--but he grew cold. He had a farm and it occupied nearly all his
   time. He was filled with an intense desire to grow rich and, therefore,
   he devoted his attention to his business till he grew colder and colder
   in Divine things--and the means of Grace on the weekdays were forsaken.
   Work for God was dropped, communion with God ceased and the religious
   professor became to all appearance an utter worldling. But yet he was a
   child of God and this is how his Father restored him. He took from him
   the wife of his youth, to whom his heart was knit. But this made him
   more worldly than before because his wife had been a great help to him
   in the farm--but now she was gone--so he must stick to it more than
   ever! Nothing came of the first chastisement except increased sin. He
   had only one son, for whom he was saving up his money and working his
   business--and he saw that son cut down with consumption, like his
   mother. This also made him still more worldly. It ought to have brought
   him to his knees, but it did not. He carried on the practice of prayer,
   but with little heart. He said, "Now, my dear son, who was such a
   comfort to me, has gone, I can hardly get out on Sundays at all. I must
   look after the cows and attend to the stock." So he sank deeper in the
   mire.

   Then the Lord began to deal with him in another way. He had a bad
   season and lost money farming, careful as he was. Next year was worse,
   and the cattle plague emptied his stalls. He was brought down to
   poverty. He could scarcely keep the farm, for he could not pay the
   rent. Still he did not yield. He had tender moments now and then, but
   he was usually hard, for he felt that God was dealing severely with
   him. He felt angry against God and stuck to his business more than
   ever, while the things of God were forgotten. Then the Lord took His
   erring child more closely in hand than before, and sent him an
   incurable disease in his body. The worldly farmer lay upon a sick bed
   fretting about his business--he did not turn to the Lord even then!
   Last of all, his house took fire and as the barn and the ricks and the
   house were all ablaze and all that he had was going, they carried him
   out into the open air upon the bed from which he could not stir, and he
   was heard to say, "Blessed be the Lord! Blessed be the Lord! I am cured
   at last." But, dear Friends, nothing would cure him till everything was
   gone from him! Was not that a pity? He was saved so as by fire. He
   would be "as the horse and the mule, which have no understanding, whose
   mouth must be held in with bit and bridle" and, therefore, he had to
   suffer for it. I pray you do not copy him. People of God, do not make
   rods for your own backs in that way! Do not drive your heavenly Father
   to hard measures.

   But oh, you ungodly, if He will deal thus with His children, how will
   He deal with you who are not His children? If He means to bless you, He
   will not let you go unpunished, but He will smite you with heavy
   strokes. I remember one who used to bless God for a broken leg--he said
   that he never ran in the ways of God until he was lame. I believe that
   some parents never loved the heavenly Father till their dear infant
   child was taken away. The shepherd tried to get the mother sheep into
   the fold, but she would not come, so he took up her lamb and carried it
   away in his arms--and then the mother followed him! He has done that to
   some of you. You would never have come to Christ if dear little Johnny
   had not gone Home to Jesus. You lost one and another for that same
   purpose--have you not had enough strokes? You have been smitten till
   your "whole head is sick and your whole heart faint." Will you not turn
   unto your God without more ado? His blows are sent in mercy! It is far
   better that you should have a Hell here than Hell hereafter! It were
   better for you to live a lifelong agony than to be cast into Hell
   forever! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved! He
   died for sinners--died for aggravating, guilty, willful sinners! And if
   they look to Him, they shall at once be forgiven! I cannot give the
   look of faith for you, or I would gladly do so, but I beseech you to
   look and live! May God the Holy Spirit lead you to do so, for Jesus'
   sake! Amen.

   EXPOSITIONS BY C. H. SPURGEON: EXODUS3:1-14; ROMANS 9:1-25.

   This Chapter in Exodus tells of the appearance of God to Moses in the
   Wilderness. Has He departed from us, Brothers and Sisters? He used to
   be seen by godly souls by mount and stream and sea--and even bushes
   were alive and blazing with the indwelt Godhead! Oh, that He would
   reveal Himself to us tonight! I am going to read this Chapter with this
   longing in my heart. I pray that the same longing may be in the heart
   of every child of God--"Show me Your face: show me Your face, my God,
   tonight!"

   Verse 1. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the
   priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back side of the desert,
   and came to the Mountain of God, even to Horeb. There is nothing
   dishonorable about common trade and matters of business at all. Here is
   a shepherd who keeps his flock--and God keeps him and reveals Himself
   to him. When God wants a man to lead His people, He seeks for him not
   among idlers, but busy, active men. And God was pleased to show Himself
   more to Moses, as a shepherd, than He had ever shown Himself to him as
   a prince in Egypt. I find no glowing Deity in the halls of Pharaoh, but
   I find the Consuming Fire manifested in the lone wastes of the Sinai
   Desert!

   2. And the Angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out
   of the midst of a bush: and he looked and, behold, the bush burned with
   fire, and the bush was not consumed. Well might it say, "Behold." I
   have seen a bush set alight by a match. It blazed in a moment, but it
   was gone in another moment! It burned up fiercely and hastily. But God
   was pleased to make a poor consumable bush to be the unharmed place of
   His abiding. He dwells today in the Human Person of the Savior. The
   Godhead is in Christ. He dwells today in the Church which might well
   enough be consumed by His Presence--but it is not. He can come and
   dwell in my heart and in yours, tonight, and yet we shall bear the
   Presence of Deity to the hour of our death! He has a way of so throwing
   Himself into our feebleness that it becomes strong--and that which
   might otherwise have been destroyed, is even preserved by His Presence!
   The bush burned with fire and was not consumed.

   3, 4. AndMoses said, I will now turn aside, andsee this great sight,
   why the bush is not burnt. And when the LORD saw that he turned aside
   to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said,
   Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. Oh, that personal call--that
   voice from God to the heart! How much we need it. Do you not remember
   when first the Lord called some of you? Then He says to you tonight, "I
   have called you by My name. You are Mine." Acknowledge that sweet
   impeachment, confess that you are His and say to Him, "For suffering or
   for service, here am I ready, yes ready, even as Moses was. Here am I."

   5. And He said, Draw not near here: take your shoes from off your feet,
   for the place where you stand is holy ground. Stand as a servant stands
   in the presence of his master in the East. He is not expected to wear,
   in the court of his master, the shoes which have trodden in the mire of
   the world. Now, put away your cares, put away your carnal thoughts, put
   away yourself, put away your sins. When God is near, solemnity and deep
   reverence become us. "The place where you stand is holy ground."

   6. Moreover He said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham,
   the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he
   was afraid to look upon God. You need not hide your face if God shall
   appear to you, though I am sure you will do it. You may come boldly. It
   is your Father's face! It is the face of One who is reconciled to you
   in Christ. Therefore open your eyes and look--and may the Lord show
   Himself to you!

   7. And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people
   which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their
   taskmasters; for I know their sorrows. Now, you troubled ones, are not
   these verses real music to you? God has seen your afflictions--there
   are God's eyes! God has heard your cry--there are God's ears. "I know
   their sorrows." There is God's mighty understanding. He is thinking
   about you. He knows all that which tries you tonight.

   10. "Comenow therefore"--This was a very extraordinary thing to follow
   after all that. God has seen the affliction of His people. What then?
   Does He say, "I am come down to deliver them"? What then? Why, the next
   thing is that He is going to use this trembling man who stands
   awe-struck with his shoes off in the presence of the still burning
   bush! "Come now, therefore"--

   10. And I will send you unto Pharaoh, that you may bring forth My
   people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. You have been praying for
   a blessing. God is going to give it through you. You have been looking
   east and west and north and south for some deliverer that shall win
   souls and stir up the Church. God calls you to do it! He invites you to
   under-

   take this gigantic service and I think that I see the color come into
   your face and then fly away again! You are ready to faint at the
   thought of such a charge laid upon you!

   11. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh,
   and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? Now,
   catch this--

   12. And He said, Certainly I will be with you. What more does Moses
   need? He said, "Who am I?" This showed his weakness. God said, "Never
   mind who you are. Certainly I will be with you." Here was strength
   enough for him!

   12. And this shall be a token unto you, that Ihave sentyou: When you
   have brought forth thepeople out ofEgypt, you shall serve God upon this
   mountain. And he did! You know how Sinai trembled while God made it His
   Throne and how Moses must have been strengthened when he did
   exceedingly fear and quake before God when he remembered that this same
   God had appeared to him when he was alone in the desert--and had
   promised that they should worship Him there.

   13. Then Moses said to God, Indeed, when Icome to the children of
   Israel and say to them, The God ofyour fathers has sent me to you, and
   they say to me, What is His name? what shall I say to them?

   14. God said unto Moses, I AM WHO I AM. That is His name--The Infinite,
   Eternal and Unchangeable God!

   14. And He said, Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I AM
   has sent me unto you. Oh, what a glorious commission--to receive it
   direct from the self-existent God, who is the same forever and ever,
   and only has immortality! Speak to us tonight, you great I AM, JAH,
   Jehovah, God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. Speak to this company
   in this House of Prayer tonight, because of Jesus, Joshua, Jehoshua,
   Jehovah, Jesus. I have tried to show you how that name of Jesus has the
   name "Jehovah" hidden away in it. Because of Him, draw near to us, O
   Lord!

   ROMANS9:1-25. The Jews thought that God must certainly save them. They
   thought they had a birth claim. Were they not the children of Abraham?
   Surely they had some right to it. This Chapter battles the question of
   right. No man has any right to the Grace of God. The terms are
   inconsistent. There can be no right to that which is free favor. We are
   all condemned criminals, and if pardoned, it must be as the result of
   pure mercy, absolute mercy, for there is no good in any one of us!

   Verses 1, 2. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also
   bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that Ihave great heaviness and
   continual sorrow in my heart. He never thought about his unbelief,
   Brothers and Sisters, without the deepest imaginable regret. How far is
   this from the spirit of those who look upon the ungodly without
   tears--settle it down as a matter that cannot be altered and take it as
   a question of hard fate--but are never troubled about it! Not so the
   Apostle. He had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart.

   3. For I could wish that I, myself, were accursed from Christ for my
   brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. He had just that
   self-sacrificing spirit of Moses, that he would lose anything and
   everything if they might but be saved. And this is the spirit which
   ought to actuate every Church of Christ. The church that is always
   caring for her own maintenance is no church. The Church that would be
   willing to be destroyed if it could save the sons of men--which feels
   as if, whatever her shame or sorrow, it would be nothing if she could
   but save sinners--that Church is like the Lord, of whom we read, "He
   saved others: Himself he could not save." Oh, blessed heartbreak over
   sinful men which makes men willing to lose everything if they might but
   bless and win men to Christ! "My kinsmen," he says, "according to the
   flesh."

   4, 5. Who are Israelites; to whom pertains the adoption, and the glory,
   and the Covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God,
   and the promises. Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the
   flesh Christ came, who is over al, God blessed forever. Amen.What
   dignity has God put upon ancient Israel! How favored far beyond any of
   us in these particulars! They had the Light of God when the rest of the
   world was in darkness! Theirs was the Law of God, and theirs the
   Covenant promises! Above all, of them it was that Christ came! Our
   Savior was a Jew! Forever must that race be had in respectful honor and
   we must pray for their salvation.

   6, 7. Not as though the Word of God has taken no effect. For they are
   not allIsrael, which are ofIsrael. Neither, because they are the seed
   of Abraham, are they all children: but in Isaac shall your seed be
   called. Now the Apostle is getting to his point. You Jews claim to have
   the mercy of God because you are of the seed of Abraham, but there is
   nothing in that, he says, for God made a distinct choice of Isaac to
   the rejection of Ishmael, as he did afterwards of Jacob, and then Esau
   was left out.

   8. That is, your flesh which are the children of the flesh, these are
   not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted
   for the seed. Now Isaac was not the child of Abraham's flesh. He was
   born according to promise, when his mother was past age and his father
   well stricken in years. His was the birth according to the promise and
   that is the way the line of Grace runs--not according to the flesh, but
   according to the promise! If, then, all my hope of Heaven lies upon my
   being a child of godly parents, it is an Israelite hope and good for
   nothing! If my hope of Heaven lies upon my having been born according
   to the promise of God--born of His Grace and of His power--in that line
   the Covenant stands! God has determined that it shall be so.

   9-13. For this is the word of promise. At this time will I come, and
   Sarah shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebecca also had
   conceived by one, even by our father Isaac (for the children being not
   yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
   according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calls)
   it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is
   written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.So, then, there is
   no claim of birth, for he that had the claim of birth, even Esau, is
   passed by! There is, indeed, no claim at all, for God gives freely
   according to His own will, blessing the sons of men.

   14. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God
   forbid/There is no unrighteousness in anything that He does! And in the
   winding up of all affairs, it shall be seen that God was righteous as
   well as gracious.

   15-16. For He says to Moses, 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. That is where it must begin. When men are condemned, what
   can they appeal to, but the mercy of God? Where is the hope of men, but
   in the sovereignty of the Most High?

   17-24. For the Scripture says unto Pharaoh, Even for this samepurpose
   have Iraisedyou up, that Imight showMy power in you, and that My name
   might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore has He mercy on
   whom He will have mercy, and whom He will, He hardens. You will say
   then unto me, Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His
   will? No but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the
   thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why have You made me thus? Has
   not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel
   unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, wiiling to show His
   wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering
   the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? And that He might make
   known the riches of His Glory on the vessels ofmercy, which He had
   before prepared unto Glory, even us, whom He has called, not ofthe Jews
   only, but also of the Gentiles?'There was the sting of it. They could
   not endure that God should, in His Divine Sovereignty save Gentiles as
   well as Jews! But He has done so and He has sent the Gospel to us while
   they, having refused it, are left in the darkness which they chose.

   25. As He says also in Hosea, I will call them My people, which were
   not My people: andher beloved, which was not beloved.Oh, what a
   splendid verse is this! Let some here who have been far from God until
   now and never had a gracious thought, nevertheless hear what He has
   done and will do again! "I will call them My people that were not My
   people, and her beloved which was not beloved."
     __________________________________________________________________

"The Oil of Joy for Mourning"

   (No. 3341)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The oil of joy for mourning." Isaiah 61:3.

   MOURNERS in Zion ought to be doubly comforted, for here, in this
   gracious promise, is a second gift of Divine Love to them--a second
   exchange of loss for gain. The varied expressions of this choice
   Scripture show the manifold loving kindnesses of the Lord to His
   afflicted and the plentiful devices of wisdom by which He ministers
   consolation. It was not enough to give the sorrowing ones, "beauty for
   ashes"--He must add an oil with which to enhance the beauty and take
   away, not only the ashes, but the mourning which lay beneath them!
   This, also, illustrates the exceeding fullness of the blessings which
   are stored up in the Lord Jesus--in Him we have everything which heart
   can wish--a rich variety of joyful blessings never to be exhausted! It
   also shows us the marvelous fitness of our Lord Jesus, since solely
   because of His coming as the Anointed of the Lord, there is healing for
   the wounded, liberty for the captives, eyes for the blind, comfort for
   mourners, beauty for the disfigured and oil for fading countenances! He
   meets every need of the soul and fills the heart to overflowing with
   contented gratitude. Let it be repeated and gratefully remembered that
   all these good things come by the Anointed Savior alone. There can be
   no traffic with Heaven except by the crimson road of the atoning blood!
   No channel for Divine Favor except by the Christ of God on whom the
   Spirit of the Lord forever rests! To Him be Glory forever! Blessed be
   His name--He is the channel of Divine Grace and in Him is no straitness
   or shallowness! A Divine riches of glory flows to us by Christ Jesus--

   "Immortal joys come streaming down, Joys, like His griefs, immense,
   unknown." If our Redeemer were not what He is, what would we do? But
   being what He is, there is no necessity which He cannot supply, there
   is no grief which He cannot relieve and there is no right desire which
   He cannot satisfy. Let us drink of the river of His fullness and sing
   to His praise!

   Notice, also, at the outset of our present meditation, the effectual
   way in which the blessings which Jesus brings are bestowed upon
   mourners. We have often heard doubting ones say, "Yes, there are
   promises, but we cannot reach them. We know that there are abundant
   consolations and rich and free comforts, but we do not feel their
   power, nor dare to take them to ourselves." Now, in this place we see
   the condescending Lord, Himself, applying the oil of joy in exchange
   for mourning! His own right hand pours the precious oil upon the bowed
   head--He, Himself, causes the face to shine and banishes woe! A man may
   lie bleeding on the battlefield and there may be liniments close at
   hand, but in his weakness and agony he may be quite unable to bind up
   his own wounds, or reach the cordials--he may die because he is not
   able to stretch so much as a finger to help himself to remedies which
   lie by his side! It is an unspeakable mercy that our Lord gives His
   Grace to us in such are effectual manner that His mourners actually
   obtain the help they need! He is a very present help, a real
   Comforter--the oil of joy is not shown us in an unbroken alabaster
   vase, nor merely offered to us in a vial, but it is actually and
   effectually applied to the soul!

   Let us now come to the consideration of this second of the three great
   blessings bestowed upon the mourners in Zion--and may we all enjoy a
   portion thereof while we meditate thereon. In working out the metaphor
   we shall observe

   that--

   I. OUR LOVING LORD BRINGS HIS MOURNERS TO SIT AT A FEAST.

   This is clearly intended, for oil was largely used by Orientals upon
   festive occasions. The oil which makes man's face to shine was
   associated with the bread which strengthens man's heart, and the wine
   which makes glad the heart of man,

   (Psa 104:15), because these are the chiefprovisions of a banquet.
   Before the feast, or during the entertainment, the guests were
   refreshed with perfumed oil which would be either poured upon the head,
   or furnished for anointing the face. It was part and parcel of a great
   feast. Hence we read of those who "drink wine in bowls, and anoint
   themselves with their chief ointments." Therefore our first thought is
   this, that the Lord Jesus brings mourning souls to a feast of love at
   which they sing, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my
   enemies, You anoint my head with oil." How great will be our joy if we
   can feel that our Lord has brought us into His banqueting house and
   that we are now reclining there! Now, to all Believers, this is truly
   the case. Our hunger now is relieved, for He satisfies our mouth with
   good things. That fierce, wolf-like hunger which we once felt, is gone
   forever, for it is written, "He that eats of this bread shall never
   hunger." Our craving, all-consuming thirst is ended, for he that drinks
   of the water which Jesus gives him shall never thirst! Many of Zion's
   mourners are sitting under the Word, longing for Divine Provision and
   praying, "Lord, evermore give us this bread." The bread is theirs and a
   Voice cries to them, "Eat, O Friends! Drink, yes drink abundantly, O
   Beloved!" Your deadly famine of heart is gone and the spiritual hunger
   which you now feel is a pleasant appetite which gives a zest to
   heavenly food--an appetite which you long to have increased to the
   utmost! Even at this moment, though you feel a blessed hunger and
   thirst after righteousness, you are filled with royal dainties. You are
   no longer starving in the streets, nor famishing under the hedges and
   in the highways, but, by Divine Grace you have been sweetly compelled
   to come in and you are at this moment the guests of the table of
   boundless mercy where the name of Jesus is as ointment poured forth, so
   that all around you the oil of gladness is shedding a Divine Perfume!
   You are no longer feeding the swine, but resting at the Father' s
   table--the oxen and the fatlings are killed and you are actually at the
   supper. Believe this and act accordingly!

   And what a feast it is! For who is your Host? The Lord of Life and
   Glory, Himself, ordains "the feast of fat things, of fat things full of
   marrow, of wines on the lees well-refined." "The King sits at His
   table." It is His table and He sits at it! It is a great thing to dine
   with a king, but what must it be to be daily eating bread at the table
   of the King of kings? Let the joy bells ring in your soul at the very
   thought, for you are already come to the great feast which the King has
   made for His Son! He comes in, Himself, to see the guests!

   It is the feast of the universe. There never was such another and there
   never can be its like! It is the antepast of the great Supper of the
   Lamb. What provisions are put upon the table! Men do eat angels' food
   when they come here. Yes, they eat viands better than the bread of
   angels, for the body of Christ has become the meat and the drink of His
   mourners. Poor Souls, you feast upon Incarnate Deity! Speak of oxen and
   of fatlings? These are poor types compared with the wondrous provision
   of celestial Grace with which the Infinite Jehovah has loaded the table
   of the Covenant! And all these things are yours. You may have as much
   as you will. There remains no need to eat bread by weight, or to drink
   water by measure--He will satiate your soul with fatness and nothing
   shall be withheld from you! Ought you not to bless Him that you are now
   a guest at such a table and that such food is at this very moment
   spread before you?

   Think of your fellow guests. Look around you and inspect the company.
   Remember where you were a little while ago--you were strangers and
   foreigners, yes, you were as dogs in the street! Where are you now? You
   are permitted to sit with the children of God, with the saints of the
   Most High! Does it not bring the water into your eyes to think that
   you--you who long refused to come and despised the feast of Grace--are,
   at last, brought in? No, not only are you sitting here at the feast of
   love with God's people, but the saints above are your comrades--for
   "you are come to the general assembly and church of the first-born,
   which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the
   spirits of just men made perfect." We sup with the glorious company of
   the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the noble army of
   martyrs and the holy Church throughout all the world! Now, also, have
   we fellowship with angels. We have come unto Mount Zion and to an
   innumerable company of angels. Better still, we have fellowship with
   Jesus. "Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant," is the center of the
   whole! It is His wedding feast and we are glorifying Him by partaking
   of His Father's bounty. We cannot at this moment actually put our heads
   upon Jesus' bosom as John did, nor need we wish for that visible and
   physical delight, but our heart rests upon His breast and enjoys an
   unspeakable bliss in so doing! Jesus, Immanuel, we are safe in Your
   arms, and our heart is at perfect rest in You! We are even now abiding
   in You, while at Your Passover we keep the feast. We are feasting with
   the great Father, Himself, for, Beloved, when the glorious Sacrifice
   becomes a meat offering, God Himself delights therein and partakes with
   us in the satisfaction made by His Son! Oh, the satisfaction which God
   the Father finds in Jesus! It is a theme upon which we dare not attempt
   to speak,

   but this we know--the Lord rests in His love. He smells a sweet savor
   in the Person and work and Sacrifice of His dear Son. If we love Jesus,
   so does the Father! And if we rest in Jesus, so does He! And if we
   would glorify Jesus, so would the Father! Thus are we brought to feast
   with God, the Judge of all, when we come to "the blood of sprinkling,
   which speaks better things than that of Abel." Here the oil ofjoy is
   most befitting. Is it not most natural and proper that it should be
   poured out at such a festival?

   We cannot linger, but must pass to the next observation, which is
   this--

   II. BEING AT A FEAST, IT IS BECOMING THAT WE SHOULD HAVE PRESENT JOY.

   Hence the text speaks of "the oil of joy for mourning"--the mourning
   was present enough, the joy should be equally so. At feasts, the
   perfume poured upon the heads of the guests was a seemly and
   appropriate thing. It suited the feast, it made the guests feel at home
   and it gave refreshment all around as the delicious perfume sweetened
   the air. Come, Beloved, we have at this moment reason for joy--let us
   use it! Let every child of God feel that he has the oil of joy in the
   fact that he possesses present blessings. Our best things lie on the
   other side of the Jordan--we are looking for our full bliss at the
   coming of our Lord, but we have much in the present. The oil of joy is
   on our faces now, our locks are even now bedewed with the sacred
   anointing--and it will be well for us to turn our thoughts towards that
   Truth of God!

   For, first, let all Believers recollect that we have today the joy of
   the Atonement''By whom also," says the Apostle, "we have received the
   Atonement." The Atonement will be no more ours in Heaven than it is
   now. "We have redemption by His blood." Our sin will be no more put
   away in Glory than it is at this moment, for our iniquity is even now
   cast into the depths of the sea! Our Substitute has finished
   transgression and made an end of sin. And having believed in Him, we
   know that for us the full Atonement is already made and the utmost
   ransom forever paid! "It is finished." "Therefore being justified by
   faith, we have peace with God." "There is therefore now no condemnation
   to them who are in Christ Jesus." Having believed, we know that our sin
   is as far removed from us as the east is from the west! We also know
   that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us and that it covers us
   from head to foot. This is a Divinely sweet ingredient of the oil of
   joy which now distils upon us from the head of our glorified Aaron and
   perfumes even those who are as the skirts of his garments!

   Besides that, my Brothers and Sisters, at the present moment we live in
   the love of God. I t may not be at this moment sensibly shed abroad in
   your heart by the Holy Spirit, but still, "the Father Himself loves
   you." If you are a Believer in Christ, He will not love you more when
   you are in Heaven than He loves you now, for He loves you Infinitely at
   this instant! You are even now, "accepted in the Beloved." "Beloved,
   now are we the sons of God." Infinite love, eternal love, unchanging
   love, almighty love is the present possession of the children of God!
   Hence comes our safety, hence comes the certainty of the supply of all
   our needs--hence, indeed, flow all our joys! At this moment, despite
   our spirit depression and soul battling and heart strife, the Lord has
   set His love upon us and rests in that love! Should not this make our
   faces shine?

   At this time, too, we possess the Divine Life within us. Having
   believed, we have been regenerated and the Spirit of God dwells in us!
   Yes, within these mortal bodies does the Godhead dwell! He has made our
   bodies to be the temples of the Holy Spirit. And what a favor is this,
   for this indwelling is the witness of the Spirit within us, the
   perpetual seal of Divine Grace. God has put into us a new life, a life
   like His own--He has created in us a superior principle, unknown to
   flesh and blood, for we are not born-again of the will of man, nor of
   the will of the flesh, but of the will of God! A supernatural life has
   been implanted in us which cannot die because it is born of God! We
   have this and we know it--and because of it we greatly rejoice.

   And not only so, but because we are the sons of God, we are heirs
   according to the promise, since it is written, "If children, then
   heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Is not this oil to
   make the face shine? What better delights can your imagination conceive
   than the Divine joys of Adoption? O, you mourners, have you not here
   the oil of

   joy?

   Further, we have the present joy of a high calling i nvolving the
   exercise of sacred functions. You are at this hour, Beloved, as many of
   you as believe in Him, made kings and priests unto God! You are
   consecrated to the service of Him who has bought you with a price. The
   mark of the blood is upon you and "you are Christ's." At this moment
   you are a living sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the altar.
   Your Lord has sent you into the world, even as the Father sent Him

   into the world, to proclaim His Truth and to do His will among the sons
   of men. Is not this cause for delight? Does not your Divine vocation
   anoint you with the oil of gladness?

   With this we have special privileges. There is one privilege I prize at
   this moment--I cannot tell you how much. It is this--the liberty to
   pray, the power to pray, the promise that I shall be heard! Take the
   Mercy Seat from me and poverty, faintness and anguish would seize my
   soul! As long as there is a Mercy Seat and a torn veil, and the Voice
   that bids me draw near and tells me that if I wait upon the Lord I
   shall renew my strength, I have a joy worth worlds! What? Have you lost
   a child? Is your property melting before your eyes? Does health
   decline? Do friends forsake? Yet the Throne of Grace is accessible--fly
   there and lose your grief! There burdens are light. There crosses bud
   with crowns and tears sparkle into diamonds! Come here, you mourners,
   even with the load of your doubts and fears--supplication will quicken
   you and for mourning you shall obtain the oil of joy!

   Time would fail me if I were to go through the whole catalog of the
   sources of the Christian's present joy. Ah, you worldling, you know and
   we confess it is true, that our chief joys are yet to come! But
   notwithstanding, we have enough today to make us more than a match for
   you! You may display your present mirth and carnal delight if you
   will--and laugh at us who weep now--but we can endure your ridicule
   with calm complacency because we have a secret peace and a deep
   fathomless repose of heart which make us even now as far from envying
   you as an angel from envying a mole! We are not of all men the most
   miserable, but of all men the most blessed! Our eternal hopes revive us
   amid the sorrows of this fleeting life. The harvests of Heaven shale
   out and drop golden grain from above, upon which we feed even now! To
   have Jesus for our Brother, God for our Father and the Spirit to be our
   Comforter is a better portion than the richest, the proudest, or the
   most famous of worldlings can possibly possess! The oil of joy is not
   made in the presses of earth--it drops upon us through the golden pipes
   of the sanctuary, flowing from the sacred olive trees which the Lord
   has planted! Passing on from that observation, we would offer a third,
   which is implied in the text, namely, that--

   III. THIS JOY COMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

   This is clear, since evermore when we read of oil we have before us in
   Scripture the Divine influence of the Holy Spirit. The first part of
   the Chapter before us runs thus--"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me
   because the Lord has anointed Me." The oil with which Christ was
   anointed was the Holy Spirit--and the oil of joy with which we are
   anointed is the same Spirit! It is He who gives us joy in the Lord!

   The Holy Spirit brings joy to Believers thus--first, He clears the
   understanding and enables us to comprehend the deep things of God. Many
   poor souls know but little of the precious gifts which the Lord has
   bestowed upon them. As yet, though they are the Lord' s elect, they are
   not aware of it. Though they are the redeemed of the Lord, they
   perceive it not. There is the Light of God about them and yet they
   cannot see, for their eyes are not yet opened beyond the power to see
   men as trees walking. Let us be grateful if we have passed beyond this
   stage. Through Infinite Mercy the Holy Spirit has visited some of us
   and while He has painfully made us see our ruin, He has also most
   blessedly led us to comprehend something of the remedy--and has enabled
   us to understand with all saints what are the heights and depths, and
   to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge! We have an anointing
   so that we know all things. Now are the mysteries opened and the hidden
   things laid bare and, therefore, we have joy in the Lord, for our
   renewed understanding floods our heart with rivers of delight!

   The Holy Spirit also gives us joy as He enables us to exercise an
   appropriating faith You that have faith, do you bless God sufficiently
   for it? Do we not fail to adore the Divine Mercy which has worked this
   Grace in us? We ought to blame ourselves when we find our faith to be
   weak, but we must never commend ourselves when faith is strong. The
   weakness of faith is ours, but the strength of faith comes of the Holy
   Spirit and of Him alone. Let us bless Him that He has enabled us to
   take to ourselves what the Lord Jesus has provided, so that now we do
   not only see His Grace to be excellent, but we grasp it as our own!
   Here is oil of joy for us, indeed!

   The Spirit also, very graciously, sanctifies us, and this is joy. It is
   a part of His work to discover sin in us and to excite a holy hatred of
   it. He burns in our soul like flames of fire consuming evil. Now, the
   destruction of sin is the destruction of sorrow and, as a child of God
   grows in likeness to Jesus, he grows in solid peace of mind. If you
   will follow your doubts and fears to their roots, you will find that
   they grow from the dunghill of your sins--and when the Lord cleanses
   out the evil of our hearts and creates a new spirit within us, the oil
   of joy perfumes the soul and we are glad in His salvation.

   Moreover, the Holy Spirit graciously quickens His people and what a
   wonderful effect quickening has upon our joy! Whenever we are slothful
   in the things of God, we miss the delights of healthy spiritual life
   and, before long we mourn. But when the Holy Spirit comes and makes us
   feel lively and energetic and sensitive, then we begin, also, to
   rejoice in the Lord and the power of His might within us works in us a
   leaping of holy joy! Those who not only have life, but have it more
   abundantly, are a highly favored people and know how to exult in the
   Lord! Beloved, long for no joy but that which the Holy Spirit gives
   you! Thank God for the comforts of this life, but do not let them
   become your idols, as they will be if they become your exceeding joy.
   Draw from the upper fountains, fill your pitcher at the eternal
   springs--ask neither for the cinnamon nor camphor of this world's
   gardens, but let your chief spices be the fruit of the Spirit which are
   joy and peace through believing! We may now, in the fourth place,
   remark that--

   IV. THE JOY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT GIVES US IS A GREAT PRESENT GIFT.

   I once heard a person say, very wickedly, indeed, as I thought and
   still think, that sin could do the Believer no harm. But he added,
   "Except that it destroys his comfort." I thought, "Well, that is a
   terrible 'exception,' indeed! That surely is quite enough to fill us
   with holy fear! If anything robs the Christian of his joy, surely the
   loss is great enough to set him upon his watch tower!" Yet I fear that
   many Christians do not consider this. They dream that it can be well
   with their souls when the joy of the Lord is gone, but, Brothers and
   Sisters, it is not so! The healthy condition of a child of God is a
   state of peaceful rest in the Lord. It is amazing how full Scripture is
   of comfort for mourners because the Lord's objective is that the
   mourner may be comforted. "Comfort you, comfort you, My people, says
   your God. Speak comfortably to Jerusalem." Our Lord desired that we
   might have His joy fulfilled in ourselves and He said, "Let not your
   hearts be troubled." "Rejoice in the Lord always," said the Apostle
   and, as if that were not enough, he added, "and again I say, rejoice."

   Hear me, you mourning ones--the maintenance of a cheerful, happy frame
   of mind is of the utmost importance to you, and that for many reasons
   which may be drawn from the metaphor of oil.

   Oil is refreshing, and so is holy joy. It puts new life into the soul
   and renews its youth like the eagle's. When the man is faint with long
   pursuing, he revives if he perceives he already possesses present
   blessings in which he may rejoice. The joy of the Lord is our strength!

   Oil was intended to also make each guest agreeable to his neighbors.
   When his head was anointed with the sweet perfume, those round about
   him were gratified. Happy Christians are pleasing to those about
   them--and thus they become a means of attracting souls to Jesus. We
   ought to be so happy that others ask, "From where have these men their
   joys?" If so, you can clearly see why we should exchange our mourning
   for the oil of joy. It would be evil to frighten men from the glad
   tidings by drawing long faces and using doleful tones.

   Besides, Brothers and Sisters, you all know how weak you are in the
   service of God if your heart runs down into despondency. But when holy
   joy comes back, you feel that you could face a lion, or the old roaring
   lion, himself! Joy makes us brave. "The spirit of a man will sustain
   his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?" Give me the joyful
   Christian for his Master' s service, for he will break through a troop
   and leap over a wall!

   How gloriously does sacred joy lift us up above the sorrows of the
   world! No, more--how it lifts us up above earth's joys! The man who has
   once drunk the old wine of the Kingdom does not desire the new and sour
   wine of earth. He who knows the joy of the Lord will despise the joy of
   the world. Earthly comforts are small concerns to the heavenly mind. He
   receives them gratefully as matters of ordinary gifts from his Father's
   hands, but his heart cries, "The Lord is my portion, says my soul." He
   who has eaten the white bread of Heaven has his mouth put out of taste
   for the black bread of earth. He who has feasted at God's table and had
   the oil ofjoy poured upon his head by the Holy Spirit has risen above
   the fascinations of the hour! What can charm a man who has gazed on the
   beauties of Jesus? What can delude us into idolatry when we have once
   beheld the Glory of the Lord? The joy of the Lord is a grand safeguard.
   Earnestly could I wish that all God's people were flooded with
   it--there would then be no fear of angry tempers, harsh speeches, or
   murmuring words. Full of the joy of the Lord, deeds of injustice in
   trade or of grasping at the world would be disdained by you! Suffering
   would be endured with patience and labor performed with diligence!
   Railing would never be returned for railing, nor proud looks given to
   the poor. The joy of the Lord makes a man so calm, so quiet, so
   heavenly, that he lives above the world. What a grand life is that of
   Abraham! He has his trials and some of them are intense, but he walks
   along the

   road of history with an almost noiseless tread, gliding along as though
   all were smooth! The record says, "It came to pass that the Lord had
   blessed Abraham in all things"--and yet in the previous pages we read
   of trials with Lot, with Hagar and Ishmael--and the grand ordeal with
   Isaac! Faith made his trials blessings, and his inward joy, like
   Aaron's rod, swallowed up all the rods of his afflictions. The same
   road is open to us and we have the same reasons for walking in it since
   the God of Abraham is our God forever and ever! He who can live by
   faith shall have a constant supply of the oil of joy poured upon him by
   the Holy Spirit--and his mourning shall flee away. Our last observation
   is--

   V. THE JOY WHICH GOD GIVES HIS PEOPLE IS BEST SEEN AND FREQUENTLY BEST
   FELT IN FELLOWSHIP.

   We began with noting that oil is connected with festivity. Sweet spices
   are for banquets where men feast together. Oh mourners, you will often
   find your souls made joyous when you assemble with your Brothers and
   Sisters! Bread eaten in secret is sweet and morsels behind the door are
   delicious, but still, the choicest and most abundant provisions are
   brought forth when the king's household gather around his table and
   realize that "they, being many, are one bread." Speaking personally, my
   happiest times are spent with my Brothers and Sisters in Christ in the
   high festivals, when the multitude keep holy day. Draw a circle around
   my pulpit and you have hit upon the spot where I am nearest Heaven!
   There the Lord has been more consciously near me than anywhere else. He
   has ravished my heart while I have been trying to cheer and comfort His
   mourners. Many of you can say the same of your pew where you are known
   to sit--it has been a Bethel to you and the Lord Jesus has revealed
   Himself to you in the midst of His people. Let us remember what
   delightful times we have had in prayer together. We have come into the
   sanctuary heavy of heart and while one Brother after another has
   approached the Throne of Grace for us, we have been unburdened and
   helped to joy in God till the Prayer Meeting has seemed to be a Heaven
   below, an antepast of the eternal meetings above! Thus the oil of joy
   is poured out in the assembly of fellowship.

   Ofttimes, also, when we have been singing together some delightful
   hymn, in a lively, feeling manner, we have felt as if we could leap
   with delight and so the oil of joy has streamed upon our heads. Have
   you not often cried with the poet--

   "I would begin the music here, And so my soul should rise! Oh for some
   heavenly notes to bear My passions to the skies!'

   Yes, that is the oil of gladness given at the festival of praise among
   the sons of God--who would not be there?

   A joyous influence has also been within the house when Believers have
   met to talk with one another concerning the things of God in simple,
   pious conversation. Alas, how little is there of such speaking, one to
   another, especially among wealthy Christians. A Christian man remarked
   to me the other day that when he was a boy the good old Christian
   people were constantly talking upon the Doctrines of Grace and other
   things which concern the Kingdom of God, but there is little of this
   now. The staunch old men of the last generation knew what they believed
   and discerned between things that differed--they were, perhaps, a
   little too severe in their judgments--but still they did converse on
   Divine things and were refreshed thereby! But now we are so very
   charitable that we are afraid to talk to one another about the things
   of God, for fear we should differ! It should not be so, for when Christ
   is the subject and God's people converse together, their hearts burn
   within them with sacred delight, and the oil of gladness is poured upon
   their heads! Holy fellowship brings heavenly joy--the conversation of
   saints with each other is the source of unnumbered delights.

   Lastly, the Communion Table has been to many of us, above all other
   places in the world, the palace of delight There are certain of us who
   never forget the ordinance for a single Lord's-Day, and years of
   experience bear witness to the value of this means of Grace! It is
   marvelous that so few, even among Christians, are regular in their
   attendance at that thrice blessed Supper. A young girl said to me the
   other Sabbath, "Jesus seems so near when we are at the Table." And she
   was quite right. The emblems used at the Supper so vividly bring our
   Lord before us that we think only of His passion, of the blood that was
   shed and of the body which was made to suffer for our sins. Then are we
   borne away with grateful emotion and feel as if we had reached the very
   gate of Heaven! While we drink the wine and eat the bread, the oil of
   gladness is poured upon us by our Lord Himself! You who neglect that
   ordinance are losing a great privilege and besides that you are
   neglecting a solemn duty. May the Lord convince you of your negligence
   and bring you to delight in that ordinance which is the joyful means of
   communion with Himself.

   Now, all this while I have been talking to God's people and you will
   say, "Have you not a word to say to the sinner?" Well, I have all the
   while been speaking to the sinner, too, because all this is for you if
   you repent of sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ! If you will
   come and have it, the Table is spread and loaded for you. No,
   more--"the Word is near you, even in your mouth." What? Is the Bread of
   Life in your mouth and will you not eat it? Poor, hungry, empty, needy
   sinner, can you reject what God, Himself, puts into your mouth? If
   angels will rejoice when you repent, depend upon it there is also joy
   in store for you! Come then to Jesus, just as you are! Bring no money
   with you, bring no fitness with you, bring no fancied goodness with
   you--bring your sins and lay them before your Lord. Bring your hard
   heart, your lack of feeling, your lack of Divine Grace and just come
   and find all that you need in Christ, who is waiting to bless you! When
   I was a child I remember how at a school festival the children were
   instructed to bring their own mugs with them. Now that showed the
   poverty of those who gave the treat, but my Master does not want you to
   bring anything! He supplies everything. Come as you are, with nothing
   about you except your needs and your willingness to be saved! When an
   empty, guilty, lost, undone, ruined creature is coming to a great,
   blessed and mighty Savior, all he has to think of is the love which
   invites him and the greatness of the Redeemer who will receive him!
   Come here, then, all you who mourn because of sin, or mourn that you
   cannot mourn, and, by believing in Jesus you shall obtain the oil of
   joy and the days of your mourning shall be ended!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: MARK9:20-41.

   This miracle is one that shows the transforming power of the Savior in
   a remarkable fashion.

   20-21. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him and he
   fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming. And He asked his father, How
   long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. A
   terrible case.

   22-25. And ofttimes it has cast him into the fire, and into the waters,
   to destroy him: but if You can do anything, have compassion on us, and
   help us. Jesus said unto him, If you can believe, all things are
   possible to him that believes. And immediately the father of the child
   cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help You my unbelief
   When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the
   foul spirit, saying unto him, You dumb and deaf spirit, I charge you,
   come out of him, and enter no more into him. That is one way in which
   Christ cures. When He drives the devil out of a man, He adds, "Enter no
   more into him." I believe in the final perseverance of the saints,
   because I believe in the Omnipotent ejection of Satan out of men when
   Christ speaks the word, "Come out of him, and enter no more into him."

   26-29. And the spirit cried, and convulsed him sorely and came out of
   him: and he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead. But
   Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose. And when
   He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, Why
   could not we cast him out? And He said unto them--According to another
   Evangelist, it was from lack of faith. Howbeit, He added--

   29. This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. God
   does not give us everything in answer to one prayer. It may be
   necessary for some blessings that the prayer should be reiterated--that
   it should deepen--that it should grow into an aching. It may be even
   necessary, in order that a blessing should come, that fasting should be
   used with prayer in order to show the intense eagerness and earnestness
   of the petitioner. Now notice the 38th verse.

   38. And John answeredHim, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils
   in Your name, andhe follows not us: and we forbade him, because he
   follows not us.John in this case was like a good many people at the
   present day. You notice it. They could not cast out the devils,
   themselves, and when they found somebody else that did it, they forbade
   his doing it because he did not follow with them. I have known learned,
   eloquent, respectable ministers who cannot save sinners. And they hear
   that certain poor, illiterate, uneducated men have snatched sinners
   like brands from the burning--and they forbid them to do what they
   cannot do themselves. It is insanity--that would stop any man from
   doing what God enables him to do! And we ought to be the very last to
   forbid others from doing it.

   39. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do
   a miracle in My name, that can lightly speak evil of Me. These people
   were dissenters, we may say--a sort of outsiders. And John puts forth
   the whole power of his

   Apostolic authority to put them down--and then Jesus Christ puts forth
   the full power of His Divine Authority to give them liberty to go on!

   40-41. For hie that is not against us is on our side. For whoever shall
   give you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to
   Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward
     __________________________________________________________________

Faith Seeing God's Glory

   (No. 3342)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Jesus said unto her, Said I not unto you that if you would believe,
   you would see the Glory of God?" John 11:40.

   IT is not every man whose deed is as good as his word, but of the Son
   of Man, Christ Jesus, it may be said that whatever His lips have
   promised, His hands perform. He can, after the fact has transpired,
   turn to His disciples and say, "Said I not unto you, such-and-such, and
   is it not even as I said?" Seeking Sinner, Christ has said that you
   shall have peace if you believe on Him and He will not run back from
   that word! If you cast yourself upon Him, you shall have peace right
   now--you shall have happiness evermore, you shall have Heaven at the
   last--for there is no promise which Christ has made which He is not
   prepared to keep! There is no blessing which He presents to the hand of
   our faith which is either unreal, a sham, or a mockery! You shall find
   that Christ's gold is not mere tinsel, but true, and that His silver is
   silver tried in the furnace--good spending money, both for time and for
   eternity!

   I shall hope to use the text tonight--may God, too, use it--first, with
   regard to the case of our feelowmen, about whom many of us are much
   concerned. And then, in the second place, with regard to our own case.

   Dear Friends, I know that I touch a sympathetic chord in your hearts
   when I speak--

   I. WITH REGARD TO OUR CARE FOR OTHERS' SOULS.

   I bless God that so many of you love your fellow creatures and fellow
   sinners and earnestly desire to promote their highest interests by
   bringing them to Christ!

   You have tasted and known the sweetness of true religion for yourselves
   and you are not selfishly satisfied merely to rejoice in this, but long
   that others, too, may taste and see, as you have done, that the Lord is
   good! Now, I know that if you are really in earnest about the matter,
   you will often meet with cases which wiil stagger your faith, will
   throw you back entirely upon your God and compel you to make your
   passionate appeal to His Omnipotence. Well, the text addresses itself
   especially to those who meet with such cases. Poor Martha, when she saw
   the stone rolled away from the tomb of her dead brother, was shocked
   with what would meet the eyes and nostrils of her Lord, and so, in deep
   solicitude and almost alarm she declared, "Lord, by this time he
   stinks." The spectacle was too revolting, for he had been dead nearly
   four days--and in an Oriental climate that signified much that was
   repulsive. Terrible havoc would already have been worked on the body
   and she could not bear, I say, that the Savior should be exposed to
   such a spectacle! Now, how often do we meet with men and women, young
   and old persons, whose case is a very terrible one! We do not like to
   speak of it. It is getting among the putrid things, for "it is a shame
   even to speak of the things which are done of them in secret." There
   are some cases which are shocking, terrible, fearful! We may well wish
   that a stone may cover the cave so that they may not be seen, that they
   may be left unobserved as cases too vile for the ordinary gazer to look
   upon. Have you never met with such? I am sure, my dear Friends, if you
   are City Missionaries, or lovers of City Missionary work, you must meet
   in this great city with some of the most revolting instances of
   immorality, debauchery, dishonesty and everything that is dreadful--and
   you are very apt to think that these are cases in which the Gospel will
   be out of place and the publishing of the news of pardoning love will
   be like throwing pearls before swine! The text, however, tells you
   something which may comfort you concerning such cases.

   Perhaps I shall be addressing some tonight who have been laboring of
   late in connection with cases which appear hopeless to them, not so
   much from any gross immorality as from a hardness of heart which has
   come over the people. There may be a mother here tonight who is much
   concerned about her daughter--that daughter was once here, frequent-

   ly here, but where she is at this moment the weeping mother does not
   know, nor does her anxious father--and it is with deep concern and sad
   hearts that some of us have asked, "Where can she have gone?"

   While some thus actually leave the parental home and, we fear, plunge
   into sin and excess, there are others who cause great anxiety in
   another way. They do not want to hear the Gospel which once greatly
   moved them--they have wearied of it--they contrive to stay away from
   the public worship and now the mother's admonitions have become
   positively irksome. The girl feels herself too big to yield to a
   father's counsels and entreaties. Perhaps even worse than this is the
   case you have been praying for--the case of one who actually denies and
   flouts the religion of Jesus Christ, who declares it is all a sham, a
   mere form got up that priests of all sects may get a living by it.
   Perhaps even blasphemy has taken the place of attention to the Word.
   You feel, as you think of such an one, who is the object of your love,
   that you would give up your very heart if you could but have a hope of
   his ultimate salvation--but he seems to have gone too far. Now, you
   cannot get him to listen to the Word. He is tonight--yes, good woman,
   your own husband--where is he? He is possibly in the gin palace, or
   even worse. You fear that at the very moment when you are sitting here,
   some for whom you have been pleading night and day are plunging deeper
   and deeper into sin and that when you reach home, the cross you will
   have to endure will be to hear hard things and bitter against the
   Savior whom you love, and to see and hear those dear to you thus
   penetrating further and further into the lairs of wickedness! Now, you
   see, you have a desperate case before you, and I want, if God shall
   help me, just to push the text home. Christ says, "Said I not unto you
   that if you would believe you should see the Glory of God?" This death,
   this burial, this "stinking" of Lazarus--to use the expressive word of
   Martha--all this is only a platform for the Divine Glory to display
   itself! This horrible sin, this hardness of heart, this rejection of
   the Word of God--all this is only a stage upon which the Grace of God,
   in answer to your prayerful faith, shall come and do its wonders!

   Let me tell you what you will yet see if your faith is able to lay hold
   upon Christ. You will see the conversion of these lost ones and then
   you will see the Glory of God, for you will say, "Could God have given
   His only-begotten Son instead of such sinners as these?" Did it never
   strike you as strange that there should be two--one, the perfectly holy
   Christ, the beloved Son of God and, on the other hand, a reeling,
   cursing, blaspheming drunk--and that God would sooner smite His Son
   than smite that drunk? That He should even grieve His Son and make Him
   smart, rather than that that blasphemer should smart? Truly, when the
   Jews made the choice of a robber rather than Christ, it was a strange
   choice and only to be understood by their wicked infatuation. But here,
   such is the power of God's love that when one out of two must suffer,
   He chooses that the innocent Christ should suffer and that the drunken,
   blaspheming sinner should go free! Truly "God commends His love towards
   us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

   Look at it again. There is this great sinner whom we have been
   describing--is it not marvelous that Jesus Christ could really give
   Himself for such an one? He has been in prison, perhaps, two or three
   times, and he has done everything that is bad, and yet, oh, wonder of
   wonders--the Lord Jesus Christ gives Himself for him! Now, "scarcely
   for a righteous man would one die: perhaps for a good man one would
   even dare to die," but God commends His love towards us in that while
   we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. What? Did Christ shed His
   blood for thieves, harlots, and drunks? Yes, Sir, as much as for the
   self-righteous and even more so, for while the self-righteous miss
   Heaven by reason of their pride and refusal of His salvation, some of
   these, coming humbly to the Cross, find pardon through the precious
   blood!

   But it is a great wonder--and when a soul of this kind is converted you
   do see the Glory of God! You do not understand the miracle of love it
   expresses, in that Christ could die for such a mass of spiritual
   corruption, as some of His creatures have really made themselves to be
   before they had been helped by Sovereign Grace to trust in Christ. As
   the Glory of Christ's power was seen in Lazarus coming out of the
   grave, though He had been four days dead and was corrupt, so the same
   Glory is seen in the conversion of every great sinner!

   What? Does the former swearer pray? Yes, and prays better than half of
   us and much more earnestly! Oh, what depth of feeling, what groaning
   that cannot be uttered, comes welling up from his grateful, adoring
   heart. Does "the woman who was a sinner" love the Savior? Yes, and she
   washes His feet with her tears and wipes them with the hair of her
   head, thus doing more for Christ than Simon did, whose guest He was,
   though he thought he had done so much. Ah, yes, Grace can make bright
   saints out of black sinners, can take the very scum and dregs of
   Satan's dominions and make them into sparkling jewels to glitter in the
   crown of Divine Grace forever! It is wondrous what the Grace of God can
   do! My dear Hearer, if you should happen to feel yourself to be
   degraded by sin, do not give up! Do not think that Christ cannot save

   you! Do not let Satan tell you tonight that Christ can never save you!
   Look upon this case of Lazarus--"By this time he stinks, for he has
   been dead four days," and yet where the worm had been, where corruption
   had been, life came back at the Savior's word! And so shall it be with
   you. He can save you. He can save you now! He can save you from the
   blackest of your sins and make you sing His praises! The Glory of God,
   then, is seen in the conversion of every sinner, but most conspicuously
   in the conversion of the chief of sinners!

   And this Glory is also seen in the fact that these sinners, when saved,
   hold on and continue to the end. I have sometimes heard it said of such
   an one, "Ah, he will never hold out!" I bless God that there have been
   so many whom God has blessed in this house who have held out year after
   year! Look over our Church records--see the names of very nearly 3,600
   souls associated here in Church fellowship, and in a year how many are
   excommunicated for their sins? Why, enough to make us grieve, but so
   few that they make us wonder at the Grace of God which keeps them! Many
   of them have been brought in while young and they have been exposed to
   many temptations--some plucked from the depths of sin--and yet they are
   an honor to the Christian Church of which they are members! And I can
   speak of them in every company into which I move and say that they
   honor Christ and prove the power of the Gospel and the reality of
   conversion! Brothers and Sisters, we see the Glory of God, not only in
   the regenerating of those who were once great sinners, but even more
   remarkably displayed when we see that they do not go back to their old
   sins, but they have become such new creations that it is impossible for
   them to return to the old evil life and its evil loves and longings!
   So, then, it appears from the text that if we are praying for our
   friends, their present condition ought not to stagger us and, however
   bad their state may be, we should only hear the Savior telling us that
   He is making herein larger room for the display of His matchless Grace!
   So we should be encouraged to pray more earnestly for such--rather than
   even for a moment to give them up as though such case were hopeless!

   Now, who is it that sees the Glory of God in the conversion of a soul?
   When a man has produced some masterpiece of art or other genius, he
   likes others to see it. Who are they who see great sinners when they
   are converted? Who are they? We read of one stone upon which were seven
   eyes. When such a sinner is saved, all eyes are set upon him. Why, his
   neighbors see him. Some of them hate the change, but they cannot help
   seeing it. When a great sinner is converted, beloved Friends, his wife
   knows of it, his children know of it, his relatives know of it and it
   is a matter of wonder to them all! "Oh," they say, "So-and-So has
   become a Christian." Very likely they say he has become a Methodist, or
   a "Spurge-onite," or some such ugly name. They are sure to call him by
   the name of the minister whom God has blessed to him. And then they
   talk of it in the workshop and he gets jeered at for it, but they say,
   "Ah, what is this? Here is a kind of religion come among us which
   really has power over people to alter their lives, which takes them out
   of the old ruts in which they were known to run and puts them on a new
   highway, and turns their minds in another direction! What is it?" So
   that friends and relatives see it and enemies see it, too, and, what is
   still more remarkable, it becomes a theme of wonder in other
   worlds!Devils see it and they do not like it--and they resolve to
   overthrow the man--but all the devils in Hell cannot destroy a true
   child of God! You know Toplady's saying about the Grace of God. He says
   it is like leaven--if you once get it into the cake you may boil it,
   you may fry it, you may bake it--but you cannot get it out! And so,
   once get the Grace of God into a man's heart and you cannot get it out
   again! God does what the devil cannot undo when He makes "a new
   creature in Christ Jesus." And then the angels see it. We have God's
   Word for that, for we are told that they rejoice over one sinner that
   repents. A poor woman upstairs in an attic found the Savior and her
   finding the Savior affected three worlds in one moment! It made earth
   glad. It made Hell howl with indignation and it set Heaven in a blaze
   of extraordinary joy! Do not the harps of the angels thrill with
   super-celestial harmonies when they hear of sinners being eternally
   saved? Do they not lift up a new paean, and yet more exalted praise
   unto Him who trod the wine-press alone, and of whose victory these
   souls are the reward?

   Yes, earth, Heaven and Hell, all know of it! We know it for the text
   says, "Said I not unto you, that if you would believe, you should see
   the Glory of God"? It is a very great comfort in one's labors to see
   those who are truly converted. Of course, we ought to be able to work
   on and to believe in success even if we cannot yet see it, but it is a
   great delight to be privileged to see the sheaves cut and then carry
   them to the Great Husbandman and say, "That is a sheaf You gave me." I
   have heard of Mr. Matthew Wilks, the famous but eccentric preacher,
   being waited on by some of his very excellent and very proper members
   to reprove him for some of his quaint sayings. "Well," said Mr. Wilks,
   "if you will wait just a little, I will answer you." Going upstairs, he
   brought down a long roll which contained the names of those whom God
   had blessed and saved through his ministry. "Now," he said, "all these
   precious souls have been brought to God by these sermons which you feel
   moved to criticize. By the Grace of God I will preach yet more of
   them!" And so may every minister say when God gives him success, for it
   strengthens him in his work! You dear Sunday School teachers who teach
   in your classes. You who distribute tracts. You who preach in the
   streets--if God gives you conversions, I am sure you will go on with
   your work! It will whet your appetites! You will want more! You will
   never be satisfied, but will press on in your Master's service!

   But now comes in an "if," and then I will leave this point. "Said I not
   unto you, if you would believe, you should see the Glory of God"? That
   is the thing! Why is it that we are not more successful? It is because
   we do not believe. I heard a conversation the other day, something like
   this. A Brother said--and a very excellent Brother, too--"When I go
   into the pulpit I go hoping that perhaps God will bless the word that I
   am going to deliver, prayerfully seeking that He would do so, and
   feeling satisfied that it will be according to His mind and will and
   believing that if I preach the Word, perhaps it will be blessed."
   Another Brother said, "Well, my Brother, I think you are right, but I
   do not go into the pulpit in that way at all." "How then?" asked the
   other. "Why," was the answer, "I go into the pulpit believing that God
   is going to save souls tonight, that I am going to be made by Him the
   instrument of it and I preach believing that while I am preaching,
   souls must and will be saved--that there is not a chance they maybe,
   but they willbe, that God's Word will not return unto Him void, but
   will prosper in the thing whereto He has sent it. I hope I am as humble
   as if it were a pe-radventure, but I am all the more earnest, I trust,
   because I feel certain that now souls will be blessed." Now, I do
   believe that God does bless in a very great measure according to what
   we believe will be the result and that if we can only stand and preach
   Christ, believing Christ will come to souls and souls will find Him,
   then the more of such faith that we have, the greater will be the
   results. Beloved, do we always pray in faith, as we ought? We pray here
   at every Prayer Meeting that God would save souls--but do we believe
   that He certainly will hear us? If we do not, we shall lose the
   blessing. We must believe not only that God is, but that He is the
   rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, or we shall miss His
   blessing!

   Oh, what a mercy to rise from your knees and say, "I have got it! I
   asked for souls and God has heard me--and I shall see my desire and be
   satisfied! I have prayed definitely for conversions, and conversions
   will be given me." Brothers and Sisters, in such a Church as this,
   where God is so manifestly and so marvelously working, we ought to be
   forever expecting conversions!

   You Christian people, as you sit in the pews should be looking out for
   God to bless your friends, believing that your dear children will
   manifest the first signs of His gracious saving power. Then should you
   encourage these seedlings of promise and put the young plants in the
   hothouse of deep love during the winter of their conviction, so that
   they may not be withered or blighted, but come to be plants of God's
   right hand planting! Expect the blessing! It is coming! It is coming!
   God is blessing His Church and He intends to bless it yet more. He has
   opened the windows of Heaven and He is pouring out the blessing so that
   we have not room enough to receive it! We have not even now room enough
   to receive the hearers--the day is coming when we shall not have room
   enough to hold the Church! Only let us pray and work-- and God, even
   our own God, will bless us and bless His other Churches, too--and the
   ends of the earth shall fear Him! So you see, then, the whole matter is
   if you can believe. Now, Mother, can you believe about your child? Now,
   good Woman, can you believe about your husband? Now, my Brother, can
   you believe about your wife? May God help you to believe Him! Depend
   upon it, the struggle is there. It is much harder for you to believe in
   God than it is for God to convert your wife, much harder for you to
   trust God about your child than it is for Him to save your child! It is
   much easier for God to save the harlot, the drunk, the thief, than it
   is for us to think He will do it! But when we can believe in Him and,
   believing, boldly pray for it and expect it, we shall get it, and he
   that was repulsive but yesterday shall be fragrant with Divine Grace
   tomorrow! He that rotted in his tomb but the other day, so far gone
   that men turned away from him, shall come into the midst of God's
   Church, be found among the living in Zion and make the Church on earth
   and the Church in Heaven glad in his society! But now we must have a
   few minutes in which to use the text for--

   II. THE COMFORT AND BLESSING OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT THEMSELVES SAVED.

   I do not suppose, dear Friends--speaking to those of you who are
   awakened and quickened in your consciences--I do not suppose I could
   give a descriptive character of you which you would think to be too
   bad. You once thought yourselves very good and excellent, but it is
   quite a different tale with you now. God the Holy Spirit has met with
   you and

   made you see yourselves--and now you are ashamed of yourselves. You
   feel as if you were dead, as if you had no power, no life.

   You feel more, you seem as if you were buried. Satan tells you that
   there is no hope for such as you are and you feel as if you were like
   Lazarus, really corrupt in soul, so that you cannot sometimes endure
   yourselves. You cannot sleep at night--your fears distract you. You are
   afraid that God will do with you as Abraham did with his dead, that is,
   bury you out of His sight. I have known many like you and whenever I
   have met with them, I have been glad, for I have always felt that God
   was about to bless them when they could never stand, much less, bless
   themselves! It was just then, when they thought so badly of themselves,
   that God thought well of them. Now, dear Friends, I say I cannot
   describe your condition as being worse than you really think it to be,
   for you really now feel yourselves to be about as bad as a person could
   ever be. Now, what about you? Why, this--that the badness of your
   present condition is no barrier whatever to your salvation if you can
   now, enabled by Divine Grace, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to save
   you! I will not enter into your past life, nor into your present state.
   We will suppose both to be outrageously bad, if you like. You may say
   that you have no feeling, no sensibility--that you cannot repent and a
   great many other things. But now, can you believe that Christ can save
   you? Can you trust Him to do it? If you can, then all there is of
   hardness in you--even if it were ten times more--could not keep you out
   of Heaven! "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as
   snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." If your
   heart is hard, pardoning love can melt it! If you have no repentance,
   Christ is exalted on high to giverepentance! If your will is stubborn,
   He can make you willing in the day of His power! Can you believe this?
   Have you not heard the story? It was God, Himself, who died on Calvary!
   It was none other than that same One who made the heavens, who came
   down on earth and became a Man for the sake of men--and on the bloody
   tree expired in extreme agonies! He, "very God of very God," though a
   Man like you, died that sin might be put away and that sinners might be
   saved!

   Sinner, can you believe this? Can you trust Him? "Yes, I should trust
   Him," says one, "but I cannot." I do not mean what you can do, but can
   you trust Him to do? Can you believe? For if you will believe on Him,
   you shall see the Glory of God. "But I cannot see." No! No! No! It does
   not say if you can see, but if you believe, you shall see! Believing
   comes first, and then the seeing follows! And what is it you are to
   see? The Glory of God. Now, supposing you were a very good sort of
   person and had not any sin, it would not be much Glory to God to save
   you. Why, you would not need saving-- you could save yourselves, or
   there would be nothing from which to be saved! What glory would then be
   His? But if, on the other hand, you can see nothing to nurture
   it--then, in your wondrous salvation would the Glory of God be
   gloriously seen! You, and others, too, would see God saving you in
   spite of your sin, in the teeth of your soul's corruption and in
   defiance of all the powers of evil! Such a sight of God's Glory will
   make it impossible for a single note of praise to be given to
   yourselves, but all the Glory, all the Glory shall be to His rich,
   all-conquering, Sovereign Grace!

   Now, can you believe this? Can you trust Jesus Christ, alone, to
   utterly save you? Sink or swim, can you throw yourself into the sea of
   Jesus' love? Now, can you just give yourself up to Christ to save you,
   for if you will believe, you shall see the Glory of God. You shall see
   that Glory in your pardon, in your new creation, in your being
   sustained under temptation, in your being kept in the hours of life, in
   the night of death, in your being lifted up at the Day of Judgment to
   receive an acquittal and in your being presented faultless before His
   Presence with exceedingly great joy! Mercy, in her dream--if you
   remember--laughed, and when Christiana asked her why she laughed, she
   said it was because of what she had dreamed. Now, verily, I have known
   what it is to laugh in the same way. I have thought of myself as black,
   defiled, corrupt, unworthy. And then I have thought of myself as one
   day wearing a crown, of waving a palm branch, of bowing before the
   eternal Throne of God, having neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such
   thing--and, verily, I have seemed to laugh that that should ever be
   true and my soul has leaped at the very thought that I--yes I, shall
   tread the streets of gold, passing through the gates of pearl and see
   His face and bow before Him--I, who was once filled with sin and
   corruption, filled to the brim with the vision of God! And, Brothers
   and Sisters, we will meet there and what a wonder it will be that we
   should ever get there! Do you not think they will sometimes say to one
   another in Heaven, "I remember-- it is almost enough to make me weep to
   remember--when I stood in the tavern and made others laugh at a
   lascivious jest and when I could sing a merry song. Oh, how different
   from the song that now engages this happy heart and from the music that
   comes from these blessed strings!" And do you not think that another
   will say, "And I remember haunts of wickedness and vice that dare not
   be mentioned here, but I am washed!" And oh, when they think of that,
   they will strike up again the grand old song that will always be
   new--"Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own
   blood, unto Him be Glory forever and ever." I am of the same mind as
   the good old soul who said that if Jesus Christ ever took her to
   Heaven, He would never hear the last of it. And He never will!--

   "I'll praise Him in life, I'll praise Him in death, I'll praise Him as
   long as He lends me breath! And say when the death-dew lies cold on my
   brow, If ever I loved You, my Jesus, 'tis now." Yes, and up there in
   Heaven we shall still praise Him! We shall not have time to think of
   anybody else, nor to think of any but our Lord--

   "Jesus sought me when a stranger Wandering from the fold of God. He to
   rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood."

   "Why, if an angel had come to me 17 years ago and had said to me, "Now,
   my lad, get up from that bedside"--there was I, about that time, on my
   knees before God, with many tears, thinking that I should never be
   saved. I had longed and entreated for mercy from my childhood, without
   having any comfortable answer. And I considered that I was among the
   reprobate and was meant to illustrate forever the Justice of God in
   Hell--if, I say, an angel had come to me at that time and said, "Come,
   my lad, you will one day preach the Gospel to thousands of sinners, and
   tell them what a dear Savior you have found"--do you think I would have
   believed him? "No," I would have said, "that will never be." Why, it is
   such a change for me to be here talking to you from being there, afraid
   of the wrath of God, that I do not know how to talk of it! But oh, that
   is nothing! That is no change at all compared with our being taken away
   to Heaven! With our being taken up where angels dwell! Above all, where
   He dwells, that Blessed One whom, though we have not seen, we love and
   unceasingly adore, to be in His bosom forever, to be kissed with the
   kisses of His mouth, to be His dear ones, to live in His Father's house
   where the many mansions are! Oh, the Glory of God! What a sight that
   will be! And, Sinner, if you will believe, you shall see it! Where did
   you come from tonight? Where are you going when you leave this service?
   I hope you will leave a different man, a different woman! If you will
   believe, you shall see the Glory of God! Oh, may the Holy Spirit
   constrain you to believe tonight! May this be the time when you shall
   come empty-handed and take Christ to be your All-in-All! May this be
   the instant when you shall be done with your self-righteousness, when
   you will give up trying to save yourself and come and rest where God
   would have you rest--in the blood of His dear Son! In His death! His
   Resurrection! In His intercession before the Throne of God!

   Oh, come, Sinner! God help you to come! Come! All black and ruined,
   come! All lost and defiled, come! Though you are as one dead, no, like
   Lazarus rotting in the tomb of your sins, "Awake, you that sleep, and
   rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." In the name of
   Jesus, thus I speak to you and He speaks to you through me. Come forth!
   Come forth! You corrupting Lazarus, come forth! 'Tis Jesus bids you
   come! Trust Him! He bids you trust Him and whoever trusts Him shall see
   the Glory of God forever! Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOHN111-26.

   Verse 1. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the
   town of Mary and her sister, Martha. In God's Book, towns are most
   remarkable for saints that dwell in them. "The town of Mary and her
   sister, Martha." A day will come when a city shall be more illustrious
   for a saint than for a Caesar--be more renowned for deeds of faith than
   for deeds of battle! It was "the town of Mary and her sister, Martha."

   2, 3. (It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped
   His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick). Therefore his
   sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick
   They did not say anymore. They felt that it was quite enough to tell
   Him that Lazarus was sick. They left it to the tender heart of Jesus to
   do whatever seemed good in His sight. Some prayers would be all the
   better if they were shorter--all the better if they did not so much
   declare our own will as declare our confidence in the good will of
   Christ! I like the omissions of Martha's and Mary's prayer.

   4. When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but
   for the Glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
   Our Savior speaks in a different style from us. We would have said that
   the sickness was unto death, but, ultimately, to the Glory of God. But
   He who sees the end from the beginning speaks with a grandeur of style
   which could not be imitated by us! So the Lord speaks of things, not as
   they seem to be, nor even as they are in the present moment, but as
   they shall be in the long run--"Not unto death, but that the Son of God
   might be glorified."

   5. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. Yet Lazarus
   died. Jesus loved Lazarus, yet Lazarus was sick. Jesus was not of that
   cruel sort of people, of whom we have some in these days, who call
   themselves saints, and who attribute all sickness among God s people to
   their sin or to their lack of faith. Not He. Here was one that was
   sick, but Jesus loved him just as much for all that.

   6. When He hadheard, therefore, that he was sick, He abode two days,
   still, in the sameplace where He was. Notice the connection. "Jesus
   loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus"--and yet when He had heard
   that Lazarus was sick, "He abode two days, still, in the same place
   where He was." Sometimes true love may think fit to make us wait. It
   may be the truest love on God s part to let us lie sick and not to come
   post-haste to us to make us well. Yes, the truest love may demand that
   the sickness should turn to death, for out of the death He may bring
   the greater Glory. The Lord acts not upon the scale of man, for He sees
   not as man sees. He sees the end as well as the beginning.

   7. Then after that He said to His disciples, Let us go into Judaea
   again--And that because He loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus! If
   that love in its wisdom made Him tarry, yet that love in its sincerity
   at last moved Him to seek the house of grief.

   8. 9. The disciples said to Him, Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone
   You, and are You going there again? Jesus answered, Are there not
   twelve hours in the day?Is there not a time in which the sun will not
   go down--in which it is safe and right for men to work?

   9. 10. If any man walks in the day, he stumbles not, because he sees
   the light of this world. But if a man walks in the night, he stumbles
   because there is no light in him. There is a singular turn, is there
   not, in that expression? We expected it to be, "Because he sees not the
   light of the world," instead of which the Savior says, "Because there
   is no light in him"--because in spiritual things our light not only
   comes from above, but it shines within--and without that inner light we
   are sure to stumble.

   11. These things said He: and after that He said unto them, Our friend
   Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.It is the
   Savior s way to use terms concerning His miracles, which, so far from
   exaggerating them, even appear to depreciate them. He is about to raise
   a man from the dead, but He says, "Our friend Lazarus sleeps; but I go
   that I may awake him out of sleep." I am afraid that our tendency is
   always to describe our actions in the largest possible terms consistent
   with truth, perhaps sometimes forgetting those last words. But the
   Savior describes truthfully what He does, but still in terms which,
   like His Humanity, seem to veil the Glory. Wonderfully condescending is
   it of Him to speak thus--

   12. Then said His disciples, Lord, if He sleeps, He shall do well. It
   is considered to be a sign of getting better when a patient can sleep.

   13-16. However Jesus spoke of his death: but they thought that He had
   spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly,
   Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes, that I was not there, to
   the intent you may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. Then said
   Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also
   go, that we may die with Him. A singular mixture of faith and unbelief!
   He so believes his Master that he is willing to die with Him. He so
   doubts Him that, although the Savior had plainly told him that He was
   immortal till His work was done, yet he is afraid that His Master and
   all of them will be put to death. Oh, the Lord knows us better than we
   know ourselves--and the Lord accepts us notwithstanding our
   infirmities.

   17. Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four
   days already. So that he was probably dead as soon as the messengers
   arrived to tell the Savior that he was ill.

   18. Now Bethany was near unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off.
   Just a nice little walk which our Savior had often taken in the evening
   after the toils of the day in Jerusalem. He had loved to make Bethany
   His quiet resting place. "Fifteen furlongs off."

   19-20. Andmany of the Jews came to Martha andMary, to comfort them
   concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus
   was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house. Because
   she had not heard that Jesus was come, or else, no doubt, she would
   have been there as soon as Martha.

   21. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if You had been here, my brother
   had not died. They had often said to one another, "Oh, we wish the Lord
   would come." They had sent for Him. They felt sure that He would come.
   But, alas, their brother had died before the Master had arrived--and
   now this thought which was uppermost in their hearts is uppermost in
   their speech, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother had not died."

   22. But I know that even now, whatever You will ask of God, God will
   give it to You. There is faith there, and there is unbelief, too. She
   believes that Christ can have what He wills of God, but she does not
   recognize His own personal Godhead--His own power to work resurrection.

   23-26. Jesus said unto her, Your brother shall rise again. Martha said
   unto Him, Iknnow that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the
   Last Day. Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection, and the Life: he
   that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And
   whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you Believe
   this?She looked upon the Resurrection and the Life as things that were
   to be in some dim and misty future. "No," says Christ, "I am the
   Resurrection and the Life. Not only do I get these things by prayer
   from God, but I am these things." And then He goes on to explain it. He
   says, "I am the Resurrection. He that believes in Me, though he were
   dead, yet shall he live. I am the Life. Whoever lives and believes in
   Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" He has taken her out of the
   thought of this poor common animal-life into the thought of the
   spiritual and higher life, which is, indeed, to the soul what the
   resurrection is to the body! It was well for the Savior thus to teach
   her higher truth than as yet she knew.
     __________________________________________________________________

"The Star Out of Jacob"

   (No. 3343)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "There shall come a Star out of Jacob." Numbers 24:17.

   THIS prophecy may have some reference to David, but we feel persuaded
   that the true design of the Holy Spirit is to set forth an emblem of
   our Lord Jesus Christ. All Nature, above as well as around us, is laid
   under contribution to set forth our Lord. All the flowers of the field
   and many of the beasts of the plain--and now the very orbs of
   Heaven--are turned into metaphors and symbols by which the Glory of
   Jesus may be manifested to us! Where God takes such pains to teach, we
   ought to be at pains to learn. Where He makes Heaven and earth to be
   the pages of the book, we ought to be most ardent in our study. Oh, you
   who have neglected to learn of Christ, may that neglect come to an end
   and may some word be spoken which shall be as the beaming of a star
   unto the darkness of your soul, that henceforth you may be led to know
   Christ and to be found in Him!

   Our Lord, then, is compared to a star, and we shall have seven reasons
   to assign for this. He is called a Star as--

   I. THE SYMBOL OF GOVERNMENT.

   You will observe how evidently it is connected with a scepter and with
   a conqueror. Jacob was to be blessed with a valiant leader who should
   become a triumphant sovereign. Very frequently in Oriental literature,
   their great men, and especially their great deliverers, are called
   stars. The star has been constantly associated with monarchy and even
   in our own country we still look upon the star as one of the emblems of
   lofty rank. Behold, then, our Lord Jesus Christ as the Star of Jacob!
   He is the Captain of His people, the Leader of the Lord's hosts, the
   King in Jeshurun, God Over All, glorious and blessed forever!

   We may say of Jesus in this respect that He has an authority which He
   has inherited by right. He made all things and by Him all things
   consist. It is but just that He should rule over all things. As there
   is not a tongue that can move in Heaven or earth except by His
   permission, it is right that every tongue should confess that He is
   Lord to the Glory of God the Father! Oh, that men were just towards the
   Son of God! Would that their rebellious souls would give way to the
   force of rectitude--that they would no longer say, "Let us break His
   bonds asunder and cast His cords from us!" Unconverted men and women, I
   would that you would yield to Jesus. He has a right to you. It is
   through His intercession that your forfeited life is still spared! It
   is by His Divine goodness that you are where you are tonight. Through
   His mediatorial Sovereignty it is that you are allowed to be on praying
   ground and pleading terms with God! Give Him His due then. Rob Him not
   of the allegiance which He so justly claims. Give not your spirit over
   to that exacting tyrant who seeks to compass your destruction! Bow the
   knee and kiss the Son, even now, lest He be angry and you perish from
   the way. Acknowledge Him to be your Lord!

   Our Lord as a Star has an authority which He has valiantly won.
   Wherever Christ is King, He has had a great and a stern fight for it.
   Remember the dread conflict in Gethsemane in which He said, "I have
   trodden the wine press alone." When He came red with His own gore from
   Calvary, He had, in fact, then and there put to flight the hosts of
   Bozrah and of Edom and stained His garments with the victor's crimson!
   He who, then, traveled in the greatness of His strength is still mighty
   to save. In every human heart where Jesus reigns, He reigns through
   having dislodged, by the force of Divine Grace, the old tyrant who had
   fixed his sovereignty there. The maintenance of that Sovereignty within
   the heart is the result of the same powerful scepter of His love and
   Grace. Oh, that King Jesus would put forth His power and get a throne
   in more hearts! Believers, do you not long to see Him glorious? I know
   you do if you love Him! You would live for this, you would die for
   this--that Christ might have His own and drive the milk-white steeds of
   triumph through the

   streets of Jerusalem, all His people bowing before Him and strewing His
   pathway with their honors! O Sinners, would to God that you would yield
   to Him! I pray that now He may gird His sword upon His thigh and by the
   power of Grace constrain you to bow your willing necks to His silver
   scepter! Brothers and Sisters, it is a mournful fact that Christ has so
   small a part of the world as yet in His royal power. Look, the gods of
   the heathen stand fast upon their pedestals! The old harlot of Rome
   still flaunts in her scarlet! The crescent of Mohammed wanes, but still
   its baleful light is cast throughout the nations! Why does He tarry?
   Perhaps His finger is on the latch. It may be that He will come before
   long. Come quickly, Lord! Our yearning hearts beseech You to come!
   Meanwhile, it is for you and for me to be fighting, each soldier in his
   rank, each of us standing in his place, as his Master has bidden us,
   contending with heart and soul and strength for the right and for the
   true, for faith, for holiness, for the Cross and all that that Cross
   indicates among the sons of men! Blessed Star of Jacob! You shine with
   no borrowed rays! You shine with a mysterious power which none gave to
   You, for it is inherently Your own.

   Before we leave this point, I will only say this Kingdom of Christ,
   wherever it is, is most beneficent Wherever this Star of government
   shines, its rays scatter blessings! Jesus is no tyrant. He rules not by
   oppression. The force He uses is the force of love. There was never a
   subject of Christ's Kingdom that complained of Him. Those who have
   served Him most, have longed to serve Him more! Why, even His poor
   martyrs in the catacombs of Rome, dying of starvation, or dragged up to
   the Coliseum to be devoured by wild beasts, never said an ill-word of
   Him. Certainly if it were difficult to any, it seems it would be hard
   to them--but the more they were troubled, the more they rejoiced--and
   there never were sweeter songs than those which came from dying lips
   when men were crackling on the firewood, or being dragged limb from
   limb at the heels of wild horses, or being sawn asunder! Just in
   proportion as the bodily pains became acute, the spiritual joy became
   intense! And while the outward man decayed, the inner man leaped up
   into newness of life, anticipating the joys of the first-born before
   the Throne of God! He is a good Master. Young people, I would that you
   would serve Him! Oh, that you were enlisted in His service. It is now a
   good many years since I gave my heart to Him--it is fast coming on 20
   years, but I cannot say a word against Him! No, but I wish I had always
   served Him! I wish I had served Him, before, and I pray that He may use
   me to the fullest extent. If He will make but a doormat for His temple
   of me, I shall be but too glad. If He will let my name be cast out as
   evil and give my body to the dogs, I do not care, so long as His truth
   does but prosper and His name becomes great! But alas, there is so much
   self in us, pride and I know not what besides, that we who really know
   the Master, have reason to ask Him to bring in His great artillery and
   blow down the castles of our natural corruption--conquer us yet again,
   and rule in us by main force of Grace, till in every part and corner of
   our spirits there shall be nothing but the love of Christ and the
   indwelling of His gracious Spirit! By the star we understand the symbol
   of government. In the second place, the star is--

   II. THE IMAGE OF BRIGHTNESS.

   When men wish to speak of brightness they talk of the stars. They who
   are righteous are as the stars and they that turn many to righteousness
   shall shine as the stars forever and ever! Our Lord Jesus Christ is
   brightness itself! The star is but a poor setting forth of His
   ineffable splendor. Oh, let the thought come home to you. He is the
   brightness of His Father's Glory--unutterably bright as the Deity. He
   is brightness Himself in His Human Nature, for in Him there was neither
   spot nor wrinkle. As Mediator, exalted on high, enjoying the reward of
   His pains, He is bright indeed! Observe that our Lord as a Star is a
   bright particular Star in the matter of holiness. In Him was no sin.
   Look, and look, and look again into His star-like character. Even the
   lynx-eyes of infidels have not been able to discover a mistake in Him!
   And as for the attentive eyes of critics who have been Believers, they
   have been made to water again and again--and then to glisten and
   sparkle with delight as they have seen the mingling of all the
   perfections in His adorable Character to make up one perfection!

   As a Star, He shines also with the light of knowledge. Moses was, as it
   were, but a mist, but Christ is the Prophet of Light. "The Law was
   given by Moses"--a thing of types and shadows--"but Grace and truth
   come by Jesus Christ." If any man is taught in the things of God, he
   must derive his light from the Star of Bethlehem. You may go as you
   will to the universities, to the tomes of the learned, to the schools
   of the philosophers, but in spiritual things you receive no light till
   you look up to Jesus! And then in His light you see light, for there is
   transcendent brightness in Him. He is the Wisdom of God as well as the
   Power of God. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life! Divine Light has
   found its center in

   Him!

   His Light, too, is that of comfort. Oh, how many have emerged from the
   darkness of their souls and found peace by looking up to this Star of
   Jacob, the Lord Jesus Christ! Well did our hymn put it--

   "He is my soul's bright Morning Star, And He my Rising Sun."

   One glimpse of Christ and the midnight of your unbelief is over. But a
   sight of the five wounds and your sins are covered and your iniquities
   put away. Happy day, happy day, when first the soul beholds a crucified
   Redeemer and gives herself up to Him, relying upon Him for eternal
   salvation! Shine, sweet Star--shine into some benighted heart tonight!
   Give holiness, give light, give the knowledge of God, give joy and
   peace in believing, in believing in the precious blood!

   When speaking upon Christ as a Star, "the Symbol of Government," I
   said, submit to Him. Now, speaking of Him as a Star, the Image of
   Brightness, I say, look to Him--look to Him! It is the Gospel's
   precept, "Look unto Me, and be you saved all you ends of the earth,"
   and well do we sing--

   "There is life for a look at the Crucified One!" Poor Sinner, delay no
   longer! You are not asked to doanything, nor to beanything, nor to
   feelanything! You are simply bid to look away from self to what Christ
   has done and you shall live--

   " View Him prostrate in the Garden,

   On the ground your Maker lies!

   On the bloody tree behold Him,

   Hear Him cry before He dies--

   'It is finished!'

   Sinner, will not this suffice?"

   Look to Him, then, and live! Thirdly, our Lord is compared to a star to
   bring out the fact that--

   III. HE IS THE PATTERN OF CONSTANCY.

   Ten thousand changes have been worked since the world began, but the
   stars have not changed. There they remain. We dreamed at one time that
   they moved. Untaught imagination said that all those stars revolved
   around this little globe of ours. But we know better now. There they
   are, both day and night--always the same--and we may say they have not
   changed since the world began, nor probably will they till, like a
   vesture, God shall roll up Creation because it is worn out. It is very
   delightful to recollect that the same star which I looked at last night
   was viewed by Abraham, perhaps with some of the same thoughts! And when
   we have gone and other generations shall have followed us, those that
   come after will look up to the same star! So with our Lord Jesus. He is
   the same yesterday, today and forever. What the Prophets and Apostles
   saw in Him, we can see in Him! And what He was to them, that He is to
   us and shall be to generations yet unborn! Hundreds of us may be
   looking at the same star at the same time without knowing it. There is
   a meeting place for many eyes. We may be drifted, some of us, to
   Australia, or to Canada, or to the United States. Or we may be sailing
   across the great deep, but we shall see the stars there. It is true
   that on the other side of the world we shall see another set of stars,
   but the stars, themselves, are always the same. As long as we who are
   in this hemisphere are concerned, we shall look upon the same star. So,
   wherever we may be, we look to the same Christ. One Brother here has
   learning, but as he looks to Christ, he sees the same Christ as the
   poor unlettered woman in the aisles. And you, poor man, who have not,
   perhaps, a sixpence in the world, you have got the same Christ to trust
   in as the richest man in all the world! And you who think yourself so
   obscure that no one knows you but your God, you look to this same Star
   and it shines with the same beams for you, as for the Christian who
   leads the van in the Lord's hosts! Jesus Christ is still the same, the
   same to all His people, the same in all places, the same forever and
   ever! Well, therefore, may He be compared to those bright stars that
   shine now as they did of old and change not! In the fourth place, we
   may trace this comparison of our Lord to a star as--

   IV. THE FOUNTAIN OF INFLUENCE.

   The old astrologers used to believe very strongly in the influence of
   the stars upon men's minds. Without endorsing their exploded theories,
   we meet in Scripture with expressions like this--"Can you bind the
   sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of
   Orion?"--alluding, no doubt, to the fact that the Pleiades are in the
   ascendant in the sweet months of spring when the warm breath and gentle
   showers are bringing forth the green sprout and tender blade, the
   foliage and the flowers of May with all the loveliness of the season.
   While Orion is in the ascendant as a wintry sign,

   when the bands of frost are binding up the outburst of Nature. But,
   whether there is an influence in the stars or not, as touching this
   world, I know there is great influence in Christ Jesus! He is the
   Fountain of all holy influences among the sons of men. Where this Star
   shines upon the graves of men who are dead in sin, they begin to live!
   Where the beam of this Star shines upon poor imprisoned spirits, their
   chains drop off, the captive leaps to lose his chains! When this Star
   gleams upon a burdened Christian with its light, he begins to bud and
   blossom and precious fruits are brought forth! When this Star shines
   upon the backslider, he begins to mend his ways and to follow, like the
   eastern sages, its light till he finds his Savior once more! This Star
   has an influence upon our nativity. It is through its benign rays that
   we are born-again and in our destiny it has an influence upon our
   death, for it is in its light that we fall asleep, believing that we
   shall wake up in the image of the Lord Jesus! Oh, sweet Star, shine on
   me always! Never let me miss Your rays, but may I always walk in the
   light thereof, till I am found sitting in the full noontide heat of the
   Sun of Righteousness forever and ever! In the fifth place, the Lord
   Jesus Christ may be compared to a star--

   V. AS A SOURCE OF GUIDANCE.

   There are some of the stars that are extremely useful to sailors. I
   scarcely know how else the great wide sea would be navigated,
   especially if it were not for the polar star. Jesus is the Polar Star
   to us. How the poor Negro in the olden times, when the curse of slavery
   had not been taken away, must have blessed God for that polar star--so
   easy to find. Any child with but a moment' s teaching will soon know
   how to discover it in the midst of its fellows at night. And when the
   Negro had once learned to distinguish the star that shone over the land
   of freedom, how he followed it through the great dismal swamps, or
   along the plains which were still more dreadful! How he could ford the
   streams and climb the mountains, always cheered by the sight of that
   polar star. Such is Jesus Christ to the seeker! He leads to liberty. He
   conducts to peace. Oh, I wish you would follow Him, some of you who are
   going about a thousand ways to find peace where you will never find it!
   There is never a Sunday but I try to speak, sometimes in gentler tones,
   and at other seasons with thundering notes, the simple Truth that Jesus
   Christ came into the world to save sinners. I try to make it plain to
   you that it is not your prayers and tears, your doings, your willings,
   your ANYTHING that can save you--but that all your help is laid upon
   One who is Mighty and that you must look alone to Him! Yet, Sinners,
   you are still looking to yourselves! You rake the dunghills of your
   human nature to find the pearl of great price which is not there! You
   will look beneath the ice of your natural depravity to find the flame
   of comfort which is not there! You might as well seek in Hell, itself,
   to find Heaven as look to your own works and merits to find some ground
   of trust! Down with them! Down with them, every one of them! Away with
   all those confidences of yours, for--

   "None but Jesus, none but Jesus,

   Can do helpless sinners good.?'

   Just reverse that helm and shift that sail, and tack about! Follow not
   the wrecker's beacon on yonder shore luring you to the rocks of
   self-delusion, but where that Star guides, there let your vessel sail
   and pray for the favoring gales of the blessed Spirit to guide you
   rightly to the Port of Peace. Our Lord is compared to a star, surely--

   VI. AS THE OBJECT OF WONDER.

   One of the first lines which full many of you ever learned to recite
   was--

   "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are."

   But that is precisely what Galileo might have said and exactly what the
   greatest astronomer that ever lived might say. You have sometimes
   looked through a telescope and have seen the planets, but after you
   have looked at them you do not know much about them--and those who are
   busy all day and all night long taking constant observations, I think,
   will tell you that the result is rather that of astonishment than of
   intelligence. Still, it is--

   "HowI wonder what you are." So to those of us who are in Christ Jesus,
   He is a peerless Star! But oh, Brothers and Sisters, we may well wonder
   what He is! We used to think, when we were little ones, that the stars
   were holes pricked in the skies through which the light of Heaven
   shone, or that they were little pieces of gold dust that God had strewn
   about. We do not think so now. We understand that they are much greater
   than they look to be. So, when we were carnal and did not know King
   Jesus, we esteemed Him to be very much like anybody else--but now that
   we begin to know Him, we find out that He is much greater, infinitely
   greater than we thought He was! And as we grow in Grace, we find Him to
   be still more glorious! A little Star to our view at first, He has
   grown in our estimation into a Sun, now, a blazing Sun by whose beams
   our soul is re-

   freshed! Ah, but when we get near to Him, what will He be? Imagine
   yourself borne up on an angel's wing to take a journey to a star.
   Travelling at an inconceivable rate, you open your eyes all of a sudden
   and say, "How wonderful! Why, that which was a star just now has become
   as large to my vision as the sun at noon!" "Stop," says the angel, "you
   shall see greater things than these," and, as you speed on, the disc of
   that orb increases till it is equal to a hundred suns! And now you say,
   "But what? Am I not near it now?" "No," says the angel, "that enormous
   globe is still far, far away," and when you come to it, you would find
   it to be such a wondrous world that arithmetic could not compute its
   size! Scarcely could imagination belt it with the zone of fancy. Now,
   such is Jesus Christ! I said He grows upon His people here, but what
   must it be to see Him there where the veil is lifted and we behold Him
   face to face? Sometimes we long to find out what that Star is, to know
   Him, to comprehend with all saints what are the heights and depths, and
   to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge--but, meanwhile, we
   are compelled to sit down and sing--

   "God only knows the love of God--

   Oh that it now were shed abroad

   In this poor stony heart!"

   We have to confess that--

   "The first-born sons of light Desire in vain its depth to see! They
   cannot reach the mystery, The length, the breadth, the height!"

   But, to conclude, the metaphor used in the text may well bear this
   seventh signification. Our Lord is compared to a star as--

   VII. HE IS THE HERALD OF GLORY.

   The bright and morning star foretells that the sun is on its way to
   gladden the earth with its light. Wherever Jesus comes, He is a great
   Prophet of Good. Let Him come into a heart and, as soon as He appears,
   you may rest assured that there is a life of eternity and joy to come!
   Let Jesus Christ come into a family and what changes He makes there!
   Let Him be preached with power in any town or city and what a herald of
   good things He is there! To the whole world, Christ has proclaimed glad
   tidings. His coming has been fraught with benedictions to the sons of
   men. Yes, the coming of Christ in the flesh is the great prophecy of
   the Glory to be revealed in the latter days, when all nations shall bow
   before Him and the age of peace, the golden age, shall come--not
   because civilization has advanced, not because education has increased,
   or the world grown better--but because Christ has come! This is the
   first, the fairest of the stars, the prognostic of the dawn.

   Yes, and because Christ has come, there will be a Heaven for the sons
   of men who believe in Him. Sons of toil, because Christ has come, there
   shall be rest for the weary! Daughters of sorrow, because Christ has
   come, there shall be healing for the weak! O you whom chill penury is
   bowing down, there shall be lifting up and sacred wealth for you
   because the Star has shone! Hope on! Hope always! Now that Jesus has
   come, there is no room for despair!

   I commend these thoughts to you and earnestly ask you once again, if
   you have never looked to Christ, trust in Him now! If you have never
   submitted to Jesus, submit to Him now! If you have never confided in
   Him, confide in Him now! It is a very simple matter. May God the Holy
   Spirit teach and guide you to disown yourselves and to acknowledge Him.
   Cease from your own thoughts and trust His Word. This done by you all,
   there is proof positive that all is done for you by Christ. You are His
   and He is yours--where He is, shall your portion be--and you shall be
   like He, for you shall see Him as He is! It will be a day to be had in
   remembrance if you are now led to give yourselves to Him. I well
   recollect when my heart yielded to His Divine Grace--when I could no
   longer look anywhere else and was compelled to look to Him! Oh, come to
   Him! I know not what words to use, or what persuasions to employ. For
   your own sake, that you may be happy now! For eternity's sake, that you
   may be happy hereafter! For terror's sake, that you may escape from
   Hell! For mercy's sake, that you may enter into Heaven, look to Jesus!
   You may never be bidden to do so again. This bidding may be the last,
   the concluding measure which shall fill up the heap of your guilt
   because you reject it. Oh, do not despise the exhortation. Let the
   prayer go up quietly now from your spirit, "God be merciful to me, a
   sinner." Let your soul wrestle vehemently. Let your tongue utter its
   mighty resolve--

   "I'll to the gracious King approach,

   Whose scepterpardon gives.

   Perhaps He may command my touch,

   And then the suppliant lives!

   I can but perish if I go,

   I am resolved to try,

   For if I stay away, I know

   I must forever die.

   But, if I die with mercy sought,

   When I the King have tried--

   That were to die, delightful thought,

   As sinner never died!"

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: LUKE 15:1-24.

   Verse 1. Then drewnear unto Him all thepublicans andsinners to
   hearHim.They were drawing near. It was not an unusual occurrence. It
   was their habit to draw near to Christ. The Pharisees and Scribes stood
   in the outer ring. They did not come too near. These poor outcasts and
   publicans and sinners drew near. They wanted to catch every word. They
   could not have too much of it. They took a delight in getting near to
   His blessed Person. They drew near to hear Him.

   2. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This Man receives
   sinners, and eats with them. The sinful, knownto be so. This Man
   receives them, welcomes them, admits them to an intimacy with Him. What
   is worse, He eats with them! To teach them is bad enough, but to sit at
   the same table with them, making Himself their company and making them
   His company--this is worse than worse! And so they murmured. I am very
   glad that they did. We owe a great deal to the murmurings of the proud
   Pharisee, for our Lord graciously answered those murmurings and then He
   gave us some of the choicest jewels of speech that are preserved in the
   treasury of knowledge!

   3. And He spoke this parable unto them, saying. So it is only one
   parable, yet it is three. Three panels making one picture. The whole
   three are necessary to make up all His teaching.

   4. What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he loses one of them,
   does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that
   which is lost, until he finds it?He is justifying His looking for the
   lost ones. Their accusation was that He received the sinful and false,
   and ate with them. "Well, well," says Christ, "I do that, but I am a
   shepherd, and if I have lost one of My sheep, do you blame Me if I
   leave the flock to go after the lost sheep?" "And he goes after that
   which is lost until he finds it."

   5. 6. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
   And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors,
   saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was
   lost A true picture of Christ going after those who are willful and
   wayward and, therefore, have taken to wandering till they are
   lost--lost to God, lost to society, lost to usefulness, lost to
   happiness--perhaps lost to hope. He goes after them. That is, in His
   life. He throws them on His shoulders in His death. He will bring them
   home rejoicing by His Resurrection Life and then throughout eternity He
   will make the glorified spirits in Heaven glad by showing them the
   sheep that was lost, the soul that was saved!

   7. Isay unto you, that likewise joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner
   that repents, more than over ninety andnine just persons, which need no
   repentance. If there is such, if there is some that have never wandered
   and who belong to the flock, yet the flock, itself, does not, of
   itself, cause any great exuberance of joy. The overflow of delight is
   caused by the lost sheep when it is found! A Church of godly people
   will give great content to Christ, but still, if there is any bell
   ringing, any sound of joy and gladness, it will be over the wandering
   one that has been restored! Here you have the Son of God, Himself, and
   His relation to the wandering souls of men. He is their Shepherd! He
   seeks them! He brings them back to the fold and He is glad! Now comes
   the second panel of the picture.

   8-10. Or what woman, having tenpieces of silver, if she loses onepiece,
   does not light a candle andsweep the house, and seek diligently till
   she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and her
   neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece
   which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the
   presence of the

   angels of God, over one sinner that repents. In this second picture you
   have the Holy Spirit working through the Church, compared to a woman.
   She has lost her piece of money. She gets the candle of the Gospel. She
   takes the broom of the Law--she sweeps and searches, she raises dust,
   she expends her candle till she finds her piece of money. You notice
   that she blames herself for its being lost, for she says, "I have found
   the piece which I had lost." The shepherd did not say that of the
   sheep. He said, "the sheep that was lost." That was its own doing. The
   Church of God seems to blame herself that she has lost her hold upon so
   many who once belonged to her. The Holy Spirit, through the Church,
   seeks after lost souls who bear the image of the King upon them, like
   minted pieces of silver. It is a wonderful verse which is repeated
   here. "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God." It does not
   say that the angels rejoice. It means that--but there is joy in their
   presence. Who is in their presence but God, Himself? The great and
   blessed God, whose Throne they continually surround, in whose face they
   see joy over saved souls! And notice the joy is about one sinner--a
   sinner. That is all we know about him. He may have been as poor as a
   church mouse and he may have made himself sick unto death by his vice.
   There was joy over him when he repented. It was only one! It was not a
   batch of twenty. It was not a large number con-verted--there is joy
   over one sinner. What had he done? Built a church? No. Preached a
   sermon? No. He had repented! That is all, but that is quite enough to
   set all the music of the angels' harps pouring forth the praise of God!
   "One sinner that repents."

   11. And He said--And here comes the greatest of all the parables, the
   most instructive, perhaps, and the best loved of them all! In these
   parables we do not find anything about a Savior, a Mediator. Did you
   ever read a parable that contained all the Truth of God? If any man
   were to try and make a parable that contained all Truths of God at
   once, verily I say unto you, he would be a fool! He must fail, and fail
   in his object of teaching anything--

   "One thing at a time, and that done well,

   Is a very good rule as many can tell." And to teach one Truth at a time
   is quite sufficient. It is true that the parable that we are going to
   read says nothing about a mediator, and it does not say anything about
   the father seeking his lost son, not a word. No work of the Holy
   Spirit. It is meant to teach one thing--and it does teach it! And if it
   does not teach 50 things, do not imagine that the other 49 are not
   true!

   11. 12. A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his
   father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.He would
   have that when His father died. Does he demandto have his heritage in
   his father's lifetime? Yes, he does. It is an unreasonable demand.
   Yet--

   12. And he divided unto them his living. He was of a gentle mold, of a
   kindly heart. He did not want to have a son stay with him like a slave.
   He must be served willingly or not at all--so he divided to them his
   living.

   13. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together He
   turned the sheep and the stock and everything into money.

   13. And took his journey into a far country. We do not know where it
   was. It does not matter, it was a far country. He wanted to get away
   from his father, from his authority, from his observation. He went into
   a far country.

   13. And there wasted his substance with riotous living. What he did I
   do not know. His elder brother had heard some very bad stories about
   him which we shall see at the end of the chapter. They may not,
   however, have been all true, for rumor is greatly given to
   exaggeration. Beware of this exaggeration, especially of the follies of
   others!

   14. And when he had spent all Got to his last penny.

   14. There arose a mighty famine in that land. Famines generally come
   when one's money is all gone. He might not have feared a famine if he
   had still been wealthy. The two things come together, the two seas
   meet. He had spent all and now there was a famine.

   14. And he began to be in need. The first time in his life. He had
   always had everything he wanted, but now he began to be in want. It is
   an ugly kind of feeling when, for the first time, you cannot buy a loaf
   of bread. When, for the first time, you cannot get a night's lodging
   for love or money--and have not any money and nobody gives you any
   love. He began to be in need.

   15. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country. I dare
   say he was a member of the same company that he belonged to. He went to
   him and said, "Now help me. You have many a time enjoyed yourself at my
   house. You have

   drunk my champagne, now help me. I am in trouble." Well, he had a berth
   empty and that was to keep his pigs--the very worst thing a Jew could
   do--and what a Jew would never do unless he was starving.

   15. And he sent him into his fields to feed swine. "There is a job for
   you! You need a job? Go into my fields and feed my swine." The son has
   become a swineherd. One who fared sumptuously everyday at home, has now
   come to serve pigs!

   16. And he would gladly have filled his belly with the husks that the
   swine did eat So hungry was he, that if he could have eaten the slop
   which the pigs fed upon, he would have been glad to kneel at the trough
   and feed with them!

   16. And no man gave unto him. No, they all alike seemed stony-hearted.
   When you have plenty, everybody will give you some more. When you have
   nothing, nobody will give you a penny. "No man gave to him."

   17. And when he came to himself.'For he had been away from himself. He
   was beside himself and now he came home to himself.

   17. He said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough
   and to spare, and I--The son whom he loves. "And I."

   17-19. Perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and will
   say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before you, and
   am no more worthy to be called your son: make me as one of your hired
   servants. Let me be anything, so that I may have something to do with
   you. Let me live at home. Let me eat the bread from your table. Put me
   in the lowest place. I cannot be so low as I now am. Put me anywhere.
   Make a hired servant of me.

   20. And he arose, and came to his father. But--Blessed "but."

   20, 21. When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had
   compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son
   said unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in your sight,
   and am no more worthy to be called your son. He was going on with his
   prayer, "Make me as one of your hired servants," when his father kissed
   him right on his lips and smothered that prayer! He did not mean to let
   him pray that, and so the father, interrupting him, stopped that legal
   bit of prayer.

   22. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe,
   andput it on him: andput a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet Is
   this the justifying righteousness of Christ? I think not. No servant
   can put that on. God Himself, imputes the righteousness of Christ to
   us! It means just this--Receive this poor forgiven sinner into the
   Church and treat him like a gentleman. Do not look at him as one that
   is wearing rags any longer. Put the best robe on him, treat him well,
   take him into your favor, receive him into your society, put a ring on
   his hand, and shoes on his feet.

   23, 24. And bring here the fatted calf, and kill it: and let us eat,
   and be merry: For this, my son was dead, and is alive again. He was
   lost, and is found. And they began to be merry A fine old Saxon word
   that is, "merry." I have known some good people afraid to say, "I wish
   you a merry Christmas." But I always like it, for I like these grand
   old Bible words. If the word "merry" means anything wrong, it is you
   that make it wrong! But it is right enough in the Bible. "They began to
   be merry." Now, is it not a very curious thing that the father said,
   "Put the robe on him, put the shoes on him"--but he never said, "Now
   make him eat." Why is that? He says, "Let us eat and be merry." He does
   not say anything about the son eating. No, Brothers and Sisters,
   because the best way to make another man eat is to go at it yourself.
   It breeds an appetite in him. If he is standing there looking at what
   you are doing--"Let us eat and be merry"--his mouth begins to water!
   Why, you know how hard it is if you are called upon to stand when you
   are very hungry and see other people eat. How you want to eat! That is
   the best preaching in the world. If the end of the discourse is to make
   a man eat, the best preaching is to fall to, yourself! "Let us eat and
   be merry," and they did that--and then this restored prodigal son found
   his appetite, and so feasted, too.
     __________________________________________________________________

Unanswered Prayer

   (No. 3344)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 20, 1866.

   "O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You hear not; and in the night
   season, and am not silent." Psalm 22:2.

   It is very clear to everyone who reads this Psalm that these are not so
   much the words of David as they are the words of David's Son and
   David's Lord, our blessed Master. He prayed with strong crying and
   tears. He came before His Father's Throne with supplications and for a
   long time it seemed as if He would have no answer. It did appear as if
   God had utterly forsaken Him and that His enemies might persecute and
   take Him.

   Now, why was the Savior permitted to pass through so sad an experience?
   How was it that He whose lightest word is prevailing with Heaven, that
   He who pleads with Divine Authority this day in His continual
   intercession, was permitted, when here below, to cry, and cry, and cry
   again and yet to receive no comforting answer? Was it not mainly for
   this reason--that He was making an Atonement for us--and He was not
   heard because we, as sinners, did not deserve to be heard?He was not
   heard, that we might be heard! The ears of God were closed against Him
   for a season, that they might never be closed against us--that the
   mourner's cry might forever find a way to the heart of God--because the
   cry of Jesus was shut for awhile out from Mercy's gate. He stood the
   Surety for our sins and was numbered with the transgressors! Upon Him
   the Lord laid the iniquity of all His people and, therefore, being the
   sinner's Representative, He could not, for awhile be heard.

   There was also, no doubt, another reason, namely, that He might be a
   faithful High Priest having sympathy with His people in all their woes.
   As this not being heard in prayer, or being unanswered for awhile, is
   one of the greatest troubles which can fall upon the Christian, and
   fall it does, the Savior had to pass through that trouble, too, that so
   it might be said of Him--

   "In every pang that rends the heart, The Man of Sorrows bore His part."

   When I fear that I have not been heard in prayer, I can now look upon
   my Savior and say--

   "He takes me through no darker rooms Than He went through before."

   He can now have a tender, touching sympathy with us because He has been
   tempted in all points like as we are.

   Was it not, also, once more in our Savior's case, with a view to
   display the wondrous faith, fidelity and trustfulness of the obedient
   Son of God? Having been found in fashion as a Man, He humbled Himself
   and became obedient to His Father's will. Now, obedience is not
   perceived until it is tried, and faith is not known to be firm and
   strong until it is put to the test and exercised. Through what an
   ordeal did this pure gold pass! It was put into the crucible and thrust
   into the hottest coals--all glowing with a white heat, they were heaped
   upon Him and yet no dross was found in Him! His faith never staggered!
   His confidence in His God never degenerated into suspicion and never
   turned aside into unbelief. It is, "My God! My God!" even when He is
   forsaken. It is, "My Godand My Strength" even when He is poured out
   like water and all His bones are out of joint! In this thing He not
   only sympathizes with us, you see, but He sets us an example. We must
   overcome, as He did, through faith. "This is the victory which
   overcomes the world, even your faith." And if we can copy this great
   High Priest of our profession who endured such contradiction of sinners
   against Himself--if we can copy Him so as to be neither faint in our
   minds, nor turn from our Master's work--we shall triumph even as He
   overcame!

   But my chief objective in considering this theme is not so much to
   speak of the Savior's trial as to address myself to those of our number
   who may even now be passing through the same experience as our Lord. It
   will already comfort you to know that Christ has been where you are.

   It will already comfort you to know that Christ has been where you are.
   It will already guide you to know that He has set you an example and
   that He bids you follow in His steps. Let us now draw near to His
   sorrow and think on it for awhile for our instruction and comfort.

   In the first place, the text--without any inquiry into the cause of
   unanswered prayer, seems to give--

   I. A GENERAL GUIDE FOR OUR CONDUCT.

   Suppose that we have been seeking some blessing from God for many
   months and have not obtained it? Whether it is a personal blessing, or
   on behalf of others, what ought to be our conduct under such a trial as
   that, the trial of a long delay, or an apparent refusal?

   In the first place, Brothers and Sisters, it is clear the text teaches
   us that we must not cease to trust God. ' 'O my God." Oh, that
   appropriating word! It is not, perhaps, "My Father." The spirit of
   adoption is not here so much as the spirit of reverent trustfulness,
   but still there is the hold-fast word--"O my God." Christian, never be
   tempted to give up your hold upon your only strength, upon your
   solitary hope! Under no conceivable circumstances, ever give place for
   an instant to the dark thought that God is not true and faithful to His
   promises! Though you should have seven years of unanswered prayer, yet
   suggest any other reason to your mind than one which would dishonor
   Him. Say with the Savior in this Psalm, "But You are holy." Settle that
   in your mind. Oh, never allow the faintest breath of suspicion to come
   upon the fair fame of the Most High, for He does not deserve it! He is
   true. He is faithful. In this apparently worst of all cases, He did
   deliver His Son and come to the rescue in due time. In all other cases
   He has done the same--and I pray you never to distrust your God until
   you have some good and valid occasion for it. Never cast a slur upon
   His integrity till He really does forsake you--till He absolutely gives
   you up to perish! Then, but not till then, shall you doubt Him. Oh,
   believe Him to be good and true! You may not know why it is that He
   deals so strangely with you, but oh, never think that He is unfaithful
   for an instant, or that He has broken His Word. Continue to trust Him!
   You shall be rewarded if you do--and the longer your faith is tried, it
   shall be with you as when the ship is longest out at sea--it goes to
   the richest climes and comes home with the heaviest and most precious
   freight. So shall your faith come back to you with joy!

   Your faith may lie among the pots for many a day, but the time of her
   deliverance shall come and, like a dove, shall she mount with wings
   covered with silver and her feathers tipped with yellow gold! "Trust in
   the Lord at all times you people, and pour out your hearts before Him."

   Once again, as we are never to cease to trust, so we are never to cease
   to pray. The text is very expressive upon this point. "I cry in the
   daytime, but You hear not: and in the night seasons I am not silent."
   Never cease your prayers! No time is a bad time for prayer. The glare
   of daylight should not tempt you to cease--and the gloom off midnight
   should not make you stop your cries. I know it is one of Satan's chief
   objectives to make the Christian cease praying, for if he could but
   once make us put up the weapon of all-prayer, he would easily vanquish
   us and take us for his prey. But so long as we continue to cry to the
   Most High, Satan knows he cannot devour the very weakest lamb of the
   flock! Prayer, mighty prayer, will yet prevail if it has but time!

   Oh, if this is the dark suggestion of the Evil One, "Forsake the
   closet! Give up private devotion. Never draw near to God, for prayer is
   all a fancy"--I pray you, spurn the thought with all your might and
   still cry, both in the daytime and at night, for the Lord will still
   hear your prayer!

   And while you never cease from your trust, nor from your prayer, grow
   more earnest in both Let your faith be still more resolved to give up
   all dependence anywhere but upon God, and let your cry grow more and
   more vehement. It is not every knock at Mercy's gate that will open
   it--he who would prevail must handle the knocker well and dash it down
   again, and again, and again! As the old Puritan says, "Cold prayers ask
   for a denial, but it is red-hot prayers which prevail." Bring your
   prayers as some ancient battering ram against the gate of Heaven and
   force it open with a sacred violence, "for the Kingdom of Heaven
   suffers violence, and the violent take it by storm." He that would
   prevail with God must take care that all his strength be thrust into
   his prayers! The Lord will not hear you if you only bring up a rank or
   line of the display of your desires. There must be no reserves--the
   whole army of your soul must come into the conflict

   and you must besiege the Mercy Seat, determined to win the day, and
   then shall you prevail! If there are delays, take them as good and
   sound advice to be more firm in your faith and more fervent in your
   cry!

   And yet again, cease not to hope. The New Zealander has a word for hope
   which means, "the swimming thought," because when all other thoughts
   are drowned, hope still swims. She lifts her head out of the foamy
   waves with her tresses all trailing and sees the blue sky above her and
   hopes, as it is there. So if you have prayed ever so long, yet hope on!
   "Hope you in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the strength of my
   life and my portion forever." As long as there is a place of prayer and
   a promise of an answer, no Believer ought to give way to despair. "Go
   again," said Elijah to his servant seven times! It must have been weary
   work to the Prophet to have to wait so long. He did not stand up once
   and pray to God as on Carmel--and then instantly came down the fire to
   continue the sacrifice--but again and again and, getting more humble in
   posture, with his face between his knees, he beseeches the Lord, not
   for fire, which was an unusual thing, but for water, which is the
   common gift of the skies! And though he pleads for that which the Lord,
   Himself, had promised, yet it did not at once come! And when his
   servant came back, four, five, six times, the answer was still the
   same--there was no sign of rain, but the brazen heavens looked down on
   an earth which was parched as if in an oven! "Go again!" said the
   Prophet, and at the seventh time, lo, there appeared the cloud like
   unto a man's hand--and this cloud was the sure forerunner of the deluge
   and storm! Christian, go again seven times! No, I will venture to say
   70 times seven, for God must keep His promise! Heaven and earth may
   pass away, but not one jot or tittle of Jehovah's Word can fail. "The
   grass withers, the flower thereof fades away, but the Word of our God
   endures forever." Do you plead that enduring Word of God? Let no dark
   thoughts drive you to despair. Continue to trust! Continue to pray!
   Increase in your fervency and in the hope that the blessing will yet
   come! It did come to the Savior. The morning broke upon His midnight
   after all. Never tide ebbed out so far as in the Savior's case, when
   the great stretches of misery and sorrow were visible where once God's
   love had rolled in mighty floods. But when the time came, it began to
   turn, and see how it has turned now in mighty floods of matchless joy!
   The love of God has come back to our once suffering Savior and there,
   upon the Eternal Throne He sits, the Man, the Crucified, who bowed His
   head under mountains of almighty wrath, which broke in huge billows and
   covered His soul. Be of good courage, Christian! Hope on, poor Soul,
   and hope on forever!

   Thus much by way of general direction. But we now go on to a second
   point and shall inquire into-- II. THE CAUSES OF UNANSWERED PRAYER.

   We shall, perhaps, on this theme, get a few special directions which
   may be available in particular cases. Dear Friends, there are some of
   us who are not often troubled about unanswered prayer--on the contrary,
   our own experience is such that the existence of a God who hears His
   people's cry is reduced to an absolute, mathematical certainty!

   I have no more doubt about this than about my own existence, not
   because I can see it clearly and understand it perfectly, nor because
   with a blind credulity I submit myself to the Bible as being the
   Infallible Revelation of God, but because I have had real dealings with
   God, have tried and proved His promises to be true and have found out
   that according to my faith, it has been done unto me in a thousand
   instances! This is truth that those who have learned to live in the
   spirit world and to talk with God understand and know as plainly as
   they understand and know that when a child speaks to its father, its
   father grants its request. It has become to many Believers not at all a
   matter to be argued or talked of by way of dispute--they know that they
   have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, and
   their prayers are answered. But occasionally, to all Believers, I
   suppose, there will come staggering moments when they scarcely know how
   to reply to their doubts because certain of their prayers have not been
   answered.

   It may possibly happen that the cause of unanswered prayer may many
   times lie in something connected with sin. Do you not think that
   unanswered prayers are often a Fatherly chastisement for our offenses?
   The Savior, in that wonderful Chapter where He tells out His love to
   us, says, "If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love,"
   and then He notes, as a special favor, if a man abide in His love and
   keep His commandments, he, "shall ask what he wills and it shall be
   done unto him." Now it seems to me to be only reasonable that if I will
   not do what God wills, God will refuse to do what I will--that if He
   asks of me a certain duty and I refuse it--when I ask Him for a certain
   privilege or favor, it is not unkind, but, on the other hand, most wise
   and kind that He should say, "No, My Child, no. If you will not listen
   to My tender command, it is kind to refuse you your desire until you
   repent and obey."

   Perhaps this is the way in which, too, are visited upon God's people
   some neglects of ordinances.''He that knows his Master's will and does
   it not, the same shall be beaten with many stripes." And one of these
   stripes may surely be our failure in prayer! It may also be temporal
   affliction, but probably this is one of the main ways in which the
   Master inflicts the stripes upon His children. They are negligent of
   His commands and He says, "Then you shall tarry awhile. I will not yet
   grant you what you seek. But when you come to a better mind and are
   more scrupulous and tender in the fulfilling of My commands, then your
   longings shall be satisfied."

   It may occur, too, that this delay may be a sort of disclosure to us as
   to wherein our sin lies. Sin sometimes lies in a Christian unrepented
   of because he only dimly realizes that it is there. Hear what Job
   declares--"Are the consolations of God small with you? Is there any
   secret thing with you?" That is to say, if you love selfish ease and
   feeble comforting. If you do not prevail with God in prayer, is there
   some secret sin in you which keeps back the blessing? God does, as it
   were, say to us, "Search and look." Unanswered prayer should be to
   every Christian a search warrant--he should begin to examine himself to
   see whether there is not something harbored within which is contrary to
   the will of God. Oh, Believer, this is not a hard work for you to do,
   surely, but it is a very necessary one! Search yourself and breathe the
   prayer, "Search me, O God, and try me, and know my ways, and see if
   there is any evil way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." I
   think this is one great reason for unanswered prayer, namely, that it
   is a chastisement for sin committed or an admonition against sin
   harbored.

   Sometimes there may be great sin in the prayer, itself! Are not our
   greatest sins often connected with our holiest things? We must be aware
   of our prayers. There is such a thing as polluting the Mercy Seat.
   Remember what became of Nadah and Abihu, who offered strange fire
   before the Lord. Beware, Christian, beware--you may sin against God in
   the prayer chamber as well as you can in the market--and you may offend
   on your knees, as well as when you are in your business! Have a care,
   for how can you hope that a prayer thus stained with sin can ever
   succeed unless you bring it to the blood to have it purged and cleansed
   from all defiling before it mounts to the Throne of Grace?

   And I sometimes fear, too, that our prayers do not speed because the
   thing asked for, though as we think good for us, is asked for from a
   wrong motive.

   If, for instance, a Christian minister asks that he may win souls in
   order that he may gain reputation and fame as a useful and successful
   Evangelist for his Master, he will probably not be heard, for he asks
   from an unworthy motive. If I seek to be useful merely that I may be
   known to be a useful man or woman, I am really seeking my own
   honor--can I expect God to minister to and pamper that?

   I must take care, then, that even when I ask for a good thing, I ask it
   for the purest of reasons--for God's Glory. Oh, what washing even our
   prayers need! What cleansing, what purging! Can we wonder that they do
   not succeed when we so often make mistakes, both in the substance of
   the prayers and the motives from which we offer them?

   Praying seems, to some persons, to be simply a child's play or a formal
   habit. They will take a book, read a form of intercession, and perhaps
   offer a few extemporary words and that is all. But these are all
   nothing and naughty prayers unless God shall touch them and give them
   life!

   Sometimes, then, failure in prayer may be caused by sin. In such a
   case, heart-searching, deep repentance and especially a speedy going to
   the Cross to have renewed fellowship with the cleansing blood and to be
   brought once more in contact with the holy sufferings of the blessed
   Substitute will make us speed.

   But we go on to notice that failure in prayer may sometimes be the
   result of ignorance.

   I think persons often offer very ignorant prayers, indeed. I am sure I
   have good evidence that some do. There is scarcely ever a week passes
   in which I do not receive intelligence from different persons who are
   on the verge of bankruptcy, or deeply in debt, that they have prayed to
   God about it--and that they have been guided by God to write to me to
   get them out of their difficulties and to pay their debts! Now, I am
   always perfectly willing to do so as soon as ever I am directed
   expressly by God, Himself! But I shall not receive the direction at
   secondhand! As soon as I receive it myself-- and I think it is only
   fair that I should receive it, as well as they--I shall be quite
   willing to be obedient to His direction, provided, too, the funds are
   in hand, which does not often happen! But folks must be very foolish to
   suppose that because they ask God that such-and-such a debt may be paid
   by miraculous means, it will certainly be done! I have a right to ask
   for anything which God has promised me, but if I go beyond the range of
   the Divine Promises, I also go beyond the range of assured and
   confident expectation. The promises are very large and very wide, but
   when one gets a fancy in his head, he

   must not suppose that God is there in his fancy. I have known some
   fanatical persons who thought they could live by faith. They were going
   to preach the Gospel, having no gifts whatever for preaching. They were
   going to be missionaries in a district having no more gift to be
   missionaries than horses in a plow. But they thought they were destined
   to do it and, therefore, they tried to live by faith. And when they had
   been nearly half-starved, then they complained against the goodness and
   abandoned the labor. Had God really inspired and sent them, He would
   have sustained and kept them, but if they go about it willfully and
   stubbornly on their own account, they must be driven back to realize
   their own ignorance of the Divine Will. Now, we must not pray
   ignorantly--we must pray with the understanding and with the spirit, so
   that we may clearly know what we are praying about. Get the promise and
   then offer the prayer--and the prayer will be answered as sure as God
   is God! But get your own fancy into your head and you will only have to
   get it out again, for it will be of no service to you.

   And then oftentimes we pray in a way in which our prayers could not be
   heard consistent with the dignity of the Most High. I love a holy
   familiarity with God and I believe it to be commendable, but still, man
   is but man, while God is God and, however familiar we may be with Him
   in our hearts, we must still remember the distance there is between the
   Most High and the most elevated and most beloved of His creatures--and
   we are not to speak as though it were in our power to do as we will and
   as we please. No, we are children, but we are to remember that children
   have a limit as to how they are to speak to their father. Their love
   may come as near as they please, but their impertinence may not--and we
   must mind that we do not mistake the familiarity of communion for the
   impudence of presumption! We must be careful to distinguish between the
   two, for he who is taught of God and waits upon Him according to His
   mind will find, as a general rule, that he will not be long without an
   answer to his prayer.

   Now, if it is ignorance that thus prevents the answering of your
   prayers, you should get better instructed and search especially into
   such texts as bear upon the matter of prayer, that you may know how to
   use your private key of Heaven and open the sacred portals, the gate of
   the Divine Mercy, for ignorance will often make you to fail.

   Again, does it not often happen that there may be reasons for delay
   lying in our own infirmity?

   Sometimes, if a mercy were to come to a Believer immediately when he
   asked for it, it would come too soon. But God times it until it appears
   only at the right and best moment. When a gracious godly soul has been
   much exercised in his mind concerning a special mercy--has studied it,
   weighed it, arrived at a proper apprehension of it and arranged his
   plans for its proper use and benefit--then, just at the time that the
   barn was swept and all the lumber taken out--then God's harvest of
   bounty comes home and the man, being quite ready for the blessing, the
   blessing comes!

   Perhaps you are not yet ready for the blessing. You have asked for
   strong meat, but you are but as yet a babe and, therefore, you are to
   be content with milk for a little while longer. You have asked for a
   man's trials, a man's privileges and a man's work, but you are as yet
   only a child growing up into manhood--and so your good Father will give
   you what you ask for, but He will give it to you in such a way as to
   make it not a burden to you, but a blessing. If it came now, it might
   involve responsibilities which you could not handle, but coming
   by-and-by, you shall be well prepared for it!

   There are reasons, too, I doubt not, which lie in our future, why our
   prayers are not answered. Delays in prayer may turn out to be a sort of
   training school for us. Take the Apostle's instance. The "thorn in the
   flesh" was very painful, and though he was a chosen Apostle, yet he had
   no answer. Thrice he cried, but still the "thorn in the flesh" was not
   removed. It was well that it was not, for Paul needed to be taught
   tenderness in order that he might write those loving Epistles of his
   and, therefore, he received an answer of another sort, "My Grace is
   sufficient for you." Oh Christian! If you could get rid of the trouble
   in which you now are, you would not be able to comfort poor mourners as
   you shall yet do! You would not be a full grown, strong man if you had
   not these stern trials to develop your manly vigor! Men do not learn to
   be intrepid sailors by staying on dry land. You are to put out to sea
   in the midst of the storm, so that you may learn how to manage and
   guide the vessel of your soul! You are going through a rough drill,
   that you may be a valiant and stalwart, a good soldier of Jesus Christ,
   for battles are yet to come and grim foes yet to face--for you have
   many fights between now and the blessed active ease of Heaven!

   You have not yet won the crown, but you will have to cut your way, inch
   by inch and foot by foot, and the Master is making you an athlete that
   wrestling with your enemies you may overcome. He is strengthening your
   muscles and tendons, sinews and power by the arduous exercise of
   unanswered prayer that you may be finely useful in the future! Still,
   yet again, perhaps the reason why prayer is not always quickly answered
   is this--a reason which no tongue can tell, but which is inscrutable
   lying in the Sovereign purposes and wisdom of God.

   Now, look! If I cannot tell why God does not hear me, what must I say?
   I had better say nothing but put my finger on my lips and wait. Who am
   I that I should question Him as to what He does? Who am I that I should
   arraign my Maker before my bar and say to Him, "What are You doing?"?
   Almighty Potter, You have a right to do as You will with Your own clay!
   We have learned to submit to Your will, not because we must, but
   because we love that will, feeling that Your will is the highest good
   of Your creatures and the most sublime wisdom! Why should we be so
   anxious to know the depth of the sea which cannot be fathomed by our
   line? Why must we be toiling to heave the lead so often? Leave these
   things with God and go on with your praying and your believing--and all
   shall yet be well with you!

   And now I conclude this point by saying that if the Christian, after
   looking into the matter, cannot find a reason why he should not be
   answered, let him still expect that he shall be, and still wait upon
   God, remembering, however, that he may never be answered after his own
   fashion, but that he shall be answered after God's fashion.

   I like that verse of old Erskine's, for though rough and quaint, it is
   true--

   "I'm heard when answered soon or late. Yes, heard when I no answer get!
   Yes, kindly answered when refused, And treated well when hardly used."
   In Heaven every Believer will realize how great was this truth--and so
   here I leave it.

   And now, to conclude, I thought I would say a few words upon a very
   special case which may occur, and which may be here represented this
   evening. I have no doubt that it is in more than one instance. It was
   once my case. It is not the case of a Christian asking a blessing for
   himself, but it is the case of a sinner, conscious of his danger as a
   sinner, asking for mercy.

   Brothers and Sisters, it was a very unhappy lot to have to seek the
   Lord with such earnestness as I could command as a child for four or
   five years--with sighs, and cries, and entreaties--but to have no
   comfortable answer whatever, to be as one that chooses strangling
   rather than life because of a sense of God's anger in my soul. To
   desire reconciliation, to live in the midst of Gospel Light and to hear
   the Truth of God preached every Sabbath day, indeed, every day in the
   week, after a fashion, and yet not to discover the way to Heaven was a
   great affliction. Now, sometimes it is not good advice to say to such a
   person, Go on praying. It is good advice! I must correct myself, there,
   but it is not the best advice in such a case. Soul, if you have been
   seeking mercy and you cannot find it, go on praying by all means--never
   relax that, but it is not by praying that you will ever get peace. The
   business of your soul is to listen to Christ's command--and His command
   is contained in the Gospel, which Gospel is not, "Go you into all the
   world and tell every creature to pray," but it is, "He that believes
   and is baptized shall be saved."

   Now, your business is to pray, certainly, but your first business is to
   believe! Your prayers before you believe have but little weight in
   them. Unbelieving prayers! Shall I call them prayers? Prayers without
   faith? They are birds without wings, ships without sails and beasts
   without legs! Prayers that have no faith in Christ in them are prayers
   without the blood on them! They are deeds without the signature,
   without the seal, without the stamp--they are impotent, illegal
   documents! Oh, if you could but come as you are and look to Christ on
   the Cross! It is not your prayers that can save you--it is Christ's
   prayers, Christ's tears, Christ's sufferings, Christ's blood and
   Christ's death! If you trust to your prayers, you have gone back to the
   old beggarly elements of the Law. You might as well trust to your good
   works as to your prayers, but to trust either will be to rest in "a
   refuge of lies." Your hope, Sinner, lies in the altogether gratuitous
   mercy of God--and that mercy only comes to those who rest in Jesus
   Christ, alone, waiting patiently for Him! Oh, that you could but come
   just as you are and lay yourself at Mercy's door with such a word as
   this on your lips--

   "My hope is fixed on nothing else Than Jesus' blood and righteousness!"

   There are no doings of yours needed to complete the work. No! I venture
   to say, not even any praying of yours. Your praying and your doings
   shall each occupy their proper place, afterwards, and then they shall
   be essential in their way, but now, as a sinner, your business is with
   the sinner's Savior! If you are now enabled to look completely out of
   self and see all that your flesh can do as dead and buried forever in
   the grave of Christ--and as being nothing and worse than nothing! And
   if you can see Jesus, the mighty Savior, distributing the gifts which
   He has received for men, even distribut-

   ing them to the rebellious--if you can thus trust Him, you are saved!
   What do you say, Sinner? Are you enabled to do it now? Can you fall
   flat before His Cross? Oh, the happy day when I learned that I was no
   longer to look to self, but found that the Gospel was, "Look unto Me,
   and be you saved, all you ends of the earth." Many of you have looked,
   Brothers and Sisters! Look again to that sacred head once wounded and
   filled with pain and grief, but which now is crowned with glory! Look
   and renew your vow of dedication and He will lift you up to be above
   the angels and only second to God, Himself!

   Oh look now!

   And as to you who have never looked before, I pray the Master to open
   your blind eyes and cause the scales to drop, so that you may look now
   and, while you look, may see everything you need laid up for you in
   Jesus! Everything a sinner needs can be richly supplied by Him--and
   then the sinner can go his way rejoicing and singing, "Christ is All,
   and happy am I that I have sought and found Him." The Lord bless you
   all for His name's sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM32.

   This is a great Psalm of Grace, a Psalm in which a sinner, cleansed by
   Sovereign Grace, adores and blesses the mercy ofGod.

   Verse 1. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
   covered. This is not a blessing for the man who says he has no
   sin--this is not a benediction for the innocent who talk about their
   own good works--but blessed is the man who, having sinned, is pardoned,
   whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! In a word, it is
   a Gospel blessing--it is the blessing of Free Grace.

   2. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputes not iniquity, and in
   whose spirit there is no guile. He had a thousand iniquities. He
   transgressed in all sorts of ways. The Lord does not impute these
   things to him. He has set them down to the account of Another who has
   ventured to stand in the sinner's place and be made sin in the sinner's
   place! But to this man, this blessed man, God does not impute
   iniquity--and in his spirit there is no guile--he confesses his sin
   with honesty, he is pardoned with certainty and in his spirit there is
   no cunning concealment.

   3, 4. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my roaring all the
   day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me: my moisture
   was turned into the drought of summer Selah. This is the experience of
   those men whom God saves. Till they confess sin, that sin rankles in
   them like venom--it boils their blood, it eats into their bones, it
   makes life worse than death, it makes them dread the wrath to
   come--their days are nights, and their nights are Hells! They cannot
   stand themselves. This was David's experience and it has been the way
   by which God has led thousands of His redeemed ones that He might bring
   them to Himself. As long as we cloak our sin and conceal it and pretend
   that we are innocent, the fire burns within us--but when we just
   confess the sin, then it is that we are dealing with God aright-- and
   God deals with us in Grace!

   5. I acknowledged my sin unto You, and my iniquity have I not hid. I
   said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and You forgave
   the iniquity of my sin. Selah. All gone, gone forever, gone at a
   stroke! Oh, what a mercy this is, that when once we will take the place
   of sinners and plead guilty, then it is that we are absolved at once!
   We have but to acknowledge that we deserve the punishment and
   immediately that punishment is remitted! This is the way of Grace, the
   plan of Infinite condescending Love!

   6. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto You in a time when
   You may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not
   come near unto him. The man that has so prayed as to find complete
   forgiveness, he is the man that will never leave off praying as long as
   he lives! The one gain which covers everything, the gain of conscious
   forgiveness, inspires a man to pray about anything and about everything
   as long as he lives! "For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto
   You." "You are my hiding place." You see God was his hiding place when
   he was in a storm of sin, and now he takes God to be his hiding place
   in every time of trouble, from all the afflictions of his life, all the
   sorrows of the way. "You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me
   from trouble." Shall He not, since He has blotted out our sins? Oh, if
   God has preserved us from the wrath to come, what is there to be afraid
   of? "You shall preserve me from trouble. You shall compass me about
   with songs of deliverance." I shall live in a ring of music! I shall
   march onward to Heaven as in the center of song! Why, it may well be
   so, when once God has freely blotted out our sins--"You shall compass
   me about with songs of deliverance." Yes, says God, that I will, and I
   will do more!

   8. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go: I
   will guide you with My eyes. I have not blotted out your sins to leave
   you to wander back into them again--I will be your Teacher, your folly
   shall not be your ruin, your ignorance shall not be your destruction. I
   will guide you--look at Me!--"I will guide you with My eyes." "A
   glance, a look, shall be enough for you! I will give you such a heart
   that you shall understand the least motion of My finger. No, I will
   guide you with My eyes."

   9. Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no
   understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest
   they come near unto you. A pardoning God may well ask this of us, that
   we would be tender. Oh, let us be very willing to do the Lord's will,
   plastic in His hands like clay in the hand of the potter! It is a great
   pity, Brothers and Sisters, when we won't be guided by the gentle
   leadings of God and must be whipped and spurred, and tugged at. For God
   will govern us if we are His people. If one bit will not do it, He will
   get a tougher bit that shall cut us and hurt us, but He will rule us!
   And so He ought to do, blessed be His name!

   10. 11. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusts in the
   LORD, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice,
   you righteous: and shout for joy, all you that are upright in heart
     __________________________________________________________________

Sunlight for Cloudy Days

   (No. 3345)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT MENTONE.

   "But I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me." Psalm 40:17.

   IT is not everybody who would like to apply to himself the first part
   of the text. Perhaps we, most of us, accept it because it happens to be
   Scriptural language--and yet we might not spontaneously say of
   ourselves, "I am poor and needy." Some would even wish us to believe
   the very opposite, for if I read their hearts aright, they say, "I am
   not poor, nor needy." They have enough of this world's goods and as for
   spiritual matters, they are strong and self-reliant. All this comes of
   vainglory and, in the long run will end in vanity and vexation of
   spirit--for if a man can do without God, it is certain that God can do
   without him--and the day will come when God willdo without him,
   according to His Word, "I will ease Me of My adversaries." He who has
   tried throughout life to do without God will inherit remorse forever
   and ever. It is well to begin, continue and end in this life with God's
   favor, that we may enjoy it world without end! I therefore trust that
   none among you would wish to say, "I am rich and increased in goods and
   have need of nothing," for that would be tantamount to a proud resolve
   to do without God--and it will end in your eternal ruin!

   There are some who cry, "I am poor and needy, woe is me that I should
   be so! But the Lord does not think of me. I have looked up to Heaven,
   but no eye of pity looks down upon me in the depth of my misery." Many
   a wretched mind, many a bereaved spirit, many a downcast heart has
   cried, "The Lord has forgotten me! He counts the number of the stars
   and calls them by their names, but as for me, I am too little, too
   insignificant, too obscure--I cannot believe that God thinks upon me."
   Dear Friend, I hope you will be converted from this unbelief! I pray
   that you may not only be able to join in one half of my text by saying,
   "I am poor and needy," but that you may humbly unite in the second
   declaration, "Yet the Lord thinks upon me." Despite your insignificance
   and unworthiness, you may yet learn that the Lord has thoughts of love
   towards you and is causing all things to work together for your
   external, internal and eternal good!

   Do not let it surprise you that one of old should say, "I am poor and
   needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me," for God has often thought of poor
   and needy persons. Look at Joseph when he was in prison and the iron
   entered into his soul-- his reputation was gone, he was reproached and
   even punished unjustly--yet we read that the Lord was with Joseph and,
   in due time He brought him out and set him on the throne of Egypt!
   Ruth, the Moabitess, came penniless to Israel's land and she went to
   glean among the sheaves as a poor and needy peasant woman. But the Lord
   was thinking upon her and so provided for her that she rose to an
   honorable estate and her name is written among the progenitors of our
   Lord Jesus! To give you a more modern instance--the Apostles were poor
   fishermen with their little boats and well-worn nets, upon the Lake of
   Galilee--yet the Lord looked upon them--unlearned and ignorant men as
   they were, and made them to be the pioneers of His Kingdom! Never mind
   how poor and needy you are, you may yet be heirs of God, joint-heirs
   with Jesus Christ!

   "Alas," you say, "my trouble is not a poverty of gold and silver, but I
   am poor as to anything like goodness in the sight of God. I feel so
   guilty and so far from being what I ought to be." Yet the Lord has
   oftentimes thought of such people as you! Look at the blessed Master
   sitting on the well at Sychar, talking with that wanton woman who had
   had five husbands and he whom she then had was not her husband--she was
   a woman whom none would honor--but the blessed Savior thought upon her!
   Remember, too, the thief dying upon the cross next to the
   Redeemer--with all his sins red upon him, for he had been a robber and
   probably a murderer, too--his prayer, "Lord, remember me," touched the
   heart of Jesus and, "Today you shall be with Me in Paradise" was the
   gracious response! The Lord thought on him and yet there was never one
   more poor and needy than he! There, too, was Saul of Tarsus, the
   persecutor, breathing out

   threats and slaughter against the Church of God! But the Merciful One
   in Heaven, who saw his sin, thought on him with love and said, "Saul,
   Saul, why do you persecute Me?" Poverty of all merit and need of all
   Grace do not prevent the Lord from thinking upon men! Is not this fact
   as clear as the sun in the heavens? However spiritually poor you may
   be, you may yet partake of the riches of His Grace and so become rich
   in faith--indeed, none but consciously needy ones ever obtain the
   privilege of saying, "Yet the Lord thinks upon me."

   I was troubled, when I was asking the Lord, with the notion that I was
   so utterly insignificant that the Lord would never notice me. There is
   no reason for such fear, since the Lord has thought upon very obscure
   people. Think of the Sy-ro-Phoenician woman's daughter. What was her
   name? Do you know what sort of a girl she was? Can you tell her
   after-history? She is quite unknown to fame, yet the Lord thought upon
   her and healed her. That little daughter of Jairus, a child of 12 years
   of age, what could she do? Did she become a distinguished woman? What
   lifework did she perform? She makes no figure in history, yet the Lord
   thought upon her and even restored her from the dead! The widow's son,
   who was being carried out of the city of Nain, what did he achieve?
   What post of honor did he occupy? What lofty path did he pursue? We
   know nothing of him except that the Lord thought upon him! The most of
   the persons whom the Lord Jesus thought upon in the days of His flesh
   were unknown to fame and, for my part, I judge that the happiest
   persons are those who pass through life unknown of men, but known of
   God! During the French Revolution, a man of great influence escaped the
   guillotine and when asked how it was, he replied, "I made myself of no
   reputation and kept silent." Those who are content to follow the cool
   sequestered vale of life are often happier than those who climb the
   high places of the earth. Do not, therefore, think that your being in
   the background is any hindrance to the Lord's thinking upon you! He
   cares nothing about the blare of trumpets, or the blaze of fame--the
   Lord looks upon the meek and lowly and finds out the men that are of a
   broken heart and of a contrite spirit, and that tremble at His
   Word--and with these He deigns to dwell. May we be found among them!

   At this time my desire is to do four things upon each of which I would
   speak briefly. By the words of the text I desire, first, to help your
   faith to remember that if you are poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks
   upon you. Then I long to enlarge your hope. Thirdly, to inflame your
   love and fourthly, to direct your life. May God the Holy Spirit perform
   all these things for us! First, let me--

   I. HELP YOUR FAITH. You say to yourself, "I cannot understand why God
   should think of me." Why not? "Because I am so little." Let me ask you
   if there is anything in the world which is not little to God? You say,
   "There is the world, itself," and I answer that the earth which we
   think so large, is no more to God than a single grain of dust! The
   solar system and all the other systems that make up the Creation of God
   are as nothing to the Infinite Jehovah! So great is the universe that
   the most elevated conception of the most enlarged mind has never
   compassed more than a fragment of it--yet God is infinitely beyond the
   inconceivable whole of created existence! A man must always be really
   greater than his own works and certainly God must be infinitely greater
   than all that He has ever made. Now, if you think it difficult that God
   should think upon the little, what else should God think upon? You
   reply that you expect Him to think of the great ones of the earth.
   Alas, the most of them think very little of Him--the Lord has had the
   least worthy treatment from those who are ranked as rich and honorable.
   When we reach Heaven, we shall find few kings and princes, few of the
   learned and lauded--"God has chosen the poor of this world, rich in
   faith"--so says the Inspired Apostle.

   Again, if it should seem difficult to you for God to think upon the
   poor and needy, I invite you to answer the question, "Who need God's
   thoughts most?" On the field of battle, after the fight, if a surgeon
   should be there to attend to the wounded, where will he go first? Of
   course he will go to those whose gaping wounds have almost opened the
   gates of death for them! And the slightly wounded he will leave till he
   has more time. The Lord will not look upon us according to what we
   deserve, for if He did, He would destroy us all! He will look upon us
   in proportion to our needs. Our urgent needs move His mercy and He will
   go first to those who require Him most. Do you need His Grace more than
   anyone else? Then He will hasten at once to you! If I see a physician's
   carriage hurrying down the street, I feel morally certain that he is
   not driving to my door, for I am not dangerously ill. But if I know of
   one who has fallen in a fit, or has been badly injured by an accident,
   I conclude that he is going to him. When the Angel of Mercy is made to
   fly very swiftly, you can be sure that he is speeding to one who is in
   urgent need of Divine Grace.

   Remember, too, that God has always dealt with men from that point of
   view. When God made His election of men before the earth was, He chose
   them as fallen and undeserving, that He might lift them up to the
   praise of the glory of His

   Grace. His choice of men was never guided by anything good that He saw
   in them! As says the Apostle Paul, "For the children being not yet
   born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
   according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that
   calls." The decree still stands, "I will have mercy on whom I will have
   mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion."
   The Lord of Grace asks in His Sovereignty, "Shall I not do as I will
   with My own?" God views all men as guilty and, finding them guilty, He
   yet chooses unto Himself a people in whom His Grace shall be
   resplendent! Therefore do not conclude that He will pass you by because
   you are poor and needy.

   Moreover, the redemption of Christ obviously views us as fallen and
   guilty. Did He lay down His life to redeem those who were not captives?
   Did He pour out His blood to cleanse those who were already clean? If
   we had not needed a great salvation, would the Darling of Heaven have
   stooped to the death of the Cross that we might be saved? They who
   think that sinners cannot be saved, or that men can be saved by any
   other means than by true faith in Jesus, make a superfluity of the
   death of Christ--and this is a blasphemy atrocious to the last degree!
   "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly." "This is a
   faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
   into the world to save"-- the righteous?--oh no, but, "to save sinners,
   even the chief." Stagger not at the Grace of God to your own hurt but
   say, "Though I am spiritually poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon
   me."

   Furthermore, the gift of God the Holy Spirit proves that God regards us
   as poor and needy. If we were strong and full of all spiritual forces,
   we would not have needed the Spirit of God to quicken and regenerate
   us! And we would not have needed that Spirit to abide in us as our
   Teacher and Helper. Why, Brothers and Sisters, you cannot even pray
   without the Spirit of God! The Spirit is given to help your infirmity
   in prayer because that infirmity most surely exists. The gift of the
   Spirit of God to men is a proof that God looks upon them as being poor
   and needy in spiritual things. Now, if you feel that you cannot pray,
   that you cannot repent, that you cannot believe, that you cannot do
   anything that is good in your own strength, fret not about it, but fly
   to the Strong for strength! Say, "I am poor and needy, but the gift of
   the Holy Spirit is an evidence that the Lord thinks upon me."

   Let me further say, to help your faith, that though you say you are
   very poor and spiritually needy, you are not alone in this, for so are
   all God's saints--and the brighter the saints the more they feel their
   own poverty and need! Certain boasters talk "exceedingly proud" about
   their religious attainments. But the more they glory, the more vain is
   their glory. True saints are humble. In a company where certain people
   were displaying their spiritual attainments, it was noticed that one
   devout person remained silent. Finally a talkative man turned to him
   and asked, "Have you no sanctifica-tion?" He replied, "I never had any
   to boast of, and I hope I never shall have." The more high in Grace,
   the more low in self-esteem! Ask the man who has the most holiness what
   he thinks of himself and he will be the first to lament that he has not
   yet reached the point which he desires. We are like those old-fashioned
   wine glasses which had no foot to them, so that they could not stand
   upon the table, but must be held in the hand. When Jesus has us in His
   hand, we can be filled with the Water of Life--but out of His hand we
   cannot hold a drop, nor even stand! We are nothing at all without our
   All-in-All! "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me,"
   said one. "Without Me you can do nothing," is the true word of Christ
   to every branch of the living Vine. Now, if all God's saints say that
   they are nobodies, do not despair because you are a nobody! If they all
   confess that they can do nothing without Christ, do not despond because
   you, also, can do nothing without Him!

   Do you reply, "I wish I had a greater sense of spiritual riches"? If
   you had more faith in Christ, it would be well, but to have any
   confidence in your own experience would do you mischief!

   Let me here relate a story which may cheer those who feel themselves to
   be so guilty that the Lord will not think upon them. The Lord looks
   upon those who feel their guilt. A Savior is on the lookout for sinners
   quite as much as sinners are on the lookout for a Savior. I have heard
   that a great English prince on one occasion went to visit a famous king
   of Spain. The prince was taken down to the galleys, to see the men who
   were chained to the oars and doomed to be slaves for life. The king of
   Spain promised, in honor of the prince's visit, that he would set free
   any one of these men that the prince might choose. So the prince went
   to one prisoner and said, "My poor fellow, I am sorry to see you in
   this plight, how came you here?" "Ah, Sire," he answered, "false
   witnesses gave evidence against me. I am suffering wrongfully."
   "Indeed!" said the prince, and passed on to the next man. "My poor
   fellow, I am sorry to see you here, how did it happen?" "Sire, I
   certainly did wrong, but not to any great extent. I ought not to be
   here." "Indeed!" said the prince, and he went on to others who told him
   similar tales. At last he came to one prisoner who said, "Sire, I am
   often thankful that I am here, for I am sorry to admit that if I had
   received my due, I would have been executed. I am certainly guilty of
   all that was laid to my charge--and my severest punishment is just."
   The prince replied wittily to him, "It is a pity that such a guilty
   wretch as you are should be chained among these innocent men and,
   therefore, I will set you free." You smile, and well you may. How you
   will smile if Jesus does the same for you! Assuredly this is the manner
   of Him--He passes by those who think highly of themselves and looks
   upon those who are self-condemned and plead guilty before God. He came
   not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance! When we have
   nothing to pay, He frankly forgives the debt! He thinks upon the poor
   and needy.

   I ask you to look at the text again, by way of--

   II. ENLARGEMENT OF YOUR HOPE. "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks
   upon me." It is a great thing that God should think upon us. Is it true
   that the great heart of God is thinking upon me, an inconsiderable atom
   of existence? What then? It is enough to make the bells of our hearts
   ring for joy! Let us listen again to the silver note of the text, "The
   Lord thinks upon me." The Lord thinks as much of one of His people as
   if there were nobody else for Him to think upon! Poor needy one, the
   Lord thinks upon you as intensely as if you were the only being now
   existing! The Lord is able to concentrate His whole mind upon any one
   point without dividing that mind--He has such an infinite capacity that
   each one of us may be the center of God's thoughts--and yet He will not
   be forgetting any other beloved one! God is a Being whose center is
   everywhere, but His circumference is nowhere! "The Lord thinks upon
   me." Is it not beautiful to notice how God thought of the first man
   whom He placed on this earth? He did not make man till He had prepared
   everything for his happiness! The Lord would not rest until He had
   finished His work, until He had lighted up the heavens and created all
   manner of comforts and conveniences for His child. Not till He had even
   prepared the birds to sing to him and the flowers to breathe their
   perfume upon him, did God create man. Why did God rest on the seventh
   day? Because He had thought of all that man needed and had made all
   things good for Him. Our Lord Jesus never rested till He had finished
   the work that His Father gave Him to do, which work was all for us--and
   the great Providence of God will never rest till all the chosen of God
   are brought safely home to Heaven! Thus you see how God thinks upon us.

   Remember, also, that God's thoughts are not dumb thoughts. They break
   out into words and this precious Bible contains the expression of those
   thoughts of love. This priceless Book is a love letter from our Father
   who is in Heaven. Read each line as if it were freshly written and it
   will make you say, "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me,
   and here are His thoughts."

   Nor does the Lord rest in words. I have heard of a waiter who said to a
   guest, "I hope you will remember me, Sir." "Yes," replied the other, "I
   shall never forget your bad behavior." It would be well for us if our
   fellow men would not think of us when we have done them wrong, but
   God's thoughts of us are always kind and forgiving. His thoughts are
   practical and produce deeds of kindness. He thinks to give and forgive,
   to save and succor, to cheer and cherish. The Lord is thinking what He
   will give you, what He will make of you and what mansion in Heaven He
   will appoint for you! If He has thought upon you, He always will think
   upon you, for the Lord never changes! Our God, in whom we trust, is not
   fickle. He is not thoughtful of us today and forgetful of us tomorrow.
   If you should live to be as old as Methuselah, the promises of God will
   never wear out--and if all the troubles that ever fell upon humanity
   should pounce upon you-- God's strength will be put forth to sustain
   you and to bear you to a triumphant close!

   Oh, the joy of knowing that God thinks upon us! It is better to have
   God thinking upon us than to have all the kings of earth and all the
   angels of Heaven thinking upon us. Thirdly, and very briefly--

   III. LET THIS INFLAME YOUR LOVE. "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord
   thinks upon me." Dear Friends, think much of God since He thinks much
   of you. Let your hearts go out towards Him on whose heart your name is
   written. It ought to be impossible for a Christian to wander among
   these olive groves without saying, "Beneath such trees as these my
   Savior sweat great drops of blood." We ought not to sit on the beach
   without thinking, "The Lord has cast my sins into the depths of the
   sea." As the palm tree lifts itself to Heaven, without an earthward
   branch, so send all your thoughts upward! As the vine, though sharply
   pruned, yields its cluster, so bear fruit unto your Lord. Upon yonder
   sea the Apostle of the Gentiles was tossed and wrecked for love of
   Jesus--yield to that same Lord, your whole hearts as you think upon His
   thoughts of you! Everything about this place should make us think of
   our Lord, for in many respects it is the counterpart of "Your land, O
   Immanuel!" This day God is thinking upon you! This day think upon God!
   Christ in

   Heaven is preparing Heaven for us--let us be preparing a place on earth
   for Him. I have often wondered what is meant by our Lord's preparing a
   place for us, since Heaven is prepared for us from before the
   foundation of the world. I suppose Heaven was not fully fit for us till
   Jesus went there and the very going there of our Well-Beloved has
   prepared Heaven for redeemed men and women to live in it in His own
   sweet society! Jesus is watching in Heaven for the time when we shall
   come Home and He is praying for that Homecoming--"Father, I will that
   they, also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am."

   Do you not receive frequent tokens that the Lord Jesus is thinking upon
   you? Special mercies in answer to prayer, sweet visits of love--do not
   these cheer your heart? Our sacred joys, which come from Jesus, are
   like those boxes of flowers that we send to our friends who are
   freezing in the cold at this time in England. They know that we
   remember them as they look upon every rosebud, violet and anemone that
   comes to them through the post. Our heavenly Father sends us many such
   tokens of His loving remembrance while we are hearing the Gospel, or
   enjoying the Lord's Supper, or occupied in our private prayers and
   meditations. "How precious, also, are Your thoughts unto me, O God, how
   great is the sum of them!" To close, let me use this text to--

   IV. DIRECT YOUR CONDUCT. "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon
   me." The whole of what I say shall go into this one thought--if God
   thinks upon you, leave off all anxious and carking care about yourself!
   I do not suppose there is any place in the world that has more care and
   anxiety in it than this little town which nestles beneath the mountains
   and suns itself by the sea.

   Many of you come here with dear ones who are pining away before your
   eyes, or you are alarmed about your own health. Do not unduly trouble
   yourselves, for if you do so, you cannot remove sickness, thereby, but
   you may even increase it. If I could do any good by worrying, I would
   worry away to my heart's content! But as it is useless, I find it best
   to let it alone. They tell me that if a man were to fall into the sea,
   he would float if he would remain quiet, but because he struggles, he
   sinks. I am sure it is so when we are in affliction. Fretfulness
   results in weakening us, in hiding from us wise methods of relief and,
   in general, in doubling our pains. It is folly to kick against the
   pricks! It is wisdom to kiss the rod. Trust more and fear lees. If you
   have trusted your soul with Christ, can you not trust Him with
   everything else? Can you not trust Him with your sick child, or your
   sick husband? With your wealth, with your business, with your life?
   "Oh," says one, "I hardly like to do that. It is almost presumption to
   take our minor cares to the great Lord." But in so doing you will prove
   the truthfulness of your faith! I heard of a man who was walking along
   the high road with a pack on his back. He was growing weary and was,
   therefore, glad when a gentleman came along in a chaise and asked him
   to take a seat with him. The gentleman noticed that he kept his pack
   strapped to his shoulders, and so he said, "Why do you not put your
   pack down?" "Why, Sir," said the traveler, "I did not venture to
   impose. It was very kind of you to take me up, and I could not expect
   you to carry my pack as well." "Why," said his friend, "do you not see
   that whether your pack is on your back, or off your back, I have to
   carry it?"

   My Hearer, it is so with your trouble. Whether you care, or do not
   care, it is the Lord who must care for you! "But my daily trouble seems
   too mean a thing to bring before the Lord in prayer." Then I fear you
   forgot my text, or fail to see the spirit which dictated it--God thinks
   upon the poor and needy--and all the concerns of the poor and needy
   are, like themselves, poor affairs. Why do you weary yourself with care
   when God cares for you? If I were afraid of burglars and kept a
   watchman to guard my house at night, I certainly would not sit up all
   night, myself! The Lord is your Keeper, why are you fearful? It is
   infinitely better that you should be able to say, "The Lord thinks upon
   me," than that you should have all power, wisdom and wealth in your own
   hands! I charge you, then, to rest in the Lord and fret no longer!

   First, trust your Lord with your souls, and then trust Him with
   everything else! First, surrender yourself to His love, to be saved by
   His infinite compassion--and then bring all your burdens, cares and
   troubles--and lay them down at His dear feet and go and live a happy,
   joyful life, saying, as I will say, and close--

   "All that remains for me, Is but to love and sing! And wait until the
   angels come, To bear me to my King."

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS 8:1-31.

   Verse 1. There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in
   Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.To my
   mind one of the sweetest words of that verse is that little word now.
   "There is, therefore, now no condemnation--at this very moment! Walking
   under the power of the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus, there is,
   therefore, now no condemnation to Believers! It is a logical
   conclusion, too, from something that went before. You and I are not
   absolved from sin apart from the Truth of God, but there is a great
   truth at the back of it which necessitates it. "There is, therefore,
   now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
   after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

   2. For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free
   from the Law of sin and death Sin and death cannot govern me--cannot
   condemn me--cannot destroy me. Another Law has come in. The Spirit of
   life in Christ Jesus has brought me into another kingdom wherein I
   cannot be affected, so as to condemn me, by the Law of sin and death.

   3, 4. For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the
   flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for
   sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law
   might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
   Spirit The Law of God was a good Law, a just and holy Law. It was weak,
   not in itself, for, verily, if righteousness could have been by any
   Law, it would have been by the Law of God! But it was weak through our
   flesh. We could not keep it. We could not fulfill the conditions of
   life laid down under it. Therefore, what the Law could not do, God has
   now done for us! He has found a way of making us righteous through the
   righteousness of His own dear Son, whom He has sent in the likeness of
   sinful flesh. He has found out a way of condemning sin, without
   condemning us! He condemned sin in the flesh, but we escaped. And He
   has found a way of making us practically righteous, too, through the
   abundance of His Grace, enabling us to walk no longer after the flesh,
   but after the Spirit. Blessed be God for this, for when we had broken
   His Law, He might justly have left us to take the consequences, but He
   has stepped aside--He has gone beyond all that might have been expected
   of Him--and brought in a Law by which a remedy is applied to all our
   ills. Glory be to His name!

   5. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.
   They live to eat and drink. They live for self-aggrandizement. They
   live for the world and its pleasures. It is according to their nature.
   Everything acts according to its nature. The wolf devours--the sheep
   patiently feeds. They that are after the flesh do mind the things of
   the flesh.

   5. But they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit God has
   given us, then, the Spirit to dwell in us and now I trust we can say
   that we desire holiness, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy
   Spirit, for these things are the things of the Spirit!

   6, 7. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded
   is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for
   it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. It is so
   deeply vitiated, so thoroughly depraved, that so long as the fleshly
   mind exists, it will be in rebellion against God. "You must be
   born-again," for that which is born of the flesh is flesh--and only
   that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Unless we are renewed,
   then, by the Spirit of God, we never shall be subject to the Law of
   God--neither, indeed, can we be.

   8, 9. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But you
   are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if, indeed, the Spirit of God
   dwells in you. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none
   ofHis. Christ does not acknowledge any that are not indwelt by His
   Spirit. They may wear the Christian name. They may perform some acts
   which look like Christian acts--but all this means nothing. You must
   have the Spirit of God within you, or else you are none of His! And
   what a thing it is to be "none of His." "Verily," says Christ, "I never
   knew you." "But, Lord, we ate and drank with You! You preached in our
   streets." But He says, "I never knew you." They are none of His. Oh,
   dear Friends, the highest point to which human nature can reach of
   itself falls short of being in Christ! There must be the Spirit of God
   dwelling in us or else we are none of His!

   10. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin.
   Therefore, it suffers disease and pain, for the soul is regenerated,
   but not the body. If I may so speak, the Regeneration of the body
   happens at the Resurrection. It is then that it will receive its full
   share of the blessed work of Christ! "The body is dead because of sin."

   10, 11. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the
   Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that
   raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by
   His Spirit that dwells in

   you.So there is a complete deliverance provided for body, soul and
   spirit! As Moses said to Pharaoh when he agreed to let the people of
   Israel go, but said that they must leave behind their flocks, "Not a
   hoof shall be left behind," so no particle of our real manhood shall be
   left under the thralldom of sin and death! The soul is already
   emancipated and the body shall be--by the Spirit which dwells in you!

   12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live
   after the flesh. For we owe the flesh nothing by way of gratitude or
   service. The flesh has dragged us down. The flesh has ruined us. We owe
   it nothing except mastery of it. We are not debtors to it, to live
   after it.

   13. For if you live after the flesh, you shall die. It will die and so
   will you who make it your master!

   13. But if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body,
   you shall live. "Mortify," kill, put to death.

   14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
   God. There may be a great many weaknesses and infirmities about them,
   but if they follow the Divine Leadership of the Spirit of God, they are
   the sons of God!

   15. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but
   you have received the Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father
   Is this true of you? "You have received the Spirit of Adoption, whereby
   we cry, Abba, Father." Dear Friends, hearing these words, can you
   respond to them? Are they true of you?

   16. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the
   children of God. Many of you make a profession of being the children of
   God. Can your own spirit say that it is true? And is there, in addition
   to this, the witness of the Spirit within you that it is true? If not,
   unless there is a witness to our testimony, it avails nothing. Our Lord
   Jesus Christ said, "If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not
   true." And if He chooses to put Himself on a level, as it were, with
   the rest of humanity in that respect, we cannot expect that our witness
   will stand for anything if it stands alone! No, there must be the
   Spirit, Himself, bearing witness with our spirit that we are the
   children of God!

   17. And if children, then heirs: heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
   Christ Oh that if--"ifchildren." There are some that get over all that.
   They believe in a universal fatherhood--which is not worth the words in
   which they describe it. This is a different fatherhood altogether!

   17. If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
   together. Oh, this blessed co-partnership--this fellowship! Joint-heirs
   with Christ! Taking part in the whole heritage--as well the heritage of
   suffering as the heritage of glory. "It shall bruise Your heel, but You
   shall bruise his head." There is to be the heel-bruising for the
   Christ, as well as for us, but there is to be the head-crushing of sin
   and Satan for Him and for us, too!

   18. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
   worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
   Glory in us? Only think of that! You know the Revelation that is in the
   Book--but how grand will be the revelation that is in the man! "The
   glory which shall be revealed in us." We shall be full of glory! And a
   part of God's Glory, which otherwise must have lain concealed, will be
   revealed in His people to His own praise forever and ever--but also to
   our own eternal joy.

   19. For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the
   manifestation of the sons of God. There is something that the whole
   creation is waiting for and it cannot come till God's children are
   manifested--till the glory is revealed in them!

   20. 22. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but
   by reason of Him who has subjected the same in hope. Because the
   creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
   into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the
   whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. "The
   whole creation." It is the same word all through--so I have used the
   same word. The whole world is in its pangs and birth throes, and there
   can never come its complete deliverance into the new heavens and the
   new earth, except there shall also be the manifestation of the children
   of God and their deliverance from all that now hampers and hinders the
   Divine Life that is within them!

   23. And not only they, but ourselves, also, which have the first fruits
   of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for
   the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. This is what we are
   looking for! Our manhood is not all soul--it is body, too! And here, as
   yet, this poor body seems to lie outside the gate, like Lazarus, while
   the soul rejoices in God. But its time of glorifying is coming! The
   trumpet of the archangel shall proclaim it!

   24. For we are saved by hope. As yet we are saved by hope.

   24-26. But hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does
   he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
   patience wait for it. Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities.
   That is a grand thing! We have got the first fruits of the Spirit to be
   the pledge of all the glorious harvest. The very fact that the Spirit
   dwells in us is the conclusive proof that our bodies shall be raised
   from the dead! Meanwhile, the Spirit of God is helping us, as we groan
   and labor, towards the complete perfection. "The Spirit helps our
   infirmities."

   27. And He that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the
   Spirit, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the
   will of God.Nor is it only the Holy Spirit who is thus helping us
   onward towards the grand finale!

   28, 29. And we know that all things work together for good to them that
   love God, to them who are the calledac-cording to His purpose. For whom
   He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
   of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren. And
   you know that He is the First-Born in this sense--not only as the
   greatest, but that as the First-Begotten from among the dead, He has
   risen from the dead! He has risen from the dead and in this He leads
   the way for us all. "That he might be the first-born among many
   brethren."

   30. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He
   called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also
   glorified.No slips, no gaps or chasms by the way. The foreknown are
   predestinated. The predestinated are the called. The called are
   justified. The justified are glorified!

   31. What shall we say, then, to these things.?Shall we succumb under
   the sufferings of the body? Shall we yield to doubt because of all our
   heavy feelings and the dullness that comes of the flesh? By no means!

   31. If God is for us, who can be against us?We can get through all
   these difficulties if God is with us!
     __________________________________________________________________

Resurrection for the Just and the Unjust

   (No. 3346)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 4,
   1868.

   "There shall be a resurrection both for the just and the unjust." Acts
   24:15.

   THE heathen had, somehow or other, spelled out the Truth of God that
   the soul of man is immortal. Almost all their religions implied this
   and some of their sages plainly taught it. But never had they imagined
   that this immortality might belong also to the body!

   The Doctrine of the Resurrection from the Dead was peculiar to
   Christianity. It was so novel and it seemed, at first, to be so absurd
   that when men heard the Apostles speak of such a resurrection they
   mocked and laughed them to scorn as fools. They called Paul, "a
   babbler," because of this. They believed he must be mad. Had they not
   seen the body sicken and die? Had they not marked it in various stages
   of decay? Did they not know that it was frequently dissolved into small
   dust, scattered to the manifold winds of Heaven, or that its fragments
   mingled with the waves of the sea, or that its various members were
   torn by wild beasts and could they, therefore, imagine it to be
   credible that any sane person could believe that the human body would
   rise again from the dead? Yet Paul believed this and this he
   preached--that there would be a resurrection of the dead, both of the
   just and the unjust, not that the just and the unjust would merely live
   as to their souls, but that their bodieswould be restored from the
   grave and that a resurrection, as well as an immortality, would be the
   future of every man of woman born, whatever his character might be!

   Now, this is the great Doctrine of the Christian faith which we do not
   doubt, but joyously accept! Our Lord's Body, that same Body in real
   identity which was nailed to the tree and laid in the tomb for three
   days--that same Body came to life again, with the nail prints
   visible--into which Thomas was invited to put his finger--with the mark
   of the spear into which the same doubting Apostle was asked to thrust
   his hand! Christ proved Himself to be not merely a spirit, but a solid,
   tangible, corporeal existence, for He said, "Handle Me, and see; a
   spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I have." And although He
   appeared in the room, the doors being shut, and thus proved that His
   body had lost some of the properties of coarse matter, yet, at the same
   time, He took a piece of flesh and of honeycomb and did eat before
   them--and let them see that it was His very Self who had hung upon the
   Cross and died there at Calvary! And so shall it be with us! Though by
   death our bodies shall lose some of their qualities which we shall all
   be only too glad to lose, though their corruptions and weaknesses shall
   all be laid aside, yet my body and yours in definite identity, each for
   itself, shall rise up from its bed of dust and silent clay, and enter
   into the rest that remains where Jesus dwells before the Throne of God!
   Behold at this present, "the whole creation groans and travails in pain
   together, until now, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
   of the body."

   My great purpose tonight, Beloved, is to speak on the majestic fact
   that the just and the unjust are to live on in a resurrection state. I
   am not going to debate, discuss, argue as to the fact of it, but,
   assuming your belief in God's Inspired Word, declare a few thoughts
   which that sublime Truth seems to raise in one's mind. I shall treat
   the Truth as though it were a lantern--and shall look at some of the
   rays of Divine Light that stream from it on all sides. And, first of
   all--

   I. WHAT AN ENNOBLING EFFECT THIS TRUTH HAS UPON US!

   Observe the effect it has, first of all, given our bodies. Paul
   elsewhere calls the body, "this vile body," and so it is in comparison
   with what it is to be, by-and-by! But yet if this body has been
   redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and if the Holy Spirit
   dwells in our bodies, as we are taught in Scripture--and if these
   bodies are to be partakers of a pure and sinless immortality--then what
   noble things these otherwise vile bodies become! So noble, my Brothers
   and

   Sisters, that it becomes us to guard them sacredly, as sacred things!
   Now, our bodies may be defiled, but shall they be defiled after being
   washed in pure water and after being given up to Christ? You know how
   they may be defiled. The Apostle speaks very plainly concerning certain
   carnal lusts whereby members of Christ may be made members of all
   manner of iniquity. From these things we fly--they should not be so
   much as named among you, as becomes saints. Our bodies may be defiled
   by eating and drinking, unless in the eating and the drinking we
   glorify God. We may by excess in either way bring ourselves into
   conditions in which the mind will not act and I believe, mark you, that
   gluttony is as much a sin in the sight of God as drunkenness, and that,
   in fact, any eating or drinking which makes us unfit for communion with
   God becomes sinful at once! Any passing beyond that boundary, whatever
   it may be, whether in eating or in drinking, becomes sinful! The body
   is clogged and defiled and who would have it so when it has been
   purchased by Christ's precious blood and is to dwell with Him forever?

   The body, too, may be defiled by outward adornments, for the Holy
   Spirit has expressly warned Christian men and women against these.
   There is a holy adornment that we speak of--that of a meek and a quiet
   spirit--but when men and women hang upon themselves their jewels and
   their ornaments of an ungodly profession, they sin against the plain
   precepts of the Word of God and they really defile the bodies that
   belong to Christ! So every bowing of the knee to that to which I ought
   not to bow, every yielding of this body of mine to write what is not
   true, every motion of my tongue to speak that which is not upright and
   according to the fear of God, every movement of these feet to take me
   where it is not good for me to be--defiles the body! So there are ten
   thousand ways in which the Temple of God may be defiled, but I say
   again that with the thought that this body is to live forever and ever,
   we ought to guard with sacred care these members of Christ! The body
   that has been bought with His blood--that is to sleep on His bosom,
   that is to be awakened in His likeness, that is to dwell with Him
   forever, molded after His own Image--take care of that body and keep it
   consecrated unto the Lord!

   And while this ennobles the body, let me say that it also ennobles the
   entire man. If man is a creature. If he is only first among animals,
   though the most highly organized of all the vertebrate creatures. And
   if, when he dies, that is the end of him, as that might be of a sheep
   or a dog, then, looking up to the stars and thinking of man as a mere
   beast, you need not say with David, "Lord, what is man?" You know what
   he is! You have got your answer--and a gloomy and a melancholy answer
   it is. But if man is to live forever and ever, what a noble creature he
   becomes! And, mark you, men are ready enough to admit this of some of
   their fellow creatures--kings, queens, princes, senators and men who
   have heaped up their gold--but when it comes to this, that the beggar,
   being immortal, is to be honored, they do not like it! I would that men
   would remember that the same Bible that says, "Honor the king," also
   says, "Honor all men"--that is, be they what they may! But men must
   honor people's coats--not the men! Or they honor their carriages, or
   they honor their sovereigns, but they do not honor the men! And yet, in
   truth, seeing that man is to live forever, that his existence in the
   future is coeval with the life of God, every man becomes a strange and
   wondrous thing! If you could pile up a mountain of gold, a huge pyramid
   of it, and then by the side of it a pyramid of precious stones, yet all
   these put together could not be valued with the soul of the pauper's
   child that has been in the workhouse from its very birth! Despise not,
   then, despise not a man made in the image of God--a man redeemed with
   the blood of Christ, a man immortal, a man a mystery if he is
   immortal--a mystery of mysteries!

   As I begin to look at him in the light of my text, which is far above
   all the fictitious surroundings to which men attach so much weight, he
   appears to me now to be a greater being than stars or suns, for these
   may die out and their brightness become extinct--but here is a star
   that shall shine on forever! A sun that shall flash its beams
   throughout eternity! We must not, therefore, if we are poor, broken,
   despised--at once go into sin as though we were too mean to be capable
   of excellence! We must not begin to say, "I cannot be saved--I am so
   illiterate, I am so obscure." Why not? If you are not saved, you will
   have to live forever in misery! Can you understand that? You are
   endowed with an immortality from which it is impossible for you to
   escape! In that respect, by that wondrous gift, God has put you on an
   elevated position and I pray that you may look at it as such--may, by
   His Grace, not fling yourselves away, nor trifle with yourselves, nor
   do the devil's bidding--but seek Him who has promised in His Word that
   they that seek Him shall find Him!

   Thus much on that one thought. And now a second one. If there is
   another state, as you know there is, for body and soul--

   II. WHAT A LIGHT THAT CASTS UPON THIS PRESENT LIFE!

   How little it makes it! How great it makes it! How little! Well, if I
   suffer, today. If my life should be made weary through weakness of
   body, or if it should be bitter through heart-toil, or if it should be
   severe through stern poverty, yet you know how we sing--

   "The way may be rough, but it cannot be long."

   And again, we sometimes sing--

   "An hour with my God will make up for it all."

   These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, are not worthy to
   be compared with the weight of glory which shall be revealed in us!
   Looking at the trials of this present life and comparing and
   contrasting them with the splendor, glory, and eternity of the life to
   come, they are not worth a thought! They disappear and we sing as we
   wade through the midst of them, knowing that it is so written that
   through much tribulation we must inherit the Kingdom of God. When we
   look back from the hilltops of Heaven, I suppose life itself will seem
   to be infinitesimal. Those great troubles of ours will look like pin's
   pricks and we shall almost laugh to think that we should have weighed
   those burdens and thought them so heavy when they were, after all,
   light as feathers. I think we shall, as Watts says--

   "With transporting joys recount

   The labors of our feet."

   We shall say, one to another, "How could we have been so unbelieving?"
   What was there, after all, in our trials to depress us so much? Our
   sufferings were not worth a thought when once compared with those of
   our Master. "His way was much rougher and darker than mine. Did Christ
   my Lord suffer, and did I repine?" Why was it that with such blessed
   help, such rich promises, such Covenant blessings and with the
   everlasting arms underneath us, yet nevertheless we were faint and
   ready to die? Oh, Brothers and Sisters, this world seems so little when
   we think of the world to come! Now, you who have been envious of the
   rich, you little think how soon they will be as poor as you! You who
   have sometimes thought how richly you were favored--think how fame is
   nothing but a breath--and how soon it is gone! Princes will sleep side
   by side with the slave. The great conqueror will not be distinguished
   from the victims of his ambition. The greatest millionaire will be no
   richer than you! Both alike, you came naked into this world--and naked
   you return to the dust. So must it be. Oh, it is all little! "Vanity of
   vanities, all is vanity." The big round world becomes a bubble and it
   vanishes--and as a puff of smoke, the glory of the world departs!

   And yet in this respect, I say, how great this present life becomes!
   You know how our poet puts its--

   "Great God! On what a slender thread

   Hang everlasting things!

   The eternal state of all the dead

   Upon life's feeble strings."

   This life is the mother of the life to come. There is a resurrection
   for the just, and all the glory which the just shall inherit will be
   but the outcome of that immortal life which they received here! There
   is a resurrection for the unjust, and the worm undying and the fire
   that shall never be quenched! And all these will be just the
   development and open revealing of the character which they acquired
   here on earth. Living in sin is the germ of living forever in Hell!
   Believing in Jesus is the root of rejoicing forever in glorious
   immortality! Now, Sirs, see you not that life is not a thing to be
   played with, not a heap of counters that a child may toss to and fro,
   not the mere spray on the great sea of eternity? You must not joke and
   talk about it as though it were a thing to be despised--but come up and
   look at it with all its solemn possibilities and results--and live the
   life of sober men, live the life of men who have peered beyond the veil
   and seen some of the momentous issues of this fleeting existence!
   Henceforth, live while you live, earnestly, as in the sight of God, the
   Judge of the quick and the dead! Yes, let the light of the Resurrection
   stream over the whole of your present life to make its great things for
   the present to become little--to make those things which otherwise
   might be little, which have a reference to eternity--become great in
   your esteem. But I will not tarry on this and, therefore, pass on to
   the thought--

   III. WHAT ENCOURAGEMENT THIS OFFERS TO US!

   To think that there is a resurrection and another life! What? Were it
   worth our while to toil here in the service of Christ, often unrewarded
   and very frequently misrepresented and persecuted for what we do, if
   there were not a place where the reward of Divine Grace would be given
   and where the mistakes of earth would all be set right? "Therefore,"
   says the Apostle, "beloved brethren, be you steadfast, unmovable,
   always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch

   as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." It might be in
   vain here, but forasmuch as there is a resurrection, your labor is not
   in vain in the Lord! If we win souls for Christ, it often happens that
   some of those whom we thought were saved, go back into perdition--many
   of those who are really saved walk disorderly--others are ungrateful to
   their spiritual parents and turn aside to crooked ways. But if our
   record is on high and we do not look to our success for our reward, but
   to our Master--then we may be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in
   work! You who are doing something for Jesus Christ in the school, or in
   any other department of labor, if you look upon your rewards as the
   result, you may, perhaps, have very few conversions and you may go
   toiling on very heavily. But if you will look beyond all present
   results to the great Taskmaster's blessed smile and think you hear Him
   say, "Well done, good and faithful servant"-- when you see Him reward
   you not according to your success, but according to the measure of
   Grace which you use faithfully in His service--when you see that, you
   will pluck up courage, you will not be of heavy heart, you will be
   instant in season, out of season!

   The same thing is an encouragement under suffering. For this the
   martyrs cheerfully gave themselves up to their tormentors, not
   accepting deliverance because they looked for a better resurrection.
   This it was that made them brave to meet the lions in the amphitheater,
   or to lie and silently rot in the dismal dungeons of the Roman
   Emperors. This it was that made Smithfield glorious, as the saints in
   their chariots of fire clapped their hands and ascended to the skies!
   They were, of all men, most miserable if, in this life only, they had
   hope. They were, of all men, most insane to fling away their lives if
   this world were all! But because there is another and a better land, to
   die for Jesus became a glorious thing and they did it, being not
   amazed, not trembling, but dying with greater grandeur about them than
   that with which most men have learned to surround their living! And
   now, you that today are poor, or today are scoffed at. You who, though
   trying to follow Christ, find it a hard path. You who at home have
   little to encourage you and comfort you--remember this worldis not your
   rest! If you were to have 50 years of your present trouble, well, it
   will be as nothing compared with the eternal weight of Glory! Have
   patience. Ask your Master to give you His patience. Pray of the Holy
   Spirit to work in you holy virtue, that after you have endured awhile,
   you may inherit the promise. Remember that there must first be the
   service before there can be the reward--and even under the economy of
   Grace--in which we are not saved by works, but saved by the merit of
   Jesus, yet the Lord will have His servants, first of all, be made
   perfect through suffering before He admits them to their everlasting
   rest. Be of good courage, then! He will strengthen your heart. This is
   not your rest, but it remains for you, and you shall inherit it,
   by-and-by. Passing on again, for I only dwell for a moment upon each
   thought--this fact of our rising again and living forever suggests to
   us--

   IV. WHAT OUGHT TO BE THE ONE CONCERN OF LIFE.

   What shall this be for the saint--what for the sinner? If I am to live
   again as a child of God. If my salvation is accomplished. If my sin is
   blotted out and I am really saved, then let me serve my God with all my
   might, seeing what a blessed immortality He has prepared for me! Slaves
   work when they hear the whip crack, but the children of God are not
   slaves--they are not under bondage--they work from a very different
   motive. They have no fear of Hell, no fear of losing Heaven. When their
   faith is constantly fixed upon the merits of their Savior, they know
   that their warfare is accomplished, that their iniquity is pardoned,
   that their salvation is secure beyond all risks through the Everlasting
   Covenant, the inimitable purpose and the Divine promise of the Father
   in Christ Jesus! Because their salvation is secure and because it leads
   to such a blessed immortality, they burn with fervent love and
   passionate gratitude towards Him who has done so much for them!
   Gratitude in the heart ought to be, and I believe it is, the most
   powerful force in human motive. Love-- what shall equal it? Its wheels
   move until the axles grow hot with speed. Love has an impetuous force
   about it. Many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown
   it. What love we owe to Him who died, that when we die we may live
   again, who rose that we might rise and made a pathway to the skies that
   we might follow Him, even to His Throne!

   "He lives, the great Redeemer lives," and beckons us to come and live
   with Him! When our bodies must, for awhile, see corruption, His voice,
   which shall be the trumpet sound, shall call us from the beds wherein
   we slumber to abide with Him forever! Let us love Him, then! Let us be
   up and doing to find the lost ones that are His sheep, to find His
   pieces of money that are now in the dust, to discover our prodigal
   brethren that are still going astray! Shall we ask for rest when rest
   remains? Shall we escape from toil when toil is the only exposition of
   our love? Shall we bemoan our sufferings when sufferings give us
   opportunities of proving our affection to Him? If the saint in Heaven
   could wish himself back again, he almost might--if he could win a soul
   by tarrying here a little longer! If any one of yonder white-robed
   hosts could wish

   to be on earth, surely it might be to occupy the place of an earnest
   Evangelist, or of a fervent Sunday school teacher, or of any other who
   is a soul-winner for Jesus! I must confess I do not envy Gabriel his
   crown when God gives me souls! I have then thought that I would rather
   be here to talk with you and point you to my Master's Cross, than be up
   there and cast my crown at His feet--for surely there can be no joy in
   Heaven greater than the joy of doing the Master's will in winning souls
   for Him! Do not let us throw away our opportunities for doing this.
   Some of you do not, perhaps, think of using them. In your business, in
   the acquaintances that Providence puts in your way--you have
   opportunities in all these things of bearing your witness for your
   Master. I pray you to see them and seize them! They will soon pass, and
   in the silent chamber, when you are about to enter into another world,
   if regret shall mingle with the holy peace that then shall gild your
   brow, it will be this regret, "I wish I had served Him better, whom I
   am so soon to see. I wish I had more to take to Him who gave Himself up
   for me." Surely you will bid "good-bye" to friends with reluctance, if
   you have never warned them to escape from the wrath to come! And those
   dear children--it will bring hotter tears into your eyes to leave
   them--if you leave them unsaved because you did not plead and wrestle
   with them for their salvation. So live, dear Friends, that when you
   come to die, there shall be nothing left undone and you may go and feel
   that through Grace you have been what you are, and unto God be the
   praise--that you have not neglected the lifework which your Master gave
   you!

   Now, I said that this text should make the unforgiven sinner think--and
   so it should, and very earnestly, too, because there will be a
   resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just. If you who are now
   living in sin were really to die and perish like horses, there might be
   some sort of excuse found for choosing the pleasures of this life as
   being all-in-all. After all, if there is no other world, I do not know
   but what the Epicurean philosophy is the right one--"Let us eat and
   drink, for tomorrow we die." If we are only to live in this world, it
   is the part of wisdom to enjoy one's self as much as possible. I do not
   know but that even then a man would be justified in running into
   vice--because that does not bring enjoyment--it is sure to guarantee,
   even in this life, the most serious results. But still, at the bottom,
   that old Greek philosopher had hit upon the true philosophy of life if
   this life were all--"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." But if
   there is a life to come, as there is, then what a fool Epicurus was!
   And what nonsense his philosophy becomes! Let us eat and drink, for
   tomorrow we do not die, or if we do, yet we live again--and in the
   light of living again, why, eating and drinking seems such dreadful
   trumpery, such driveling idiocy that a man cannot tolerate it either
   from philosopher or from a fool! Oh, if you are to live forever, you
   who are living without thinking of your God, what sort of life must the
   next one be for you? You to whom, even now, to think of God is an
   irksome burden, what will the next world be for you? You believe that
   Book, you dare not doubt it! And that Book tells you that "except you
   repent of your sin, you shall all likewise perish." Moreover, it tells
   you that there is no salvation out of Christ, but "He that believes in
   Him shall be saved; but He that believes not is condemned already,
   because he has not believed on the Son of God." According to this Book
   of God's perfectly revealed mind, there is reserved for you, if you
   remain impenitent, a "fearful-looking-for of judgment and fiery
   indignation." Fear not him who can destroy the body--only fear Him who
   can cast both soul and body into Hell!

   Why do you give so much attention to this world that is so soon to be
   left--and the eternal things are quite forgotten or despised by you? I
   do not feel as if I could plead this with you with any sort of force or
   eager earnestness because it is really so plain that you, in your sins,
   must see it for yourselves! You surely, surely, as sober-minded men and
   women-- and I know there are some here who are accustomed to think--you
   must feel that the living throughout millions of ages ought to be of
   greater concern than living from week to week, or even year to year! We
   think a man is very foolish that lives from hand to mouth, and never
   cares to make any provision for a rainy day. But what a fool that man
   must be who makes no provision for that rainy day when the tempest of
   Heaven's retribution shall beat upon his naked soul--and he shall have
   no shelter and no way of escape! And if a man has grown old and yet
   neglects eternity, if his constitution is being gradually undermined
   and yet the everlasting things are despised. If he has had solemn
   warnings that he must soon depart. If he has seen old companions, one
   by one, taken to the grave--and he still trifles away his time,
   lingering upon the brink of fate--what folly is this and in what words
   can I describe it?

   Blessed Spirit, take away this folly and make men wise that they may be
   saved! Let this be our one great concern-- with holy care to make our
   calling and election sure, that when the Master comes we may not be
   found castaways--but may be gathered with His people! And now for the
   last point. I do not know whether you will set much store by this last
   thought, but it is this--considering that our friends whom we talk with
   everyday, with whom we go up and down to the market, and to the place
   of worship--considering that they are to live forever--

   V. SHOULD WE NOT ALTER A GREAT DEAL OF OUR PRESENT BEHAVIOR UNDER THE
   POWER OF THIS TRUTH?

   What kind of behavior does this majestic fact inculcate towards our
   fellow men and women? Well, I think that Christian people ought always
   to act to one another as immortal beings. Now I know some who belong to
   one denomination who will scarcely speak to those of another section of
   Christ's one Church. Well, well, well--if you both ever get to Heaven,
   you will have to dwell together! Yet it seems as though you cannot live
   together on earth without bickering! Why can't you make up your minds
   to differ from each other, but always in a Christian spirit? I think,
   if I knew I had to live with a man, forever, one thing I would like to
   do would be to tell him perfectly honestly, with sincere love, all the
   Truths of God I knew--and I ought to be willing to hear from him all
   the Truth he thought he knew. I would not like him to say to me, "Now,
   you must not hold your views strongly--you must not speak of them, or
   try to propagate them." That would be as bad as telling me I must sin
   against God by restraining the light which He had given me! Neither
   ought I to say to him, "You shall not be free to hold and disseminate
   your views," for that would be to take upon myself a responsibility
   which does not belong to me!

   But each holding our separate views and contending earnestly for what
   we believe to be "the faith once for all delivered to the saints,"
   might we not thus exercise an honesty which we shall look back upon in
   Heaven with joy--and at the same time, a brotherly kindness which will
   be a sweet reflection even beyond the stars? If any two of you have
   fallen out, even about the faith, go your way and agree tonight! You
   have got to live together forever--do not quarrel! You who are
   relatives, especially, let not the sun go down upon your wrath, but as
   you are birds in the same nest, children of one family, and one with
   God, do not fall out! And if you have, make it up at once and let holy
   Christian forgiveness reign and rule! You see, God will not put a
   partition between you in Heaven. I do not believe they will practice
   any kind of strict communion up there. I do not believe there will be
   any separate bench for any who would like to have that kind of thing,
   but that the whole company of saints will have communion with each
   other and with their common Lord, their glorious risen Head! And that
   it will be their delight, all washed from all their imperfections and
   infirmities, to eat bread together in the Kingdom of God, world without
   end! Well, let us have large hearts and brotherly kindness--not keeping
   back our views, for that would be to sin--but holding with a firm hand
   everything which we have received from the Holy Spirit, and yet loving
   the whole household of faith. If we were to die, and there were no life
   to come, then we might be foolish and unchristian enough to be forever
   squabbling and bickering! But if, after death, we are to live forever
   in the same place of Glory, let us so behave to one another that we
   shall not be ashamed or embarrassed to meet each other there.

   And so with regard to the unconverted. Oh, Christian people, try to
   think of all the unconverted people with whom you have to meet as
   immortal souls. Your servant girl that nurses and loves your child--you
   may, perhaps, never have thought of but as a servant girl--but she is
   an immortal soul as much as the Queen on the throne! Or it may be the
   man who comes to do odd jobs about the house and who blacks your
   shoes--you never thought of him, probably--but as a worker, yet
   he--even he--shall outlast the stars! And all those working men and
   women, and girls who come streaming into your yard or factory, who
   weave at your looms, toil in your workrooms, stand at your printing
   press or at the bookbinding, or in your builder's shop--all these and
   the myriads engaged in commercial and professional life you may
   hitherto, perhaps, have only thought of them as two-legged machines to
   earn so many shillings for you and draw so many less from you every
   week! Yes, but now just think again. They are living for immortality as
   well as yourselves! Will you try to act with them that if their funeral
   knell were heard and they were gone, the voice of conscience might not
   have to torment you with this suggestion, "You neglected their souls!
   You did not do to them what you ought to have done to them! You kept
   back from their immortal part that which, alone, could make them
   blessed in this life and in the life to come." 'Tis but a simple
   thought, and yet if I leave it with you, and God the Holy Spirit
   blesses it, it may be a very blessed thought to some whom you know not
   of today! Remember that all you see in the streets, and all you see in
   the house, and all you see here tonight are all immortal and shall live
   again! And so treat them as such, looking forward to the time when you
   will have to give an account whether you have abused or used graciously
   the opportunities which your Master placed in your way.

   And now may the good Lord keep our thoughts Heavenward and bless us in
   them, for His name's sake. Amen.

   7

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 73.

   Here you have the Psalmist in a fainting fit. He has allowed the flesh
   to conquer the spirit. The observant eye of reason has, for awhile
   rendered dim the clear vision of faith.

   Verse 1. Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean
   heart That must be true. Whatever we have seen or felt, it cannot be
   doubted but what God must become a good God to His own people, "Such as
   are of a clean heart."

   2, 3. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had wellnear
   slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of
   the wicked. I began to envy those whom God hates and to think that it
   would be better for me to have been one of them!

   4. For there are no pangs in their death: but their strength is firm.
   Their unbelief helps them to die in peace, mocking God even to the
   last.

   5, 8. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued
   like other men. Therefore pride compasses them about as a chain;
   violence covers them as a garment Their eyes stand out with fatness:
   they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak
   wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They justify
   themselves in treading others down. They laud it over others. They
   bully them. They rob them. They crush them, yet speak as if they had a
   perfect right to do so!

   9. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walks
   through the earth. Leaving nobody alone, sparing no character, however
   pure.

   10, 11. Therefore his people return here: and waters of a full cup are
   wrung out to them. And they say, How does God know? And is there
   knowledge in the Most High?They get to doubt the Personality of God. If
   they will not precisely say that there is no God, yet they go as near
   to it as they can! They come to what is about the same thing. They have
   a god who does not know and who does not perceive.

   12. Behold, these are the ungodly whoprosperin the world; theyincrease
   in riches. And this is what the good man said--

   13, 14. Verily Ihave cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
   innocence. For all daylong have I beenpla-gued, and chastened every
   morning. "Is this all I am to get by my righteousness? Is this the
   reward of following after God--to be whipped as soon as I wake, and to
   be sent to bed sore with grief?"

   15. If I say, I will speak thus, behold I should offend against the
   generation of Your children. So he did not say what he thought. Some
   have said, "If you think so, you may as well say so." But not so! You
   might as well say if you have a match you may as well burn your house
   down! Bad thought is bad to yourself, but it ends there--turn it into
   words and tell it to others and it may do infinite mischief.

   16, 17. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me. Until I
   went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end.He went and
   hid himself in his God! He got near his God. It does not mean that he
   went to some place of worship, but that he went to the God whom he
   worshipped--hid himself in his God.

   18. Surely you did set them in slippery places; You cast them down into
   destruction--

   "On hills of ice I see them stand, While flaming billows roll below,"

   melting down their foundation.

   19, 22. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are
   utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakes; so, O Lord,
   when You awake, You shall despise their image. Thus my heart was
   grieved, and I was pricked in my veins. So foolish was I, and ignorant:
   I was as a beast before You. It is a man of God that talks thus about
   himself. He feels that he had got to act and think as a beast might do,
   for a beast only calculates things according to time present--it crops
   the grass, is satisfied and lies down. But an immortal man ought to
   take a wider sweep and range in his thoughts and not merely think of
   today and of this present life, but of the end of time and of the
   eternity that lies beyond this present mortal state! And because he had
   failed to do so, he calls himself foolish and ignorant, and says--

   23, 28. Nevertheless I am continually with You: You have held me by my
   right hand. You shall guide me with Your counsel, and afterwards
   receive me to Glory. Whom have I in Heaven but You? And there is none
   upon earth that I desire beside You. My flesh and my heart fails: but
   God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. For, lo, they
   who are far from You shall perish: You have destroyed all them that
   desert You for harlotry But it is good for me to draw near to God: I
   have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all Your works.
   He finds all his comfort in his God. He comes to the conclusion that
   whatever the portion of the ungodly may be, his is infinitely better
   than theirs because they have not God and he has God, who is
   All-in-All!
     __________________________________________________________________

Things to Be Remembered

   (No. 3347)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "A Psalm of David to bring to remembrance." Psalm 38:(Title).

   THESE words form the title to the Psalm before us, which we read just
   now in your hearing. Let us note, for a short time, the subjects which
   David thought it necessary to bring to remembrance. We must all have
   noticed that our memories much more readily retain evil than good. The
   snatch of a profane song heard in childhood will remain with us to our
   graves--while many a holy thought leaves scarcely an impression upon
   the tablets of memory. We heard it--it is gone-- it would be difficult
   to recall it. The draft that flows down the rivers of Sodom, one
   retentively collects, but the goodly cedars of Lebanon that are floated
   down the stream pass by unheeded. We may well say, "Forget not all His
   benefits," for, alas, while the multitude of God's benefits is
   forgotten, if there is anything to murmur at, it is pretty sure to be
   treasured up as though it were a priceless relic to be carefully
   preserved! May the Lord mend our memories. As He makes us new men and
   women in Christ Jesus, may the Holy Spirit give to our memories the
   power to grip the right and the true--and with a loose hand to let slip
   that which is evil and contrary to His rule. The Psalm is "to bring to
   remembrance." This seems to teach us that good things need to be kept
   alive in our memories, that we should often sit down, look back,
   retrace and turn over in our meditation things that are past, lest, at
   any time we should let any good thing sink into oblivion. I have read
   the Psalm to you and I think you will all agree with me that among the
   things which David brought to his own remembrance, the first and
   foremost were--

   I. HIS PAST TRIALS AND HIS PAST DELIVERANCES.

   Come, my Brothers and Sisters, let me stir up your pure minds by way of
   remembrance. Let me remind you of your past battles and victories, of
   your troubles and conflicts and your sweet cheer and safe preservation.
   It will do you good to remember them--such a remembrance will prevent
   your imagining that you have come into the land of ease and perfect
   rest We may have our time of prosperity and say with David, "I shall
   never be moved. Lord, by Your favor, You have made my mountain to stand
   strong." But soon adversity surprises us, as it suddenly overtook him
   and changed his note, "You did hide Your face and I was troubled." This
   is not the place for us to have peace and rest! We are as yet at
   sea--the vessel has not reached the port. We are as yet in the
   wilderness--we have not come to the goodly land, even to Canaan. We are
   not yet out of gunshot of the devil. We are not yet beyond afflictions
   and trials and if, for awhile, the weather has been calm and the sun
   has been bright--and we poor pilgrims have been trudging on along green
   pastures and by the side of still waters--let us remember the giants
   with whom we fought in days long gone! Let us remember the hills of
   difficulty, the valleys of humiliation, the conflicts with
   Apollyon--for as it was at the first, so shall it always be till we
   come to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
   Oh, you who are making for yourself a downy nest and building up a
   castle in the air, remember you do this without the permission of your
   God! No, you do it in the teeth of His warnings, for has not Jesus
   said, "In the world you shall have tribulation"? And is it not written,
   "Many are the afflictions of the righteous"? Bring to remembrance,
   then, your former struggles lest you begin to settle upon your lees and
   fancy that there is no more trial for you!

   Remember them, too, because they will refresh your memories with regard
   to the mercy of God and so will stir you up to gratitude. Oh, we
   thought when we were in trouble that if the Lord would guarantee us
   deliverance, He would never hear the last of it! We said to ourselves,
   "I will praise Him while I have any being if He brings me out of this
   strait and sets my feet, once again, in a large room." But our song was
   not quite as long as we expected and, after having praised God a
   little, the novelty of the mercy departed and our gratitude subsided.
   But, oh, my Brothers and Sisters,

   have we not much cause to bless God? Have we not cause to bless Him
   that we have been delivered from the burden of guilt--a burden that
   once bowed us to the earth--that we have been saved in dire afflictions
   when it seemed as if we must be crushed, that tribulations have been
   averted which threatened us, or that we have been sustained under those
   which have actually come upon us? Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song!
   And weave that new song out of the remembrances of His past mercies
   when He appeared for His servants in the times of trouble and worked
   amazingly for them according to the counsels of His love! Blessed be
   the name of the Lord at this time as we bring to remembrance trials
   past, and mercies that have been received!

   Such a remembrance will be of great service to you, my Brothers and
   Sisters, if you are at this time enduring the like exercises. What God
   was, that He is. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and
   forever," is His people's trust and glory. Having begun to deliver you,
   He will not afterwards forsake you! He has not brought you this far to
   put you to shame. What is the trouble of today? You have passed through
   another quite as great. What is the doubt that assails you? You have
   already met a doubt quite as gloomy and by faith you have overcome it!
   What is the fear which now gathers like a heavy cloud? The time before,
   it burst with mercies upon your head--and it shall do the same again!
   Draw courage from the recollections of the past and go forward to the
   fears of the future--and they shall vanish as you advance confident in
   your God. The great point, however, in David's Psalm is--

   II. TO BRING TO REMEMBRANCE THE DEPRAVITY OF OUR NATURE.

   There is, perhaps, no Psalm which more fully than this one describes
   human nature as seen in the light which God, the Holy Spirit, casts
   upon it in the time when He convicts us of sin. I am persuaded that the
   description here does not tally with any known disease of the body. It
   is very much like leprosy, but it has about it certain features which
   cannot be found to meet in any leprosy described either by ancient or
   modern writers. The fact is, it is a spiritualleprosy--it is an inward
   disease which is here described--and David paints it to the very life
   and he would have us remember this. Child of God, let me bring to your
   remembrance, tonight, the fact that you are by nature no better than
   the vilest of the vile! "Children of wrath even as others," are we.
   Even you who are favored by Divine Grace to enter into rich fellowship
   with Christ are no better, naturally, than the lost spirits in Hell!
   There was no difference at birth and no intrinsic essential difference
   of moral constitution between Peter and Judas, between Paul and Demas,
   between the brightest Apostle and the bloodiest persecutor! We have
   grown in Grace--had we been left to ourselves, we would have rotted in
   sin! We have gone from strength to strength in the way of holiness, but
   if it had not been for Divine Grace that interposed most sovereignly,
   we would have gone from depth to depth in the way of crime!

   Just turn that over for a minute. By nature not one whit better than
   the rest of mankind, see what Grace has done for you in making such a
   difference! Why are you not tonight upon the drunkard's bench? Why fill
   you not the seat of the scorner? Perhaps you have been there already,
   and if Divine Grace had not prevented, you would have continued there!
   I think it does us a world of good, when Grace has made the difference,
   to still take the place which the publican did. I never feel so well in
   spiritual health as when I cry out, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"
   Somehow there is a safeness about it, when a sense of sin makes one
   cling to the sinner's Savior. Growth in Grace and high frames in
   spirituality are very pleasant, but it does us so much good, every now
   and then, to come right on the ground again, flat on our face before
   the Lord, crying out, "What am I that You have brought me to this? God
   forgive me, and accept me through the precious blood, for in myself I
   am loathsome, vile and abhorred--and in me there dwells no good thing."
   The best mode of living is to live upon Christ every day as you did the
   first day of your conversion--always to stand at the foot of the Cross
   with--

   "Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to Your Cross I cling."

   A saint, I hope, by Grace, but a sinner certainly by nature. Still,
   still dependent upon the same merit of the Substitute, still accepted
   through the continual plea of the Divine Intercessor who has espoused
   my cause and is able to save to the uttermost, them that come unto God
   by Him. "Heirs of wrath even as others"--this is what we were! Sinners
   saved by Grace--this is what we are! It is well to bring to the
   remembrance of the child of God that although his past sin is all
   blotted out, and he is justified by faith which is in Jesus Christ, yet
   there still remains in him the old body of this death. Sin, the force
   of sin, still dwells in him! Now, Brothers and Sisters, there are times
   when everything goes very smoothly with us. Everybody treats us kindly.
   We are much in religious exercises. We go from Prayer Meetings to
   lectures, from

   lectures to sermons, and from sermons to our room and to our Bibles. We
   do not get vexed or troubled and we begin to think, "Now I really am
   somewhat of a superior being. I think I am not what I used to be--I
   never could be roused to that old anger which once flamed out so
   furiously, nor could I now be led into such fretfulness as once was
   known to overcome me." I have noticed--take my experience for what it
   is worth--that the most dangerous time in the Christian's life is when
   he has been nearest to God in devotion. You meet the devil and not
   expecting him, he is too much for you. It is just when you have been
   most spiritual that the temptation which you had almost thought would
   never come again, trips you up, and ah, how soon you find that if when
   upon the mountain, your face glowed, down in the valley, again, unless
   your Master holds you up, your foot will slip and your face will be
   covered with the filthiness of the valley! Remember, child of God, let
   others say what they will to you, that the dictates of experience and
   the teachings of God's Word lead you to the remembrance that there is
   still in you a spirit that lusts after all manner of evil, a nature
   which, if it were not curbed and confined by the Grace of God, would
   make you again to be what you were, yes, and would bring into your
   house seven devils worse than the first! Never conceive that any one of
   the evils of your nature is so dead that it cannot have a resurrection.
   Strive against every form of sin, every thought of sin, every carnal
   tendency, every evil pas-sion--and when you have striven most, never
   count your victory to be complete until your feet are within the pearly
   gate! Never reckon that you may take off your helmet and lay aside your
   sword and say, "The battle is fairly won," until you have crossed the
   River of Death and go waving the banner of love in the streets of the
   New Jerusalem!

   David brings this to remembrance and that, too, in the most forcible
   words. Some of the children of God can use very terrible words about
   what they feel in their own nature, so that ungodly men say of them,
   "How bad these Christians must be!" It is not that they are worse than
   others, but that they have the sense to see the evil. A man in a black
   coat may have a hundred spots and blots upon it, but nobody will see
   them--but let him wear a coat of white and if there is only a little a
   speck of mire, it is immediately perceived! The holier the Christian
   becomes, the more readily he perceives his imperfections and the
   wickedness of his sins--and sin, instead of becoming more bearable to a
   Christian, becomes growingly more and more intolerable! A man in the
   water may bear much--in fact, much of it might roll over his head and
   he would not feel the weight of it--but let him come out on the dry
   land and put but a small quantity of water in a bucket and how heavy it
   is when he carries it upon his head! When he is in the water, he does
   not feel the weight, for it presses him on all sides--but get him out
   of the water and then he begins to feel its gravity. So, a sinner in
   his sin is like a man in the deep--he does not feel the weight of his
   sin. But get him out of it, bring him into a new element, and then
   immediately sin becomes exceedingly sinful! Oh, if we could but be
   perfect! If it were possible to be rid of this evil nature! So we sigh
   and so we cry, waiting for the adoption, for the coming of the Lord,
   for the perfecting of our nature as it shall be, by-and-by, when the
   furnace work of Providence and the refining work of Divine Grace shall
   all be done!

   It is a gloomy thing to bring to your remembrance, my dear Friends, but
   it is often brought to mine, and I know it is good for me--what you
   were by nature, and what you still are, unless the Grace of God
   prevents it. Remember old John Bradford's remark whenever he saw a man
   go by his window to Tyburn to be hanged--and he lived at that time
   where he saw them all--"Ah," he said, "there goes John Bradford if the
   Grace of God had not prevented." It is said that a Scotchman once went
   to see Rowland Hill and, sitting down, he looked at the lines in his
   face. He looked a long while, till Rowland smilingly said, "And what
   are you looking at, my Friend?" "I am looking at the lines in your
   face, Mr. Hill." "And what," said he, "do you make of them?" "Why, that
   if the Grace of God had not saved you, you would have been a great
   rogue." "Ah," said Rowland, "and you have hit the mark!" It is even so,
   and even worse than that! If the Grace of God had not come into our
   hearts and made new creatures of us, we had been equal to the devil,
   or, at any rate, it would not have been our fault if we had not
   excelled even Apollyon, himself, in rebellion and enmity to God! A
   third thing the Psalm brings to our remembrance is-- III. OUR MANY
   ENEMIES.

   David says that his enemies laid snares for him, sought his hurt, spoke
   mischievous things and devised and imagined deceits all day long.
   "Well," says one, "how was it that David had so many enemies? How could
   he make so many? Must he not have been imprudent and rash, or, perhaps,
   morose?" It does not appear so in his life. He rather made enemies by
   his being scrupulously holy. His enemies attacked him not because he
   was wicked, but, as he says in this very Psalm, they were his enemies
   because he loved the thing which is good. Now, you must not suppose
   that because you seek to live in all peaceableness and righteousness,
   that, therefore, everybody will be peaceable towards you. Far from it!
   Our Lord put us upon the right tack when He said, "I came not to send
   peace upon earth, but a sword." The ultimate result of the religion of
   Christ is to make peace everywhere--but the first result is to cause
   strife. When the Light of God comes, it must contend with the darkness.
   When the Truth of God comes, it must first combat error. And when the
   Gospel comes, it must meet with enemies--and the man who receives the
   Gospel will find that his foes shall be they of his own household. You
   shall not be helped by an ungodly father, nor be cheered onward by an
   un-Christian mother. One would think that even nature, itself, might
   lead parents to admire that which should make their children virtuous,
   preserve them in this life and bless them in the life to come. But such
   is the enmity of the human heart against Christ and His Gospel, that
   hundreds of parents have been monsters to their children when those
   children have been obedient subjects to Christ! Why those stakes, those
   dungeons and those racks? Why the snows of Piedmont dyed scarlet with
   human gore? Why the glens of Scotland marked with the lurking places of
   the saints? Because this world hates the people of God! "You are not of
   the world," says Christ, "even as I am not of the world, and therefore
   the world hates you." It is good to be reminded of this, that we may
   not be astonished at the fiery trial as though some strange thing had
   happened to us! It is the part and lot of the follower of the true to
   have to contend with deadly odds.

   And remember, Christian, you have enemies who seek to turn you aside
   and do you mischief. You are not now traveling along a road that is
   safe for your feet, in which there is no enemy whatever, but behind
   every hedge there lurks a foe. Whether you are in high or low estate,
   temptation will assail you. It is not possible for you to shut the door
   so quickly as to shut out temptations to sin! Snares assail you in your
   bed and at your table--snares will be about your feet at home and
   abroad, with your fellow workmen and in the bosom of your family. Be
   always on the alert then. Travel with a naked sword--never sheath it.
   "Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation," and until you have
   come out of the enemy's country, into the land that flows with milk and
   honey, always hear your Captain say, "What I say unto you I say unto
   all--watch." Watch--especially watch against those who come to you with
   words softer than butter which inwardly are drawn swords! Watch against
   temptations that appeal to your pleasure. You need not be so much
   afraid of that which grieves you as of that which charms you. Watch
   against the fair siren whose fascinating song will attract you from the
   billowy deep with the hope of rest to where, alas, you will find
   shipwreck and ruin! Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it
   sparkles in the cup, when it moves itself aright. Let the charm of the
   temptation be the warning to you. Let the pleasure be the very beacon
   which shall make you turn aside from it, feeling that there must be
   evil lurking there. Christian, be always on your guard! Never be taken
   by surprise. Once more-- IV. THE PSALM REMINDS US OF OUR GRACIOUS GOD.

   Anything which drives us to God is a blessing and anything which weans
   us from leaning on an arm of flesh, and especially that weans us from
   trying to stand alone, is a blessing to us! Think awhile how much you
   owe to the Grace of God who has preserved you until now. The man who
   carries a bombshell within his heart, and has to walk through the midst
   of sparks, may wonder that he has not been blown to pieces--

   "Kept alive with death so near, I to God the glory give."

   With such a heart as mine, if You, O Lord, had not held me fast, I had
   long ago declined and turned back to the world! Praise the Grace that
   has held you till now! Keep in remembrance the patience of God in
   enduring with you, the power of God in restraining you, the love of God
   in instructing you and the goodness of God in keeping you to this day.

   Nor ought we ever to forget with regard to our inward depravity and the
   Grace of God, that mighty work which the Holy Spirit has undertaken. I
   was trying the other day in my own mind to weigh in the scales the work
   of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit--and the only conclusion I
   could come to was this--that I did not know which in its execution was
   the more difficult, or which in its results was the more precious. For
   Christ to take the guilt of sin and suffer was certainly a marvelous
   thing, but for the Holy Spirit to condescend to dwellin our hearts and
   to combat day by day with our sin until He should eradicate the very
   principle of selfishness and make us to be holy even as God is
   holy--this is a work worthy of God! And if the former work, that of
   Christ, was Divine, certainly this is no less so! Oh, let us never
   depreciate the Holy Spirit's work, but looking forward to what we are
   to be, as well as backwards upon what we were, let us magnify the Holy
   Spirit with our heart, soul and strength who has worked all our works
   in us and by whom we shall be presented faultless before the Presence
   of God without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing!

   "My God, I thank You for reminding me of Yourself, of Your Son by whom
   I am cleansed, of Your Holy Spirit by whom I am sanctified, of Yourself
   by whom I am daily succored. Oh, bind me to Yourself with tenfold cords
   and as your Providence brings me where I have to encounter new sins,
   and new trials, and to experience new deliverances and new mercies, may
   You be brought more closely to my soul and may everything bring You to
   remembrance." We never walk so safely as when we walk with God. We are
   never so rich as when we are poor in everything without Him, and never
   so strong as when we are weakness, itself, except for such strength as
   we get from our invisible Helper. Lean heavily there, Christian. Lean
   heavily! You can never make that arm weak. Bear with all your
   weight--He can never tire. Cast all your burden upon Him. You may even
   be glad to have a burden to cast there, so that you may have
   opportunities of knowing and proving the power and faithfulness of your
   God. Tonight, as your troubles have been brought to remembrance, let
   those bring your weakness to remembrance--let that bring your God to
   remembrance and so do you go up the rungs of the ladder from the bottom
   of the horrible pit and of the miry clay, to the very heights ofjoy and
   gladness! And as you go say, "My God, You are mine--mine, despite my
   sin--mine to deliver me from it all and to make me like Yourself, to
   dwell with You forever."

   Brothers and Sisters, the mercy is that all the badness that we see in
   ourselves does not at all affect our standing before God, or our belief
   in our own personal safety! Though I see within myself all that is foul
   and corrupt, everything that is villainous and even devilish, by
   nature, yet do I know that I am saved and rejoice that neither death
   nor Hell shall divide me from my Master's bosom, for our standing rests
   not in ourselves, but wholly in what Christ has done! His perfect work
   presents to us a foundation upon which we can build securely--and
   though we grieve daily over indwelling sin and have come to God with
   many a bitter accusation against ourselves, yet glory be to His name,
   Christ changes not and our acceptance in the Beloved does not wax and
   wane like the moon, but abides in one sacred, high, eternal noonday
   never to go down! Glory be to God, and let our souls exult in such
   mercy as this!

   I would to God as I bring these things to your remembrance, that you
   would remember how many have forgotten these things all their lives.
   How many of your own companions live as if there were no God and no
   hereafter? I bring them to your remembrance. Pray for them and do what
   you can to lead them to Jesus!

   I wish I could bring to theirremembrance that they must die and that
   after death there comes the judgment--and that the judgment for an
   unpardoned soul means eternal destruction from the Presence of the
   Lord! Oh you who have much remembrance for the things of this world
   that are not worth remembering, for awhile use that faculty for nobler
   ends. Scrape not up the mire of the streets, but begin to gather a
   little of the pure gold that God puts before you! Think upon your
   latter end! Think upon the Gospel which now is preached to you. Think
   upon the time when it shall be preached to you no more! Think of the
   hour when you shall be called to account for having rejected the
   Gospel's invitation. Whoever trusts Jesus shall be saved. Rely upon
   what Jesus has done and, guilty as you are, your sins shall be
   forgiven!

   God grant that it may be so with you, for His love's sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS 6.

   Verse 1 What shall we say, then?Shall we continue in sin that Grace may
   abound?The 5th Chapter ends up in this way, that "where sin abounded,
   etc.. Jesus Christ our Lord." Then he goes on to say, "What shall we
   say, then?" What inference shall we draw from the fact that where sin
   abounded, Grace did much more abound? Shall we be base enough to draw a
   wicked inference from a gracious statement? Shall we continue in sin
   that Grace may abound? It is a horrible suggestion and yet it is one
   which has come into the minds of many men, for some men are bad enough
   for anything--they will curdle the sweet milk of love into the most
   sour argument for sin! "Shall we continue in sin that Grace may abound?
   God forbid!" With all the vehemence of his nature, he says--

   2. God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer
   therein?The Grace of God makes us dead to sin. This is the Grace of God
   which delivers us from the power of evil--and if this is so, how can we
   live any longer therein?

   3. Know you not, that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ
   were baptized into His death? If we are in Christ at all, we are
   partakers of His death and as His was a death for sin and a death to
   sin, we are made partakers of it--we are really dead because Christ
   died and we are in Him. Therefore we are dead to the old life, to the
   old way of sin. We signify that by our baptism.

   4. Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as
   Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so
   we also should walk in newness of life. Our Baptism, solemn as it was,
   was a great acted lie, a living pretense unless we are dead to our
   former way of living and have come to live unto God in a new life
   altogether, by virtue of the Resurrection of Christ from the dead!

   5. For if we have been planted together in the likeness ofHis death, we
   shall be also in the likeness ofHis Resurrection. If we have partaken
   of His death, we partake also of His rising power. We live because He
   lives and we live as He lives, not after the old manner, but in newness
   of life.

   6. Knowing this, that our oldman is crucified with Him, that the body
   of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.We
   are to regard ourselves as persons that have been dead. We are
   ourselves, it is true, and yet in another sense we are not ourselves.
   We are not to look upon ourselves as though we owed any kind of service
   to the power which we obeyed before we knew the Lord. We are new
   people--we have a new life and have entered upon a new exis-tence--the
   old man is crucified with Him

   7. 8. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we are dead with
   Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.There was no
   getting free from the power of sin except by dying to it but, being
   dead to it, we are free from it and, now being dead that way, we have
   entered into a new life that we might live as Christ lives!

   9. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more; death
   has no more dominion over Him. So we, being raised from our former
   death, shall die no more--death has no more dominion over us. That is
   to say, sin cannot reign in us again--we are dead to it, we are brought
   into a new life that can never end, even as our Lord Jesus Christ is.
   There is a parallel between us and Christ, even as there is a union
   between us.

   10. For in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He lives,
   He lives unto God. And so do we! We have died unto sin once, but now
   that we live, we live unto God.

   11. 12. Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead, indeed, unto
   sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin,
   therefore, reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the
   lusts thereof It is in the body that it tries to reign. These poor
   things, these mortal frames of ours, have so many passions, so many
   desires, so many weaknesses, all of which are apt to bring us under the
   dominion of sin unless we watch with great care.

   13. Neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness
   unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from
   the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
   "Neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto
   sin"--neither eyes, nor ears, nor hands, nor feet--neither suffer any
   of these to become the tools of sin, "but yield yourselves unto God."
   He is ready to use you! Lay all the powers of your nature out as tools
   for Him to use. "Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from
   the dead." He is not the God of the dead--He cannot use the dead, but
   He is the God of the living--and as you profess to have received a new
   life in Christ, yield up all the faculties of this new life unto the
   living God, "and your members as instruments of righteousness unto

   God."

   14. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the
   Law, but under Grace. When you were under the Law, sin did get dominion
   over you! That Law which was ordained to life, worked towards death.
   The evil concupiscence of your nature revolted against the command and
   led you astray. But now, Beloved, it is of love and Grace, and now sin
   cannot get in--stronger motives shall hold you to holiness than ever
   held you before, and the Grace of God, itself, like a wall of fire,
   shall guard you from the dominion of sin!

   15. What then?Shall we sin because we are not under the Law, but under
   Grace? God forbid!That must not be! Again the evil spirit crops up,
   trying to turn the Grace of God into licentiousness, and to make us
   feel free to sin because of God's love--that must not be!

   16. Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey,
   his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of
   obedience unto righteousness?It is a wonderful heart-searching text, is
   this! Let us put ourselves under its power. Whatever you obey, that is
   your master! And if you obey the suggestions of sin, you are the slave
   of sin! And it is only as you are obedient to God that you are truly
   the servants of God. So that, after all, our out-

   ward walk and conversation are the best test of our true condition.
   Without holiness no man shall see the Lord, nor can he have any reason
   to believe that he belongs to God.

   17. But God be thanked that you were the servants of sin, but you have
   obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Or
   into which you were delivered. God has taken you, melted you down, and
   poured you into a new mold! God be thanked for that--you are not what
   you used to be. Although you are not what you hope to be, yet you have
   reason to bless God you are not what once you were--you have obeyed
   from the heart that form of doctrine into which you were delivered.

   18. Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of
   righteousness. The fetters are struck off, the lusts of the flesh do
   not hold us any longer. We are the Lord's free men and women--and out
   of gratitude for this glorious freedom, we become the willing servants
   of the righteous God!

   19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your
   flesh: for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanliness
   and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants
   to righteousness unto holi-ness.It needs no explanation. In the days of
   our sin, we sinned with all our power. There was not one part of us but
   what became the willing servant of sin and we went from iniquity into
   iniquity! But now the Cross has made us entirely new and we have been
   melted down, poured out into a fresh mold. Now, let us yield every
   member of our body, soul and spirit to righteousness, even unto
   holiness, till the whole of us, in the wholeness and consequently the
   holiness of our nature, shall be given unto God.

   20. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from
   righteousness. You did not care about righteousness then. When you
   served sin, you felt it was utterly indifferent to you what the claims
   of righteousness might be. Well, now that you have become the servant
   of righteousness, be free from sin! Let sin have no more dominion over
   you, now, than righteousness used to have when you were the slaves of
   sin! "What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now
   ashamed?" What profit did they ever bring you? There was a temporary
   delight, like the blossom on the tree in spring, but what fruit did you
   find? Did it ever come to anything? Is there anything to look back upon
   with pleasure in a life of sin? Oh no, those things whereof we are now
   ashamed were fruitless to us, "for the end of those things is death."

   22, 23. But now beingmade free from sin, and being servants to God, you
   have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the
   wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through
   Jesus Christ our Lord.

   ISAIAH53.

   This is a Chapter which you have read hundreds of times, perhaps. I am
   sure it is one that needs no comment from me. I shall read it through
   with scarcely a sentence of comment.

   Verses 1-9. Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm ofthe
   LORD revealed? For He shallgrow up before Him as a tender plant, and as
   a root out of a dry ground: He has no form nor comeliness; and when we
   shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is
   despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorro ws and acquainted with
   grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised and
   we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our
   sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
   But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
   iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
   stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
   turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the
   iniquity of us all He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He
   opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as
   a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth. He was
   taken from prison and from judgment and who shall declare His
   generation? For He was cut off out ofthe land ofthe living: for the
   transgression of My people was He stricken. And He made His grave with
   the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He has done no
   violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth A strange reason for
   making His grave with the wicked, and yet remember, if it had not been
   that He had done no violence, He would not have been fit to be a
   Substitute for sinners! And so He was numbered with transgressors to
   redeem men.

   10, 11, 12. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to
   grief when You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see
   His seed. He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure ofthe Lord shall
   prosper in His hands. He shall see ofthe travail ofHis soul, and shall
   be satisfied; by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many;
   for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore willIdivide Him aportion
   with the great, andHe shall divide the spoil with the strong because He
   has poured out His soul unto death; and He was numbered with the
   transgressors; and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for
   the transgressors. How clearly you have before you, here, our blessed
   Redeemer, and how strong are the expressions used by Isaiah to set
   forth His Substitution. If he intended to teach us the Doctrine that
   Christ suffered in the place of His people, he could not have used more
   expressive words. And if he did not intend to teach us that Truth of
   God, it is marvelous that he should have adopted a phraseology so
   likely to mislead. Yes, we believe and hold it fast, that Christ did
   take the sins of His people verily and truly upon Himself and did, in
   proper Person make a complete expiation for the guilt of all His
   chosen! And in this we find our hearts' best confidence--

   Our soul can on this Doctrine live,

   Can on this Doctrine die!"

   Have you and I an interest in this Atonement, or must the complaint be
   made concerning us--"Who has believed our report, and to whom is the
   arm of the Lord revealed?" While I was reading just now, could you say
   by faith, "Yes, surely He has borne our griefs and carried oursorrows"?
   Have you an appropriating faith which takes the sufferings of Christ to
   be its own? Do you now humbly, but yet confidently, look to Jesus
   Christ, the great Burden-Bearer on yonder tree, and know that your
   guilt was there? If so, rejoice and walk worthily of your calling! If
   not, Soul, you do not know the first letters of the alphabet of
   religion! May the Lord teach you, for His name's sake.
     __________________________________________________________________

Knowing and Doing

   (No. 3348)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING,
   SEPTEMBER 20, 1868.

   "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them." John 13:17.

   The original scope of these words was just this--"If, as you say, you
   have understood the meaning of this--the washing of your feet by your
   Master--if you have comprehended My intention in so doing, then it will
   be to your lasting honor and happiness if you do the same. I have
   symbolically represented to you, by washing your feet, certain virtues.
   You shall be a happy people if these virtues are found in you and
   abound." And have we not abundant proof that our Lord spoke the truth,
   for where are churches as happy as where they are knit together in
   brotherly love, where they have laid aside contentions about priority
   and distinction and where each one becomes a servant of all--everyone
   willing to take the lowest place and no one contending who shall be the
   greatest! May we prove, as I trust in our measure we have already done,
   how true these words are, and never may Diotrephes be in our midst to
   strive for the preeminence, nor a root of bitterness spring up to
   trouble us! May we, everyone, try to be like our Lord and happy,
   indeed, shall we be in such a case.

   But the sentence before us is equally applicable to every other Gospel
   precept. If we understand anything which the Holy Spirit has revealed
   to us, happy shall we be if we follow its practical intention--if,
   being first taught and instructed--we afterward practically exemplify
   in our life and conduct the things which we have learned! That is the
   one thought I propose to lay upon our hearts and minds this evening!
   And that one thought may be enough.

   You will notice in the text that there are two "ifs"--"If you know
   these things, happy are you if you do them." It appears, then, first,
   that genuine and acceptable service to Christ should be based upon
   intelligent knowledge--"If you know these things." And secondly, that
   all intelligent understanding of the things of God should lead us to
   the practice of them--"Happy are you if you do them." The first "if
   shall be taken first--"If you know these things"--

   I. ALL SERVICE OF CHRIST IS BASED UPON INTELLIGENT KNOWLEDGE.

   Our first observation is that this is an "if even in this country. "If
   you know these things." Alas, even in such a city as this, where the
   Gospel is to be heard in all our streets and Bibles are to be found in
   all our homes, it is so sad that tens of thousands do not know these
   things! They are so careless about what God has revealed that they will
   not even cross the threshold to listen to the Word of God! This day
   what a mass of Sabbath-breaking has grieved the Spirit of God! All
   around us there are those who are toiling hard six days in the week for
   themselves and cannot give to their God and, I may add, to their truer
   and nobler selves, this one day in which to think of Him. He has
   written to them the great things of His Law and they have trifled with
   it! He speaks to them and invites them to hear that their souls may
   live, but they would rather rest in their beds, or be found in any kind
   of pleasure sooner than seeking pleasure in the ways of God! Pity this
   poor city, you who know its sins! Pray for it, you who know its high
   privileges and solemn responsibilities! Work for it, you who have power
   with the heavenly Father, until at last the blessing shall come and men
   shall no longer need to say to their fellows, "Know the Lord."

   Alas, this is an "if," however, which does not merely concern those who
   are outside our walls. There are many who know not these things, though
   they hear about them--and the reason is because while they come to the
   place of worship, and the sound of the preaching glides across their
   ears, they never give deep, earnest attention to it They say that
   preaching is dull--very possibly it is--but it is very amazing that it
   should not be still duller when people have no concern to get into its
   inner meaning, but find it quite enough to come and to go like a door
   on its hinges! Full often from the hum-

   blest teacher something might be learned if we were but anxious to be
   taught. Or if we learned little by what he said, his very emotions
   might remind us and one thought, however commonplace, might engender
   another--and it would not be altogether without profit to sit together
   in the assembly of the saints.

   Oh, how negligently do some hear! They are thinking of their homes, of
   their horses, of their cattle, of their farm and their merchandise. God
   gets no such attention from men as legatees give the lawyer when he
   reads the will. If men would listen to the preaching of the Gospel but
   half as well as they listen to sweet music, there might be hope of its
   being a blessing to them! But many understand not the things of God
   because of their negligent hearing of it.

   Alas, too, there are some who attend at least with an outward attention
   which we cannot blame, but they know not the things of God because they
   have not yet found out that the letter, that is, the external word, is
   a killing thing, and that it is the inner and spiritual sense which is,
   alone, to be sought after To listen to a Doctrine, for instance, is
   right enough, and to catch the theory of it and be able to repeat the
   definition may be in some respects valuable. But it is imperative to
   get into the soul and spirit of that teaching of God which alone is
   spirit and truth and, consequently, food to the spiritual man! Dead
   orthodoxy, mere doctrinal correctness--these will never land men in
   Heaven because they do not even put them into the Kingdom of Heaven
   now! Men who merely have these are like botanists who know not the
   flowers, but only know the names of the divisions and the orders. They
   are like physicians who speak of drugs they have never seen or used,
   who would attempt to deal with men's bodies before they had even
   studied anatomy or seen a bone!

   We need to come to the tasting and handling of God's Word. And all the
   hearing in the world will end in nothing unless the soul gets still
   closer and in the very soul and secret of the Truths of God. Hence
   there is an "if," an "if about the best of hearers, about the most
   intelligent--"If you knowthese things"--you may have listened to them,
   have drunk them in from the earliest days of your life, but unless the
   Holy Spirit has revealed them to you, flesh and blood cannot do so and
   you cannot, therefore, know them!

   It is greatly to be regretted that there are some persons who do not
   know the Truth of God because they have no care to know at all They
   have a contempt for anything that God reveals. They are wise men and,
   therefore, they spend their whole lifetime in studying a piece of rock,
   or in collecting specimens of beetles, or in any wonderfully wise track
   of science! But to listen to the eternal Jehovah is quite beneath them!
   To hear what He has been pleased to say concerning Himself in His own
   Word seems to them to be trifling. Have I not often met with men who
   would think it to be worth years of study to make the idlest possible
   conjectures about the formation of a limestone rock, who yet would
   laugh in one's face if one began to speak about the soul and the things
   of the world to come? And these are wise men--at least according to
   their own estimate of themselves! Whether or not they are fools shall
   remain for the future to reveal to them--may they find it out before
   the discovery shall be too late!

   Others never will become intelligent in the things of God because they
   are prejudiced. They have made up their minds that they doknow--and he
   who thinks he knows will never learn. The conceptions which they
   received early in life--their training, the fancies which they have
   forged for themselves as being what should be the truth--these occupy
   their minds and they cannot see the things of God because the mind has
   been blinded with other matters. Would to God that we could be clear of
   prejudice and clear of unholy contempt for God's Truth--and could come
   simply to Him and ask to be taught as a child by the great Father and
   lay bare our bosoms that the Holy Spirit might cast out error from us
   and might write the mind and will of God there clearly! Then, indeed,
   with such a humble submission and a Divinely earnest desire, there need
   be no longer an "if" as to whether we learn these things. There is an
   "if," however.

   Let us now observe that we ought never to rest content while there is
   an "if""If you know these things." My God, is it a question whether I
   know You or not, whether I know Christ or not, whether I know the
   Revelation which You have given to us or not? Then begin to teach me
   now! Oh, Sirs, it will not do to trifle with an ignorance which shall
   be our lasting ruin! We ought not to give sleep to our eyes until we
   have asked to be taught of God! To be ignorant about the things of
   ordinary daily life is not wisdom, but to be ignorant about eternal
   life is stark madness!

   An uneducated man stands but little chance in the battle of this life.
   A man uneducated for eternity--alas, how exposed is he to innumerable
   adversaries, how sure to fall, how certain to perish! Go, I pray you,
   Brothers and Sisters, go to the Wise One for wisdom! Go to this Book
   for the Light of God! Go to the Holy Spirit, Himself, for Divine
   instruction and let it not be any longer with you a matter of question
   as to whether you are taught of God or not! Oh, I would speak very
   earnestly here. I do not ask that you should be learned. I do not ask
   for myself that I may be profound. But I

   do pray that we may comprehend with all saints what are the heights and
   depths and know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, or at least
   may know Him and be found in Him, clothed in His righteousness and
   accepted in His merits. It ought not to be an "if."

   But, supposing that there is no "if with any of us, then what ground is
   there for gratitude! If the Savior need not say, "If you know these
   things," but if we can say, "Lord You know that we love You, that we
   rest in You, that we serve You, that we have been taught of Your
   Spirit," then there is no room for self-congratulation, no room for
   pride! What have you which you have not received? Thank God, dear
   Friend, that you were not born amidst the heathenism of Africa! Thank
   God that you were not left to the Sabbath-breaking of London! Thank God
   that when you did hear the Word, it broke through the outer door and
   came into the inner chamber of your soul! Thank God that that passage
   of Scripture was not sent to you, "Come and speak to this people and
   make their ears heavy that they shall not hear, for their hearts have
   grown gross"! Blessed be the distinguishing Grace that enabled us, who
   once were as incapable of this as the dead in their graves, to see and
   hear spiritually!

   What should come of it? Why, if you know these things and have learned
   them by the Spirit of God, make it the method of showing your gratitude
   to try and be His instruments in teaching others! If you know these
   things, be not silent. If you know these things, wrap not up these
   blessed secrets in your hearts as though they were committed to you
   only for your own personal enjoyment, but in the name of Him who gave
   such a priceless gift, go and tell wherever your tongue can be heard,
   the good news of the salvation of Jesus Christ! And perhaps God may
   make you a blessing to some of His hidden ones who as yet have not come
   to Christ.

   Thus much about the first "if." It looks to me like the first arch--and
   having passed through it, I can see another beyond me--and I must pass
   to the second if I would get the happiness.

   II. THE INTELLIGENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE THINGS OF GOD SHOULD LEAD US TO
   THE PRACTICE

   OF THEM.

   "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them."

   This second "if" applies to all the things which we have been taught of
   God. Let me give you, however, a specimen. Saving Truths--if you know
   them, happy are you if you do them! This is a saving Truth of God--that
   whoever trusts in Jesus Christ is saved. You know that. If there is
   anything you ought to know, you who come to this house, you ought to
   know that, for it is the staple of all our sermonizing every
   Lord's-Day--that a simple confidence in Jesus Christ, the Savior, saves
   the soul! Happy are you, then, if you have exercised this simple
   confidence, for then you are saved! If you have trusted with the whole
   weight of your sin upon Jesus, you have the happiness of being saved,
   accepted, secure. Saving Truths ought to, every one of them, be the
   first objects of practice. That same Spirit who teaches us the Truths
   of God enables us to put them into action in our daily life. Dear
   Hearer, have you been a hearer of the good message, but have been a
   hearer, only? If so, you have missed the joy of the whole business! I
   pray you go a step farther and believe and live!

   After saving Truths come purifying Truths. Such is the Doctrine of the
   Holy Spirit's indwelling. The Holy Spirit dwells in Believers and where
   He dwells, there should be purity, peace, holiness and purging out of
   sin.

   You believe this, but happy are you if you seek so to act. If you pray
   that you may not grieve the Spirit of God, nor cause Him to depart from
   you, your daily anxiety shall bring its results and you shall be happy.

   Then, there are certain ennobling Truths in God's Word and happy are we
   if we do them. Such is the Truth of Divine Adoption. Every Believer is
   a child of God. Happy are we if we live like one, if we exercise the
   privileges of heirs, if we come to our Father with a child-like
   confidence, if we plead with Him as a dear son asking a generous Father
   to supply his needs. Remember that every Doctrine of the Gospel has a
   practice appended to it and that to get the happiness out of the
   Doctrine you must put its preceptory part, or its practical inference,
   into action. You may be as orthodox as you please, but your orthodoxy
   shall be only like so many grapes untrodden in the winepress! But if
   you cast them into your daily life, then shall the luscious juice run
   forth and you shall be satisfied with favor and be full of the goodness
   of the Lord! Bread on the table will not satisfy you, nor will mere
   Doctrine. The bread must be taken and eaten--and assimilated--and then
   shall it comfort you. And so with the Truth of God--it must be a part
   of yourself and be worked out into your daily life--or else the
   happiness of it cannot be yours.

   If there were time tonight, I would make an inventory of all the Truths
   of Scripture and say after each one, "If you know these things, happy
   are you if you do them." If you know it to be a privilege to be united
   with God's people, come and join the Church! If you know that Jesus
   bids you be baptized and come to His Table to remember Him, I pray you
   be not disobedient, even to what you may think to be His least
   commandment! Whenever you get the glimpse of a Truth from God's Word,
   or in your conscience by His Spirit, never be a traitor to the heavenly
   vision! Depend upon it, it is a terrible thing to trifle with
   knowledge! Some men would not see when they might have seen--and they
   have always been blind. Many a man who might have led the van in the
   Church of God, and have helped on a glorious reformation, has stepped
   back from the forefront because, perhaps, of some spurious charity with
   which he indulged the flesh--and he has gone back into the rear--to the
   vile dust from whence he sprang! But he that is faithful to God,
   faithful to the convictions of his conscience--and carries all out into
   practice--shall be among those to whom the Master shall say, "Well
   done," at the last. I say to every Truth in Scripture there is a
   practical conclusion and I beseech you to see to it that you hear
   Christ say, "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them."

   Why is it that the practice of a Truth of God is required to the
   enjoyment of the happiness which it brings? Answer--this is always
   God's rule. The ground is fat and full of bread, but the farmer, by his
   tillage, must bring out the corn. Down deep in the heart of the earth
   are the stores of gold and silver--there gleam the precious ores in
   quantities that might make even Croesus, himself, to blush for poverty!
   But the metal starts not up from the soil by itself. It must be dug
   for--it must be cast into the furnace and separated from the ore. There
   shall be wealth in many nations, and trade shall bring comforts to all
   ranks, but the sea must be traversed, the sails must be spread, the
   voyage must be made! Labor everywhere shall bring enjoyment, but
   without labor there shall be none. God is not the God of idleness! He
   speaks not to the earth to bid it bring food to the door of the idler.
   He commands neither the ravens nor any other of His creatures to bring
   bread and meat for the sluggards. There shall always be practice, and
   then the result of work shall be the reward. So must it be in the
   things of God--you must put them into practice to get the blessing they
   hold! The laws of Nature are wonderful, and a knowledge of them
   desirable, but a knowledge of all the laws of Nature would never have
   reaped a field, built a house, found jewels in the mine, or even have
   made a steam engine without a furnace, a hammer and strenuous toil!

   All the knowledge with which a man can cram his brain cannot secure him
   in his daily needs until he transfers it from his brain to his right
   hand and sets to work with it! If you would get God's blessings, then,
   in Nature or in Grace, carry out the Divine Laws into immediate and
   energetic practice!

   In the next place, for God to give the comforts of His promises to men
   who will not obey His precepts would be to discourage all Christian
   effort. Every man would fold his arms and sit down. "If I am to have
   salvation without believing," says one, "why should I believe? If I am
   to have Grace given me without using such Grace as that which is
   already entrusted to me, then let me eat and drink, for Grace will come
   to me! Let me be as carnal as I like." But God will not so act as to
   give graceless hearts such an excuse!

   To give His blessing to those who do not practice His precepts would
   be, in fact, to give a premium for sin. The more knowledge, if that
   knowledge is not put into practice, the more sin, in consequence! Shall
   God reward a man who, sitting in the Light of God, will not walk by the
   Light? And shall He give enjoyments to those who know His will and who
   do not that will? No, Sirs, if blessings came to merely knowledge, I
   suppose the devil would be the most blessed of beings! Certainly if the
   comforts of the Gospel came to those who understand the Gospel best,
   but who do not practice it, there would be some of the vilest of
   mankind who would be orthodox enough--who would, on such a rule, go to
   Heaven! But they shall find themselves shut out when that judgment
   shall be given which proceeds upon this rule, "By their fruits you
   shall know them." You all see, without any reasoning from me, that it
   would seem strange, indeed, if God allowed the precepts of the Gospel
   to be trampled underfoot and then gave the same blessings to the
   rebellious as to the graciously obedient! It must not, shall not be!
   See we not, then, that our happiness from the things of God must come,
   not merely through knowledge, though that is the first stage of Divine
   Favor--but we must not rest satisfied until we pass into the second
   stage--the doingof what we have learned! We close with the question
   which the text naturally inspires--

   III. WHAT IS THE HAPPINESS WHICH THIS PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE BRINGS?

   Briefly, it is always a blessed thing to be obedient to God. The very
   soul of joy to the creature who wants to be truly happy is conformity
   to the will of the Creator. When God's will and ours keep pace
   together, it will be Heaven on earth to us! It is only when our will
   jars with the Divine mind that our soul's happiness departs, but when
   we are helped to lay

   aside self and say from our inmost soul, "Not my will, but Yours be
   done," and so come to be ruled and governed entirely by the Divine
   Mind, then shall we be in Paradise here below!

   Added to this, to increase our happiness if we do these things, we
   shall have the blessings promised to the doing thereof. We are no
   legalists. We do not believe in salvation by works, nor even in rewards
   given to men because of any merit on their part, but we do know that if
   Jesus says, "He that believes shall be saved," then he that believes
   will get that salvation and this will be the blessing which he enjoys,
   and so with every other new Covenant blessing!

   Brothers and Sisters, there is a happiness here in practical
   Christianity and there is a happiness hereafter. In mere nominal
   Christianity there is no happiness. Look at some of your professors.
   They have got religion enough to make them miserable! Their attendance
   at church or chapel--what is it but a bit of slavery? They would not go
   to church if they could help it, but they think it looks respectable.
   If they had their way and the force of custom were withdrawn, they
   would not be found among the worshippers! Look, I say, at many of them.
   The very sight of their Bible and Prayer Book seems to make their faces
   long and dismal at once. Prayer--is that a pleasure to them? To sing
   God's praise--is that a delight? No, far, far, far from it! And why is
   this? Because they have never, by Divine Grace, been led solemnly to
   trust in Jesus and earnestly to give themselves up to those Truths
   which only in their practical force and influence can make us
   happy--but which in their mere theory are "the letter which kills," and
   only in practice are they the spirit and life! Oh, that some of you
   church members would put in practice what you believe! Oh, Sirs, it is
   well enough to say that a Christian should be consistent, but if you
   are not honest in your business, how does your belief help you? It is
   well enough to say that a Christian should be godly, but if you are
   godless in your families--if family prayer is neglected and private
   prayer given up--what is the use of your beliefs, what the use of your
   perfect creeds? You may talk until doomsday about what you believe or
   what you do not believe, but it is that part of your belief which gets
   interwoven into the warp and woof of your daily life which affects your
   business, which really moves you, impels you, or restrains you
   according to whether you would do right or wrong--it is this, it is
   this, it is this, and it is just this, only, that is worth having! Your
   dead religion--it is a corpse--bury it! Your living godliness, your
   vital godliness, the godliness that vitalizes you and makes you live
   unto God and His Truth--this it is to be sought after--and may God in
   His mercy grant it to each one of us! "If you know these things, happy
   are you if you do them."

   And so we come to a conclusion by noticing that if the text were read
   in another form, it would read very solemnly, "If you know these
   things, unhappy, wretched, ruined are you if you do them not." I
   scarcely feel that I have either strength or will to enter upon the few
   sentences I meant to have uttered tonight. There are not many of you
   here who are ignorant of the Gospel. The most of this great assembly
   have read it and heard it, and if any should ask you, "What is the way
   of eternal life," you could give them a very ready answer. And, thank
   God, there are not a few of you who have put into practice this Gospel!
   You have looked to Jesus--you are resting in Him. You can say, while
   confessing many imperfections, that you desire to walk in the ways of
   obedience to Him who has redeemed you with His blood.

   But, painful reflection! There are many--very many--and you know who
   they are--who know these things, but do them not! Ten years ago they
   were greatly affected by a sermon and they vowed repentance. The season
   passed away and their conscience became crippled--no good results came.
   Some time ago, at an earnest Prayer Meeting, they were again pricked in
   conscience, but this time they were not so wounded as before. And now,
   tonight, they are just what they have always been--willing hearers,
   attentive hearers, kind friends to the Gospel in some respects,
   contributing towards any godly enterprise, but still they have not
   surrendered to God by believing in Christ--and so are still strangers
   to Him as the soul's Savior. And I have to ask them tonight whether it
   shall always be so, and, if not always, then how long? "How long halt
   you between two opinions?" And if it is not to be long, why not end it
   tonight? Oh, blessed Spirit, they do know! It is not this they need,
   but they need to feel! They do not love! They do not believe! Oh, give
   them these, that they may not go down into Hell with the accumulated
   responsibilities of abundant Light. "If I had not come and spoken to
   you," said Christ, "you had been without sin, but now you have no cloak
   for your sin." Oh, the godly mothers of some of you will rise up
   against you to condemn you, for you knew these things, but you did them
   not! Some of you, your conscience will speak with a voice of
   thunder--it will roar like a lion on you when God condemns you because
   you knew the Gospel and refused it--you understood the way of
   salvation, but you would not walk therein! There is no place more
   terrible to be lost than from the shadow of a pulpit! The more plain
   the Gospel, the more sure your ruin if you reject it! The more earnest
   the ministry that comes to you with its notes of warning and
   invitation, the more horrible your overthrow if your ears refuse the
   words of Jehovah's love! Tonight, I pray you--and I think I speak in
   God's name--cast in your lot with Christ and with God's people! You are
   guilty, but He is gracious and delights to pardon! You feel unworthy,
   and you are, but Christ receives the most undeserving! Rely upon Him
   now. You have nothing else that will suffice. Oh, cast yourselves upon
   Him! Happy shall you be if you do this. Other doings without this were
   mere legalism and vain, but this is the great work, the master work,
   the God work, that you believe on Jesus Christ whom God has sent!
   Trust, then, in Him, and your peace shall be like a river and your
   righteousness like the waves of the sea. Trifle no longer! Listen no
   longer merely with the outward ear, but now decide that if there is an
   inner sense, you will find it--if there is a secret Truth, you will
   hunt it out until you secure it.

   If there is a living Christ to pardon you and make you snowy clean,
   resolve you will find Him! If there is a road to Heaven, determine to
   find and walk in it. "And now farewell sin, farewell
   self-righteousness, farewell the shallow pleasures of this world!
   Jesus, take my heart just as it is--I give it up to You--and help me to
   do now what I have never done before--to put in practice what I hear,
   and carry out what I have been taught." So may God help you and we will
   meet in Heaven and we will say together there that this night's text
   was true, "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them." God
   help you to do them, now, for Christ's sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: HEBREWS 11.

   First, a definition of faith.

   Verses 1-3. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
   evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good
   report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the
   Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things
   which do appear. There was no pre-existent matter. The world was made
   by God's word, so that prior to the things which are seen, there
   existed that which is not seen. We, dear Friends, when we are trusting
   in the unseen God, are going back to first principles--we are getting
   to that which is the essence and the source of all. The next verse
   illustrates the worshipof faith.

   4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,
   by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of
   his gifts: and by it he, being dead, yet speaks. There is no
   worshipping God aright except by faith. The most gorgeous ceremonies
   are as nothing in His sight! It is the faith of the heart which He
   accepts. Next we read of the rewardof faith.

   5, 6. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and
   was not found, because God had translated him: for before his
   translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without
   faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must
   believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently
   seek Him. See this reward then--it pleases God--and that is reward
   enough for anyone of us. Next see faith's safety.

   7. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved
   with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by which he
   condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by
   faith. Faith can outlive a deluge which drowns the whole world! She has
   an Ark even when God's wrath sweeps all the rest away! Next we learn
   the obedience of faith.

   8-10. By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place
   which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed: and he went
   out, not knowing where he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of
   promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac
   and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a
   city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.Here you
   have the expectation of faith. Faith does not live on things seen--she
   lives on something yet to come. That which is to come she regards as
   eternal, not like a mere tent in which she dwells here, but a city that
   has foundations, fixed and firm. Next we see the strengthof faith, that
   strength seen in the deadness of nature.

   11-13. Through faith, also, Sara herself received strength to conceive
   seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she
   judged Him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of
   one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in
   multitude, andas the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These
   all diedin faith, not having received the promises, but having seen
   them afar of, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them,

   and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. That
   is a rich word, they, "embraced them." They were far off and yet faith
   brought them so near that they seemed to receive them to their hearts
   and feel the comfort of them! Next is the confession of faith.

   14-19. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a
   country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which
   they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But
   now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly one. Therefore
   God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them
   a city. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he
   that had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of
   whom it was said, That in Isaac shall your seed be called. Accounting
   that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from whence also
   he received him in a figure. Here you have the triumphof faith, one of
   the greatest victories that was ever achieved by faith, when a man was
   willing, at God's command, to offer up his son, his only son, his son
   according to promise, his son in whom all the Covenant was to be
   fulfilled! In the 20th verse you get the discern-mentof faith, faith
   foreseeing--

   20, 21. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to
   come. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of
   Joseph and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff You remember
   'his discernment, how he crossed his hands willingly that he might lay
   the right hand upon the younger son. Faith is always giving blessings
   to others and she knows which way to give them, for God makes her
   wondrous quick of heart and quick of eye.

   22, 23. By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of
   the children of Israel: and gave commandment concerning his bones. By
   faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents,
   because they saw he was aproper child; and they were not afraid of the
   king's commandment Here is the courageof faith--

   24, 25. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called
   the son ofPharaoh's daughter: Choosingra-ther to suffer affliction with
   thepeople of God than to enjoy thepleasures of sin for a season. Here
   is the choiceof faith--

   26. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures
   in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.Here is
   the judgmentof faith, by which she judges wisely, choosing rather to be
   reproached for Christ than to reign with the world.

   27, 28. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath ofthe king:
   for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. Through faith he kept
   the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest He that destroyed the
   first-born should touch them. Here, again, you have the obedienceof
   faith, taking God's precepts and carrying them out.

   29. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land: which the
   Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. There you have the difference
   between faith and presumption--faith goes through the sea. Presumption
   is drowned in the sea.

   30. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed
   about seven days. Here are the weapons of faith, the warfareof faith,
   with nothing but her ram's horn trumpet she encompasses the giant walls
   of the city and down they fall!

   31. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not
   when she had received the spies with peace. Here you have faith uniting
   itself with the people of God--she perished not with them that believed
   not, for she had come out from among them and allied herself with the
   people of God by receiving the spies.

   32-35. And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of
   Gideon, and ofBarak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae: of David, also,
   and Samuel, and of the Prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms,
   worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
   quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge ofthe sword, out of
   weakness were made strong, grew valiant in fight, turned to flight the
   armies ofthe aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again:
   and others were tortured, not excepting deliverance: that they might
   obtain a better resurrection. Oh the victories of faith! When faith
   takes to working, how mightily she works.

   36, 37. And others had trial of cruel mocking and scourging, yes,
   moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn
   asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about
   in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. You
   have seen the works of faith and the sufferings of faith--now you see
   God's estimate of faith. He counts the believing man to be far beyond
   the rest of mankind!

   38, 39. (Of whom the world was not worthy). They wanderedin deserts,
   andin mountains, andin dens and caves of the earth. All these all
   having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise.
   It lay in the future to them far more than it does to us, for Christ
   has now come and we look back to that glorious appearing of our Lord
   and Savior, but they had altogether to look forward.

   40. God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us
   shouldnot be madeperfect. For it never was God's intention that any
   part of His Church should be able to do without the rest of it, so that
   those who lived before the time of Christ cannot do without us--neither
   can we do without them.
     __________________________________________________________________

"The Garment of Praise"

   (No. 3349)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Isaiah 61:3.

   THE list of comforts which the Anointed has here prepared for His
   mourners is apparently inexhaustible. He seems as if He delighted to
   give "according to the multitude of His tender mercies" a very cloud of
   blessings. This is the third of His sacred exchanges--"the garment of
   praise for the spirit of heaviness." Grace, like its God, delights to
   be a trinity. This is also the broadest of the blessings, for whereas
   the first adorned the face with beauty, and the second anointed the
   head with joy, this last and widest covers the whole person with a
   garment of praise! Man's first vesture was of his own making and it
   could not cover his shame--but this garment is of God's making and it
   makes us comfortable in ourselves, and comely in the sight of God and
   man. They are better adorned than Solomon in all his glory, to whom God
   gives the garment of praise. May the blessed Spirit sweetly help us to
   bring out the rich meaning of this promise to mourners, for again I
   must remind you that these things are only given to them--and not to
   the thoughtless world.

   We have already noticed the variety of the consolation which Jesus
   brings to mourners--the Plant of Renown produces many lovely flowers
   with rich perfume and a multitude of choice fruits of dainty taste. Now
   we would call your attention to their marvelous adaptation to our
   needs. Man has a spirit and the gifts of Grace are spiritual. His chief
   maladies lie in his soul and the blessings of the Covenant deal with
   his spiritual needs. Our text mentions "the spirit of heaviness" and
   gives a promise that it shall be removed. The blessings which Jesus
   gives to us are not surface blessings, but they touch the center of our
   being! At first we may not perceive their depth, but only know that
   beauty is given instead of ashes--this might seem to be an external
   change. Further on, however, joy is given, instead of mourning, and
   this is inward--the thought has advanced, we are getting nearer the
   heart. But in the words before us, the very spirit of heaviness, the
   fountain from which the mourning flows, the hearth whereon the ashes
   are burned is dealt with and taken away--and instead thereof we receive
   the garment of praise! What a mercy it is that the blessings of the
   Everlasting Covenant belong to the realm of the spirit for, after all,
   the outward is transient, the visible soon perishes. We are grateful
   for the food and raiment which our bodies require, but our sterner need
   is nourishment, consolation and protection for our spirits. The
   Covenant of Grace blesses the man, himself--the soul--which is the
   essence of his life. It puts away the sordid sackcloth of despondency
   and robes the spirit in royal garments of praise. Judge you your state
   by your estimation of such favors, for if you have learned to prize
   them, they are yours! The worldling cares nothing for spiritual
   blessings. His beauty, joy, and praise are found in things which perish
   in the using. But those who know their preciousness have been taught of
   God and since they can appreciate them, they shall have them!
   Soul-mercy is the very soul of mercy and he whom the Lord blesses in
   his spirit, is blessed indeed!

   I want you still further to notice how these blessings grow as we
   proceed. At first, out of the triplet of favors here bestowed there was
   beauty given, instead of ashes. There is much there--beauty of personal
   character before God is no mean thing--yet a man might have that, and
   by reason of his anxiety of heart he might scarcely be aware of it.
   Doubtless many who are lovely in the sight of God spend much of their
   time in bewailing their own uncomeliness. Many a saint sorrows over
   himself, while others are rejoicing in him! Therefore, the next mercy
   given to the mourner in Zion is the oil of joy, which is a personal and
   conscious delight. The man rejoices. He perceives that he is made
   beautiful before God and he begins to joy in what the Lord has done for
   him and in the Anointed One from whom the oil of gladness descends.
   This is an advance upon the other, but now we come to the highest of
   all! Seeing that God has made him glad, he perceives his obligations to
   God and he expresses them in thankfulness--and so stands before the
   Most High like a white-robed priest, putting on praise as the garment
   in which he appears in the courts of the Lord's House, and is seen by
   his Brothers and

   Sisters. As you advance in the Divine Life, the blessings you receive
   will appear to be greater and greater. Some promising things become
   small by degrees and miserably less, but in the Kingdom of Heaven we go
   from strength to strength. The beginning of the Christian life is like
   the water in the pots at Cana, but in due time it blushes into wine.
   The pathway which we tread is, at first, bright as the dawn, but if we
   pursue it with sacred perseverance, its radiance will be as the perfect
   day! There shall be no going down of our sun, but it shall shine with
   increasing luster till it shall be as the light of seven days, and the
   days of our mourning shall be ended!

   I beg you also to mark that when we reach the greatest mercy and stand
   on the summit of blessing, we have reached a condition of
   praise--praise to God invests our whole nature. To be wrapped in praise
   to God is the highest state of the soul. To receive the mercy for which
   we praise God is something, but to be wholly clothed with praise to God
   for the mercy received is far more! Why, praise is Heaven, and Heaven
   is praise! To pray is Heaven below, but praise is the essence of Heaven
   above! When you bow lowest in adoration, you are at your very highest.
   The soul full of joy takes a still higher step when it clothes itself
   with praise. Such a heart takes to itself no glory, for it is dressed
   in gratitude and so hides itself. Nothing is seen of the flesh and its
   self-exaltation, since the garment of praise hides the pride of man.
   May you all who are heavy in spirit be so clothed upon with delight in
   the Lord, who has covered you with the robe of righteousness, that you
   may be as wedding guests adorned for the palace of the King with
   glittering garments of adoring love!

   Looking carefully into the words before us, we will dwell, first, upon
   the spirit of heaviness. Secondly, upon the promise implied in the
   text--that this shall be removed. And then, thirdly, upon the garment
   of praise which is to be bestowed. First, let us muse upon--

   I. THE SPIRIT OF HEAVINESS.

   We would not make this meditation doleful and yet it may be as well to
   set forth the night side of the soul, for thus we may the better show a
   sympathetic spirit and come more truly home to those who are in
   heaviness through manifold temptations. Some of us know by experience
   what the spirit of heaviness means. It comes upon us at times even now.
   There are many things in the body. There are many things in the family.
   There are many things in daily life which make us sad. Facts connected
   with the past and with the future cause us, at times, to hang our
   heads. We shall just now dwell upon those former times when we were
   under the spirit of heaviness on account of unpardoned sin. We cannot
   forget that we were in bondage in a spiritual Egypt. We would awaken
   our memories to remember the wormwood and the gall, the place of
   dragons and of owls.

   Observe that this heaviness is an inward matter and it is usually a
   grief which a man tries to keep to himself. It is not that he is sick
   in body, though his unbelieving friends fancy that he must surely be
   ailing, or he would not seem so melancholy. "He sits alone and keeps
   silent," and they say that he has a low fit upon him and they invite
   him out into company and try, if they can, to jest him out of his
   distress. The fact is that sin is pressing upon him, and well may the
   spirit be heavy when it has that awful load to carry! Day and night
   God's hand is also heavy upon him and well may his spirit be loaded
   down. Conviction of sin makes us as a cart that is loaded with
   sheaves--but it is intensely inward and, therefore, not to be
   understood by careless minds. "The heart knows its own bitterness and a
   stranger intermeddles not therewith."

   1 have known persons who have been the subject of this heaviness most
   sedulously endeavor to conceal from others even the slightest
   appearance of it. And I cannot say that there has not been some wisdom
   in so doing, for ungodly men despise those who tremble at the Word of
   God. What do they care about sin? They can sin and rejoice in it as the
   swine can roll in the mire and feel itself at home. Those who weep in
   secret places because the arrows of the Lord have wounded them, are
   shunned by those who forget God, and they need not be sorry for it,
   since such company can furnish no balm for their wounds. Mourner, you
   are wise to keep your sorrow to yourself as far as the wicked are
   concerned, but remember, though perhaps you think not so, there are
   hundreds of God's children who know all about your condition, and if
   you could be bold enough to open your mind to them and tell them of
   your heaviness of spirit, you would be surprised to find how thoroughly
   they would sympathize with you and how accurately some of them could
   describe the maze through which you are wandering! All are not tender
   of heart, but there are Believers who would enter into your experience
   and who might, by God's blessing, give you the clue to the labyrinth of
   your grief. The Lord comforted Paul by Ananias, and you may be sure
   that there is an Ananias for you! If you feel, as many do, that you
   could not unburden your soul to your parents or relatives, go to some
   other experienced Believers and tell them as far as you can your
   painful condition. I know, for I have felt the same, that all hope that
   you shall be saved is taken away and that you are utterly
   prostrate--but yet THERE IS HOPE!

   While this heaviness is inward, notice in the next place that it is
   real. Heaviness of spirit is one of the most terribly true of all our
   griefs. He who is cheerful and light-hearted too often contemns and
   even ridicules him who is sad of soul. He says that he is "nervous,"
   calls him "fanciful.. .almost out of his mind," "very excitable..
   .quite a monomaniac," and so on. The current idea being that there is
   really no need for alarm and that sorrow for sin is mere fanaticism! If
   some persons had suffered half an hour of conviction of sin,
   themselves, they would look with different eyes upon those who feel the
   spirit of heaviness, for I say it, and know what I am saying, that next
   to the torment of Hell, itself, there is but one sorrow which is more
   severe than that of a broken and a contrite spirit that trembles at
   God's Word, but does not dare to suck comfort out of it! The bitterness
   of remorse and despair is worse, but yet it is unspeakably
   heartbreaking to bow at the Mercy Seat, and to fear that no answer will
   ever come--to lie at the feet of Jesus, but to be afraid to look up to
   Him for salvation! To be conscious of nothing but abounding sin and
   raging unbelief and to expect nothing but sudden destruction--this is
   an earthly Tophet! There are worse wounds than those which torture the
   flesh, but more cruel pangs arise from the broken bones of the soul
   than from those of the body. Sharp is that cut which goes to the very
   heart and yet does not kill, but makes men wish that they could die or
   cease to be. There is a prison such as no iron bars can make and a
   fetter such as no smith can forge. Sickness is a trifle compared to
   it--it is to some men less endurable than the rack or the stake. To be
   impaled upon your own sins, pilloried by your own conscience, shot at
   by your own judgment as with barbed arrows--this is anguish and
   torment!

   This heaviness of spirit puts a weight upon the man's activity and
   clogs him in all things. He is weighted heavily who bears the weight of
   sin. You put before him the precious Promises, but he does not
   understand them, for the heaviness presses upon his mental faculties.
   You assure him that these Promises are meant for him, but he cannot
   believe you, for heaviness of spirit palsies the grasping hand by which
   he might appropriate the blessing. "Their soul abhors all manner of
   meat, and they draw near to the gates of death." Troubled minds at
   times lose all their appetite. They need spiritual food and yet turn
   from it. The most wholesome meat of the Gospel they are afraid to feed
   upon, for their sadness makes them fearful of presumption. Heaviness
   brings on amazement and this is but another word for saying that the
   mind is in a maze and cannot find its way out.

   They are weighted as to their understanding and their faith, for "the
   spirit of heaviness" also presses there. Their memory, too, is quick
   enough at recollecting sin, but to anything that might minister
   comfort, it is strangely weak, even as Jeremiah said, "You have removed
   my soul far off from peace: I forget prosperity." Indeed, David was
   still more oblivious, for he says, "My heart is smitten and withered
   like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread." All the faculties become
   dull and inert, and the man is like one in a deadly swoon. I have heard
   persons, under conviction of sin, say, "I seem absolutely stupid about
   Divine things." Like one that is stunned by a severe blow, they fall
   down and scarcely know what they feel or do not feel. Were they in
   their clear senses, we could set the Gospel before them and point out
   the way of salvation and they would soon lay hold of it! But, alas,
   they seem to have no capacity to understand the Promise, or to grasp
   its consolation.

   Now, this heaviness of spirit also renders everything around the man
   heavy. The external is generally painted from within. A merry heart
   makes mirth in the dull November fog under a leaden sky, but a dull
   heart finds sorrow amidst May blossoms, and June flowers. A man colors
   the world he lives in to the tint of his own soul. "Things are not what
   they seem," yet what they seem has often more influence upon us than
   what they are! Find a man, then, with heaviness of spirit, and you will
   find that his sorrows appear to be greater than he can bear. The
   common-place worries of life which cheerfulness sports with, are a load
   to a sad heart--yes, the grasshopper is a burden! The ordinary duties
   of life become a weariness and slight domestic cares a torture. He
   trembles lest he should commit sin even in going in and out of his
   house. A man who bears the weight of sin has small strength for any
   other load. Even the joys of life become somber. It matters not how
   much God has blessed a man in his family, in his basket, or in his
   store, for as long as his heart is oppressed and his soul bowed down
   with sin, what are the bursting barns and what are the overflowing wine
   vats to him? He pines for a peace and rest which these things cannot
   yield. If the eyes are dark, the sun, itself, affords no light!

   There is one thing, however, which we would say to mourners pressed
   down with guilt--whatever heaviness you feel, it is no greater
   heaviness than sin ought to bring upon a man, for it is an awful thing
   to have sinned against God. If the sense of sin should drive you to
   distraction--and cavilers often say that religion does this--it might
   reasonably do so if there were no other matters to think upon--no
   forgiving love and atoning blood. That which is the result of sin ought
   not to be charged upon religion, but true religion should be praised,
   because it brings relief to all this woe! Sin is the

   most horrible thing in the universe--and when a man sees how foully he
   has transgressed--it is no wonder that he is greatly troubled. To think
   that I, a creature that God has made, which He could crush as easily as
   a moth, have dared to live in enmity to Him for many years, and have
   even become so hardened as to forget Him and perhaps defy Him! This is
   terrible! When I have been told of His great love, I have turned on my
   heels and rejected it. Yes, and when I have even seenthat love in the
   bleeding body of His dear Son, I have been unbelieving and have done
   despite even to boundless Grace, and gone from bad to worse, greedy
   after sin! Is it marvelous that when they have seen the guilt of all
   this, men have felt their moisture turned into the drought of summer
   and cried in desperation, "My soul chooses strangling rather than
   life"? However low you are, beloved Mourner, you are not exaggerating
   your guilt! Apart from the Grace of God, your case is, indeed, as
   hopeless as you suppose. Though you lie in the very dust and dare not
   look up, the position is not lower than you ought to take. You richly
   deserve the anger of God and when you have some sense of what that
   wrath must be, you are not more fearful of it than there is just need
   to be, for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
   God. "He touches the hills and they smoke."--

   "The pillars of Heaven's starry roof Tremble and start at His reproof."
   What will His wrath be when He puts on His robes of justice and comes
   forth to mete out justice to the rebellious? O God, how terrible is
   Your wrath! Well may we be crushed at the very thought of it!

   Another reflection we would suggest here and that is, that if you have
   great heaviness of spirit on account of sin, you are by no means alone
   in it, for some of the best servants of God have endured hard
   struggling before they have found peace with God. Read their
   biographies and you will find that even those who have really believed
   in Christ have at some time or other felt the burden of sin pressing
   with intolerable weight upon their souls. Certain of them have recorded
   their experience in terrible sentences, but others have felt what they
   have not dared to commit to writing. "Weeping Cross," as the old
   writers call it, is a much-frequented spot--many roads meet at that
   point, and most pilgrims have left a pool of tears there.

   There is this to be added. Your Lord and Master, He to whom you must
   look for hope, knew what heaviness meant on account of sin. He had no
   sin of His own, but He bore the iniquity of His people and, therefore,
   He was prostrate in Gethsemane. We read that "He began to be sorrowful
   and to be very heavy." The spirit of heaviness was upon Him and He
   sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground! This
   same heaviness made Him cry upon the Cross, "My God, My God, why have
   You forsaken Me?" Jesus was sorely amazed and very heavy--and it is to
   Him as passing through that awful heaviness that I would bid you look
   in your hour of terror, for He alone is your door of hope. Through His
   heaviness, yours shall be removed, for "the chastisement of our peace
   was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." So much, then,
   concerning heaviness of spirit. And now, secondly, let us--

   II. SEE THE HEAVINESS REMOVED, for of this the text contains a Divine
   Promise--the anointed Savior will take it away. Only a word or two upon
   this.

   Brothers and Sisters, do you enquire how Jesus removes the spirit of
   heaviness? We answer, He does it thus--by revealing to us with
   clearness and certainty that our sin is pardoned. The Holy Spirit
   brings us to trust in Christ and the Inspired Word assures us that
   Christ suffered in the place of all Believers and, therefore, we
   perceive that He died for us. And also that nothing remains for us to
   suffer because sin, having been laid upon the Substitute, it is no more
   upon us. We rejoice in the fact of our Lord's Substitution and the
   transfer of our sins to Him. We see that if He stood in our place, we
   stand in His--and if He was rejected, we are "accepted i n the
   Beloved." Then straight away this spirit of heaviness disappears
   because the reason for it is gone--

   "I will praise You every day! Now Your anger's turned away, Comfortable
   thoughts arise From the bleeding Sacrifice."

   Moreover, in the new birth the Holy Spirit infuses into us a new
   nature--and that new nature knows not the spirit of heaviness--it is a
   thing of light, and life, and joy in the Holy Spirit! The newborn
   nature looks up and perceives its kinship with God. It rejoices in the
   favor of the Holy One from whom it came. It rests in the Lord, yes, it
   joys and rejoices in Him! And whereas, the old sin-spirit still sinks
   us down according to its power, there still being in us the evil heart
   of unbelief, this new life wells up within us as a living fountain of
   crystal and buoys us up with the peace and joy which comes of the Holy
   Spirit's indwelling! Thus the inner life becomes a constant remedy for
   heaviness of spirit.

   And faith, too, that blessed gift of God, wherever it resides, works to
   the clearing away of heaviness, for faith sings, "All things are mine,
   why should I sorrow? All my sin is gone, why should I pine and moan?
   All things as to the present life are supplied me by the God of
   Providence and Grace--and the future is guaranteed to me by the
   Covenant ordered in all things and sure." Faith takes the telescope and
   looks beyond the narrow range of time into the eternal heavens, and
   sees a crown laid up for the faithful. Yes, and her ears are opened so
   that she hears the songs of the redeemed by blood before the Throne of
   God--thus she bears away the spirit of heaviness! If I see no joy with
   these poor optics, faith has other eyes with which she discovers rivers
   of delight! If flesh and blood afford me nothing but causes for dismay,
   faith knows more and sees more--and she perceives causes for
   overflowing gratitude and delight! Hope also enters with her silver
   light, borrowed from faithful promises. She expects the future glory,
   at which we hinted just now, and begins to anticipate it all. And so,
   again, she drives away the gloom of the heart. Love, also, the sweetest
   of the three, comes in and teaches us to be resigned to the will of God
   and then sweetly charms us into acquiescence with all the Divine
   Purposes. And when we reach that point, and so love God that whatever
   He may do with us, we are resolved to trust Him and praise His name,
   then the spirit of heaviness must vanish!

   Now, beloved Mourners, I trust you know what this great uplifting
   means. It is a work in which the Lord is greatly glorified when He
   raises a poor, begrimed soul out of the sordid potsherds among which it
   has lain, and gives it to soar aloft as on the silver wings of a dove!
   Some of us can never forget the hour of our great deliverance--it was
   the day of our espousals, the time of love--and it must forever remain
   as the beginning of days unto us. All glory be to Him who has loosed
   our bonds and set our feet in a large room! But now we come to the
   third and most prominent point of the text, which is--

   III. THE GARMENT OF PRAISE BESTOWED, which takes the place of the
   spirit of heaviness. We suppose this may mean, and probably does mean,
   that the Lord gives us a garment that is honorable and worthy of
   praise--and what is this garment but the righteousness of our Lord
   Jesus Christ? The Lord arrays His poor people in a robe which causes
   them to be no more worthy of shame, but fit to be praised. They become
   unblameable in His sight. What a blessing this is! Did not the father,
   when he received the prodigal, say, "Bring forth the best robe and put
   it on him"? That was a praiseful garment, instead of the spirit of
   heaviness--and whenever a child of God begins to perceive his adoption
   and to say, "Abba, Father," then He puts on a fit garment for a child
   to wear, an honorable dress, a garment of praise! When we realize that
   Christ has made us priests unto God and we, therefore, put on the
   priestly garment of sanctification by beginning to offer the sacrifice
   of prayer and praise, then, again, we wear a praiseful garment! When we
   exercise the high prerogative of kings, for we are kings as well as
   priests, then, again, we wear not a sordid vesture of dishonor, nor the
   costume of a prison, nor the rags of beggary, nor the black robe of
   condemnation, but a garment of honor and of praise! Every child of God
   should be clothed with the garments of salvation--his Savior has
   prepared them for this end--let him wrap them about him and be glad,
   for these garments make him beautiful in the sight of God!

   But I choose, rather, to follow the exact words of our version tonight
   and speak of the garment of praise as meaning gratitude, thanksgiving,
   and adoration. The anointed Comforter takes away the spirit of
   heaviness and He robes His people in the garment of praise.

   Now, this is something outward as well as inward. A wise man endeavors
   to hide the heaviness of his spirit, but when the Lord takes that away,
   he does not wish to conceal his gratitude. I could not help telling
   those I lived with, when I found the Lord! Master John Bunyan informs
   us that he was so anxious to let someone know of his conversion that he
   wanted to tell the crows on the plowed land all about it! I do not
   wonder. It is a piece of news which it would be hard to withhold.
   Whenever a man's inward heaviness is graciously removed, he puts on the
   outward manifestation of joy and walks abroad in the silken robes of
   praise!

   As we have already said, a garment is a thing which covers a man, so
   when a man learns to thank God aright, His praise covers him--he,
   himself, is hidden while he gives all the glory to God. The man is seen
   as clothed in praise from head to foot. Many persons very unfairly
   judge Christians when they begin to speak of the love and mercy of God
   to them, for they cry out that they are egotistical--but how can it be
   egotistical to talk of what the Lord has done for you? If you speak
   with any sort of confidence, captious individuals say that you are
   presumptuous. How can it be presumptuous to believe what God, Himself,
   declares? It is presumptuous to doubtwhat God says, but it is not
   presumption to believe God! Neither is it egotism to state the truth.
   If I were to say that God has not blessed me abundantly, the pulpit on
   which I stand would cry out against me! Shall I conceal the mercy of
   God as if it were stolen goods? Never! But rather

   I will speak the more boldly of the measureless love which has kept my
   soul from going down to the pit! "He that glories, let him glory in the
   Lord." Bless the Lord, O you saints of His, and give thanks to His holy
   name. Show forth His salvation, compel men to see it, gird it about
   your loins and wear it for your adorning in all companies! While
   speaking of this garment of praise, let us enquire of what it is made.

   Is not praise composed in a large measure of an attentive observation
   of God's mercy?Thousands of blessings come to us without our knowledge.
   We take them in at the back door, and put them away in the cellar. Now,
   praise takes note of them, preserves the invoice of favors received and
   records the goodness of the Lord. O Friends, if you do this, you will
   never be short of reasons for praise!. He who notices God's mercy will
   never be without a mercy to notice. This is the chief material of the
   garment of praise--attentive consideration of Divine Grace is the
   broadcloth out of which the garment of praise is made.

   The next thing is grateful memory. Very much that God does for us we
   bury alive in the grave of oblivion. We receive His mercies as if they
   were common trash. They are no sooner come than they are gone, and the
   proverb truthfully says, "Bread eaten is soon forgotten." Why, my
   Brothers and Sisters, the Lord may give you a thousand favors and you
   will not praise Him. But if He smites you with one little stroke of the
   whip, you grumble at Him! You write His mercies on the water and your
   own trials you engrave on granite! These things ought not to be.
   Maintain the memory of His great goodness. "Forget not all His
   benefits." Call to remembrance your song in the night and remember the
   loving kindnesses of the Lord. In this, also, we find rich material for
   the garment of praise.

   We are further aided by rightly estimating mercy. Is it not a great
   mercy to be alive and not in Hell? To be in your senses and not in the
   lunatic asylum? To be in health and not in the hospital? To be in one's
   own room, and not in the workhouse? These are great favors, and yet,
   perhaps, we seldom thank God for them! Then count up your spiritual
   mercies, if you can. Remember, on the other hand, what you deserved,
   and what it cost the Savior to bring these blessings to you--how
   patient the Lord has been with your refusal of His love and how
   continuously He has loaded you with benefits! Weigh His mercies, as
   well as count them, and they will help you to put on the garment of
   praise.

   It is the telling out of the Divine goodness which largely constitutes
   praise--to observe, to remember, to estimate, to prize and then to
   speak of the Lord's gracious gifts--all these are essential. Praise is
   the open declaration of the gratitude which is felt within. How greatly
   do many fail in this! If you visit them, how readily they enlarge upon
   their troubles--in five minutes they have informed you about the damp
   weather, their aching bones and their low wages. Others speak of the
   bad times and the decline of trade till you know their ditty by heart!
   Is this the manner of the people of God? Should we not entertain our
   visitors with something better than the bones of our meat and the hard
   crusts of our bread? Let us set before them good tidings and cheerfully
   tell of the Divine goodness to us, lest they should go away under the
   impression that we serve a hard master. It would create an almost
   miraculous change in some people's lives if they made a point of
   speaking most of the precious things and least of the worries and ills!
   Why always the poverty? Why always the pains? Why always the dying
   child? Why always the husband's small wages? Why always the unkindness
   of a friend? Why not sometimes--yes, why not always--the mercies of the
   Lord? That is praise and it is to be our everyday garment, the livery
   of every servant of Christ!

   Let us enquire, too, who ought to wear this garment? The answer may be
   suggested by another--whom does it fit? Truly there is a garment of
   praise which exactly suits me and I mean to wear it. It is so capacious
   that some of my Brothers and Sisters would wonder if they could see it
   spread out. I am so much in debt to my God that, do what I will, I can
   never give a fair acknowledgment of it. I freely confess that I owe Him
   more than any man living and am morally bound to praise Him more
   earnestly than anyone else! Did I hear some of you claiming to be equal
   debtors? Do you demand to be allowed to praise Him more than I? Well, I
   will not quarrel with you. Let the matter stand and if you will excel
   me, I will praise my Lord for it. I once, in preaching, remarked that
   if I once entered Heaven, I would take the lowest place, feeling that I
   owe more to God's Grace than anybody else, but I found, when I left the
   pulpit, that I had several competitors who would not yield the lowest
   place to me! They were, each one, ready to exclaim--

   "Then loudest of the crowd I'll sing, While Heaven's resounding
   mansions ring With shouts of Sovereign Grace!" Blessed be God, this is
   the only contention among the birds of Paradise--who owes the most, who
   shall love the best, who shall lie lowest and who shall extol their
   Lord the most zealously! Charming rivalry of humility! Let us have more
   of it below. I again say there is a garment of praise that fits me.
   Brother, Sister, is there not one which fits you, ex-

   actly suiting your state and condition? If you are an heir of Heaven,
   there is--there must be a garment of praise which will rest most
   becomingly upon your shoulders--and you should put it on at once.

   Then, when shall we wear it? We should certainly appear in it on high
   days and holidays. On Sabbath days and communion seasons the hours are
   fragrant with grateful memories. I heard of someone who did not attend
   public worship because his clothes were not fit to come in, and I
   replied, What can he mean? Does the Lord care for our outward dress?
   Let him put on the garment of praise, and he may come and welcome! The
   outer vestments matter little, indeed! All garments of that sort are
   only proofs of our fall, and of the need to hide our nakedness for very
   shame. Fine dress is unbecoming in the House of God, especially for
   those who call themselves "miserable sinners." The best adornment is
   humility of spirit, the robe of thanksgiving, the garment of praise!
   The Lord's-Day should always be the happiest day of the week, and the
   communion should be a little Heaven to our souls. "Call the Sabbath a
   delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable."

   We should wear the garment of praise on the most commonplace of days.
   It should be the peasant's frock and the merchant's coat, the lady's
   dress and the servant's gown--it is the best for wear, for comfort, for
   beauty and it never gets out of fashion. I once knew an old saint, a
   Methodist, a very quaint, original, rustic old man, who was celebrated
   for happiness. When he went out to day labor early in the morning, he
   was always singing as he went along the road. The country people used
   to call it "tooting to himself." Quietly he hummed a bit of a hymn
   wherever he was. When he used his spade or his hoe, he worked to the
   music of his heart and never murmured when in poverty, or became angry
   when held up to ridicule. I wish we were all as spiritually minded and
   as full of praise as he! Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord! When should we
   notbless Him? We will praise Him when our beds refresh us--blessed is
   He who kept the night watches. When we put on our clothes in the
   morning, we will bless His name for giving us food and raiment. When we
   sit down to break our fast, we will bless the love which has provided a
   table for us. When we go forth to our work, we will bless the Lord who
   gives us strength to labor. If we must lie at home sorely sick, with
   fierce pain or slow decay, let us praise Him who heals and sanctifies
   all our diseases! Let us endeavor to display the sweet spirit of
   thankfulness from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.
   Every moment may suggest a new verse of our life Psalm and cause us to
   magnify Him whose mercy endures forever!

   Now, lastly, why should we wear the garment of praise? We should wear
   it as we wear other raiment, to keep us warm and comfortable, for there
   is no such vesture in the world as that of praise! It warms the inmost
   heart and sends a glow through the whole man. You may go to Nova Zembla
   and not freeze in such a robe! In the worst cases and in the most
   sorrowful plights, be you where you may, you are proof against outward
   circumstances when your whole being is enwrapped in praise! Wear it
   because it will comfort you. Wear it also because it will distinguish
   you from others. It will be livery to you and men will know whose
   servants you are. It will be a regimental dress and show to which army
   you belong. It will be a court dress and manifest to what dignity you
   have attained. So arrayed, you will bear the tokens of your Lord who
   often, in the days of His sorrow, lifted His eyes and heart to Heaven
   and thanked the great Father for His goodness!

   May some poor burdened soul lose its heaviness while thinking over our
   text, and henceforth wear this kingly robe--the garment of praise!
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

"Stewards"

   (No. 3350)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   TO THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE PASTORS' COLLEGE ASSOCIATION, 1887.

   "Let a maun so consider us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards
   of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a
   man be found faithful." 1 Corinthians 4:1,2.

   MY beloved Brothers--I might even say with Paul, "My dearly beloved and
   longed for"--it gives me intense delight to look into your faces once
   again, and yet I feel weighted with a solemn responsibility in having
   to direct your thoughts at this time so as to give the keynote to our
   solemn conference. I ask your continued prayers that I may speak
   aright, saying the right thing in the right way.

   There is considerable advantage in the freedom of the usual inaugural
   address. It may take the methodical form of a sermon, or it may wear
   looser garments and come forth in the undress of a speech. Certain
   freedoms which are not usually accorded to a set sermon are allowed me
   in this rambling discourse. You shall call my talk by what name you
   choose, when I have done, but it will be a sermon--for I have a very
   definite and distinct text in my mind--and I shall keep to it with at
   least an average closeness.

   I may as well announce the text, for it will furnish you with a clue to
   my intent. You will find the passage in the First Epistle to the
   Corinthians, in the first verses of the fourth Chapter-- "Let a man so
   consider us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the
   mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be
   found faithful"

   The Apostle was anxious to be rightly considered and well he might be,
   for ministers are not often estimated rightly. As a rule, they are
   either gloried in, or else despised. At the commencement of our
   ministry, when our stores are fresh, and our energies are full--when we
   blaze and flash and spend much time in the firework factory--people are
   apt to think us wonderful beings! And then the Apostle's word is
   needed, "Therefore let no man boast in men" (1 Cor 3:21). It is not
   true, as flatterers insinuate, that in our case the gods have come down
   in the likeness of men--and we shall be idiots if we think so! In due
   time foolish expectations will be cured by disappointment and then we
   shall hear unwelcome truth mingled with unrighteous censure. The idol
   of yesterday is the butt of today! Nine days, nine weeks, nine months,
   or nine years--be it more or less--time works disenchantment and
   changes our position in the world's view. The primrose day is over, and
   the nettle months are come! After the time of the singing of birds has
   passed away, we come nearer to the season of fruit, but the children
   are not half as pleased with us as when they wandered in our luxuriant
   meadows and strung our daisies and buttercups into crowns and garlands.
   In our more autumnal years, the people miss our flowers and greenery.
   Perhaps we are becoming sensible that it is so. The old man is solid
   and slow, whereas the young man rode upon the wings of the wind! It is
   clear that some think too much of us, and some think too little of
   us--it would be far better if they considered of us soberly "as the
   ministers of Christ." It would be for the advantage of the Church, for
   our own benefit and for the glory of God if we were put in our right
   places and kept there, being neither overrated, nor unduly censured,
   but viewed in our relation to our Lord, rather than in our own
   personalities. "Let a man so consider us, as of the ministers of
   Christ."

   We are ministers. The word has a very respectable sound. To be a
   minister is the aspiration of many a youth. Perhaps if the word were
   otherwise rendered, their ambition might cool. Ministers are
   servants--they are not guests, but waiters, not landlords, but
   laborers. The word has been rendered "under-rowers," men who tug the
   oar on the lowest bench. It was hard work to row a galley--those rapid
   strokes consumed the life of the slaves. There were three banks of
   oars. Those on the upper bank of oars had the advantage of fresh air.
   Those who were beneath were more closely shut in and I suppose that the
   lowest bank of rowers would be faint with heat, as well as worn out
   with sore travail. Brothers, let us be

   content to wear out our lives even in the worst position, if by our
   labor we can speed the passage of our great Caesar and give speed to
   the ship of the Church in which He has embarked! We are willing to be
   chained to the oar and to work on through life to make His boat cleave
   the waves. We are not captains, nor owners of the galley, but only the
   oarsmen of Christ! The text, however, does not call us simply ministers
   or servants, but it adds, "ofChrist" We are not the servants of men,
   but of the Lord Jesus! Esteemed Sir, if you think because you subscribe
   to my support that I am bound to do your bidding, you are mistaken!
   Truly, we are "ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake" But in the
   highest sense our sole responsibility is to Him whom we call Master and
   Lord. We obey superior orders, but we cannot yield to the dictation of
   our fellow servants, however influential they may be. Our service is
   glorious because it is the service of Christ--we feel honored in being
   permitted to wait upon Him whose shoe laces we are not worthy to
   unloose! We are also said to be "stewards." What are stewards? Let us
   consider--

   I. WHAT IS THE OFFICE OF STEWARD? What is required of stewards? This is
   our duty. We are not now speaking of anybody outside, but of you and
   myself, therefore, let us make personal application of all that is
   said.

   First, a steward is a servant and nothing more. Perhaps he does not
   always remember this--and it is a very pitiful business when the
   servant begins to think that he is "my lord." It is a pity that
   servants, when honored by their master, should be so apt to give
   themselves airs. How ridiculous Jack-in-Office makes himself! I do not
   refer now to butlers and footmen, but to ourselves! If we magnify
   ourselves, we shall become contemptible--and we shall neither magnify
   our office nor our Lord. We are the servants of Christ, but not lords
   over His heritage.

   Ministers are for churches--not churches for minister. In our work
   among the churches we must not dare to view them as estates to be
   farmed for our own profit, or gardens to be trimmed to our own taste.

   A steward is a servant of a peculiar kind, for he has to superintend
   the other servants and that is a difficult thing to do. An old friend
   of mine, who is now with God, once said, "I have always been a
   shepherd. Forty years I was a shepherd of sheep and another forty years
   I was a shepherd of men--and the last flock was a deal more sheepish
   than the first." This witness is true. I think I have heard that a
   sheep has as many diseases as there are days in the year, but I am sure
   that the other sort of sheep are liable to ten times as many! A
   pastor's work is an anxious one. All sorts of difficulties occur with
   our fellow servants and, alas, unwise stewards make a great many more
   than there need be by expecting perfection in others, although they do
   not possess it themselves! Our fellow servants are, after all, wisely
   selected, for He who put them into His household knew what He was
   doing--at any rate, they are His choice and not ours. It is not our
   place to find fault with our Lord's own election!

   The other servants will take their cue from us. A steward who is dull,
   inert and slow, will have a slow team of servants about him and the
   business of his lordship will fare badly. Those who travel will have
   noticed that the servants in a hotel are very much like the
   landlord--if the landlord is cheery, attentive, and obliging--all the
   maids and waiters partake of his geniality! But if he looks sourly at
   you and treats you with indifference, you will find that the whole
   establishment is of a disdainful order. Oh, that we may always be alive
   and earnest in the service of the Lord Jesus and that our people may
   also be alive! A minister must give himself wholly to his work. I have
   read of a Puritan divine, that he was so full of life that his people
   said he lived like one who fed on live things! Oh, for a life sustained
   by living bread! We shall not be good stewards in the management of our
   fellow servants unless we are, ourselves, filled with the Grace of God!
   We must set our fellow servants an example of zeal and tenderness,
   constancy, hopefulness, energy and obedience. We must ourselves
   practice constant self-denial and select as our own part of the work
   that which is the hardest and most humiliating. We are to rise above
   our fellows by superior self-forgetfulness. Be it ours to lead the
   forlorn hopes and bear the heaviest burdens. Archdeacon Hare was giving
   a lecture at Trinity College when a cry of, "Fire!" was raised. His
   pupils rushed away and formed themselves into a line to pass buckets of
   water from the river to the burning building. The tutor saw a
   consumptive student standing up to his waist in the water and cried to
   him, "What? You in the water, Sterling?" The reply was, "Somebody must
   be in it, and why not I as well as another?" Let us say to ourselves,
   "Some fellows must be doing the drudgery of the church and laboring in
   the hardest places--and why should not I take that post?"

   Next, remember that stewards are servants under the more immediate
   command of the great Master We should be as the steward who daily goes
   into his lord's private room to receive orders. John Ploughman was
   never in the squire's parlor, but the steward is often there. If he
   neglected to consult the squire, he would soon be doing amiss and
   involving himself in heavy responsibility. How often ought you and I
   say, "Lord, show me what You would have me to do!" To cease

   to look up to God, so as to learn and practice His will, would be to
   quit our true position. A steward who never communicates with his
   master? Give him his wages and let him go! He who does his own will and
   not his master's is of no value as a steward! Brothers, we must
   continually wait upon God. The habit of going for orders must be
   cultivated. How grateful should we be that our Master is always within
   call! He guides His servants with His eyes and with His guidance He
   also gives the necessary power. He will make our faces to shine before
   the eyes of our fellows if we commune with Him. Our example must
   encourage others to wait upon the Lord. As our business is to tell them
   the mind of God, let us study that mind very carefully.

   Again--stewards are constantly giving account Their account is given as
   they go along. A business-like proprietor requires an account of
   outgoings and incomings from day to day. There is great truth in the
   old proverb that "short reckonings make long friends." If we make short
   reckonings with God, we shall be long friends with Him. I wonder if any
   of you keep account of your faults and shortcomings. Perhaps the time
   will be better spent in constant efforts to serve your Master and
   increase His estate. We ought, each one, to ask himself, "What am I
   doing by my preaching? Is it of the right kind? Am I giving prominence
   to those Doctrines which my Lord would have me put in the forefront? Am
   I caring for souls as He would have me care for them?" It is a good
   thing thus to review one's whole life and enquire, "Do I give
   sufficient time to private prayer? Do I study the Scriptures as
   intensely as I should? I hurry about to many meetings, but am I, in all
   this, fulfilling my Master's orders? May I not be gratifying myself
   with the appearance of doing much, whereas I could really be doing more
   if I were more attentive to the quality than to the quantity of the
   work?" Oh, to go often to the Master and to be right and clear in our
   accounts with Him! This will be profitable both to our churches and to
   ourselves.

   To come to the main point--a steward is a trustee of his master's
   goods. Whatever he has belongs to his Master and choice things are put
   into his custody, not that he may do as he likes with them, but that he
   may take care of them. The Lord has entrusted to each one of us certain
   talents--and these are not our own. Gifts of knowledge, thought, speech
   and influence are not ours to glory in, but ours in trust for the Lord
   alone! It is His pound that gains five pounds!

   We ought to increase our capital stock. Are all you young Brothers
   doing that? Are you increasing in gift and capacity? My Brothers, do
   not neglect yourselves! I observe that some Brothers grow and others
   stand still, dwarfed and stunted. Men, like horses, are very
   disappointing creatures--good colts drop suddenly lame, or develop a
   vice of which they were never before suspected. To be always giving out
   and never taking in tends to emptiness.

   Brothers, we are stewards of the mysteries of God--we are "put in trust
   with the Gospel." Paul speaks of the Gospel of the blessed God which
   was committed to his trust. I hope none of you have ever had the
   misfortune to be made a trustee. It is a thankless office. In executing
   a trust, there is little scope for originality--we are bound to carry
   out a trust with literal exactness. One person wishes to receive more
   money and another desires to alter a clause in the deed--but the
   faithful trustee falls back upon the document and abides by its
   provisions. I hear him say, as they worry him, "Dear Friends, I did not
   make this trust. I am simply the administrator of it and I am bound to
   carry it out." The Gospel of the Grace of God needs great
   improvement--at least, so I am informed--but I know it is no business
   of mine to improve it! My part is to act upon it. No doubt many would
   improve God, Himself, from off the face of the earth if they could.
   They would improve the Atonement until it vanished. Great alterations
   are demanded of us, in the name of the spirit of the age. And of course
   we are warned that the very notion of punishment for sin is a barbarous
   relic of mediaeval ages and must be given up! And with it the Doctrine
   of Substitution and many other old-fashioned dogmas! We have nothing to
   do with these demands--we have only to preach the Gospel as we find it.
   Stewards must keep to their orders and trustees must carry out the
   terms of their trust!

   My Brothers, we are at this present hour set for the defense of the
   Gospel. If ever men were called to this office, we are so called. These
   are times of drifting--men have pulled up their anchors and are driven
   to and fro with winds and tides of divers kinds. As for me, I have in
   this hour of danger not only let down the great bower anchor, but I
   have cast four anchors out of the stern! That may be quite the wrong
   place, but in these times we need anchoring both fore and aft. Now I am
   fixed! Skeptical reasoning might have moved me at one time, but not
   now! Do our enemies ask us to lay down our swords and cease to fight
   for the old faith? Like the Greeks to Xerxes, we answer, "Come and take
   them!" The other day the advanced thinkers were going to sweep the
   orthodox into limbo, but as yet, we survive their assaults. These
   boasters do not know the vitality of evangelical truth! No, glorious
   Gospel, you shall never perish! If we are to die, we will die fighting.
   If we shall personally pass away, fresh Evangelists will preach upon
   our graves. Evangelical truths are like the dragon's teeth which Cadmus
   sowed--they breed men all armed for the fray. The Gospel lives by
   dying! Brothers, at any rate, in this contest, if we are not
   victorious, we will at least be faithful!

   A steward's business is to dispense his Master's goods according to
   their design. He is to bring forth things new and old--to provide milk
   for babes and strong meat for men, giving to each one his portion of
   meat in due season. At some tables I fear the strong men have been
   waiting a long time for the meat and there is small hope of its yet
   appearing--the milk and water is more plentiful by far! Someone went to
   hear a certain preacher last Sunday and complained that he did not
   preach Christ. Another remarked that perhaps it was not the due season,
   but my Brothers, the due season for preaching Christ is every time you
   preach! God's children are always hungry and no bread will satisfy them
   but that which came down from Heaven.

   A wise steward will maintain the proportion of the Truths of God. He
   will bring forth things new and old--not always Doctrine, not always
   practice, and not always experience. He will not always preach
   conflict, nor always victory-- not giving a one-sided view of the
   Truths of God, but a sort of stereoscopic view which shall make the
   Truth of God stand out "evidently set forth" before them. Much of the
   preparation of spiritual food lies in the correct proportion of the
   ingredients. Excess in one direction and failure in another may breed
   much mischief! Let us, therefore, use weight and measure--and look
   upfor guidance!

   Brothers, take care that you use your talents for your Master, and only
   for your Master. It is disloyalty to our Master if we wish to be
   soul-winners in order to be thought to be so! It is unfaithfulness to
   Jesus if we preach sound Doctrine with the view to be thought sound, or
   pray earnestly with the desire that we may be known as praying men. It
   is for us to pursue our Lord's Glory with a single eye and with our
   whole heart. We must use our Lord's Gospel, our Lord's people and our
   Lord's talents for our Lord and for Him alone.

   The steward should also be the guardian of his Master's family. Look to
   the interests of all who are in Christ Jesus, and let them all be as
   dear to you as your own children. Servants in the olden times were
   often so united to the family and so interested in their masters'
   affairs, that they spoke of our house, our land, our carriage, our
   horses and our children. Our Lord would have us thus identify ourselves
   with His holy business and especially He would have us love His chosen.
   We, beyond all others, should lay down our lives for the Brothers and
   Sisters in Christ! Because they belong to Christ, we love them for His
   sake. I trust we can heartily say--

   "There's not a lamb in all Your flock I would disdain to feed."

   Brothers, let us heartily love all whom Jesus loves! Cherish the tried
   and suffering! Visit the fatherless and the widow! Care for the faint
   and the feeble! Bear with the melancholy and despondent! Be mindful of
   all parts of the household and thus shall you be a good steward.

   I shall cease from this picture when I have said that the steward
   represents his master When the master is away, everybody comes to the
   steward for orders. He had need to behave himself well who represents
   such a Lord as ours! A steward should speak much more carefully and
   wisely when he speaks for his lord than when he speaks on his own
   account. Unless he is guarded in his utterances, his lord may be forced
   to say to him, "You had better speak for yourself. I cannot allow you
   thus to misrepresent me." My beloved Brothers and fellow servants, the
   Lord Jesus is compromised by us if we do not keep His way, declare His
   Truth, and manifest His spirit. Men infer the master from the servant.
   Are they not to be excused if they do? Ought not the steward to act
   after his master's manner? You cannot dissociate the squire from the
   steward--the lord from his representative. A Puritan was told that he
   was too precise, but replied, "I serve a precise God."

   If urged to utter your own thoughts rather than revealed Truth of God,
   follow Jesus, who spoke not His own things, but those of the Father. In
   this you will be acting as a steward should do. Here lies your wisdom,
   your comfort, and your strength. It was a sufficient vindication for a
   steward, when one accused him of folly, that he could reply, "Say what
   you please of what I did, for therein I followed my master's orders."
   Caviler, do not blame the steward! The man has done according to the
   command of his superior--what else would you have him do? Our
   conscience is clear and our heart is restful when we feel that we have
   taken up our cross and have followed the footprints of the Crucified
   One! Wisdom is justified of her children.

   The second part of our study is--

   II. OUR OBLIGATIONS AS STEWARDS. "It is required in stewards that a man
   be found faithful" It is not required that a man be found brilliant, or
   that he be found pleasing to his associates, or even that he be found
   successful! All that is required is that he be found faithful--but
   truly this is no small matter! It will need that the Lord, Himself, be
   both our wisdom and our strength, or we shall surely fail. Many are the
   ways by which we may come short of this requirement, however simple it
   may seem to be.

   We may fail to be faithful through acting as if we were chiefs instead
   of servants. A difficulty arises in the church which might readily be
   settled by loving forbearance, but we "stand upon our dignity" and then
   the servant grows out of his livery. We can be very high and mighty if
   we please--and the smaller we are, the more easily do we swell out. No
   cock is greater in fight than a bantam--and no minister is more ready
   to contend for his "dignity" than the man who has no dignity! How
   foolish we look when we play the grandee! The steward thinks he has not
   been treated with proper respect and he will "let the servants know who
   he is." His master was roughly used the other day by an angry
   tenant--and he took no notice, for he had too much mind to be put out
   with so small a matter--but his steward passes by nothing and fires up
   at everything! Is this as it should be? I think I see the gentle Master
   lay His hand upon His furious servant's shoulder, and I hear Him say,
   "Can you not bear it? I have borne far more than this."

   Brothers, our Master "endured such contradiction of sinners against
   Himself," and shall we be weary and faint in our minds? How can we be
   stewards of the gentle Jesus if we behave ourselves haughtily? Let us
   never ride the high horse, nor attempt to be lords over God's heritage,
   for He will not have it--and we cannot be faithful if we give way to
   pride.

   We shall also fail in our duty as stewards if we begin speculating with
   our Master's money. We may play ducks and drakes with our own, but not
   with our Lord's money. We are not bidden to speculate, but to "occupy"
   till He comes. Honest trading with His goods is one thing, but to play
   a high game and run unlawful risks is quite another! I do not intend to
   speculate with my Master's Gospel by dreaming that I can improve it by
   my own deep thinking, or by soaring aloft with the philosophers! We
   will not, even with the idea of saving souls, speak other than the
   Gospel! If I could create a great excitement by delivering novel
   doctrine, I would abhor the thought! To raise a revival by suppressing
   the Truth of God is dealing deceitfully--it is a pious fraud and our
   Lord wants no gain which might come by such a transaction! It is ours
   simply and honestly to trade with our Master's pounds and bring Him
   such increase as they gain in fair dealing.

   We may become false to our trust by acting as men-pleasers. When the
   steward studies the good pleasure of the plowman, or the whims of the
   maid, everything must go wrong, for everything is out of place. We are
   influenced by one another and we influence one another. The greatest
   are unconsciously influenced in some measure by the least. The minister
   must be overwhelmingly influenced by the Lord, his God, so that other
   influences may not warp him from his fidelity. We must resort
   continually to headquarters and receive the Word from the mouth of the
   Lord, Himself, so that we may be kept straight and true! Otherwise we
   shall soon be biased, although we may not be aware of it. There must be
   no holding back to please one person--no rushing forward to satisfy
   another--no moving an inch even to gratify the whole community! We must
   not harp upon a certain string to win the approval of this party.
   Neither must we be silent upon an important Doctrine to avoid offending
   that clique! What have we to do with idols, dead or alive? O Brothers,
   if you go in for pleasing everybody, you have indeed set yourselves a
   task! The toils of Sisyphus and the labors of Hercules are nothing to
   this! We must not flatter men. We must speak plain words--and words
   which conscience will approve. If we please men, we shall displease our
   Lord, so that success in our self-imposed task would be fatal to our
   eternal interests! In trying to please men, we shall not even succeed
   in pleasing ourselves! To please our Lord, though it may seem very
   difficult, is an easier task than pleasing men. O Steward, have your
   eyes only upon your Master!

   We shall not be found faithful stewards if we are idlers and trifers Do
   you ever meet with lazy ministers? I have heard of them, but when my
   eyes sees them, my heart abhors them. If you plan to be lazy, there are
   plenty of avocations in which you will not be needed, but, above all,
   you are not needed in the Christian ministry! The man who finds the
   ministry an easy life will also find that it will bring a hard death.
   If we are not laborers, we are not true stewards, for we are to be
   examples of diligence to the household. I like Adam Clarke's
   precept--"Kill yourselves with work and pray yourselves alive again."
   We shall never do our duty either to God or man if we are sluggards.

   Yet some who are always busy may yet be unfaithful, if all that they do
   is done in a jaunty, trifling manner. If we play at preaching, we have
   chosen an awful game. To shuffle texts like cards and make literary
   essays out of themes which move all Heaven and Hell is shameful work!
   We must be serious as death in this solemn work. There are boys and
   girls who are always giggling, but who never laugh--and they are the
   very image of certain always-jesting preachers. I like an honest laugh.
   True humor can be sanctified and those who can stir men to smile can
   also move them to weep. But even this has limits which the foolish soon
   exceed. Be seriously in earnest. Live like men who have something to
   live for and preach like men to whom preaching is the highest exercise
   of their being! Our work is the most important under Heaven, or else it
   is sheer imposture! If you are not earnest in carrying out His
   instructions, your Lord will give His vineyard to another, for He will
   not put up with those who turn His service into trifling.

   When we misuse our Master's property, we are false to our trust. We are
   entrusted with a certain amount of talent, strength and influence--and
   we have to use this trust money with a single purpose. Our purpose is
   to promote the Master's honor and Glory. We are to seek God's Glory and
   nothing else. By all means, let every man use his best influence on the
   right side in politics--but no minister has liberty to use his position
   in the Church to promote party ends! I do not censure workers for
   temperance, but even this admirable purpose must not push out the
   Gospel! I trust it never does. I hold that no minister has a right to
   use his ability or office to cater for the mere amusement of the
   multitude. The Master has sent us to win souls--all is within the
   compass of our commission which tends towards that--but that is chiefly
   our work which drives directly and distinctly at that end. The danger
   lies at this time in setting up theatricals, semi-theatricals,
   concerts, and so forth. Until I see that the Lord Jesus Christ has set
   up a theater, or planned a miracle play, I shall not think of emulating
   the stage or competing with the music hall! If I do my own business, by
   preaching the Gospel, I shall have enough to do. One objective is
   enough for most men--one such as ours is enough for any minister,
   however many his talents, however versatile his mind.

   If we would be faithful as stewards, we must not neglect any one of the
   family, nor neglect any portion of the estate. I wonder whether we
   practice a personal observation of our hearers. Our beloved friend, Mr.
   Archibald Brown, is right when he says that London needs not only
   house-to-house visitation, but room-to-room visitation! We must, in the
   case of our people, go further and practice man-to-man visitation. By
   personal contact, alone, can certain persons be reached. If I had a
   number of bottles before me, and were to play upon them with a
   fire-engine, how much of the water would be lost? If I want to make
   sure of filling them, I must take them up, one by one, and carefully
   pour the liquid into them. We must watch over our sheep, one by one.
   This is to be done not only by personal talk, but by personal prayer.
   Dr. Guthrie says that he called upon a sick man who greatly refreshed
   his soul, for he told him that he was known to accompany his minister
   in his visits. "While I lie here, I shall follow you in your
   visitation. I keep on remembering house after house in my prayer, and I
   pray for the man, his wife, his children and all who dwell with him."
   Thus, without moving a step, the sick saint visited Macfarlane, and
   Douglas, and Duncan, and all the others whom his pastor called to see!
   We ought thus to beat the bounds of our parish and go round and round
   our congregations, forgetting none, despairing of none, bearing all
   upon our hearts before the Lord. Especially let us think of the poor,
   the crotchety, the desponding. Let our care, like the hurdles of a
   sheepfold, enclose all the flock!

   Another thing must not be overlooked. In order to faithfulness we must
   never connive at evil. This injunction will be warmly commended by
   certain Brothers whose only notion of pruning a tree is to cut it down.
   A gardener comes to a gentleman's house and when he is told that the
   shrubs are a little overgrown, he answers, "I will see to it." In a few
   days you walk round the garden. He has seen to it with a vengeance! He
   has done the garden, and it is done for! Some persons cannot learn the
   balance of virtues--they cannot kill a mouse except by burning down the
   barn! Did I hear you say, "I was faithful, I never connived at evil"?
   So far so good! But may it not happen that by a bad temper you produced
   more evil than that which you destroyed? Yield in all things personal,
   but be firm where truth and holiness are concerned! We must be
   faithful, lest we incur the sin and penalty of Eli. Be honest to the
   rich and influential. Be firm with the wavering and unsteady, for the
   blood of these will be required at our hands. Brothers, you will need
   all the wisdom and Grace you can get in order to fulfill your duties as
   pastors! There is an adaptation to rule men which would seem to be
   quite absent from certain preachers--and the place of it is supplied by
   an adaptation to set a house on fire, for they scatter firebrands and
   burning coals wherever they go. Be you not like they! Strive not, and
   yet wink not at sin!

   Some neglect their obligations as stewards by forgetting that the
   Master is coming. "He will not come yet," whisper some. "There are so
   many prophecies to be fulfilled and it is even possible that He will
   not come at all, in the vulgar sense of the term. There is no
   particular need for us to make haste." Ah, my Brothers, it is the
   unfaithful servant who says,

   "My Lord delays his coming." This belief allows him to put off labor
   and travail. The servant will not clean the room by daily duty because
   the master is away--and she can have a great clean up, in the form of a
   revival, before her lord arrives. If we would each feel that each day
   may be our last day, we would be more intense in our work. While
   preaching the Gospel, we may someday be interrupted by the blast of the
   trumpet, and the cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom comes; go you out to meet
   Him!" This expectation will tend to quicken our pace. The time is
   short, our account is near--our Lord is at the door! We must work with
   all our might. We must not be eye-servants, except in this sense--that
   we labor in the Lord's Presence since He is so near!

   I am impressed with the rapid flight of time, the swift approach of the
   last great audit. These annual conferences return so speedily! To some
   of us it seems only a day or two since that of 1886--the last of them
   hastens on. I shall soon be giving in the account of my stewardship,
   or, if I should survive for a while, others of you may be summoned to
   meet your Lord. You will soon go home to your Lord if your Lord does
   not soon come to you! We must work on from hour to hour with our eyes
   upon the audit, that we may not be ashamed of the record which will be
   found in the volume of the book.

   The reward of faithful stewards is exceedingly great--let us aspire to
   it. The Lord will make the man who was faithful in a few things to be
   ruler over many things. That is an extraordinary passage where our Lord
   says, "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He comes, shall
   find watching: verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself and
   make them to sit down to meat, and He will come forth and serve them."
   It is wonderful that our Lord has already served us, but how can we
   comprehend that He will serve us again? Think of Jesus rising up from
   His Throne to wait upon us! "Behold," He cries, "here comes a man who
   served Me faithfully on earth! Make way for him, you angels, and
   principalities, and powers! This is the man whom the King delights to
   honor." And to our surprise, the King girds Himself and waits upon us!
   We are ready to cry, "Not so, my Lord." But He must and will keep His
   Word! This unspeakable honor He will pay to His true servants. Happy
   man to have been the poorest and most despised of ministers, to be now
   served by the King of kings!

   Beloved Brothers, we are bound to go forward, cost us what it may, for
   we dare not go back--we have no armor for our backs. We believe
   ourselves to be called to this ministry and we cannot be false to the
   call. If I must be a lost soul, let me be lost as a thief, a
   blasphemer, or a murderer rather than as an unfaithful steward to the
   Lord Jesus! This is to be a Judas, a son of perdition, indeed!
   Remember, if any of you are unfaithful, you win for yourselves a
   superfluity of condemnation. You were not forced to be ministers. You
   were not forced to enter upon this sacred office. By your own choice
   you are here. In your youth you aspired to this holy thing and thought
   yourselves happy in attaining your desire. Brothers, if we meant to be
   untrue to Jesus, there was no necessity to have climbed this sacred
   rock in order to multiply the horrors of our final fall! We could have
   perished quite sufficiently in the ordinary ways of sin. What need to
   qualify ourselves for a greater condemnation? This will be a dreadful

   result if this is all that comes of our college studies and our burning
   of the midnight oil in acquiring knowledge. My heart and my flesh
   tremble while I contemplate the possibility of any of us being found
   guilty of treachery to our charge and treason to our King! May the good
   Lord so abide with us, that at the last we may be clear of the blood of
   all men! It will be seven heavens in one to hear our Master say, "Well
   done, good and faithful servant."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Queen of Sheba

   (No. 3351)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   DECEMBER 8, 1867.

   "The Queen of the South shall rise up in thejudgment with this
   generation, and condemn it: for she came from the ends of the earth to
   hear the wisdom of Solomon and, behold, a greater than Salomon is
   here." Matthew 12:42.

   Our LORD, on this occasion, was addressing a number of captious critics
   who, instead of listening to what He said and giving it the attention
   due to its own weight, said, "Show us a sign." Our Lord replies to them
   that He will give them no sign except the two signs of Jonah and of the
   Queen of the South. The first was very much to the point. Jonah, a lone
   man, working no miracle, went to Nineveh, a great city, where he was
   completely unknown. There he commenced to preach. The whole subject of
   his testimony was, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
   Through the broad streets of that gigantic city and through its lanes
   and alleys, in its public squares the voice was heard, sharp and
   shrill, of that lone man--"Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
   overthrown." No rod was turned into a serpent. No mountains were made
   to smoke. None were struck dead by the sudden hand of God. No
   paralytics and sick folk were healed. No signs were given to the men of
   Nineveh, but the declaration of that one man sent of God was sufficient
   to denounce and discover their sin! They felt that they had been guilty
   of sins that deserved to be denounced. He pronounced their punishment
   and they also felt that the punishment was well deserved and,
   therefore, from the king on the throne to the meanest of the citizens,
   all the inhabitants of that great city humbled themselves and Jonah's
   work was done! And God forgave the city. And the Lord Jesus seemed to
   say, "I also speak to you and tell you Truths of God which ought to
   have as much power upon your consciences as Jonah's testimony had upon
   the men of Nineveh, but you turn away, albeit that I speak truth which
   you cannot answer, and tell you things which you cannot meet nor deny.
   Yet you say, 'Show us a sign,' fools that you are! There shall no sign
   be given you except the sign of Jonah, the Prophet." The second sign
   was also quite as much to the point. It was the case of the Queen of
   Sheba. She had heard, by report, that Solomon was the wisest of men.
   She knew that men flocked to his court to be instructed from his lips.
   Under many disadvantages and at much expense, she set out upon a long
   journey that she might listen to the wise man's teaching. She found it
   to her benefit and returned with joy. "But"--Christ seems to say, "I am
   as wise as Solomon. I am able to instruct you as well as that monarch
   instructed those who came to his court and yet you show no eager desire
   to know what it is I teach! You are not willing to open your ears to
   receive, nor your minds to give a candid judgment upon what I utter,
   but you cry out at once, 'Show us a sign.' You would open your eyes and
   stare in vacant wonder at a miracle, but the mightiest wisdom that I
   can deliver to you, you tread under foot as swine tread under feet the
   choicest pearls."

   So Christ would give them no sign. He felt that they needed it not and,
   indeed, it would be wasted upon them. If they had possessed the same
   naive mind that was found in the Queen of the South, they would have
   listened to Him. And if they had been of the same honest spirit with
   the men of Nineveh, they would have repented upon His testimony, even
   as they did of old, who heard the Prophetic voice of Jonah!

   Ah, my dear Hearers, this very night the same spirit broods over
   thousands! They do not, when they go to hear a sermon, think of the
   matter of what they hear, but they must have it delivered with
   cleverness, with refined speech, with polished periods. Ah, if men were
   wise, they would care but little how these Truths of God were given to
   them, but they would weigh the Truths themselves! We do not claim that
   you should believe all that we say--if we speak anything contrary to
   God's Word, we charge you to reject what we say, but we do ask you to
   judge it, to weigh it and to let the im-

   portant Truths which we are charged by God to deliver to you, have a
   place in your attention--let them exercise your judgment, let them move
   your heart and will--let them influence your lives!

   Coming now, however, at once to the text, we shall notice, in the first
   place, that Jesus is ' "greater than Solomon."\n the second place, that
   Jesus "is here." And in the third place, that if we do not listen to
   Him and obey Him, the Queen of the South may well rise up to condemn
   us.

   These things, I think, are very evidently in the text. In the first
   place, then, in the text--

   I. OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST CLAIMS TO BE "GREATER THAN SOLOMON."

   You all know the history of Solomon. Solomon was great in several
   particulars and we shall point out to you that in each of these, Christ
   is greater than he.

   In the first place, Solomon was very great as a ruler. His father,
   David, had, by much perseverance, valor and industry, very much
   enlarged the boundaries of his once small dominion. He was a man of war
   and he left to Solomon a heritage, indeed--a well-filled treasury and
   an army of veterans. Solomon ruled over the whole of Israel. There
   seems to have been no disloyal rebellion, no revolt throughout the
   whole of his reign. In David's reign there were many rivals and the
   people were a restless, discontented, turbulent people. No people,
   perhaps, were more difficult to govern than the Jewish people in the
   days of David! But Solomon was so judicious, noble and just a ruler,
   that he left the whole nation at peace with itself.

   He was a monarch whom all respected and Solomon, too, in his time,
   enlarged the boundaries of his territory until it reached to the
   borders of Egypt and to the river Euphrates on the other side. They
   that dwelt in the wilderness "bowed before him and his enemies licked
   the dust." Many nations paid him tribute and all the strangers who
   remained in the land, whom the children of Israel did not destroy, did
   him service. He had dominion from sea to sea and, to use an Oriental
   extravagance of expression, "from the river even unto the end of the
   earth." Solomon had a kingdom from his father and with it a special
   Divine Blessing--the gift of wisdom which enabled him to rule well. His
   army was one of the largest of the various armies of the Oriental
   kings. He ruled with wonderful state. The throne which he had built for
   himself is said to have had none like it in the whole of the then known
   world. His treasury was filled so full that as for silver, it was
   accounted for nothing. He made gold to be as silver, and silver as
   stones in Jerusalem! He was the greatest monarch that Israel had ever
   seen!

   And yet, dear Friends, what a petty, little king he was, and when we
   compare him for a single moment with our Lord Jesus Christ, what a
   contrast there is! All the power of Solomon is gone and not a speck of
   it is left. He had dominion in his day over vast numbers of humankind,
   but he has no dominion now. But the Throne of the Man who was crucified
   on Calvary has power over tens of thousands of human hearts at this
   present moment. Lo, these 1,800 years Christ has reigned over
   multitudes who have been all too glad to kiss His feet and have
   rejoiced in the light of His Countenance! His Kingdom, instead of
   waning, has continually increased and the day shall come when all kings
   shall yield their scepters to Him and He shall gather sheaves of them
   beneath His arm when all monarchs shall doff their diadems and He,
   alone, shall reign King of kings and Lord of lords--the universal Head
   of the great monarchy--the Stone cut out of the mountain without hands
   which shall yet fill all the earth! The power of the Lord Jesus Christ
   over His Church is like the power of Solomon over Israel. He keeps it
   at one, and together!

   Apart from Christ, the Church is a broken thing, divided into sects and
   parties, but in Christ Jesus, the Savior's prayer is answered, "That
   they all may be one." Bring any one of us to the Cross and you shall
   not know this from that, for there we all agree to trust Him, to
   worship Him, to count His authority to be paramount and His example to
   be our pattern! Yes, Lord Jesus Christ, all Your children praise You!
   All those that are of Your household put the crown upon Your head. You
   rule in the household and You rule well, You "first-born among many
   brethren." Moreover, our Lord's dominion extends beyond His Church. He
   rules even to the river of Egypt. Know you not that Christ is Lord
   paramount over Providence? Nothing occurs without Jehovah-Jesus'
   purpose, decree, or permission! The very hairs of your head are all
   numbered--

   "He overrules all mortal things, And manages our mean affairs."

   Nor is this all. The Lord Jesus has the government upon His
   shoulders--and that government extends not only to earth, but to Heaven
   and Hell--

   "Lo!In His hands, the Sovereign keys Of Heaven, and death, and Hell."

   The power of Christ is felt beneath Hell's most profound wave and His
   Glory is sung on Heaven's most starry heights! He has put all things
   under His feet. He is exalted far above all principalities and powers,
   and every name that is named, that at the name of Jesus every knee
   should bow, of things in Heaven, and things on earth, and things that
   are under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that He is
   Lord, to the Glory of God the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, has
   a dominion which, for duration and for extent, is infinitely superior
   to anything of which Solomon ever conceived! And as for majesty and
   glory--talk not of the peacock--throne of the Great Mogul, all set with
   many colors and with gems and precious stones that shine resplendent
   like a rainbow in the glittering sun! There is no throne like unto the
   Throne of Jesus, the Emperor of all worlds! See before Him the sea of
   glass mingled with fire. Around Him stand His seraphic courtiers. There
   stand the elders with their "vials full of sweet odors." And as you
   listen you can hear their "harps of sweeter sound." And mark you not
   the countless hosts who all cast their crowns before Him and, with one
   soul and voice, cry, "You are worthy to take the book and to loose the
   seals thereof, for You were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your
   blood"? Oh, cannot your ears hear this very moment the mighty booms of
   that great sea of music which rolls up to the Throne of Jesus? Can you
   not catch some stray notes from the harps of angels and archangels, as
   unceasingly they sing, "You are worthy! You are worthy to take the book
   and to loose the seals thereof"? Beloved, we cannot thinkof comparing
   Christ with Solomon, but we must contrast them, for a "greater than
   Solomon is here, as a Ruler."

   Let us learn from this the obvious lesson of practical value and
   wisdom. If, from the far-off South, the Queen of She-ba came to see
   Solomon, how wise will it be for us to come to see Jesus! Oh, that we
   would do so and make Him our King! Let us enlist in His warrior bands.
   None ever served so great a master! Let us be members of His household,
   for happy are they that stand continually in His Presence. Let us give
   over our enmity and cast down the weapons of our rebellion! And let us
   say by Grace --

   "Oh, King of Grace, my heart subdue--

   I would be led in triumph, too,

   A willing captive to my Lord,

   To sing the triumphs of His Word,"

   Solomon was great as a builder For this, perhaps, he is best known
   among us. 'Twas a mighty deed to bring the towering cedars of Lebanon,
   all fashioned and prepared, to Jerusalem to make a house for the
   Lord--to hew from the quarries in the mountains, great stones and
   goodly ones, all squared, and each one fitted and made ready for its
   place so that there might be no sound of hammer, nor lifting up of
   chisel in the building of the house. Happy were the eyes that looked
   upon the Temple of Solomon! Even at this very day, when the explorers
   come upon what they suppose to be the Temple, they are astounded at the
   masses of stone which they find there! Our Lord said that one stone
   should not be left upon another, but that all should be cast down--but
   even as they lie in the places where they were cast down--they are
   amazing! Even modern engineers have marveled how they could ever have
   been brought and put into their places--they are of such enormous size
   and yet so well squared and prepared for the building! Besides this,
   Solomon built a house of the forest of Lebanon, of which we have a
   descriptive account in the pages of Inspiration and which also seems to
   have been a marvelous work. In addition to that, he was great in the
   erection of works for the carrying of water. He made pools in Zion--the
   upper and the nether pools. He seems to have carried aqueducts where
   they were never heard of before his time, and it is possible that many
   of the great discoveries of modern days were well known to Solomon,
   even all those years ago. He seems to have built an ascent to the house
   of the Lord, which particularly struck the Queen of Sheba as being a
   most wonderful piece of masonry. Besides this, he was the builder of
   treasure cities. He also built Gezer, Bethhoron, Baalath, Tadmor in the
   wilderness, and so on. Solomon was a great master builder--none could
   excel him as a piler of huge stones, one upon another.

   Ah, but my Brothers and Sisters, a greater than Solomon is the Lord
   Jesus! It is easy enough to build with stones, granite, bricks and
   cedar. These are dead, coarse things that you can hew and cut as you
   will. Get enough sawing and cutting power and you can make what you
   will of these things. It is only brute mechanical force that is needed,
   with judgment here and there to direct and guide it. Get strength
   enough and, as Archimedes said, you might move the world with a
   lever--it is only one physical force pitted against another. But what
   shall we say of Christ, who has built a house

   that is made of living, immortal souls, built of what Peter, taught of
   the Spirit, calls, "living stones"? You do not cut these, nor polish
   them quite so easily. Men with strong, stubborn wills. Men with
   diseased imaginations. Men with perverse affections, men altogether
   gone from original righteousness--our Lord Jesus Christ has taken these
   and He has prepared them to make a Temple in which there shall be
   nothing but holiness and perfection! I trust that some of us have been
   prepared to be built into "a living Temple, for an habitation of God
   through the Spirit." But if the Lord Jesus Christ shall ever make tens
   of thousands--and thousands of thousands of once guilty men all
   perfect, and shall build these altogether, fitting each one into its
   place and making each one willing to maintain and stay in its
   place--this will be such a thing as a thousand Solomons could not have
   attempted! This is no work of brute force, of mechanical power, my
   Brothers and Sisters--this is the power of the Holy Spirit Himself--a
   spiritual'power, a power which comes from God, who is a Spirit, and who
   will have those who worship Him, worship Him in spirit and in truth!
   Can you conceive of this Temple? My soul seems to rise upon the wings
   of imagination at the very thought of it--a Temple all alive, a living
   Temple--each stone a priceless soul, glittering with immortality! John
   tells us of a city, the foundations whereof were of precious stones and
   he tells us of the "new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven," and I
   know not what besides. That was but a faint picture of the living
   Temple of Jesus, where each soul shall be more precious than the whole
   world, even though all the world were one pearl of the purest water--a
   Temple built by Him, for Him, to His own praise!

   Moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the great Master Builder, has built
   many a pool and aqueduct. We sang about one just now, such as Solomon
   never knew--

   "There is a fountain filled with blood,

   Drawn from Immanuel's veins!

   And sinners plunged beneath that flood,

   Lose all their guilty stains!"

   This is more glorious than the Pool of Gihon, the upper and the nether
   pool! Moreover, Solomon brought a river into Jerusalem that the
   multitude might drink, but it was not like this--"The water that I
   shall give you, shall be in you a well of water, springing up into
   everlasting life." Beloved, we have said that Solomon built treasure
   cities, but our Lord has given us promises that hold richer treasures
   than Tadmor ever knew--a Covenant--oh, the grandeur of that word,
   Covenant--a Covenant stored with all the fullness of God, for in Christ
   "dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily"!

   I shall lose myself if I attempt to extol my Master as a Builder! I
   only pray that you and I may be built upon His Foundation--that we may
   come to the Fountain which He has opened and may be cleansed
   therein--that we may come to His treasure city and be enriched, all our
   necessities being removed. And may we dwell with Him in the palace
   which shall never be taken down! A greater than Solomon, then, is
   Christ as a Builder!

   And now for a third view of Solomon. Solomon was the greatest man of
   his age as a trader A careless reader may not observe this, but a
   careful student of the narrative will discern the reason why Solomon
   was so immensely rich. Possessed of great wisdom, he saw at once that
   the wealth of a people must largely depend upon its commercial
   enterprise and activity. He therefore took a city upon the banks of the
   Euphrates, and when the great caravans, laden with costly treasures
   from India and China, sought to make their way to Egypt, Greece and
   Rome, they crossed at the very ford which Solomon possessed. He seized
   upon an oasis in the great desert and upon it he built a city, known to
   this day as Tadmor-- "Baalath and Tadmor in the wilderness." This
   little oasis, this spot of green earth in the midst of the desert, the
   caravans must pass. It was the only place where they could obtain
   water--and here Solomon built these cities which became the great
   depot, where exchanges were continually made of the productions of
   Egypt, India and China! The trade which, after the days of Solomon,
   went farther west and at last passed through the port of Venice--and
   then went still farther west and went through Holland, and has now come
   to London--all that trade was in the hands of Solomon. If you read
   carefully the record of his life, you will see that he was a most
   clever trader and managed for a time to secure a complete monopoly of
   all the provinces of the East. For this, the Queen of Sheba marveled at
   him. She wondered how it was that he could have been so wise as to be
   able to do this.

   But our Lord says that "a greater than Solomon is here." Our Lord Jesus
   Christ has been a Trader of no common sort, my Brothers and Sisters. By
   His most precious blood He has brought us the supplies of the skies!
   Solomon could only bring to himself gold, and silver, and spices, and
   apes, and peacocks--but our Lord Jesus Christ has, by His precious
   blood, opened up the skies to the commerce of souls so that now,
   through Christ, there comes to us pardon for our sin, acceptance in the
   Beloved, sanctification by the Spirit, preservation by the indwelling
   of God and all those priceless

   gifts of which we cannot now speak particularly, only we must say of
   them, "Blessed be the name of Jesus, that ever our souls learned to
   trade in this heavenly direction." Yes, Christ is, indeed, greater than
   Solomon! Oh that you would seek to be enriched by Him! Oh that you
   would seek to obey that text in which He says, "I counsel you to buy of
   Me gold, yes, fine gold, tried in the fire, and the white raiment that
   you may be clothed." God give us Grace that we may come to this greater
   Trader than Solomon!

   Moreover, Solomon was exceedingly great as a sage. I shall not amuse
   you, for that is no objective of mine, with the various legends that
   are told of him. The one instance of his decision between the two women
   reminds us of the excellency of his judgment.

   He was renowned for this. You have his Proverbs, his Ecclesiastes, one
   of his thousand and one songs, and you may be assured that he was a
   mastermind in his day.

   But the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ far transcends this, for He can
   open up all the dark questions of your mind! He can teach you, O man,
   what you most want to know. He can teach you the way to Heaven, the way
   to escape from the power as well as the result of your sins, the way to
   get peace with God! The sages could not tell you this, but Jesus can.
   Seek Him, for He is greater than Solomon! I had more to say upon this
   point, but time will not allow, for I must have a word or two upon the
   second head, which is--

   II. THIS JESUS IS HERE

   He is not here in body. As we reminded you last Sabbath evening, He is
   gone. He is not here in that sense, "for He is risen." But Christ is
   here by His Spirit. If you want to get to Christ, this is the
   way--think of Him. That is, coming towards Him. Read His life. Study
   His death. Meditate upon Him. Let the thought of His laying down His
   life for His enemies dwell upon your minds. I wish that some of you
   would read the story of His Crucifixion very, very often. If you have
   not any faith, perhaps faith will come while you are reading it. "God
   commended His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, in due
   time Christ died for the ungodly." He did not die for those good people
   who have not any sin. He had nothing to do with those good people who
   are so righteous that they can get to Heaven their own way. Christ died
   for the guilty, the lost, the worthless. He comes like a physician to
   the sick--like one who gives sustenance to the perishing poor. Oh, read
   His life, for this will help you to come to Him!

   The true way in which to come to Christ is to believe Him, to trust
   Him. If any man trusts in Christ to save him, he has come to Him! When
   I used to hear sermons about coming to Christ, I thought, "Well, I
   would do it if I only knew how! If I had to walk from here to York, or
   no matter how far, I would find my way." But you do not come to Christ
   with your feet--you come to Him with your mind, heart and will--and he
   that trusts in Jesus, who says, "I will lean alone upon what Christ has
   done. I have been trying a thousand ways of salvation, but they shall
   all go to the winds and now, sink or swim, I believe that Jesus Christ
   died to save sinners and I trust in Him"--that man is saved! If you
   trust in Him, and lean on Him and if, just as you now see me throw the
   whole of my weight upon this rail, you lean the whole weight of your
   soul on Christ, you are saved!

   That is the only way of salvation, to throw yourselves completely on
   Jesus! God must punish sin, but Christ bore what was due to our sin in
   the place of sinners, of all who trust Him! If you trust Him, then
   Christ was punished instead of you and no penalty can fall on you. Your
   debts have all been paid by Christ and God cannot--for He is
   righteous-- demand from you what Jesus has already endured for your
   sake. If you trust Jesus Christ, then, as sure as God is true, He will
   save you! It is His own promise, "He that believes and is baptized
   shall be saved." Now, for the purpose of trusting, Christ is here. If
   you could see Him with your eyes, you could not trust Him any more than
   you can tonight when you cannot see Him, though He is here and oh,
   wonder of wonders, He is also engaged yonder in Heaven, according to
   this Book, in pleading for you! You do not need to see a man to trust
   him. I can trust a man who is in India. I can trust a brother whom I
   may have in Australia, I can trust a man who may be in the backwoods of
   America and trust him quite as well as if I saw him--perhaps my trust
   might be all the more like trust because I did not see him. We say that
   there are some people whom we can only trust as far as we can throw
   them, that is to say, we cannot trust them at all! But Christ is not of
   that kind. For all the purposes that are needed, then, to save you,
   Christ is here! By His Spirit He is here, and here now, and He will now
   whisper into your soul, "Peace. Your sins are forgiven you." If you
   will now trust Him, you shall have in your heart a peace which passes
   all understanding, which shall be the best proof to you that Jesus is
   here. Oh, why do you put it off? Oh, why do you who feel you need a
   Savior, continue so long away from this simple faith." I prayed for you
   just now--the Lord knows how sincerely I prayed--that we might all meet
   in Heaven. We never shall, unless we all believe in Jesus, for He is
   the one Door--if we will not enter by Him, we cannot enter--there is no
   stealing or climbing our way there.

   If we have to come and rest in Christ, why should we not do it tonight?
   Oh, why should we this night not be led to rest alone in Christ? If we
   do this, we are saved, already saved, completely saved, irrevocably
   saved--so saved that neither death nor Hell shall ever divide the
   Believer from his Lord! May this be done by us all, for Jesus is here.
   And now I have to close by saying that if, with this Gospel before us,
   we do not come to this greater than Solomon-- III. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
   WILL CONDEMN US!

   For look! She was a heathen who had heard but a little about Solomon
   and yet she came to see if it were true. You profess to be Christians,
   many of you. You have heard about Jesus from the time when you left the
   cradle. If you come not, these many Sundays, these many sermons, these
   good books and these Bibles of yours--what shall they be but like the
   big stones that were hurled at Achan to destroy him for his sin? May
   God grant that you may not sin against the Light of God, but may the
   Light lead you to Christ that you may be saved!

   This woman came to see Solomon from afar We know not how far it
   was--whether she was the queen of the southern part of Arabia, or
   whether her territory was upon the other side of the Red Sea in
   Abyssinia--she seems to have been the queen of both countries. But from
   whichever she might have come, it was a long journey. You have no
   distance to go. Thought can travel all the distance in a moment! Faith
   can throw a bridge across every difficulty! Believe in Christ and you
   are with Christ! Trust Christ and Christ is with you--and you are with
   Him and in Him!

   The Queen of Sheba had to meet a thousand dangers. Traveling in those
   days was no easy task. The Bedouins would attack her caravans. She had
   many trials and hardships to put up with, but there are no such
   hardships to you. You have simply to trust. All the way to Heaven is
   only two steps--the first is to step out of yourselves and the second
   is to step into Christ. First to have done with all that you can do and
   secondly, to ask for all that Christ has done. You have no
   difficulties, then.

   Now, this woman, when she came, did not come bringing her own wisdom to
   Solomon, but she came to learn from Solomon. You must come to Christ,
   not to bring your own knowledge, but to learn of Him what He would have
   you to do. If you are to be saved, you must be taught as well. "Unless
   you are converted and become as little children, you shall in no wise
   enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

   And this woman did bring very great presents to Solomon--spices and I
   know not what. Now Christ asks you to bring nothing! And if you do not
   come on such terms, well may she condemn you. He needs no merits of
   yours. He needs no good heart. He needs nothing good from you. "Surely
   He needs faith and repentance," says one. Yes, but--

   "True belief and true repentance, Every Grace that brings me nigh,
   Without money,

   Come to Jesus Christ and buy."

   "But I must felmy needs," says one. Yes, but--

   "This He gives you-- 'Tis His Spirit's rising beam."

   You are to come to Christ without anything--and Christ will give you
   everything!

   This woman had never been invited to come. She went on a haphazard
   journey. Solomon never sent the Queen of Sheba an invitation to visit
   his court, but she came and was well rewarded. But you have been
   invited hundreds of times. I must bear this witness against you. I have
   invited you very earnestly times without number. Oh, why, why,
   why--when the Gospel is so simple, why do you kick against it? If my
   Lord were hard I could understand your lifting up the heel against Him.
   If He laid down some difficult conditions, I could excuse you if you
   said, "Master, we cannot come up to them." But when the only thing He
   says is, "Take what I give you. Receive it as a gift of Grace"--oh, not
   to receive it is unkindness, is madness, is wickedness! May God forgive
   your unbelief! I know the very difficulty in your case is that it is so
   easy. I do believe if salvation were more difficult, some of you would
   like it better. You are just like Naaman. If the Prophet had bid him do
   some great thing, he would have done it, but when it was nothing but,
   "Wash and be clean," it did not suit his pride. And it does not suit
   yours just to come and trust in Christ. I know you say you are afraid
   it would not be true. Ah, then you prefer your opinion to the testimony
   of God, for this is God's simple testimony, "Believe on the

   Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." "He that believes and is
   baptized shall be saved. He that believes not shall be condemned."

   May the Eternal Spirit bring you, empty-handed and ruined, to the
   All-Sufficient Savior and may you be enabled to now rely upon Him and
   you shall find that He is true! "Him that comes unto Me," He says, "I
   will in no wise cast out." The Lord bless you for Christ's sake!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 119:113-120.

   The proper way in which to read these verses is to peruse them in the
   spirit of prayer, turning every verse into a personal supplication to
   God. I trust that many of us may be so in the Spirit, today, that these
   words may suit us.

   Verse 113. I hate vain thoughts: but Your Law do I love. The moralist
   is quite content to look after his actions, but the Christian is never
   happy until his thoughts are sanctified. The true Believer hates vain
   thoughts because they lead to vain words and to vain actions--because
   vain thoughts nailed his Savior to the tree, because vain thoughts
   spoil his devotion, mar his communion with God and, like the birds
   which came down upon Abraham's sacrifice--would destroy all his
   offering. "I hate vain thoughts." The converse of this is, "But Your
   Law do I love." There is nothing vain there. Nothing in Your Law to
   distract me. Nothing to give me unhallowed thoughts. Brothers and
   Sisters, here is a cure for vain thoughts! When you have been assailed
   by vain thoughts, let your mind be lovingly stored with texts of
   Scripture, with passages of God's Word! The Psalmist, while writing
   these words, is evidently under a sense of danger, so he said--

   114. You are my hiding place and my shield: I hope in Your Word. Here
   is a hiding place to escape to from danger and a shield to protect
   while in danger. A hiding place is not enough because that cannot be
   moved--but the shield can be carried everywhere. It is buckled on the
   warrior's arm and into every conflict he can take it. So, at evening,
   when I tell my troubles to my God, He is my hiding place. But all the
   day long, while I myself abide in the heat of the conflict, He is my
   shield! See where the Christian's hope is, dear Friends! It is not in
   his own integrity, or faithfulness, or sincerity-- but, "I hope in Your
   Word."--

   "The Gospel bears my spirit up! A faithful and unchanging God Lays the
   foundation for my hope In oaths and promises, and blood."

   115. Depart from me, you evildoers: for I will keep the commandments of
   my God. By which David did not mean that he would not speak with
   ungodly men. Monkish seclusion would be no advantage to a Christian! We
   are to be in the world, though not of it, as a ship is in the sea, but
   the sea is not in the ship, or else soon would she go to the bottom. We
   are to take care of the world--to hold such society with them as may
   come from necessity--but as to any nearer communion, "Depart from me,
   you evildoers. Your company I cannot bear! Your example pollutes the
   air! You do me damage, you vex my ears, you dishonor my God--depart
   from me, you evildoers, for I will keep the commandments of my God."
   You see, it seems as if this was not possible as long as there was an
   intimate association with the ungodly. I know nothing that is so likely
   to destroy the purity of a Christian's life as an intimate association
   with ungodly people. You cannot run with the hare and hold with the
   hounds, too. It is impossible for you to join with world and yet be
   true followers of Christ.

   116. Uphold me according unto Your Word, that I may live: and let me
   not be ashamed of my hope. You see, he feels his weakness and he cries
   to his God.

   117. Hold You me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto
   Your statutes continually. The brightest archangel owes all his glory
   to God--and the perpetuity of that glory depends upon the constant gift
   of the Gracious One. How wise, then, is it of men, conscious of their
   weakness, to hang constantly upon their God! As the vessel hangs upon
   the nail, and if the nail can move, the vessel must fall, so must we
   hang upon God. If He is not faithful, and true, and potent, then we
   must perish--but, thank God, concerning this we have no doubt!

   118-119. You have trodden down all them that err from Your statutes:
   for their deceit is falsehood. You put away all the wicked of the earth
   like dross: therefore I love Your testimonies. You see, the Psalmist's
   mind is entirely occupied

   with this spirit of perseverance. He seems to tremble and to be filled
   with awe lest he should by any means prove an apostate and be unworthy
   to enter into the Kingdom. He looks with solemn mind upon God as
   casting all the wicked of the earth down under His feet, just as men
   cast out the refuse--as the slag of the furnace is sometimes thrown
   down to make the footpath. So he says, "You put away the wicked of the
   earth like dross. You have trodden them down." David was filled with a
   heavy trembling lest this should be his lot--lest, after he had thought
   he had known and experienced the happiness of communion with God, he
   should be found to be reprobate silver and be given over to
   destruction! Does such a fear as this come upon you, my Brothers and
   Sisters? If it does not, there is room for you to fear, for even our
   holy Apostle had this as his anxiety, "Lest, after having preached to
   others, I myself should be a castaway." It is not as to whether God
   will be faithful to me, but whether I am really His, whether my
   conversion has been genuine and my union to Christ vital. These are
   questions which breed a holy anxiety, which is one of the very best
   means of keeping a Christian in the path of right and so of
   guaranteeing the perseverance which God has promised. 120. My flesh
   trembles for fear of You and'I am afraid of Your judgments
     __________________________________________________________________

A World Wide Welcome

   (No. 3352)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
   you rest." Matthew 11:28.

   PERHAPS no verse in the whole of Scripture has been handled in the
   pulpit more frequently than this, and yet it has not been exhausted and
   never can be! It is a great soul-saving text. There are some words of
   Scripture which seem to be like special stars in the sky. As the
   polestar is conspicuous to the astronomer, so are these salvation
   Truths of God to the Evangelist--he is never weary of gazing at them
   and pointing to them. The promises that are fitted to give present and
   immediate relief to the conscience are stars of the first magnitude and
   many sinners have had their attention attracted by them and by them
   been directed to the Port of Peace! Upon such a passage as I have
   propounded for our sermon tonight, [see exposition at end of sermon] I
   shall have nothing new to say. No novelty is required. We only need to
   hear the same old Truths--yes, to hear them till they work their way
   into our souls, and then to hear them yet again, that our pure minds
   may be stirred up by way of remembrance, and that we, feeling their
   value, may proclaim them out for the guidance and comfort of others!
   Observe first--

   I. TO WHOM THE SAVIOR ADDRESSED HIMSELF--all them that "labor and are
   heavy laden."

   It is not once out of a dozen times that I have ever had the good
   fortune to hear this text quoted correctly. It is, "All you that are
   weary and heavy laden," according to the modern rendering. But as Jesus
   Christ said it, it is, "All you that labor and are heavy laden." I
   suppose the alteration has been made in the interests of those who will
   not venture upon an invitation to men to come to Christ until they have
   got Him--I mean will not tell men to look to Jesus till they virtually
   have already experienced all that a look to Jesus is ever likely to
   give them! They will insist so much upon the spirituality of the terms
   used here that, seeing the words are a little difficult to get over,
   they must change them altogether! When our Lord said, "All you that
   labor," who is to tell me that I am to trace in the word all them that
   spiritually labor? I should be afraid to add to the words of Scripture
   and must leave the responsibility with those who do so. Men labor, and
   if they labor with their heads, or their brains, or their hearts, in
   any form of labor, Christ bids them come to Him for rest. Men bear
   great burdens, some of them burdens of care, some burdens of grief,
   some burdens of foolish hope--but if they come to Him, being heavy
   laden or heavily loaded, He will take their load from them and give
   them rest.

   From the day of the Fall man has been a laborer and he has been heavily
   laden. Into whatever condition man may climb, he cannot altogether
   escape that first curse, "In the sweat of your brow shall you eat
   bread." If he does not work with his hands, he must, at least, toil
   mentally. But if he is idle because he says he has a competency, there
   is a something about such a life as that from which a man cannot
   escape! Instead of the world getting better in the way of toil and
   burden carrying, it is every day getting worse. Why, our forefathers of
   the Puritan times were quite easy souls compared with us! When I read
   the diaries of some of their lives, I quite envy them. A Puritan
   minister, when he dedicated himself to the work of the ministry with
   all his heart, was not run upon by the public, hunted up by the postman
   and embarrassed with ten thousand of the difficulties which arise out
   of our unnatural civilization! Good souls, they sometimes had rest and
   walked with God with some degree of ease! But now the world goes by
   steam. We have laid down steel rails and all business must run on them.
   It is all driving and turmoil from morning till night. You wake up,
   some of you, with the sound of the steam whistle in your ears, and you
   scarcely can sleep in your beds because of the rumbling of the trains
   at your very doors! It is a world of toil, and I believe that it will
   go on so--and instead of getting better, the world will in some
   respects get worse. It will be a harder struggle to live and a sterner
   struggle to live a spiritual life as the world grows gray. Hence, the
   words of the Master seem to me to come more fresh tonight than even
   when they fell from His

   lips, "Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden," for we
   labor more, now, than men did in His day, and are even more heavily
   laden than they were then! Jesus Christ addresses you tonight whose
   toils are many and your burdens heavy. Some of you are laboring after
   wealth, and if you got it you would find no rest in it. But the
   probabilities are that you may never get it and so be disappointed. But
   you need rest. Well, come to Him and you shall have it! Some of you,
   perhaps, are toiling after learning and the honor which it will bring
   you--may you get it! If it is good for you, you may, perhaps, obtain
   it. But in all learning there is sorrow--oftentimes the greater the
   domain of knowledge, the broader expanse is there in the soul for the
   floods of grief to cover. But if your mind needs rest, Jesus bids you
   come to Him! Oh you with enlarged ambitions, with grasping desires! Oh
   you that are panting and puffing in the race of life, you that are
   faint and weary with tugging at the oar of the world's great ship, come
   to Him, for He can release you! He can take off the chain from the
   galley slave and set you free!

   Still, while the text is not exclusively directed to those who
   spiritually labor and are spiritually heavy laden, it includes them. Do
   I not address some tonight who are laboring hard to establish a
   righteousness of their own? Oh, sinful attempt, since God has forbidden
   it and declares the effort to be futile! Oh, vain folly, thus to fly in
   the face of Eternal Wisdom which declares that "by the works of the Law
   there shall no flesh living be justified"! If you are ever to get rest,
   you must cease from your own doings and you must come to Christ! Oh,
   you that are heavily laden with your sins and feel them like a burden
   pressing your heart, bowing you to the ground and crushing you, as it
   were, down to the lowest Hell--that burden can never be lifted off your
   weary backs except by one hand--and that hand, the pierced hand which
   has felt the weight of the burden before! To you that toil, to you that
   are bowed down and crushed with the load, Jesus speaks tonight as He
   did of old! And He says, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Now
   notice--

   II. THE COMMAND OR THE INVITATION--which you will--THAT JESUS GIVES.

   It is, "Come unto Me." There never seems to have been any difficulty in
   Christ's day in understanding the expression, "Come unto Me." It
   exactly struck the Oriental mind--they understood it at once. But
   now-a-days thousands ask the question, "What is faith? What is
   believing in Jesus? What is coming to Him?" Many convinced souls say,
   "If I could walk to Christ, it does not matter how perilous or
   fatiguing the journey--I would certainly go! And if He were here,
   literally, and I could fall down and kiss His feet, I would certainly
   do it."

   Understand, then, that the coming here mentioned is not to be taken
   literally, but spiritually. It is not a physical coming. We cannot now
   come to Christ by the motion of our bodies, nor shall we be able until
   He calls us by the sound of the last trumpet. If men had come to Christ
   physically when He was on earth, it would not have been of any use to
   them, unless by faith they had spiritual contact with Him, for some
   drew near to Him with idle curiosity and others with malignant
   opposition--yes, there were those who came to Him to crucify Him! They
   looked to Him physically as He hung upon the tree, but they were not
   saved by such a coming as that! The coming here meant is coming by the
   mind, approaching with the heart--a thing of the inner nature, a
   spiritual thing! To come to Christ, then, is just this--in one word it
   is to accept Him as your Savior--but to spell out that one counsel, let
   me trace out the action of the mind in coming. First, you must listen
   to His Doctrine. Seek to know, oh, weary ones, what it is that Jesus
   teaches! Turn to the record and see who He was, what He was, what was
   His commission, what was His message and what were the terms in which
   He delivered it, and what was the spirit in which He came to bring it.
   In the next place, believe whatever He teaches. Accept as being true
   what Christ declares. If He claims to be God, believe Him--accept Him
   as such. If He puts Himself down as Prophet, Priest and King, let your
   mind jump at it and say, "He shall be my Prophet, my Priest, my King."
   Coming to Christ begins in divers ways in the soul. With many it begins
   first by hearing of Christ, then by believing with the mind the
   testimony that is borne concerning Jesus. But this is not enough. After
   having heard and accepted that the witness of Christ is true, the
   genuine coming is then to cast your soul, with all its awful interests,
   into His hands and trust Him--in fact, to say, "I have no dependence
   for life, for death, for eternity, but on the Person and merits of that
   Son of God who was born of Mary, who lived a life of holiness, who died
   upon the tree, who rose again and whoever lives to make intercession
   for us." The simple act of trust--albeit by some it is so much
   despised--is the act which saves the soul! The moment a sinner casts
   himself flat upon what Christ has done, with no reserve, no holding to
   any other hope even with his little finger. The moment he makes himself
   to be a bankrupt, gives up all and lives upon the charity of Christ.
   The moment he completely takes off his own rags and puts on no garment
   but the righteousness of Christ. The moment that he acknowledges
   himself to be a black, filthy, condemned--yes, and without Christ--a
   condemned sinner! The

   moment he feels that and then takes Christ to be his fullness, his
   trust, his All-in-All--he has come to Christ! He is saved, he shall
   have rest!

   But to come to Christ implies a little more than even this, if we would
   get the perfection of it and the completeness of the rest which is
   promised. When I come to Christ and trust in Him to be my Savior, I am
   then to continue to come to Him by following in His footsteps, obeying
   His precepts, drinking in His spirit, and serving His cause. Brothers
   and Sisters, we are all, as His people, constantly coming to Him! "To
   whom coming," says the Apostle, "as unto a living stone"--not, "to whom
   we have come, and there is an end of it," but to whom we are always
   coming! We are like the country people who do not live by experience of
   having gone to the well seven years ago, but they go every day and dip
   the pitcher in afresh. We are like in our souls what we are in our
   bodies--we do not grow fat and flourishing on the experience of having
   eaten a good meal 20 years ago, but it is by daily coming to the table
   and continually receiving fresh food for the sustenance of our bodies!
   And, Brothers and Sisters, to get perfect peace through Jesus Christ,
   there must be a daily, an hourlycoming to Him in constant trust, in
   faithful obedience and in holy fellowship, striving to be conformed to
   His image. "Come unto Me,"then, says the Savior, "all you that labor
   and are heavy laden." He picks out you working men and He says, "Come
   and hear what I have got to say. Believe it, accept it, trust it and I
   will give you rest." He finds out you merchants who toil so much that
   the brain sometimes gives way, and He says, "Now, come. Come to Me and
   I will give you rest. You expect to get it when you retire from
   business and go to your country house--but even now, if you come to Me,
   you shall have a rest that no suburban retreat, no accumulation of
   wealth, no immunity from the strain of business can ever give you! I
   can make that heart beat at an easier rate. I can cool that hot blood
   that is now coursing through your veins at such speed. I can bathe your
   spirit in a sleep that shall be like an infant's slumber, soft and
   light--and I can do this for you while you are striving to be rich, or
   while you are poor, while your losses are great, while your friends are
   falling like autumn leaves and while your fears are howling in your
   ears like winter's winds! I can give you rest, perfect rest, if you
   come to Me." If you come to Him, believe what He says, trust Him
   entirely, rest and repose in Him and you shall get for your souls that
   Paradise which they so much need, of perfect peace! Having noticed the
   persons addressed and the invitation given, let us observe--

   III. OUR LORD'S DESCRIPTION OF THE BLESSING WHICH IS TO BE GIVEN TO
   SUCH WHEN THEY

   COME. "I will give you rest."

   The best word in all human language, next to, "God," and "Jesus," is
   that word, "rest." Different views of Heaven charm different people. No
   doubt Heaven is described under various metaphors so that every
   Christian may find some delight appropriate to himself. As for me,
   whether it is that I am constitutionally lazy or not, I do not
   know--there is no idea of Heaven which charms me like that of being at
   perfect rest in Christ Jesus, where--

   "Not a wave of trouble rolls

   Across the peaceful breast."

   This text seems to ring like a marriage bell in one's ears. "Come unto
   Me and I will give you rest." Oh, you will not care about it, you who
   do not labor, you who are never heavy laden and have got no more burden
   than you can carry--you will not care about it--but those who are stuck
   in the struggles of life, or that are oppressed with spiritual
   grief--they will be the persons who will find the sweetness of it! Yes,
   rest for the weary, rest for the toiler, rest for the heavy laden--
   this is, indeed, a blessing!

   And what is the rest which Jesus gives? Well, it is a spiritualrest
   which He bestows upon His people--a rest which rests them throughout,
   for when the mind gets rested, the very bodily frame seems to be
   sustained. While an agitated mind often brings the body into disease
   and lowers it into its grave--Jesus can give such a tonic to the entire
   system by the peace which He imparts--that the very lame shall be made
   to leap like a hart!

   Oh, what a peace this is--the peace which Jesus gives! He gives peace
   as to all the guilty memories of the past. These will haunt us. When
   the conscience is awakened, our dead sins seem to start up, wearing,
   each one, its ceremony, and each sin stands before us like a grim ghost
   claiming retribution And the awakened conscience, knowing right well
   that the wages of sin is death, becomes alarmed and the man says, "What
   must I do to be saved?" As if in your walk tonight there should
   suddenly open before you a pit in the very pathway which you were about
   to tread--how you would stand amazed and aghast! And then if another
   opened behind you, and then on either hand the earth began to rock and
   reel, how would you be astounded and dismayed!

   Such is the position of a man when conscience is suddenly quickened. He
   thought himself to be standing on the solid ground of his own good
   works--but suddenly all is gone. No good works appear. Sin is on either
   side. Hell is beneath him and the sword of Divine Justice, all
   unsheathed, is gleaming above his head! Ah, but Jesus Christ can show
   you how sin is forgiven! If you believe Him, He will tell you that He
   came into the world to suffer for the sins of all who trust Him--that
   He actually did bear all the punishment which was due from the hand of
   God to all the sinners who will trust in Him--and that God is so
   rigidly just, severely righteous, yet infinitely gracious in the pardon
   of those who will trust in Christ!

   Nor is it only the fear of the past, but the power of the present, from
   which this kindly rest exempts us! A man awakened, longs to escape from
   sin. As an iron net, his habits of sin surround him. He tugs and toils
   to escape from there, but the more he strives, the more thoroughly is
   he enveloped therein. His attempts at reformation from some sin are
   often successful, but any attempts to reform our nature and to overcome
   our inbred sin made by us in our own strength, must inevitably be a
   failure! Sin, indeed, will only become more exceedingly sinful the more
   we strive to bridle it unless we cry unto the Strong for strength! How
   often has a man said, "I cannot lead a better life. It is no use--you
   may exhort me if you please, but see what I have been, how I am tempted
   and how my passions drag me this way and that? There is no hope for
   me!" But Jesus steps in and says, "Come to Me and I will give you rest.
   I can change your nature. I can take away the heart of stone and give
   you a heart of flesh. I can give you tendencies and passions of quite
   another kind which shall combat with your old proclivities and
   ultimately overcome them. I can inspire in you a new hope. I can
   breathe into you a new and better life, for I am the Resurrection and
   the Life, and he that believes in Me, though he were dead, as you are,
   yet shall he live. And as to returning to your old sins, that shall not
   be, for he that lives and believes in Me shall never die. I will keep
   you and deliver you from the power of sin and Satan, and you shall be
   Mine even till life's end." Thus peace is given to us, both as to the
   guilt and as to the power of sin!

   But this is not all! Jesus can give peace and does give peace to all
   who come to Him as to the cares of this world. The righteous have their
   troubles. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." But there is a
   sacred art which Jesus teaches, which enables the Christian to rejoice
   in tribulation and to triumph in the midst of distress! Some of the
   happiest moments that God's people have ever had have been when neither
   sun nor moon appeared and when in the darkness they crept into the
   bosom of Jesus and nestled there! We are not dependent upon outward
   circumstances when faith is in exercise. Jesus shows us that His love
   is faithful, eternal, immutable love--and immediately we kiss the
   smiting hand and love it as well as the giving hand. Oh, you that are
   now the poor slaves of your daily cares, how happy would you be if you
   came to Jesus and trusted in Him! The cage would grow no larger. The
   income might become no richer. You might still be among the poor and
   the laboring ones, but you would have a rest in your condition, a
   satisfaction in your state which would make it better, though it
   changed it not! For it is all one to a man to have his estate brought
   up to his mind, or to have his mind brought down to his estate. It
   matters not, as long as he is content! It all comes to the same end and
   Christ, by a Divine baptism of His love, bathing us, covering us
   completely in the floods of His Divine Grace can give us, as to the
   cares of this world, a perfect rest!

   And, my Brothers and Sisters, if we come to Christ, we shall likewise
   get rest as to our desires. Thoughtful men find it difficult to rest.
   They go from one theory to another. When they think they have nestled
   for a while, a new difficulty comes and scares them from it. But he
   that believes in the Son of God has something upon which his mind may
   stand most stably, for as well is the teaching of Christ the most
   reasonable as it is also the most spiritual of doctrines! He that gets
   to know Christ, gets a fixed leverage for his soul on which to stand
   fast--let the world whirl as it may!

   He that gets Christ gets rest for his affections as well as for his
   understanding. The affections need something to love. We are always
   idolizing something or other, but those things either get broken in
   pieces, or else turn out to be our enemies. But he that gets the love
   of Jesus Christ supremely rests in his heart and he can sing--

   "Now rest, my long-divided heart! Fixed on this blissful center, rest."

   As I have already shown you, the conscience rests, so the understanding
   rests, the judgment rests, the affections rest and the whole powers of
   the man come to rest, even his desires--those insatiable things--those
   horse-leeches--those greedy, all-devouring things--these, too, are full
   when the man gets Christ, for he can then say--

   "All my capacious powers can wish, In You most richly meet--

   Nor to my eyes is light so dear, Nor friendship half so sweet."

   Yes, it is a perfect rest to every faculty of our nature that Jesus
   Christ gives us when we come to Him!

   And what, after all, is that portion of the rest which we see and
   experience here when compared with the fullness of which we shall enjoy
   hereafter? ' 'Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and
   I will give you rest. When the world passes away and all the fashion,
   thereof. When the pulse grows faint and few. When the eyes are glazing.
   When the eternal world begins to dawn upon the disembodied spirit, I
   will give you rest--rest when the elements dissolve with fervent heat,
   rest when the trumpet grows exceedingly loud and long and the dead
   arise from their graves--rest when the Great White Throne is set and
   the books are opened--when the dividing Voice separates the sheep from
   the goats! I will give you rest when Hell opens and the guilty descend
   to their doom. Rest while their smoke goes up forever and ever, and the
   vengeance of Almighty God is seen in the overthrow of all His enemies!
   I will give you rest--rest in the Father's bosom--rest at the right
   hand of God, rest in eternal union with Jesus, rest with the palm
   branch and the harp--rest in the everlasting vision of the blessed Son
   of God who is your trust and your all." Ah, Brothers and Sisters, what
   a rest is that--

   "To which our laboring soul aspires, With ardent pangs and strong
   desires!"

   It will be a rest from all sin! A rest from all temptation to sin! A
   rest from all painful memories about sin! A rest from all watchfulness
   against sin, from all liabilities of ever being led into it! A rest
   from secret sins, a rest from inbred sins, a total rest from every form
   of evil! It will be a rest from all the molestations of doubt and fear.
   A rest from every questioning as to our state before God! A rest from
   all the uprisings of natural depravity from an evil heart of unbelief.
   A rest from the attacks of Satan, the assaults of men without and of
   fiends from beneath--a rest, too, from daily toils--no more those hands
   to be rough with labor and that brow to be wet with sweat--no more the
   head to ache with thought and the heart to throb with dismay! A perfect
   rest from every species of toil that can bring distress, though we
   shall serve Him day and night in His Temple. It will be a rest from all
   care--no thoughts of those children and their little waywardnesses, no
   thoughts about the house and how to provide things honest in the sight
   of all men! A rest altogether from the engagements of the city and from
   the labors of the field! A rest completely from the toils which are
   allotted to the sons of men in this vale of tears. Oh, blessed rest! A
   rest from pain. A rest from death. A rest from fear. A rest with God. A
   rest, an eternal rest, which remains for the people of God!

   And this is for you, laboring and heavy laden one! This is for you, son
   of poverty! For you, daughter of sorrow! This is for the inmate of the
   poorhouse, the dweller in the alms room. This is for the crossing
   sweeper, this is for the toiling artisan. This is for the burdened
   merchant. This is for the care-worn statesman. This is for the minister
   who serves his Master till he is weary in his work! This is for us all
   if we have, by the Holy Spirit, through Divine Grace, been led to come
   to Jesus! That is the point. Do you believe on the Son of God? Dear
   Hearer, do you believe Jesus to have been God's Son, and to have died
   as the Substitute for sinners? And will you trust in Him as such,
   wholly and only? Will you venture on Him, and venture on Him now? If
   so, here is His promise, "He that believes and is baptized shall be
   saved." If you believe Him, you shall have salvation now! Obey Him! Be
   baptized as He commands you, and you shall thus have the blessing which
   God gives to all who trust in the slain Lamb of God!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOHN61-41.

   Verses 1-5. After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee,
   which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed Him,
   because they saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased.
   And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.
   And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near When Jesus then lifted
   up His eyes, and saw a great company come unto Him. They had been
   hearing Him all day and He had withdrawn a little from them, but they
   pursued Him up the hill--and I doubt not that as they toiled up the
   hill, they showed their faintness and their weariness which led the
   Savior to see how much they needed refreshment.

   5-7. He said unto Philip, Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?
   And this He said toprove him: for He, Himself, knew what He would do.
   Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient
   for them, that every one of them may take a little. Men's calculations
   concerning Divine things generally terminate in a deficit. Two hundred
   pennyworth is not sufficient. But Christ's calculations always
   terminate in a credit balance, as we shall see. "Gather up the
   fragments that remain, that nothing may be lost." We, at our best, fall
   short of the mark. Our blessed Master not only does enough, but in His
   House there is bread enough and to spare!

   8-10. One ofHis disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said unto
   Him, There is a ladhere, who has five barley loaves: and two small
   fishes: but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men
   sit down--Or lie down, as it is, for they were accustomed to do that at
   feasts, and Christ would have them take their ease as well as enjoy
   their refreshment. "Make the men recline."

   10. Now there was much grass in the place. So it was a splendid dining
   room! It was luxuriously carpeted! We learn from this that it was the
   Eastern spring time, for there is not much grass otherwise. And there
   was, therefore, in Christ's banqueting hall, a blue ceiling and a floor
   of green grass! What more could they need except the food?

   10-11. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus
   took the loaves--Common, coarse loaves of barley, not much esteemed,
   even then, as food.

   11. And when He had given thanks. Though out of doors and "in the
   rough," as we say, He did not forget that! I know some that fall to
   their meals like so many swine--and have not as much grace as chickens,
   that are sure to lift their heads whenever they take a drink, as if to
   bless God for every drop they receive! This gracious habit is going out
   of fashion among them.

   11. He distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that
   were set down--Or reclining.

   11. And likewise of the fishes as much as they would. That is always
   one of the rules of Christ's feasting--as much as they would. According
   to your appetite, according to your will, according to your faith, so
   be it unto you!

   12. When they were filled--Had all they could desire.

   12. He said unto His disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain,
   that nothing be lost. Economy in the midst of bounty! However much we
   have, we are never warranted in wasting a single crumb! They had as
   much as they would, but they were not allowed to throw away the
   fragments.

   13-14. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets
   with the fragments ofthe five barley loaves, which remained over and
   above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had seen the
   miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet that
   should come into the world. Men are often convinced by the argument of
   selfishness. They had been fed and now they believed. But faith that
   depends upon a full stomach will despair when they get hungry again!
   Always beware of that religion which is in dependence upon loaves and
   fishes. You know how it was with the children of Israel--

   "Now they believed the Word, While rocks with rivers flow, Then with
   their sins they grieved the Lord, And He did bring them low."

   Oh, but we must not have a faith that depends upon what it can see, and
   upon what it can eat, and what it can drink! Oh, for the confidence in
   the blessed Person of the Lord, and in the spiritual riches which He
   can communicate!

   15. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by
   force, to make Him a king, He departed again into a mountain, Himself,
   alone. What? Could He not have used His kingship for the best of
   purposes? Might He not easily have routed the Romans, restored Israel
   to all her glory, conquered the Gentiles, subdued the world and set up
   a glorious Church and state with Himself for the King, and Himself as
   the Head of the Church? Ah, that has been the idol of a great many and,
   like a will-o'-the-wisp, it has led many of the true people of God into
   bogs and sloughs where they were likely to be lost. But our Master knew
   better than this and was not to be tempted away from the true method by
   which His Church is to be set up in the world. Therefore, "He departed
   again into a mountain, Himself, alone."

   16-17. And when evening was now come, His disciples went down unto the
   sea and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum.
   And it was dark, and Jesus was not come to them. That is a sentence
   that I should think some very gloomy people might hang upon--and about
   which they might groan in unison, "It was now dark, and Jesus

   was not come to them." Have you never been in that condition? Dark,
   dark, dark, as to circumstances and as to feelings, and Jesus was not
   come to them. Now, something comes beside that.

   18. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. Misfortunes
   never come alone. An absent Savior, a roaring sea and a bellowing wind!
   What will they do now?

   19. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs,
   they saw Jesus. Here He is! Here is the first of their blessings. The
   first mischief is removed and the rest will soon go. They see Jesus!

   19. Walking on the sea. Oh, what a sight! A grander sight than to see
   Him on the land! And it is a more glorious sight to see Christ in the
   time of trouble than it is in the time of prosperity. He is always
   sweet, but He is more marvelous when they see Jesus walking on the sea.

   19. And drawing near unto the ship: and they were afraid. Afraid of
   their best Friend--trembling at their Deliverer!

   20. But He said to them, It is I. Do not be afraid

   21. Then they willingly received Him into the ship: and immediately the
   ship was at the land where they went. The sea and the winds knew how
   not only to spare the vessel, but to carry it instantaneously to the
   place where they wished to be! But how often have you and I been rowing
   about, 25 or 30 furlongs, and we did not seem to be getting out of the
   storm at all? But the moment Christ has come, we have been where we
   wished to be! Oh, glory be to His name--there is no difficulty that you
   can be in, dear Friends, but Christ can get you out of it in a moment
   and bring you where you should be!

   22-24. The following day, when thepeople which stood on the other side
   ofthe sea saw that there was no other boat there, save that one where
   into His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His
   disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone
   (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias near unto the place where
   they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks). When the
   people therefore sa w that Jesus was not there, neither His disciples,
   they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. Was
   not that a pleasant sight? So it seemed, but it was not. "Seeking for
   Jesus." That is a good description of a man--seeking for Jesus. Yes,
   but they were only seeking for more bread! They looked at Him as a
   bread giver--and they were after Him for that.

   25. And when they had found Him on the other side ofthe sea, they said
   unto Him, Rabbi, when did You come here? They could not understand how
   He could have got there. Jesus answered them and did not answer them.
   Some of Christ's answers are evidently no answers at all. That is very
   often the best answer you can give.

   26. Jesus answered them and said-- What? Did He explain to them how 'He
   got there? No, He would not gratify their curiosity. He came not for
   that end. He therefore gave them a home stroke and said--

   26. Verily, verily, I say unto you, You seek Me not because you saw the
   miracles, but because you did eat of the loaves, and were filled. You
   are loafers--loaf-hunters. You seek not Me, but Mine. It is not for the
   good that I can give your souls, but it is that you may have another
   meal, that you are here. Yours is cupboard love. You come after what
   you can get.

   27. Labor not for the meat which perished, but for that meat which
   endures unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto
   you: for Him has God the Father sealed. Now, do you understand what
   Jesus meant? Seek after that which will feed your souls. Do not hunt so
   much after bread for the body. Yet the Savior puts it very curiously.
   This is a double-shotted perplexity--a singular, curious kind of word.
   You are not to labor for that which you cannot get without labor and
   you are to labor for that which you cannot get by labor! The Savior
   liked to put things in that sententious way, so that they might
   remember what He said. If they misunderstood Him, it was their own
   fault, for it is plain enough. God grant us Grace to practice the
   meaning of these words! Why are you so eager to get a bit of barley
   bread and a fish? Oh, that you were half as eager to come and get the
   Bread which comes from Heaven which will make a man live forever and
   which will be food to him as long as he lives!

   28. 29. Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we might work
   the works ofGod? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work
   ofGod--The chief work, the greatest work which you can do!

   29. That you believe on Him whom He has sent. This is the point. You
   would like Me to work miracles. You would be glad to have a very
   wonderful, mysterious experience, but this is the thing you ought to
   seek after--the grandest, greatest thing that you can have--"that you
   believe on Him whom He has sent."

   30. They said therefore unto Him, What sign show You, then, that we may
   see and believe You? What do You work? Are you not wonderfully struck
   with the patience of Jesus? These people had seen His miracles and they
   had eaten loaves and fishes, and yet they say to Him, "What sign show
   You, then, that we may see and believe You?" Oh, the matchless patience
   of the Lord and the marvelous provocations of men!

   31. Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave
   them bread from Heaven to eat. They plainly hinted that they wanted
   more food.

   32-34. Then Jesus said unto them, verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses
   gave you not that bread from Heaven; but My Father gives you the true
   bread from Heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from
   Heaven, and gives life unto the world. Then they said unto Him, Lord,
   evermore give us this bread. Not understanding Him and praying still
   for bread, but not far Grace.

   35-37. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread oflife. He that comes
   to Me shall never hunger. And he that believes on Me shall never
   thirst. But I say unto you, That you also have seen Me, but believe
   not. All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me and him that comes
   to Me, I will in no wise cast out. What a striking Truth of God that
   was, with which to reply to them! You only come after Me for bread, but
   you do not come after spiritual things. You do not believe in Me. But,
   even if you do not, I shall not be disappointed, and My work will not
   fail. God has an election of Grace and that election shall be carried
   out. "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me." And then, as if
   to cheer them up again, He says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no
   wise cast out."

   38-41. For I came down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will
   of Him that sent Me. And this is the Father's will which has sent Me,
   that of all which He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but should
   raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of Him that
   sent Me, that everyone which sees the Son, and believes on Him, may
   have everlasting fife: and I will raise him up at the last day. The
   Jews then murmured at Him, because He said, I am the bread which came
   down from Heaven. And there you see Christ has got no farther with them
   but to leave them murmuring! And I believe that often the true minister
   of God must expect to see no other result come of faithful testimony
   than for the people to murmur at him. But what if it is so? Will his
   Master blame him? No. No more than He blamed the Only-Begotten. It must
   be so that there may be a separation between the precious and the
   vile--that God's chosen may be drawn out! While such as believe not
   shall be judged and, in their own consciences, shall be condemned.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Great Teacher and Remembrancer

   (No. 3353)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 8, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST
   16, 1866.

   "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
   in My name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your
   remembrance, whatever I have said unto you." John 14:26.

   THE Savior, when He departed from this world, provided for all the
   needs of His people, not so much by giving them divers benefits, but by
   promising them the Presence of a gracious Person who should supply them
   all that their spiritual needs might demand. I trust there are many of
   us who know in some degree the value of the promise, "I will send the
   Comforter unto you," and that we know that when that Comforter comes,
   He brings us all good things. We have not to look in one place for
   quickening and in another place for comfort, in another for instruction
   and in a fourth for illumination. But when we receive the Spirit, we
   have all things in one! I may say of Him, as of Jesus Christ, "In Him
   dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." In Jesus it dwelt in a
   real human Nature, physical as well as spiritual, but in the Holy
   Spirit we have the same fullness of Deity, but He comes in and
   dwells--resides--in His people!

   Our Savior here directs us to one particular blessing, which the coming
   of the Holy Spirit would bring us, namely, that of Divine Instruction.
   In endeavoring to enter in some measure into the text, tonight--too
   briefly to enter into it fully--we shall, first of all remark that the
   text suggests to us--

   I. THE VALUE OF ALL THAT JESUS CHRIST HAS SPOKEN.

   For He tells us that the Holy Spirit shall "bring to our remembrance
   all things whatever He has said unto us."

   When the Savior was with His disciples, it is very possible that many
   of His choice sayings fell to the ground for lack of attention on their
   part They did not, perhaps, know that every word of His had a fullness
   in it that should have been treasured up by them as priceless. But now
   He tells them that it shall be the Holy Spirit's office to teach them
   all such Truth and to bring all their meanings to their remembrance.
   Brothers and Sisters, there is a great danger nowadays in not attaching
   sufficient importance to the teaching of Scripture. You will sometimes
   hear persons speak very disparagingly of doctrinal Truth and others
   will smile at anything like dispensational Truth. Some are inclined to
   throw experimental teaching in the background and some few speak very
   sadly about the practical Truth of God. But our Lord here speaks of
   "all things whatever I have said unto you," and He also speaks of the
   Spirit teaching us "all things." We may, therefore, believe that every
   Truth of God that is revealed in Scripture has its proper place and its
   importance. And we may gather this from the fact that Christ has taken
   the trouble to speak it We do not believe that He has uttered one
   foolish word--no more--not one useless word, for in the whole compass
   of His teaching there is not to be found a single passage which should
   have been left unsaid. There may be repetitions, but there are no
   redundancies. He may have taught the same Truth in several shapes, but
   He has never taught it once too often. He has never revealed a Truth
   which it were better to conceal, just as He has never concealed a truth
   which it would have been better to reveal. If my Lord has taught
   anything, it must be worth my while to learn it! If Christ lifts the
   veil, it is my privilege to look--and what He manifests to me I ought
   not to be slow to gaze upon.

   Moreover, Brothers and Sisters, in addition to the importance which
   must attach to these things because Christ has spoken them, there is
   this--that He now sends the Holy Spirit to teach them to us. If you say
   that any one part of the Truth of God is unimportant, you do as good as
   say that to that extent the Holy Spirit has come upon an unimportant or
   valueless mission! You perceive it is declared that He is to teach us
   "all things," but if some of these "all things" are really of such
   minor importance and so quite non-essential, then surely it is not
   worth while disturbing our minds with them.

   And so to that degree, at any rate, we accuse the Holy Spirit of having
   come to do what is not necessary to be done! And I trust that our minds
   recoil with holy repulsion from such a half-blasphemy as that. Beloved
   Brothers and Sisters, He teaches us "all things," because it is
   necessary for us to learn all things--and so He comes to bring to our
   remembrance not part, but, in turn, the whole of our Lord's wondrous
   teaching! That teaching is essential to our knowledge of Divine things,
   to our comfort and progress in spiritual things--that remembrance is
   part of our soul's discipline and advance.

   I wish that some of my friends would get this very simple and very old
   Truth of God into the depths of their minds and hearts, for then they
   would surely study a great many things that they now overlook--and I
   think they would not be so apt to excuse their own lack of diligence in
   the school of Christ, by saying, "Well, there are some all-important
   Doctrines. We have studied them and that is enough." Brothers and
   Sisters, when a boy goes to school, he may say, "If I learn arithmetic,
   I shall be able to be a tradesman and that is what I shall be. I do not
   want to read that dry Latin book. I do not care to read that book of
   poetry. It does not matter about my writing such a very elegant round
   hand." But the schoolmaster says, "My boy, you are put under my
   teaching to learn all things and it is not for you to pick and choose
   what class you will attend." Now, we are scholars under the tuition of
   the blessed Spirit and it is not for us to say, "I will learn the
   Doctrine of Justification by Faith, and when I know that, I shall not
   trouble my mind about Election. I shall not raise any question about
   Final Perseverance. I shall not enquire into the ordinances, whether
   Believer's Baptism or infant Baptism is right--I take no interest in
   these things--I have ]earned the essential matter and I will neglect
   the rest." You will not say this if you are an obedient disciple, for
   do you not know that the ministers of Christ have received a commission
   to teach all things that Christ has taught them, and do you think that
   our commission is frivolous and vexatious? Do you think that Christ
   would bid us teach you what it is no need of you to learn, or,
   especially, that the Holy Spirit would, Himself, come to dwell in the
   midst of His Church and to teach them all things, when out of those,
   "all things," there are, according to your vain supposition, some
   things that were quite as well, if not better, left alone? Brothers and
   Sisters, whatever the Lord has spoken as a Master concerns His
   servants! Whatever He has delivered as a Prophet, concerns His
   disciples--whatever He has spoken as a Friend, concerns us, His
   friends--and whatever He has taught us as Lord concerns everyone of us
   as members of His body, of His flesh and His bones!

   I must again reiterate this Truth of God. I do not think I can leave it
   without still trying to further impress it upon your minds. There is a
   tendency, among us all, I suppose, to choose some part of the Truth of
   God and attach undue importance to that, to the neglect of other
   Truths.

   It is a grave question if this is not the origin of various divisions
   which are to be found in the Church of Christ--not so much heresy, as
   the attaching of disproportionate importance to some Truth of God, to
   the disparaging or neglecting of others equally necessary. Some Brother
   speaking to me the other day, declared of a certain Truth, "You cannot
   have too much of a good thing." Whereupon I remarked, that a nose was a
   good thing, but it might be possible to so exaggerate it that you would
   spoil the beauty of the face. A mouth is a good thing and yet it may be
   very possible to have such a mouth that there would be no particular
   beauty about the visage, for the beauty of the man consists in
   proportion, and the beauty of Divine Truth consists in the proportion
   in which every part of it is brought into view. Now, there are some who
   exaggerate one feature and some another. There are some Brothers who
   are fond of what is called "the high side" of Doctrine. I am fond of
   it, too, very fond of it, but there is a temptation to bring that out
   and to neglect, perhaps, the practical part of the Gospel and to cast
   into the background, possibly, the invitations of the Gospel and those
   Truths which concern our usefulness in the world. Then, on the other
   hand, there are some who are so enamored of experience that nothing but
   experimental Truth will suit them--they must be always harping upon
   that one string and they look down with contempt upon those who hold
   fast Doctrinal Truth, which is very wrong--and shows that they have not
   yet been led into all the Truths of God!

   Alas, how many are so taken up with practical teaching that they grow
   legal for lack of having the salt of the Doctrines of Grace to keep
   them right. But oh, if it were possible for our minds to hold all the
   Truth of God, as far as a finite mind could grasp it! If we could but
   cast aside the prejudices of education and, perhaps, of constitution,
   too, and say to the Holy Spirit, "My Lord, I will bind myself neither
   to this party nor to that. I will subscribe neither to this formula nor
   to that. I am prepared to receive Your mind into my mind. I am prepared
   to give up much that I hold dear if You will show me that it is not
   according to Your will--and I am prepared to receive the Gospel from
   You, as You shall be

   pleased to show it to me!" It is allTruth and not some Truths of God
   that the Holy Spirit comes to teach! To teach His children Truth in all
   its harmony, Truth in all its parts, Truth, indeed, as a whole!

   But it may be said, "There must be some Truths which are not so
   essential as others!" That is granted. There are some Truths that are
   so vital to salvation and peace with God. And there are some others
   that do not vitally concern the regeneration and conversion of the
   soul--and upon these, men may be in error, and yet not risk their souls
   for all eternity. But still, even these Truths are part of the whole
   body of Truth, and the body cannot do without its head, its heart,
   though it might lose a limb. Yet is that a reason why I should chop off
   a limb, or consent to have it maimed, because I could still exist
   without it?

   I could exist without an eye. Shall I not, therefore, mind being
   blinded? There may be a bone in my body, possibly there are several,
   the use of which even the anatomist does not know. There are some
   nerves, especially nerves in connection with the organs of secretion,
   the use of which are not known to the best physiologists, but nobody, I
   suppose, would like to dispense with them because each man who thinks,
   must feel that that God who made the man knew best how to make him
   perfect and how to adapt him to the position in which he would be
   placed. There may be bones or nerves in the human system which will
   never be used but once in our lives--and yet if they were not there, we
   might not be able to get through that particular juncture. So is it
   with the Truths of Scripture. There may be a Truth which I shall never
   need to use and which may never have a practical turn to serve in my
   life, but once--and then if I do not happen to know that Truth just at
   that time, I may entail on myself a host of sorrows through my own
   ignorance--sorrows which I ought to have prevented.

   The Holy Spirit comes to teach all the Truth of God and I beg yet
   again, for the fourth time, to reiterate that all Truth must be
   necessary for you and for me, or else the Spirit of God would not have
   come to teach it to us, and that while we may give more prominent
   importance to the greater and more vital Truths, yet there is not one
   Truth in Scripture to which we are allowed to say, "Be still! Be
   quiet--we do not need you." Brothers and Sisters, how many of you might
   be happy if you did but study Doctrinal Truth! You go lean and starved
   through the world because your minister does not preach the Doctrines
   of Grace, does not give you the full weight of the Truths of the
   Sovereign Grace of God.

   Still, if you but studied them for yourselves, you might yet have
   bright eyes and an elastic, bounding footstep, and rejoice in the
   everlasting love of God which never leaves His people, but preserves
   and glorifies them in the end!

   And some, too, are always groaning from a sense of inward corruption
   and very properly studying their own hearts, but they might live
   gladsome, triumphant lives if they did but learn a little more of the
   liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free, and seek to drink in
   the precious Truths of our standing in Christ and our perfection in
   Him. It is the willful neglect or refusal to believe some majestic
   Truth of God that is the cause of nearly all our doubts and fears--and
   a great many other pieces of mischief that keep us from serving and
   honoring our Lord as He deserves to be served and honored by those who
   are not their own, but are bought with a price.

   This first point we may now leave, if the Holy Spirit will but bring it
   home with power to our souls, for this Truth of God, among others, must
   be taught us by Him. We now come to a second point which is clearly in
   the text, namely, not only the value of all Truth that our Lord Jesus
   Christ has spoken, but--

   II. THE NEED OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO TEACH US ALL THE TRUTH.

   But cannot an honest and a willing mind learn all the Truths of God
   that are in Scripture without the teaching of the Holy Spirit? I infer
   that it cannot from the fact that the Holy Spirit is provided. There i
   s nothing that is unnecessary in the Covenant of Grace--and the Divine
   Power is never unnecessarily exerted. It is constantly remarked of the
   miracles that there is not one of them that can be dispensed with--and
   God never interferes to do out of the course of Nature what might be
   done according to the ordinary laws of Nature. If the Christian were
   fully equipped to know and understand the Divine mind without the
   teaching of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit would not have been
   given. We should not find the Holy Spirit here unless it were necessary
   that He should be here. Even with Christ for a Teacher, mark--so that
   there was no fault in the Teacher--with Christ for a Teacher, the
   disciples did not learn these Truths without the teaching of the Holy
   Spirit! I infer, therefore, that much more is that teaching now
   necessary and that the Spirit of God should abide with us, to teach us
   Truth, and to bring the things which we have learned to our
   remembrance. And why? Is it not because there is a radical defect in us
   as disciples? Are we not frequently inattentive? Do we not sometimes
   feel a lack of interest in the Truths of God which we receive from the
   Word, which I may now call the lips of Christ? A child may be very
   plainly taught, but if you cannot get its attention, if you cannot
   catch its will and interest it, it will not learn much--that which you
   teach it will glide like oil over a slab of marble--it does not
   penetrate and permeate and, consequently, is not properly and
   thoroughly learned. And often on the Lord's-Day you will hear most
   delightful Truths, but if you are not interested in them, it does not
   catch your mind.

   And in reading Scripture, how seldom do we show as much interest as we
   do in reading a letter from a friend? With what glistening eyes will
   some persons read the will of their relatives--and they never forget
   what they read there because mind and heart are deeply interested.

   But alas, how often do we turn from these sacred pages without enough
   interest to learn what is in them! We are not so eager to drink in
   their spirit. We do not bring our souls up to the Truth and it is not
   any wonder, therefore, if we do not learn those Truths of God which are
   so spiritual that they can only be grasped by a soul in active, alert
   exercise!

   Besides this, we do not learn because of our ready prejudice against
   the special Truth we ought to learn. A great part of God's Truth is
   very unpalatable to human nature--to learn it is something like taking
   bitter medicine--people do not choose it with enthusiasm.

   There are some Truths which would always be unpalatable, even to
   Christians, Christians as they are, if it were not for the sugar which
   sometimes goes with the Truth, and but for this it would be very
   nauseous to them. There are some minds which seem, more than others, to
   kick against certain points of Divine Truth, either from their
   prejudices, their education, or the nature and force of their
   constitution--and it is only the Spirit of God who can irresistibly
   come and convince the understanding! Ah, Friends, when the scholar does
   not want to know, it needs a God to teach him--and sometimes our minds
   do not wish to know the Truth. I should not like to say a hard thing of
   God's people, but I believe there are many of them who do not want to
   know too much. I have often thought that it has been the case with
   myself, and I believe it is the case with others. There is an awkward
   Truth which, if it were learned, would throw us out of our present
   comfortable position and might even necessitate a change of our
   ecclesiastical connections if we were to know it--and so we do not want
   to know it! We do not read any book that might make us know it. We try
   to look at things on our own side if we can, and do not look fairly at
   the subject, nor enquire into it. It must, therefore, need the Spirit
   of God to teach us when a Truth of God is so unpalatable and we are so
   unwilling to learn it! Then, besides this, Beloved, when we recollect
   the intense spirituality of truth and how our carnal natures are always
   prone to adulterate it with our own predilections and the notions of
   the flesh. When all things around us bring the Truth of God down from
   its high spiritual atmosphere, where alone it can flourish, into the
   smoky, cloudy region of our materialism. When they bring down food
   worthy of angels to become poor bread even for mortals, then we see how
   desperately we need the Holy Spirit to help us as learners in the
   school of Christ!

   We seize the fair fruit of Divine Truth with a careless, hasty hands,
   mar its heavenly bloom, never knowing its richest beauty and
   essence--and then we feel how true of us are Paul's words, Inspired of
   the Holy Spirit, written to certain Christians, "Not as unto spiritual,
   but as unto carnal, and babes in Christ Jesus."

   These, then, are a few of the reasons why the Spirit of God is needed.
   There are plenty more, of which we will speak another day, but I think
   every Christian knows experimentally that he never does fully learn the
   Truth and hold it tenaciously except by the teaching and sustaining
   Grace of God the Holy Spirit. I like our young people to learn the
   Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith. It is a "form of sound
   words" that is well worth committing to memory, but even Christian
   people, when they know them, will find that unless those Truths are,
   one by one, brought home to the soul, they have only the shell of
   Truth, but do not know the life and inner essence of it. We must have
   everything we truly learn burnt into us by the Holy Spirit! It must be
   taught us sometimes by painful experience, at other times by blissful
   enjoyment--sometimes by a marvelous illumination, a light shining upon
   a passage in such a way that we see it as we never saw it before--and
   though we may have read it 20 times, we now for the first time in our
   lives see its true meaning and rejoice! Why, dear Friends, what is the
   ministry without the Spirit of God? Do you not often come and go, and
   find no comfort in attending a place of worship? And even the Bible,
   itself, without the Spirit of God is but a lantern without a light! And
   what is even the Mercy Seat, except the Holy Spirit is there, enabling
   us to drink into the very life and soul of the Divine teaching? It is
   not that Book as it is there on the paper--it is that Book as it must
   be written on the fleshy

   tablets of our heart which becomes to us the Word of God, the word of
   our salvation in which we rejoice and upon which we often feed!

   This second truth you know, and will never doubt, that we need the Holy
   Spirit to teach us Truth of God. The third thing that is in the text is
   this--the Holy Spirit is said not only to teach us, but--

   III. TO BRING TO OUR REMEMBRANCE THE TRUTH WHICH WE HAVE RECEIVED.

   Mark! The Holy Spirit does not now reveal fresh Truth beyond what is
   already in the Word of God. There is a special curse pronounced upon
   any who shall add to this Book--and you may rest assured that the Holy
   Spirit will not so transgress in a matter which He has peremptorily
   forbidden all His children to commit! When persons start up as
   Prophets, or Prophetesses, and tell us that they have had special
   visions from the Lord and they know what is going to happen next year,
   we always understand that their proper destination is Bethlehem
   Hospital [London insane asylum] and we begin immediately to shun them
   and their books! We are persuaded that the Holy Spirit makes no such
   fresh revelations to men, but teaches us what Christ taught, bringing
   all these things to our remembrance! What Christ has taught, and only
   that, it is His joyous work to make plain and clear and powerful to us!

   Why do we need to have the Truths of God thus spoken brought to our
   remembrance? Is it not that we often trust our memories not to forget
   these Truths, but, "he who trusts his own heart is a fool," and so is
   he who relies absolutely on his own memory. For anything bad, alas, we
   may trust it only too well--we are sure to recollect the thing far
   better forgotten. But if it is anything very good and soul-inspiring,
   memory has a paralysis in the fingers and cannot retain it in their
   grasp! You may remember a great many things in business--these are sure
   to write themselves deeply on the memory--but Divine things which
   concern the future state are often written so illegibly that they are
   very readily blurred, blotted out! We need the Holy Spirit to bring
   these things to our remembrance.

   And then, again, we are so constantly beset with cares that it is
   little marvelous that the things of God should slip away from us. You
   have but one day in the week, as it were, devoted to these things--one
   day of building and six of pulling down! With many it is one day's
   storing and six days' scattering. It is but a slight advance that we
   make towards Heaven. Believe me, it is one of the greatest joys of my
   heart to see you here so constantly at Prayer Meetings and on Lecture
   Nights. It always seems to me to be one of the best signs of vital
   godliness that can well be exhibited, except a holy life, to see people
   willing to come out to the weeknight services. Any hypocrite will come
   on Sundays, but to come on weekdays seems to me to be a favorable sign
   and a proof of sincerity. But even then how little do we get! Perhaps
   there is trouble in the family--from the first thing in the morning
   till the last thing at night it is nothing but hard work and there is
   the looking for the wherewithal we shall be clothed--and we do not
   always cast our care on Him who cares for us. So the thorns too often
   choke up the seed and did not the Holy Spirit bring these things to our
   remembrance, they might quickly slip away altogether.

   There is, again, Brothers and Sisters, another reason for needing to be
   reminded of these Truths of God, namely, because we forget what we do
   not thoroughly apprehend. I have a notion that as a rule, what a man
   thoroughly understands, through and through, he does not forget. When
   you have mastered a fact or truth, seen it from all points, grown
   familiar with it, it is not easy to let it slip. You may hold a joint
   of meat in your hand and be very hungry all the while. But cook your
   joint, eat it, and properly digest what you eat, and it is yours and
   hunger goes. The man who receives the Truth of God in the mere letter
   of it may quickly forget it, but he who has received it in the spirit,
   understood it, digested it, assimilated it, will never altogether lose
   its nourishing and power! When a Truth is understood, it is somewhat
   like it was with the boy from whom the priest took away his New
   Testament. "Ah," said the boy, "but what will you do with the 10
   chapters that I have learned by heart? You cannot take those away."

   Memory does not readily lose the things she really understands. And
   when the heart has penetrated into the marrow of the Truth of God and
   the Truth of God into the marrow of the heart, it abides! But, alas,
   with the most of Divine things, we do not seek to enter into them as we
   should. We hear them and that is all. We hear, but we do not understand
   and, therefore, the Spirit of God is needed to ring the bells of Heaven
   again and again in our ears and to make us hear the same Truth over and
   over again, bringing to remembrance what Christ has told us.

   If it is asked how He does this, the answer is that He does it by
   instrumentality, as well as by His own immediate action. He does it
   through the preaching of the Word! The Word of God brings to your mind
   the old Truths of God that you have heard ever since you were a boy, or
   girl and, thank God, they have not lost their preciousness, but are
   just as sweet to your ears now, as they were when you heard them from
   old Dr. So-and-So, who has now gone home to Heaven! Thank God you still
   love that Truth whenever it is brought to your remembrance. I like to
   use the same Bible always in my study, and to mark it so that I may
   afterwards know the places which once filled me with delight and
   comfort. And sometimes the good old Book which we have studied so long
   will thus bring things to our remembrance. Then there is communion with
   Christian Brothers and Sisters. Sometimes even an illiterate Christian
   Brother may set a Truth in such a light as you never saw it in before,
   just like some of those fine old pieces of architecture which are very
   fine from one point of view, but some day you are taken to another
   point and you say, "Well, I think it is even more beautiful from this
   place of revealing than from the other." So my conversation with
   Christian Brothers and Sisters often sheds for me a new light upon
   long-known and precious Truths. But over and above all this, I believe
   that the Holy Spirit does actually come into contact with our spirits,
   apart from human instrumentality, and that when we are walking by the
   way, sitting in the house, or in our chamber of prayer, flashes sudden
   light upon the Truth and so we learn what we knew not before and,
   turning to God's Word, we perceive it to be blest Truth that was always
   there, but which we had not seen until the Holy Spirit opened our eyes!
   Brothers and Sisters, if we do not experimentally know what it is to
   have the Truth of God as it is in Jesus brought to our remembrance by
   the Holy Spirit, we must not rest satisfied until we do, for this is
   one of the marks and evidences, as well as one of the privilegesof the
   child of God, that the Holy Spirit is his personal Teacher. "All your
   children shall be taught of the Lord," and again and again does the
   adorable Third Person of the Divine Trinity teach us the things of
   Christ and bring them constantly to our remembrance!

   I am sorry that I cannot enter more fully into this point for need of
   time, but we must now close with the last point which is a question for
   us all--

   IV. HOW FAR HAS THIS OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BEEN PERFORMED IN US? I
   will first ask those of you who profess to be the people of God. Has
   the Holy Spirit taught you anything? Is that a hard question? It is one
   that was asked of old--"Have you received the Holy Spirit since you
   believed?" I am solemnly afraid that there are some professors who are
   content to have been convicted of sin, to have been led to trust in
   Christ, but who, after that, are utterly indifferent to the Holy Spirit
   as their Teacher. They sit in the House of God, but they do not apply
   their minds to learn the Truth. They pin their faith to somebody's
   sleeve and are content to believe according to the last speaker they
   hear, so that they will one day believe one thing, and another day
   another thing and so are carried about with every wind of doctrine!
   Brothers and Sisters, these things ought not to be! Receiving Christ as
   a Priest, we ought also to receive Him as a Prophet. And if we are
   quickened by the Holy Spirit, we ought also to seek to be illuminated
   and instructed by Him. Have you and I felt the Holy Spirit at work with
   us, endearing Doctrine and making it more precious to us? Have we,
   indeed, ever sought His influence, or have we, though professing
   Christians, lived thoughtlessly in this respect? Do you not think that
   if we have done so, we have grieved the Holy Spirit? What grieves a man
   more than to deny the importance of the office and work for which he
   lives? What should grieve the Holy Spirit more than this, among other
   things, to forget His office as our Instructor and to ignore altogether
   the great purpose for which He is to be found in the midst of the
   Christian Church at all times? Surely we should be seeking with all our
   prayers to pray, "Teach me, O God! And lead me in the plain Truth!" And
   we should long to sit with Mary at the Master's feet. Do you really
   study your Bibles, my dear Brothers and Sisters? Why you can scarcely
   bring out a magazine or a newspaper, nowadays, and make it pay, even
   with religious people, without a tale! It is one of the signs of the
   times that feeble fiction reading is as common among Christians as
   among others, and that our young disciples--young men and women both--
   must have a sensational novel in a religious form, or they will not
   read at all!

   Time was when Christian women, as well as men, read history, studied
   the fascinations of science and cultivated their best qualities of mind
   and heart. And Christian men in days past, in the Puritan and later
   ages, sought to be acquainted with solid literature, as well as with
   the Word of God. But it seems to be the last mark of the degeneracy of
   God's people that they must have their ears tickled with a straw and
   cannot read solid Truth. You need not wonder that we cannot breed men
   on chaff, or that they are blown about with every wind of Doctrine when
   this is the food on which they live. There are certain silkworms which
   grow the color of the leaves they feed on and you may depend upon it
   that those who live on this frivolous literature will lead frivolous
   lives, and those who take nothing but these milk-and-water tales will
   not be likely to have about them anything solid or robust, or anything
   vigorously real! Do not talk to me of reading such things! Brothers and
   Sisters, when you and I have read our Bibles through so as to find
   nothing there to interest us, it is

   high time that we asked God to teach us how to read them! It is a sign
   of a lack of Grace if the Bible is a dry Book. It is a dry Book, a very
   dry Book, to a graceless soul--but it has more in it than all the rest
   of the volumes in the world put together! And the more it is studied,
   the more will the interest of the student in it increase. Besides, we
   have such an abundance of other Christian literature that no Christian
   ought to say he is obliged to read the other poor stuff. We have no
   time to spare for this, when the soul is starving and dying for lack of
   knowledge! Let us pray the Holy Spirit to lead us into the Word of God
   and then give ourselves to its earnest and loving study.

   But this question will scarcely refer at all to some now present. My
   dear Hearers, are you among those who have no interest in these things?

   It is not likely that you should desire the Holy Spirit to instruct
   you. There are, I fear, some here who have no hope and are without God
   in the world. The mere statement of the fact ought to excite us all to
   prayer for such. But, alas, it is so commonly known that there are many
   out of Christ and without hope, that we do not feel distressed about it
   as we should. If there were fewer unregenerate sinners than there are,
   we would probably be more concerned about them. If there were only a
   dozen unconverted persons in the world, all the Church of God would be
   praying for their conversion, but because there are many millions of
   them, they are so common that we do not look upon them with the awe,
   the tenderness and the yearning sympathy which we ought to feel.

   There are some here to whom the Holy Spirit is an unknown Person, who
   have never been made alive unto God by Him and, consequently, cannot
   desire that they may be instructed by Him. Oh, that the blessed Spirit
   would come and convince them of their sin in not believing, which is
   the greatest of all sins--and the very sin of which the Spirit comes to
   convince men! "He shall convince them of sin because they believe not
   on Me." Oh, may He convince them of this sin and then may they
   understand that there is nothing for them to do, but that Christ has
   done it for them--and that all they have to do is to receive the
   finished work, to wear the finished robe, to look to Jesus Christ and
   to find life in the look! Pray for them, Brothers and Sisters, that the
   Holy Spirit may help their infirmities, that they may know Christ and
   may come to Him! May God bless the Gospel to them whenever it is
   preached! And when they are told that "the Son of Man came into the
   world to seek and to save that which was lost," may they cry unto Him
   and trust Him, for this is the vital part of the business and, trusting
   in Him, they shall enter into eternal life through Jesus Christ our
   Lord!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS9:26-32.

   The Jews thought that God must certainly save them. They thought they
   had a birth claim. Were they not the children of Abraham? Surely they
   had some right to it! This Chapter battles the question of right. No
   man has any right to the Grace of God. The terms are inconsistent. But
   that same Grace delights to save and bless even the perverse and
   rebellious who will yield to its blessed power!

   Verse 26. And it shall come to pass, that in theplace where it was said
   unto them, You are not My people; they shall be called the children of
   the living God. That in the very same place where their sins made it
   patent and palpable they were notGod's people--in that very same place
   shall men confess that they are the children of the living God! Oh,
   what has not Grace done?

   27-29. Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of
   the children of Israel is as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be
   saved: For He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness:
   because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Isaiah
   said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been
   as Sodom, and been made like unto Gomorrah. God has a people, then,
   even in Israel with all its rejection! And He always will have, for He
   will never make the seed of Abraham to be as Sodom and Gomorrah! He
   will love His own and glorify Himself in the midst of His people.

   30. What shall we say then? Why, say this--

   30. That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have
   attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faih. For
   thousands of years they worshipped brutish idols and blocks and stones.
   Their philosophy was mixed with filthiness. Their lives were abhorrent
   to God. Even these, at last, have attained righteousness, even the
   righ-

   teousness which is by faith, for the Gospel being preached among the
   Gentiles, they have believed in Jesus and they are saved!

   31. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not
   attained to the law of righteousness. Israel followed after the law of
   righteousness with many ceremonies and external washings, wearing of
   phylacteries and bordered garments. Alas, poor Israel!

   32. Why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the
   works of the Law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. And God is
   determined that they that are of the Law shall not inherit it! He has
   made it a Sovereign Decree that the Believer shall be justified and
   saved, but no one else. They sought it not by faith, but as it were, by
   the works of the Law.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Old Testament "Prodigal"

   (No. 3354)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "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." 2 Chronicles 33:12,13.

   WHEN we wish to recommend a physician to a friend who is very ill, we
   are in the habit of mentioning certain cures which he has worked. And
   when we can produce several astonishing instances, we feel that we are
   going the right way to work to convince the judgment of our friend and
   to win his confidence in the doctor. Now, it is our impression that
   very many are anxious to be saved by the Grace of God, who,
   nevertheless, have not dared to trust the great Healer of souls. They
   know that they are in great danger, but they are reluctant to go to
   "the Beloved Physician." They are grievously afraid because of the
   greatness of their sins and they are filled with doubt and unbelief as
   to the possibility of their salvation on account of their singular
   sinfulness. Therefore, it struck me that if I could set before them a
   number of Scriptural instances of wonderful conversions, it might tend
   to encourage hope in Christ in their hearts and, under the blessing of
   the Holy Spirit, it might be the means of leading them to trust and try
   our Lord Jesus, out of whose very garments virtue flows. Perhaps, dear
   Friends, as you shall see how the Lord, the Healer, has looked on one
   and another, and restored them from the horrible disease of sin, you,
   too, who feel yourselves so far gone, may pluck up courage and say, "If
   He healed others, why should He not also heal me? I, too, will touch
   His garment's hem and see if He will not make me perfectly whole." How
   I wish that poor souls knew how ready my Lord Jesus is to save them!
   Then they would not stay back if they knew how eager He is to have
   mercy on the guilty! I pine within my soul to lead you to Jesus that
   you may be blest! That is the desire of my heart in introducing to you
   the case of Manasseh, whom I select from the Old Testament as a very
   prominent instance of glaring sin and of amazing Grace!

   We do not find many of what we can accurately call conversions in the
   Old Testament. It is a record of a dim dispensation in which we rather
   see the types of things than the things, themselves, but I should
   suppose that the priests, if they had been inspired to write what they
   often heard, would have been able to tell of many instances of deep
   conviction which would be made known in connection with the Sin
   Offerings and the Trespass Offerings--and they probably saw many
   instances of persons who henceforth led a new life and ceased from the
   sin which they had confessed over the victim's head. Of conviction,
   confession and conversion, they must have seen a great deal, but
   records we have none. On this account the story of the madly wicked
   king who was led to humble himself greatly before God is all the more
   valuable and it is matter for thankfulness that it is so remarkable!
   Every item of it reflects glory upon the amazing Grace of God and,
   indeed, compels us to exclaim, "Who is a God like unto You, passing by
   transgression, iniquity and sin?"

   We will waste no time on a preface, but come at once to the life story
   of Manasseh, and look, first, at his circumstances. Then consider him
   as a great sinner And afterwards, with greater comfort, view him as a
   remarkable convert First, let us notice--

   I. HIS CIRCUMSTANCES.

   A man's sin may be heightened by his position, or, on the other hand,
   the condition in which he is placed may suggest some alleviating
   considerations which, in all fairness, should be remembered. Now, with
   regard to Manasseh, we find that he was the child of an eminently godly
   father--the son of a king who, with all his mistakes, was sound in
   heart towards God. Hezekiah "worked that which was good, and right, and
   truth before the Lord his God." He was a man mighty in prayer and found
   deliverance thereby in the hour of great peril through the invasion of
   Sennacherib. Hezekiah

   was a man whose life was so precious in the sight of the Lord that in
   answer to his cries, He gave him a new lease on life and spared him yet
   another 15 years. It is a great thing for a youth to have a godly
   father to train his tender mind. And, even though such a parent should
   be taken away early, yet the privilege is an eminent one. As for
   Manasseh's mother, we cannot say with certainty that she was a godly
   woman, but let us hope that as her name was Hephzibah--"My delight is
   in her"--she, too, was delightful for grace and piety. Isaiah seems to
   have taken her name and to have applied it to the church--"you shall be
   called Hephzibah, for the Lord delights in you," and we may suppose
   that he would hardly have done so unless there had been some sweet
   associations therewith. Let us trust that Queen Hephzibah was, indeed,
   God's delight and, if so, Manasseh had the special favor of having two
   parents who would train him up in the way he should go. Such a happy
   start in life renders his later sin the more heinous!

   But, in all truthfulness, we have to mention, next, that he was a child
   born to his father in his later years, after his life had been
   lengthened by special license from above. He was the child of his
   parent's desire--an heir born after the father had expected to die
   childless and, therefore, it is not at all unlikely that he was a
   spoiled child. It is very possible that being highly prized, he was
   also greatly indulged and, if so, he was in special danger. Those
   children who are doted upon by their parents are greatly to be pitied,
   for they are apt to be allowed to have their own way--and a youth's own
   way is sure to be a wrong one! Fathers, in such cases, are apt to play
   the part of Eli, of whom we read that his sons made themselves vile,
   and he restrained them not. It was no wonder that Adonijah disturbed
   the dying moments of David when we read that, "his father had not
   displeased him at any time in saying, Why have you done so?" Nor need
   we marvel that Absalom almost broke his father's heart if this was the
   manner of his bringing up! Even though at 12 years of age Manas-seh
   could not have fully developed his character, yet it may have been
   warped by those early days of admiration and indulgence. Parents, take
   note of this--and you petted children do the same.

   Remember that Manasseh lost his father at twelve years of age. I do not
   know a greater trial for a family than for the head of the house to be
   taken away while the children are young. Just when the guiding,
   encouraging and restraining power of the father is needed, it is
   mournful to see it removed. How mysterious it seems to us when a large
   family loses the wise guide of the household at the very time when his
   influence is most needed by the growing boys and girls. Too often in
   such a case the young people have broken away from all restraint and
   the loss of their father has been the loss of everything. Manasseh, the
   prince who seemed born under such favorable circumstances for the
   production of a gracious character, was much to be pitied when the good
   king, his father, was called away and his tender son was left alone
   amid flatterers and idolaters!

   Remember, too, that Manasseh was placed in a giddy position as a child,
   for he mounted the throne at 12 years of age. A child upon a throne is
   a child out of its natural place. Such high and hard places are not for
   boys! Now and then such a child turns out to be a Josiah, the very
   delight of mankind, but the probabilities are very much against its
   being so. "Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a child." It is ill
   for a child to sway a scepter, but "it is good for a man that he bear
   the yoke in his youth." A fierce fire of temptation blazes around a
   youthful throne. Sycophants and flatterers are sure to surround a boy
   prince, pandering to his worst desires and arousing that part of his
   nature which most needs to be repressed. No doubt there were good
   people whom Hezekiah had gathered in his courts, but then they could
   not flatter as well as the evil party which had been repressed for
   awhile, but still remained strong in the land. Though Heze-kiah had set
   up the worship of God and had done his best to root out idolatry, yet
   the idolatrous party was far from being extinct and the common people
   were sadly careless and irreligious! Isaiah, in his opening Chapter,
   describes the condition of the land by saying, "Israel does not know,
   my people do not consider. Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a
   very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have
   been like unto Gomorrah." The nation was not steadfast like king
   Hezekiah--it worshipped Jehovah when compelled by royal authority--but
   it was ready enough to turn aside to its idols. The idolatrous
   party--which I might liken to the papists and the people who worshipped
   on the high places--who were the ritualistic party of the day, came
   around the young king, fawning, flattering and cajoling. By pleasing
   the taste of the boy-king, and indulging his vices, they undermined in
   his esteem the orthodox worshippers of God, whom I may call the
   evangelical school. He yielded himself up readily to their influence
   and when he was old enough, became the head of the idolatrous party,
   throwing his whole soul into it and, with all the might of his nature
   and the force of his authority, labored to stamp out the pure worship
   of the Most High God and to set up those debasing

   idolatries which his father Hezekiah had so much abhorred! Look at him,
   then, as a mere child placed in a condition of great danger, led astray
   at first and afterwards becoming a ringleader in iniquity.

   These are some of the circumstances of Manasseh's life. Now, I have a
   heavy task and one which saddens me, though it is concerning one who
   lived so many hundreds of years ago--I have mournfully to describe
   Manasseh as--

   II. A GREAT SINNER.

   If you will turn to the Second of Chronicles, Chapter 33, and will
   follow the verses, you will get a view of this atrocious offender. In
   the second verse we read, "He did that which was evil in the sight of
   the Lord. "That is a description of his life as a whole. Take his 55
   years' reign in the bulk, notwithstanding the repentance of his later
   years, it is a true estimate of it all to say that "he did evil in the
   sight of the Lord." He was a son of David, but he was the very reverse
   of that king who was always faithful in his loyalty to the one only God
   of Israel! David's blood was in his veins, but David's ways were not in
   his heart. He was a wild, degenerate shoot of a noble vine!

   No, the description of his life is more intensely black than the
   summary might suggest, for it is said that "he did evil in the sight of
   the Lord like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had
   cast out before the children of Israel." He seemed to have taken for
   his models the men whom God condemned to die for capital offenses
   against His Law! How deplorable that one who was cradled in piety must,
   notwithstanding, not be satisfied until the very scum of society, which
   God had skimmed off as from the pot and thrown away with detestation,
   should be his models and his tutors! Yet we have known young men to be
   doubly perverse--possessed, as it were, by the devil, if not by seven
   devils at once! We are all depraved, but in some that depravity
   manifests itself in an extraordinary love of low, coarse society and of
   everything that is irreligious and unlovely. I have in my mind's eye
   now--and it makes my heart melt as I remember it--sons of men with whom
   I have been glad to associate and who were always happy to aid me in
   the Lord's work, but now their sons find their most congenial company
   among the drunken and profane, the gamblers and debauchers--and if,
   perchance, they see their father's friend, they look aside or slink
   away, anxious to be unobserved by him, scarcely brooking to have it
   known that they know the man! This is the unhappiest thing that can
   occur to us parents. You who have buried your little children. You who
   have wept so bitterly when your dear babes were snatched from your
   bosoms may far prefer that sorrow to having your sons and your
   daughters live to dishonor your name by plunging into glaring sin!
   Manasseh was a son of this character and could his father have foreseen
   what he would live to do, he would have preferred death rather than
   have lived to be the sire of such a monster of iniquity!

   It is noted concerning him, in the next place, that he undid what his
   father had done. In the third verse we read, "He built again the high
   places which Hezekiah, his father, had broken down." I have known many
   a man who has had no respect for God who, nevertheless, has had such a
   regard for his father's memory that he would not scoff at things which
   his father held sacred. But this man had cast off all filial reverence!
   He cared not what his godly parent might have thought--he gloried in
   building up what his father had thrown down--and throwing down what his
   father had built up!

   This is a great evil, for a man, in order to be guilty of it, has to do
   violence to some of the strongest and best instincts of his nature. Is
   that your case, my Friend? Are you doing exactly that which you know
   would have broken your father's heart? Is your conduct such that your
   mother would have been brought to her grave by it had she been here?
   Are you fighting against the Lord God of your father? May the Lord in
   mercy stop your guilty hand lest the curse of Absalom come upon you!
   Turn not aside from your father's God! Follow in the godly footsteps of
   your mother and set not yourself to act contemptuously against that
   which was your parents' reverence.

   Manasseh next sinned in a great variety of ways, for, according to the
   third verse, he seemed eager to be meddling with all forms of idolatry.
   He was not satisfied with one false god, or one set of idolatrous
   rites, but he reared up altars for Baalim and made groves and
   worshipped the host of Heaven. Nor yet content with all this, he adored
   Moloch and passed his children through the fire in the valley of the
   Son of Hinnom. He heaped up vile idolatries, not only sending far and
   wide to find out what were the gods of the different nations, but
   reviving the old cast-off gods of the Canaanites whom God had destroyed
   for their crimes! One form of insult to the living God was not enough
   for him--he heaped together his rebellions! There are men to whom to
   sin with one hand is not sufficient--they must transgress with
   greediness. One vice does not content them--they cannot be satisfied to
   go to Hell except with four steeds to their chariot and

   these they drive like Jehu the Furious! They never seem content, except
   with all their might they are fighting against the Lord and pulling
   down His wrath upon their heads!

   These sins of Manasseh were not merely various, but some of them were
   peculiarly foul The worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth was associated with
   such abominations that one is sorry even to have known of them, and
   especially the ashe-ra, or symbols, wrongly translated "groves," were
   so lascivious that I shall not so much as hint at what they were. Such
   worship must have unutterably defiled the mind of the worshipper and
   rendered him fit for vice of the most degrading kind! Think of
   obscenity made into a religion--vice an ingredient of adoration. O God!
   That ever man should have come down to this! Worse, still, that a king
   of Judah and a son of Hezekiah should patronize and ordain orgies which
   polluted the mind beyond conception! It sufficed not that he adored the
   sun when it shined, and kissed his hand to the moon walking in her
   brightness--the sin of star worship was not enough--but he must set up
   graven images and worship the idols of the Philistines, of Egypt,
   Assyria and Tyre! The calves of Bethel did not sufficiently provoke the
   Lord, but the idols of Baal and the lewdness of Ashtaroth must defile
   the whole land from end to end! Instead of the holy worship of Jehovah,
   the worship of devils was ordained by the king's authority and Judah's
   land became a den of abominations!

   But Manasseh went to the utmost in evil and added gross impudence and
   insult to his crimes, so as to defy the Lord to His face, for, "he
   built altars in the House of the Lord, whereof the Lord had said, In
   Jerusalem shall My name be forever. And he built altars for all the
   host of Heaven in the two courts of the House of the Lord." Oh, the
   infinite patience of the Most High, that He bore with such a daring
   insult as this! There were all the hills of Judah and the valleys
   thereof. Were they not enough for Manasseh's idols and their altars?
   Must the hill of Zion also be profaned? Was there no spot but that
   which the Lord had set apart for Himself and of which it had been said,
   "The Lord is there"? Must Jehovah's own courts be desecrated with the
   image ofjealousy? Must the altars to the hosts of Heaven be set up
   where only the Lord of Hosts should have been adored? Yet Manasseh
   dared to do this, carrying rebellion against the Lord to its utmost
   extent!

   Another proof of his inveterate sinfulness is found in his treatment of
   his children. He was not satisfied with sinning in his own person--his
   offspring must be handed over to the Evil One. "He caused his children
   to pass through the fire in the valley of the Son of Hinnom." Moloch is
   said to have been represented by a great hollow image made of brass,
   which was heated red hot and filled with fire till the flames came
   pouring forth from its mouth. Into the red-hot arms of this image some
   parents placed their babes, so that they were consumed alive--but
   others, like Manasseh, passed their children between those burning
   arms, so that they received "a baptism of fire."

   Nor is this all. Manasseh went to extremes in personal, deliberate sin,
   for it is said of him that for himself and on his own account, he
   "observed times"--that is, "lucky" and, "unlucky" days and he "used
   enchantments"--those different devices by which men think they can
   produce certain events or foretell them. "And he used witchcraft and
   dealt with a familiar spirit and with wizards." It matters nothing
   whether these things were deceits by which he was duped, or were real
   dealings with demons--the sin is the same because in the man's intent,
   forbidden communion was carried on, such communion as is abominable in
   the sight of the Most High, and to be abhorred by every Believer!
   Whether true or pretended, attempts at necromancy, witchcraft and
   communion with spirits mark a mind far gone astray from God. Remember
   that such persons cannot enter Heaven, for, "without are dogs and
   sorcerers," and they are placed with whoremongers and liars who are
   declared to be shut out of the Holy City. Manasseh was eager and greedy
   in these detestable pursuits--he could never have enough of them.
   Witches, wizards, familiar spirits, enchantments, all sorts of cheats
   he trusted in--he who would not believe in God could freely yield his
   faith to lying wonders! How sad to see a mind capable of thought and
   reason bowed down at the feet of witches and mutterers of spells! How
   horrible to see a man making a league with death and a covenant with
   Hell! Still, if a man should have gone this length, he may yet be
   recovered out of the snare of the devil by Almighty Grace! Friend, if
   you have even wandered into this infamous wickedness, you need not
   despair, for Jesus lives to save the vilest of the vile!

   The picture is awful enough already, surely, you say. Yes, but we have
   other strokes to add, for Manasseh repeated these sins and exaggerated
   them each time. After one forbidden idol had been enshrined, he set up
   another yet more foul! And after building altars in the courts of the
   Temple, he ventured further and, "set a carved image, the idol which he
   had made, in the House of God, of which God had said to David and to
   Solomon, his son, "In this house, and in Jerusalem,

   which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put My name
   forever." Thus he piled up his transgressions and multiplied his
   provocations.

   All this while he was leading thousands with him in his desperate
   course--both by his influence and authority he was compelling the
   nation to blaspheme! The whole land followed its king, save only a
   remnant cording to the election of Divine Grace--and these bore all the
   fury of Manasseh's wrath. The nation was prone to fall into idolatry
   and willingly went with the court! When the king bade them worship
   Baalim, they joyfully replied, "So would we have it!" And even when the
   most polluted emblems were set up for worship, the mass of the people
   greedily went after the abominations! A few wept and sighed in
   secret--and spoke often, one to another--but they had no power to alter
   the sad state of things, for the king was too strong for them. How sad
   to see a royal personage become a ringleader of iniquity! For princely
   example is infectious and its power for evil is boundless. Do I speak
   to one whose life leads others astray? Are you a man of mark? Are you
   placed in a position of influence? Are you a parent with children about
   you who will inevitably copy you? Are you the foreman in the workshop,
   or the head of a club, so that what you say and do becomes law to
   feebler minds than your own? Ah, you have the power to sin a hundred
   times at once, for you make others commit the sin in which you indulge!
   Your sin brings forth many at a birth and as by means of mirrors the
   image of an object can be multiplied, so is your sin reflected in
   scores of others! The voice of your evil life is repeated by a thousand
   echoes! Think of this and beware! Why should you destroy others as well
   as yourself? Do not be guilty of the blood of your neighbors! Do not
   murder your own children's souls! Consent not to be a jackal for the
   lion of the Pit, or a net in the devil's hand, for if you are such,
   your sin is infinite!

   Nor was this all, for though it is not recorded in the Chronicles, yet
   you will find in the Second Book of Kings, at the 21st Chapter, that he
   persecuted the people of God very furiously. "Moreover, Manasseh shed
   innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end of
   it to another." He was so zealous in carrying out his idolatries that
   he could not endure the sight of a man who would not bow before his
   images! He hated those ancient Nonconformists, those Protestants, those
   separatists, those Puritans--and he made laws to put them down so that
   the worshippers of Jehovah were "stoned and were sawn asunder, they
   wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted,
   tormented." We cannot vouch for the tradition that the Prophet Isaiah
   was put to death by Manasseh by being sawn in sunder, but terrible as
   is the legend, it is not at all improbable. Manasseh had his
   Bartholomew Massacre and his unholy Inquisition! He was a bloody
   persecutor during much of his long life and left marks of his reign of
   terror all over the land. Persecution is one of the most heinous of
   sins and greatly provokes the Most High, for the Lord has said
   concerning His people, "He that touches you, touches the apple of My
   eye." Manasseh did, as it were, thrust his finger into the eye of God!
   This was a Heaven-provoking crime! In these days the law does not allow
   the shedding of innocent blood, but there are people in the world who
   go as far as they can in persecution. There are modes of torture which
   can be used against a believing wife, such as will hardly be imagined!
   Children can be provoked and grievously afflicted by un-Christian
   parents. "Trials of cruel mocking," are mentioned by the Apostle--and
   they are very cruel and trying, too. We have known persons use towards
   brothers and sisters, and even towards children, such threats and modes
   of abuse and such taunts and jeers, that they have made their lives
   bitter as with heavy bondage! This is against God a very high offense.
   You cannot anger a man more than by ill-using his little ones! Touch
   his children and you bring the color into his face, directly, and the
   man's temper is up--and he who insults, and mocks and grieves God's
   children will one day find that the Lord will avenge His own elect
   though He bears long with them!

   Only one more touch to finish this dark picture--was there ever a
   blacker?--and it is this which is contained in the tenth verse--"And
   the Lord spoke to Manasseh, and to his people, but they would not
   listen." Manasseh refused warning. He did not sin without being
   rebuked. God did try the bit and bridle upon him, but they were of no
   use, for this wild horse took the bit between his teeth and dashed on
   in utter madness! He could not, he would not, bow before the loving
   admonition of the Most High! This makes sin to be exceedingly sinful,
   for, "He that being often reproved, hardens his neck, shall suddenly be
   destroyed, and that without remedy." Without rebuke, a man's sin may be
   far less than it must be after the rejection of admonitions from the
   mouth of God! To stifle conscience and refuse loving warning is to
   incur fearful guilt.

   Such was this Manasseh--the very chief of sinners! I feel certain that
   among those whom I address there is not a grosser sinner than he was.
   And I might almost say there never lived a worse! He has an evil
   eminence among the lovers of

   iniquity, and yet he was saved by Divine Grace! O you who hear these
   words or read them, never dare to doubt the possibility of your being
   forgiven! If such a wretch as Manasseh was brought to repentance,
   surely no one need despair! Now listen to what Almighty Grace,
   nevertheless, did for Manasseh, whom we will now think of as--

   III. A REMARKABLE CONVERT.

   His conversion began, or was worked at its commencement,
   instrumentally, by his afflictions. The king of Assyria came against
   him and he was unable to resist his assault. Sennacherib, a former king
   of Assyria, had invaded the land in the days of Hezekiah and the Lord
   had delivered His people, but there was no God to deliver Manasseh, and
   so the armies of Assyria overran the land and the royal idolater found
   his idols fail him. For fear of being captured in Jerusalem, he fled
   and concealed himself in a thorn brake, but was soon captured, or
   "taken among the thorns," and led in chains to Babylon. He seems to
   have been very severely handled by the king, who was, probably,
   Esarhaddon, king of united Assyria and Babylon, for he is spoken of as
   taken with hooks, such as large fish are taken with, or held by a ring
   such as is often passed through the noses of wild beasts. If this is
   only a figure, it represents Manasseh as regarded by the Assyrian king
   as an unmanageable beast to be subdued by rigor--even as a bull is
   managed by a ring in his nose. We are also told that he was loaded with
   double fetters of brass and was taken down to Babylon, to be kept in a
   close dungeon. The Assyrians were notoriously a fierce people and
   Manasseh, having provoked them, felt all the degradation, scorn and
   cruelty which anger could invent! He who had trusted idols was made a
   slave to an idolatrous people! He who had shed very much blood was now
   in daily jeopardy of the shedding of his own! He who had insulted the
   Lord must now be continually insulted himself. That which he had meted
   out was measured into his own bosom! He was the prodigal in actual
   life, in a far country, where he gladly would have filled his belly
   with the husks that the swine ate, but no man gave unto him. While fast
   chained in prison, the iron entered into his soul and his thoughts
   troubled him. How vain, now, to cry to Baal or Ashtaroth! The stars
   that peered through the grated bars of his dungeon upbraided him for
   his foolish worship and the sun and moon took up the tale of rebuke.
   Familiar spirits were familiar no longer and magic, with its lying
   wonders, could not release him! No, nor the witches and wizards with
   their enchantments.

   There he lies and fears that there he will lie and rot--but in his
   extremity, Infinite Mercy visits him and his soul finds vent for its
   misery in prayer "He sought the Lord God of his fathers." I admire the
   historian's words, he had dishonored his father as well as his God, but
   now he thinks of his godly ancestors and their holy faith. Surely his
   desire to return to his father's faith bore some likeness to that more
   spiritual resolve of the prodigal, "I will arise and go unto my
   father." It has often happened that men have been, by Divine Grace, the
   more readily led to God because He was their father's or their mother's
   God. Human love is thus dissolved in the nobler passion. Manasseh
   thinks, meditates, considers, reviews his life and loathes himself! He
   remembers how his father prospered by Jehovah's aid and, perhaps, also
   remembers the marvelous story of how Jehovah heard his father's prayer
   when he was near to die and raised him to life again. At any rate, in
   the dungeon he imitated his father, turned his face to the wall and
   wept sorely and prayed. "If," he said, "God saved my father's life,
   perhaps He may forgive my sin and bring me out of this horrible
   captivity." Thus hopefully he cried unto the Lord! O Friend, will you
   not also cry unto the God whom you have offended? Will you not say,
   "God be merciful to me a sinner?" Try, I beseech you, the power of
   prayer!

   But notice what went with his prayer, for, O Sinner, if you would have
   mercy of God, it must go with your-- "he humbled himself greatly." Ah,
   he had been a great man before--he was high and mighty Manasseh who
   would have his own way and dared defy the Lord to His face! But now he
   sings another song. He lies low as a penitent and begs as a sinner! How
   would he now use the language of his forefather David--"Have mercy upon
   me, O God, and blot out my transgressions." There is in the Apocrypha a
   book entitled "The Prayer of Manasses," which was probably composed to
   gratify the curiosity which would like to know how so great a
   transgressor prayed. Of course, it is spurious, but it contains some
   good and humble language almost meet for the lips of so great a
   penitent, though far more coherent and oratorical than his words are
   likely to have been. What a broken prayer Manasseh's must have been!
   And what groans, and sobs, and sighs were heard and seen by the great
   Father of Spirits, as His erring child sought His face in the gloomy
   cells of Babylon! Let such be your frame of mind, O Sinner. Be ashamed
   of your sin and folly! Confess it with mourning and abhor yourself on
   account of it. May the Holy Spirit bring you to this mind!

   Brothers and Sisters, the Lord heard Manasseh! Glory be to Infinite
   Grace, the Lord heard him! Blood-stained hands were lifted to Heaven,
   and yet the Lord accepted the prayer. A heart that had been the palace
   of Satan! A heart which had

   conceived mischief and brought forth cruelty! A proud rebellious heart
   humbled itself before God and the Lord pardoned and smiled upon the
   penitent and, as a testimony of His Infinite Mercy, He moved the king
   of Assyria to take Manasseh out of prison and restore him to his
   throne! The Lord does great marvels and shows great mercy unto the very
   chief of sinners! O that this might persuade some to test and try this
   gracious God! Manasseh had not such a clear revelation as you have--you
   have heard of God in Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto
   Himself--not imputing their trespasses unto them. Let the wounds of
   Jesus encourage you! Let His intercession for sinners cheer you! God is
   ready to pardon, and His heart yearn towards you. Come even now and
   seek His face, you vilest among men!

   Now, can you picture Manasseh going back from Babylon attended by a
   cohort of Assyrian soldiers? The poor Believers in Jerusalem have had a
   little respite while he has been in durance. Perhaps they even ventured
   to the Temple and restored the worship of Jehovah. At any rate, they
   crept out of the holes and corners in which they had laid hid and
   breathed more freely. But now it is rumored that the persecuting king
   is coming back--that the hunter of the souls of men is again abroad!
   What dread seized the minds of the timid among the godly and how
   earnestly the brave-spirited steeled their hearts for the conflict!
   More stoning, more sawing asunder! Can it be that these horrors are to
   be renewed? The righteous meet and sorrowfully plead with God that He
   would not permit the light to be quite quenched, nor give over His
   people like sheep to the slaughter. What a day of foreboding it must
   have been when the king came through the city gates! But perhaps some
   of them watched him--and when he passed by a shrine of Baal they
   noticed that he did not bow! The image of Ashtaroth stood in the high
   place, but they observed that he turned away his head as though he
   would not look in that direction! And what was their joy when they
   afterwards read his proclamation that from henceforth, Judah should
   worship Jehovah alone! What hanging down of the heads for the
   ritualistic, idolatrous party--but what joy among the evangelicals that
   the king, himself, had come over to their side--for now the Truth of
   God and the true-hearted would have the upper hand! What triumph was
   felt by the saints when the king sent the cleansers to the Temple to
   pull down the carved image! Then went up their hymns and they blessed
   the Lord with all their hearts, singing, "In Judah is God known! His
   name is great in Israel! There breaks He the arrows of the bow, the
   shield, and the sword, and the battle." O that such songs might be sung
   in the Church of Christ because of some of you!

   Manasseh also did his best to undo what he had done, and to restore
   what he had damaged, for those who are really converted show it
   practically. Restitution must be made for wrongs done, or repentance is
   a sham! All the evil we have done we must labor to remedy, or our
   penitence is only skin deep. That conversion which does not convert or
   turn the life is no conversion at all. One or two things remain to be
   said by way of practical address. First, dear Friends, adore Divine
   Grace. Never limit its power, but believe it able to convert the most
   abandoned! Believe that it can save you! Since our Lord Jesus always
   lives to intercede for those who come unto God by Him, He is able also
   to save them unto the uttermost! You cannot have too large ideas of
   Divine Grace, for where sin abounds, Grace does much more abound!

   But secondly, never turn it into an excuse for continuing in sin, for
   this case of Manasseh, with all its mercy, is still a sad one. Though
   we have seen how Grace gave it a good ending, yet, take it for
   all-in-all, it is a sad case and as a life, Manasseh's was wasted,
   misspent and full of wretchedness. Although he sought to mend matters,
   he could not fully undo what he had done. The people were nothing like
   as eager to follow the right as they were the wrong--and after many
   years of royal patronage of idolatry it was not easy for the masses to
   turn around, all of a sudden, and so the people sacrificed on their
   high places, though only to Jehovah, and their hearts still went after
   their idols.

   The last word is, seek for mercy, all of you. Do not neglect it because
   of its greatness, but rather hasten to receive it! Since we all need
   more mercy than we imagine, let us cry for it at once in hearty
   earnest! Let us come to the fountain which is opened for the house of
   David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and wash therein! Let us, by
   faith in Jesus' blood, wash and be clean! The Lord make us to do so,
   for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Life's Inevitable Burden

   (No. 3355)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 16,
   1867.

   "For every man shall bear his own burden." Galatians 6:6.

   IN pondering Scripture Truth, we must not strain metaphors, nor use
   figures of speech as though they were literal statements. You have an
   instance of the truth of this remark in this Chapter. In one verse the
   Apostle says, "Bear you one another's burdens, and so fulfill the Law
   of Christ," while in the verse of our text, he says, "Every man shall
   bear his own burden." Still, he is not contradicting himself. He would
   be if he were speaking literally of burdens, but he is speaking
   metaphorically and, consequently, he uses the figure first in one way
   and then in another. It may be useful to us, Brothers, to learn never
   to draw arguments and doctrines from metaphors. Many do and there are
   many supposed doctrines which really have no better ground-work than
   mere metaphors. I remember hearing one contending against the
   chastening of God's people and he urged that the Church was the bride
   of Christ and that it was impossible that Christ, as the Husband of the
   Church, should in any way chasten or strike His own spouse, which would
   be a very reasonable thing to say of a man. If the metaphor ran on four
   legs, the argument might have been correct, but as no metaphor is
   intended so to do, and is only to be understood in the sense intended
   by the person employing it, the argument is fallacious and valueless! I
   have heard others say that true Christians are citizens of Heaven and,
   consequently, we ought not to exercise our votes in political matters!
   This is another piece of utterly illogical reasoning because we might
   as well say to Christians that they ought not to eat animal food as
   they form the Lord's flock, and sheep must not, and cannot, eat animal
   food! The fact is, the reasoning from metaphor is always risky and
   sometimes proves quite absurd!

   I mention this because I am quite sure that very much of it does
   prevail in the Christian world and that people use the language of
   Scripture in a manner in which they would not use the same language if
   found in other books. The Word of God is, however, not to be treated
   with less, but moreveneration in our reading and study of it, and yet
   in the same simple, common-sense fashion as that in which we would
   treat any other book. The truth is there are burdens which may be
   shared and which should be shared. The burden of grief, the burden of
   pecuniary need, the burden of heart trouble may sometimes be borne, but
   on the other hand, there are burdens which no man can share with his
   fellow, nor ought he even to thinkof sharing, but where each man must
   stand apart and alone before God--and no one can assist him.

   Of these burdens we shall speak tonight, and they shall be our first
   point. Then, lest we should become burdensome to you, we shall offer a
   few considerations which may tend to take out the weight of the burdens
   which we must unavoidably carry, each one for himself. And then we
   shall close by endeavoring to find something practical to be done
   tonight as the result of the text. First, then, we have to speak of--

   I. CERTAIN BURDENS WHICH EACH MAN WILL BE QUITE CERTAIN TO HAVE TO BEAR
   FOR HIMSELF.

   In speaking of the first three burdens which I shall have to mention, I
   shall address myself to you all, whether saints or sinners, for there
   are some Truths of God which are common to all men as men. And such is
   the first burden--the burden of original sin. The burden of our natural
   depravity, the burden of our fallen nature, the burden of our
   constitution which is perverted by evil--these we shall, each one of
   us, have to carry for himself. It may be said that this is not our
   burden, but Adam's--but the burden of the father, if he brings the
   whole household into poverty--becomes the burden of the family and each
   individual member of it. If the head should ache, it is no use for the
   hand to say, "It is no business of mine." There is, too, so vital and
   intimate a connection between the whole body of humanity, between Adam

   the head, and all the members of the body corporate, that Adam's Fall
   becomes ours, Adam's ruin our ruin and the taint in the blood is to be
   found in us all. Some of you are "dead in trespasses and sins" and,
   therefore, this burden is no more a burden to you than the heavy clods
   of the churchyard are to the bodies that lie beneath them. But if ever
   you are quickened by Divine Grace, you will soon find that "the body of
   this death," as Paul calls indwelling sin, is a very heavy burden to
   battle with and you will have to personally fight out the conflict
   within your own soul. You will have to call in the aid of Divine Power,
   or you will never get the victory, but--mark you--in the conquest of
   your own corruption, in the overcoming of your own besetting sins and
   of those evils which are more powerful in you than they are in others
   because you are constitutionally inclined to them--in that battle you
   will have to fight for yourselves! You may get some assistance from
   other people's experience, but still, the struggle and the conflict
   must be with you.

   Young people, never imagine that all the training in the world can rid
   you of your evil without an earnest struggle on your own part! Don't
   conceive that a mother's prayers will give you tenderness of conscience
   unless you also learn of Christ for yourselves. Do not conceive that
   the rebukes of a father can conquer that evil temper unless you
   struggle against it. And if you habitually have a tendency to pride, do
   not conceive that the preacher's homilies against pride can overcome
   pride in you! No, in the name of God you must go to the armory and ask
   for the sword of the Spirit, that you may personally, girded with
   Divine Strength, which you may obtain by earnest prayer, overcome in
   your own soul your besetting sins! In this respect, then, you will have
   to bear your own burden. I know I have to bear mine and I do not know
   that any of you could help me. And I believe that each one of you,
   quickened by Divine Grace, must feel there is something peculiar about
   your case--some sin, perhaps, which you would not like to whisper into
   another's ear-- perhaps only a sin of thought, but still it is a
   burden. I hope it will become more and more a burden to you, for the
   more burdensome it becomes, the more likely are you to conquer it! But
   you will have to bear it yourself and in the strength of the Holy
   Spirit you will have to conquer it, too, and get rid of it. You will
   have to pluck out the right eye and tear off the right arm. It were
   better for you, remember, to enter into life crippled and maimed than
   to keep these and be cast into eternal Hell! It is for you, in God's
   name, personally to do battle with your personal depravity!

   Each man must, each man alone can bear his own burden here. Again, each
   man must also bear his own burden of personal sin unless, (here comes
   in the grand and gracious proviso), unless the sin is blotted out or is
   utterly removed! Every man who has sin to carry must bear his own
   burden. There is no shifting the sin from you to a sponsor. No fellow
   creature can stand for you and take your offenses. The Lord Jesus
   Christ did take His people's sins, as He was their Covenant Head,
   Surety and Representative--and they who are in Christ are free from
   sin--their sin being utterly removed and having ceased to be, having
   been cast by the tremendous power of Christ into the depths of the sea,
   so that if they are sought for, they shall never be found against the
   Lord's people any more forever! But do remember, dear Hearer, that if
   you are not a pardoned soul, you have got a burden to carry and you
   will have to bear it. You will have to bear it now, for "he that
   believes not is condemned already." You will have to bear it when you
   come to die and you will have enough to do to die having this burden of
   sin pressing upon your heart. Worst of all, you will have to bear it
   when your spirit is disembodied and your naked soul is called before
   your Maker. Ah, it will be a dreadful thing to go there with the
   blackness and defilement of sin about you! And you will have to bear
   it, too, in the day of the Resurrection and in the solemn article of
   judgment! And then, last of all, you will have to bear your own burden
   in the eternal future--and there it will sink you, sink you, sink you
   beyond all hope of rescue or escape!

   Now, while there is life there is hope. "All manner of sin and iniquity
   shall be forgiven unto men. If we confess our sin, He is faithful and
   just to forgive us our sins," but unless the sin is removed, it must
   remain our own burden forever and forever! You will not get rid of it
   by joining a church. You cannot be rid of it by passing through rites
   and ceremonies. It will be no help to you to have been a citizen of a
   Christian nation, so-called, and to have worshipped in a Christian
   assembly. "Every man shall bear his own burden." We came through the
   gates of life into this world alone--we shall go back through the iron
   gates of death, each man alone. And the judgment, though crowds will be
   gathered, will be the judgment of so many individuals, each weighed in
   the scale, alone, either to hear the verdict that they are "accepted in
   the Beloved," or else to hear it said, "Tekel"--"You are weighed in the
   balances and found wanting." How I wish that all my hearers would lay
   this to heart! Do not try to hide away in the crowd, for God will
   search and bring you out individually and you shall be tested and tried
   apart from others! If you take ever so many sovereigns to the bank, it
   is not very likely you will pass one bad one, for they would very soon
   discover it. That might be done, however, on earth, but it

   could not be done in Heaven! "Every man shall bear his own burden," and
   if the burden of sin is upon him, it shall crush him beyond all hope!

   Once again, while thus speaking to both saints and sinners, "Every man
   shall bear his own burden" of the Law. By sin we do not escape from the
   Law. The Law of God is binding upon every man of woman born, unless, by
   being dead to the Law through Christ, he escapes from under its yoke
   and bondage. Now, the Believer is not under Law. Do not misunderstand
   me. I mean that he is not under Law in the sense in which the sinner is
   under it. He is not under its condemning power! He is not under Law,
   but he is under Grace! The principle of Law does not bind him--it is
   the principle of love which rules and governs his spirit. Now, every
   man who is under the Law is bound to keep it, and to keep it
   personally. Look, my dear Friends--you who have never fled to
   Christ--look where you are. The Law of God is such a Law that Adam
   failed to keep it, though innocent. How, then, shall you keep it while
   imperfect? It is a spiritual Law, a Law touching not only your actions,
   but your words and your thoughts--how can you keep it? And yet, if you
   keep it not, it brandishes its great whip with the thongs and brings it
   down upon the conscience with terrible effect. If you keep not the Law,
   remember the sentence, "Cursed is everyone that continues not in all
   things written in the Book of the Law to do them." Happy is the man who
   has escaped from the territories of the Law of God and come into the
   dominions of Divine Grace! But so long as we are under the Law, its
   burden is ours and here comes in this grimly solemn Truth of God that
   it is a burden which each man must carry on his own shoulders, but
   carry it he cannot and, therefore, it will crush us and the curse of
   God must come upon us through the Law!

   And now we shall leave those three points which are common to all men
   and simply speak to Believers of the burdens which they have to carry
   and which they ought joyfully to shoulder, each man for himself!

   And first, my Brothers and Sisters, when we have been quickened and
   awakened, we shall find daily necessity for the confession of sin and
   here, "every man shall bear his own burden." A general confession may
   be very proper in the congregation, but it is only acceptable to God as
   it becomes an individual and particular confession in the case of each
   one using the words. Repentance is peculiarly a private and personal
   Grace. Lamentation for sin is a thing for one's own chamber--the
   husband apart, and the wife apart--the daughter apart and the mother
   apart. Into confession in its fullness, no two can enter. As far as the
   sin has been common they may confess together, but in so far as the
   guilt in each case is personal and particular, so must confession be.
   My dear Friends, let us not hesitate, whatever it may be that is upon
   our minds, tonight, to come and acknowledge it before our Father, who
   is in Heaven. We do not confess now like condemned criminals who
   confess before execution because they must--we confess like the
   returned prodigal, with our heads on our dear Father's bosom, conscious
   that we are forgiven, quite sure that His love is set upon us and that
   we shall not be driven from Him on account of sin, but hating sin all
   the more because of this love--and weeping bitterly because of that
   wondrous Grace which has had such compassion upon us! Let us be very
   marked in our acknowledgment of sin in private. I believe the Lord
   often withholds from His people a sweet sense of perfect acceptance
   until their confession shall be more precise--until they learn to "call
   a spade a spade," as we say, and so make a clean breast of the matter
   before the Most High.

   Further, my Brothers and Sisters, there is another burden we have to
   carry and which we must cheerfully shoulder, and that is the yoke of
   Christ Jesus says, "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me." And then He
   adds, "for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." We are bound to
   obey Christ. He is the Captain--we are His soldiers. There should be
   maintained in the Church a sacred military discipline--we should obey
   spontaneously the commands of our great Leader! He is our Shepherd, we
   must keep close to Him--walking in His footprints and delighting in His
   company. He is the Physician--we must follow His prescription, not
   hesitating, even though the draught He gives is very bitter. Perfect
   obedience is what Jesus Christ has a right to claim from us! Oh, that
   He would give us Grace that He might receive according to His rights!
   Is there any duty, my Brothers and Sisters, which you have not yet
   fulfilled and which presses upon your conscience? Or is there some
   other duty on which your conscience is but partially enlightened? Ask
   for a quickened conscience and when you obtain it, never tamper with
   it! Oh, to have a conscience quick as the apple of the eye, tender and
   delicate, that will not even bear the slightest dust of sin! Oh, to
   walk before God as Caleb did, of whom the Lord said, "My servant Caleb
   has followed Me fully." There were some of whom it was said, "They
   walked before the Lord, but not with all their heart, as did David."
   May we have the whole-heartedness of the most consecrated towards the
   Savior and whatever form the yoke of Christ may take, may we count it
   our highest joy to bear it! Since He carried our sorrow, let us be
   willing to carry out His commands to their utmost letter, desiring that
   not so much as a jot or a tittle shall be left unheeded of the Master's
   will!

   Further, Brothers and Sisters, I think we ought, each one of us, to
   feel that we have a burden of prayer to carry to the Mercy Seat. "Every
   man shall bear his own burden" in this respect. I wish we did this in
   our assemblies. I am afraid that you often let me pray, but some of you
   do not pray yourselves. I am afraid, too, that private prayer is
   neglected by a very large number of Christians--not that the form of it
   is absolutely renounced, but the vigor of it is not maintained. I wish
   I could say this without a blush concerning myself, but I do feel that
   very many of us do grievously fail here. We give the Lord some scanty
   five or ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, whereas our Puritan
   forefathers prayed sometimes for hours! But it would matter little
   about the time if we did but give the spirit. It is poor work,
   sometimes, our praying! Oh, that we wrestled with the Angel and
   prevailed! My Brothers and Sisters, we have, everyone of us, something
   to take before God in prayer--and we rob the Church of our
   contributions to her treasury of intercession if we do not put our
   share into it!

   Some of you ought to pray for the Sunday school more than you do. Some
   of you should bear in prayer the burden of the young of the
   congregation. The preacher has his burden of prayer--a heavy one. My
   Brothers and Sisters, the deacons and elders should be--I trust they
   are--peculiarly men of prayer! They have a burden to carry--a burden of
   prayer for the Church. And you aged fathers in our Israel and you, my
   dear Sisters who are matrons in our midst, it often seems to me to be
   peculiarly your office to be intercessors for the Church. It may be
   possible that many of you could not preach and could not be very
   serviceable in many active labors, but you can be the very strength and
   sinews of war for the Church militant by your prayers! No, no--it is
   not the whole Church praying that you are to think ofjust now, but you,
   yourself--praying--each man and woman taking his own share of the great
   common burden which we have to take before the Mercy Seat and leave
   there!

   So, too, must each of us take our own burden of witnessing for Christ
   All saints cannot witness to all Truth since nobody knows all the Truth
   of God but God! Some of our hyper-Calvinistic friends also know it all,
   according to their own understanding--but at any rate we think that
   nobody else does! Finite minds can only grasp part of the Truth. The
   Infinite alone can lay hold of the whole of Truth. If we were
   altogether Infallible in our knowledge of Doctrine, we should be God,
   for only God can know all things and know all things thoroughly--know
   all things without admixture of error. But wherein we do know, each man
   is called to bear testimony to the Truth he does know. There are many
   things that I do not know--why should I, then, pretend to be a witness
   to them? But there are some two or three things I do know. I am quite
   sure about them--and if I do not speak positively upon them, I shall
   fail to bear my burden before the Lord. And there is some one Truth of
   God, perhaps, my Brother, about which you have a little Light of God, a
   little more Light than your neighbors. Do not hide the Light of God!
   God does not ever light a lamp to put it under a bushel. If you have
   received, either by experience or research, any special Light which is
   peculiar to you--spread it that it may be, as it should be, the common
   property of the Church of God, to the Glory of God! I wish that
   Christians in these days thought more of bearing their witness. The
   Scottish people in years gone by attached great importance to the
   bearing of witness--testifying--standing out at all costs to give
   evidence to the Truth of God. But nowadays Truth is cast into the
   street as though it were worthless! And Christians will honor a Truth
   and hold it, and yet will put their finger to their lips and say, "For
   peace's sake, such a Truth is to be unspoken." No! Peace is precious,
   but it has its price, and is not to be purchased at any price! Truth
   first! "First pure, then peaceable." First, the Truth of God and then
   the peace of God. May we have both, but let us take care that we bear
   our own burden in witnessing for the Lord Jesus Christ.

   Again, dear Brothers and Sisters, we have, each one of us, our own
   burden in the matter of caring for souls. You are placed, some of you,
   as working men amidst working men--your burden is manifestly your own
   class. Others of you move in other spheres. Do not forget that each
   sphere has its particular claim. You have ability? You have, then, a
   burden peculiar to a man of ability. You have wealth? There is a burden
   there. On the other hand, you live in obscurity. Your utmost sphere is
   your little children and your one or two rooms. Still remember that
   circles are prized not in proportion to their size, but in proportion
   to their roundness--and so we shall be honored and rewarded by Divine
   Grace--not according to the largeness of our sphere, but according to
   the way in which we have filled it for Christ! We must each bear the
   burden of our own sphere. Mother, no one else can be a mother to your
   children and do for them what you should do. Minister, if you are truly
   sent of God, no one can be a sponsor for you in your ministry--you must
   take

   that burden which God has put upon you, upon yourself! And you trader,
   merchant, working man--there is something which you, each of you, must
   do and however earnest all the rest of Christians may be, they cannot,
   by the surplus of their zeal, if there is any, by any possibility make
   up for a deficiency in your case! The timber may be very strong in one
   part of the vessel, but the strength of the timber there is no
   recompense for a rotten portion in another part of the keel-- it must
   be strong all over. We are all set, as it were, to forge a chain--and
   if the link that you shall forge is thoroughly strong and well welded,
   yet if I make a mess of my portion of the work, the chain will be
   injured all through! Let us remember this and discharge our own work in
   the strength of God, by the power of His Spirit, and we shall joy in
   ourselves by the Holy Spirit!

   I might thus enlarge upon these burdens, but they all come to the same
   effect. There is one more word, however, which will be addressed,
   perhaps, to half a dozen here--probably not so many. Sometimes, upon
   some men, God casts a burden which He never puts on others. The Prophet
   speaks of "the burden of the Lord." Probably we have all carried it at
   some time, but at any one particular time there will not be many who
   are bearing it. That burden may be something very extraordinary to
   others, though you have become so familiar with it that it seems
   ordinary to you. Perhaps tonight something is saying in your soul, "Go
   and speak to such an one." Do not violate that monition! Believe me,
   there is more in spiritual impulses than some people think! You have
   all read the old story of the Quaker who felt moved to ride into a
   certain town, some 10 or 12 miles off at the dead of night--and to go
   to a certain house. He did so. He found the house and knocked at the
   door. No one came to the door. He knocked again and when, at last, a
   man came downstairs and opened the door and asked him what he wanted.
   The Quaker said, "Perhaps you can tell me, for I do not know. The Lord
   has sent me to you, but what for I know not." Then the man produced a
   rope and said that just when the knock came to the door he was in the
   top room, planning to hang himself. God had evidently sent the Quaker
   just at that time to prevent him. If you and I were more obedient to
   these "burdens of the Lord" when they came, we might often do more good
   than we do. We must not be fanatical--there is a line to be drawn--but
   at the same time I am afraid we often check sacred impulses, which, if
   followed, might be fraught with the most blessed consequences! Do you
   feel called at this time, my dear Friend, to a work which you never
   undertook before? Consult not with flesh and blood! Do not be
   particular about asking help and assistance. "Every man shall bear his
   own burden." Go in the strength of God! If, like Gideon, you need a
   sign, take it, and when you have it and your heart has become like
   Gideon's fleece, wet clean through, even though it is with sorrow, so
   that you could wring it out, then go in this, your might, for if God
   has sent you, He will go with you. "As your days, so shall your
   strength be." This may be a word to somebody--I know not to whom--but
   it was a burden on me to say it--and there I leave it.

   Now we turn to the second Truth of this theme! And with much greater
   brevity-- II. SOME THINGS WHICH LIFT THE WEIGHT OF THESE PRESSING
   BURDENS. "Every man shall bear his own burden." It is not pleasant to
   be talked to all this long time about your being a burden-bearer, but
   perhaps these things will make it more pleasant. The first thing of
   which to remind ourselves is this-- that it is quite consistent with
   the Truth of God declared in our text, to remind you that Jesus Christ
   is the great Burden-Bearer for all His saints--that though, on the one
   hand, you will have to bear your own burdens, yet on the other hand
   Christ will bear all your burdens for you! Your burden of sin was laid
   upon Him as the scapegoat for your soul. That you know, and now your
   sin is put away! And now, tonight, whatever your burden is, come with
   it to your best Friend, the "Friend that sticks closer than a brother."
   Tell Him the cause of your complaint. The disciples of John, when their
   master's head was taken off, took up the body and "went and told
   Jesus." Come and tell Jesus what it is that vexes you tonight! It is
   said of one sick child, "They brought him to Jesus." Is your trouble a
   sick child, or is it you who is sick? Or what is it? Bring it to Jesus!
   All griefs either fly at His approach or else they change to joys! Or
   if they remain griefs, they minister to us an abundance of spiritual
   wealth--

   "Come, make your needs, your burdens known--

   He will present them at the Throne!

   And angel bands are waiting there,

   His messages of love to bear."

   You must remember that your burden is easy to bear when Christ is with
   you. When Jesus Christ has strengthened you with all strength in your
   inner man and put into you His own Omnipotence to be your succor, then
   shall the burden cease to be a burden to you any longer!

   This also may tend to lighten the pressure, that as every man has to
   bear his own burden, so every man has his own hope. I would be afraid
   to change with anybody else. I have sometimes thought, when I have been
   much desponding, that I wished I had half as good a hope as some of my
   Brothers and Sisters, but when I come to think it over--I do not
   know--I do not know--I would be as happy as the least in the Lord's
   family if I knew that I was really one of His, but I really should not
   like to change with any of the little ones, or the great ones, either,
   on the chance of their being His. No! I know my own hope and I will
   keep it!

   And, blessed be God, as we have our own burden, so we have our own joy.
   The most miserable and unhappy Christian in the world, when you come to
   get into his secrets, will tell you--he will let it out somehow--that
   he has a secret spring of joy which others have not. In fact, it is to
   be remarked that those who have deep griefs have generally
   proportionately deep joys! The man of superficial sorrow generally has
   superficial mirth--but the man whose heart has been bored through and
   through has a stream of joy springing up as from an artesian well that
   cannot be equaled for freshness by the mere land springs of superficial
   piety! Brothers and Sisters, we would not part with our joys nor with
   our hope. Though we have our sorrows to ourselves, yet we have our joys
   to ourselves, too! And, thank God, they cannot be taken away from us!

   So, too, the Christian has Christ all to himself. I have sometimes
   tried to think of that. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ, able to save ten
   thousand times ten thousand sinners--and yet He is all mine! All Christ
   is mine! Here He is feeding the millions of His saints, and yet there
   is not a single crumb upon His table but what is mine! Nor a grain of
   corn in the granary of my Brother Joseph but what belongs to me! All
   Christ belongs to each one of God's people! You have got a burden to
   yourself, but you have also got God to yourself--think of that! Have
   you ever remembered that if you were the only creature in the
   world--the only creature in the universe--if there were no angels and
   no other men--have you ever thought of what an inspection God would
   have of you and how He would see you through and through? Well, at this
   present moment and at all times, you are as much an object of His
   inspection as if that were the case! For multitudes of objects do not
   divide the exercise of Omniscience upon each one. The Infinite Mind of
   God is such that the Infinite Care of God belongs to every individual
   throughout the entire universe! Yes, you have a God to yourself! Oh,
   what infinite supplies you have, Christian! Talk of your expenses! Look
   at your income! Speak of your poverty! Look at your wealth! You talk of
   your weakness--now estimate your strength! You can cast the plumb line
   to the bottom of your sorrows and measure the Atlantic waves of your
   grief, but you cannot measure Heaven above, nor the earth beneath, nor
   the depths of Hell! If you could measure these, God is greater than
   them all! Oh, why, then, do you despond because of the big burden, when
   you have peculiar help, peculiar joy, peculiar hope and peculiar
   strength? Rest in God and be joyful!

   Once again, it is true that we, all of us, have a burden to carry, but
   then we have not to carry that burden long. You do not much pity a man
   who has to carry a load only during the twinkling of an eye. Well, the
   whole of life is not any more than that! Just think, my dear Friends,
   of eternity--and what is life? Imagine ourselves sitting down in Heaven
   in the midst of eternal blessedness, and what a moment life will seem!
   We shall know, then, what Paul meant when he said, "These light
   afflictions which are but for a moment." But for a moment! Oh, pluck up
   courage, Brothers and Sisters! You are nearer Home than you thought you
   were and every moment you are getting nearer! We find our horses
   quicken their speed when we turn their heads homeward and they drag
   their loads with speed. Now, your head is homeward, Christian, you--

   "Nightly pitch your moving tent, A day's march nearer home."

   Therefore, be of good comfort and let not the burden gall your
   shoulders.

   Once more. If you have a burden to yourself, remember that you will
   have your own place in Heaven which nobody else will have. You have
   your own sorrows, but you will have your own joys there! I think there
   is a note in the heavenly song for each one of us to take. I do not
   suppose that Mary Magdalene sings precisely the same note as the dying
   thief. There will be her lofty voice taking some of the treble notes
   and we shall have him, it may be, taking the deeper bass. I believe
   that if one of us should be absent, the choir of Heaven would not be
   complete. In the noblest orchestra all the in-

   struments and voices are needed for the completeness of the chorus, and
   so will it be in the orchestra of Heaven! Paul says that the saints
   that are gone before into Heaven are not perfect without us--that "they
   without us would not be made perfect." That is to say the company would
   not be complete, but gaps appear. So long as there is one soldier in a
   squad who has not arrived, the battalion is not completely formed. So
   we must each get there to perfect, to complete the number of the saints
   in Heaven! Well, then, Beloved, as we are, each one, to have a place
   and portion in Heaven, each a mansion to himself or herself, we may
   well be content to bear our burdens here alone. And now to close. What
   is-- III. THE PRACTICAL INFERENCE AND RESULT?

   I do not know what it may be, but oh, may God the Holy Spirit burn my
   text into your hearts! I do not want you to remember so much anything I
   have said--it does not matter about that--you can forgot it all! But I
   do want you to recollect this one Truth of God--especially you
   Christians--that "every man shall bear his own burden." There is
   something for each one of you to do for Christ. Oh, that notion that
   the minister can do it, that the united action of the Church can do
   it--it has ruined the Christian Church to a large extent! A personal,
   individual sense of responsibility is what we need--each Christian
   judging himself daily and hourly as to his capabilities, obligations
   and indebtedness to his Lord! Brother minister, you have got your
   burden to bear. Is there any new work you can undertake for Christ, or
   any old work that needs strengthening, into which you can throw
   yourself with greater zeal? Then I pray you do it! My Sister in the
   Lord, you have not done, perhaps, what you might do. Now say in your
   heart, before you leave the pew, "By God's Grace, I will do whatever I
   can." I can look round, round upon you here and see some who are really
   doing more than I could for a moment ask you to do, for you are "in
   labors more abundant."

   I thank God that there are such in this Church, but then I think of
   others. Oh, if all were like some, what a Church we would be! If all
   the vines in our vineyard bore such clusters as some of the vines do,
   oh, how the wine presses would burst with new wine! In the matter of
   liberality, the preacher must never judge--that is a matter for each
   man. "How much should you give unto your Lord?" In the matter of
   service, it is not for us to allot you your work, but what can you do?
   Now, what will you do tonight" "Oh, give me till the morning," says
   one. No! No! We have not an hour that we can afford to waste! Let us
   serve God today--we will leave tomorrow to care for itself. Now is the
   accepted time for service, as well as salvation! Serve Him now! Do
   something to forward His Kingdom and honor His name now! The only way
   to serve Christ in the future is to serve Him in the present, for the
   future never comes, or, if it does, it ceases to be future and is the
   living present.

   Now I ask you, you who are now washed in His cleansing blood, you who
   now bear in your body the marks of the Lord Jesus, you who have lain on
   His bosom, you who have been kissed with the kisses of His mouth, you
   who have been brought from under the apple tree and know how sweet His
   fruit is and how delightful His shadow is, you who are now one with
   Him, of His flesh and of His bones, you who expect soon to see Him, you
   who are longing to be with Him and hope to be caught up to dwell with
   Him, to see Him as He is, and to be like He is--I charge you by the
   roes and the hinds of the fields, by the lily beds wherein you had
   fellowship with your Lord, and by the garden of nuts wherein He has
   revealed Himself to you--I charge you, by His everlasting love, by the
   love you bear to Him, and by that sweet song you sang just now--

   "For He is mine, and I am His-- The God whom I adore! My Father,
   Savior, Comforter, Now and forevermore,"

   serve Him now! Serve Him forevermore and may the Lord bless you and
   make you blessed, and a great blessing to others, for Jesus' sake.
   Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

David's Sublime Consolation

   (No. 3356)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 29, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 23,
   1867.

   "Although my house is not so with God; yet He has made with me an
   everlasting Covenant, orderedin all things and sure: for this is all my
   salvation, and all my desire, although He makes it not to grow." 2
   Samuel 23:5.

   NO GOLD but pure gold can stand the fire. And if a man's religion has
   been a pretentious sham, it is very likely to tumble to pieces under
   the rough hand of death. There have been a few hypocrites who have been
   able to brazen it out, even in the last solemn article, but these must
   always be the few. David, at any rate, was never the man who would play
   the hypocrite in the last extremity of death. You can see how true, how
   deep, how thorough his faith in God must have been, for his dying bed
   was by no means an enviable one. His dying pillow was stuffed with
   sharp thorns. His was a life which, although it had much of Divine
   Grace about it, yet had much of sinful nature, too. He was dying as we
   might not wish to die in some respects, but his faith triumphed as we
   may well desire that our faith may triumph, whatever the outward
   circumstances of our life or death may be! We shall go at once, and
   without further preface, to consider our text and notice in turn the
   Psalmist-King's grave lament. And then, blessed compensation, his
   glorious comfort. First, then, we shill ponder, and may the Holy Spirit
   make it greatly to profit everyone of us--

   I. DAVID'S GRAVE LAMENT.

   His house, he declares, was "not so" with God. And the numbers and the
   power of that house did not grow as he could have wished. Brothers and
   Sisters, there are some troubles that a man outgrows. There are some
   childish trials connected with our early Christian life which we,
   without effort, outlive and which in due course pass away. We shall not
   have to feel--thank God!--ever again the special perils of our youth
   and of our early manhood. When we have passed into riper years, we
   leave these things behind us. But there are some troubles which
   accumulate as we grow. For instance, there is the peculiar trouble
   alluded to in the text. There are, no doubt, multitudes of cares and
   trials connected with a family of little children, but every parent
   knows that the trials connected with little children are as nothing
   compared with the sorrows of those who have grown-up children that
   cause them heartache and heartbreak.

   We could better afford to bury them one by one in their infancy, than
   that they should live to dishonor their father's name and to blaspheme
   their father's God! The mother might be well satisfied to watch over
   their sick couches night after night and to weary herself as though she
   labored in the very fire for their sakes. We could well put up with the
   little mistakes, sturbornesses, follies and even sins of their earliest
   days. But the sting is when, having left our roof, they leave our
   teaching! When, having gone from our training, they do not abide in it,
   but plunge into sin and prove to us most sadly that Divine Grace does
   not run in the blood, but that natural depravity most certainly does.
   Now, this particular form of trial accumulates as we grow older. Some
   of us here have not yet come to it. May God grant that we never may,
   but I know there are some here whose hairs are plentifully sprinkled
   with gray, who have this as their daily cross to carry and who look
   back on all the troubles of their youth and say that they were as
   nothing compared with this--the house being amiss with God, the
   children being disobedient--the sons and daughters training up their
   children, but not in the nurture and admonition of the Lord! This is a
   trial which comes when the battle of life, as we think, is almost over
   and when we might naturally expect to take a little repose in the
   eventide of life, before the dawning of the everlasting morning! This
   seems to be one of the last thorns that is thrust into our rest. With
   some it has been a thorn which, as in the case of David, has pierced
   their heart in its last beats and throbs. I may be addressing some such
   tonight. At any rate, I am addressing a great many who have need to
   pray against this trial. Oh, it is a dreadful thing--a terrible thing
   to look for-

   ward to, but what must it be to bear, none can tell but those whose
   hearts have been wrung by the iron hand of such an affliction!--

   "How sharper than a serpent's teeth it is To have a thankless child."

   David had an Absalom and an Amnon, and a Tamar--of whom the less said
   the better--and outside his dying chamber door there was an Adonijah
   trying to upset his father's last will and testament. And although
   Solomon was, in some respects, a great deal better, yet he was not, in
   those days, all that might be wished.

   The fact is that, taken as a whole, they were a bad set. Was it any
   wonder that they should be such? David had himself very much to blame
   for it, for polygamy can never by any possibility work well. Jacob's
   trouble arose out of that and no doubt David's troubles began there,
   too. And this must have been the sting about it to David, that some of
   his children could quote their father's example for their sins! Not but
   what his life had had in it very many virtues, but children will cover
   their eyes and not observe those things when it does not suit their
   whim to see them. But if there is a fault in the parent, there is none
   more quick than the child to spy it out and to make the fall--the
   mistake of the parent which was pardoned, because wept over--to be the
   one outstanding mark of that parent's character and in that, alone, to
   imitate it.

   Now, my Brothers and Sisters, at such a time, when we are stung with
   such a trouble so near to us--for the troubles of our own house ought
   always to affect us more than any other--there we get our first
   comforts around the family hearth and there we must expect to have our
   sweetest joys and our deepest pangs! When, I say, we have this
   affliction and have in it that drop of gall of knowing that we,
   ourselves, are somewhat responsible for the whole matter and that we
   cannot throw it upon Divine Sovereignty, but must take some measure of
   it to ourselves--oh, it will be glorious faith if still, with all those
   pangs and griefs in their utmost bitterness, we can say, "Yet He has
   made with me an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure,
   for this is all my salvation and all my desire." Believe me, it is one
   thing to read that text, but quite another thing to feel it! And it is
   one thing to suppose ourselves under these circumstances, rejoicing in
   the Lord, but quite another thing to come into these depths--these very
   depths--with God's waves and billows going over us and yet, by joyous
   faith, to lift our head out of the waves and sing with bravest
   confidence in our God!

   Now we shall be allowed, since David's is but one case among many, to
   show that apart from the family--supposing that to be right--that there
   may still be other forms of poignant sorrow under which we may labor
   and in which our only relief will be to triumph in God's Covenant
   faithfulness to our souls!

   The trial to some of us will come possibly from the Church. The
   faithful minister makes the Church that he serves his family. The
   earnest deacon, the truly-called elder, considers the Church, too, to
   be his household. The excellent and devoted conductors of the Bible
   classes, and Sunday school classes will come in the faith and love of
   sanctified souls to look upon those under their charge as children
   committed to them as a sacred trust, to train and nurture in Christian
   life and conduct. And some of us can say, who have known it, that it is
   a grief that cuts very deep into the soul when the Church, or the
   class, or whatever our circle of service, is not so with God as we
   could desire! When we think of some who backslide. When we hear of
   some, as we have heard time and again, who fall into open sin and,
   worst of all, into cruel un-kindness to the very person who was the
   means of their conversion, but of whom it is not now possible for them
   to say anything too bad or too unkind because they think they have
   received further illumination, and have learned something which God
   grant they may unlearn--whenever these things occur and they occur very
   frequently in a large Church and occur very painfully in a small
   one--they throw the minister, they throw the Sunday school teacher,
   they throw the earnest worker of any sort flat on his face, and they
   make him shed many tears and cry out to God in the bitterness of his
   soul, "You do not make my Church grow. You do not make my Church to be
   as I would have it to be--like Yourself. You do not give me the sheaves
   which I long to reap, nor the souls to be saved which I long to win."

   It is a great and deep sorrow and it is a great blessing if, at such
   times, we can come back to this, "Yet He has made with me an
   everlasting Covenant." You know it is that precious Doctrine which is
   meant to keep us quiet when we are succeeding, for the Lord Jesus said
   to His Apostles when they came back overjoyed and said, "Lord, even the
   devils are subject to us"--"Ah, nevertheless, rejoice not in this. Do
   not make this the mainstay of your joy, but rather rejoice that your
   names are written in Heaven." Well, when it is not so with us as we
   would wish, but we have to experience the very

   opposite, I think that then I can hear our Lord saying, "Nevertheless,
   be not brokenhearted about this, but rather rejoice that your names are
   written in Heaven, that My Covenant with you is everlasting."

   Beloved, you may not have either of the two sorrows I have spoken of,
   but if you are a child of God, you will have fellowship with a third,
   namely, the inward state of your own soul

   In a certain very special sense, that is the definite household of
   everyone of us. These powers and passions, imaginings and emotions,
   thoughts and desires--these are, so to speak, the children of your
   house, and I am afraid that most of us will have to say, "Although my
   house is not so with God." I read a book the other day written by a
   Brother whom I very highly esteem and, indeed, reverence for his
   holiness, excellence and usefulness. But when I found him speaking of
   himself as living in perfect allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and
   perfect love to Him--and as having continued so for 20 years without
   sin--I must confess that I thought he must either use language in a
   different way from that in which I use it, or else that he and I must
   have very different kinds of hearts, for I do not find it as he said! I
   believe I have sincerely strived to serve my Master, and have served
   Him so as to have had given me many seals of my service, but I never
   did serve Him in such a way as to be satisfied with my service! I never
   could dare to feel content with a prayer I ever prayed, or a sermon I
   ever preached! I have always cultivated the idea that if I were to feel
   satisfied, I would be proud--and that if I did feel content, I would be
   doing wrong--and so I have rather strived against the feeling of being
   satisfied with anything within me--but have tried to continually feel
   that I still have enemies to drive out of the Canaan of my heart and
   corruptions still to subdue, glorifying God for anything that I could
   see that was gracious, but trying, at any rate, to mourn and lament
   over what was my own--and there is a good deal of that--and I find, if
   anything, more of it now than ever, not that there is more, but as we
   grow in Grace I think we perceive it more clearly! A room is not more
   dusty when it is shut up than it is when the sun shines in through the
   little crevice in the shutter, where the beam of sunlight comes
   through. There is no more dust in that particular part of the room
   where the sun shines in than there is anywhere else, and yet how very
   full of dust that slanting sunbeam seems to be! The room is not more
   dusty there, but there is more light there than anywhere else. So it
   seems that the very coming in of light to the soul reveals more and
   more of the evil things, the spiritual ugliness that yet lurks there
   and which I fear will be there until the Lord takes us Home! It is very
   pitiable to see so many persons perfectly content to be so very
   imperfect, sitting down as though they--knowing they cannot here be
   absolutely perfect--have no desire to "grow in Grace, and in the
   knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." It does such persons
   good to hear a sermon on the Doctrine of Scriptural Perfection! If it
   does not make them angry with it, it does them good, for it makes them
   see that there is something better to be obtained in this world than
   they have ever yet dreamed and so stimulates their ambition! But for
   all that, I would still like to see a perfect man--and I would like to
   see Satan and he have a turn of conflict! And if Satan did not somehow
   or other get the better of him, I would be mistaken and surprised!

   For this I know, that when we are most watchful and most guarded,
   temptations will still overtake us and surely these men must have some
   tragically unguarded moments. Ah, Brothers and Sisters, it will not do!
   "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
   death?" is as certainly the cry of the Christian as the rest of the
   sentence, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is, none the
   less, a sorrow to a truly sanctified soul, not to be sanctified
   perfectly. It is a most bitter grief to conceive that there should be
   any sin dwelling in him. It is his cross and his burden and, therefore,
   at such times when the burden is heaviest, it is a gracious thing for
   faith to be able to say, "Although my heart is not so with God as I
   would have it and I do not live so near to Him as I could desire, nor
   serve Him as I wish, yet still, for all that, I am a sinner saved by
   Grace, and He has made with me, unworthy me, an everlasting Covenant,
   ordered in all things and sure."

   The beauty of the comfort of the text is that it is set boldly,
   strikingly, upon so black a foil! In David's case a sorrow of the
   bitterest kind is associated with a joy of the sweetest description!
   What I am driving at is this--whether it is family trouble, Church
   trouble, or inward spiritual trouble arising from personal experience,
   it is the work, boast and glory of faith to be able to see light in the
   midst of the darkness, to find a way through the sea and a path through
   the desert-- and to sing--"Though this is not what I would have it, nor
   that, nor the other thing, nor a thousand things, yet has He made with
   me an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure"!

   I shall not stay to say anything about the latter part of the verse,
   namely, about the house not growing. David did not see his family grow
   in the estimation of the people, grow in strength, grow in numbers. It
   is a great sorrow not to see our families growing up in piety and
   advancing in holiness--a great grief not to see our Churches making
   steady progress--and a heavy trouble, most of all, not to see our own
   hearts growing in love and other Divine Graces, and so going onward
   towards ripe maturity of blessed character.

   Having thus spoken of David's great lament, we now turn with joyful
   relief to speak of--

   II. DAVID'S GLORIOUS COMFORT.

   As I said before, we will only give you a few plain, practical
   thoughts, praying the Holy Spirit to make them of Divine Power. The
   glorious comfort which David found lay in the Covenant which God had
   made with him. With David it was a Covenant of royalty for himself and
   for his seed, but we believed he also had a further vision of the
   Covenant of Grace. At any rate, we of the Gospel dispensation must do
   so, for though we shall not have earthly thrones, yet under Christ's
   Covenant we are made kings and priests unto God!

   Now, let us suppose ourselves to be sitting down alone, soliloquizing
   over all our griefs. There is a burden upon our mind and this thought
   crosses us--"Yet" I have a, "yet," to set over against my "although." I
   have a heavy, "although," to mar my prospects, but I have a delightful,
   inspiring, "yet," to shed its light upon them--"Yet has He made with me
   a Covenant."

   Observe, first, that this Covenant made with us is a Covenant of pure
   Grace. It would scarcely console Adam to think of the Covenant under
   which he was--the Covenant of Works. It would be very sorry consolation
   to think of the Covenant of Works now, for we have all broken it and
   all that remains to us of its provisions is its curse! But we rejoice
   to know that that Covenant of Works is, as far as we are concerned,
   fulfilled completely by Jesus Christ--and there remains nothing but
   God's side of it to be fulfilled! Christ undertook our side of it and
   He declared, "It is finished," when He gave up the ghost. Man's side of
   the Covenant of Grace is fulfilled and, therefore, the Covenant stands
   now solely and only as a Covenant of pure and unconditional promise on
   the part of God towards His elect people! A delightful thought is this,
   for on these terms it is truly a Covenant of Grace. "I will and they
   shall--I will give them a new heart, and a right spirit, and they shall
   walk in My ways. I will purge, and wash, and cleanse them, and they
   shall be clean." It is a Covenant without, "ifs," or, "buts," or,
   "perhapses," in it because its elements are unalloyed Grace--Grace,
   Grace, Grace, and not a single jot or tittle of merit in it! Now,
   Believer in Christ, you are under such a Covenant, a Covenant which is
   all promise to you and no threats! Ought not this to cheer and comfort
   you? These dark afflictions--what are they? You can say, as one of old
   said, "Strike now, Lord, if You will, for I am forgiven! Now do what
   You will with me, for I am Your child."--

   "If sin is pardoned, I'm secure! Death has no sting beside."

   Nor has life any, either, for the worst sting is gone, sin is removed
   and I am saved! Now, Lord, I leave everything in Your hands, making no
   conditions or stipulations, but will be pleased, or strive to be
   pleased, with all Your will provides, since I know that the threats are
   all gone and there remains for me nothing but promises full of
   boundless mercy which then shall be my heritage!"

   The next thought is, that this Covenant is made with me. Beloved, I
   cannot preach on this as I would, but I pray that the Holy Spirit may
   bring home to your souls both the power and sweetness of the thought,
   "Yet has he made with me an everlasting Covenant." The Doctrines in
   themselves are delightful, but it is the personal interest in and
   realization of the Doctrines that give real delight!. The Covenant--oh,
   yes, that is the Well of Bethlehem--but it is "within the gate." But a
   Covenant made with me. Ah, that is the water from the well rippling at
   my very lips! I drink it and am completely refreshed! It would be
   pleasant to hear of a Covenant made with ten thousand men, that they
   might be saved, and our common humanity might make us rejoice therein.
   A Covenant made with countless millions might well make us glad to
   overflowing, but, after all, it is not selfish, but only laudable as
   the law of self-preservation God has Himself implanted in us, for us
   most of all to rejoice in our own personal faith in Christ, our
   personal property in the Covenant of which He is the Surety! "Yet He
   has made with me." You know, sometimes, when I am thinking of God's
   mercy, trying to get a grip of my adoption and my acceptance in the
   Beloved, I find myself crying and at other times laughing. It seems
   such a wonder that an "heir of wrath" should be made an heir of
   Heaven--an enemy of God made to be His own Dear son to whom He has made
   absolute promises of Infinite Love and unutterable Grace! Surely this
   ought to make our hearts leap like the heart of a warrior when the
   battle has come to a close and the victory has been won! How joyous
   ought to be the Chris-

   tian's life! There ought to be a sacred exhilaration, a holy riot in
   our spiritual life at the thought that God has personally made with
   us--unworthy, sinful, but pardoned and accepted men and women--"a
   Covenant ordered in all things and sure."

   There is a very poor man in this place, just come from his labor. He
   has not even had time to go home to wash his face. He is very poor. If
   you could see his room, there is very little furniture in it and the
   wages he earns come to a very little. He has been poor for years and
   years. You, perhaps, would scarcely notice him. He is a mere drudge, a
   weight lifter, a carrier, one of the despised "masses" and yet God has
   made with him an everlasting Covenant! Why, what a contrast between the
   parties to this Covenant! Here is the Infinite and Eternal God with all
   the blazing splendor of His Deity--and He has made a Covenant with this
   poor despised child of poverty and toil! Well, now, if you come to
   think of it, there is no difference in spiritual need between the
   crossing-sweeper and the millionaire! They are only two frail mortals,
   with a little difference in their circumstances and surroundings, but
   there is no difference when they go to their last resting place, and
   they sleep in the lap of mother earth! And yet, with either or both,
   God is ready to make an everlasting Covenant--with such insignificant
   ones, with you and me! Oh, dear Christian Brothers and Sisters, here is
   the music of it--"with me." Now, may your faith lay her hand on the
   dear Savior's head afresh, look to Christ anew, see His blood flowing
   for you, wash again and feel that you are clean and then say, "Yet He
   has made with me an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and
   sure."

   It may increase our joy to remember the Person who has made this
   Covenant. If the Covenant had been made with men, it might have been
   kept, or it might not have been--for the surest treaties have been
   broken--and when men have been bound with fetters, the proverb has not
   always been proved true, "Fast bind, fast find," but men have slipped
   through a thousand nooses and have been untrustworthy even when solemn
   oaths and obligations have been used to bind them down! But God is
   true, so true that we might take His Word at once, and yet since He
   knew our unbelief, He has been pleased to give us "two immutable
   things, wherein it is impossible for God to lie that we might have
   strong consolation who have fled for refuge to the hope set before us."
   He has done this, He who has not twice destroyed the earth with a
   flood, notwithstanding all her sins! He who settled the mountains and
   fixed the hills in their sockets has said that the mountains shall
   depart and the hills be removed, but that His love shall not depart
   from us, neither shall His Covenant be removed from us. He has said it
   whose power is equal to His Truth, whose love, with golden hands,
   encircles both His power and His faithfulness. He has said it who never
   knows the shadow of a change, the sun without a parallax and without a
   tropic. He has said it, the great I AM has made with us a Covenant of
   Grace!

   Then comes the thrilling Truth of God--"an everlasting Covenant" We
   must not, above all things, leave that out! It is the duration of the
   mercy which is always the great theme of joy to the Christian. I do not
   know where my brethren get their comfort from, who believe in a
   temporary Covenant of Grace. I am not disposed to controvert with them
   because if they like it and can get any comfort out of it, I am very
   glad that somebody should. But it is a kind of land I should never
   think of plowing, nor should I ever wish to add to my farm! I shall
   never be tempted to covet that as Ahab covets Naboth's vineyard. That
   system of theology seems to me to play fast and loose with Divine
   things and make man stronger than God--and so I am content not to
   desire its possession. I suppose I am a greater sinner than they and
   have more need of Grace and I come back to my Master's power alone to
   keep me, rather than depend on my own strength to keep myself. And here
   are my comfort and joy, that if God has made a Covenant with me, He has
   not done it for today or tomorrow and next week, or even next year, but
   for all eternity! When the hair turns gray, the Covenant will still be
   young! And when the pulse beats low and the death sweat shall stand on
   our brow, the Covenant will be as full of life as in our early days
   when first we knew the Lord. It is "an everlasting Covenant," and
   everlasting in the respect of its being made with me, not a Covenant
   which is everlasting, but which changes with persons and is first with
   one and then with another. "He has made with me an everlasting
   Covenant.'"

   Oh, Christian, rejoice! Do not be afraid of rejoicing in that Doctrine
   of the safety of the saints. Depend upon it, though some have used it
   to their own destruction and their end shall be terrible for having
   perverted the Truth of God to make it a cloak for sin, yet the children
   of God have always found that when they are most happy they can be most
   active! When they feel most safe they are most grateful and when they
   are most grateful they are most courageous and the most
   self-sacrificing! Do not be afraid of knowing that you are safe in
   Christ, for if your thoughts are troubled about your eternal security,
   you will not be able to give the integrity of your manhood and
   womanhood to the cause of God. But if you know that you are saved, if
   you are sure of it, if you know that your ship can never be driven on
   the rocks, if you can give your whole selves, body, soul and spirit
   unreservedly to God, out of no legal motives, but under the Divine
   constraints of gratitude, gratitude to eternal love--you are the man or
   woman who God the Spirit can make into a fine strong Christian! But if
   you are forever struggling and striving, now believing, now doubting
   and thinking that your safety depends on something you can do, and that
   the whole matter may possibly tumble down--you will get no joy out of
   your salvation and will forever be a self-seeker of a certain kind. But
   grasp the Truth of God that your salvation is finished once and for all
   and you can then say, no sing, "Now for the love I bear His name, my
   whole spirit, my whole time, talents, substance--all shall be laid upon
   the altar of Him who loved me and gave Himself for me."--

   "Loved of my God, for Him again,

   With love intense I burn--

   Chosen of Him ere time began,

   I choose Him in return."

   And now note, very briefly, indeed, that this everlasting Covenant is
   ordered and sure. This, too, should fill us with holy musing and sacred
   exultation. It is so ordered that Divine Justice is not infringed,
   while Divine Mercy is magnified! It is so ordered that the safety of
   the soul is secured, and yet the soul is delivered from its sin--so
   ordered that holiness excludes the sinful from Heaven and yet the
   sinful are admitted, having been washed in the precious blood of the
   Covenant. "Ordered in all things"--its great things and its little
   things! Every wheel and every cog of every wheel, was in the mind of
   the Divine Artificer and has been placed in its proper position to work
   out the Divine result! Ordered with regard to the past, the present and
   the future! Ordered with regard to Nature and to Providence--ordered
   with regard to my body and my soul--ordered as to the perfection of my
   Divine manhood before the Throne of God!

   It is ordered in all things and is, therefore, sure. It would not have
   been sure had it not been well ordered, but being well ordered and
   fixed according to the truest Law of God, there is no fear of any
   division of its parts or any dislocation of its members! It will never
   be a house divided against itself. You know that when a house has no
   order in it, nothing can be relied upon. Wills run contrary to one
   another and discord reigns. But there is nothing of the kind in the
   Covenant of Grace. There are no conflicting elements. All the elements
   are of one kind. Boasting is excluded. Human merit is cast out. It has
   Grace for its Alpha and Grace for its Omega. It has Grace for its
   foundation and the topstone shall be brought forth with shouts of,
   "Grace, Grace," unto it. Infinite Wisdom planned it and so the ideas of
   human fallibility and mistake have been excluded from it. "Ordered in
   all things and sure."

   Let our souls then fall back upon this Truth with the exclamation of
   David, "This is all my salvation and all my desire." If, indeed, God
   has made such a Covenant with me, then I am saved. I rest upon Christ
   whom God has said He has set forth to be a Covenant for the people--a
   Leader and Commander to the people. My dear Friends, are you all
   trusting in Christ alone? Is He all your salvation? Is He all your
   desire? I think that is one of the ways by which to discover the true
   sons of Zion from those that are not so--by seeing whether Christ is
   all their salvation! There are some who save a little corner for
   something else besides Christ. Beloved, it must come to this--if you
   and I are ever saved--that Christ as He is revealed in the Covenant of
   Grace must be all our salvation! He must be made unto us of God,
   wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption! Christ is ALL!
   Oh, what blessed Truth that is! How it drives all priestcraft out of
   the world! How it makes absurd and profane all pretended soul-saying
   ceremonies! How it brings us to the Savior, simply and alone to Him,
   "This is all my salvation"--what Christ has done for me and what God
   promises to give me as the result of what Christ has done in fulfilling
   the Covenant of Grace on my behalf--this is all my salvation!

   And now, Sinner, you who have never come to Christ, remember that this
   must be all your salvation if ever you are saved. And does not this
   cheer you? You thought you were to get some good feelings. You need
   not. You may come to Christ for them. "Oh," you say, "but I must
   repent." He is exalted on high to give you repentance. It is His work
   to give you repentance! Come to Him as you are, with nothing of your
   own, and rest wholly in Him. And you have then, in your soul, the true
   sign of God's electing love. If you rest wholly upon Jesus, do not
   trouble your head about either the glorious past or the glorious
   future, but rejoice now! To lay hold on Christ is to lay hold on
   everlasting love and to find a resting place that shall last you when
   the world has melted away like a moment's foam dissolves into the wave
   that bears it and is gone forever. Rest in God patiently--with your
   whole soul relying upon the merit of Jesus--and the everlasting
   Covenant is yours!

   And the text closes with saying--"and all my desire." "I do not want
   anything else to rest upon. But this one thing do I covet--no other
   source of joy than this." So David seems to say. Ah, but some of you
   Christian people cannot say, "This is all my desire" Your desire is to
   make a great deal of money! Your desire is to dress so that people may
   think you a person of great taste and refinement! Or your desire is to
   be respectable, or your desire is to be something far away from the
   thoughts of God! You smile, but it is really not at all a thing at
   which to smile. It is a great pity that so many whom we would hope to
   be Christian people do not find their chief delights in God and do not
   let their desires end in Him. This is a sad, sad thing. If there were a
   wife here who found her greatest pleasure in somebody else's company
   rather than her husband's, it would be a very great disgrace to her.
   And it is a terrible dishonor to a Christian when, in order to get his
   pleasures, he has to get out of the circle of communion with Christ! I
   have heard of such Christians. "Oh," they say, "well, we try to be
   circumspect and so on, as a matter of duty, but may we not enjoy
   ourselves?"

   Well, but where--where--where? You do not like to say where and I will
   not press the question, but there are some who enjoy themselves most
   when they are where Christ would not go--no, where Christ would not
   have them go and where they would not like Christ to come and find them
   there! Now, question yourselves whether you belong to Christ at all if
   that is the case, for our sweetest pleasures, if we are true
   Christians, we find when we are most conformed to Christ, doing His
   will most conscientiously in His sight, most denying ourselves and most
   completely giving up our own wills and wishes, after a carnal sort,
   that the will of Christ may reign in our mortal bodies to His Glory!
   "This is all my salvation and all my desire." Let others roam through
   the world as they may, but the soul of the Christian is satisfied at
   home. He can say, in the words of our hymn--

   "I need not go abroad for joy,

   I have a peace at home!

   My sighs are turned into songs,

   My heart has ceased to roam.

   Down from above the Blessed Dove

   Has come into my breast,

   To witness there eternal love,

   And give my spirit rest."

   So may it be with you, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS3:9.

   Verses 9, 10. What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise: for
   we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under
   sin. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is
   none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. They are all
   gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is
   none that does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher:
   with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under
   their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet
   are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And
   the way of peace have they not known.' There is no fear of God before
   their eyes. This is a description of man given by Prophets in the olden
   times. "Now," says Paul, "we know that what things soever the Law says,
   it says to them who are under the Law." So that this is a description
   of the Jews, a description of the people who had the Light of God, the
   best people that were then upon the face of the earth--and if these are
   the good people-- where are the Gentiles, the bad ones without the
   Light?

   19, 22. Now we know that what things soever the Law says, it says to
   them who are under the Law; that every mouth may be stopped and all the
   world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the Law
   there shall no flesh be justified in His sight for by the La w is the
   knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the Law is
   manifested, being witnessed by the La w and the Prophets--even the
   righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto alland upon
   all them that believe--for there is no difference. There is no
   righteousness of works on the face of the earth. The Law, itself,
   describes men as being sinful from their throat to their feet. Almost
   every member of the

   body is mentioned and described as being foul with sin! But, says Paul,
   there is another righteousness on the face of the earth--and that is
   the righteousness of God's Grace, which comes through believing in
   Christ!

   23, 31. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Being
   justified freely by His Grace through the redemption that is in Christ
   Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His
   blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are
   past, through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time
   His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifer of him which
   believes in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what Law?
   Of works? No, but by the Law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man
   is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law. Is He the God of
   the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles
   also-- seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by
   faith and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the Law
   through faith? God forbid! Yes, we establish the Law.
     __________________________________________________________________

Heedful Hearing

   (No. 3357)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   AUGUST 23, 1868.

   "Take heed, therefore, how you hear." Luke 8:18.

   It is implied in this verse that you do hear. A man cannot take heed
   how he hears if he does not hear at all. Hence, how great is the sin of
   a vast proportion of the inhabitants of this city who utterly forsake
   the ministry of the Gospel, who never hear it, or hear it but only now
   and then! We have frequently met with people who, before they came to
   this house, never attended any place of worship. They were taken there,
   they say, to be christened, or they went there to be married and they
   expected to be carried there, or somewhere like it, to be buried, but
   that was all their church going and all their respect for the worship
   of God. Unhappy they--to have the Light of God and to refuse to see--to
   have God's diamond lying, as it were, at their very feet, and yet to
   refuse to pick it up! The day will come when wasted Sabbaths will be a
   burning accusation against the inhabitants of this privileged, but
   wicked city! With churches in almost every street, with preachers of
   the Gospel to be found here and there declaring fully the saving Truth
   of God, it shall go harder with the citizens of London than with the
   inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day when the Lord comes to
   judge the quick and the dead! Do I address any who have merely dropped
   in here tonight, but who are not often hearers of God's Word? Ah, my
   dear Friends, you little know the sweetness of the Gospel, for if you
   did, "not tents of ease nor thrones of power" could tempt your feet
   away from the place where God specially reveals Himself on the Day of
   Rest!

   Do you think how unjustly you are treating your God? There are seven
   days in the week and He gives you six, but you rob Him of the seventh.
   You are like a man on the highway who met a beggar and seeing him to be
   in great need-- and having but seven pounds in his pocket, he gave the
   beggar six--and then the beggar knocked him down and stole the seventh
   from him! He was an ungrateful wretch--and what are you? You shall
   answer for yourselves.

   It is implied, again, in the text that a man hears the Gospel, for it
   does not matter much how you hear if it is not God's message, if it is
   not the Truth of God. The best way to hear a lie is not to hear it at
   all. The best way to hear preaching that is not according to God's
   Gospel is to hear enough of it to know what it is and then walk off and
   hear no more. But it is implied that you do hear the Gospel and here
   comes the enquiry--Do those who frequent places of worship invariably
   ask themselves the question--"Is the preacher a Gospel preacher? Does
   he preach according to the Holy Scriptures? Does he deliver to me the
   Truth of God, or is it a cunningly devised fable or invention of his
   own?" I fear that the most of our hearers only ask, "Is he a fluent
   speaker? Is he a high-soaring rhetorician? Can he pile his words, one
   upon another? Or is he amusing? Does he use many illustrations and
   metaphors? Will there be something to interest me?" Ah, but, my
   Hearers, if the bread is poisoned, it is of small concern that the
   baker makes it up into pretty loaves! If it is not a Gospel draught
   that is given you to drink, it is a small matter to you whether the cup
   is richly designed or not. Better that you have it in the poorest pot
   and drink from that, if it is from the river of the Water of Life, than
   that you receive untruth out of a golden cup! The chief matter with a
   hearer when he goes to a town to live and has to enquire, "Where shall
   I attend on the Lord's-Day?" should be this--"Where can I hear most
   concerning the Lord Jesus Christ? Where shall I hear a man who can
   touch my conscience? Where shall I hear the Truth that will be quick,
   powerful and sharp as a two-edged sword to my soul? Where may I hope to
   be saved? Where may I trust, being saved, that I may be helped on the
   road to Heaven?" All the rest is mere matter of taste, but this is a
   matter of the utmost importance! Is it the Gospel or not? If it is not
   the Gospel, let not your feet tread the floor! But if it is the Gospel
   of Jesus, then "forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as
   the manner of some is."

   But now, these two things being granted--that we ought to hear and that
   it ought to be the Gospel--the text graciously counsels us, "Take heed
   how you hear." We purpose to handle our theme after this fashion.
   First, there is a caution implied in the text. Secondly, there are
   rules intended in it. And then again, there are strong reasons for it.
   First, there is--

   I. A CAUTION IMPLIED IN THE TEXT.

   "Take heed how you hear." The caution is that we should not think it a
   trifling thing to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "Take heed"--as
   though you had to stop on the threshold and remember where you are.
   Take heed, take heed and remember, then, that it is no trifling thing
   to hear a sermon if it is a Gospel sermon! Some think it is a simple
   work to preach and child's play to sit and listen. When the great
   trumpet peals and the dead are awakened, they will think very
   differently! They will reckon that speech was never put to so noble a
   purpose as when it was used to bring men to reconciliation with their
   Maker--and that ears were never used to as good an end as when they
   were used attentively to hear what God the Lord would speak when He
   would bid the rebel come to Him and find mercy! The preacher, if he is
   what he should be, does not think it a light or easy thing to preach.
   It is said of Luther that he never feared any man and yet he declares
   that he never preached a sermon without his knees knocking together
   because he trembled lest he should be guilty of the blood of any of his
   hearers. This is the great burden of my life, lest I should miss
   anything that should be profitable to you. Lest, in dealing with God's
   Word, I should be like some untaught chemist's lad who is mixing
   medicines which were meant for restoring health, but who introduces
   poisons into them. No! But I would tell you all I know, tell you all
   God's Word as I have learned it and speak it honestly, affectionately
   and plainly, trusting thus to be clear of the blood of all men!

   But in proportion as it is solemn work to preach, it is also solemn
   work to hear. When men enter king's palaces, they become at once
   respectful, they regard their company, they pay marked attention to the
   head of the household--and should they not, when they come into the
   assembly of God's people to join in the worship of the Most High?
   Should they not, after the same sort, say, "How awe-inspiring is this
   place where the Gospel is preached! It is none other than the House of
   God, and the very gate of Heaven"?

   Because, then, it is no light and trivial thing to hear a sermon, take
   heed how you hear!

   Again, it is no easy thing to hear a sermon well, and hence the appeal
   of the text, "Take heed how you hear." The fool cannot hear it well. He
   lets it in one ear and out the other! The mere critic hears it, but
   without any profit to himself. Multitudes have heard hundreds, possibly
   thousands of sermons, but they have not been benefited thereby--they
   have let the golden stream run past them--and not one single drop of
   the precious treasure have they retained. The art of listening to the
   preaching of the Gospel is one of the highest arts in the world and
   conduces to the best results! Don't you suppose when you have come up
   those step, and taken your seats, that you are all ready for the
   sermon. No! No, it is not so! If you would have good fruit of it, there
   ought to be as much preparation on your part as on mine. Am I to pray
   that I may be a blessing to you, and are you not to pray that you may
   get a blessing out of the words? Are you to come flippantly, or even
   carelessly into these seats and sit down, and then hope to be edified?
   If so, indeed, you shall usually find your hopes disappointed! Take
   heed how you hear, because it is not a little thing, nor an easy thing,
   to listen to the Gospel of Jesus!

   Take heed how you hear, implies this caution--that it is no light thing
   to hear the Gospel irreverently, for on the bad hearing may hang not
   only the loss of the blessing which might have come, but the infliction
   of a punishment which shall be the greater for careless hearing. Men
   never listen to a Gospel sermon and remain as they were. They are
   either bettered by it or--shall I say worsened?--if there is such a
   word. It is not possible that the Gospel should have shined on those
   eyes without either giving light or increasing the blindness. I do not
   believe that any man has regularly sat under the sound of a Gospel
   ministry for three months without being either sensibly hardened or
   manifestly softened by it. You know how children's characters are
   formed, how day after day, and week after week, bring impressions for
   good or for evil upon their sensitive minds. And it is just the same
   with ourselves. Every Truth of God that passes before the camera of our
   soul leaves some degree of impression upon the sensitive plate of our
   character--and we are either blessed by it, or cursed by it, as the
   case may be. It must be either a savor of life unto life to us, or of
   death unto death. It is no light thing to have heard amiss!

   But there is also a sweet caution that springs out of the text if you
   think it over. "Take heed how you hear," for it may be a blessed thing
   to hear, and no one can tell the weight of mercy that may come from the
   hearing! I have heard of a child who used to lean forward so earnestly
   to catch every word--he told his mother it was because he had heard the
   preacher say that if there was a sentence in the sermon that was likely
   to save one soul, the devil would, if it were possible, be sure to get
   you to be inattentive while that was being said! Now the boy was right,
   and there was a great truth in it. If men did but always catch the Word
   of God, speaking after the manner of men, what chances there would be
   that that Word would be blessed to them! And what a blessing it would
   be! Why, there may be some here tonight--for there have been such here
   many nights--who have come in here having had a miserable life of it up
   till now and their wife and children a more miserable life, still, if
   it is possible, for they have been frequenters of the ale-house,
   spending their money in riotousness. But what if they should be sobered
   tonight by Divine Grace and get new hearts and right spirits--that
   would be blessed hearing--blessed for the family, for the wife and
   children, as well as for the man himself!

   There may have come in here some poor desponding men and women, ready
   to make away with themselves. Oh, perhaps in the hearing, tonight, the
   joy of the Lord may come to them and they may be saved! Many and many
   have found out that they were the children of God while they were
   hearing--found out that Christ was theirs, pardon of sin was theirs,
   Heaven was theirs! And they would never have found it if it had not
   been for hearingit! But while they were listening, God's Holy Spirit
   opened their hearts to perceive and receive what had all the while been
   written in the Scriptures!

   Oh, may it be a blessed night to some of you while you are here! Pray
   for it, people of God! "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
   avails much." Let your prayer go up that souls here may so hear the
   Word of the Gospel of salvation as being a great message from God and,
   therefore, may hear it with all their hearts and so listen to it that
   it may be salvation unto them according to the Master's promise,
   "Incline your ears and come unto Me: hear and your souls shall live."
   Now, and at somewhat greater length--

   II. THE TEXT IMPLIES SOME RULES AS TO HEARING.

   The text is multum in parvo--much in little. "Take heed how you hear,"
   means many things. Do not be alarmed when I say that we shall have
   seven points under this head. That you may remember them, I have put
   them in the order of the alphabet.

   "Take heed how you hear." That is, first, take heed that you hear
   attentively. And it will not burden your memories if I hook on to that
   word another like it--retentively--that heed that you hear attentively
   and retentively. I have heard of a poor idiot who was an excellent
   hand, idiot though he was, at carrying messages. And the way in which
   he did it was to deliver the message exactly as he had it, word for
   word. But he had a great peculiarity. While the person told him the
   message, he always stood with one hand closing one of his ears--and as
   soon as ever he had got the message, he put the other hand up and
   closed the other ear so that both ears were shut--and away he ran! When
   asked why he did it, he said that when the message came he did not want
   it to get out at one ear--and then when he had received it, he shut the
   other ear in order that it might not get out that way! Observe, fool
   though he was, there was wisdom in the action. I wish there were as
   much wisdom in some who would not like to be called fools, for they
   hear the Truth of God with one ear and it goes out the other! It were
   well if they took care not to let it escape them. Have your ears open
   with keen, attentive listen-ing--and then have both of them shut as
   being retentive to keep in the Truth you have received. But alas, many
   do not even hear at all. The Gospel is being preached, but they are
   thinking of a thousand other things. Distracting thoughts fill their
   minds.

   We all know how hard it is for the marksman to shoot a running deer.
   And how difficult it must be for the preacher to strike the running
   judgment and the moving, restless mind that is preoccupied with other
   things! But if we can get the whole mind fixed on the subject before
   us, as it should be, then we may hope to make an impression. Do labor,
   dear Friends, to whomever you may be listening, to put those
   distractions away--the thoughts of house and home and all besides,
   while the Gospel is operating upon your minds! And when you have heard
   it, try to store it up and keep it there. If it is good for today, it
   is good for tomorrow! And if it does not bless you today in the
   hearing, perhaps God may bless it to you in years to come. We have read
   of a man who was converted through a sermon, but he heard the sermon 70
   years before it was blessed to him! Mr. Flavel had preached it and the
   man was sitting, 70 years later, under a hedge in the

   United States. And he recollected that it was 70 years ago that day
   that he had heard the sermon--and God, then and there, blessed the
   sermon to him and he was saved! Hear, then, attentively and
   retentively!

   The second point is--hear believingly and, as all true belief ends in
   practice, hear obediently. That which we do not accept as being true
   can be of no service to us, especially in the economy of Divine
   Grace--where everything comes to us by faith--and where unbelief
   restrains the hand of God and keeps back the blessing. Faith, however,
   as I have said, must always be obedient if it is true. When you have
   heard the Word, put it in practice at once! What a grand close to a
   sermon that was after Paul had preached in the streets of Ephesus, when
   they brought out their books of witchcraft and made a pile of them in
   the street and burned them before the Apostle's face! Ah, it were well
   if men would bring out their sins, their hard thoughts of God, their
   fancied self-righteousness and everything contrary to the Divine will.
   It were blessed preaching, and blessed hearing, if such were the
   result--hear believingly and obediently!

   Thirdly, hear candidly and honestly. Too many are prejudiced against
   the Word. Prejudiced because they do not like the preacher, though I
   see not why they should not accept the Truth wherever it may be found.
   A man would prize a jewel, though he found it on a dust heap--and the
   Gospel of Jesus is to be valued, let who will proclaim it! Some make up
   their mind before they hear, that they will not receive it. This is
   neither honest to the Truth of God, nor to themselves. They show not
   wisdom, but folly here. But many will tell you that they cannot be
   expected to change their religion, as if they half-felt that if they
   were to think a little they must do so. Surely that religion that will
   not bear deep consideration must be a poor, poor thing! No, Sir, but
   hear what is to be said! Judge it by the Word of God. Judge it honestly
   and when you have done so, if it is not the Truth of God, cart it away
   to the winds! But if it is the Truth of God, then accept it and may God
   bless it to you! It is a pity that men are not more candid in hearing
   the Gospel and in applying it to themselves. How many, if they hear a
   Truth of God, will say, "I wonder how that will suit So-and-So," and
   immediately cast their eyes around the place to see if Mrs. So-and-So
   is there and wonder how she will like it. The old Roman said, "Lend me
   your ears," but I may say--keep your ears at home! Hear for yourselves.
   Constantly this process ought to be going on in the hearer's mind,
   "What has that Truth to do with me? That promise--is it mine? That
   threat--ought it to make me tremble? That caution--does it apply to me?
   That command--am I the man who ought to carry it out? Oh, for such
   candid, personal applications of Gospel Truth by each hearer to
   himself! We should then have blessed results.

   I have thus gone through three points. The fourth is--hear devoutly and
   hear sincerely. I reckon that but little good will come of the hearing
   which some people give when they hear of loaves and fishes being given
   away. If there are so many loaves to be given away on Sunday, a certain
   number of poor people will be sure to be there--a vile hypocrisy which
   cannot be too much condemned! Take heed, dear Hearers, that none of you
   ever hear with such low and sinister motives, but that you come to hear
   the Gospel as God's voice to us and, therefore, as in God's Presence
   with simple and lowly hearts, desire to know His Truth that you may
   sincerely live it! Never should there be mixed therewith anything so
   gross and carnal as that which brings some men and women to the House
   of God.

   Why, do not even some of you come merely because it is the custom to go
   somewhere, or because it looks respectable, as if the Lord's own
   worship were to follow and honor the fashion of the day? This is all
   mischievous and rotten as a motive! If I did not think it were some
   good to me to come to worship, or that it was my duty to God to do it,
   do you think I would do it to please my neighbors? No! Let my neighbors
   please themselves! The honest, upright man in these things remembers
   that religion is a personalthing and that to be the mere slave of
   fashion and custom of others is sinful degradation!

   Oh, I beseech you, lay aside that slavery of men's fashion! And when
   you do listen to the Gospel, let it be with a direct and devout feeling
   in your soul that you have come to worship God and to hear what the
   Lord God shall speak to you!

   I will not stay on any one point and, therefore, pass on to observe
   take heed that you hear earnestly and, therefore, spiritually. Some men
   get no blessing from the Gospel, but who wonders that they do not? They
   never put their hearts into it. Oh, I think if I were this night under
   conviction of sin and were seeking a Savior, I would listen with all my
   heart and soul to the preaching of Jesus Christ! Have you not known
   times, some of you, when you would have stood in the aisles by the hour
   to hear of Christ, if perchance you might have got rid of the burden of
   your sins? Ah, these are the men that get the blessing! But those who
   are half asleep and in their minds quite asleep, are not likely to
   receive the Word.

   How can it come to them with power? What probability is there that it
   will, when they themselves care not whether it will or not?

   And then, dear Friends--coming to the letter "F"--take care that you
   hear feelingly, asking the Lord to make the Word cut into your souls!
   Those get the blessing in whom the Word plows a furrow--not those to
   whom it is like whipping the water, no impression being made but for an
   instant. Oh, pray God that you may not get Gospel-hardened! Ask Him to
   make you tender under all threats and to keep you like a well-plowed
   field that is ready to receive the good seed when it is scattered upon
   it! Try if you can, and may God's Holy Spirit help you to be warned
   under the threats, to be cheered by the promises, to be comforted by
   every good Word of the Lord so that, feeling the power of the Word, it
   may be life and salvation to you!

   Again, "take heed how you hear," and mind that you hear gratefully and
   prayerfully. It is a privilege beyond all price to live in a land of
   Bibles, to be brought where the Gospel is proclaimed. Thank God for it.
   Do not be indifferent, lest He take the candlestick out of its place
   and leave you in the dark. Hear prayerfully! I wish it were a habit
   with you, when you get home, to take a few minutes in a quiet room and
   pray for a blessing upon what has been heard. We might expect to see
   great results if this were your constant practice, to pray after your
   hearing--and even before--to get the ground ready! And when the seed is
   sown, to rake it and water it, so that it may have congenial soil in
   which to take root. Ah, but how many come to hear the Gospel and then,
   all the way home, get into some idle company after the service and
   whatever Word of God might have been blessed, fails to produce any
   result, for the evil birds of the air have devoured the seed that fell
   upon such a hard highway!

   May God give you Grace to put in practice these seven hints that I have
   given you. "Take heed how you hear." And now, lastly, there are--

   III. CERTAIN OBVIOUS REASONS FOR TAKING HEED HOW YOU HEAR.

   And the first is because it is God's Word. Not everything that I say,
   or that any minister says, is God's Word. Hence you should take heed to
   separate between what is God's and what is ours. But wherein we speak
   according to Holy Scripture, it is as much God's Word as if God Himself
   spoke. And let me remind you that God's Word, whoever speaks it, is a
   much more solemn matter than a king's word! Where the word of a king
   is, there is power, but where the Word of God is, though a boy should
   speak it, there is Irresistible Power! It is better for you to hear
   God's Word from your fellow men than it would be to hear it from an
   angel, for God would have employed angels on such messages if they had
   been better. But because men can enter with greater sympathy into your
   feelings, God has not given this ministry unto angels, but has
   "committed unto us the word of reconciliation." It is better for you to
   hear it from us than it would be to hear it from one who should rise
   from the dead, for if not, God would bid them rise from the dead and
   preach to you. But remember, He would not send any from the dead to
   preach to Dive's kinsmen.

   He said, "They have Moses and the Prophets: let them hear them." I will
   go further and say it is better for you to hear the Word of God from a
   poor preacher than it is to hear it from God, Himself, for men did hear
   it from God, Himself at Sinai, and they prayed that He would no more
   speak with them, for the voice was too terrible. "You cannot see God's
   face and live," but in tender mercy He speaks through the lips of one
   like yourselves, who has passed through your sinnership, has fled to
   Jesus and can speak from living experience. Therefore "take heed how
   you hear," for though it is but a man that speaks, it is more than a
   king, or an angel, or one risen from the dead! It is, after all, the
   Voice of God, the King of kings, speaking through His
   ambassador--therefore despise it not!

   "Take heed how you hear" because it is most precious Truth which is
   proclaimed--Truth which may save your soul! The only chance, my
   unconverted Hearer, that you have of Heaven lies in the preaching of
   the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Do you know the story? God became Man that
   He might suffer what was due for human sin. And whoever trusts in Jesus
   Christ, the Substitute for sinners, shall be saved! If you rely simply
   and entirely upon Him, you shall live! Now, that is the Gospel. If ever
   you shall enter Heaven, it shall be through that gate. If ever you have
   true peace, it will be through that precious balm of Gilead. I beseech
   you, then, despise it not! This treasure is better than gold! No
   mention shall be made of coral or jewel in comparison with it. Oh, come
   and buy it without money and without price! But trifle not in that
   sacred market of a preached Gospel in which alone you can buy the
   salvation of your soul!

   Take heed how you hear, because it is by this Gospel that you will be
   judged. Paul says that Christ will judge the world and he adds,
   "according to my Gospel." The Gospel! The Gospel! You have heard that
   word till you have grown sick of it, but you shall see that word
   pointing the sword of Justice if you despise it! When God stands and
   holds out mercy to sinners, if they reject it, surely their destruction
   shall be the more severe! Oh, my dear Hearers, if you understand the
   Gospel of Jesus, I beseech you to so act towards it that you may not be
   afraid when the big books are opened and the thundering voice of the
   Judge shall read out the history of your life and shall pronounce your
   final and eternal destiny!

   Take heed how you hear, for many who heard the Gospel once are now
   among the lost Terrible reflection! These pews have held some whose
   spirits are now forever banished from hope! Take heed how you hear, for
   you may be sitting in such a seat--the successor of such an one--and
   you, also, may tread in his footsteps, despise the Truth of God and so
   die without hope!

   Take heed how you hear, for there are many nearing the end who will
   hear no more.

   Among the regrets that too often make dying such stern and crushing
   work is this, "I knew the Gospel, but I did it not. I was told of
   Christ, but I never trusted Him. I was pressed and persuaded and prayed
   to give my heart up to Him, but I put off a decision until now! My last
   few hours have come and 'tis enough for me to be thinking of the pain I
   suffer! I have no time to think upon eternal things and do such weighty
   business with a God who has now come so near to me, dressed in robes of
   wrath!" Oh, as you will prize your Sabbaths when they are over. As you
   will value the sermons when you cannot listen to any more of them,
   think well of them, now, and make this resolution--and God help you to
   make it in His strength--that you will never again read the Bible, or
   listen to Gospel preaching or Gospel talking, without the solemn desire
   of your whole soul that it may be made a saving blessing to you, that
   you may not perish while hearing the

   Word!

   Oh, I pray you take heed how you hear, for there are many in Heaven now
   who never could have been there if they had not heard the Word. And
   they were such as you are! Then why should not you find the way there
   by the same road which they, though wayfaring men, were able to tread
   without mistake? Children, recollect that--

   "Many dear children are gathering there, For of such is the Kingdom of
   Heaven." There are children in Heaven who were saved by hearing the
   Word in the Sunday school, saved by listening to it from this platform
   when they were but boys and girls! Dear Children, may you trust Jesus
   and become lambs in His flock. Young men and maidens, there are
   multitudes of your age who are among the choristers of the skies,
   making eternal melody before the Great White Throne, and they came
   there by hearing of the name of Jesus and trusting in Him! Will you not
   follow them? They were taken from you--some of you remember them when
   they died--you sat side by side with them in the class one Sunday, and
   the next Sunday they were in Heaven! Or you watched them fading slowly,
   like lilies broken a little at the stalk, and at last they withered.
   No, they withered not, except to our poor eyes, for they bloomed anew
   in Heaven!

   Will you not bloom there, too? If so, listen to the Word of Jesus and,
   above all, accept it, and accept it now! Trust Him whose hands were
   pierced! Rest in Him whose heart was smitten with a spear! He will save
   you! He rejects none who yield to Him--yield to Him now! And you, you
   men of business, 'tis hard work to get you away a little while from the
   desk and ledger, you are so absorbed and eaten up with many of the
   business cares of life! And you, working man, so apt to close your ears
   to anything about another world--yet hear me! There are merchants like
   yourselves and working men like yourselves who stand among the
   white-robed host and rejoice with unspeakable joy and full of glory!
   They are there, and if you ask them how, they will tell you that they
   washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb! They
   found that precious blood by listening to the Gospel with attentive
   ears, and will you not be found there? Oh, what will it profit you if
   you gain the whole world and lose your own soul? Sirs, it will be bad
   business if you make ten thousand pounds and forever ruin your souls!
   It will be hard business, you working men, if you toil on, and on, and
   on, bricklaying and carpentering, and I know not what besides, and yet
   throw away your souls, your immortal natures! I beseech you, by every
   grain of sense you have, and all the wits that are within your brains,
   be wise and trifle not with your souls--your better part, your immortal
   part! As for your body, the worms will eat it, do what you may with it!
   But your soul--oh, I pray God that no undying worm may ever feed on
   that, but may you escape from that danger, safely be sheltered in
   Christ Jesus and be eternally blessed in Him!

   I have given you good enough reasons, then, for taking heed how you
   hear, but what is needed, is not reasons, but reason, or better
   still--Grace, the Grace of God! What is needed is not more argument,
   but the willingness to yield to

   those already felt. Oh, yield now to the saving Grace of God in Christ
   Jesus! Look to Him and be saved, I pray you, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: 2 TIMOTHY 2.

   Verse 1. You therefore, my son, be strong in the Grace that is in
   Christ Jesus. This is an exhortation to everyone of us, not only to
   have Grace, but to be strong in it. There are many professors who as
   long as they are just saved, are content. We are not content with being
   barely alive spiritually--we do not wish to spend our life shivering
   with cold, but we seek after comfort as well as existence--and we seek
   to be in health, as well as to be in life. So should it be with the
   Christian. He should pray, "Lord, make me strong in the Grace that is
   in Christ Jesus." Oh, that these words might be not merely an
   exhortation, but a Divine fiat, that as God said, "Let there be light,"
   so He may say to His children, "Be you strong," and then oh, how soon
   shall the weakest of us leap into immortal strength!

   2. And the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the
   same commit you to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others
   also.So then, there is to be a succession of teachers in the Church,
   and these do ill who are always speaking against the ministry of God.
   Timothy receives his ministry from Paul--he is to commit it to faithful
   men and these are to hold it in custody to teach to others. But there
   are some who say that all Christians should be teachers. To which we
   answer, if the whole body were a mouth, where is the ear? The mouth is,
   after all, but a vacuum. If the whole body was a mouth, there would be
   no body at all! If all are to be shepherds, who are to be the sheep? If
   all are to sow, where are we to find the ground? No, Brothers and
   Sisters, we must be careful to pray God to continue the ministry in our
   midst, for without it we miss many blessings. "The same commit you to
   faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also."

   3. You therefore endure hardships, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
   If you desire delicacy, join not the army. A soldier's calling is not
   to be linked with softness--and if you desire ease and comfort, join
   not the army of Christ, for a Christian's profession and these go not
   together!

   4. No man that wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life;
   that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier.So Timothy,
   as a Christian minister, is to act as the Roman soldier did! It was a
   law in Rome that no soldier was to plead in court for another as a
   lawyer, or to act in business for another as a bailiff, or to have
   anything to do, while a soldier, with either husbandry or merchandise.
   And so should it be with the men of God who have to preach the Word--
   and every Christian, indeed! Though he meddles with common things, he
   is to take care that he is not entangled by them, not to be caught, as
   it were, as game is entangled in a net. There is a way, you know, of
   making the actions of common life subservient to the purposes of Divine
   Grace. This is the Christian's business--let him take care that he is
   not entangled with the cares of this life.

   5. And also, if a man competes in athletics, he is not crowned except
   he strives lawfully. There were rules in the Grecian games. When they
   struck each other, the blow was not to be given except upon a certain
   part of the body, and if a man fought unlawfully, he could not get the
   prize. So there are laws, too, for the Christian ministry and also holy
   regulations for the great wrestling of Christians.

   6. The farmer that labors must be first partaker of the fruits. This is
   a law. No man has any right to be a partaker at all till he has first
   tasted of the fruits of the field. Until we have first tasted that the
   Lord is gracious, we cannot effectively or properly minister the things
   of God.

   7. 8, 9. Consider what I say; and the Lord give you understanding in
   all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised
   from the dead according to my Gospel Wherein I suffer trouble, as an
   evildoer, even unto bonds. But the Word of God is not bound. See how
   the Apostle comforts himself! Here he is in prison, but the Truth of
   God is free! He sits with the chains about his wrists, but the Word of
   God travels from nation to nation, from continent to continent, like
   the free spirit that dwells in it!

   10. Therefore Iendure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may
   also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal
   glory.Not that the sufferings of Paul had anything meritoriously to do
   with the salvation of the elect, but

   that by his earnest striving and suffering, the word of the Gospel was
   brought to their hearing--faith, then, came by hearing--and so they
   were saved.

   11, 12, 13. It is a faithful saying: For if we are dead with Him, we
   shall also live with Him. If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him:
   ifwe deny Him, He also will deny us. Ifwe believe not, yet He abides
   faithful: He cannot deny Himself Glory be to God, the unbelief of man
   cannot make God break His promises! Christian, all your unbelief has
   not made God unfaithful to you! And Sinner, though you cast out the
   promises of God as being good for nothing, yet He will not therefore
   raise the recompense of reward, for Jesus will save others if He saves
   not you. "He abides faithful."

   14. Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the
   Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the
   subverting of the hearers. There are some Christians who want to have
   this exhortation given to them in these days, for they are always
   striving about words to no profit. Beware of these men, if you would
   not have your faith staggered!
     __________________________________________________________________

"Grace and Glory"

   (No. 3358)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   FEBRUARY 6, 1868.

   "The Lord will give Grace and Glory." Psalm 84:11.

   IT is very wise to look within ourselves to discover our own weakness
   and spiritual poverty, but it is very unwise to be always dwelling upon
   that weakness and poverty--and to forget that our strength does not lie
   there, nor are our riches to be found within ourselves! Let us look
   within to be humbled, but not to be made unbelieving. Look within, so
   as to be driven from all confidence in ourselves, but never so as to
   shake our absolute confidence in God. Our text, as it were, beckons us
   away from seeking the living among the dead, calling us up from
   searching for precious jewels amid dross and refuse, but directs us to
   the living God Himself--the overflowing Fountain of every good thing,
   our Father whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save, and whose
   ear is not heavy that He cannot hear us tonight! He--He-- Jehovah,
   Himself, the Infinite, Eternal, Everlasting, Inimitable I AM--He will
   give Grace and Glory, so that though you may think you have no Grace,
   He will give it to you, and though you may fear that you shall never
   obtain Glory, yet He can and will bestow it upon you! He will give
   Grace and Glory. The very first word of the text, I say, is a taking us
   away from leaning upon the broken reeds of our own self-reliance and a
   calling us away to the Rock of our salvation, where we may rest with
   security!

   "He will give Grace and Glory." That word, "give," also takes us off
   from our natural legality of self-trust. I think that we are all very
   apt to go back to the bondage of Mount Sinai. We are like those foolish
   Galatians! We are often "bewitched," so that we do not obey the Truth
   of God, but, having begun in the Spirit, we seek to be made perfect in
   the flesh and, being saved already by faith, we often try to be
   perfected by the works of the Law!

   "'Tis strange, 'tis passing strange, 'tis amazing," that after having
   felt the whip of legal bondage, we should wish to go back to the brick
   kilns of Egypt and to be slaves once more! The text says, "He will give
   Grace and Glory," which is the very opposite of wages and puts us on
   the footing of Grace and not on the footing of debt. Oh, it is a
   blessed thing to see a finger from the sky thus beckoning us away from
   underneath the quaking mountain, where even Moses confessed that he did
   altogether fear and quake! It is a blessed thing to be set free from
   the thunder and lightning, and the Voice as of a trumpet, and to be
   brought to the blood which speaks better things than that of Abel, and
   to hear God speaking concerning His great and unspeakable gifts to us!

   Now, in the spirit of these two thoughts, let us come to this text,
   which is very simple, extremely simple, but which is also exceedingly
   full of comfort if the Lord shall apply it to our hearts by the Holy
   Spirit.

   There are just two great and splendid gifts that God here declares He
   will bestow. First, the gift of Grace, and then next, the gift of
   Glory. We will take the first gift first in our meditations--

   I. GOD WILL GIVE GRACE.

   To whom will He give Grace? Broadly understood, we may say that He will
   give Grace to His own chosen ones. So is it in the Covenant of Grace.
   "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." Grace
   is a most Sovereign thing. God has the right to give it where He
   pleases and He takes care that the Sovereignty shall be seen. Some of
   His chosen ones have gone afar into sin, but He gives them Grace, for
   all that. Some of them may be on the very verge of destruction and come
   to the last hour of life--but still, He will give them Grace--and there
   is not one upon whom His electing love has set the broad arrow of the
   Kingdom, marking that man to be a vessel of mercy, who shall pass away
   without receiving Divine Grace! This is a broad statement and though
   there are some that cavil at it, yet rest assured that it is the Truth
   of God!

   Another statement we may also make as broadly, namely, that He will
   give Grace to all those who were specially redeemed by Christ As many
   as Christ has redeemed and purchased by His blood, shall be His, for we
   hear Him say, "The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."
   Christ loved His Church and gave Himself for it. The chosen are spoken
   of in this manner, "These are they who are redeemed from among men,"
   and although the redemption of Christ has its universal aspect very
   plainly taught in God's Word, and I hope we shall never try to take
   away the force of those universal passages--yet there is a special
   redemption besides. "He is the Savior of all men," says the Apostle,
   "especially of them that believe." Now, that special redemption is of
   such a kind that to all those who are concerned in it, He will give
   Grace. Not one whom Christ has thus redeemed from among men shall
   perish! Not one of His own blood-bought sheep shall be devoured by the
   wolf. Not one member of that body of His shall be maimed. Not one part
   of His bride, the Church, shall be destroyed! To every one of these, it
   is quite certain, He will give Divine Grace!

   And although some think that these two Truths of God are not practical,
   yet are they eminently so, for this, among other things, is one
   practical result--that we preach with holy confidence, with quiet
   confidence, that our preaching cannot be in vain since we do not cast
   the net at a chance, but believe that God will fill it and that when
   the Gospel is preached, it must be the savor of life unto life to many!

   "Other sheep have I," said Christ, "who are not of this fold: them also
   must I bring," and therefore do we preach, because they must be
   brought!

   As the farmer sows the corn broadcast, with all the freer hand because
   he knows there is a predestined harvest, even so do we. And as a
   fisherman who should have a Divine promise that he must catch fish
   would throw in the net and toil all night cheerfully because he knew he
   could not labor in vain, so is it with us. We know that if we are
   steadfast, unmov-able, always abounding in the work of the Lord, this
   is our comfort--that our labor is not in vain in the Lord! "He shall
   see His seed! He shall prolong His days and the pleasure of the Lord
   shall prosper in His hands." I take the expression of the text, then,
   without qualification--He will give Grace.

   But now, coming to ourselves--for we cannot tell, except by marks and
   evidences, who are those chosen and who are those specially
   redeemed--it may be said that the Lord will give Grace to every
   believing soul. If you will put your whole reliance upon the Atonement
   of Christ, He will give Grace to you. Though your faith should be so
   slender that it seems to you to be nothing but a bruised reed, He will
   not break your faith, but He will give you Grace--and though the
   spiritual life should seem to be so dim as to be nothing but as smoking
   flax, He will not quench it, but will give Grace. If you believe,
   though it is with the faith of despondency, you shall have Divine
   Grace! If you rest in Christ, though there should be much fear and much
   mistrust mingled with your reliance, yet He will give Grace. "'He that
   believes and is baptized shall be saved." It says nothing as to how
   much he believes, nor how little--"He that calls upon the name of the
   Lord shall be saved." It does not say how loud he is to call, but if
   his call is never so faint, yet if he does but call, He shall have
   Grace! "Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise cast out." It does not
   say whether he comes walking, or running, or crawling--if he does but
   come--he shall not be cast out! If you believe on the Lord Jesus
   Christ, then of you it shall be said, "The Lord will give Grace."

   The same may be said to every repenting sinner. If you abhor your sin,
   if you resolve in God's strength to give it up, if the sweetness has
   turned to bitterness, if it is like gravel between your teeth, then He
   will give you Grace, for when you are thoroughly sick of sin and self,
   then will He give you Grace to joy and rejoice in Christ!

   The same shall be said of all those who are prayerful. He will give
   Grace to all who seek it with earnest hearts through the Savior. At the
   Mercy Seat, whether you are a saint or sinner, if you draw near to God
   in sincere prayer, He has already given you some Grace and He will give
   you more. Every time that you go to God with true-hearted confidence in
   prayer, put this before you emblazoned in letters of gold, "He will
   give Grace."

   You shall not find that you wait upon God in vain, for He has not said
   in secret or dark places of the earth, "Seek you My face in vain." He
   will, to every prayerful one, give Grace.

   I might continue these instances as to different characters, but rest
   assured, dear Friend, if you are a Believer, and you use prayer and
   repentance, you shall find His promise true in all your conditions. If
   you go forth to work for God, He will give Grace. In the vineyard you
   shall find Him furnishing you with tools, yes, and giving you strength
   equal to your day. He will give Grace. And if you are laid aside from
   active service and made to toss to and fro upon the bed that grows
   harder every hour till the skin is broken and the bed becomes a misery,
   still He will give Grace. Perhaps you are untried at suffering, but He
   will give you Grace. Perhaps you are naturally of an impatient
   spirit--wait upon Him--He knows how to bring your spirit down one way
   and lift it up another! He will give Grace.

   Thus might I continue to take the text from its absolute sense and
   apply it to all the characters that are pictured in God's Word as
   having a part and lot in the blessedness of salvation--and we may say
   of each of these, "He will give Grace."

   But to turn the subject a moment, let us ask, What Grace will God give?

   He will give all manner of Grace. There is Grace not only in fullness,
   but in all variety treasured up in Christ Jesus. As our needs are many,
   so the forms in which Grace blesses us are many, and He will give Grace
   in all these forms! Do you mourn tonight your ignorance of the deep
   things of God? Do you feel yourself to be like a little child studying
   His A. B. C. book in God's great school? Then if you want to understand
   with all saints what are the heights and breadths, and to know the love
   of Christ which passes knowledge, He will give you Grace! He will give
   Grace to instruct. He will make you to know even as you are known. He
   shall give you His Holy Spirit who shall lead you into all the Truths
   of God and take of the things of Christ and show them to you. He will
   give instructingGrace!

   Perhaps tonight you are in some great dilemma. There is one difficulty
   on the right aide and another on the left. There are mountains behind
   and the rolling sea in front, and you say, "What shall I do?" "Stand
   still and see the salvation of God," for He will give you delivering
   Grace. If He does not give you money to fill your purse, He will give
   you Grace to help you to bear your poverty. If He does not give you
   health to bring you off your sickbed, He will give you Grace to make
   your bed in all your suffering, so that you shall bear it and yet
   rejoice in the Lord always! He will give Grace. If you will only wait,
   you shall have directing Grace. You shall hear a voice near you,
   saying, "This is the way; walk you in it." If you will do as David did
   when he said, "Bring here the ephod"--that was in order that he might
   ask of God's priests what he should do--if you will wait until Christ,
   God's great High Priest, takes the sacred Urim and Thummim, He shall be
   pleased to send the Light of God into your soul and you shall have
   directing Grace to guide you on your way! "He that trusts in his own
   heart is a fool, but He that trusts in the Lord, mercy shall compass
   him about."

   But you need, dear Friends, perhaps at this moment, not so much
   instruction and direction as comfort. It may be you are feeling greatly
   depressed. Your spirits have sunk very low, indeed. Well, He will give
   you Grace. The doctor can give medicine, but God can give Grace! A dram
   of Grace is often better than a pound of what the world can give in the
   form of cordials. Oh, what blessed revivals of spirit God can give to
   His downcast ones!

   I think it is one of the delights of the Spirit of God to comfort
   mourners. I know it is, for He might, if He had pleased, have taken the
   name of The Instructor, and Jesus might have spoken of Him as The
   Quickener, but yet it is so blessed to recollect that He did not do so,
   but that the name of The Comforter was especially His because we need
   most His comfort to strengthen and fortify us for all life's
   endurances. We need most the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and that is
   His main business, His gracious occupation--that in which He most
   delights to act--to comfort all that are tried and mourn!

   When a man has many titles, he will naturally choose to be best known
   by the one which he likes best. And the Holy Spirit uses this name of
   The Comforter, though He has many more names besides. Oh, you, then,
   who are troubled and distracted, tossed with tempest and not comforted,
   Jesus comes, and He says, "He will give you Grace," and if He does
   this, you need not wish to have your trouble removed, but, like Paul,
   be quite satisfied with the gracious promise, "My Grace is sufficient
   for you."

   Possibly, however, dear Friend, you are not troubled tonight. Beware of
   that! Be thankful and pray that you may not be. "Lead us not into
   temptation, but deliver us from evil." But it is possible that you now
   need Grace to lead you to make advances in inward sanctification--and
   though this may seem very difficult to you in the position in which you
   are placed, and burdened as you are with your inward corruptions, yet
   He will give Grace! You have a bad temper? Down with it! "I cannot,"
   you say. But He will give Grace. You have a proud spirit. Away with it!
   "I cannot conquer it," you say. He will give Grace. You have grown cold
   of late and lukewarm--you must be revived--you must recover from this
   backsliding. You say, "How?" He will give Grace! Grace is the one thing
   that is needed to put the Christian into a healthy state of soul! And
   the promise of the Lord which we are using tonight--and repeating so
   often in your ears--is just to the point--He will give Divine Grace.
   You must never say you cannot be as holy as So-and-So. Never tell me
   you cannot grow to be as patient as Job, or as believing as Abraham.
   Job received his patience and Abraham received his believing from God!
   He is not straitened in His gifts to us. He is as ready to enrich us as
   He was to enrich those ancient ones. Go to Him with child-like
   confidence, with this in your mouth, "He will give Grace."

   Now, it is not possible for me to state the case of everyone of my
   Brothers and Sisters now present. You may be lacking in strength or
   protection, or you may be needing correction and rebuke--but whatever
   your great need, His Grace will meet it and so the promise is suitable
   to every one of us, "He will give Grace." Come, you poor Hannah, you
   whose lips move in silent prayer because of some very painful domestic
   affliction. Tell the Lord what it is! There may be no change in your
   circumstances, but oh, if He gives you Grace, it will seem very
   different from what it was!

   Man of business, you have come here tonight having passed through a
   world of trouble during the day. You cannot get it out of your mind and
   somehow you cannot see how the Lord can alter it. Well, He may not, but
   He will give you Divine Grace and then the difference will be
   marvelous!

   Thus might I select the trouble of each one, but I am sure that
   whatever the wound is, this plaster will just fit it. The world's
   comfort is described by one of the Prophets thus, "The bed is shorter
   than that a man may stretch himself upon it, and the covering is too
   narrow for him to wrap himself in it." Ah, it is not so with my text!
   Now, stretch yourselves, you that have big troubles. "He will give
   Grace," is a bed quite long enough for you! Now, then, you that are
   most naked and deprived of warmth--rap this around you--surely this
   will set your soul a glow--"He will give Grace." "All necessary Grace
   will God bestow."

   Perhaps you are shivering tonight at the thought of the greatest enemy
   of all, namely, death! And as you are getting old, perhaps you fear his
   approach. Well, but Friend, He will give Grace and though you must die,
   yet Grace will enable you to go through the Jordan singing in its
   utmost depths, triumphing in the Grace which will surely bring you safe
   to the other side! He will give Grace--Grace of all sorts to those who
   earnestly seek it.

   But now, again--still shifting the kaleidoscope a little--taking the
   same thought only putting it in other lights. In what manner will God
   give Grace?

   Well, dear Friends, He will give it sufficiently. He will give you as
   much Grace as you need, though certainly none to spare. Each man shall
   have his omer full of manna every day. There shall be no lack in the
   Lord's camp! There shall be abundant Grace for abundant temptation or
   trial. And for those who are in many trials, there shall be Grace yet
   superabundant!

   The Lord will give His Grace seasonably. It shall always come just when
   we need it--

   "He is never before His time, He is never behind."

   Whenever your testing or trouble shall come, your Grace shall come,
   too, and when you arrive at the spot where you will have to put your
   back down to the burden, there shall the Grace be given that will
   strengthen your back to bear the load! You shall not meet with
   abounding Grace when you do not require it, but just as your days, so
   shall your strength be.

   God will also send this Grace of His readily. You shall not have to tug
   and strain to get it. You shall not have to labor and toil to win it.
   It shall drop upon you like honey falling from the comb! It shall come
   as freely to you as the water bubbles up from the great spring. He will
   be a very present help in time of trouble and be glad to deliver
   you--as glad to deliver you as you are to be delivered!

   And the Grace shall come to you constantly--not fitfully and only
   sometimes, but at all times! By night and by day. God shall never cease
   to bless you, for His mercy endures forever--

   "At home or abroad, on the land and the sea, As your days shall demand,
   shall your strength always be." If the earth should forget the Covenant
   which God made for it with the sun and moon. If seedtime and harvest,
   and summer and winter should pass away, as they must in the general
   conflagration, yet still the mountains may depart and the hills be
   removed, but the Covenant of His Grace shall not depart from you! Grace
   shall come to you constantly.

   But remember one thing. It will come to you mediately, that is to say,
   not direct from God immediately, but mediately through Christ. You
   shall get your Grace from Him in whom it has pleased the Father that
   all fullness should dwell. And, in another sense, you shall get it
   mediately through the use of means. "For this will I be enquired of by
   the house of Israel, to do it for them." He will give Grace, but you
   must pray for it! He will give Grace, but you must search the
   Scriptures to find it! He will give Grace, but you must observe Gospel
   ordinances--you must not be negligent of Baptism or the Lord's Supper!
   He will give Grace, but you must listen to the Word, and hear, and your
   souls shall live! He will give Grace, but you must get into communion
   with God and draw near to Him--have your times of quiet retirement, of
   still meditation, for although the Lord makes the conduit head to flow
   unto the marketplace, yet He expects His people to bring their pitchers
   there to get them filled! Though He spreads the table, yet He does not
   force the food into our mouths! We must come to the table and eat of
   the dainties which He has prepared. He is very liberal and gracious.
   Oh, be not straitened in yourselves, for you need never be straitened
   in Him! So we come back to the text. He will give Grace, but we must
   take care that we go to Him for it in His own appointed way.

   But now to close upon this first promised blessing, Who isit will give
   Grace? This brings us back in a circle to the spot from which we
   started. "He will give Grace." Oh, I want so to make each Believer
   cling to his God! He will give Grace. You will not get Grace from out
   of yourselves! It will never spring up within us apart from God. He
   will give Grace. You will not get Grace merely by using the means of
   Grace, as some do mechanically and who feel quite satisfied when they
   have had their morning prayer, or have been to the public service, if
   there is one, and have read their Bible Chapter, and so on, their
   hearts being really asleep all the time. No! You must go to God, for it
   is He who gives Grace and no one else can! And what a blessing it is
   that you do not need anyone to help you to come to Him! You can
   approach Him yourselves, through Jesus Christ! And He has promised, not
   by a priest, nor by any means of that kind, but by Himself, to give you
   Grace, so that you, tonight, who have not any Grace, if you come to
   God, you will get it! You will not get it by working and praying, and I
   do not know what, all in themselves, but if your mind can get right to
   the invisible God and ask Him for Grace, He will give it! Depend upon
   it, no man ever did sincerely seek the Grace of God but that, sooner or
   later, he had it. A man may be a long time seeking and he may anxiously
   look and not discover what he needs, but though the promise tarry, wait
   for it--it will come! God is faithful to His promise and He will in due
   time answer your prayers, for there it is on record, "He will give
   Grace." Do not blot the promise out of your heart, poor Soul, but cling
   and hang on to it! As a drowning man clings and hangs on to a plank, so
   do you to this Divine assertion, "He will give Grace."

   May the Lord apply those remarks, and now let us say a few words upon
   the second great promise-- II. HE WILL GIVE GLORY.

   He will "give Grace and Glory." That word, "and," seems very little as
   we hear it. It is nothing but a very common conjunction which is used
   so plentifully that it seems to carry no meaning in it at all! But in
   this case we would not take ten thousand pounds for these three letters
   which make this little word, "and." "The Lord will give Grace and
   Glory." Why, He has riveted the two things together--Grace and Glory!
   There are many who would like to take that diamond rivet out, but they
   cannot. The Lord does not say that He will give Grace and perdition. He
   does not say, on the other hand, that He will give Glory without first
   giving Grace. He has put the two together--and what God has joined
   together let no man put asunder!

   If we have Grace, we shall as surely have Glory, for the two are tied
   up in one bundle. These are twin stars that shine together and if you
   have shared His Grace, then His Glory cannot be denied. Grace shall
   flower into Glory as the bulb in the blossom! Grace shall rise as the
   fountain and Glory shall be its spreading river!

   If we possess the Grace, we shall not perish, but if we have it not, we
   must perish and never know the Glory! It is not possible that those
   shall be glorified who have not first of all been justified, and then
   sanctified--and where Grace does not reign in our hearts we shall not
   reign in Heaven!

   "He will give Grace and Glory." Now, the Glory that He shall give--oh,
   that we had the power to see it and to understand it! Eye has not seen,
   the ear has not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to
   conceive the things which God has prepared for them that love Him! But
   He has revealed them unto us by His Spirit, "that we may search all
   things, even the deep things of God." We do, therefore, know a little
   of what that Glory is. The eye does not, the ear does not, but the
   enlightened soul taught of the Spirit of God does know what the Glory
   will be. So far as this we know, that the Glory which we who have
   obtained Grace are to receive is the Glory of Heaven--whatever Heaven
   may be, a place or a state, or both, as is most probable! Whatever may
   be meant by the streets of shining gold, the gates of pearl, the walls
   of jasper, calcedony, and sapphire. Whatever may be indicated by
   crowns, and palms, and harps of gold--whatever may be meant by the
   river of the Water of Life and trees that bear twelve manners of
   fruits--all this in perfection is the inheritance of those who have
   Grace in their hearts! Oh, you shall have the harps, you shall wave the
   palms, you shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the
   Kingdom of God! If there are degrees in Glory, as some say, yet this
   thing is very certain, that the very least of the saints will have
   Glory--and I do not see how the very greatest could have more.

   The very meanest, the very doorkeepers, if such there should be in the
   House of the Lord above, will have Glory! And I am sure we can say of
   Heaven that if we may but have the lowest place there, we will bless
   the Lord to all eternity! The Glory that God can give is the Glory of
   Heaven!

   In the next place, it is the Glory of eternity. Eternity! Oh, when we
   begin to speak of that word we know not how to speak! Eternity!
   Eternity! Eternity! It must expound itself. We are always confusing it
   with time, and speak of the "countless ages of eternity" as though
   there were any "ages," or could be anything like counting in eternity
   at all, which is of unending duration! Now, the Glory which Christ is
   to give us will be such a Glory as that. It will never know a pause,
   never draw near to a conclusion, never decline and we shall never grow
   weary of it--nor will it be weary of us. It is the Glory of eternity!

   Further, Brothers and Sisters, we are told by the Lord that the Glory
   which He will give to His people is the Glory of Christ "The Glory
   which you gave Me I have given them." Can you conceive how glorious
   Christ is, not only in His Nature originally, but now that He has
   obtained as a reward, a seat upon His Father's Throne and at His
   Father's right hand? Brothers and Sisters, whatever Glory Jesus may
   have, He will share it with us, when we shall be like He and when we
   shall see Him as He is. It is the Glory of Christ!

   And hence, to crown all, it is the Glory of the Father Himself, for
   Christ partakes in His Father's Glory, and even so shall we! Does not
   your heart long and pant to know by actual enjoyment what this Glory
   is? Oh, to get away from looking in the mirror and to have a view of
   Christ's face! To have the clouds and mists all swept away, and in the
   serene atmosphere of Heaven to behold the King in His beauty, and the
   land that is very far off!

   Why, this Glory is the Glory of perfect nature--spotless, s inless,
   incorruptible--a body that can know no weakness, or sickness, or decay!
   A soul that will not be capable of temptation, that cannot be fretted
   by care, nor distracted by trouble!

   It is the Glory of victory. The Glory which God will give His people is
   the Glory of bruising Satan under his feet shortly, the Glory of seeing
   the arrows and the bow, the sword and the shield of the devil forever
   broken in pieces! The Glory of seeing all the hosts of Hell confounded
   and put to the blush eternally by everyone of the saints in whom Christ
   shall reign forever!

   It is the Glory of perfect rest, perfect happiness and perfect
   security. It is the Glory of the foot upon the Rock, with the new song
   in the mouth and the goings established! It is the Glory of the
   blessed. He who knows what it is when the whole soul shall be as full
   of happiness as it can hold, shall float, swim, dive and plunge into
   seas of heavenly rest! It is when it shall not be possible for a man to
   have a wish ungratified, nor a desire unfulfilled! It is where every
   power shall find ample employment without weariness, and every passion
   shall have full indulgence without so much as a fear of sin--

   "Oh, happy hour, oh, blest abode, I shall be near and like my God! And
   every power find sweet employ In that eternal world ofjoy!"

   Do you not again say, "Why are His chariots so long in coming?" Why do
   You delay, Beloved? Be You as a roe or a young hart upon the mountains
   of Beza!

   And now, to close. The text says, "He will give Glory." So, then,
   although Glory is a reward and is often called so, yet still it is a
   gift! The rewards of Grace are of Grace. They are not legal rewards
   given to us because we deserve them. As one says, Christ first gives
   His servants Grace to serve Him, and then rewards them as if they had
   served Him in their own strength, though their service, indeed, is His
   work in them rather than their work for Him! It is a gift then. There
   is not a soul in Heaven that is there by merit. There is not a note of
   self-righteousness to mar the song of Free Grace before the Throne of
   God! It is all love, undeserved love, love without limit, love to be
   extolled throughout eternity!

   But it says that He will give Glory. Now, when will He give it? Ah,
   would not some of us like to know! If we could get a hold of some
   Prophetical work that would tell us when we were, all of us, going to
   get this Glory, I am sure we should pay the price with great readiness
   and cheerfulness. But we would be very unwise in so doing--and he is
   the wisest man who says--

   "My God I would not wish to see My fate with curious eyes."

   It is enough for you, Christian, that you will have Glory! And I will
   tell you one thing--you will have it before seventy year's time. There
   is very little probability with any one of you who have grown up to
   manhood or womanhood, that there will be a single exception to that
   statement! Well, that is not long, and that is the outside! Some of you
   will have it very soon. Ah, we should not wonder if it came to you
   before this year of Grace has gone that you will have reached the land
   of Glory! Others may be spared a little longer, but what is the
   difference in the time? It really seems to be no measurement at all.
   Life is only a span at the longest, and but a span even at the
   shortest--that it is much the same as compared with eternity. When we
   do but get to Heaven, we shall wonder that we thought anything about
   time at all. An hour with our God will make up for all its troubles.
   Yes, I suppose that but one sight of Christ will take away all the

   taste of the bitters of life from our mouths forever! We shall wonder
   how we ever could have fretted and worried ourselves with such little
   things as they were--such insignificant trifles and how these light
   afflictions which were but for a moment and are not worthy to be
   compared to the eternal weight of Glory--could have exercised such a
   depressing influence upon our spirits at times! If we could blush in
   Heaven, surely we would blush to think that we have been so impatient
   with tarrying a little while here!

   When shall we come to this Glory? Well, we shall come to it when our
   work is done. We shall not be kept out of the wage a moment after it is
   earned. We shall come to Glory when we are ripe for it. When the fruit
   is mellow, the farmer will gather it in. Some grow mellow soon, but
   some are naturally sour and they need to be long in the mellowing. We
   shall get to Heaven when we have really been tried in the furnace till
   there is no more need for the trying--when we have passed through the
   last crucible and have come out of it wholly sanctified--the process
   being complete.

   This much we know, that we shall go to Heaven just when God has
   purposed it. The devil himself, with all the hosts of Hell, cannot keep
   us back a moment longer than that! We shall go there just when Heaven
   will be most Heaven to us. We shall go there just when we should have
   chosen to go ourselves, if we had had the wisdom of God to choose for
   us. We shall go there just when Christ will be ready to welcome us and
   when we shall know that He has prepared a place for us. Let us be
   patient awhile then. Only let us hang hard upon this gracious promise,
   putting the Lord frequently in mind of it, "He will give Grace and
   Glory."

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, one more remark. If the Lord does give Grace
   and Glory to some of your friends, do not quarrel with Him about it. He
   said He would, and when He does, why should we complain? Did you ever
   see two persons praying against each other? Can you suppose such a
   thing as a Believer praying for one thing and Christ praying for
   another? Now, listen to them. There is a Believer praying over a
   friend, "Oh, God, spare him! Spare him, I pray You, I beseech You I
   entreat You! Spare him and let him yet live here." Listen! There is
   Christ praying, too, and He says, "Father, I will that they, also,
   which You have given Me, should be with Me where I am." The Believer
   wants his friends to be with him where he is! But Christ says, "Where I
   am." Now, when Christ's prayers and our prayers cross each other in
   this way, I put it to you, which shall win? When we pull one way and
   Christ pulls the other, what shall our choice be? Surely we shall say,
   "Oh, Lord Jesus, I would not compete with You for a moment! No, You
   have a dearer claim upon my friend than I have, for You have bought him
   with Your precious blood."

   It is hard to part, but let them go! If He has given your dear
   children, or your friends, or your partners in life, Grace now, when He
   proceeds to give them Glory you may weep, for, "Jesus wept," but you
   must not murmur, for that would be to deny Christ's claim to what He
   has purchased with His own precious blood!

   Oh, that all of you had Grace that you might all have Glory! Do not
   hope for Glory without Grace, but Jesus is willing to give it. Whoever
   trusts Him shall receive it. May it be the portion of us all, for
   Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Penitence, Pardon and Peace

   (No. 3359)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And, behold, a woman in the city, who was a sinner, when she knew that
   Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster
   box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and she
   began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair
   ofher head, and kissed His feet and she anointed them with the
   ointment" Luke 7:37-38.

   THIS is a marvelously vivid Gospel incident. Every detail is plainly
   and forcefully set forth, so that we can picture the scene, making it
   live before us, without much mental effort. And yet, in some respects,
   there is a great reticence, a Divine delicacy, gloriously
   characteristic of so tender a book as the New Testament. The
   Evangelist--"the beloved physician," Luke--does not lay bare the minute
   particulars of this woman's life's sins, but delights to dwell rather
   upon the story of her penitence and its fair fruits, and so makes her
   to shine resplendently as a wonder of redeeming Grace! The symptoms of
   her soul's horrible malady he reveals in a single phrase--and that of
   general description--but upon the details of her gracious cure he
   delights to dwell.

   We will consider the life of this famous penitent, as the Holy Spirit
   shall help us, under three heads, and notice, first, her former
   character Then, her deed of love which showed her new character And,
   thirdly, our Lord's treatment ofher. Let us very briefly look at--

   THE WOMAN'S CHARACTER, to begin with, in order that we may see the
   horrible pit out of which she was

   taken.

   We do not know much about her. Romish expositors generally insist upon
   it that she was Mary Magdalene, but this appears to other writers to
   have been quite impossible. Certainly it does not seem probable that a
   woman possessed with seven devils should follow the trade of "a
   sinner." Demoniacal possession was akin to madness and it was
   frequently accompanied by epilepsy. And one would think that Magdalene
   was more fit to be a patient at an infirmary than an inmate of a
   reformatory. Some have even been so mistaken as to suppose this woman
   to have been Mary of Bethany, but this will never do. One cannot
   associate with the lovely household of Martha and Mary the horrible
   course of pollution implied in the vice which earned for this woman the
   special name of "a sinner." Besides, although both women anointed our
   Lord, yet the place, the time, the manner were all different. I need
   not stay to show you the difference, for that is not the point in hand.

   This woman was distinguished by the title of "a sinner," and her touch
   was regarded by Simon the Pharisee as defiling. We are all sinners, but
   she was a sinner by profession--sin was her occupation and probably her
   livelihood. The name in her case had an emphatic sense which involved
   shame and dishonor of the worst kind. The city streets wherein she
   dwelt could have told you how well she deserved her name. Poor fallen
   daughter of Eve, she had forsaken the guide of her youth and forgotten
   the Covenant of her God. She was one of those against whom Solomon
   warns young men, saying, "Her house inclines unto death, and her paths
   unto the dead." Yet as Rahab was saved by faith, even so was she, for
   Grace covers even a harlot's sins!

   She was a weel-known sinner. Ill-fame had branded her so that Simon the
   Pharisee recognized her as one of the town's unhallowed sisterhood. Her
   way of life was common town talk--persons of decent character would not
   associate with her--she was cut off from respectable society and, like
   a leper, put outside the camp of social life. She was a sinner marked
   and labeled. There was no mistaking her--infamy had set its seal upon
   her.

   She was one who had evidently gone a great way in sin, because our
   Savior, who was far from being prejudiced against her, as Simon was,
   and never uttered a word that would exaggerate the evil in anyone, yet
   spoke of "her sins which are many." She loved much, for much had been
   forgiven. She was the five hundred pence debtor as compared with Simon,
   who owed but fifty. It is not difficult to imagine her unhappy story
   because that story is so commonly repeated

   around us. We know not how she was first led into evil ways. Perhaps
   her trustful heart was deceived by flattering words and promises.
   Perhaps the treachery of one too dearly loved led her into sin and
   afterwards deserted her to loneliness and shame. Perhaps her mother's
   heart was broken and her father's head was bowed down with sorrow, but
   she became bold enough to pursue the sin into which she had at first
   been betrayed and became the decoyer of others. That long hair of hers,
   I fear, is rightly called by Bishop Hall, "the net which she was known
   to spread to catch her amorous companions." She was a sinner of the
   city in which she dwelt and, though her name is not mentioned, it was
   far too well known in her own day. She had lived an evil life we know
   not how long, but, certainly, she had greatly sinned, for her own
   flowing tears, as well as the Savior's estimate of her life, prove that
   she had been no ordinary offender. Let equal sinners be encouraged to
   go to Jesus as she did!

   But all her sin was known to Jesus. I mention this, not at all as a
   fact you do not know, but as one which any trembling sinner may do well
   to remember. If you have fallen into the same vice in a greater or
   lesser degree, whether others know it or not, Jesus knows all about it.
   Our Lord allowed her to wash His feet with her tears, but He knew well
   what those eyes had looked upon. When He allowed those lips to kiss His
   feet, He knew right well what language those lips had used in years
   gone by. And when He allowed her to show her love to Him, He knew how
   foul her heart had been with every unhallowed desire. Her evil
   imaginations and unchaste desires, her wanton words and shameless acts
   were all before the Savior's mind far more vividly than they were
   before her own, for she had forgotten much--but He knew all. With all
   her tender sense of sin, she did not apprehend all the heinousness of
   her guilt as the perfect mind of Jesus did--and yet though she was a
   sinner, a well-known sinner, and known best of all to the Savior to be
   such, yet, glory be to Divine Grace, she was not cast out when she came
   to Jesus, but she obtained mercy and is now shining in Heaven as a
   bright and special star to the glory of the love of Christ!

   When this woman stood in the house of Simon she was a believing sinner.
   We do not know how she became a convert, but, according to the harmony
   of the Gospels, this particular incident fits in just after Matthew
   11--that is to say, if Luke has written his story with the intent of
   chronological correctness--and if the harmonies are right, this passage
   comes in after the following blessed words, "Come unto Me all you that
   labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest: take My yoke upon
   you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall
   find rest unto your souls, for My yoke is easy, and My burden is
   light." Did this woman hear this gracious invitation? Did she feel that
   she was laboring and heavy laden? Did she look into the face of the
   great Teacher and feel that He spoke the truth and did she come to Him
   and find rest? Doubtless her faith came by hearing--did she hear in
   some crowd in the street the sweet wooing voice of the Sinner's Friend?
   Was this the means of making "the woman that was a sinner" into the
   woman that anointed Jesus' feet? We are not informed as to the
   particular means, nor is it of any consequence. She was converted and
   that is enough--how it came about is a small matter. Perhaps even she,
   herself, could not have told us the precise words which impressed her
   mind, for many are most assuredly brought to Jesus, but the work has
   been so gentle, gradual and gracious that they feel themselves renewed,
   but hardly know how it came about! On the other hand, from the marked
   change in her character, it is highly probable that she did know the
   day, the hour and the precise means--and if so, dear were the words
   which called her from the ways of folly, sin and shame! I do not
   suppose that our Savior had, at that time, delivered the memorable
   parable of the prodigal son, but it may have been some similar
   discourse which won her attention when she made one of a crowd of
   publicans and sinners who drew near to hear the Lord Jesus. Pressing
   forward among the men to catch those silver tones, so full of music,
   she wondered at the Man whose face was so strangely beautiful and yet
   so marvelously sad--whose eyes were so bright with tears and whose face
   so beamed with love and earnestness. The very look of that mirror of
   love may have affected her! A glance at that holy countenance may have
   awed her and His tones of deep pity and tender warning--all these held
   her fast and drew her to abhor her sin and accept the joyful message
   which the great Teacher had come to proclaim! She believed in Jesus.
   She was saved and, therefore, she loved her Savior!

   When she came to the Pharisee's house she was a forgiven sinner. She
   carried an alabaster box in her hand with which to anoint Him because
   she felt that He had been a priest to her--and had cleansed her. She
   brought her choicest treasure to give to Him because He had bestowed on
   her the choicest of all gifts, namely, the forgiveness of sin. She
   washed His feet because He had washed her soul. She wept because she
   believed--and loved because she trusted. She was, when she entered the
   room, in a condition of rest as in her forgiveness, for men are seldom
   deeply grateful for mercies which they are not sure of having obtained.
   Though after that deed she rose a step higher and became fully assured
   of her acceptance,

   even at her first coming she was conscious of forgiven sin--and for
   that reason she paid her vows unto the forgiving Lord whom her soul
   loved.

   Our text begins with a, "behold," and it may well be so, for a forgiven
   sinner is a wonder to Heaven, earth and Hell! A forgiven sinner! Though
   God has made this round world exceedingly fair, yet no work of Creation
   reflects so much of His highest Glory as the manifestation of His Grace
   in a pardoned sinner! If you range all the stars around and if it is so
   that every star is filled with a race of intelligent beings, yet, I
   think, among unfallen existences there can be no such marvel as a
   forgiven sinner. At any rate, he is a wonder to himself and he will
   never cease admiring the Divine Grace which pardoned and accepted him.
   What a miracle to herself must this woman have been. For a case like
   hers she had seen no precedent and this must have made it the more
   surprising to her! When your case also appears to stand out by itself,
   alone, as a towering peak of Grace, refrain not from wondering and
   causing others to wonder. "All Glory to God," may some say, "I, whose
   name could not be mentioned without making the cheek of modesty
   crimson, I am washed in the blood of the Lamb! I who was a blasphemer,
   who sat on the drunkard's bench, who gloried in being an infidel and
   denied the Godhead of Christ, I, even I, am saved from wrath through
   Him! I who played a dishonest part, who respected not the laws of man
   any more than those of God, I who went to an excess of riot--even Iam
   made whiter than snow through faith in Christ Jesus!--

   "'Tell it unto sinners, tell, Iam, Iam saved from Hell.'"

   Let all know it upon earth and let Heaven know it--and let the loud
   harps ring in yon celestial halls because of matchless Grace! Behold,
   then, this woman's character, and remember--however fallen you may have
   been--the Grace of God can yet save you! Now, secondly, let us
   consider, at some length--

   II. THE DEED OF LOVE WHICH INDICATED HER CONVERSION.

   Her conduct as a convert was wide as the poles asunder from that of her
   unregenerate state--she became as evidently a penitent as she had been
   a sinner. One of the expositors upon this passage says that he cannot
   so much expound it as weep over it--and I think every Christian must
   feel very much in that humor. O that our eyes were as ready with tears
   of repentance as were hers! O that our hearts were as full of love as
   hers and our hands as ready to serve the forgiving Lord! If she has
   exceeded some of us in the publicity of her sin, yet has she not
   exceeded all of us in the fervency of her affection!

   Let us notice what she did. And the first of 12 matters to which I
   shall call your attention is the earnest interest which she took in the
   Lord Jesus. ' 'Behold, a woman in the city, who was a sinner, when she
   knew that Jesus sat at the table." She had a quick ear for anything
   about Jesus. When she heard the news, it did not pass in one ear and
   out the other, but she was interested in the information and
   immediately went to the Pharisee's house to find Him. There were
   hundreds in that city who did not care a farthing where Jesus was. If
   they heard the general gossip about Him, it did not concern them in the
   least--He was nothing to them. But when she knew it, she was in motion
   at once to come even to His feet! Jesus will never again be an object
   of indifference to a forgiven sinner. If the Lord has pardoned you, you
   will henceforth feel the deepest interest in your Savior and in all
   things which concern His Kingdom and work among men. Now, if you have
   to move to any place, you will want to know first, "Where can I hear
   the Gospel? Are there any lovers of Jesus there?" If you are informed
   about a town or country, the information will not be complete till you
   have enquired, "How is the cause of God prospering there?" As you look
   upon your fellow men, the thought will strike you, "How do they stand
   towards Christ?" When you attend a place of worship, it will not matter
   much to you whether the edifice is architecturally beautiful, or the
   preacher a learned man and a great orator--you need to know whether you
   can hear of Jesus in that place and be likely to meet with Him in that
   assembly! Your cry will be, "Tell me, O You whom my soul loves, where
   You feed?" If you perceive a sweet savor of Christ in the place, you
   feel that you have had a good Sabbath, but if Jesus Christ is lacking,
   you consider everything to be lacking--and you groan over a lost
   Sabbath. A soul that has tasted Christ's love cannot be put off with
   anything short of Him--it hungers and thirsts after Him and any good
   word about Him is sweet unto the taste. Is it so with you?

   Notice, next, the readiness ofher mind to think of something to be done
   for Jesus.' 'When she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the
   Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster box of ointment"--she was
   quick and ready in her thoughts of service. She would not appear before
   the Lord empty, but the resolve to bring an offering and the selection
   of that offering were quickly made. She would get that alabaster box of
   aromatic ointment, the daintiest and costliest perfume that she had,
   and she would anoint His feet to do Him honor. Many minds are inventive
   for the things of the world, but they

   seem to have no quickness of thought in reference to the service of
   Christ--they proceed with dull routine, but never flash out with
   spontaneous deeds of love. This woman showed an original genius in her
   love. She was no copier of a former example--her plan of service had
   the dew of freshness upon it. Mary of Bethany did something like it,
   but that was afterwards--this was the woman's own original idea. Her
   thoughtful soul struck out this new path for itself. We need more
   contriving, inventing and planning for Christ! See how we act towards
   those we love--we consider what will please them and plot and plan some
   pleasant surprise for them. We put our heads together and ask, "What
   shall it be? Let us think of something new and original." That
   thoughtfulness is half the beauty of the act.

   Notice, thirdly, her promptness of action. She did not merely think
   that she had an alabaster box to give, but she took it at once and
   hastened to pour out its contents. Dear Friend, you have been saved by
   Grace and you have an alabaster box upstairs which you have long meant
   to bring down--but it is still there. Half-a-dozen times or more, when
   you have had your heart warmed by the love of Christ, you have felt
   that now was the time to bring out the box, but it still remains sealed
   up! You were so pleased with yourself for having such earnest feelings
   and generous resolutions that you stopped to admire yourself and forgot
   to carry out your resolutions! You have done nothing, though you have
   intended a great deal. Do you not sometimes feel as self-contented as
   if you had done something wonderful when, after all, you have only
   mapped out what you think you may possibly do at some future time?
   Indeed, it is a mighty easy thing to make yourself believe that you
   have really done what you have only dreamed about! This is wretched
   child's play and the woman before us would have none of it! She saw the
   occasion and she seized it. Jesus might not be in her city, again, and
   she might not be able to find Him for many a day. The thought struck
   her and she struck the thought while yet the iron was hot and fashioned
   it into a fact!

   Observe, in the fourth place, her courage. She knew that Jesus was at
   the table in the Pharisee's house. And she soon found Him reclining, in
   the Oriental fashion, with His feet near the door, for Simon was so
   uncivil that he was sure to give Him a poor place at the table. Seeing
   the Lord, she ventured in. It needed no small bravery for her to enter
   the house of a Pharisee, who, above all things, would dread to be
   touched by such a character! In her bad times she had seen the holy man
   gather up his garments and leave her a broad space on the streets, for
   fear that she should pollute his sacred person! She must have felt, as
   all penitent sinners do, an inward shrinking from the cold, hard,
   self-righteous professor of purity! She would have gone anywhere in
   that city rather than into Simon's house. It must have cost her a great
   struggle to face his frowns and severe remarks. Perhaps, however, I am
   wrong. Indeed, I think I am, for she was so full of the desire to show
   her love and to honor the Lord Jesus that she forgot the Pharisee! Yes,
   and if the devil had been there, instead of Simon, she would have dared
   even him in his den, to reach her Lord! Still, there was much courage
   needed for one so lowly in her penitence to be able to bear the cold,
   contemptuous look of the master of the house. Conscious that she had
   been a castaway from society, yet she courageously fulfilled her
   mission, fearless of cruel remarks and taunting charges. O poor, timid
   seeking Soul, the Lord can also give you the courage of a lion in His
   cause, though now you are timid as a hare!

   When, then, the penitent had reached the Master's feet, note well how
   one Grace balanced another and observe her humility tempering her
   courage. Her boldness was not forwardness nor indelicate
   impertinence--no, she was as bashful as she was brave! She did not
   advance to our Lord's head, or thrust herself where He would readily
   see her--much less did she presume to address Him--but she stood at His
   feet behind Him, weeping. She was probably but a little way in the
   room. She courted no observation. She was near Jesus, but it was near
   His feet, and weeping there. To weep at His feet was honor high enough
   for her--she sought no uppermost seat at the banquet. Ah, dear Friends,
   it is a blessed thing to see young converts bold, but it is equally
   delightful to see them humble! And they are none the worse for being
   very retiring if they have been great sinners.

   I have been very sorry when I have seen a lack of modesty where it
   ought to have superabounded. There is more Grace in a blush than in a
   brazen forehead, far more propriety in holy shamefacedness than in
   pious impudence. Good Bishop Hall says, "How well is the case altered!
   She was known to look boldly in the face of her lovers, and now she
   dares not behold the awful Countenance of her Savior! She had been
   accustomed to send alluring beams forth into the eyes of her paramours,
   but now she casts dejected eyes to the earth and dares not so much as
   raise them up to see those eyes from which she desired commiseration."
   Lowliness goes well with penitence. One would not wish humility to be
   corrupted into cowardice, nor courage to be poisoned into pride. This
   repenting sinner had both excellences in proper proportion and the two
   together put her exactly in the place where a woman that was a sinner
   ought to be when saved by Grace!

   We see before us our reclaimed Sister looking down upon the Lord's
   blessed feet. And as we mark her flowing tears, we pause to speak of
   her contrition. She gazed upon our Lord's feet and I wonder whether
   that sight suggested to her how her feet had wandered--and how
   travel-worn had become the feet of the Lord, who had sought and found
   her--

   "She knew not of the bitter way

   Those sacred feet had yet to tread,

   Nor how the nails would pierce, one day,

   Where now her costly balms were shed." But she saw those feet to be all
   unwashed, for Jesus had been neglected where He ought to have been
   honored. And she saw therein the memory of her own neglect of Him who
   had so freely loved her soul. She wept at the memory of her sins, but
   she wept over His feet. She grieved most because she had grieved Him.
   She wept because she had sinned so much and then wept because He had
   forgiven her so freely! Love and grief in equal measures made up those
   precious tears. The Divine Spirit was at work within her, dissolving
   her very soul, even as it is written, "He causes His wind to blow and
   the waters flow." And again, "He smote the Rock and the waters gushed
   out." Do you marvel that she stood and wept? Thinking of herself and
   then thinking of Him, the two thoughts together were far too much for
   her--and what could she do but both relieve her heart and express it in
   a shower of tears? Wherever there is a real forgiveness of sin, there
   will be real sorrow on account of it. He who knows that his sin is
   pardoned, is the man who most acceptably exercises repentance. Our hymn
   puts it on the right footing when it points, not to the horrors of
   Hell, but to the griefs of Immanuel, by which our pardon is certified
   to us as the deep source of sorrow for sin--

   "My sins, my sins, my Savior,

   How sad on You they fall!

   Seen through Your gentle patience,

   I tenfold feel them all.

   I know they are forgiven,

   But all their pain to me

   Is all the grief and anguish

   They laid, my Lord, on Thee." After admiring this woman's contrition,
   notice her love. The Holy Spirit took delight in adorning her with all
   the Divine Graces and she came behind in nothing--but she excelled in
   love. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He translated her act of anointing
   His feet, expressed it in the one word, "love." He said, "She loved
   much." I cannot speak much with you concerning love, for it is rather
   to be felt than to be described. Words have no power to bear the weight
   of meaning which lies in love to Christ. Oh, how she loved! Her eyes,
   her hair, her tears--herself--she counted all as nothing for His dear
   sake! Words failed her, as they fail us and, therefore, she betook
   herself to deeds in order to let her heart have vent. Alabaster box and
   ointment were all too little for Him--the essence of her heart was
   distilled to bathe His feet--and the glory of her head was unbound to
   furnish Him with a towel! He was her Lord, her All-in-All! If she could
   have laid kingdoms at His feet, she would have rejoiced to do so! As it
   was, she did her best and He accepted it.

   This love of hers led her to personal service. Her hands were the
   servants of her heart and did their part in the expression of her
   affection. She did not send the alabaster box to Jesus by her sister,
   or ask a disciple to pass it to Him, but she performed the anointing
   with her own hands, the washing with her own tears and the wiping with
   her own hair. Love cannot be put off with proxy service! She seeks no
   substitute, but offers her own person! I grant, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, that we can serve the Lord a great deal by helping others to
   serve Him, and it is right and proper to help those who are able to
   labor better and more widely than we can. But still, it is not right
   that we should rest content with that--we ought to be ambitious to
   render tribute to our Lord with our own hands. We cannot deny ourselves
   the pleasure of doing some little thing for our Beloved Lord. Suppose
   this loving woman had had a sister who loved the Master even as she
   did? And suppose, like a loving sister, she had said to her, "I fear it
   will be too heavy a task for you to face cold-hearted Simon--I will
   take the box and anoint our blessed Lord and tell Him that I did it for
   you--and so He shall know your love." Do you think she would have
   consented to the proposal? Ah, no, it would not have answered the
   purpose at all. Love refuses sponsors. She must anoint those blessed
   feet herself Now, dear Friends, you who hope that you have been
   forgiven, are you doing anything for Jesus? Are you, on your own,
   serving Him? If not, let me tell you, you are missing one of the
   greatest delights that your souls can ever know and, at the same time,
   you are omitting one of the chief fruits of the Spirit! "Simon, son of
   Jonas, do you love Me?" is the question, and if you wish to answer it
   with proof positive,

   then go, and with your own hands, feed the Savior's sheep! Surely you
   cannot love Him as you should, unless each day has its deed of love,
   its sacrifice of gratitude!

   Observe, next, that her service was rendered to the Lord Himself Read
   the passage and place an emphasis upon the words which refer to the
   Lord. "She stood at His feet, behind Him, weeping, and began to wash
   His feet, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His
   feet, and anointed them with the ointment." It was not for Peter, or
   James, or John that she acted as servitor. I have no doubt she would
   have done anything for any of His disciples, but at this time all her
   thoughts were with her Lord--and all her desire was to honor Him. It is
   a delightful thing for Christian people to lay themselves out
   distinctly for the Lord Jesus. There should be more ministering unto
   Him, more definite aiming at His Glory. To give money to the poor is
   good, but sometimes it is better to spend it upon Jesus more
   distinctly, even though some Judas or other should complain of waste--

   "Love is the true economist! She breaks the box and gives her all, Yet
   not one precious drop is missed, Since on His head and feet they fall."
   One is glad to serve the Church--who would not wait upon the bride for
   the bridegroom's sake? One is glad to go into the streets and lanes of
   the city to gather in poor sinners, but our main motive is to honor the
   Savior. See, then, how she who was once a harlot has become a zealous
   lover of the Lord and is ready to wash her Lord's feet, or perform any
   service which may be permitted her, if she may work a good work upon
   Him!

   Further, note that what she did, she did very earnestly. She washed His
   feet, but it was with tears. She wiped them, but it was with those
   luxurious tresses which were all unbound and disheveled that she might
   make a towel of them for His blessed feet. She kissed His feet and she
   did it again and again, for she did not cease to kiss His feet, or if
   she made a moment's pause, it was only that she might pour on more of
   the ointment. She was altogether taken up with her Lord and His work!
   Her entire nature concurred in what she did and awakened itself to do
   it well. True love is intense--its coals burn with vehement heat--it
   makes all things around it living. Dead services cannot be endured by
   living hearts!

   Furthermore, notice the woman's absorption in her work There she stood,
   anointing His feet with ointment and kissing them again and again.
   Simon shook his head, but what of that? He frowned and cast black looks
   at her, but she ceased not to wash His feet with her tears! She was too
   much occupied with her Lord to care for scowling Pharisees. Whether
   anyone observed her or not, or whether observers approved or censured,
   was a very small matter to her--she went quietly on--accomplishing the
   suggestion of her loving heart!

   And what she did was so real, so practical, s o free from the mere
   froth of profession and pretence. She never said a word--and why not?
   Because it was all act and all heart with her. Words! Some abound in
   them, but what wretched things words are with which to express a heart.
   As in a glass, darkly, can we see the reflection of a soul's love in
   its most passionate utterances?. Actions are far more loud and have a
   sweeter tone than words! This woman had done with speech, for the time
   being, at any rate, and tears and disheveled hair and poured-out
   ointment must speak for her! She was too much in earnest to call
   anyone's attention to what she was doing, or to care for anyone's
   opinion, much less to court commendation, or to answer the ugly looks
   of the proud professor who scorned her! This thorough oblivion of all
   except her Lord constituted, in a measure, the charm of her deed of
   love--it was wholehearted and entire loyalty which her homage revealed.
   Now, dearly Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, I do pray that you and I,
   as pardoned sinners, may be so taken up with the service of our Lord
   Jesus Christ that it may not matter to us who smiles or who frowns! And
   may we never take the trouble to defend ourselves if people find fault,
   or ever wish for anybody to commend us, but be so taken up with Him and
   the work He has given us to do, and with the love we feel to Him, that
   we know nothing else! If all others run away from the work. If all
   discourage us, or if they all praise us, may we take but small notice
   of them, but keep steadily to our loving service of Jesus! If Grace
   enables us to do this, i t will be greatly magnified.

   See, dear Friends, what Divine Grace made of "the woman that was a
   sinner." Perhaps you thought her worse than yourselves in her carnal
   state--what do you think of her as a penitent? What do you think of
   yourselves if you stand side by side with her? Do you not blush for
   very shame and ask for forgiveness of your Lord for the slenderness of
   your affection? Lastly, let us see--

   III. THE SAVIOR'S BEHAVIOR TO HER.

   What did He do? First, He silently accepted her service. He did not
   move His feet away, did not rebuke her, or bid her to leave. He knew
   that reflections were being cast upon His Character by His allowing her
   to touch Him, yet He did

   not forbid her, but, on the contrary, continued quietly enjoying the
   feast of repentance, gratitude and love which she spread for Him. He
   was refreshed by seeing such Grace in one who had before been so far
   from God. The perfumed ointment was not so grateful to His feet as her
   love was to His soul--for Jesus delights in love--especially in
   penitent love! Her tears did not fall in vain--they refreshed the heart
   of Jesus, who delights in the tears of repentance. The applause of a
   nation would not have solaced Him one-half as much as this woman's
   pure, grateful, contrite, humble love! His silence gave consent, yes,
   even approbation! And she was happy enough to be allowed to indulge
   herself in expressions of adoring affection.

   Then the Lord went a little farther, He turned round and looked at her,
   and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman?" That glance of His must
   have encouraged her and made her heart dance for joy! As soon as ever
   those eyes of His lighted on her, she could see that all was right--she
   knew that whoever frowned, there were no frowns on that brow-- and she
   was filled with supreme contentment!

   Next, the Lord spoke, and defended her triumphantly, and praised her
   for her deed! Yes, and He went beyond that and personally spoke to her
   and said, "Your sins are forgiven you," setting a seal to the pardon
   which she had received and making her assurance doubly sure! This was a
   joy worth worlds--

   "Oh, might I hear Your heavenly tongue

   But whisper, 'You are Mine,'

   The heavenly word should raise my song

   To notes almost Divine."

   She had a choice blessing in hearing from His own lips that her faith
   was firmly based and that she was, indeed, forgiven! Then she received
   a direction from Him as to what to do--"Go in peace." A forgiven sinner
   is anxious to know what he may do to please his Lord. "Show me what You
   would have me to do," was Paul's prayer. So our Lord Jesus seemed to
   say, "Beloved, do not stay here battling with these Pharisees. Do not
   tarry in this crowd of cavilers. Go home in perfect peace and as you
   have made home unhappy by your sin, make it holy by your example."

   That is just, I think, what the Lord Jesus would have me say to my dear
   friends who have followed me in this discourse. You see what Grace can
   do--go home and let your family see it! If any of you are conscious of
   great sin--and have received great forgiveness--and, therefore, wish to
   show your love to Jesus, do what is on your heart! But at the same time
   remember that He would have you go in peace. Let a holy calm abide in
   your breast. Do not enter into the vain jangling and endless
   controversies of the hour. Do not worry yourself with the battles of
   the newspapers and magazines that are everlastingly worrying poor souls
   with modern notions. Go in peace! You know what you know--keep to that.
   You know your sin and you know Christ, your Savior! Keep to Him and
   live for Him. Go home into the family circle and do everything you can
   to make home happy, to bring your brothers and sisters to Christ and to
   encourage your father and mother if they have not yet found the Savior!

   Home is especially a woman's place. There she reigns as a queen! Let
   her reign well. Around the hearth and at the table, in the sweets of
   domestic relationships and quiet friendships, a woman will do more for
   the Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ than by getting up to preach! In the
   cases of men, also, many who long to flash in public had better by far
   shine at home! Go home in peace and, by a happy, holy life, show to
   others what saints God can make out of sinners! You have seen what sin
   and the devil can do to degrade--go and prove what Grace and the Holy
   Spirit can do to elevate--and may many, cheered by your example, come
   and trust your Lord!
     __________________________________________________________________

Pleading With the Indifferent

   (No. 3360)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "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 ofHis fierce anger." Lamentations
   1:12.

   THIS was the lamentation of Jeremiah. As he saw the desolation of the
   beloved city, as he marked the cruelties inflicted by the invaders upon
   the Jewish youth, children and maidens, and as he foresaw the long
   years of bitterness reserved for the captives in Babylon, he felt as if
   he were a peer in the realm of misery--indeed peerless. He stands
   foremost, a very emperor of grief, a king of sighs and tears. "Behold,
   and see," he said, "if there was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow, which
   is done unto me."

   But may there not have been griefs as great as those of Jeremiah? Is
   the language that flows from his lips strictly accurate? Like most of
   the periods which flow from abundant grief, is there not some
   exaggeration here? If we take the words out of the mouth of Jeremiah
   and put them into the mouth of Jesus--if we suppose them to be spoken
   by Him, as, hanging on the Cross He did bear the wrath of God for us,
   then there is no hyperbole, no exaggeration! The words may be read as
   they stand--and stand as we read them--and their fullest weight shall
   not outweigh the truth!

   This evening two things challenge our attention--an earnest
   expostulation--"Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?" And a
   solemn question--"Behold, and see, was there ever sorrow like unto my
   sorrow, which is done unto me?" First--

   I. AN EARNEST EXPOSTULATION.

   The Son of God has become Incarnate. He became Man out of love to men.
   But men loved Him not and though in Him was every perfection, they
   hunted and hounded Him to death! The story is told four times over by
   Inspired authority in this Book, but the mass of mankind feel no
   concern in it. I come here tonight and I say to many of you--does not
   the story of Jesus at all interest you? You heard it read just now, did
   it fall flat and stale upon your ears? Did you say to yourselves, "It
   is dry work to listen to that. There is nothing there to strike the
   attention. If I had taken up a newspaper and had read of some murder,
   my wits would have been all awakened, but in the hearing of this death
   of Christ, I feel not at all stirred." Well, then, I ask you--Why is
   this? Why is it so? If there is anything in all the world that ought to
   interest a man, it is the death of Christ! Yet I find men, learned men,
   spending year after year in sorting out butterflies, beetles and gnats,
   or in making out the various orders of shells, or in digging into the
   earth and seeking to discover what strange creatures once floundered
   through the boundless mire, or swam in the vast seas! I find men
   occupied with things of no sort of practical moment and which, to me,
   do not seem so wonderfully enchanting. Yet the story of God, Himself,
   who deigned to become a man and as a Man suffered, and bled, and died,
   is thought to be too small a trifle for minds to dwell upon it. O
   reason! Where have you gone? O judgment! Where have you fled? Men spend
   their strength on trifles, but on God Incarnate they turn their backs!

   It is strange that even the sufferings of Christ do not attract the
   attention of men, for generally if we hear any sad story of the
   misfortunes of our fellow creatures, we are interested. The newspaper
   is accounted more than usually interesting which contains full
   particulars of shipwrecks, the blowing down of houses, murders,
   shootings, killings and I do not know what! Everybody has felt he could
   read such a paper as that because it concerned his fellow men--what
   they had lost and what they had suffered. Everyone stops to hear the
   tale of the ancient mariner! Even the wedding guest is held while he,
   with the earnest eyes, tells how he suffered on the wide, deep,
   stagnant sea. And yet this story of a Man who came to our earth with no
   motive but love, and lived here to do nothing but good, and yet was so
   despised and rejected as

   to be nailed to a cross, and there made to die in the midst of jeers,
   sneers, pains and unknown agonies--this does not interest men! I
   marvel, and yet I marvel not at the strange indifference of this age to
   the wonders of Calvary! How is it Earth does not stretch out her hands
   and say, "Come and tell us of the God that loved us and came down to
   our low estate--and suffered for us men and for our salvation"? How is
   it that the crowds of this great city do not come and besiege our
   houses and say, "Tell us yet again this strange, mysterious story of
   the sufferings of the perfect Son of God"? It ought to interest us, if
   nothing more! Is it nothing to you, however? Is it nothing to you, all
   you that pass by?

   It ought to be more than interesting--it ought to excite our
   admiration. You cannot read of a man sacrificing himself for the good
   of his fellow creatures without feeling at once that you wish you had
   known that fine fellow! And you feel instinctively that you would do
   anything in the world to serve him if he still lives, or to help
   relatives left behind if he has died in a brave attempt. Who does not
   esteem, though you never knew him, the good man at Bethnal Green who
   perished but lately in the explosion at the firework factory? He rushes
   in to seek to rescue others and is found, at last, a handful of ashes
   bewailed by a weeping wife! One felt at once, "There was a man who had
   a soul beating beneath his ribs." But is no admiration to be given to
   the Son of God who left a Throne of Glory without bound and came here
   below to poverty, to shame, to a life of contempt and toil--and then
   voluntarily gave Himself up to a death which never could have been
   inflicted upon Him if He had not given Himself up to die? Jesus Christ
   had no motive in suffering but the good of men! Nothing selfish ever
   crossed His soul. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, it was pity that ruled His
   heart--pity, and only pity--and while we set up our statues in
   reverence of men who have loved their fellow men and speak of
   such-and-such a man as "a great philanthropist," is it nothing to you
   that Jesus should die for men and shall this greatest of all
   philanthropists, this first and chief of lovers of the race of men, be
   altogether forgotten? I would admire Him even if He had not saved me!
   If I had no share in His blood, I think I would love Him. The life of
   Christ enchants me! The death of Christ binds me to His Cross! Even if
   I were never washed in His blood and were even cast away into Hell, if
   that were possible, I still feel I must admire Him for His love to
   others! Yes, and I must adore Him, too, for His godlike Character and
   His godlike sufferings for the sons of men! But why, why is it that
   such a Christ, so lovely and so admirable, is forgotten by the most of
   mankind and is nothing to them?

   Now, my dear Hearers, there are some of you to whom I might put this
   question very closely. You have heard about Jesus very often. This
   pulpit is always ringing with His name. And you have admired what Jesus
   did. I know you have and if any spoke ill of Him, you would be very
   grieved--and you would be among the first to defend His name! And yet--
   and yet--is that all? Are you always going to be interested and to
   admire, but are you never going further? Is it, after all, to come to
   this, that it is nothing to you that Jesus should die? You have no
   interest in that death, no part, no lot in the salvation which that
   death brings to the sons of men! I am afraid that with some of you it
   will be so all your days. Fifteen years have I preached to some of
   you--15 years! And if those 15 years have not brought you to Christ, is
   there any reason to believe that 15 more years will do it? No, I fear
   that with some of you the harvest is past and the summer is ended--and
   you are not saved. There was a time when this voice did seem to cut
   into your soul and the Truths of God that were uttered awakened your
   conscience! But it is all nothing to you now. You could go to sleep
   under the sound of it and your soul does sleep under the sense of it!
   What? Will you be lost? Have you resolved to be lost with a Savior
   lifted up before you? Have you determined that you will never look to
   Him who is lifted up to save you from the serpent's bite? Shall Christ,
   the Water of Life, never be tasted by your lips? Do you elect to perish
   of thirst? Shall this Bread of Life be never eaten? Do you choose
   rather to starve than to come to Him? No, you tell me you hope one of
   these days. Ah, but I have no hope of you for any day but today! And I
   wish you, too, knew that procrastination is of all things fatal. I
   would sooner that you resolved to be damned than that you only said,
   "Tomorrow, tomorrow." For if today you resolved upon your ruin, you
   might be startled at the resolution--and you might be led to see your
   folly and awakened to amend your steps! But if you always say,
   "Tomorrow, tomorrow," it will be the will-o'-the-wisp that will tempt
   you into the fatal morass where souls have been lost by tens of
   thousands--as yours will be!

   Oh, why should I have to be always coming down these steps and into
   this pulpit, to say over and over and over again to you that Jesus
   died--and that if you trust Him you shall live? Why should it need to
   be repeated over and over? Great God of patience, such a story as this
   ought to be accepted of the heart at once! If You bear with men who
   reject it, we may well bear with them, too, but, oh, we pray You let
   them not go too far with Your long-suffering, nor venture too much

   upon Your patience, lest You lift Your hand and swear in Your wrath
   that they shall not enter into Your rest because they had the Gospel,
   but they counted not themselves to be worthy of it!

   One thing I would say to you, to all of you to whom it seems as yet to
   be nothing that Jesus should die--that personally to me it is something
   that He should die. It is more than something--it is everything--and I
   will tell you why. It is much to me that Jesus died, for I know I slew
   Him. I sang those verses just now and I sang them with some bitterness
   of soul, I was forced to feel--

   "'Tis I have thus ungrateful been."

   If it were not that I had sinned, as one of the race, there had been no
   need for Christ to die. But as it was sin that pierced and nailed Him,
   I had a share in His death. But then I know another thing--that by that
   death I am delivered from the very guilt that put Him to death! I have
   looked to Him and I am forgiven. Fleming tells us in a book of his,
   that a great culprit had been condemned to be hanged at Ayr. He had
   been a very great offender, but while he lay in prison, God granted him
   repentance and he was heard to say continually as they took him to the
   scaffold, "Oh, but He's a great for-giver! Oh, but He's a great
   forgiver!" And I have often felt as if I could stand and cry, yes, even
   dance and say it, "Oh, but He's a great forgiver! Oh, but He's a great
   forgiver!" My innumerable sins confessed to Him were blotted out, each
   one, and peace and joy bestowed where all before was fear and
   trembling! Now, there are hundreds in this house that could say the
   same. If I were to ask it, and this were the proper time, there are
   thousands within this dome who could rise and say, "I, too, can say
   that it is much to me that Jesus died, for though I slew Him, yet by
   His death I live, and by the blood which I drew from His veins I have
   been washed and made white." Now, if it is so much to us, we do
   sincerely wish, oh, unconverted ones, that Christ were as much to you,
   for we do think He ought to be! We desire that He should be! We pray
   that He may be and we tremble, even to horror, lest, after all, He
   should not be, for if Christ is nothing to you, it will be a hard dying
   for you, a hard dying--the bed shall be of iron and the pillow shall be
   cold as ice--and it will be hard passing into a disembodied state! It
   will be hard coming before God. It will be hard for when your body
   rises in the day of the Resurrection, when the trumpet sounds, and the
   sepulchers are burst open, and your body, linked to your soul again,
   shall stand before the flaming Throne of Christ! It will be hard for
   you--oh, so hard--throughout eternity! An eternity without Christ! An
   eternity without Christ! "Nothing to you, nothing to you," you say now,
   but how will it be when conscience shall remind you in eternity, "you
   heard of Christ, but you said He was nothing to you! You listened to
   earnest admonitions, but you said they were nothing to you." How will
   this stir the fire? How will this fan the flame? How will this prick
   your conscience and vex your spirit, that Jesus died, and inestimable
   mercies dropped from the Cross--pardons sealed with blood were
   distributed freely upon Calvary and broken hearts were healed--and sins
   were forgiven and the dead were raised and the lost were saved? But it
   was all nothing to you, nothing to you! Oh, before death comes--and he
   is on his way to some here present--on his way to meet them soon!
   Before death comes on the pale horse with Hell following at his heels,
   I beseech you, as you love your souls, look to the Crucified and be not
   satisfied till you can say, "He is everything to me! I slew Him, but He
   saved me! I looked to Him and I live!"

   May God bless this admonition and my heart shall be glad, indeed, if He
   will but do it. Oh, how little can I do for you, you unconverted ones,
   how little can I do for you! When I sometimes get a handshake from some
   of you, and you say, "Well, I have been hearing you for years, Sir, but
   I am not converted," I look hopefully upon you, but I cannot help, when
   I get away, reproaching myself in part and saying, "Have I preached to
   these people as I ought to?" You make me wake up at night to weep about
   you and to ask myself again and again, "What more can I say? How shall
   I put it? With what force and power can I deliver it, if perhaps I may
   reach their hearts?" Oh, I trust you may yet be brought--and God shall
   be praised and glorified world without end! Now, let us change to a
   second point--

   II. A SOLEMN QUESTION.

   The Lord Jesus Christ may be represented here as bidding men see if
   there is any sorrow like unto His sorrow which is done to Him. Now,
   observe, that it may be truthfully said that the sufferings of Jesus
   were altogether unique and by themselves. There were never any
   sufferings which could match His--and never was there such an
   illustrious sufferer put to such boundless shame. He was the eye of
   Heaven, the very sun and star of the bright world! It was the seraph's
   bliss to do Him homage. King of kings and Lord of lords was He, and the
   government was upon His shoulders! And His name was called Wonderful,
   The Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of
   Peace! All the hallelujahs of eternity rolled up at His august feet!
   But He was despised and rejected of men, a Man of Sorrows and
   acquainted with grief! And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He
   was despised and we esteemed Him not. They spat into His face. They
   plucked off His hair. They blindfolded Him. They struck Him with their
   fists. They scourged Him. The bloody scourges made the sacred drops
   roll. They gave Him a felon's death and then stood by and mocked His
   prayers and made jests about His groans and pangs! Never was One so
   high brought so low. "Behold and see if there were ever sorrow like
   unto My sorrow, which is done unto Me." Never One so innocent, so
   falsely accused. He had done no evil. He was no rival of Caesar. He
   said His Kingdom was not of this world. Instead of doing evil, He had
   done boundless good. His food and His drink were to do God's will. His
   delight was to help the poor, to feed the hungry, to heal the sick. He
   was all gentleness, all goodness. From both His hands He scattered His
   bounties lavishly among the graceless sons of men--and yet they said He
   was guilty of sedition and of blasphemy! He, seditious? He a
   blasphemer? Lying could go no farther! Bribed witnesses could not be
   made to agree! The lie was too massive even for those to compass who
   were willing to have compassed it! Oh, was ever grief like His--to be
   treated as a felon and put to death as though guilty--when all the
   while He did no sin, neither was deceit found on His lips!

   Remember, Beloved, that in our Savior's death there were aggravations
   of an extraordinary kind. Before He actually came to die, that dreadful
   night in Gethsemane had broken His already emaciated frame. There He
   sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground. In two
   or three cases, other persons have sweat drops of blood, but they have
   invariably died. Our Savior did this and yet lived. Oh, how was the
   bitterness of His soul expressed in that awful overflow which fell upon
   Gethsemane's soil! Then, remember, He was led, deserted by His friends,
   without any comfort from His God, to be tried by Herod, by Pilate, by
   Caiaphas--to be scourged, beaten, probably several times with rods and
   scourges. God forsook Him--"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
   was the very depth of His agony and without one to pity, one to
   administer comfort, utterly forsaken, our Savior died with aggravations
   of agonies that were to be found in no other death!

   Still, the singularity of His death lies in another respect. There was
   never sorrow like the sorrow which was done unto Christ, because all
   His sorrow was born for others. Whatever you and I may suffer, we
   deserve it and, directly or indirectly, we may trace it to the fact
   that we are sinners. But He was not a sinner. In Him was no sin and
   neither suffering nor death could lawfully have been laid upon Him had
   He not made Himself the Substitute for His people. Behold, and see if
   there was ever sorrow like His sorrow! He bears the sin of many. He is
   numbered with the transgressors. He stands vicariously to endure what
   never could have been His if it had not been that He was a Surety and
   stood in His people's place.

   Now, I want your thoughts just one minute. What was it that Christ, as
   Substitute, had to endure? Answer-- Although it may not have been
   precisely what we ought to have endured, it must have been something
   equivalent thereto. Now, what ought one sinner to have suffered?
   Answer--Eternal misery in Hell! What, then, what then must have been
   the pangs which in Christ's case stood as the equivalent for the
   eternal agonies of one sinnefi But Christ died not for one sinner, but
   for tens of thousands, for countless multitudes, whom no one can
   number! Think, then, my Brothers and Sisters, what must have been the
   crushing blows which Jehovah laid on Him when those blows were to be an
   equivalent for the hells of ten thousand times ten thousand of those
   for whom He suffered! Of course, it were not possible for Him to have
   endured, even for one, if He had not been God! His Godhead gave Him an
   infinite capacity for misery and infused a boundless degree of misery
   into all the pangs He bore. You have no more idea of what Christ
   suffered in His soul than you have when you take up in a shell, a drop
   of seawater! What Christ suffered is utterly inconceivable! We are not
   just to think of Him as dying as another dies. His was a vast soul, so
   great a soul that it seemed to have all souls within it--and it had the
   capacity for suffering what all souls might have borne--and the whole
   of that vast Nature which God had given, that wondrous Nature which He
   Himself also essentially possessed--was put forth to make an Atonement
   for human sin. "Behold and see if there was ever sorrow like unto My
   sorrow, which is done unto Me."

   "Oh, let us now, instead of talking any more, sit down by meditation at
   the foot of the Cross and look up! 'Tis the King! 'Tis the King, but He
   is crowned with thorns! It is the Prince of Glory, but He is stripped
   naked to His shame! It is the Ancient of eternal days, but He bows His
   head to die! He is God, All-Sufficient, yet He cries, "I thirst"! He is
   the angel's darling, but He is despised and rejected of men! Hark, He
   fills Heaven with honor! His Presence gilds Heaven with light, yet
   there upon the Cross He is covered with darkness! And the music about
   Him is that of His own sighs, and cries, and groans. Was ever grief
   like Yours? Needless question! Needless question! All but shameful
   question, for were all

   griefs that ever were condensed into one, they were no more worthy to
   be compared therewith than the glowworm's tiny lamp with the
   ever-blazing sun!

   What then, Beloved, what then? If Christ is thus alone in suffering,
   what then? Why, let Him standalone in our love. High, high, high set up
   Christ in your heart! Now, Brothers and Sisters you have many objects
   of your affection, but oh, lift up my lord, your soul's Bridegroom,
   your spirit's Well-Beloved! Come now, if you have thought well of Him,
   think better of Him! If you have loved Him, oh, love Him more! Now, ask
   to have your heart inflamed, as with coals ofjuniper, which have a
   vehement heat, and let that heart be all His own! Oh, let there be no
   such love as your love to Christ! Let it pass the love of women! Let it
   go beyond a mother's love, a brother's affection, a father's
   tenderness! Love Him--you cannot match His love to you, but at least
   seek to let your little stream run side by side with the mighty river!

   If Christ is thus alone in suffering, Brothers and Sisters, let us seek
   to make Him, if we can, alone in our service. We do not do much for
   Christ, compared with what we should. Some have learned to give much,
   but yet what is our giving for such an one as He is? We only give what
   we can spare--how few of us ever pinch ourselves for Him? He smarted
   for us and gave up even His very garments for us, but we do not come to
   that. In the olden times they did--saints, martyrs and Christian
   missionaries made sacrifice of all and counted it no sacrifice out of
   love to Him. I wish we had more Marys who would break the alabaster box
   of precious ointment upon His dear head. Oh, for a little extravagance
   of love, a little fanaticism of affection for Him, for He deserves ten
   thousand times more than the most enthusiastic ever dream of rendering!
   If He is thus, Brothers and Sisters, so far beyond all others in His
   sorrow, let Him also be first and foremost tonight in our praise. If
   you have poetic minds, weave no garlands except for His dear brow! If
   you are men of eloquence, speak no glowing periods except to His honor!
   If you are men of wit and scholarship, oh, seek to lay your scholarship
   at the foot of His Cross! Come here with all your talents and yield
   them to Him who bought them with His blood! Come, here, you with much
   and yet with little--come with hearts so warm whom He loved so well--

   "Here then your music bring, Strike aloud each cheerful string! Mortals
   join the hosts above, Come and praise redeeming love."

   The Lord give us such a frame of mind as that, tonight, when we come to
   the breaking of bread, and His be the glory. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 69:1-21; MARK 15:15-23;
   LUKE23:26-33.

   We shall read together at this time a part of the 69th Psalm and
   afterwards two passages in the New Testament. Although there is no
   doubt that this Psalm is intended to describe a very large class of
   sufferers, we think it never had its full meaning perfectly carried out
   until our blessed Lord and Master suffered at the hands of men. We
   shall read the Psalm believing that it is full of Christ. It is
   absolutely certain that we have references hare to His Advent, His
   passion and His Resurrection.

   To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, a Psalm of David.

   Verse 1. Save me, O God, for the waters are come into My soul. The
   waves have not only teased the bank, but they have dashed over the
   bulwarks and there is a flood within, as well as a flood without.

   2. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing. I am come into deep
   waters where the floods overflow Me. We had this text explained to us
   last Friday night when the traveler told us he saw a man sink in the
   mud, almost swallowed up by it, till by a very desperate grasp of the
   boat, he made his escape. Christ was, as it were, sucked in by the
   great deeps of His afflictions--as if He would quickly be swallowed up.

   3. I am weary of My crying: My throat is dried. He had been so long in
   the Garden in that awful agony, with strong crying and tears.

   3, 4. My eyes fail while I wait for My God. They that hate Me without a
   cause are more than the hairs of My head. See Him now in the street
   being led away to Mount Calvary--a vast multitude has congregated
   there, all eager to see Him die!

   4. They that would destroy Me, being My enemies wrongfully, are mighty.
   They have the Roman soldiers at their backs, while the mob applauds
   them.

   4. Then I restored that which I took not away. Christ did not take away
   our innocence, nor our safety, nor our honor, but He restored them all
   to us! He has made us clean! He has made us accepted in the Beloved! He
   has put a crown of pure gold upon our heads and set our feet upon a
   rock.

   5. O God, You know my foolishness and my sins are not hid from You.
   These words are not applicable to our Lord, except so far as they may
   refer to ourfoolishness and to oursin, which we know were all laid on
   Him. But one commentator says that He is here speaking according to the
   manner of the people. They called Him foolish. They charged Him with
   sin, but He appeals to Heaven, "Lord, You know whether I have been
   foolish, whether I have any sins or not." In that sense we might apply
   it literally to the Savior.

   6. Letnot them that wait on You, O Lord God ofHosts, be ashamed for My
   sake: let not those who seek You be confounded for My sake, O God of
   Israel "Let not the shame of My Cross destroy their faith. Grant unto
   them such confidence in Me that they may take up their cross daily and
   follow Me, that they may even learn to say with My Apostle, "God forbid
   that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   7. Because for Your sake I have borne reproach; shame has covered My
   face. It was for His Father's sake that He might bring honor to
   Jehovah, that He thus suffered reproach. "Shame has covered My
   face"--that face which is brighter than the sun and which angels desire
   to gaze upon!

   8. Ihave become a stranger unto My brethren. "Peter says he knows Me
   not. All of them have forsaken Me."

   8, 9. And an alien unto My mother's children. For the zeal of Your
   house has eaten Me up and the reproaches of them that reproached You
   are fallen upon Me. Every hard word that was spoken of the Father fell
   upon the Son--the iniquities which were rebellions against Jehovah all
   fell upon the Man of Nazareth!

   10. When I wept, and chastened My soul with fasting, that was to My
   reproach. That was scandal unto them.

   11. I made sack cloth also My garment; and I became a proverb unto
   them. Just as Michal said of David, "How glorious did the King of
   Israel become in the eyes of his handmaidens!" Out of mockery, so did
   they reproach Christ, "How glorious was the King of Israel, so daintily
   arrayed in a peasant's robe, or stripped naked upon His Cross."

   12. They that sit in the gate speak against Me. The judges who there
   dispensed justice. The merchants who there trade their wares. The
   idlers who were there to loiter, to hear the news--these all speak
   against Me.

   12. And I became the song of the drunkard. They made ballads of Him. We
   may understand that to mean they issued lampoons--every now and then
   there came out a caricature.

   13, 14. But as forMe, Myprayeris unto You, OLord, in an acceptable
   time: O God, in the multitude ofYourmer-cy hear Me, in the truth of
   Your salvation, deliver Me out of the mire, and let Me not sink: let Me
   be delivered from them that hate Me, and out of the deep waters.
   Imagine you hear your Master as He silently prays this prayer in the
   streets of Jerusalem--the mobs are hooting, but He is praying--women
   are weeping and He is weeping, too.

   15-20. Let not the flood overflow Me, neither let the deep swallow Me
   up, and let not the Pit shut her mouth upon Me. Hear Me, O Lord, for
   Your loving kindness is good: turn unto Me according to the multitude
   of Your tender mercies. And hide not Your face from Your Servant; for I
   am in trouble: hear Me speedily. Draw near unto My soul, and redeem it:
   deliver Me because of My enemies. You have known My reproach and My
   shame, and My dishonor: My adversaries are all before You. Reproach has
   broken My heart This is one of the most extraordinary verses in Holy
   Writ!

   20, 21. And I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity,
   but there was none; and for comforters, but I foundnone. They gave Me
   also gall for My meat; andin My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.
   Now, let us read the incidents in the history of Christ, of which this
   Psalm is a sort of prophecy and exposition.

   MARK 15:15-23.

   Verses 15-23. And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released
   Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to
   be crucified. And the soldiers led Him away into the hall which is
   called Praetorium; and they called together the whole band. And they
   clothed Him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it
   about His head. And began to salute Him, Hail, King of the Jews. And
   they smote Him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon Him, and
   bowing their knees worshipped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they
   took off thepurple from Him, and

   put His own clothes on Him, andledHim out to crucifyHim. And they
   compelled one Simon, a Cyrenian whopassed by, coming out of the
   country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear His Cross. And they
   brought Him unto the place called Golgotha, which is, being
   interpreted, the place of a skull. And they gave Him to drink wine
   mingled with myrrh: but He received it not. I shall have to show you
   that this was given to Him in mercy. The Romans always gave, before
   crucifixion, a cup of drugged wine, in order to lessen the
   sensibilities of the victim. In this case there was not only myrrh in
   the cup, but gall. A second cup of gall Christ did drink, but this cup,
   being intoxicating, He would not receive--when He had tasted it, He
   would not drink. He needed the possession of all His faculties--and in
   their clearest state--in order to do combat with the dreadful powers of
   darkness.

   LUKE23:26-33.

   Luke supplies some particulars which Mark has left out. Turn,
   therefore, to the 23rd Chapter of Luke and the 26th verse. Luke, also,
   tells us of Simon.

   Verse 26. Andas theyledHim away, theylaidhold upon one Simon, a
   Cyrenian, coming out ofthe country, and on him they laid the Cross,
   that he might bear it after Jesus. Now these are the things which Mark
   has not put in.

   27, 29. And there followed Him a great company of people, and of women,
   which also bewailed and lamented Him. But Jesus turning unto them said,
   Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and
   for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in which they
   shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and
   the breasts which never gave suck This was accounted a curse, but their
   curses would seem blessings to them when compared with the curse of the
   dreadful slaughter at Jerusalem!

   30, 31. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us;
   and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree
   what shall be done in the dry?If they do these things while yet the
   Jewish State is standing, what will they do when that State is broken
   up? If they do these things to innocent persons--a green tree--what
   will they do to the unhallowed person, the ungodly and the rebellious
   who are like dry, rotten trees? How will the flame lay hold on those
   branches out of which the sap of virtue has long ago been dried?

   32. And there were also two other, malefactors. It should be
   "others"--there should be an "s" there. 32, 33. Led with Him to be put
   to death. And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary,
   there they crucified Him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand
   and the other on the left. Shall we refuse to take up our cross and
   follow the Lord Jesus Christ? I think not. If any ask us whether we
   will leave Him because of the fears which may be excited by the world's
   frowns, this shall be our answer--let us sing it--with regard to the
   world and all its temptations--

   "No, facing all its frowns or smiles, Counting its gain but loss!
   Outside the camp we take our place, With Jesus bear the Cross."
     __________________________________________________________________

God's Valiant Right Hand

   (No. 3361)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 3, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE OPENING OF THE EAST LONDON TABERNACLE, ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22,
   1872.

   "The right hand of tie Lord is exalted: the right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly." Psalm 118:16.

   THIS verse might full often have leapt from the lips of Believers in
   the olden times. This verse might have constituted part of the Song of
   Moses at the Red Sea, for how wondrously did God there overthrow the
   host of His enemies, when, after dividing the sea, Egypt was swallowed
   up in it, God, Himself causing the last foe of Israel to be swept away
   by the mighty waters! "Sing unto the Lord," they said, "for He has
   triumphed gloriously," and by the shores of the Red Sea they knew that
   "The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly." It was so in the wilderness when Joshua fought with Amalek
   and Moses held up his hands in prayer. It was so when they smote Sihon,
   king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan. Are not these things
   written in the Books of the wars of the Lord, and is it not said, "The
   Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name"? It was conspicuously so in
   the driving out of the Canaanites. When the people of Israel, untrained
   for war, marched into the land, they found that their enemies had
   chariots of iron and they were entrenched in cities that were walled up
   even unto Heaven--but yet all the Canaanites, the Hivites and the
   Jebusites could not stand against the twelve tribes of Israel! They
   fled before them like chaff before the wind! They were scattered like
   the clouds before the tempest! "Oh, praise you the Lord and magnify
   Him, for He cast out the heathen and He planted His people in their own
   land." The right hand of the Lord was that day exalted, for His right
   hand does valiantly!

   And was it not so throughout the period of the Judges? Time would fail
   us to tell you of Samson, of Gideon, of Barak and all those mighty men
   who were as weapons in the hands of Jehovah--javelins cast forth by
   Omnipotence! Truly in those days, also, the right hand of the Lord did
   valiantly! David, who penned this Psalm, knew this in his own
   experience, for he smote the Philistines hip and thigh with great
   slaughter. And long after David had slept with his fathers, others
   arose and God was with them--and the Lord did mighty deeds. Have you
   forgotten how the hosts of Sennacherib lay like the sere leaves of
   autumn when the breath of the archangel had blasted them? Right onward
   throughout the whole history of Israel, the foes of God had made
   headway for a while, for He put His hand, even His right hand, into His
   bosom. But when the Lord has risen and His people have chanted the
   solemn Psalm, "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered," then
   they that hated Him have fled before Him! Into smoke have they been
   consumed like the fat of rams! Into smoke have they been consumed away!
   "The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly."

   But from those triumphs of physical might over warlike powers we turn
   our eyes to another field of battle--a spiritual one! And God who was
   mighty with weapons of war, we find mighty with the sword of the Spirit
   and with the weapons of the Gospel! And we claim the verse which is now
   before us as a song of the New Testament as well as a chant of the Old!
   The right hand of the Lord is this day exalted and still it does
   valiantly!

   We shall ask your attention not to a very lengthy sermon, but to these
   three points--The triumphs of the Lord Jesus; the triumphs of the
   Gospel in the Church; the triumphs of Grace in individual hearts. To
   all these, and I know not to which one more than another, the text is
   most appropriate.

   I. CONCERNING THE TRIUMPHS OF THE LORD JESUS IT MAY BE SAID, "The right
   hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly." He did not come as a Man of war, for He is the Prince of
   Peace. He came not here with sword, shield and buckler, but He came
   with a body fitted to suffer and with a heart that was made

   strong to endure. The Christ of God came in lowliness and in shame, to
   be despised and rejected of men, but for all that He fought great
   battles in the midst of His weakness and won for Himself wondrous
   spiritual victories. Observe, dear Friends, with holy adoration, how
   our Lord Jesus Christ met Satan in conflict, not once nor twice, but
   many times! In fact, throughout the Savior's life, the prince of the
   powers of the air assailed our Master. That was a glorious duel which
   was fought in the wilderness and on the lofty mountain, from which
   those two contending spirits had a view of the whole world! And on the
   pinnacle of the Temple, too. Sharp was the sword of Diabolus when he
   sought to smite the Savior under the fifth rib and make a full end of
   His innocence. But oh, how glorious the strokes of the Lord, Himself,
   with the sword of the Spirit, when He said, "It is written," and yet
   again, "It is written," and yet again, "It is written," and He chased
   the fiend away! And then triumphant angels came and ministered to the
   Conqueror amidst the loneliness of the desert. Oh, you Spirits, you
   might have sung that day, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the
   right hand of the Lord does valiantly." All through His life our Savior
   kept His vantage ground. The prince of this world assailed Him, but he
   made no dent upon His armor, much less wound upon His soul! He was
   tempted in all points--the darts flew so thick that they assailed Him
   from head to foot--but He was without a wound at the close of the
   conflict! He was tempted, but yet without sin. And you know how it came
   to the last tug of all in the Garden of Gethsemane. Oh, what a
   wrestling was that, when, as it were, the arch-fiend grappled close
   with Christ and gripped Him so that--

   "That desperate tug His soul might feel, Through bars of brass and
   triple steel."

   It brought the bloody sweat down the Master's face, but He did not
   relinquish His hold upon the foe and gave him such a fall that he never
   shall recover the defeat which he sustained amidst the olive trees of
   Gethsemane! And on the Cross, too, when he rallied his forces for the
   last time and assailed the Spirit of our Lord with all the malice of
   his infernal nature, there the great Michael, the true Archangel, set
   His foot upon the dragon's head--and though His heel was wounded--yet
   He broke that head! And the strength of the power of evil is gone
   forever! Its monarchy is finally destroyed. "The right hand of the
   Lord," though it was a pierced hand, "the right hand of the Lord,"
   though it had grasped a scepter of reed, "does valiantly"! "The right
   hand of the Lord is exalted."

   The same might be said, but we should go over the same ground, again,
   if we spoke of the conquests which our Lord achieved over sin in every
   shape and form. It mattered not how it approached Him--He repelled it!
   He overthrew it as far as He was personally concerned. And when the
   sins of His people were laid upon Him, oh, Brothers and Sisters, how
   dreadful was that hour, but how ought we to look back upon it with
   devout thankfulness! When the sins of His people came like an avalanche
   to crush Him, how gloriously did He sustain the load! With what
   wondrous power of angels did He suffer the wrath of God which was due
   for the sins of His people--

   "Bore all Incarnate God could bear, With strength enough, but none to
   spare."

   And when He had made Atonement forever for all His people's sins and
   brought in everlasting righteousness for all His chosen, and could say,
   "It is finished"-- when He gave up the ghost--then truly the right hand
   of the Lord was exalted and the right hand of the Lord had done
   valiantly! Brothers and Sisters, the Lord Jesus has this day conquered
   all our sins! There is not a transgression left to accuse His people!
   There is no record against them in God's book! He has perfected forever
   them that are set apart. The work is finished! Salvation is complete!
   The right hand of the Lord has done for us what we could not have done
   for ourselves! What the angels of Heaven would not have been so foolish
   as to have attempted, the Lord Jesus Christ has most surely completed
   for all Believers! Heaven rings this day with the joyful songs of His
   triumphant saints who tell how "the right hand of the Lord is exalted."

   Our precious Lord is to be praised in language like our text for having
   vanquished death as well as sin. Satan and sin He overthrew and
   virtually therein He conquered death. It did not seem as if He would
   vanquish death, my Brothers and Sisters, when He lay in the grave. The
   image of death was set as with a seal upon His brow! The Lord of Life
   and Immortality seemed, and was as really dead as any of the sons of
   Adam! The three days passed--the appointed time in which He should be,
   like Jonah, in the bowels of the earth. But on the third day He could
   not be held by the bonds of death. I think

   1 see Him, like another Samson who had been bound with cords, awakening
   from His slumber like a strong man refreshed, and He snaps the bonds of
   death, for it was not possible that He could be held by them! Then the
   stone was rolled away from the door of the sepulcher and out He came,
   resplendent in the glory of His Resurrection body! From that moment
   death has been destroyed! Children of God shall pass through the grave,
   but they cannot be confined in it. "Oh,

   death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory?" Christ
   has forever taken away the gates of the Gaza of the grave, carried them
   far away where Satan can never bring them back, and death cannot
   restore his stronghold. Glorify the ever-living Christ, for His right
   hand is exalted!

   And the same was conspicuously true in the day when our Lord left this
   world and rose to the Father Our imagination can hardly depict that
   scene, when they who received Him after the Apostles had lost sight of
   Him, brought His chariot from on high to bear Him to His Throne. Oh,
   what an ascent was that, when flashed the eternal coursers up the
   celestial hills. For He comes, mighty to save! He went forth to battle,
   but He comes back from conquest to wear His well-earned renown. Do you
   not see at His chariot wheels the bound monsters? They must be dragged
   to the very gates of Heaven and then hurled down again! He has led
   captivity captive and received gifts for men. Oh, in that day of our
   Lord's ascending up on high, they who gazed upon the matchless
   spectacle of the returning King of kings must have said, if not in
   words, yet certainly in sense, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted;
   the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

   In those victories, Beloved, you and I have a share. Satan was
   conquered for us! Sin was overcome for us! Death was bound for us--

   "Hell and our sins obstruct our course, But Hell and sin are vanquished
   foes! Our Savior nailed them to His Cross, And sang the triumph when He
   rose."

   Believe it and be glad of it! All your enemies are overcome! You still
   have to battle, but you fight with conquered foes. The dragon who is
   most dreadful to you carries a deadly wound about him. Your sins with
   which you have to contend from day to day are virtually slain. They
   have their death wound--they shall not be able to follow you into
   Heaven. Oh, rejoice in your Lord, conquer in His conquests, be
   victorious in His victory, overcome through the blood of the Lamb, and
   give Him all the glory of your triumph! Now, I pass on to note, in the
   second place, that our text is very applicable to--

   II. THE PERPETUAL TRIUMPHS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST.

   The Church began with feeble numbers, with small wealth. I might add,
   with comparatively little talent, but she was clothed with the Holy
   Spirit--she was, therefore, mighty! Let us just look at the history of
   the Church a minute or two, that our souls may be comforted with the
   prospect of the like victories in days to come. When first the Church
   was in the world like a new-born child, the dragon vomited forth
   torrents with the hope of drowning it. You know the rough weapons with
   which the world assailed the Church at first. The sword was unsheathed,
   prisons were put into use, the rack, unutterable torments, shame,
   reproach, every infernal art of persecution was pressed into the
   diabolical service to put down, if possible, the cause and Kingdom of
   Christ in the world. Now, only think for a minute what became of the
   continued attempts, the cruel attempts of the world against the Church,
   for the result conspicuously shows how the right hand of the Lord was
   exalted! The more they persecuted Israel in Egypt, the more they
   multiplied--and it was the same with the Church of God. They that were
   persecuted went everywhere preaching the Word. They might have tarried
   at home, perhaps, and been corn in the garner, but persecution broke
   down the door and they were thrown, like handfuls of wheat, broadcast
   over the nations--and everywhere the precious Seed sprang up! It was of
   no use killing the Christians--it was like the killing of the
   Hydra--the cutting off of one head made a hundred fresh ones spring up!

   Young men went to see the martyrdom of saints and as they saw their
   holy patience, they came to be Believers themselves, till dying
   Christians became the most powerful preachers of the Gospel and even
   the saints that believed were comforted by the sight of the death of
   the martyrs--they went to see how to die, they went to learn the way to
   give themselves up for Christ! The anvil never smites the hammer in
   return, but it breaks many hammers. It wears out the hammer. Here is
   the patience of the saints. God being in His Church, she has borne year
   after year, and God has forborne to avenge her, but she has triumphed!
   Her weak, feeble maidens and her illiterate men, her sons and her
   daughters who lifted not a hand in self-defense, have vanquished those
   that were armed to the teeth and had the power of Imperial Rome and of
   all empires at their back! "The right hand of the Lord," amidst the
   hosts of martyrs who wear the ruby crown in Heaven today, "is exalted,"
   for "the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

   Then, at the same time, the Church was sent into the world to combat
   with the superstitions which existed in that age and, Brothers and
   Sisters, the superstitions of ancient Rome were very attractive, very
   venerable. They had existed

   through long ages. They were interwoven with the daily life of the
   people. Poetry, art, philosophy, all lent their power to maintain the
   old heathenism with which the Christian Church came in contact. I have
   no doubt whatever that the Pontifex Maximus of the day, if he had been
   told that in Paul he saw a rival, teaching a religion which would break
   down all the old altars and the temples of Rome, would have ridiculed
   the statement. And yet it was so, for where are the gods of old Rome
   today? Who worships Jupiter today? Who bows before Saturn, father of
   the gods? Or who pays reverence to Venus or Diana? These have gone--and
   what has smitten them and broken them in pieces? The stone cut out of
   the mountain without hands has dashed them all in pieces and broken
   their power like potters' vessels! And none shall set up these false
   gods again. Nor was it so in Rome, alone. In all countries, the Church
   of God has had a complete triumph. Weird superstitions woven with
   stories of magic which alarmed the multitudes have fled like the birds
   of night before the rising sun! No form of superstition which the enemy
   has been able to devise has had power to retain its hold where the
   Gospel has been fully preached. The superstition might seem to stand
   like the eternal hills, but Faith has said, "Who are you, great
   mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain," and the mountain
   of superstition has melted away! "The right hand of the Lord is
   exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

   But, my Brothers and Sisters, the Church has been assailed by heresies
   within herselfand if anything might have destroyed her, surely it would
   have been these! I will single out but one--the Arian heresy. You that
   are well read in Church History will know how very potent at one time
   the Arian heresy was in the ancient Church. The Divinity of our Lord
   became almost universally denied! He was a great man, a good man,
   perhaps the best of men, but they said that He was nothing more. It was
   a grand day when Athanasius declared that Christ was "very God of very
   God," and, finding himself alone, yet said, "I, Athanasius, against the
   world." It did seem an unequal combat, for there were monarchs on the
   side of the Arians--bishops and the power of the then Church, as well
   as the power of the world! But Arianism-- where is it now? The pure
   faith of God has flung it off like drops of rain that are cast off from
   the housetops and remain not! There may be some sleeping in the dens
   and corners of the earth, to hide their ignoble heads, but the heresy
   is dead for any power that it has in the Christian Church. And so shall
   every heresy die. As the eternal God lives, nothing is immortal but the
   Truth of God--nothing is eternal but the Gospel! The right hand of the
   Lord fights not for a lie, but it is lifted up and His arm is made bare
   for the truth of His Son Jesus Christ! And all along through the pages
   of Church History this is true--that the right hand of the Lord is
   exalted, and does valiantly in overthrowing error!

   But the Church had to suffer from something which excelled heresy
   because it was the aggregation of heresy, superstition and apostasy. I
   mean the spread of Popery. In the Middle Ages the night was sevenfold.
   There was scarcely light enough for the anxious seeker to see his Lord!
   And men were crushed by the Inquisition, by the practice of priestly
   confession, by the domination of priests, bishops and popes. And if any
   man had then bewailed the absence of the light, as some few did, and an
   angel had said to him, "Courage, my son. The day shall come in which
   all this system shall lose its power and the old Gospel shall come
   back"--I can imagine I hear the weeper say, "If the Lord should open
   windows in Heaven, could such a thing be?" But such a thing was! God
   found the man and gave him a heart of iron and a brow of brass--and
   Martin Luther's voice was heard ringing across these waters, saying,
   "Therefore is a man justified by faith, and not by the works of the
   Law." And other voices took up that strain till in regions where that
   Truth of God was an utterly unknown thing, it became familiar to the
   peasant at the plow and humble men and women, hiding away from the
   powers that would have destroyed them, cheered one another with the
   gladness of that Gospel sound! Oh, you know, Beloved, how God smote the
   church of Rome in those days gone by, and as you read the story of the
   Reformation, you can say, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted."

   Now, I shall not detain you with history. I shall bring you to today,
   for the truth of the olden times is fulfilled in your ears again this
   day. Wherever the Gospel is preached, the right hand of the Lord is
   exalted! We have seen it and, therefore, we speak what we know. If the
   Gospel of Jesus Christ is faithfully preached, no matter by whom--if it
   is the whole Gospel affectionately declared, prayed over, believingly
   delivered--it will always glorify God's name! I want you to notice in
   these days how the Lord's hand is exalted in some respects.

   First, in this respect--in awakening the attention of a negligent
   people to the Gospel. There is nothing in the world that makes so much
   stir as preaching Christ! You shall preach anything else you like and
   the people will sleep. But if you will preach Christ out and out
   simply, in plain Saxon, as Paul would have Him preached, not with
   wisdom of words, you shall find the people will come together! I know
   not why it is, but so it is, that even those who dislike the Gospel
   will

   come to hear it! And though sometimes they set their teeth together and
   curse the men that preach it, yet they come again--they cannot help it.
   A Gospel preacher has charms coming from his lips that bind themselves
   around men's hearts. And he holds them captives, unwilling at first,
   and afterwards joyful captives, to the power of the Word He preaches!
   There should be little need of advertisements with a simple, plain,
   bold Gospel preacher. You shall put him down a back street, you shall
   give him a passage down a court, you shall then do nothing more for him
   but let him speak to a handful of people--and the first news you will
   hear of him is that he is eccentric, that he is extraordinary, that he
   is a fool, that he is a madman! This is always good news! There is a
   man of God somewhere about when we hear that noise! Straightway people
   want to hear this enthusiast, this Methodist, this Presbyterian--and
   they rush to listen--and then it is that there is power felt by the
   people! They do not know what it is, but there is a something in it
   which seems to grip their hearts and hold them! It is nothing other
   than this--that the Lord has said of Christ that if He is lifted up, He
   will draw all men to Him! And where Christ is lifted up, people will be
   drawn to hear. They must hear! We need not ask them to come--they must
   come!. Where His body is, there will the eagles be gathered together!
   Where the Savior Christ is proclaimed, there shall they come who need
   to feed upon a Savior! Does philosophy achieve such a triumph as this?
   You call it a poor triumph. So it may be in itself, but in its ulterior
   results it is a very great one. There are wise men on the earth that
   would give their eyes and ears if they could but get the people to
   listen to them--but where Christ is not preached, there are generally
   more spiders than there are human souls. Put Unitarianism in the pulpit
   and you shall soon find how the pews begin to multiply in emptiness!
   Little else comes of it. A gospel with no Gospel has great power of
   dispersion, but it has little power of attraction--but the Gospel of
   Jesus Christ soon draws a multitude together and, "the right hand of
   the Lord is exalted."

   But you will still say this is little, and I shall confess it is
   comparatively little, but mark you, if the Gospel is preached, it does
   not end in coming and going to hear it, for soon that Gospel comes like
   an eagle from afar and pounces down on men's hearts and makes them a
   prey to its power! They that came to scoff, remain to pray! They that
   looked in from curiosity, remain to receive the Savior into their
   hearts! And those who came from enmity become converted into friends!
   Oh, how the right hand of the Lord was exalted in the days of Whitfield
   and Wesley! The stories of these two eminent men have been written
   lately by many loving pens--and I must confess I am always to read the
   narratives, however they may be written. Though I have read them many
   times, I can always read them again. Oh, it was wonderful when the
   whole land was asleep! The Church of England was asleep in the dark and
   the Dissenters were asleep in the light-- but there suddenly arose up a
   man who dared to stand upon his father's grave in the churchyard and to
   preach the Gospel! And then there came another, a twin seraph, with
   equal wings, who went into fields and began to proclaim the strange
   Doctrine of Faith as a saving Grace, the necessity of regeneration and
   the work of the Holy Spirit! Oh, those were brave days--the days of the
   early Methodists--when the time of the singing of birds was come and
   the land was full of the power of the Holy Spirit! And it is just so
   now. Anywhere where the Gospel is preached, and preached with the Holy
   Spirit sent down from Heaven, there are conversions, there are broken
   hearts, there are spirits held by Jesus' love, there are glad ones
   consecrating themselves to the Redeemer's service! "The right hand of
   the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

   And we have seen the truth of this in some of the very darkest parts of
   London. What a wonderful instance of what God's Grace can do can be
   seen by anyone who chooses to see it in such spots as Seven Dials,
   where God's love has blessed the earnest Evangelist. Or in Golden Lane,
   where a dear Brother of our own, labors amidst the poverty and sin of
   the masses. Why, when I have gone there to see my Brothers and Sisters
   meet together, the poorest of the poor--fruit sellers, men that were
   drunks and blasphemers, women that were thieves and harlots--and have
   heard them sing the praises of Jesus and rejoice in His dear name, I
   have felt "the right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the
   Lord does valiantly." And so here and all around! I need not quote
   instances, for you know them better than I do, of how lions are turned
   into lambs and ravens into doves, and the most unlikely spots in East
   London--that were deserts, salt lands and not inhabited, that looked as
   if they were cursed of God--have been made to rejoice and blossom, as
   the rose, when the preacher of the Gospel has come into the place and
   His master with him! Oh, yes, "the right hand of the Lord is exalted."

   But they say the Gospel has lost its power. I read the other day that
   some of us were the echoes of a dead Puritanism, that we were not
   abreast of the age and were preaching a faith that was practically
   dead! Sirs, they lie in their throats that say so, and some of them
   know it, for the Gospel is no more dead than they are, nor half as
   much! It lives and lives in all its energy! And they speak not the
   truth that dare to say it has lost its force. But it is
   unphilosophical! Hair-splitters do not care about it! Neological
   divines toss it out as a thing fit for old women! Glory be to God! If
   it suits old women, it will suit us and all kinds of people! But
   inasmuch as it is not philosophical according to their declaration,
   that word of God is fulfilled in our ears, "The foolishness of God is
   wiser than man, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

   Then they turn round and say, "But look at those who preach
   it--uneducated men--men that are not of the higher classes of society,
   unskilled in the refinements, not able to always give the original word
   of the Scripture upon which they preach." Yes, Sirs, and it would be a
   difficult task for any man to prove that the early triumphs of the
   Gospel owed a solitary jot to education and learning! In looking at the
   inscriptions in the catacombs a few days ago, when in Rome, I could not
   help the observation continually coming to my lips that the early
   Christians must all, or almost all of them, have been so illiterate as
   scarcely to have been able to write their own names, for the most
   common words that are upon the slabs of stone that face the graves of
   the early Christians are badly spelt--and there are Greek letters and
   Latin letters intermingled, showing that they hardly knew how to finish
   a word in one language, but must piece it out with another, not knowing
   completely either the one or the other! Yes, but it was because God had
   put His Truth into the mouth of babes and sucklings, and established
   strength, that when the Church had conquered by such humble
   instrumentalities, and the Truths of God had been mighty when preached
   by such simple men, the right hand of the Lord was exalted, for the
   right hand of the Lord had done it--not the wisdom, nor the craft, nor
   the energy of man! God's arm was the more conspicuous because of the
   feebleness of the instrumentality! Much rather, then, will we glory in
   infirmities, because the power of God does rest upon us, for He it is
   that does valiantly! But now I must, in the third place, say a few
   words, and but a few, for time fails us, upon--

   III. THE TRIUMPHS OF GRACE IN INDIVIDUALS.

   Let us talk together. You remember, some of you who are this day
   converted, the time when first the Gospel had power over your soul I
   remember how I fought against it. A mother's tears would not move me,
   nor a father's earnest rebukes. I heard the Gospel, sometimes, and I
   was a little affected by it, but I threw it off! But I shall never
   forget when it came with power to my soul. I had no shield that could
   keep off its darts--the arrows of God found a ready way into my
   conscience--and they seemed to drink my very blood! My wound rankled
   and was corrupt. My soul refused to be comforted. Then, as I used to go
   up to my little chamber and bow my knees in prayer and come down more
   wretched than when I entered it, when I would search the Word of God to
   find comfort, but could not find it--then it was that he who knew me
   might have said, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted in that young
   man, for he was proud and lofty, and self-righteous, but now he lies in
   the very dust, and wonders that God lets him live, and marvels that
   there should be a Gospel for him, and can only half believe it true
   that such a wretch as he should ever be saved." Oh, I wish the Lord
   would come with power to some self-righteous ones that are here this
   afternoon! You are as good as your neighbors? Ah, suppose you are
   condemned with your neighbors, will that help you? To be lost in
   company is small benefit. Oh, but you have never done anybody any harm?
   No, except your God--and you have robbed Him of all the praise that was
   due to Him! And you have lived in this world just as you might have
   lived if there had been no God! Oh, proud Sinner, I cannot bring you
   down, but God can! Oh, for a blow from the mighty arm to level you and
   roll you, biting the dust in shame and self-abasement! Some of us know
   what that means. May you know it, too, and then you will say, though
   your heart is breaking as you say it, "The right hand of the Lord is
   exalted! He is good, but I am evil! He is great and I am nothing! He is
   infinitely holy, but I am shamefully impure! God be merciful to me a
   sinner! God save me for His Name's sake." It is in such a thing as this
   that the right hand of the Lord is exalted.

   But let me talk with you further, you that know the Lord. Beloved, do
   you remember when you sought to escape from the multitude of your sins?
   Do you recollect when they compassed you about like bees? You could not
   count your sins--you had forgotten them--they seemed dead and buried,
   but they all came to life, again, and they swarmed about you! They
   buzzed about you at your table. They stung you in your sleep, in your
   dreams. They stung you at your work. You had no peace because of your
   sins! And do you remember the place, the spot of ground, where you met
   with Jesus? Some of us recollect it to a yard. We looked to Him upon
   the Cross and the battle was over at once! One look to Jesus,
   Crucified, and the sins that compassed us about were destroyed in the
   name of the Lord--and the fires that threatened to devour us were
   quenched as a fire of thorns through the precious blood of Jesus! Do
   you remember it? Oh, let your soul go back to your spiritual birthday.
   Ring the bells of your heart, again, and hang out the streamers of your
   soul for that

   happy day when Jesus washed your sins away! Oh, Beloved, that day
   beyond all others, the right hand of the Lord was exalted, the right
   hand of the Lord did valiantly for you! It is a grand picture. I should
   like to see some artist attempt to sketch it, but he certainly must
   fail. I would like to hear some poet sing it, but I think that he could
   hardly reach the dignity of the argument. When Miriam and the daughters
   of Israel took their timbrels and went forth with the song and the
   dance to sing because Egypt had been destroyed, and Israel was free, do
   you know the note in that song that pleases me best of all is this,
   when they said, "The depths have covered them; there is not one of them
   left." Why, they looked upon the Red Sea and could not see a trace of
   their foes! And I think I hear them singing it, "The depths have
   covered them; there is not one, not one," and they answered each other,
   "Not one, not one, not one of them left." And so when you and I looked
   to Christ and saw His atoning Sacrifice like a mighty sea roll over all
   our sins--in that blessed day our spirits sang, "The depths have
   covered them; there is not one, not one, not one of them left." Every
   sin is gone, every transgression swallowed up in superabounding Grace.
   "The right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

   The same has been true, beloved Friends, in the many cases in which you
   and I have had to overcome our troubles. What sore afflictions have we
   passed through! Some to whom I speak, it may be, have had mountains of
   tribulation. Yes, Beloved, but when God has been with you, you have
   stepped from mountaintop to mountaintop without going down into the
   valley at all!

   And, beloved Friends, to close all, where there was much room for great
   enlargement, let me say, when you and I shall come to die--as soon,
   thank God, we shall, for it is a subject to be treated of with
   thankfulness--we shall find in our dying moments that "the right hand
   of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly." I
   might almost say that I came here from the grave, for it is in truth
   but a day or so since I went to bury one of the holiest men I ever knew
   and, I may add, the happiest man I ever saw in all my life! He fell
   asleep at a good old age, but as I stood by his bedside often in his
   last illness, I envied him. Covered from head to foot, as he said, with
   the boils of Job and the sores of Lazarus in one--with all his bones
   aching as though they were out of joint, yet he said to me--"What a
   happy thing it is to be here." And I said, "What a happy thing to be
   upon a dying bed?" "Yes," he said, "for I am with God, and God is with
   me, and Christ is mine and I am His, and it is the happiest day I ever
   lived." He had often said that in his lifetime, for I never knew him
   otherwise than rejoicing in his God. But I was glad to hear him, when
   his eyes were almost glazed with death, say, "It is the happiest day I
   ever lived." And just before he died, instead of expressing any regrets
   at the pain he was feeling, or at his departure, he turned round and
   said to his dear ones around the bed, "You seem all changed to me from
   what you were. I love you, but I have reached a higher stage than
   things that are seen. I have seen the King in His beauty in the land
   that is very far off--and I have heard words which it is not lawful for
   a man to utter." And they said, "Can you not tell us something of what
   you have seen?" He said, "You must pardon me. I am forbidden to tell
   you. But henceforth, I have done with all things here below, and I am
   taken up with the joy and glory of my Lord." "My bliss is so great," he
   said, "it kills me! I cannot live much longer through the excess of joy
   I feel!" In a few short minutes he had closed his eyes and was with
   God.

   The Negro said of his minister, "Sir, he is dying full of life!" So
   have I seen them die, full of life--the best of life! And I have then
   thought, "Sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously. The
   right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does
   valiantly." Fear not! The last conflict shall be the chief of your
   victories this side the river! The Lord bless you and make you a
   blessing. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Fearing and Trusting--trusting and Not Fearing

   (No. 3362)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING,
   DECEMBER 15, 1867.

   "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You." Psalm 56:3.

   "I will trust, and not be afraid." Isaiah 12:2.

   I INTEND this evening to have two texts, though I shall not therefore
   have two sermons and so keep you a double length of time! Our first
   text, which will suffice to begin with, is in the 56th Psalm, at the
   3rd verse-- "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You""

   David was one of the boldest of men. From his youth up, he was noted
   for his courage. As a youth he went, in simple confidence in God, and
   attacked the giant Goliath. Throughout life there was no man who seemed
   to be more at home in wars and battles--and less likely to be afraid.
   But yet this hero, this courageous man, says that he wassometimes
   afraid. And I suppose that there are none of us but must plead guilty
   to the impeachment that sometimes the brave spirit gives way and that
   we tremble and are afraid. It is a disease for which the cure is here
   mentioned, "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You." When my soul
   suffers from the palsy of fear, I will lay hold upon the Strong One and
   get strength from Him--and so my fears shall all be cast out."

   To be afraid is, in some cases, a very childish thing. We sometimes
   expect to see our little children frightened and that they will not
   bear to be alone in the dark, but we are surely not afraid to be there!
   The more we are afraid, the more childish we become. Courage is manly,
   but to be afraid is to be like a child. It is not always so, however,
   for there are some great and sore dangers which may well make the very
   boldest man tremble.

   To be afraid is always a distressing thing. The heart beats quickly and
   the whole system seems to be thrown out of order. There have been known
   cases of men who have had to endure severe terror for several
   hours--and their hair has all turned gray in a single night. No doubt,
   too, there have been diseases which have brought men to their graves
   which have been caused by fright. Fear is always distressing and
   whether it is the fear of outward danger, or fear of inward sin, it is
   always a terrible thing to have to go mourning because of being afraid.

   And to be afraid, too, is always a weakening thing. The man who can
   keep calm in the midst of difficulty is better able to meet it. If he
   is at sea in a storm, if his mind is quiet, he is likely to steer his
   vessel safely through the danger. But if he is perturbed and cast down
   with agitated alarm, we can have but little confidence in him, for we
   know not where he may steer the boat! A man who is afraid often runs
   into worse dangers than those from which he seeks to escape. He plunges
   himself into the sea to escape from the river--and it is as though he
   fled from a lion--and a bear met him.

   To be afraid, then, is generally a very mischievous thing. And though
   sometimes exceedingly excusable, yet full often it is also exceedingly
   dangerous. David, however, here gives us the cure for fear, "What time
   I am afraid, I will trust in You."

   I shall not have time this evening to take all the fears and amazements
   which distress humanity, but there are four or five which we will
   mention and which may comprehend the others-- I. SOMETIMES WE ARE
   AFRAID OF TEMPORAL TROUBLES.

   If some of you have such a smooth path in life that you are untried in
   this respect, yet the great proportion of mankind have a hard fight to
   find bread to eat and garments with which they shall be clothed. And in
   the lives of the poor, especially, there must often be sad times when
   they are afraid lest they should not be able to provide things
   necessary and should be brought to absolute starvation. Such a fear
   must very often afflict those who are in extreme poverty. And you, too,
   who are in business, in this age of competition, you are, no doubt,
   frequently afraid lest, by a failure in this direction

   or in that, you should not be able to meet your engagements--and the
   good ship of your business should drive upon the rocks.

   Such fears, I suppose, fall to the lot of all young tradesmen when they
   are starting in business but, perhaps, there are a few older ones who
   have done longer and rougher work and are quite free from such times of
   anxious fear.

   And, Brothers and Sisters, even if we have none of these troubles about
   what we shall eat and what we shall drink, yet we have our domestic
   troubles that make us to be much alarmed. It is no small thing to see a
   child sick, or, still worse, to see your life's partner gradually
   fading away and to know, as some do, that the case is beyond all
   medical skill--and that she, who is so dear, must be taken away.

   And you wives, perhaps, are, some of you, dreading the hour when you
   may become widows and your little children may be fatherless. You have
   often been afraid as you have looked ahead to the calamity which seemed
   to overshadow you. God has not made this world to be a nest for us--and
   if we try to make it such for ourselves--He plants thorns in it so that
   we may be compelled to mount and find our soul's true home somewhere
   else, in a higher and nobler sphere than this poor world can give!

   Now, whenever we are tried with these temporal affairs, David tells us
   we are to trust in God. "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You." I
   will just do this--after having done my best to earn my daily bread and
   to fight the battle of life, if I find I cannot do all I would, I will
   throw myself upon the promise of God, wherein He has said, "Your bread
   shall be given you, and your water shall be sure." I will believe that
   my Heavenly Father, who feeds the ravens, will feed me, and that if He
   does not allow even the gnats that dance in the sunbeam to perish for
   lack of sustenance, He will not allow a soul that rests upon Him to
   perish for lack of daily bread. Oh, it is a sweet thing, though,
   perhaps, you may, some of you, think it a hard thing--it is a sweet
   thing when God enables you to leave tomorrow with Him and to depend
   upon your Father who is in Heaven!

   I speak to the tradesman and all who often have to do business in great
   waters, who seem to go from waterspout to waterspout and over whom all
   God's waves and billows seem to go--I believe you will find yourselves
   much stronger to do battle against these difficulties if it is your
   constant habit to commit all your cares to Him who cares for you. It
   will all go wrong with us, even in smooth waters, if we do not have God
   to be the Pilot. And as to rough weather, we shall soon be a wreck if
   we forget Him! I know of nothing more delightful to the Believer than
   every morning to commit the day's troubles to God and then go down into
   the world feeling, "Well, my Father knows it all." And then at night to
   commit the troubles of the day again into the great Father's hands and
   to feel that He has said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." It
   is sweet sleeping when you can have a promise for the pillow at your
   head! You know, perhaps, the good old story which is told of the woman
   on board ship who was greatly afraid in a storm, but she saw her
   husband perfectly at peace and she could not understand it. Her husband
   said he would tell her the reason, so, snatching up a sword, he pointed
   it at her heart. She looked at it, but did not tremble. "Well," he
   said, "are you not afraid? The sword is sharp and I could kill you in a
   moment." "No," she said, "because it is in your hands!" "Ah," he
   replied, "and that is why I am not afraid--because the storm is in my
   Father's hands and He loves me more than I love you!"

   A little child was at play in a lower room and as he played away by
   himself, amusing himself, about every ten minutes he ran to the foot of
   the stairs and called out, "Mother, are you there?" and his mother
   answered, "Yes, I am here," and the little lad went back to his sport
   and fun--and was as happy as happy could be--and until again it crossed
   his mind that his mother might have gone. So he ran to the stairs again
   and called, "Mother, are you there?" "All right," she said, and as soon
   as he heard her voice again, back he went once more to his play. It is
   just so with us. In times of temporal trouble we go to the Mercy Seat
   in prayer and we say, "Father, are You there? Is it Your hand that is
   troubling me? Is it Your Providence that has sent me this difficulty?"
   And as soon as you hear the voice which says, "It is I," you are no
   longer afraid! Oh, happy are they who, when they are afraid in this
   way, trust in the Lord!

   A second great fear, through which some of you have never passed, but
   through which all must pass who enter into Heaven, is a--

   II. FEAR CONCERNING THE GUILT OF PAST SIN.

   Do not tell me with regard to temporal troubles that they are sharp and
   bitter! Believe me, that trouble for sin is far more bitter and keen.
   Do you remember when God was pleased to awaken you from your long
   sleep--when you looked within and saw that you were all defiled, full
   of pollution and all manner of evil? Do you recollect how the thoughts

   pierced you like poisoned arrows--"God requires that which is pure."
   "For every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account
   thereof at the Day of Judgment"? Do you recollect how it seemed as
   though Hell flared up right before you where you stood and it seemed as
   though there was only a step between you and death! The terrors of the
   Lord got hold upon you, and the very marrow of your bones seemed to
   freeze as you thought about an angry God and of how you, in your sins,
   without any preparation, could meet Him! Oh, it is not so long ago with
   some of us but what we recollect being startled in our sleep under a
   sense of sin! And all day long the common joys of men were no joys to
   us, and though before we had been sprightly and cheerful like
   others--yet our mirth was now turned into mourning and all our laughter
   into lamentation!

   Perhaps some of you are passing through this state of mind now. You are
   now conscious of your old sins. The sins of your youth are coming up
   before your remembrance. Now, if so, listen to what David says, "What
   time I am afraid, I will trust in You." Beloved, if you would ever get
   rid of the fear of your past sins, remember that the Lord Jesus Christ
   came into the world to suffer for the sins of all who will trust Him.
   All the sins of all His people were reckoned as upon Him and all that
   they should have suffered on account of those sins, Jesus Christ
   suffered in their place! The mighty debt, too huge for us to calculate,
   was all laid upon Him and He paid it to the last farthing! He was sued
   and summoned at the court of the Eternal Justice, for the sins of His
   people were reckoned as upon Him--and all that they should have
   rendered with hands and feet, and brow and side, He discharged--the
   whole tremendous debt that was due to God, the debt caused by the sins
   of all His people were paid by Him!

   Now, it is a blessed thing when sin burdens us to fly away to Christ
   and stand in spirit beneath the Cross--and feel that under that crimson
   canopy, no flash of Divine penalty shall ever fall upon us! "Smite me?
   Great God, You cannot, for have You not smitten the redeeming Christ on
   my account? Is it not recorded that for those who trust Him, Your Son
   is both Surety and Substitute? How, then, can You first sue the
   Substitute and then afterwards sue the person for whom the Substitute
   stood?" Faith thus clings to the Cross and feels, no--knows--that all
   is safe! I would God that some of you who are lamenting over the burden
   of your sins and are pressed down by it, would look to the Son of God
   pouring out His life and would trust Him, for then your sins would be
   gone in a moment! Only look on Jesus and though you had committed all
   the sins that are committable by mortal man, yet Jesus Christ can put
   them all away! If every form of iniquity were heaped upon you till you
   were dyed through and through with it, like the scarlet that has been
   lying long a-soak in the dye, yet let the crimson blood of Jesus come
   into contact with your crimson sins and they--

   "Shall vanish all away, Though foul as Hell before! Shall be dissolved
   beneath the sea, And shall be found no more!"

   Now, I know it is very easy when we do not feel our sins to trust in
   Christ, but the business of faith is to trust in Christ when you do
   feel your sins! Brothers and Sisters, it would be cheap faith to take
   Christ as the saints' Savior, but it is the faith of God's elect to
   take Him as the sinner's Savior. When I can see marks of Grace in
   myself, to trust Christ is easy--but when I see no marks of anything
   good, but every mark of everything that is evil and then come and cast
   myself upon Him and believe that He can save me, even me, and rest
   myself upon Him--this is the faith which honors Christ and which will
   save us! May you have it and such time as you are afraid of sin, may
   you trust in Christ! A third fear, which is remarkably common, is a--

   III. FEAR LEST WE SHOULD BE DECEIVED.

   Among the best and most careful of Believers this fear intrudes itself,
   "Lest, after having preached to others, I myself should be a castaway."
   Lest, after having been united to the Church, I should prove to be a
   dead member and so be cut out of the living vine. All these fears have
   I met with. One has said, "I fear I was never chosen of God." Another
   has said, "I fear I never was effectually called." And yet a third has
   said, "I fear I never possessed the repentance that needs not to be
   repented of." Still others have confessed, "I am afraid my faith is not
   the faith of God's elect." Very frequently have I heard this, "I am
   afraid I am a hypocrite," which is one of the oddest fears in all the
   world, for nobody that isa hypocrite was ever afraid of it! It is the
   hypocrite who goes on peacefully, without fear, confident where there
   is no ground for confidence. But these fears abound and, in some
   respects, they are healthy. Better to go to Heaven doubting, than to
   Hell presuming! Better to enter into life crippled and maimed, than
   having two eyes and hands, and feet, to be cast into the

   destroying fire! We cannot say too much in praise of assurance--and we
   cannot speak too much against presumption. Dread that! Shun it with all
   your might!

   But when you and I are besieged by these doubts and fears--and I very
   often am--as to whether we are the children of God or not, what is the
   best thing for us to do? "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You."
   This is the shortcut with the devil! This is the way to cut off his
   head more readily than anyway else. Go straight to Christ! Do not stop
   to argue with Satan. He is a crafty old liar and he will be sure to
   defeat you if it comes to argument between you. Say to him, "Satan, if
   I am deceived, if all I have ever known up till now has been only head
   knowledge, if I am nothing but a mere hypocrite, yet now--

   "Black, I to the fountain fly Wash me, Savior, or I die!"

   It is a blessed thing to begin again--to be always beginning and yet
   always going on--for no man ever goes on to perfection who forgets his
   first love, his first faith and forgets to walk in Christ Jesus as he
   walked in Him at the first!

   Beloved, whatever may be the doubt that comes to you tonight, I beseech
   you remember it is still, "Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise
   cast out." If you have been a backslider, weep over it. If you have
   been a great sinner, be sorry for it, but still remember, "All manner
   of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." And, "Where sin
   abounded, Grace does much more abound." The Gospel's voice is still,
   "Return, you backsliding children, for I am married unto you, says the
   Lord." "Come, now, let us reason together. Though your sins are as
   scarlet, they shall be as wool. Though they are red like crimson, they
   shall be whiter than snow." Come, come, come, you doubting ones,
   trembling and broken to pieces! Come again--a guilty, weak and helpless
   worm--and cast yourself into Jesus' arms!

   But we cannot tarry upon that. A fourth fear, which is frequent enough
   to cause Christians much distress, is--

   IV. A FEAR THAT WE SHALL NOT HOLD ON AND HOLD OUT TO THE END.

   Many thousands of God's saints are quite unnecessarily troubled with
   this. Remember that where God begins to work, He does not ask usto
   finish. He always completes His own work. If you have begun the work of
   salvation, you will have to carry it on, but if God has begun the good
   work in you, He will carry it on and bring it to its perfection of
   completeness in "the day of Christ." Yet there are thousands who say,
   "Should I be tempted, I might fall! Working as I do with so many
   others, none of whom fear God, but who sneer and ridicule at Divine
   things, I might, perhaps, turn aside and prove like one of them." It is
   very proper that you should have that fear, very proper that you should
   be distressed at it--

   "What anguish has that question stirred, If I should also go!"

   But, dearly Beloved, what time you are afraid, do not say, "I shall be
   able to hold out"--do not trust in yourselves, or you will trust a
   broken reed--but what time you are afraid, renew your trust in Christ!
   Go with the temptation which you now experience and which you expect to
   return tomorrow, to the Lord and He will, with the temptation, show the
   way of escape out of it. I remember a miner who had been a sad, drunken
   man, and a great blasphemer, but he was converted among the
   Methodists--and a right earnest man he was! But he seemed to have been
   a man of strong passions and, on one occasion when he was praying, he
   prayed that sooner than that he might ever go back to his old sins, if
   God foresaw that he would not be able to bear up under the temptation,
   He would take him to Heaven at once! And while he was praying the
   prayer in the Prayer Meeting, he fell dead! God had answered him. Now,
   if you are to be tried in the order of Providence in a way that you
   cannot bear and there is no other way of escape for you, God will take
   you clean away to where no temptation shall ever come near you! What
   time you are afraid, put your trust in Him and all will be well! The
   last fear I have to mention, and then I shall have done with my first
   text, is this--

   V. THE FEAR OF DEATH.

   There are some "who, through fear of death, are all their lifetime
   subject to bondage." But Christ came to deliver such--and where Christ
   works, He delivers us from that fear! Beloved, do you ever get afraid
   of death? You do, perhaps, when you feel very sick or when you are very
   ill and low spirited. You begin to look ahead and you say, "I have run
   with the footmen and they have wearied me. What shall I do when I have
   to contend with the rider on the pale horse? My trials have been so
   great that I have scarcely found faith enough to bear them! What shall
   I do in the last great trial of the swellings of Jordan?" Now, what
   ought you to do at the time you are afraid of dying, but to say with
   David, "What time I am afraid, I will trust in You"? Oh, fear not to
   die! If you are in Christ, death is nothing! "But the pain, the dying
   strug-

   gle," you say. Oh, there is no pain in death! It is the life that is
   full of pain. Death? What is it? Well, it is but a pin's prick and then
   it is over. "Many lie a-dying for weeks or months together," say some.
   No! Say they live, for 'tis living that makes them full of pain and
   anguish, but death ends all that! Death is just the passing through the
   narrow stream that is the entrance in the fields where--

   "Everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers."

   To be afraid to die must be because we do not understand it, for if
   Believers know that to die is but to enter into the arms of Jesus
   Christ, surely they will be able to sing bravely with one good old
   saint--

   "Since Jesus is mine, I'll not fear undressing,

   But gladly put off this garment of clay!

   To die in the Lord is a Covenant blessing,

   Since Jesus to Glory, through death, led the way!" What time you are
   afraid of dying, trust in the living Savior, for in Him are life and
   immortality! Remember--

   "Jesus can make our dying bed

   Feel soft as downy pillows are,

   While on His breast we lean our head,

   And breathe our life out softly there." He will keep you where you
   shall sing--

   "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." You shall fear no fear and know no
   evil because He shall be with you! And you shall find that His rod and
   His staff do comfort you!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, I have taken you far, like a guide
   conducting a number of travelers up the first road on a mountain. And I
   think we have gathered something even there, but now I want you to go
   up still higher. I feel as if, in handling this text, we have been
   travelling third class to Heaven, but now I want you to get into the
   first class! Hitherto we have been going in a sort of parliamentary
   train, which will get to Heaven safe enough, but I want you now to take
   the express.

   My second text will let you know what I mean. It is in the 12th Chapter
   of Isaiah and the 2nd verse-- "I will trust and not be afraid."

   This is several stages beyond the first text. David says, "What, time I
   am afraid, I will trust in You." Isaiah says, "I will trust and not be
   afraid," which is far better! When David is afraid, He trusts in God,
   but Isaiah trusts in God, first, and then he is not afraid at all! I
   told you in the first case that there was disease and that faith was
   the remedy, but you know prevention is always better than cure. I have
   heard of a man who had serious chills and he was thankful to have a
   medicine which helped him through it. But his neighbor said he should
   not be very thankful for that, for he had a remedy which prevented him
   from ever having the malady! So with you who are doubting and
   fearing--it is a good thing that faith can bear you through it--but how
   much better it will be if you get a faith that does not have these
   doubts, that lives above these fears and troubles!

   Look! There are two vessels yonder, and a storm is coming on. I see a
   great hurrying and scurrying on the deck of one. What are they doing?
   They have a great anchor and they are throwing it out! The storm is
   coming and they want to get a good hold, for fear lest they should be
   driven on the shore.

   But on the deck of the other vessel, I see no bustle at all. There is
   the watch pacing up and down as leisurely as possible. Why are they not
   in a panic? "Ahoy there! Ahoy! What makes you so calm and assured? Have
   you got out your anchor? Look! Your comrades in the other vessel, how
   busy they are!" "Oh," says the watch, "but we had our anchor out a long
   while ago, before the storm came on and, therefore, we have no need to
   trouble, now, and hurry to throw it out."

   Now, you who are full of doubts, fears and troubles, you know the way
   to be safe is to throw out the anchor of faith! But it would be better
   if you had the anchor of faith already out so that you could trust in
   God and not be afraid at all!

   Let us take the fears which we have already mentioned over again. Faith
   saves from--

   I. THE FEAR OF TEMPORAL TROUBLE.

   The man who fully trusts in God is not afraid of temporal trouble. You
   have read, perhaps, the life of Bernard Palis-sy, the famous potter. He
   was confined for many years on account of his religion and he was only
   permitted to live at all because he was such a skillful workman that
   they did not want to put him to death. King Henry the Third of France
   said to him, one day, "Bernard, I shall be obliged to give you up to
   your enemies to be burned unless you change your religion." Bernard
   replied, "Your Majesty, I have often heard you say you pity me, but
   believe me I greatly pity you, though I am no king but only a poor
   humble potter. There is no man living that could compel me to do what I
   believe to be wrong--and yet you say you will be compelled--those are
   kingly words for you to utter!" And he could say this to the king, in
   whose hands his life was! Bernard was a very poor man. As I have told
   you, he used to earn his bread by making pottery. And he used to say,
   in his poverty, that he was a very rich man, for he had two things--he
   had Heaven and earth. And then he would take up a handful of the clay
   by which he earned his living. Happy man! Though often brought to the
   depths of poverty, he could say, "I will trust and not be afraid."

   Take as another example. Martin Luther. They came to Martin one day and
   they said, "Martin, it is all over with the Reformation cause, now, for
   the Emperor of Germany has sworn a solemn oath to help the pope." "I do
   not care a snap of my finger for both of them," he said, "nor for all
   the devils in Hell! This is God's work, and God's work can stand
   against both emperors and popes!" Luther was a man who trusted--really,
   intensely--and because of this he was not afraid. Is not that much
   better than being afraid, and then having to trust to banish the fear?
   Now, God is with me, and come what may--

   "Should earth against my soul engage,

   And hellish darts be hurled.

   Now I can smile at Satan's rage,

   And face a frowning world.

   Let cares like a wild deluge come,

   And storms of sorrow fall--

   I shall in safety reach my home,

   My God, my Heaven, my All." Oh, if we can all get to this brave
   assurance of faith, happy shall we be in the midst of the worst
   trouble! Faith also saves from the--

   II. FEAR CONCERNING PAST SIN.

   He is in a blessed state who is delivered from such fear because he who
   is not is not afraid. One of you knows a man, perhaps, who has got into
   debt and who owed a great deal. But some little time ago a friend paid
   all his debts for him-- and he has the receipt! Now, when he walks the
   streets, is this man afraid of the sheriff's officer? Does he fear that
   he shall be arrested? Why, no! He knows he shall not, because he
   carries the receipt with him! Every man who trusts Christ perceives his
   own sin, but he also perceives that Christ paid for all his sin. He
   that believes has the witness of his pardon in himself which he carries
   with him as a receipt and which eases his conscience and prevents his
   fears. Oh, if you can but know that Christ died for you! If you can but
   rest alone in Him so as to know that He is yours, then all the sins
   that you have ever committed, though you lament them, shall never cause
   you a moment's uneasiness, for they are drowned beneath the Red Sea of
   the Savior's blood and, therefore, you may say, "I will trust and not
   be afraid." As to that third fear which I mentioned--the fear lest we
   should be hypocrites, or--

   III. LEST THE WORK OF GRACE SHOULD NOT BE RIPENED IN OUR HEARTS--

   There is one way of getting rid of that fear entirely! If you take a
   sovereign across the counter, you may not know whether it is a good
   one--you may have some doubts about it. But if you get it straight from
   the Mint, I do not suppose you will have any suspicion of it at all! So
   when a man asks, "Is my faith right? Is my religion right?" If he can
   say, "I got it straight from the Throne of God by trusting in the blood
   of Jesus Christ"--then he will know that he received it from
   Headquarters--and there can be no mistake about it! A Christian has no
   right to be always saying--

   "Do I love the Lord or no? Am I His, or am I not?"

   He may be compelled to say it, sometimes, but it is far better for him
   to come just as he is and throw himself at the foot of the Cross and
   say, "Savior, You have promised to save those that believe! I believe,
   therefore You have saved me!" I know

   some think this is presumption, but surely it is worse than presumption
   not to believe God! And it is true humility to take God at His word and
   to believe Him.

   I think I once illustrated this Truth of God in this place in this way.
   A good mother has two children. Christmas is drawing near and she says
   to one of them, "Now, John, I shall take you out on Christmas Day to
   such a place and give you a great treat." She promises the same to
   William. Now, Master John says to himself, "Well, I do not know. I do
   not know whether my mother can afford it. Or perhaps I do not deserve
   it. I hardly think she will take me--it will be presumption in me to
   believe that she will."

   But as for little Master William, he is no sooner told that he is to go
   out on Christmas Day than he claps his hands and begins to skip--and
   tomorrow tells all his playmates that his mother is going to take him
   out on Christmas Day! He is quite sure of it. They begin to ask him,
   "How do you know?" "Why," he says, "Mother said so." Perhaps they
   mention some things that make it look rather unlikely. "Oh, but," he
   says, "my mother never tells lies and she told me she would take me,
   and I know she will!" Now, which of those children, do you think, is
   most to be commended--the bigger boy, who raised difficulties and
   suspected his mother's word? Why, he is a proud little fellow who
   deserves to go without the pleasure! But as for his little brother,
   William, who takes his mother at her word--I do not call him proud. I
   consider him truly humble--and he is the child who really deserves the
   mother's fondest love! Now, deal with God as you would have your
   children deal with you! If He says He will save you if you trust Him,
   then if you trust Him, why, He will save you! If He is a true God, He
   cannot destroy the soul that trusts in Christ! Unless this Bible is one
   great lie from beginning to end, the soul that trusts in Christ must be
   saved! If God is true, every soul that trusts in Jesus must be safe at
   the last. Whatever he may be and whoever he may be, if he trusts his
   soul with Christ and with Christ, alone, He cannot be cast away unless
   the promise of God can be of no effect! "I will trust and not be
   afraid."

   So, Brothers and Sisters, it will be with other fears--time fails us to
   mention them--whatever they may be. May you get into such a blessed
   state of confidence in the love of God, in the love of Christ's heart,
   in the power of Christ's arm, in the prevalence of Christ's plea, that
   at all times you may trust in Him and in nothing, whatever, be afraid!

   God bring us all up to this second platform and give us Divine Grace to
   stay there--and happy shall you be and have a foretaste of Heaven upon
   earth! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Witnessing at the Cross

   (No. 3363)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And one of the malefactors who was hanged, railed on Him, saying, If
   you are Christ, save Yourself and us. But the other answering rebuked
   him, saying, Do not you fear God, seeing you are in the same
   condemnation? And we, indeed, justly, for we receive the due reward of
   our deeds; but this Man has done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus,
   Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom. And Jesus said unto
   him, Verily, I say unto you, today shall you be with Me in Paradise."
   Luke 23:39-43.

   THE dying thief was certainly a very great wonder of Divine Grace. He
   has generally been looked upon from one point of view only--as a sinner
   called at the eleventh hour and, therefore, an instance of special
   mercy because he was so near to death. Enough has been made of that
   circumstance by others! To my mind, it is by no means the most
   important point in the narrative. Had the thief been predestined to
   come down from the Cross and live for half a century longer, his
   conversion would have been neither more nor less than it was. The work
   of Grace which enabled him to die in peace would, if it had been the
   Lord's will, have enabled him to live in holiness. We may well admire
   Divine Grace when it so speedily makes a man fit for the bliss of
   Heaven! But it is equally to be adored when it makes him ready for the
   battle of earth. To bear a saved sinner away from all further conflict
   is great Grace. But the power and love of God are, if anything, even
   more conspicuous when, like a sheep surrounded by wolves, or a spark in
   the midst of the sea, a Believer is enabled to live on in the teeth of
   an ungodly world and maintain his integrity to the end! Dear Friend,
   whether you die as soon as you are born-again, or remain on earth for
   many years is comparatively a small matter--and will not materially
   alter your indebtedness to Divine Grace! In the one case the great
   Husbandman will show how He can bring His flowers speedily to
   perfection. And in the other He will prove how He can preserve them in
   blooming beauty despite the frosts and snows of earth's cruel winter!
   In either case your experience will reveal the same love and power.

   There are other things, it seems to me, to be seen in the conversion of
   the thief besides the one single matter of his being brought to know
   the Lord when near to death's door.

   Observe the singular fact that our Lord Jesus Christ should die in the
   company of two malefactors. It was probably planned in order to bring
   Him shame and it was regarded by those who cried, "Crucify Him! Crucify
   Him!" as an additional ignominy. Their malice decreed that He should
   die as a criminal and with criminals--and in the center, between
   two--to show that they thought Him the worst of the three. But God, in
   His own way, baffled the malice of the foe and turned it to the triumph
   and Glory of His dear Son, for had there been no dying thief hanging at
   His side, then one of the most illustrious trophies of His love would
   not have been gained! And we would not have been able to sing to His
   praise--

   "The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day-- And there
   have I, though vile as he, Washed all my sins away!"

   His enemies gave our Lord Jesus an opportunity for still continuing the
   seeking, as well as the saving of the lost! They found Him an occasion
   for manifesting His conquering Grace when they supposed they were
   heaping scorn upon Him. How truly did the Prophet in the Psalm say, "He
   that sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in
   derision," for that which was meant to increase His misery revealed His
   majesty! Moreover, though it was intended to add an ingredient of
   bitterness to His cup, I do not doubt that it supplied Him with a
   draught of comfort. Nothing could so well have cheered the heart of
   Jesus and taken His mind off, for just an instant, His own hitter
   pangs, as having an object of

   pity before Him, upon whom He could pour His mercy! The thief's
   confession of faith and expiring prayer must have been music to his
   Savior's ears--the only music which could in any degree delight Him
   amid His terrible agonies. To hear and to answer the prayer, "Lord,
   remember me when You come into Your Kingdom," afforded our Lord a
   precious solace. An angel strengthened Him in the Garden, but here it
   was a man, nailed up at His side, who ministered consolation by the
   indirect, but very effective method of seeking help at His hands.

   Furthermore, the longs-continued testimony and witness for Christ among
   men was at that time exceedingly feeble and ready to expire, but the
   thief's confession maintained it. The Apostles, where were they? They
   had fled. Those disciples who ventured near enough to see the Lord,
   scarcely remained within speaking distance. They were poor confessors
   of Christ, scarcely worthy of the name! Was the chain of testimony to
   be broken? Would none declare His Sovereign Power? No, the Lord will
   never let that testimony cease, and lo, He raises up a witness where
   least you would expect it-- on a cross! One just ready to die bears
   witness to the Redeemer's innocence and to His assured coming to a
   Kingdom! As many of the boldest testimonies to Christ have come from
   the stake, so here was one that came from a cross and gained for the
   witness the honor of being the last testifier to Christ before He died!

   Let us always expect, then, dear Friends, that God will overrule the
   machinations of the foes of Christ so as to get honor from them. At all
   times of the world's history, when things appear to have gone to pieces
   and Satan seems to rule the hour, do not let us despair, but be quite
   sure that, somehow or other, the Light of God will come out of darkness
   and good out of evil!

   We will now come close up to the dying thief and look, first, at his
   faith. Secondly, at his confession of faith. Thirdly, at his prayer of
   faith. And fourthly, at the answer of his faith. First, then, may the
   Holy Spirit help us concerning this dying malefactor, to consider--

   I. HIS FAITH.

   It was of the operation of the Spirit of God and there was nothing in
   his previous character to lead up to it. How came that thief to be a
   Believer in Jesus? You who carefully read the Gospels will have noticed
   that Matthew says (Matt 27:44), "The thieves also, which were crucified
   with Him, cast the same in His teeth." Mark also says, "They that were
   crucified with Him reviled Him." These two Evangelists plainly speak of
   both thieves as reviling our Lord! How are we to understand this? Would
   it be right to say that those two writers speak in broad terms of the
   thieves as a class because one of them so acted, just as we in common
   conversation speak of a company of persons doing such-and-such, when,
   in fact, the whole matter was the deed of one man of the party? Was it
   a loose way of speaking? I think not! I do not like the look of
   suppositions of error in the Inspired volume. Would it not be more
   reverent to the Word of God to believe that the thieves did both revile
   Jesus? May it not be true that, at the first, they both joined in
   saying, "If you are the Christ, save Yourself and us," but that
   afterwards, one, by a miracle of Sovereign Grace, was led to a change
   of mind and became a Believer? Or would this third theory meet the
   case--that at the first the thief who afterwards became a penitent,
   having no thought upon the matter, by his silence gave consent to his
   fellow's reviling so as fairly to come under the charge of being an
   accomplice therein--but when it gradually dawned upon his mind that he
   was under error as to this Jesus of Nazareth, it pleased God in
   Infinite Mercy to change his mind so that he became a confessor of the
   Truth of God, though he had at first silently assented to the blasphemy
   of his companion? It would be idle to dogmatize, but we will gather
   this lesson from it--that faith may enter the mind, notwithstanding the
   sinful state in which the man is found. Grace can transform a reviling
   thief into a penitent Believer!

   Neither do we know the outward means which led to this man's
   conversion. We can only suppose that he was affected by seeing the
   Lord's patient demeanor, or, perhaps, by hearing that prayer, "Father,
   forgive them, for they know not what they do." Surely there was enough
   in the sight of the Crucified Lord with the blessing of God's Spirit to
   turn a heart of stone into flesh! Possibly the inscription over the
   head of our Lord may have helped him--"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of
   the Jews." Being a Jew, he knew something of the Scriptures, and
   putting all the facts together, may he not have seen in the prophecies
   a light which gathered around the head of the Sufferer and revealed Him
   as the true Messiah? Possibly the malefactor remembered Isaiah's words,
   "He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted
   with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was
   despised, and we esteemed Him not." Or, perhaps, the saying of David,
   in the 22nd Psalm rushed upon his memory, "They pierced My hands and My
   feet." Other texts which he had learned in his youth at his mother's
   knee may have come before his mind--and putting all these together,

   he may have argued, "It may be. Perhaps it is. It is. It must be. I am
   sure it is. It is the Messiah, led as a lamb to the slaughter." All
   this is but our supposition and it leads me to remark that there is
   much faith in this world which comes, "not with observation," but is
   worked in men by unknown instrumentalities. And so long as it really
   exists, it matters very little how it entered the heart, for in every
   case it is the work of the Holy Spirit! The history of faith is of
   small importance compared with the qualityof faith!

   We do not know the origin of this man's faith, but we do know that it
   was amazing faith under the circumstances. I very gravely question
   whether there was ever greater faith in this world than the faith of
   this thief, for he, beyond all others, realized the painful and
   shameful death of the Lord Jesus and yet believed! We hear of our
   Lord's dying upon the Cross, but we do not realize the circumstances
   and, indeed, even if we were to think upon that death very long and
   intently, we shall never realize the shame, weakness and misery which
   surrounded our Lord as that dying thief did, for he was suffering the
   pangs of crucifixion at the Savior's side and, therefore, to him it was
   no fiction, but a vivid reality! Before him was the Christ in all His
   nakedness and ignominy surrounded by the mocking multitude--and dying
   in pain and weakness--and yet he believed Him to be Lord and King! What
   do you think, Sirs? Some of you say you find it hard to believe in
   Jesus, though you know that He is exalted in the highest heavens. But
   had you seen Him on the Cross. Had you seen His marred Countenance and
   emaciated body, could you then have believed on Him and said, "Lord
   remember me when you come into Your Kingdom"? Yes, you could have done
   so if the Spirit of God had created faith in you like that of the
   thief! But it would have been faith of the first order, a jewel of
   priceless value! As I said before, so I say again--the vivid sympathy
   of the thief with the shame and suffering of the Lord rendered his
   faith remarkable in the highest degree!

   This man's faith, moreover, was singularly clear and decided. He rolled
   his whole salvation upon the Lord Jesus and said, "Lord, remember me
   when You come into Your Kingdom." He did not offer a single plea
   fetched from his works, his present feelings, or his sufferings--he
   cast himself upon the generous heart of Christ! "You have a
   Kingdom--You are going to it. Lord, remember me when You come into it."
   That was all. I wish that some who have been professors for years had
   as clear a faith as the thief--but they are too often confused between
   Law and Gospel, works and Grace-- while this poor felon trusted in
   nothing but the Savior and His mercy. Blessed be God for clear faith! I
   rejoice to see it in such a case as this, so suddenly worked and yet so
   perfect--so outspoken, so intelligent, so thoroughly restful!

   That word, "restful," reminds me of a lovely characteristic of his
   faith, namely, its deep peace-giving power. There is a world of rest in
   Jesus in the thief's prayer, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your
   Kingdom." A thought from Christ is all he needed! And after the Lord
   said, "Today shall you be with Me in Paradise," we never read that the
   petitioner said another word. I did think that, perhaps, he would have
   said, "Blessed be the name of the Lord for that sweet assurance. Now I
   can die in peace." But his gratitude was too deep for words and his
   peace so perfect that calm silence seemed most in harmony with it.
   Silence is the thaw of the soul, though it is the frost of the
   mouth--and when the soul flows most freely, it feels the inadequacy of
   the narrow channel of the lips for its great water floods--

   "Come, then, expressive silence, muse His prase." He asked no
   alleviation of pain, but in perfect satisfaction died as calmly as
   saints do in their beds!

   This is the kind of faith which we must all have if we would be saved.
   Whether we know how we come by it or not, it must be a faith which
   rolls itself upon Christ and a faith which consequently brings peace to
   the soul. Do you possess such faith, dear Friend? If you do not,
   remember that you may die all of a sudden, and then into Paradise you
   will never enter! Look well to this and believe in the Lord Jesus at
   once! And now in the second place, we are going to look at this man's--

   II. CONFESSION OF FAITH.

   He had faith and he confessed it. He could neither be baptized nor sit
   at the Communion Table, nor unite with the Church below. He could not
   do any of those things which are most right and proper on the part of
   other Christians, but he did the best he could under the circumstances
   to confess his Lord!

   He confessed Christ, first of all, almost of necessity, because a holy
   indignation made him speak out He listened for a while to his brother
   thief, but while he was musing, the fire burned and then spoke he with
   his tongue, for he could no longer bear to hear the innocent Sufferer
   reviled. He said, "Do not you fear God, seeing you are in the same
   condemnation? And we, indeed, justly, for we receive the due reward of
   our deeds: but this Man has done nothing amiss." Did this poor thief
   speak out so bravely and can some of you silent Christians go up and
   down the streets and hear men curse and blaspheme the name of
   Christ--and not feel stirred in spirit to defend His cause? While men
   are so loud in their reviling, can you be quiet? The stones you tread
   on may well cry out against you! If all were Christians and the world
   teemed with Jesus' praise, we might, perhaps, afford to be silent. But,
   amidst abounding superstition and loud-mouthed infidelity, we are bound
   to show our colors and avow ourselves on Christ's side! We doubt not
   that the penitent thief would have owned his Lord apart from the
   railing of his comrade, but as it happened, that reviling was the
   provoking cause. Does no such cause arouse you? Can you play the coward
   at such a time as this?

   Observe next, that he made a confession to an unsympathetic ear The
   other thief does not seem to have made any kind of reply to him, but it
   is feared that he died in sullen unbelief. The believing thief made his
   confession where he could not expect to gain approbation, yet he made
   it none the less clearly. How is it that some dear friends who love the
   Lord have never confessed their faith even to their Christian Brothers
   and Sisters? You know how glad we would be to hear of what the Lord has
   done for you, but yet we have not heard it! There is a mother who would
   be so happy if she did but know that her boy was saved, or that her
   girl was converted--and you have refused her that joy by your silence!
   This poor thief spoke for Jesus to one who did not enter into his
   religious experience--and you have not even told yours to those who
   would have communed with you and rewarded you with comfort and
   instruction! I cannot understand cowardly lovers of Christ! How you
   manage to smother your love so long, I cannot tell. Love is usually
   like a cough, which speaks for itself, or a candle which must be seen,
   or a sweet perfume which is its own revealer! How is it that you have
   been able to conceal the day which has dawned in your hearts? What can
   be your motive for coming to Jesus only by night? I cannot understand
   your riddle and I hope you will explain it away. Do confess Jesus if
   you love Him, for He bids you do it and says, "He that confesses Me
   before men, him will I confess before My Father which is in Heaven."

   Observe well that this poor thiefs confession of faith was attended
   with a confession of sin. Though he was dying a most horrible death by
   crucifixion, yet he confessed that he was suffering justly. "We indeed
   justly." He made his confession not only to God, but to men, justifying
   the law of his country under which he was then suffering. True faith
   confesses Christ and, at the same time, confesses its sin. There must
   be repentance of sin and acknowledgment of it before God if faith is to
   give proof of its authenticity. A faith that never had a tear in its
   eye, or a blush on its cheek, is not the faith of God's elect! He who
   never felt the burden of sin, never felt the sweetness of being
   delivered from it! This poor thief is as clear in the avowal of his own
   guilt as in his witness to the Redeemer's innocence! Reader, could we
   say the same of you?

   The thiefs confession of faith was exceedingly honoring to the Lord
   Jesus Christ He confessed that Jesus of Nazareth had done nothing
   amiss--when the crowd around the Cross were condemning Him with speech
   and gesture! He honored Christ by calling Him, Lord, while others
   mocked Him. He honored Christ by believing in His Kingdom even while
   Jesus was dying on the Cross and by entreating Him to remember him
   though he was in the agonies of death. Do you say that this was not
   much? Well, I will make bold to ask many a professor whether he could
   honestly say that throughout the whole of his life he has done as much
   to honor Christ as this poor thief did in those few minutes! Some of
   you certainly have not, for you have never confessed Him at all! And
   others have confessed Him in such a formal manner that there was
   nothing in it. Oh, there have been times when, had you played the man
   and said right straight out, in the midst of a ribald crew, "I do
   believe in Him whom you scoff and I know the sweetness of that dear
   name which you trample under foot," you might have been the means of
   saving many souls--but you were silent and whispered to yourself that
   prudence was the better part of valor and so you allowed the honor of
   your Master to be trailed in the mire! Oh, had you, my Sister, taken
   your stand in the family--had you said, "You may do what you will, but
   as for me, I will serve the Lord"--you might have honored God far more
   than you have done, for I fear you have been living in a halting,
   hesitating style, giving way to a great deal which you knew was wrong,
   not bearing your protest, not rebuking your brother in his iniquity,
   but studying your own peace and comfort instead of seeking the
   Redeemer's Glory! We have heard people talk about this dying thief as
   if he never did anything for his Master, but let me ask the Christian
   Church if it has not members in its midst--gray-haired members, too,
   who have never, through 50 years of profession, borne one such bravely
   honest and explicit testimony for Christ as this man did while he was
   agonizing on a cross? Remember, the man's hands and feet were tortured
   and he was suffering from that natural fever which attends upon
   crucifixion! His spirit must have melted within him with his dying
   grief--and yet he was as bold in rebuke, as composed in prayer, and as
   calm in spirit as if he were suffering nothing! And thus he reflected
   much Glory upon his Lord.

   One other point about this man's confession is worthy of notice,
   namely, that he was evidently anxious to change the mind of his
   companion. He rebuked him and he reasoned with him. Dear Friends, I
   must again put a personal question. Are there not many professing
   Christians who have never manifested a tithe as much anxiety for the
   souls of others as this thief felt? You have been a Church member 10
   years, but did you ever say as much to your brother as this dying thief
   said to the one who was hanging near him? Well, you have meant to do
   so. Yes, but did you ever do it? You reply that you have been very glad
   to join others in a meeting. I know that, too, and so far so good! But
   did you ever personally say as much to another as this dying man did to
   his old companion? I fear that some of you cannot say so. I, for my
   part, bless and magnify the Grace of God which gave this man one of the
   sweet fruits of the Spirit, namely, holy charity towards the soul of
   another so soon after he, himself, had come to believe in Jesus! May
   we, all of us, have it yet more and more! So much for the confession of
   his faith. Now a little, in the third place, about--

   III. HIS PRAYER OF FAITH.

   "Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom." He addressed the
   dying Savior as Divine. Wonderful faith this, to call Him Lord who was
   "a worm and no man," and was hanging there upon the Cross to die! What
   shall we say of those who, now that He is exalted in the highest
   heavens, yet refuse to acknowledge His Deity? This man had a clearer
   knowledge of Christ than they have! The Lord take the scales from their
   eyes and make them pray to Jesus as Divine!

   He prayed to Him, also, as having a kingdom. That needed faith, did it
   not? He saw a dying Man in the hands of His foes nailed to the
   Cross--and yet he believed that He would come into a kingdom! He knew
   that Jesus would die before long, the marks of the death-agony were
   upon Him--and yet he believed that He would come to a kingdom! O
   glorious faith! Dear Friend, do you believe in Christ's Kingdom? Do you
   believe that He reigns in Heaven and that He will come a second time to
   rule over all the earth? Do you believe in Christ as King of kings and
   Lord of lords? Then pray to Him as such, "Lord, remember me when You
   come into Your Kingdom." May God give you the faith which set this
   thief a praying in so excellent a fashion!

   Observe that his prayer was for a spiritual blessing only. The other
   thief said, "Save Yourself and us!" He meant, "Save us from this cross.
   Deliver us from the death which now threatens us!" He sought temporal
   benefits, but this man asked only to be remembered by Christ in His
   Kingdom. Do your prayers run that way, dear Friends? Then I bless the
   Lord that He has taught you to seek eternal, rather than temporal
   blessings! If a sick man cares more for pardon than for health, it is a
   good sign. Soul mercies will be prized above all others where faith is
   in active exercise.

   Observe how humbly he prays. He did not ask for a place at Christ's
   right hand. He did not, in fact, ask the Lord to do anythingfor him,
   but only to "remember" him. Yet that, "remember," is a great word and
   he meant much by it. "Do give a thought to Your poor companion who now
   confesses his faith in You. Do in Your Glory dart one recollection of
   Your love upon poor me and think on me for good." It was a very humble
   prayer and all the sweeter for its lowliness. It showed his great faith
   in Jesus, far he believed that even to be remembered by Him would be
   enough. "Give me but the crumbs that fall from Your table, and they
   shall suffice me. But a thought, Lord Jesus, but one thought from Your
   loving mind, and that shall satisfy my soul."

   Did not his prayer drip with faith as a honeycomb with honey? It seems
   to me as if it laid soaking in his faith till it was saturated through
   and through with it, for he prays so powerfully, albeit so humbly.
   Consider what his character had been, and yet he says, "Lord, remember
   me when You come into Your Kingdom." Note well that it is a thief--an
   outcast, a criminal on the gallows who thus prays! He is an outcast by
   his country's laws and yet he turns to the King of Heaven and asks to
   be remembered! Bad as he is, he believes that the Lord Jesus will have
   mercy upon him! Oh, brave faith!

   We see how strong that faith was because he had no invitation to pray.
   I do not know that he had ever heard Christ preach. No Apostle had said
   to him, "Come to Christ and you will find mercy," and yet he came to
   Jesus! Here comes an uninvited guest in the sweet bravery of holy
   confidence in Christ's majestic love--he comes boldly and pleads,
   "Lord, remember me!" It was strong faith which thus pleaded. Remember,
   too, that he was upon the verge of death. He knew that he could not
   live very long and probably expected the Roman bone-breaker to give
   him, very soon, the final blow! But in the very hour and article of
   death he cried, "Lord, remember me," with the strong confidence of a
   mighty faith.

   Glory be to God who worked such a faith in such a man as this! We have
   done when we have mentioned, in the fourth place--

   IV. THE ANSWER TO HIS FAITH.

   We will only say that his faith brought him to Paradise. We had a
   Paradise, once, and the first Adam lost it. Paradise has been regained
   by the Second Adam, and He has prepared for Believers an Eden above,
   fairer than that first Garden of delights below! Faith led the dying
   thief to be with Christ in Paradise which was best of all! "Today shall
   you be with Me in Paradise." Whatever the joy of Christ, and the Glory
   of Christ, the thief was there to see it and to share it as soon as
   Christ Himself!

   And it brought him Paradise that very day. Sometimes a crucified man
   will be two or three days a-dying. Jesus, therefore, assures him that
   he shall not have long to suffer and confirms it with a, "verily,"
   which was our Lord's strong word of asseveration, "Verily I say unto
   you, today shall you be with Me in Paradise." Such a portion will faith
   win for each of us, not today, perhaps, but one day. If we believe in
   Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, we shall be with Him in the
   delights and happiness of the spirit world and with Him in the Paradise
   of everlasting Glory. If we commenced to believe at once and were to
   die immediately, we would be with Christ at once, as surely as if we
   had been converted 50 years ago! You cannot tell how short your life
   will be, but it is well to be ready. A friend was here last Lord's-Day
   of whom I heard this morning that he was ill--and in another hour that
   he was dead. It was short work. He was struck down and gone at once.
   That may be the lot of any one of you. And if it should be, you will
   have no cause whatever to fear it if you now, like the thief, trust
   yourself wholly in Jesus' hands, crying, "Lord, remember me when You
   come into Your Kingdom."

   The lesson of our text is not merely that Christ can save in our last
   extremity, though that is true, but that now, at this moment, Jesus is
   able to save us, and that, if saved at all, salvation must be an
   immediate and complete act, so that, come life or come death, we are
   perfectly saved! It will not take the Lord long to raise the dead--in a
   moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall be raised
   incorruptible--and the Lord takes no time in regenerating a soul. Dead
   souls live in an instant when the breath of the Spirit quickens them!
   Faith brings instantaneous pardon! There is no course of probation to
   go through! There are no attainments to be sought after and no
   protracted efforts to be made in order to be saved. You are saved if
   you believe in Jesus! The finished work of Christ is yours. You are
   God's beloved, accepted, forgiven, adopted child! Saved you are, and
   saved you shall be forever and ever if you believe!

   Instantaneous salvation! Immediate salvation! This, the Spirit of God
   gives to those who trust in Jesus! You need not wait till tomorrow's
   sun has dawned. Talk not of a more convenient season. Sitting where you
   are, the Almighty Grace of God can come upon you and save you--and this
   shall be a sign unto you that Christ is born in your heart, the hope of
   Glory--when you believe in Him as your Pardon, Righteousness, and
   All-in-All, you shall have peace. If you do but trust yourself in
   Jesus' hands, you are a saved soul and the angels in Heaven are singing
   high praises to God and the Lamb on your account! Farewell.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:1-24.

   Verse 1. Paul, called to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ through the will
   of God, and Sosthenes our brother This brother had been put to great
   shame. He was beaten before the judgment seat, if you remember, and now
   he has the great and lasting honor of being mentioned by the Apostle
   with himself. God will honor those who bear dishonor for His name's
   sake. Be not ashamed even to be beaten for Christ--the stripes are
   stripes of glory!

   2. Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are
   sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every
   place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and
   ours.The Epistles were written to distinct churches, but they have a
   bearing upon all Christians. Hence the Apostle says, "With all that in
   every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." Let us thank
   God no Scripture is of private interpretation--every promise belongs to
   all the Seed. If you are a Believer, you may freely appropriate to
   yourselves whatever was said of old to any individual Believer, or to
   any congregation of Believers!

   3, 4. Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from thee
   Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the Grace
   of God which is given you by Jesus Christ Paul is a great preacher of
   Divine Grace and, therefore, he is a great giver of thanks. Grace
   should be followed with thankfulness. "I thank my God." What a
   beautiful expression! Not only, "I thank God," but, "I thank myGod." He
   has God in possession! He has taken Him to be his own forever and ever!
   Beloved, have we all done the same? Can we say, "I thank my God"? You
   notice how often Paul, in the first ten verses mentions the name of the
   Lord Jesus Christ. I think it is 11 times. He was full of Christ. Not
   only did he love Christ in his heart, but he had Christ's name
   continually on his tongue, for he was not ashamed of the sweet name of
   Jesus Christ! Honey in the mouth, music in the ear, Heaven in the heart
   is that sweet name of Jesus!

   5. That in everything you are enriched by Him, in all utterance, and in
   all knowledge. The church of Corinth was a church of all the
   talents--it was not, however, a church so much of all the Graces, and
   so it was a very poor example for us. I sometimes think that its mode
   of worship is recorded rather as a warning beacon than as an example to
   us. It caused, incidentally through the abundance of their gifts and
   everybody wanting to exercise his gift, great divisions, and there was
   an absence of humility and love in the church. However, Paul is
   thankful for what they have.

   6, 7. Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. So that you
   come behind in no gift: waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
   This is a fine trait in their character--they did look to the Second
   Advent--it operated upon them, it helped them in many ways. We cannot
   now mention all the holy uses which lie in the warning for the coming
   of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it ought to be a good description of all
   Christians.

   8, 9. Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that you may be
   blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ God is faithful Blessed
   is His name that He is. We are often very unfaithful. Man is always so,
   but "God is faithful."

   9, 10. By whom you were called unto the fellowship ofHis Son Jesus
   Christ our Lord. Now Ibeseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord
   Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no
   divisions among you; but that you be perfectly joined together in the
   same mind and in the same judgment Where it is not so, the life of
   piety seems to ooze away. The blessing of God cannot rest upon a church
   unless we dwell together in unity, and for unity it is necessary that
   we be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same
   judgment.

   11-15. For it has been declared unto me ofyou, my brethren, by them
   which are ofthe house ofChloe, that there are contentions among you.
   Now this I say, that everyone ofyou says, I am of Paul; and I of
   Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ Is Christ divided? Was Paul
   crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank
   God that I baptized none ofyou, but Crispus and Gains. Lest any should
   say that I had baptized in my own name. It may have been an accidental
   circumstance that he did not happen to have baptized them, but he is
   glad of it, for he says that in the temper they were in, some of them
   would have made a boast of it.

   16, 17. And I baptized also the household of Stephanus: besides, I know
   not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize,
   but to preach the Gospel. There were other people who could baptize for
   him. It was enough that he should concentrate all his energies upon
   that one matter of preaching the Gospel--not that he neglected the
   Divine command--but that it was not necessary that he, any more than
   his Master, should personally baptize, for we read that, "Jesus Christ
   baptized not, but His disciples." Not to put a dishonor upon the
   ordinance, but to let us see that the ordinance does not depend upon
   the man, but upon that sacred name into which we are baptized--and upon
   the true faith of the person baptized.

   17. Not with wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made
   of no effect A very remarkable passage! Paul could have used the wisdom
   of words. In some of his Epistles he gives us a specimen of his mighty
   rhetoric. He was a born master of speech. There was a touch of poetry
   in him and always a high logical power, but he would not use it in his
   preaching, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of no effect. You
   may do what you like with human wisdom--put a bit into its mouth and
   try to lead it into obedience to Christ--but somehow or other its
   tendency is to rebel against Him!

   18-21. For the preaching ofthe Cross is to them that perish,
   foolishness, but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. For it
   is written, I will destroy the wisdom ofthe wise, and will bring to
   nothing the understanding oftheprudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
   scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish
   the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world
   by wisdom knew not God. You have only to study the history of the world
   at the time when Paul was writing, and you will see that the "world, by
   wisdom knew not God." It had made

   itself exceedingly philosophical and sage, but if you weigh its wisest
   conclusions, you will find that they were only polished folly. There is
   nothing left us of all the wisdom of that period! Time itself has
   proved it--no, has disproved it!

   21. 22. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them
   that believe. For the Jews require a sign. Some miracle, something that
   shall attest it in a supernatural way.

   22-24. And the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ
   crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks
   foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,
   Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Beloved, you know how
   true this is! It has been a wonderful power in you, and this day it is
   the only wisdom which you desire to possess!
     __________________________________________________________________

Surveying the Field

   (No. 3364)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 24, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH
   7, 1867.

   "And I arose in the night, I and some few men with me: neither told I
   any man what Godhadput into my heart to do at Jerusalem: neither was
   there any beast with me, save the beast that I rode upon." Nehemiah
   2:12.

   NEHEMIAH, it seems, prepared himself for action by taking a survey of
   the necessities of the case. Although he lived before our Savior's day,
   he certainly acted upon one of our Savior's maxims about counting the
   cost, lest, after having begun to build, we should not be able to
   finish. I like to picture to myself that man of God going by moonlight
   round all the waste places of the city, compelled here and there to
   dismount by reason of rubbish, clambering over the fallen stones,
   leaping, sometimes, with agility from crag to crag of the city's
   walls--getting in his mind a clear idea of all the city's
   desolation--and feeling in his heart the pressing, heavy weight and
   burden of the responsibility which God had thrust upon him. If he had
   begun his work carelessly and thoughtlessly, he might have failed in
   it, but having begun months before with prayer, having been guided by
   Providence so far, yet even now the very first step he must take is a
   personal survey of the work and a thorough personal acquaintance with
   the necessities of the case.

   Now, I know that there are here, on the weeknight at the service, many
   who love the Master and are anxious to do something in His cause. And I
   thought I might very profitably commend to them the example of Nehemiah
   in this respect. We shall consider Nehemiah, then, first as a fine
   example to those who would seek the good of the Church at large.
   Secondly, a pattern to any of us laboring in any one distinct sphere.
   And thirdly, I think I may apply the same principle in reference to the
   personal work which is being done in our own hearts. And before we
   conclude our meditation, I may ask you to take a quiet ride around the
   desolations of your own spirit and so get a clear view of what must be
   done before you shall become a city inhabited by God to His praise and
   Glory! First, then, dear Friends, I suppose I have here, as Nehemiah
   had, a few men and women earnest, resolved--disinterested men and women
   who are willing--

   I. TO SEEK THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH, OF THE CHURCH AT LARGE.

   Such men will allow the word of exhortation when I say to them, first,
   you and I are in the service of the great Church of God and we must,
   like Nehemiah, firmly resolve that we will do it. Our heart must be set
   upon this thing. It must not be with us a mere fancy which we have
   taken up as we might have taken up any other. It must not even be of a
   spasmodic kind, but our heart must be set towards the Church of God
   because it is the home of our love, the place of our birth, the bride
   of Christ, the hope of the world, the pillar and ground of the Truth of
   God! If we have not such a view of the work to be done and a resolve
   that it shall be done--we certainly shall not succeed in it.

   And, my Brothers and Sisters, we must, like Nehemiah, be quite clear
   that we have no sinister motives, no selfish ends to be answered!
   Nehemiah was in a high and good position as chamberlain or cup-bearer
   to the king, but he gave up that and left Shushan to the desolations of
   Jerusalem--a long and toilsome journey. Even when the city was built,
   though the place was the beloved of his heart, yet he does not seem to
   have had any prospect of remaining in it, for the king had set him a
   time for his return. And though he did stay there 12 years, yet it must
   have been by successive furloughs that he obtained this absence from
   the palace, so that he had no selfish objective whatever. If the city
   were built, he would not dwell in it. And if the Temple-glories were
   restored once more, he would but once look upon them and then return
   again to the city of his employment and to the palace of the alien king
   at Shushan.

   God will not bless us to the Christian Church if we want to make a
   party to ourselves, or to take to ourselves the leadership. He will not
   acknowledge us in the work if we are merely seeking our own esteem,
   good name and fame under

   cover of a zeal for righteousness and for the Glory of God. No! There
   must be a resolution, but the resolution must be based on something
   better than the objectives of personal aggrandizement. There must be a
   devotion to God and a complete and perfect dedication and consecration
   of our souls to the good of the Church and our Lord Jesus Christ.

   Supposing that we have already, by Divine Grace, been called into such
   a condition? Then, further, we must learn, like Nehemiah, the art of
   waiting. He first prayed about Jerusalem, but he did not cease to hope.
   And when he came to the holy, though wasted city, he did not rush to
   the work at once, as our hot blood too often suggests to us to do. He
   knew that "raw haste" was "half-sister to delay." He was there three
   whole days in which nothing was attempted. He did not seize a trowel in
   his hand and hasten at once to work, letting other people come and join
   him if they pleased, but he rode alone all round the walls to inspect
   the damage and to estimate the cost in sacrifice and toil to repair it.
   We must be eager to labor, but we must also learn to wait. God's
   servants will find that their Master does not always give them instant
   and immediate success, but that He is often pleased to glorify Himself
   by testing their faith. If you are a soldier, you must not expect to be
   always in the fight, but must sometimes lie, perhaps for tedious days
   and even weary months, in the trenches, just as our army had to lie
   before Sebastopol--worn out with waiting, anxiously wishing for the
   order to charge. So our heavenly Lord, our great Captain, sometimes
   teaches us patience, making us wait until the time shall come to do and
   dare. Fellow Christian, young man or aged Believer, I am persuaded you
   will need to have in the midst of your toil for Jesus, to hear the
   word, "You must wait. Trust in the Lord and wait patiently for Him."

   But after he had waited, Nehemiah set a further example to us. He felt
   that he could act alone. Throughout the whole Book of Nehemiah you are
   struck with the singleness of the man and the potency of his
   individuality. He is quite prepared, if no one else will rise up to
   serve God, to serve Him by himself! And yet at the same time he never
   refuses the help of others. ' 'And I arose in the night, I and some few
   men with me; neither told I any man what God had put in my heart to do
   at Jerusalem." He who would serve God to any purpose must be willing to
   serve Him all alone. If you cannot stand the brunt of being forsaken,
   you will scarcely do to be a soldier of the Cross. Those whom Christ
   will greatly use must learn to be misunderstood, to be misrepresented
   by their Brothers and Sisters and in their more daring projects to be
   looked upon as being perfectly beside themselves. Yet they must count
   this among the cost and to be still prepared to stand to their work.
   Paul says, "At my first answer, no man stood with me, but"--sweet and
   mighty encouragement to your faith if you are alone!--"nevertheless,
   the Lord stood with me." Now, I think we shall find that it is not easy
   to couple the independence of a noble mind with the willingness to
   accept help from the few and the feeble, who at the very first are
   willing to gather around you. A man is apt to say, "No! I can act
   alone. These will but hamper me." And yet let us always remember that,
   though God has usually worked by one man, and though almost all the
   great wonders of the olden times were accomplished by personal courage
   and were feats of personal faith, yet at the same time He has
   frequently been pleased to ally to the one man a company of others,
   without whom the one man would have been feeble, indeed! Take the case
   of Gideon. We are told of "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and,
   of course, Gideon leads the van, but what would Gideon have done
   without the men that lapped? Those few and feeble folk with their
   pitchers and their torches must go with Gideon--and God will bless
   Gideon through them--and the world through the man and those who follow
   him! We must be willing, therefore, to take any help God may offer to
   us, and not be very particular about what that help is, so long as we
   are assured that God has sent it to us. We must be willing to lay aside
   our individual and sole reliance to come down from the high place of
   personal independence and work side by side with others, if it is the
   Lord's will.

   Then, further, my Brothers and Sisters, if you and I should now have in
   our minds some great work for God, we must be quite sure that we do not
   indulge in any boasting. Oh, great things are going to be done! Oh, the
   wonderful prospectuses that some people have brought out of wondrous
   things that were going to regenerate the world--and the only purpose
   they have served up to now has been to increase the work in some
   printing office! Nothing else has come from many of them. And you know
   there are people who really, by their own talk, should have turned the
   world upside down by now, but they have not done anything of the sort
   as yet. Perhaps the time may not yet have come, but with them it seems
   as if it never will come or could come! Nehemiah says, "Neither told I
   any man what my God had put into my heart to do at Jerusalem." You will
   often find it best not to commit your plans to others. If you want to
   serve God, go and do it and thenlet other people find it out
   afterwards. You have no need to tell what you are going to do and, I
   may add, there is no need for your telling what you have done, for
   very, very frequently God withdraws Himself when we

   boast of what is being done. One of the greatest injuries to the
   revival in the North of Ireland a few years ago was that it was made to
   be a kind of show thing and people said, "Come, see my zeal for the
   Lord of Hosts," and after awhile the Glory departed--not because the
   workers on the spot, themselves, desired any such vain-glorying, but
   because some who were not of a like spirit gave occasion to the flesh
   in this respect. We must mind and take care that when we work for God,
   we keep always before us that we are not working as unto men and do not
   need men's praise, but unto the Lord is the offering presented and the
   Lord alone shall have it!

   I have not yet come to this midnight ride of Nehemiah's, but I think it
   important to mention that he is again a pattern to us in our work for
   the Church of God in that he was absolutely sure that what he was doing
   was right He speaks of the thoughts and longings that he had as
   something which God had put into his heart to do. Get quite clear and
   assured of that, my Brothers and Sisters, or else go home. If you are
   not certain that the work you are about was given to you of God, and as
   positively and distinctly given to you as the work was given to Isaiah
   when the seraph touched his lips with the live coal from off the altar,
   you have no business to enter upon the work at all, for your whole
   strength will lie in a full conviction that your Master has sent you.

   And now having brought the man before you, let me exhort you, dear
   Brothers and Sisters, if you long for the good of the Church of God, to
   quietly take a walk round about her. Count her towers. Mark her palaces
   and her bulwarks. Do not go out and take notes and jottings as to what
   the world says Christ's Church is, or ought to be! Do not go with the
   view of seeing faults where there are none and railing at Christianity
   generally. That is a very heathenish practice, into which some persons
   constantly fall. But go with this solemn intent as before God, "Now, if
   I am to be serviceable to the Church in any large measure, I must know
   what her present condition is." My own solemn conviction is that a
   painstaking, judicious investigation into the present state of the
   Christian Church will have the result of perfectly appalling you! It
   has been said, and there are abundant facts to prove it, that probably
   during the last 200 years, instead of Protestantism, taking it in the
   large sense of the word, making any increase in the world, it has
   rather been diminishing and that Popery has increased! It is also, I
   believe, very certain to any of you that like to read the reports of
   many missionary societies, that the number of conversions worked under
   the missionaries abroad is so insignificant that it scarcely keeps up
   to the number of converts in years past! We have heard of a missionary
   returning after 12 years of labor and, on being asked if he knew of one
   heathen being converted under him, said he did not know of one! We feel
   that the whole field of missionary work everywhere--with but the
   exception, perhaps, just now of Southern Africa and of the labors of
   some in China--is just simply working without results. Not but what we
   ought to work all the same if we have no results, for even then we must
   not fall back.

   And the Church of God in England is just the same. There is no
   increase. We know it is a matter of statistical fact that our own
   denomination, with the exception of London and one Welsh county, has
   made no progress whatever during the last 12 months. Statistics prove
   it to be in the same position now as then. The whole mass of Methodism,
   which was once so potent for good, has, I think, only received 100
   increase on the year before--and it is questionable whether they have
   increased at all. So it is everywhere. New Churches are built, but what
   is the information we get? Why, in several built in the poorer
   districts, the whole congregation might go into the vestry, and so the
   buildings are now practically useless, seats without occupiers because
   some of the preachers are men that cannot be understood by the common
   people. If they preach the Gospel--and often they do not--they preach
   it after such a dull and lifeless fashion that it is not worthwhile
   going to listen to it! Now, if this is so, we must get the fact,
   saddening as it is, well worked into our hearts. The errors of some
   Churches, the division of others, and the general coldness and
   deadness--oh, if we did but keenly realize these, I am persuaded that
   many of us would cry day and night unto God that He would make bare His
   arm in the midst of His own Church! We should not go in and out of our
   pews feeling happy and comfortable because our own Church may be
   prospering and because in our sanctuary souls are being saved--but
   there should be great searching of heart for the state of Zion! There
   should go up a weeping and a wailing unto God, until the set time to
   favor her. Even the set time should come because her children take
   pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof! I would encourage
   you to get a clear view of the Church at large and then, in God's
   strength, go forward to any work which God has given you for her good.

   We shall not need much time, in the second place, to indicate that this
   is also--

   II. THE RIGHT METHOD OF PROCEEDING WITH REGARD TO ANY SERVICE WHICH, IN
   OUR SPHERE, WE ARE RENDERING TO CHRIST.

   Brothers and Sisters, I hope you are all working for Christ. If Christ
   has saved you, can you do otherwise than live to your Savior? If,
   indeed, your sins are all put away by His precious blood. If you are
   wrapped in His spotless righteousness and accepted in the Beloved, I do
   trust that the love of Christ compels you to tell others of the way of
   salvation, and to seek to bring in the wandering sheep of the house of
   Israel! Now, if I am right in my belief that you are engaged in some
   departments of Christian service, I am sure I shall be judicious in
   saying to you--take a thorough investigation of the work in which you
   are engaged. If it is to teach a class of children, lay those children
   on your heart! Think a great deal about them. Think about them by
   night, as Nehemiah thought of Jerusalem, and remember that they have
   souls, that those souls are under condemnation--that nothing but the
   precious blood can deliver them--that if they are not so delivered,
   sooner or later those boys and girls of yours will perish! Yet said our
   Lord, "It is not your Father's will that one of these little ones
   should perish." Get that solemn fact thoroughly worked into you.
   Mothers, fathers, you have children committed to your care. You are
   longing for the conversion of these little ones. Now I want you to get
   a full estimate of the character of each child! You have peculiar
   opportunities of riding around, as it were, your little city. Mark the
   different constitutions, the special weaknesses and defects of that boy
   and the blemishes and sins of that girl--and always keep this before
   your minds--that your children, like the children of others, need the
   regenerating of the Holy Spirit and the saving Grace of the Lord Jesus
   Christ! Do not take a light view of sin in your children any more than
   sin in others' children. The hate of God against sin is as real and
   intense in their case as in others until they are born-again! When you
   sit down to breakfast with them, think, "Ah, my dear child, I shall not
   meet you in eternity unless you are brought to the Cross !" Look the
   girl in the face, as you see her growing up to womanhood, and say to
   yourself, "Ah, my Lord! In mercy bring her to sit at Your feet as Mary
   did, and learn of You, or else she shall be no joy to me, for I must be
   parted from her in the world to come."

   Take, I say, a full survey of each child's condition and of its future
   ruin--and you will be most likely to be a blessing to the child if with
   your whole heart you are thus earnest and careful.

   Now, my dear Hearers, most of you are working with me in this place.
   Let us now go around the walls of this Tabernacle and find you out, as
   it were. Well, here are a great number of Church members--between three
   and four thousand--all professors of religion! But are all saved? Ah,
   there is an inquiry! We know they are not! We have used our best
   judgment in this question. We have urged upon them continually to make
   no profession unless they are sincere, but alas, the sad faces of some
   and their ultimate departure from the Truth of God prove that they went
   out from us because they were not of us! I know this is one of the
   worst parts of the wall with me. There is no grief that stings our
   heart like this, when Demas forsakes Christ, having loved this present
   evil world, or when some--overtaken by the lusts of the flesh, or the
   pride of life--crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open
   shame! It is a mercy when such hypocrites are found out and put away,
   but oh, it is a grievous injury to the Church which they have
   disgraced!

   Then, next, let us think of this. There are a number of people who
   always occupy these seats. They belong to them-- they are their seats
   and they have been sitting in them, some of them, ever since the house
   was built! And some of them were in the former house and have been
   under our ministry now for these 13 years. And yet some of them are not
   saved! A gentleman told me the other day he was surprised to hear that
   the Church was half as large as the congregation--or more, and he said,
   "That is a very great thing!" "No," I said, "that is a very little
   thing, for when we were at Park Street the Church was larger than the
   congregation." That is to say, there were more saved souls among us
   than there were seats for hearers, so that the members of the Church
   could not all come at any one time. And my soul will not be satisfied
   until this Tabernacle becomes much too small to hold the Church if they
   were all to come together at one time. I shall be very glad, indeed, if
   they swarm off and go elsewhere, and form other churches. I shall be
   most happy if they do that! But still, I shall always be looking
   forward to seeing all those saved who have sittings here. You know that
   at Park Street it came to this--on one occasion when a man wanted to
   take a seat, he came to me and said--I remember him well--"Sir, I
   understand that if I take a sitting here, I should be expected to be
   converted, but I cannot count upon that." "No, my good Friend," I said,
   "I know not, but still, if you take a seat, let us hope you will be."
   "Oh," said the man, "is that what was meant? I heard somebody say that
   when persons took seats, you expected them to be saved." Well, some do,
   and why should we not? Ought we not to expect that if they hear the
   Gospel preached, God will bless it to them?

   We do trust that day will soon come, but meanwhile we may go around
   this place and say that a great many who have seats here are unblessed,
   unsaved, have no desires after Christ, but are dead while they live!

   Well, then, you are painfully struck, in the next place, with the many
   casual hearers who come here and are not saved. It was once well said
   by someone, that if sinners were scarcer than they are, we would think
   a great deal more of them! If there were only one unsaved soul now
   remaining in London, why, the whole Church would be awake and in
   earnest to pray for that one soul! But when I say to you that, Sabbath
   after Sabbath, these aisles are thronged, and these pews, too, and that
   yet a very large proportion of the congregation remain
   unconverted--why, you hear it and you say, "Well, it is a very sad
   fact"--but it does not impress your hearts! We do not get the same
   impression of human ruin that Nehemiah got as he rode round Jerusalem.
   I wish we could. I wish we could think it over, resolve it in our minds
   and resolve it yet again until it came to be painful to us to think
   that so many human beings to whom the Gospel is preached should remain
   callous to its influence! And so many to whom Christ, Himself, shall
   become a savor of death unto death, and not of life unto life!

   Thus would I urge each Brother and Sister here, who is working for
   Christ, to get a clear view of the needs of the case.

   And now, lastly, I shall be happy if I shall be successful in this last
   point. It will be well for us, individually, to-- III. TAKE A LITTLE
   JOURNEY AROUND THE CITY OF MANSOUL WITHIN.

   Let me speak to every professor here. You say, "I am a Believer in
   Jesus." Well, Brother, Sister, then you can have no objection to look
   within, to search your heart! Ride around your soul. How about the
   tower of prayer? Is that well kept? Are you much with God in secret?
   And how about the castle of communion? Do you maintain fellowship with
   the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ? How about the gate of
   humiliation? Do you bow before the Lord, humbly acknowledging what you
   owe to Him, or has pride been pulling down the cornerstone thereof? How
   about the gate of holy zeal? Is that wide and in good care, or has it
   been burned with fire and taken away? And what about the wall of your
   love? Does that stand erect as it used to do? Have you not heard of one
   of old of whom it was said, "Gray hairs are here and there upon him,
   and he knows it not"? May not that be your case? If you will spend an
   hour or two tonight when all are asleep. If you should lie awake and
   commune with your own heart upon your bed, it might be a wondrous
   blessing to you! If you shall honestly look at yourself, not
   flatteringly. If you shall determine to know, as God shall teach you,
   the worst of your case. If you should desire to see which Grace is
   fainting, which holy passion expiring, which sacred feeling ready to
   die-- oh, it shall be well with you! Examine yourself, whether you are
   a Christian! This is a duty which cannot too often be performed. Ask
   the Lord to examine you. Say to Him, "Try my reins and my heart: search
   my inward soul: see if there is any wicked way in me: and lead me in
   the way everlasting."

   Oh, that some men would be more careful about the garden of their
   souls! But they let the weeds grow and they see them not! Like the
   sluggard, they do not want to see what will involve so much toil, but
   tossing upon the bed of presumption, from side to side, they dream of
   comforts and consider themselves to be safe, while all the while
   presumption is stealing away from them all their goods and making their
   garden to be a wilderness! Come, you slumberer, up! God help you up!
   Mistake no longer presumption for assurance! Recollect that assurance
   will stand the fullest examination, but if you dare not examine
   yourself, depend upon it--you are a presumptuous soul! I suggest this
   to the professor.

   And now I want to suggest the same thing to some of you who are
   unconverted. Some of you, perhaps, who have come in here tonight do not
   often listen to the Gospel and you wonder what I am doing, talking
   about riding around a city. Well, I want you to ride around yourselves,
   as it were, to take stock of your heart--to make calculations about
   your present state. Now, I will venture to say that some of you are not
   happy. You know you are not. You do not seem as if you had anything to
   live for, but to work hard at the shop, or to go to business. If you
   make money, it does not satisfy you. Time was when if you went to the
   theater, you spent a very glorious night, but now if you go
   there--well, it seems a very dreary sort of stuff to you--and the
   enjoyments you once got on with so well are very empty things to you
   now. I am glad to hear it! I am glad to hear it! I should like you to
   keep on thinking about this, and you would soon find that, in addition
   to the world's not satisfying you, you need a great deal more to
   content you than this world can ever give you! I wish, dear Friends,
   you would think of yourselves, for when we get men to think, the battle
   is half won! Thoughtless persons are on the outskirts of Hell, but
   thoughtful persons God blesses! Heedless and Too Bold went on and fell
   over the precipice and were dashed to pieces, but he who, being
   checked, waked and said, "Where am I? I do not know," and began to look
   about him, found himself just on the brink of ruin. But he had just
   time enough to start back and so was saved.

   My dear Friend, if you are not a converted person, do you not know that
   all your past life has been a waste? God made you, but you have never
   served Him! Why, if you make a tool, you expect it to be of use to you.
   God made you, but you never serve Him. If you keep a dog or a cat, you
   expect to have some pleasure from the creature. God has been keeping
   you all these years and what have you ever done for Him? If a man keeps
   a horse, it does him service, and when God makes a man, it is but
   reasonable that the man should do Him some service--and yet you have
   not. So your life has been a dead waste as to its noblest ends. And as
   for the present--why, that is no better! You are not living as you wish
   to live, and as for the future--no, no, no--do not say, "I won't think
   about that." Be a wise man and do think of it! You cannot escape the
   future any more than I can. You and I must die--and after death the
   Judgment follows--and an appearance before God. Now, my dear Hearer, be
   bold enough to look ahead. Oh, but you do not like the prospect! Well,
   but nevertheless gaze upon it, for it will be for your soul's good to
   know what it is to die without Christ and to rise again without Christ!
   And when you have got an estimate of that, it may be you will say, "No,
   I cannot endure this! Jesus, I throw myself into Your arms. Save me,
   and I shall be saved!" Oh, that men would but take stock of their souls
   and it would do them good. What a routing-out there is of corners! What
   long, long hours of extra toil at our great shops to take stock. Nobody
   thinks of going on in business without taking stock every now and then,
   or if he did, he would soon find himself in the Bankruptcy Court. Every
   good trader knows there must be a stock-taking. Why should not men take
   stock of their souls? How is it that here they say, "Oh, let well
   enough alone! I daresay it is all right," and so at last wake up and
   find themselves eternal bankrupts with nothing wherewith to pay, shut
   up in the prison out of which they can never escape?

   May God the Holy Spirit press home these words so feebly spoken. And if
   any sinner here shall be led by the sight of himself to tremble before
   God, let him remember and rejoice that there is life for a look at the
   Crucified One! Whoever trusts in Christ is saved! Rest wholly in Him.
   Cast yourself upon Him. As the swimmer gives himself up to the water,
   that it may support him, so do you, and thus shall the Grace of God
   that brings salvation appear unto you!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: NEHEMIAH 1; 2:1-8.

   Verses 1, 2. The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to
   pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan
   the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren came, he and certain men of
   Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which
   were left in captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. This good man was, of
   course, one of the banished Jews, but he had greatly prospered. He had
   risen in the empire of Ahasuerus until he had come to be great--even to
   be one of the chamberlains of the empire. But his heart was towards his
   poor people--his fellow Jews that were in poverty. Now, whenever God
   exalts a Christian in a temporal position, he ought not to disown his
   poor brethren, but his heart should go out towards them to see what he
   can do for them. It is a shame for any man to forget his country. Does
   not the Pole still say, "No, Poland, you shall never perish"? And we
   admire such patriotism. And the same feeling should be in every
   Christian breast. We should love the Church of God even as Nehemiah
   loved the chosen race from which he had sprung. So when he met with
   Hanani, the conversation was all about the poor brethren that remained
   at Jerusalem.

   3. And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity
   there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of
   Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with
   fire. A sad story they had to tell! Ezra had assisted in somewhat
   rebuilding the Temple, but little had been done for the private
   dwellings and for the walls and public buildings of the city. It was in
   a sad and wretched state--and the Jews were despised and reproached.
   Nehemiah was a great man, but he was sorry to hear this. He felt as if
   he was a fellow sufferer with his poor brethren.

   4. And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and
   wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God
   of Heaven. Was it his concern? Was it any more his concern than that of
   other men? Yes, he felt it to be his--and the tender heart which he had
   towards the people of God made him feel it to be peculiarly his. If
   nobody else did anything, he must! And, oh, dear Brothers and Sisters
   in Christ, whenever you see the cause of God in a

   sad estate, lay it to heart--weep, lament and pray--feel that you have
   an interest in it! Christ is your Savior. Of the Church you are a part.
   These blessed interests of Sovereign Mercy belong to you. Take them to
   yourself and say, By God's help, I will lay myself out for the progress
   of His cause. "I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and
   fasted and prayed before the God of Heaven."

   5, 6. And said, I beseech You, O LORD God of Heaven, the great and
   terrible God, that keeps Covenant and mercy for them that love Him and
   observe His commandments--Let Your ear now be attentive, and Your eyes
   open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant, which I pray before
   You now, day and night, for the children of Israel, Your servants and
   confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned
   against You: both I and my father's house have sinned. He seems to act
   like a priest for God, taking the sin of the people upon himself and
   confessing it. If they were hardhearted, and would not confess, he
   would, and pour out his complaint before God!

   7-10. We have dealt very corruptly against You, and have not kept Your
   commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments which You commanded
   your servant Moses. Remember, I beseech You, the word that You
   commanded Your servant Moses, saying, If you transgress, I will scatter
   you abroad among the nations. But if you turn unto Me and keep My
   commandments and do them: though there were of you cast out unto the
   uttermost part of the Heavens, yet will I gather them from there and
   will bring them unto the place that Ihave chosen to set My name there.
   Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by
   Your great power, and by Your strong hand. You see what an admirable
   prayer this is. There is a full confession of sin--an acknowledgment of
   the Justice of God in having punished His people. But then there is a
   quoting of the Divine Word--a putting of the Lord in remembrance that
   He had made such-and-such a promise! That is the very backbone of
   prayer! If you go to the bank, the main part of the transaction is to
   put the check--the note of hand--upon the counter. You get no money
   otherwise! So when you go in prayer, the main part of prayer must lie
   in pleading the promise, "You have said it. You have said it." Hold God
   to His word with a sacred daring of faith. "You have promised. You have
   declared. Now be as good as Your word." Then notice another plea he
   has. He says he is pleading for God's servants--His redeemed--redeemed
   by great power! Oh, it should always make us feel strong in prayer when
   we recollect that God's people are very dear to Him and He has done
   great things for them--therefore He loves them and for those whom He
   loves, surely He will work great deliverances! These are arguments.
   There ought to be great argument in prayer if we hope to prevail.

   11. O Lord, I beseech You, let now Your ear be attentive to the prayer
   of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear
   Your name, and prosper, I pray You, Your servant this day, and grant
   him mercy in the sight of this man.That was king Artaxerxes, whom he
   rightly viewed as a man, for, great as he was--all-potent king of
   Persia--yet still but a man! Nehemiah consoles himself in the prospect
   of having to go in before him to ask favor at his hands.

   11. For I was the king's cupbearer.

   Nehemiah 2:1. And it came to pass in the month Nisan. Three or four
   months after he began to pray.

   1. In the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before
   him: and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. We have in some
   of the old slabs and carvings some singular pictures of the dainty way
   in which the kings of Persia and Media were served by their cupbearers.
   They always spilled a little wine upon their left hand and drank first,
   for fear the king should be poisoned. So the greatest men of the
   different provinces of the empire were called by turns to act this part
   before the king. It was a piece of State ceremony.

   1. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his presence. And there was a
   law--one of those stupid Median laws--that no man was to come before
   the king with a sad countenance. It was supposed that the king must be
   so serenely happy, himself, that none might come there unless they were
   happy, too. Nehemiah had been able to obey this rule, but on this
   occasion he did not because he could not.

   2-6. Therefore the king said unto me, Why is your countenance sad,
   seeing you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow ofheart. Then
   I was very sore afraid, and said unto the king, Let the king live
   forever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place
   of my father's sepulchers, lies in waste, and the gates thereof are
   consumed with fire? Then the king said unto me, For what do you make
   request? So I prayed to the God of Heaven. And I said unto the king, If
   it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight,
   that you would send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's
   sepulchers, that I may build it. And the king said unto me, (the queen
   also sitting by him). Who was probably, Queen Esther and, therefore,
   abundantly agreeable that such a work should be done for her own
   nation. "The king said unto me."

   6. For how long shall your journey be? And when will you return? So it
   pleased the king to send me: and I set him a time. He was a valued
   servant. They did not wish to part with him. And if he would go for a
   time to do this business, yet they took steps to assure he would
   return. There are some servants that I know of, who, if they were to go
   away, their masters would not be particularly anxious that they should
   come back again! It is well when a man is so in favor with God that his
   piety acts upon his ordinary life and he becomes in favor with men,
   also. That is a poor, miserable religion that does not make its
   possessor a good servant. Yes, in whatever station of life we may be
   placed, we ought to be far more valuable to those round about us on
   account of our fearing God! May we always be of such a character that
   if we were gone, we should be missed. "I set him a time."
     __________________________________________________________________

Pictures of Happiness

   (No. 3365)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Happy are the people who are in such a state; happy are the people
   whose God is the Lord." Psalm 144:15.

   SOMETIMES God's people are unhappy when they ought to be happy. God
   observes this. Therefore He tells them when they possess the materials
   of happiness and gives them a description of the peace and prosperity
   of those who are truly happy men. Thus recollecting the choice mercies
   which surround them and not attaching so much importance to the little
   trials of the day, they may become of God's mind and feel themselves to
   be as happy as He declares they are. The pure in spirit are said by our
   Savior to be blessed. They often think themselves to be cursed and feel
   as if there were no blessing for them. But blessed they are, for Jesus
   knows whom He has blessed! And though God's people are sometimes, in
   their own consciences, unhappy, they are a happy people and to be
   congratulated on their condition notwithstanding. They have reasons for
   happiness. They have satisfactory grounds for happiness. They have
   springs of happiness. They have future prospects of happiness. If you
   are God's people, you cannot err in exorcising faith about this thing.
   You are numbered with those who are the happiest people under Heaven!

   The text speaks not only of the persons, but also of the condition of
   God's people--a condition which I believe is, to a great extent,
   parallel to our own as a Christian Church. It seems to me that we have,
   according to the Gospel standard of interpretation, all the privileges,
   all the blessednesses, which, in the verse preceding the text, David
   ascribes to this happy people. I shall ask you, therefore, to look at
   these things, that each particular may be an incentive to gratitude. He
   declares here--

   I. THE ELEMENTS OF HAPPINESS.

   First, David accounts those to be a happy people who are in a healthy
   and vigorous condition. The sons have "as plants grown up in their
   youth. And the daughters as cornerstones, polished after the similitude
   of a palace." It is a great blessing to a Church to have in her midst
   fruitful, earnest young men, yes! And I will say that whatever their
   age may be, it is no small measure of a Church's strength to have her
   sons about her, who, having grown up and become mature in knowledge,
   mental force and spiritual vigor, bear fruit unto the Glory of God!

   There has been a tendency in the Christian Church to decry
   instrumentality. But God always has worked by instruments. So far as we
   know, He always will. When Christ ascended up on high and led captivity
   captive, the gifts which He received for men were men, Apostles,
   Prophets, teachers, Evangelists, and the like. It is no small riches to
   a Church to have in her midst men--teachers qualified to teach and
   seeking to save as well, to become Evangelists--in this way and in any
   other way, thus aiming to promote the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

   Ah, unhappy is that church where her sons are all slumbering, where
   they are all stereotyped in their beliefs and in their several states
   never make any advance, feeling no throbs of sacred ambition, never
   caring to come to spiritual attainments, resting satisfied with the
   lowest possible eminence of Divine Grace, without any desire to advance
   to a high degree of love to God! Blessed is that Church where her sons
   seek to grow up and to bear fruit unto God! And not less blessed to
   have in her midst Sisters who are like those pillars we sometimes see
   in public buildings--beautifully fluted, carved, polished--the very
   adornment of the structure, placed at the corner, cornerstones that
   help to cement the entire structure and bind it together! It seems to
   me to be one of the peculiar gifts of the Christian Sisterhood to be
   the means of holding the entire fabric of the Christian Church in
   sacred love! And though in our belief they ought not to do this by
   public speech, yet by quiet conversation, active sympathy and the
   patient endurance and holy tenacity of affection, they may help to keep
   the Church well bolted together, well barred and banded, well cemented,
   so that the stones of the

   Church shall not be detached, the one from the other. Happy is the
   Church that abounds in Christian matrons and younger women willing to
   be serviceable for Christ!

   If I remind you that this is our happy case, you may, perhaps, think
   little of it and lightly esteem the cause for gratitude. But were you
   in some churches where there are not men nor women enough to take the
   Sabbath school--and such churches I have visited--where there are none,
   positively none to assist the pastor, where the whole work must be
   confined to a one-man ministry because the rest of the members do not
   seem to be alive in the sacred service--if you were members of such
   churches, you would deplore their lamentable poverty both day and
   night! God has made it otherwise with us--let us bless His name and,
   while thanking Him, acknowledge that we are happy to be in such a
   state!

   Next to that the Psalmist describes plenty as a peculiar pleasure. '
   'That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store."
   Bountiful provision of the Gospel! The ministry is to have all things
   desirable for Christians if they are to be made happy. Unhappy they who
   can seldom hear a sermon, or who, hearing it, might well have spared
   their ears the trouble of listening to the words! Thrice happy they who
   hear the pure Truth of Jesus Christ, even though it is spoken in a
   rough manner and in a style that has no enchantments for the soft
   lovers of rhetoric and elocution! If ever you are laid up a while upon
   a bed of sickness, you may heave a deep sigh for the privilege you
   scarcely know how fully to appreciate till you lose it, that you can go
   up to the House of God! I heard but the other day from one who has been
   unable to worship with us for months such words as these, "Oh, Ziona,
   Ziona, the loved of my heart, when shall the day return that I shall
   again rejoice with the multitude that keep holy day and lift up my song
   with them, and bow my head in the midst of the great congregation?" By
   your regrets which you will feel when you are thus laid aside, value
   the privilege while you possess it--the privilege of having an open
   Bible expounded and of being able to join with the whole company of the
   faithful in the worship of the most high God! If at any time the Word
   has been marrow and fatness to you, then think yourselves happy, yes,
   rejoice tonight and give to God the gratitude of your souls!

   Further, the Psalmist represents multitude as being a cause of
   thankfulness.''That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten
   thousands in our streets." Sheep are always a favorite type of the
   servants of the Lord Jesus. I cannot, nor indeed, need I, enter into
   the illustration--you yourselves understand it so well--but the
   peculiar blessing is when these sheep are multiplied by thousands and
   by ten thousands. Alas, for the Church when she is satisfied with an
   increase of one or two during a year! Ah, miserable Church that shall
   be content if the pool of Baptism is never stirred by those that
   profess their faith in Jesus or if at the sacramental Table there
   should be no fresh visitors at the feast of love! Ah, miserable state
   of religion in which the Churches shall think this to be their fit and
   proper condition and shall say they are comfortable while the world is
   perishing and none cares for souls! Oh, what a joy it is when every
   member of a Church becomes fruitful in leading others to Christ! I know
   this is much the experience of my dear Brothers and Sisters in Church
   fellowship here. The greater number, I believe, are striving to be
   missionaries for Christ. I wish I could honestly hope that all were so
   doing. It is to the shame of those who are not doing so that they can
   sit side by side with earnest Christians and not be more earnest
   themselves! Yet I thank God and take courage as I remember many of you
   who, by tears and prayers, and afterwards by earnest labors--some of
   them of the most self-sacrificing kind--have gone forth to bring others
   to Jesus, so that from a handful of men we have multiplied and shall
   multiply yet as the dispensation of God's Grace shall be continued to
   us!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, these may not seem to some selfish spirits
   any great things to rejoice in. But lovers of Christ, who have some of
   Christ's likeness in their hearts, will account it a matter for which
   to clap their hands and indulge in holy mirth when souls are converted!
   Is it not better to see a sinner saved than to see your purse full or
   your lands extending? Should it not give you greater joy that Christ is
   glorified than that anything, however desirable, should transpire for
   your own carnal gratification? Let Him reign if I perish! Let the crown
   sit well upon His head if I am trodden like mire in the street! Let Him
   be King of kings and Lord of lords even if His poor servant dies
   forgotten and unknown!

   The next blessing mentioned in the Psalm is the happiness of God's
   people is their strength--"That our oxen may be strong to labor." I
   think here, by oxen, there is mystically and spiritually intended all
   the workers of the Church, but especially ministers of Christ. Paul
   expressly calls these the oxen--"You shall not muzzle the mouth of the
   ox that treads out the corn." It is a blessed circumstance when those
   that try to plow any part of God's field are qualified for the work.
   Whenever I see a man driving a horse with a lead that is too much for
   it, I thank God it is not my task to have such work

   as that! A company of people attempting a work for which they are not
   qualified either by gifts or Grace is an unhappy spectacle. If God
   makes men strong to labor so that their labor is their delight and the
   service of God is a very recreation to them, it ought to be and it must
   be a cause of thanksgiving! Perhaps some of you have been refreshed of
   late. I know my Sunday school teachers can bear me witness. You have
   had such visitation from God that teaching in the Sunday school has
   become a greater joy to you than it ever was! There are, I know, others
   of you whose service to Christ is by no means misery. You go forth to
   the battle not with dolorous sounds, but with music in your hearts,
   with a happy beaming of your eyes, with the precision of saints and
   with the attendant symbols of victory! Be thankful for this, for it is
   no small blessing when the laborers are strong for their work.

   Then comes the blessing of peace--"That there be no breaking in, nor
   going out." No secession fomented by discord. No heresies invading the
   midst of the happy family and rending asunder hearts that should be as
   one. If it should ever be your wretched lot to be a member of a church
   that has been distracted by schism and discord, you will confess that,
   perhaps of all things in Christian experience, there is nothing that
   humbles the soul more, nothing that wounds the heart more and that does
   more mischief to the inner life than personal jealousies and the party
   divisions they occasion! It is an unspeakable blessing when God keeps
   so many hearts in holy union! We so easily divide. Our tastes are
   naturally so different. There are such varieties of circumstance and of
   temperament among us--some rich, some poor, some lively and cheerful,
   some gloomy and desponding--it is not likely that a company of men will
   all agree together year by year without some jarring, where peace rules
   and there are no breakings forth of the waters of strife! Everyone
   ought to devoutly bow his head in a gratitude which he cannot express
   and say, "Lord, with You there is no breaking in nor going out."

   The last mercy which David mentions is that of satisfaction--"that
   there is no complaining in our streets." And can we not appropriate
   this when, instead of hearing the voice of murmuring on the right hand
   and on the left--murmuring against the preacher, murmuring against the
   officers, murmuring against one another--each one is encouraging his
   fellow to do the work of the Lord and all are unanimous together in
   this sole regret, that we can't love more, can't work more, can't
   glorify God more? Oh, this makes a happy Church! It is evidence of a
   people near to God. Theirs is a happy case.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, these things may have in them little
   interest for strangers, but they will have, I trust, some force, though
   I put them thus hurriedly to you who have been with us from the
   beginning and whose history has proven how God has multiplied His
   blessings. Unworthy of the least of all His mercies we were and the
   Church was brought low by affliction and sorrow till it seemed as
   though our name would be blotted out from His Israel and Ichabod was
   written on our wall--but God turned His hand in mercy upon us! That is
   15 years ago. And by the space of these revolving years He has never
   ceased to bless. We have had no startling phenomena of revival. We have
   had no excitements such as have passed over different parts of the
   Christian world. But steadily, as though all had been regulated by an
   ever-progressing geometry, we have gone on to increase and to
   multiply--and have been led on from service to service in the name and
   strength of the Lord God! Not one particle of this is ascribable to
   human agency, only so far as God may have pleased to use it! The whole
   of it belongs to God! We then, at least, whatever others may say, ought
   to keep in the same frame of mind in which we were last Monday evening
   when we gathered round that Communion Table, instant in prayer,
   constant in fellowship, continuing to be happy in blessing and praising
   and magnifying the Lord!

   II. THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS.

   The latter part of the text carries us up to higher ground. Happiness,
   a practical outflow from the favor which God shows, is traced to its
   Source, the God of All Grace, and accounted for by the Covenant
   relations into which He has entered. "Yes, happy is that people whose
   God is the Lord." Now, Beloved, our God is the Lord, our God is
   Jehovah! Let me refresh your memories with this Truth of God in two or
   three of its aspects that you may remember and act in the spirit
   suggested by them. Our God is the Lord!

   He has revealed Himself to us in that Character We knew Him not. We
   said, "Who is the Lord that we should obey His voice?" When we heard of
   Him in the preaching of His Truth, it only reached our outward ears--we
   felt no power in our spirits till it pleased God to reveal Himself to
   us. It was years ago with some of us--it was only a few months with
   others of you. Oh, I charge you, go back to that blessed day when those
   blind eyes were opened and when that dead heart began to feel the
   Divine Light! Oh, then it was you said, "He is my God." You did not
   come to Him and ask Him to be your God, but He who gave Himself to you
   in the Eternal Covenant before the world was, in the fullness of time,
   gave Himself to you by His effectual Grace, making you willing to
   accept Him and to kiss His silver scepter! Yes, you have been changed
   from an enemy into a friend! Your back is no longer toward your God--

   "But now subdued by Sovereign Grace,

   Your spirit longs for His embrace."

   Now bless Him for that with all your heart tonight!

   Moreover, He is your God because you have been brought to acknowledge
   Him as such. Most of you have been baptized into the name, the one
   glorious name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
   Spirit--and by that act you declared to all men that you would be dead
   to all the world besides and alive only to Christ! You came forward
   years ago, moved by earnest zeal, and you said, "Let others do as they
   will, but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord." This work of
   Grace led you from believing with the heart to confession with the
   mouth. I trust that many a time since then you have stood in the gap
   for God when His name has been dishonored by the ungodly and that you
   have avowed it in your family and business that you are the Lord's
   servant. While others have disregarded His Law and oppressed His Truth,
   my soul follows hard after Him unto shame and derision! And I will
   follow where my Savior leads! Now you are happy to be able to do this.

   Happy is the people who acknowledge God to be the Lord! Be happy
   tonight, then, and show your happiness by praising the name of the Lord
   in your heart. The Lord has been your God since then, inasmuch as you
   have believed in Him. In the day of trouble your soul has found peace
   by confiding in His goodness. When you have felt the weight of sin, you
   have got rid of that weight by coming to the pardoning God. Oh, the
   mere professors do not know what it is to take God as He really is!
   They take Him to be, what shall I say?--to be anything but their
   Almighty Sovereign! They take the Lord to be their lackey, to help them
   in some grievous hour when they can't help themselves--to be their
   make-weight, in an emergency to supply a few of their deficiencies.
   They pick and choose His commands. They will be fruitful enough in
   duties that bring themhonor, but they are barren enough in any duties
   that are sacred--that only belong to God and their own soul. As to
   outward ceremonies, they can indulge abundantly, but to spiritual
   religion they are utter strangers! They have never taken God to be
   altogether their God. Why, that means something more than Master, more
   than Father, more than King! Oh, do you know what it means? Is He
   All-in-All to you? That is what Godhead is--All-in-All. Do you take Him
   to be All-in-All to you, henceforth and forever? Happy are the people
   that can say that in very truth! It may cause them loss. It may often
   make their course run contrary to flesh and blood. But if they
   acknowledge God to be their Lord, so as to give Him entire obedience as
   His Grace enables them, they are pronounced happy by the highest
   authority--and happy they shall be, come what may!

   We have taken God to be our God, not merely to trust in Him, but, to go
   further, to enjoy Him. Have you not had sweet enjoyment with your God,
   Beloved, when He has brought you to feel that all things around you
   might be shadows, but that God was true? Have you never so realized God
   in your little chamber that you forgot there was a world of sin and
   sorrow, and care--and only remembered Him? Have you never felt as you
   have come down from that mount of fellowship, that when the atheist
   said there was no God, you could laugh him to scorn, for your spirit
   had seen Him face to face and your soul had come into contact with the
   soul of the Infinite God, and you had as truly communed with Him as
   ever man communed with his fellow, or ever heart had fellowship with
   heart! Yes, oh, seek this yet again! Yes, let it be your element to
   live in the enjoyment of communion with God, for those are the happy
   people who, to the highest degree by inward fellowship, take God to be
   their God!

   And then, over and above that, having enjoyed something of the Lord, we
   have taken the Lord to be our God that we may serve Him. I t has been
   our delight, when we have had opportunities, to try and spread abroad
   the theme of His great and glorious name. You have chosen to give Him
   of His substance--I trust you have not held back any of the talent
   which your Master has entrusted to you. In proportion as any man or
   woman here answers to the description we have been reviewing--in that
   proportion shall they be truly happy! If you have but partly trusted
   and partly communed, and partly served, your happiness may well be
   shallow. But if you have trusted with your whole heart, leaning your
   entire weight upon the Lord--and if you have loved with all the power
   of your passion and communed day by day in closest fellowship with
   Him--if you have served Him with your whole heart, soul and strength,
   then happy are you! God declares you such and in the highest degree you
   certainly shall be such, world without end!

   The Believer who has thus taken God to be his God is happy because he
   has a portion with which he never can grow discontented. Men outgrow
   their books. Students come to look on the volumes they once valued as
   being worn-out things. Men outgrow their friends--those that were once
   their superiors, they can outstrip. Men outgrow their substance and
   their wealth. The comfort they once had in these things they find no
   longer. The most pleasant pleasures of the world are the first to
   expire as men advance--especially as they grow old--that which once
   contented them becomes vanity of vanities in their account! But no man
   outgrows his God! No soul ever runs at such a rate that he passes
   beyond the powers that God has given him! No, Beloved, but the more our
   capacities are enlarged and our desires expanded, the more perfectly
   satisfied are we with the Lord our God! He that has this portion has
   one that can never be taken away from him. The world did not give it
   and the world cannot steal it. The devil has tried full often to take
   away from us our God, but he shall never do that. Time may rob us of
   our health. The world may rob us of our wealth. Sickness may deprive us
   of a thousand comforts, but there is nothing that can separate us from
   the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord! Our inheritance
   cannot be alienated--it is where neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor
   thieves break through and steal!

   Hence the Lord's people are a happy people because they have a portion
   they can die with. They have a pleasure that can make their dying
   pillow soft! And they have riches they can take with them through the
   last grim river--can pass its floods without losing a single farthing
   of their heritage--no, can pass the flood and land upon the other shore
   to enter more fully into the bliss which God has prepared for them that
   love Him!

   I wish we were all such happy people! I wish we were, all of us, happy
   to the fullest degree! If you are not, you may be! If you are not, if
   you trust in Christ, you shall be, if you come empty-handed and simply
   take Christ to be your Savior! He never did reject one, yet, and never
   shall! He will accept you tonight and put you in the same happy case as
   others of His people. I know there are some here that are hard to
   comfort, but the Master, I trust, will do it yet, for He releases the
   prisoners and delights to find out the hard cases and to deal with
   them! If there is a dungeon door that no key can open, He delights to
   come with the mighty hammer of His Word and smash the door in pieces
   and give the spirit liberty! May He do that tonight, and then we will
   sing together of His pardoning power. Amen!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 103; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:25-31.

   This Psalm is a song of exulting thanksgiving, of overflowing joy and
   praise! Let each one of us read it as speaking for himself. Let it,
   here and now, be our own personal tribute of peculiar mercy received by
   each of us!

   Verse 1. Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless
   His holy name. If things without are not joyous, let all that is within
   wake itself up to praise my God! He will hear me, even though I speak
   not. If I keep the praise within myself, He will hear the music of my
   soul. "Bless His holy name."

   2. Bless the LORD, O my soul Do it again. If you have blest Him once,
   bless Him again. Does He not multiply to bless you? Bless Him
   repeatedly, continually! Then never weary of the work. Repeat yourself
   in grateful praise.

   2. And forget not all His benefits. Your poor memory has often been the
   grave of His mercy, but now call for a resurrection and let His mercies
   rise before your eyes, and let your praises rise with them. "Forget not
   all His benefits."

   3. Who forgives all your iniquities--Yes, that is done. Tonight you are
   a forgiven sinner. "All your iniquities," and they were very many, have
   gone from you once and for all! Will you not sing about that?

   3. Who heals all your disease You are raised up from the bed of pain.
   What is still better, the Lord is at work with your sinful nature,
   purging and cleansing you of your corruption--healing you of your
   pride, your sloth, your unbelief. Will you not praise Him for this?
   "Who heals"--goes on to heal--continues to heal--"all your diseases."

   4. Who redeems your life from destruction. Who has redeemed you with
   His own precious blood and given you a life above all life--the life of
   God within you--a redeemed life! Oh, by the precious blood that bought
   you, will you be silent? Will you not sing about Redemption? Is it not
   the sweetest theme to sing about that ever can be imagined?

   4. Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Treats you
   like a king! As a king gives to a king, so gives He His mercies to
   you--crowns you! What? Shall a crowned head refuse to praise Him who
   crowned it? No! "Bless the lord, O my Soul!"

   5. Who satisfies your mouth with good things. He might have left you to
   pine in spiritual hunger, but instead He has fed you--made you to know
   what is good, to love what is good, to feed upon that which is
   good--and to rejoice in that which is good! Will you not praise Him for
   this?

   5. So that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Oh, you are
   strengthened! You grow young again, your faith is revived, your hope is
   brightened, your love has been stirred up and the smoldering flame
   begins to burn anew with vigor! Will you not bless Him who restores you
   after this fashion? Surely, you cannot refuse to praise.

   6. The LORD executes righteousness and judgment for all that are
   oppressed. Let the poor of the earth praise Him fox this! Let the
   despised--those who are trampled on--exult in the fact that God is the
   executioner of the proud and the executor of the poor. "He executes
   righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed."

   7. He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of
   Israel He is a God who makes Himself known! He might have hidden
   Himself behind His works, instead of which He has given us a
   Revelation--a Revelation in the Old Testament which made David sing!
   But you and I have a Revelation in the New Testament--not made to Moses
   this time, but to great David's greater son! Shall we not praise Him
   for making known His ways and His acts to us in the Person of His Son,
   in a bright and lustrous manner unknown before? "My Soul, bless you the
   Lord."

   8. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in
   mercy. And should not this make us plenteous in song? So good a God to
   such great sinners! Merciful--full of mercy and gracious! Full of
   Grace, love and kindness! So slow to anger and so quick to forgive! O
   my Soul, be you slow to murmur! Be you quick to praise!

   9. He will not always chide. So that even you, who feel His chidings
   tonight, ought to bless Him because they last such a little while. Such
   are our faults that if He were always chiding, we could not find any
   fault with Him. But He will not always chide. He will sometimes. He
   makes us know the folly of our hearts when we wander from Him, but, "He
   will not always chide."

   9. Neither wiilHe keep His anger forever It is very short-lived towards
   His people. In fact, it is not anger of that sort which He lets loose
   against rebels, for He has said, "I will not be angry with you, nor
   rebuke you."

   10. He has not dealt with us after our sins: nor rewarded us according
   to our iniquities. Come, will you not praise Him for this? If He had
   dealt with us according to our sins, we certainly would not have been
   in the House of Prayer. We would have been now in the house of
   punishment! We would have been driven from His Presence instead of
   being invited to seek His face! "He has not dealt with us after our
   sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities."

   11. For as the Heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy
   toward them that fear Him. Sing loud, then, and praise Him greatly, for
   His mercy is so great!--

   "Loud as His thunders shout His praise,

   And sound it lofty at His Throne!" What music can be equal to such
   mercy as this?--"As high as the Heaven is above the earth." Surely, the
   best music our lips can give, and better than that, should be offered
   to Him!

   12. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
   transgressions from us. Oh, what a mercy this is! In the third verse,
   you see, He gave us the note upon which here, in the 12th verse, He
   enlarges--"Who forgives all your iniquities." How does He forgive them?
   Why, "as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
   transgressions from us." They were ours! We could not deny them, but He
   has removed them--taken them right away from us and laid them on a
   Scapegoat. That Scapegoat has carried them away--they will never be
   found again. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He
   removed our transgressions from us." Now comes in the next note. The
   third verse was, "Who heals all your diseases." This is what He says of
   it--

   13. Like as a father pities his children, so the LORD pities them that
   fear Him. While they are sick in body and while He looks at them with
   great tenderness, feeling for them, suffering with them--

   14. For He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust He knows that
   our sickness is but a premonition of that death which will dissolve
   this mortal frame, which is only kept together by a continuous miracle.
   It is strange that such a heap of dust as our body is does not dissolve
   much sooner. That it should return to the dust from where it came is no
   wonder. The wonder is that it returns not at once--and it would, were
   it not for that next mercy mentioned in the fourth verse, "Who redeems
   your life from destruction." He is singing about that now. "He knows
   our frame. He remembers that we are dust."

   15, 16. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so
   he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone: and the
   place thereof shall know it no more. Shall we sorrow about this? No,
   for we remember that we have another note yet in the fourth verse, "Who
   crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies." So He chants that
   again in the 17th verse.

   17, 18. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
   upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's
   children. To such as keep His Covenant, and to those that remember His
   commandments to do them. Mercy for ourselves! Mercy for our children!
   What a blessing this is--that our father's Friend is our Friend, and is
   the Friend of our children, too! As David loved Mephibosheth for
   Jonathan's sake, so does God still look upon the children of His
   children and keeps His Covenant with them!

   19. The LORD has prepared His Throne in the heavens. Blessed be His
   name, He crowns us and we are glad that He should be crowned, too! "Who
   crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies." And here we see
   Him--who it is that crowns us. "The Lord has prepared His Throne in the
   heavens."

   19, 20. And His Kingdom rules over all Bless the LORD, you His
   angels--As if David could not do it well enough, himself, and so he
   called in the angels to help him! You bright spirits that behold Him
   day and night and circle His Throne, rejoicing with your never-ceasing
   symphonies, lend me your harps and tongues! "Bless the Lord, you His
   angels."

   20, 21. That excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening
   unto this voice of His word. Bless you the LORD, all you His hosts.
   Sun, moon, and stars, the hosts of Heaven, and all creatures that dwell
   in this lower sphere of whatever form you are, burst forth into song
   and extol Him! And oh, men--the bests that should be the hosts of God--
   when you are made willing in the day of His power, go forth to praise
   Him! "Bless the Lord, all you His hosts."

   21. You ministers of His, that do His pleasure. You servants of His,
   whether you are wind, and rain, and snow, or whether you are
   intelligent agents, so long as you are doing His pleasure, praise Him
   as you do it!

   22. Bless the LORD, all His works in all places of His dominion: bless
   the LORD, O my Soul In the spirit of that, I think, we must always sing
   our hymns of praise unto God. No, more, our whole life should be a
   Psalm of joyous thanksgiving and thanks-living!

   1 CORINTHIANS 1:25-31.

   In this Chapter the Apostle magnifies the Cross of His Lord as God's
   greatest gift to the world and as the highest glory of God's
   self-revelation to men! He praises God that the Corinthian Christians
   have experienced the saving Grace that comes by faith in the sinner's
   sacrifice on Calvary. He rejoices, too, that that same Grace has taught
   them to look forward to the Savior's return in Glory. But he is
   compelled to reprove them for some divisions and rivalries that sprang
   from their glorying in gifts rather than graces. This leads him to
   remind them how God had disparaged mere worldly wisdom by saving
   mankind by the death of Jesus. And he brings all to a very practical
   application in the verses that we now ponder.

   25. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness
   of God is stronger than men. And yet you will perceive that the Church
   is always looking after wise men after the flesh. If it can find these,
   it immediately cringes before them, and asks these learned doctors to
   teach it something more than the simplicities of Christ. This is the
   old disease of the Church! May God yet cure her.

   26. For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men
   after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. There are
   a few such. Remember how the Countess of Huntingdon used to say that
   she was very thankful for that letter "m," for it does not say "not
   anynoble," but "not manynoble are called."

   27, 28. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound
   the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound
   the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things
   which are despised has God chosen, yes, and things which are not Seem
   scarcely to have an existence, not worth notice, not put down in the
   list of existences.

   28, 29. To bring to nothing things that are. That no flesh should glory
   in His Presence. This is what flesh always likes to do. Proud flesh we
   speak of, and all flesh is such. Flesh has a great tendency to swell,
   to corrupt--it is easily puffed up--but God will not have it so. What
   is flesh to God? Did not He make all things? Shall the thing formed
   boast itself against the Former?

   30. But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us
   wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctifcation, and redemption.In fact,
   we have everything in Christ! We have in His Prophetic office, wisdom.
   In His priestly office, righteousness and sanctification. And in His
   royal office, in which He paid the price of our salvation, we have
   redemption!

   31. That, according as it is written, He that glories, let him glory in
   the Lord. Here is room for glorifying and it is our duty to glory in
   God. Let us do so more and more!

   --Adapted from The C. H. Spurgeon Collection, Ages Software,
   1.800.297.4307

   PRAY THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL USE THIS SERMON TO BRING MANY TO A SAVING
   KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

Deliverance From the Power of Darkness

   (No. 3366)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   NOVEMBER 29, 1866.

   "He has delivered us from the power of darkness." Colossians 1:13.

   DARKNESS is used in Scripture to express a great many things. Sometimes
   it represents sorrow. "A night of weeping" is a common expression among
   us. We speak, too, of, "walking in darkness and seeing no light." We
   commonly say to one another that our minds are in a dark and gloomy
   state when we are surrounded by the fogs and mists of sorrow. Taking it
   in this sense, how often might we say of our heavenly Father, that, "He
   has delivered us from the power of darkness"? He has helped us in our
   temporal difficulties and circumstances, or He has whispered, "As your
   days so shall your strength be," and He has turned our night of weeping
   into a morning of gladness, put away the sackcloth and ashes, and given
   us the oil ofjoy! Blessed be His name for all this! Let us not be
   ungrateful, nor forget the many times when He has turned our mourning
   into dancing and our sackcloth into scarlet and fine linen.

   But darkness frequently signifies, too, in Scripture, ignorance. We
   were once so in darkness that we were blinded. "The God of this world"
   has blinded our eyes, lest the light of the glorious Gospel should
   shine in upon us! "We who were sometimes darkness, are now light in the
   Lord." Christ's mission had for one of its many gracious purposes and
   ends the taking away of the darkness of human ignorance and the pouring
   of light upon the intellect of man. I thank God that many of us, though
   we know comparatively little, do know that whereas we were once blind,
   now we see! We do know something of ourselves so as to be humbled--and
   we know, too--something of the gracious God, so as to rejoice that we
   are saved by Him! God has, therefore, delivered us, in that sense, from
   the power of darkness. Let us be thankful for that. Pant for more
   knowledge, but oh, Believer, be grateful for what you have! Remember
   that the little you already know of saving Truth is inestimably
   precious, for to know Jesus Christ is eternal life! And if, on this
   side of the grave, you never learn any more, yet you know that which
   should set your tongue eternally in holy motion with a rapturous song
   of thankfulness to Him who has taught you such priceless Truth! Yes,
   "He has delivered us from the power of darkness."

   Darkness, too, frequently represents Satan and the mysterious spiritual
   influence which he exerts upon the human mind. He is called "the Prince
   of Darkness." Darkness seems to be his element. God is the "Father of
   Lights," but Satan seems to be the father of the gloom and the dark!

   Two elements are now at war in this lower world--Christ, the Light, the
   true Light, and Satan--sin--thick darkness, a darkness which may be
   felt--the Egyptian darkness in which we are naturally born and out of
   which we are not delivered except by the supernatural power of God
   exhibited through the plan of salvation by His Grace! Beloved, we still
   are tempted by Satan, but we are not under his power! We have to fight
   with him, but we are not his slaves! He is not our king. He has no
   rights over us. We do not obey him--we will not listen to his
   temptations. By the Grace of God, we mean, notwithstanding all his
   opposition, to fight in his very teeth and to win our way to Heaven! He
   "has delivered us from the power of darkness." Oh, what a mercy this
   is--that man, such a poor creature as he is, should be able to escape
   from the power of that master spirit Diabolus, Satan, the destroyer!
   That was a wonderful moment when, according to Bunyan's description,
   Hopeful and Christian found that the key was turned in the lock and
   that they could get out of Giant Despair's castle. That was a wonderful
   moment, I say, when, according to Master Bunyan, the key turned in the
   great lock which locked the iron gate. To use John Bunyan's own words,
   he says, "That lock went damnable hard." In all the new editions of
   "Pilgrim's Progress," it is put, "That lock went desperately hard."
   That is the more refined way of

   putting it, but John Bunyan meant just what he said and implied that
   there was a sense of the wrath of God upon the soul of man on account
   of sin, so that he felt as if he were even near to Hell itself! And
   yet, at such a time, the key did turn in the lock and the iron gate was
   opened. You recollect that just at the moment, old Giant Despair woke
   up, and was going to pursue the pilgrims and lay hold upon them when he
   was seized with one of his fainting fits. Oh, what an escape from Giant
   Despair! And yet this is little compared with escaping from Satan!
   Satan is the prince of the power of the air--and human despair is but
   one of his servants, one of the black officers in his infernal
   regiment! To escape from Satan, himself! Oh, let it be sung in Heaven!
   Let angels who have never fallen help us to sing in triumph over those
   fallen spirits from whom we have been rescued by Divine Grace! "He has
   delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the
   kingdom of God's dear Son."

   I prefer tonight, however, as we cannot talk about all these things,
   and the field is so very wide, to consider the word, "darkness," here,
   in the restricted meaning of sin. Sin is a tremendous moral and
   spiritual darkness which has spread over the human mind. But we are
   told in the text and we have felt it in our personal experience, that
   "He has delivered us from the power of darkness."

   Let us speak, first, of the power of darkness from which we are
   delivered. Secondly, upon the statement here made concerning it And
   thirdly, of the inferences which inevitably flow from the statement.

   First, then, let us speak a little upon--

   I. THE POWER OF SIN FROM WHICH WE HAVE BEEN DELIVERED--as it is here
   set forth--under the suggestive image of "the power of darkness."

   What is "the power" of darkness? I suppose everyone will admit that it
   is a power which tends towards slumber It is a composing power. God has
   given us the night in which to sleep. Whether or not there is any
   absolute power in darkness to engender sleep, I do not know. But I do
   know this, that it is much easier, when reclining on your bed, to sleep
   in the dark than it is to sleep in the full glare of the sun. There
   seems to be some sedative influence about darkness, something which
   assists a man to fall into a state of inaction which we call, "sleep."
   Now, Beloved, look upon the race of men. They are under the power of
   darkness and, in consequence, they sleep. Does not the Apostle say to
   us who are delivered from that power, "Let us not sleep as do others"?
   "They that sleep," he says, "sleep in the night," that being the proper
   time for sleep--the night with its raven wing seeming to engender
   sleep--"but let us that are of the day be sober, putting on the
   breastplate of love." If you look abroad in the world, I say, you will
   see men under the soporific influence of sin given to slumber. Do you
   believe that men would go on to sin as they do if it were not that sin
   stupefies them, prevents their using their reason, drowns their
   conscience and will not permit them to judge accurately concerning
   things that differ? Why, can you imagine that a man would run the risk
   of everlasting misery for the sake of a few days of carnal delight if
   he were not, by some means or other, besotted and made a fool of by
   sin? Can you conceive that a man would hear the tidings of pardoning
   mercy through Jesus Christ and be solemnly assured that if he turned
   from the error of his ways, God would accept and receive him--and that
   then he would treat that message with levity and go his way, even to
   ridicule it, if it were not that sin has made him so unreasonable, even
   in these matters, and made him, if not an idiot, a madman, so that he
   will not think? He willfully chooses his own mischief, ruins himself
   and that with a sort of Satanic malice against himself as well as
   against God--choosing rather to inherit eternal misery than to give up
   the poor delights of time-- choosing rather to feast upon the empty
   husks of this world than to come and sit down at the table of mercy and
   eat and drink of the Grace which God has provided! So, then, it is very
   clear--observation shows it to us and we also have felt it in
   ourselves--that sin has a soporific, a drowsing, a sleep-giving power!
   It makes men careless and indifferent. Makes them say, "I'll chance it!
   I do not care what the future may bring!" It makes a man go right to
   the very edge of Hell with his eyes blindfolded and his heart like
   Nabal's heart--which was turned to stone--careless even of the "terrors
   of the Lord" and of "the wrath to come"!

   But blessed be His holy name! "He has delivered us from the power of
   darkness." I hope we do not sleep. "Oh, Christian! If you are careless,
   if you are asleep, if tonight your heart is heavy and dull, I should
   like to come and whisper this right into your soul, "He has delivered
   us from the power of darkness." We are now to be active, earnest,
   zealous and full of devoted life! If they sleep who are unconverted,
   they only act according to nature. They are in the dark. They,
   therefore, sleep. What can they do otherwise? But you are in the Light
   of God, you know that you are saved, you rejoice in Jesus Christ! Oh,
   sleep not, my Brothers and Sisters, but seeing that there are but a few
   hours in your day, work while the

   day lasts and make it your pleasure and your delight to spend and to be
   spent in the service of Him! "He has delivered us from the power of
   darkness."

   A second power of darkness lies in concealment It is the power of
   darkness to hide things. What a darkness we had last night! Trying to
   get home from ministering abroad, I thought I wou1d never be able to
   find my way. One could hardly see one's hand in that dense fog which
   encompassed one. Houses and trees that one would have known in a moment
   and that would have told one where one was, were all concealed. One
   could see nothing! It would be a very small world, indeed, if it were
   no larger than what could then be seen. Darkness hides things. No
   matter how glorious yonder landscape may be as you stand upon the
   mountain's brow--if the sun has gone down and if night has spread its
   wings over the whole, you can see nothing! It may be very well for the
   guide to tell you that yonder is a silver lake, and there the Black
   Forest, and that far away are the brows of mountains covered with their
   eternal snows, but you can see nothing-- night has effectually blotted
   it all out! Now, the power of sin is just like that. It hides from the
   human mind what that mind ought to see. The man is lost, but he does
   not know it--he cannot see the rocks that are just ahead. The man has
   soon to stand before the bar of God and receive his sentence, but he
   does not know it. I mean his heart does not know it. He trifles on,
   caring for none of these things. As for the plague that is in him, in
   his ruined state, he does not believe it. He hears the Truth of God
   that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, but he is
   indifferent to it and as to the dear and precious things of the
   Covenant of Grace, he does not care for them. No matter how rich may be
   the mercy, nor how pure the consolation, he knows nothing at all about
   them, for he is in the dark! It is all dark, dark, dark with him amid
   the blaze of noon!

   I think I may honestly and humbly say that I do try to speak as plainly
   as any man can speak--and care nothing about mighty fine words--and yet
   I do not doubt but that scores come into this house and go out of it,
   saying, "Well, I do not understand it!" How could they? They are under
   the power of sin which makes the plainest truth perplexing and hides
   from their eyes that which the merest babe in Grace can plainly see!

   But, Beloved, "He has delivered us from the power of darkness." Now we
   can see, blessed be His name! The first sight we had so alarmed us that
   we almost wished we could not see! It was a sight so terrible, but
   when, afterwards, we looked to Jesus upon the Cross and found there was
   life for that look at the Crucified One--and when since then we have
   learned to look continually to Him and to find in His wounds our
   healing, and in His death our life--oh, I hope we are thanking God
   every moment of our existence that "He has delivered us from the power
   of darkness." Now we can see in Him our Father, who was once to us,
   "the unknown God."

   Now we can see in Jesus, to whom we were once strangers, our own dear
   Elder Brother. Now we can look at the river of death without being
   alarmed at it, for beyond it we can see the turrets and pinnacles of
   the new Jerusalem glittering with jasper and with carbuncle--and we are
   anticipating the happy day when we shall sing with the saints above!
   Sweet thought is it that with these eyes of ours, we shall see our
   Savior! Yes, He has delivered us from the concealing power of darkness!

   In the third place, darkness has a depressing and an afflicting power
   Are you not all conscious, if you are shut up in a dark room, that your
   mind seems to sink in the dark? Why, our little children, who are the
   simplest specimens of humanity--and let us know the truth at once--can
   hardly be punished more severely (though I hope we never do so punish
   them, for it would be very wicked to do so) than by being shut up in
   the dark! They cannot bear it, cannot endure it and, at first, when the
   little one even goes to bed in the chamber alone in the dark, it feels
   afraid. What must not those persons have suffered who were shut up in
   the dungeons at Venice--dungeons below the watermark of the canal,
   where not a ray of light, perhaps, did ever come, except by the
   jailer's candle--shut in there, hour after hour, unable to know the day
   from the night, but finding it one long and dreary night! The cruel
   oppressor would not have thought of it unless he had known that the
   darkness was so uncongenial to us that it depresses our spirits. Now,
   when some men have eyes given to them and can really see, sin is like
   darkness to them. Of course, it is not to some of you. A blind man sees
   as well in the dark as he does in the light, but as soon as ever you
   get eyes, God begins to deal with you till you feel that sin is a
   darkness to you! Oh, what a darkness is this! Well do some of us
   remember when we walked in the darkness of our sin. We tried to kindle
   a fire and to light ourselves with the sparks of our own good works,
   but we failed in every attempt and we would have been in the thick
   Egyptian night even now if it had not been that He delivered us from
   the power of darkness!

   Now, we know that we still, alas, sin, but it does not fill us with
   despair because there is an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ
   the Righteous!

   Now, we come to our Father every night and, bowing low in reverence
   before Him, we mourn that we have sinned during another day, but we do
   not mourn with a hopeless sorrow, for we remember that--

   "There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, And
   sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains."

   We know that when we were plunged into that fountain, our foulest
   stains were cleansed right away and now we give thanks unto the Father
   who has delivered us from the depressing power of sin! Oh, Christian,
   if you are downcast tonight about this, if you cannot say the text in
   this sense, go to your heavenly Father, pray to Him and ask Him to
   enable you to look to Christ just as you did at first! Perhaps you have
   too many good works of which to boast--and that is why you are so
   depressed. Throw them all away and come, now, as a poor, empty-handed
   sinner, having nothing to which to trust but the finished work of
   Christ! You may depend upon it, that doing this, your peace will yet be
   like a river because your righteousness, being Christ's imparted to
   you, will be like the waves of the sea. Then shall you sing, "Thanks be
   to Him who has delivered us from the depressing power of darkness."

   I cannot dwell upon these points, though they are all interesting, but
   must now notice, fourthly, that there is what I may call the
   fascinating power of darkness. It is strange, but it is true, that
   there are many who love darkness. I said just now that this was
   contrary to nature, and so it is in one sense. Unfallen nature could
   not bear darkness, but fallen nature loves it! Hear what God says about
   it, "Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil."
   Night is the time of the world's merriment. Then the thief steals out
   to do his deeds of evil. "They that are drunk, are drunk in the night,"
   and then is the time for "wantonness and chambering." As the Apostle
   says, it is the hour of evil! Darkness seems to be attractive to some
   men. Strange is it, but it is so. The fascinating power of sin is just
   like the fascinating power of darkness. I have sometimes thought that
   sin might well be compared to those serpents which fascinate their
   prey. It may be some poor little animal--the snake looks and looks, and
   the little creature, instead of running away, looks at those bright,
   sparkling eyes till the poor hare, or rabbit, or whatever it may be,
   instead of escaping, stands as though it were a statue, perfectly
   tranquil and fascinated with the glare of the serpent's eyes! And then
   in a moment the snake darts at it and devours its prey! So is it with
   sin and there are some here, perhaps, who are under its fascinating
   power tonight. They know, for they have often been told, that sin is
   their deadly enemy--and yet it is so pleasant, it is so enchanting, so
   enticing! As they picture the wizard as being able to strike men into
   stone, or able to make them do his will, so does sin seem to do and
   then, at last, it destroys the man who once found pleasure in it! It is
   a cupbearer to you and comes with smiling face, holds out the sparkling
   goblet and says, "Drink, my Lord! See the beaded bubbles sparkling on
   the rim! Drink! For it moves itself aright and sparkles. Drink! And it
   shall put a flush into your veins and make your blood tingle and leap
   and let you know a thrill and a joy you have never known before!" And
   when you get the cup to your lips, you may not be able to take it away
   again, though, as you drink, it will scald the lips and throat and burn
   the very vitals! And as you drink on, especially if you drink of the
   cup of lust, you shall feel another thrill that shall make the very
   bones rot, and the very marrow to decay till you wish you had never
   been born and curse bitterly the day in which you came into this world
   to be partaker of a poison so terrible, so loathsome, so like an
   ante-past of Hell! Oh my God! Grant that if there are any young men or
   women here who have already drunk of that cup, that by Your help they
   may dash it down once and forever! But it is fascinating, fearfully
   fascinating--and when once a person begins to drink of it, it is seldom
   that he stops until he drains the very dregs of eternal ruin! But
   thanks be unto God, for "He has delivered us from the power of
   darkness."

   It cannot fascinate us now. I know you, you fair witch! I know you, you
   painted harlot! Though you might have deceived me once, I know you now!
   My Savior has shown me superior charms. He has taught me the mischief
   that comes from loving the world and the things thereof--and now you
   tempt me in vain! I hope there are many here who can say, "He has
   delivered us from the fascinating power of sin, from the power of
   darkness."

   I cannot stop on this point, however, but must notice the fifth thing.
   There is about darkness an emboldening power to some men. Darkness
   makes the child afraid, but it makes the evil man bold! It is in the
   dark that the lion comes out after his prey and all the beasts of the
   field go forth to get their food. The sun would frighten them, but
   boldness comes to

   them with the darkness. And oh, there is a wonderfully emboldening
   power to some men in sin! Perhaps, my dear Friend, you have come in
   here tonight, but you have said this afternoon that which you would not
   have said 10 years ago! Ah, young woman, you have already done that
   which you would have shuddered to have done only 12 months ago! Ah,
   merchant, you have already entered into a doubtful transaction which
   you would have scorned some months back! You see, you did wrong by
   little, and as you did one wrong, you got courage to do another, and
   another, and another! There is the darkness of sin over your minds--you
   have grown more bold in sin, but that is a poor courage which depends
   upon the darkness--it is, in fact, the darkness of Satan! It is because
   of his supreme darkness of mind and spirit that Satan is the boldest of
   all spirits in contending with the God of Heaven and earth. Beware of
   the brow of brass! It is a grand thing for a Christian to be like a
   pillar of iron against evil, but it is a mark of reprobation to become
   like an iron pillar against God and against His Truth--and some men do
   become such. They sin until their sin engenders a second nature!

   At first, when sin catches us in its net, it is with the tiniest
   spider's cobwebs that can scarcely be seen. And they seem as though you
   could break from them in a moment. Then they become silken bonds--then
   firmer, still, until a man seems to be enveloped in a tangle of
   cables--and every cable hardens and becomes as iron or triple steel
   until at last there is no escaping, for sin gathers daily force until
   it gets a monstrous power over men! Men will now say and laugh at a
   thing which once made them shudder! And do an action and then wipe
   their mouths and say, "Aha! Aha!" An action which once he would no more
   have thought of doing than trying to mount without wings above the
   skies! Hazael said, "Is your servant a dog that he should do this
   thing?" And yet, dog or not, he did the very thing he thought it
   impossible for him to do! Now, I trust if we have been delivered from
   the power of sin in this respect, that we are no longer to be found
   doing wrong--and that if we have done wrong, we are humbled on account
   of it. Then should we be contrite and broken in spirit--and instead of
   boasting, snapping our fingers, and saying, "It is nothing"--we should
   go to our beds ashamed, or go to our Father's face blushing, mourning,
   weeping and saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" What a blessed
   thing it is to have a broken heart! Thank God for a tender conscience,
   and if you have one, never tamper with it. Oh, young man, never tamper
   with a tender conscience! It is such a blessing to have it. Oh,
   cultivate it, and pray the Lord to make your heart more and more tender
   concerning sin that you may hate it with a perfect hatred! He has
   delivered us from the power of sin.

   Once more, and I shall leave this point. Darkness seems to have about
   it a kind of prophetic power. If we were not warned by our astronomers
   when an eclipse was coming, I have no doubt that half the world would
   be dreadfully frightened as soon as the sun became darkened. People
   would say to one another, "The Judgment is coming." That is their
   general thought. If the day gets unusually dark, they think something
   horrible is going to happen and they want to know whether this is not
   the time when the Judgment may be expected, and so on. Darkness seems
   to be a prognostication of evil. Such is sin. My dear Hearer, if you
   hear the voice of sin, it tells you in your sober moments--it cannot
   help telling you--that there is a judgment to come. "Be sure your sin
   will find you out." "God will bring every work into judgment." For
   every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account at the
   Last Day. But the Christian knows that to him the darkness of sin
   prognosticates nothing of the kind! He stands beneath the Cross of
   Christ and he knows that sin spent itself upon Jesus upon that Cross so
   that it might not touch, for a single moment, the soul that believes in
   Jesus! Now, notwithstanding everything, the Christian can say, "I am
   forgiven. I am a monument of Grace. I am a sinner saved by blood! I
   rejoice that for me sin has been put away and I am, therefore, saved."
   Thus, "He has delivered us from the power of darkness."

   Now, I shall need your attention for a little upon the second Truth of
   God found here, which is--

   II. THE STATEMENT HERE MADE CONCERNING THE POWER OF DARKNESS.

   Observe that, in the first place, it is a statement full of assurance.
   "He has delivered us." Paul does not say he hopes so, but definitely
   asserts, "He has delivered us." Brothers and Sisters, can we speak in
   the same positive manner? Let us not be content unless we can, for if
   we have believed in Him, "He has delivered us." If, indeed, our trust
   is in His finished work and perfect righteousness, then He has
   delivered us! It is not a matter of argument, or a thing about which to
   raise a debate--it is so--it must be so, for every soul that is in
   Christ, He has delivered from the power of darkness and translated into
   His own Kingdom!

   Observe, again, it is a statement full of intelligence. The person who
   uttered it knew what he was saying. He was a sound Divine, for he says,
   "He has delivered us." He does not say, "We have got out of it
   somehow," but, "He has delivered us." I wish some persons could have
   much clearer notions than they have about who it is that saves. If
   salvation comes of man--well, say so! And if sinners save themselves by
   all manner of means, give them the credit, the glory, the praise of it!
   But if it is God who saves, then let Him have the sole and perfect
   honor for it! "Salvation is of the Lord." Sinner, you should not try to
   save yourself! You cannot do it! If you could, why did Christ come to
   save you? Your salvation does not rest in your hands. "It is not of him
   that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy." All the
   matter of salvation rests with the Eternal Father, through Jesus
   Christ. He is the Alpha and the Omega of our salvation. The person who
   wrote this verse, then, it seems, was a sound Divine, for he ascribes
   the glory where it ought to be ascribed. "He has delivered us."

   Then, next, it is a statement full of gratitude. If you look at the
   connection, you find it says, "Giving thanks unto the Father." What a
   delightful Grace gratitude is! It is such a heavenly thing to be
   thankful. I wish we spent a little more time about it, being dissolved
   by God's goodness, looking at all that He has done for us and at all
   our demerit, which renders that love the more wonderful! What joy is
   there in gratitude--to fall speechless at the foot of the Cross and
   feel the thanks we cannot speak, or to stand up and sing, "Blessed be
   His name," or to tell others the loving kindness of the Lord and to
   say, "He has dealt graciously with me and He will deal graciously with
   me." Brothers and Sisters, be much in the sacred and holy palace of
   gratitude! You cannot have anything that will more strengthen you for
   service than holy thankfulness to God for His favors. We might have
   said a good deal more upon that last point, but we leave you to say it
   to yourselves! And so we will close with the third Truth of God that
   shines here, namely--

   III. THE INFERENCES THAT MAY BE DRAWN FROM THIS STATEMENT.

   The first inference is a doctrinal one, but as I have already touched
   on this, I only briefly hint and then leave it. Here it is. Deliverance
   from the power of sin is as much the work of God as deliverance from
   the guilt of sin! Where we look for justification, there must we also
   look for sanctification, for as we are justified through Jesus Christ,
   we must also expect to receive sanctification from a heavenly source.
   We cannot receive the one blessing through the spirit and the other
   through the flesh. We would infer from the text, speaking doctrinally,
   that in order to our sanctification and our deliverance from the power
   of sin, we must look to our heavenly Father, altogether and alone.

   The next evidence is experimental "He has delivered us." Now, then, I
   ought to feel in my soul that I am so deli-vered--and if I do not so
   feel--I ought to be wretched until I do feel it because this has been
   the experience of every true Christian sooner or later. He has
   delivered us from the power! We may be in darkness sometimes, but it
   shall not have power over and enslave us. Sin shall not have dominion
   over you, for you are not under the Law, but under Grace. Let the
   experimental inference then be, "I am resolved to be happy, yet I
   will--I will rejoice in God, for He has delivered."

   The next inference is practical If we are delivered from the power of
   darkness, do not let us put ourselves under its power again, and do not
   let us temporize with it. You would fancy, from the actions of some
   professors, that they were not delivered from the power of darkness at
   all, but were only helped to keep away from some conspicuous sin. When
   I hear some people talk about fox-hunting Christians, card-playing
   Christians, Christians who are never at Prayer Meeting, Christians who
   have no zeal for souls, it seems to me that they might just as well
   talk about angels who are not in Heaven, or angels who never obey the
   voice of God! Why, these are sham Christians! They are not genuine
   Christians-- they are of the world and do the things of the world! We
   may conclude that their hearts and natures are worldly, for if they
   were spiritual, they would love spiritual things, and their hearts
   would be engaged in spiritual exercises. Brothers and Sisters, the
   Grace of God has not come into us merely to keep us away from some few
   notable vices, but to deliver us altogether from the power of darkness!
   And if I can sometimes go into sin--just occasionally by way of
   pleasure--it proves that I am a stranger to the deliverance which Jesus
   Christ gives to His really called and regenerated people!

   And now the last inference is a hopeful inference. If He has delivered
   us from the powers of darkness, He will deliver us all the way through!
   If He has done this great thing for us, what will He not do for us? If
   He has delivered us from the tremendous power of sin, He will certainly
   deliver us from the power of death! If sin is taken away, why need we
   fear? Has He delivered us from the power of darkness? Then He will
   certainly help us in our daily troubles. Did He give His own dear Son
   to put away our sin--and will He not give us bread and water? If He has
   covered our souls with the beautiful robe of righteousness that Christ
   has woven, will He let us lack for ordinary raiment? Oh, let us be of
   good cheer! The good God of Grace cannot be a bad God of Providence! He
   who feeds us so well on heavenly bread cannot starve us for lack of
   bodily bread! He has delivered us! We have already received the
   greatest mercy--and you may be quite sure of the

   smaller ones! When Sir Francis Drake was overtaken by a storm in the
   Thames off Greenwich, "What?" he said, "afraid of a storm? Been round
   the world three times and afraid, now, of being drowned in a ditch?
   No!" And surely we who have circumnavigated a whole world of discipline
   and trouble over whose heads the waves and billows have rolled, we do
   not mean to be drowned in this present trouble! Do you, my dear Friend?
   You shall not perish in this ditch! You shall get safely Home! He who
   has delivered you from the power of darkness will never withdraw His
   hand and help until He brings you within the pearly gates, puts the
   crown on your head, the palm branch in your hand, the snow-white robe
   on your shoulders and the new song of everlasting joy in your mouth,
   even praise forevermore! Be of good courage, then!

   And then there is this inference for some of you who are not converted.
   If God has delivered us, why should He not deliver you? Why, some of us
   who have been delivered seemed very unlikely to ever be delivered! We
   did not want to be! We loved darkness rather than light and yet He
   delivered us from it. We were, some of us, very hardhearted. Some of us
   had plunged very deep into sin. There are some here who are wonders of
   Divine Grace! They were once wonders of sin and yet the love of God
   looked them up and brought them out--fetched them from the bar of the
   gin palace, fetched them out of the theater, brought them even from the
   brothel, some of them, and washed and cleansed them and made them sit
   among God's people, love His ways and rejoice in His dear name! And why
   should not God do the same with you? I know 20 reasons why He should
   not, but I will tell you one thing He has said, "Him that comes unto Me
   I will in no wise cast out." So if you come to Him, He will not cast
   out even you!

   The way to come to Him is to trust Him. That is, trust Christ to save
   you and it is all done, and you are saved! That is the great work. When
   a soul, sensible of sin, sees that Christ, by His blood, made atonement
   and comes and throws himself upon that Sacrifice of the Cross, then sin
   is pardoned! Then because the sin is pardoned, the forgiven sinner is
   grateful and he says, "I will not go on in this sin." So he puts it
   away and he is led into a life of holiness by the mercy of God. Oh,
   that we could all say in the words of the text--and if we cannot all
   say it tonight, I hope we shall soon be able to do so--"Giving thanks
   unto the Father, who has made us meet to be partakers of the
   inheritance of the saints in light, and has delivered us from the Power
   of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son."
     __________________________________________________________________

Paul As a Pattern Convert

   (No. 3367)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "However for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me, first, Jesus
   Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which
   should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting." 1 Timothy 1:16.

   IT is a vulgar error that the conversion of the Apostle Paul was an
   uncommon and exceptional event and that we cannot expect men to be
   saved now-a-days after the same fashion. It is said that the incident
   was an exception to all rules, a wonder altogether by itself. Now, my
   text is a flat contradiction to that notion, for it assures us that,
   instead of the Apostle as a receiver of the long-suffering and mercy of
   God being at all an exception to the rule, he was a model convert, and
   is to be regarded as a type and pattern of God's Grace in other
   Believers. The Apostle's language in the text, "for a pattern," may
   mean that he was what printers call a first proof, an early impression
   from the engraving, a specimen of those to follow. He was the typical
   instance of Divine long-suffering, the model after which others are
   fashioned. To use a metaphor from the artist's studio, Paul was the
   ideal sketch of a convert, an outline of the work of Jesus on mankind,
   a picture of Divine long-suffering. Just as artists make sketches in
   charcoal as the basis of their work--which outlines they paint out as
   the picture proceeds--so did the Lord, in the Apostle's case, make, as
   it were, a picture or outline sketch of His usual work of Grace. That
   outline, in the case of each future Believer, He works out with
   infinite variety of skill and produces the individual Christian, but
   the guiding lines are really there. All conversions are, in a high
   degree, similar to this pattern conversion. The transformation of
   persecuting Saul of Tarsus into the Apostle Paul is a typical instance
   of the work of Grace in the heart.

   We will have no other preface, but proceed at once to two or three
   considerations. The first is that-- I. IN THE CONVERSION OF PAUL, THE
   LORD HAD AN EYE TO OTHERS, AND IN THIS PAUL IS A PATTERN.

   In every case the individual is saved, not for himself, alone, but with
   a view to the good of others. Those who think the Doctrine of Election
   to be harsh should not deny it, for it is Scriptural--but they may to
   their own minds soften some of its hardness by remembering that elect
   men bear a marked connection with the race. The Jews, as an elect
   people, were chosen in order to preserve the oracles of God for all
   nations and for all times. Men personally elected unto eternal life by
   Divine Grace are also elected that they may become chosen vessels to
   bear the name of Jesus unto others. While our Lord is said to be the
   Savior especially of them that believe, He is also called the Savior of
   all men--and while He has a special eye to the good of the one person
   whom He has chosen--yet through that person He has designs of love to
   others--perhaps even to thousands yet unborn!

   The Apostle Paul says, "I obtained mercy, that in me, first, Jesus
   Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which
   should hereafter believe." Now, I think I see very clearly that Paul's
   conversion had an immediate relation to the conversion of many others.
   I t had a tendency, had it not, to excite an interest in the minds of
   his brother Pharisees? Men of his class, men of culture, who were
   equally at home with the Greek philosophers and with the Jewish rabbis,
   men of influence, men of rank, would be sure to enquire, "What is this
   new religion which has fascinated Saul of Tarsus? That zealot for
   Judaism has now become a zealot for Christianity--what can there be in
   it?" I say that the natural tendency of his conversion was to awaken
   inquiry and thought and so to lead others of his rank to become
   Believers. And, my dear Friend, if you have been saved, you ought to
   regard it as a token of God's mercy to your class. If you are a working
   man, let your salvation be a blessing to the men with whom you labor.
   If you are a person of rank and station, consider that God intends to
   bless you to some with whom you are on familiar terms. If you are
   young, hope that God will bless the youth around you. And if you have
   come to older years, hope that your conversion, even at the eleventh
   hour, may be the means of encouraging other aged pilgrims to seek and
   find rest unto their souls. The Lord, by calling

   one out of any society of men, finds for Himself a recruiting officer
   who will enlist his fellows beneath the banner of the Cross! May not
   this fact encourage some seeking soul to hope that the Lord may save
   him, though he is the only thoughtful person in all his family--and
   then make him to be the means of salvation to all his kindred?

   We notice that Paul often used the narrative of his conversion as an
   encouragement to others. He was not ashamed to tell his own life story.
   Eminent soul-winners, such as Whitefield and Bunyan, frequently pleaded
   God's mercy to themselves as an argument with their fellow men. Though
   great preachers of another school, such as Robert Hall and Chalmers, do
   not mention themselves at all, and I can admire their abstinence, yet I
   am persuaded that if some of us were to follow their example, we would
   be throwing away one of the most powerful weapons of our warfare! What
   can be more affecting, more convincing, more overwhelming, than the
   story of Divine Grace told by the very man who has experienced it? It
   is better than a dozen tales of converted Africans and infinitely more
   likely to win men's hearts than the most elaborate essays upon moral
   excellence! Again and again, Paul gave a long narrative of his
   conversion, for he felt it to be one of the most telling things that he
   could relate.

   Whether he stood before Felix or Agrippa, this was his plea for the
   Gospel. All through his Epistles there are continual mentions of the
   Grace of God towards himself--and we may be sure that the Apostle did
   right to argue thus from his own case--it is fair and forcible
   reasoning and ought by no means to be left unused because of a selfish
   dread of being called egotistical! God intends that we should use our
   conversion as an encouragement to others and say to them, "Come and
   hear, all you that fear God, and I will tell you what He has done for
   my soul." We point to our own forgiveness and say, "Do but trust in the
   living Redeemer and you shall find, as we have done, that Jesus blots
   out the transgressions of Believers."

   Paul's conversion was an encouragement to him all his life long to have
   hope for others. Have you ever read the first Chapter of the Epistle to
   the Romans? Well, the man who penned those terrible verses might very
   naturally have written at the end of them, "Can these monsters be
   reclaimed? It can be of no use whatever to preach the Gospel to people
   so sunken in vice." That one Chapter gives as daring an outline as
   delicacy would permit of the nameless, shameful vices into which the
   heathen world had plunged! And yet, after all, Paul went forth to
   declare the Gospel to that filthy and corrupt generation, believing
   that God meant to save a people out of it! Surely one element of his
   hope for humanity must have been found in the fact of his own
   salvation--he considered himself to be, in some respects, as bad as the
   heathen, and in other respects even worse! He calls himself the
   foremost of sinners (that is the word) and he speaks of God having
   saved him foremost, that in him He might show forth all long-suffering.
   Paul never doubted the possibility of the conversion of a person,
   however infamous, after he had himself been converted! This
   strengthened him in battling with the fiercest opponents--He who
   overcame such a wild beast as I was can also tame others and bring them
   into willing captivity to His love!

   There was yet another relation between Paul's conversion and the
   salvation of others, and it was this--It served as an impulse, driving
   him forward in his lifework of bringing sinners to Christ. "I obtained
   mercy," he said, "and that same Voice which spoke peace to me said, "I
   have made you a chosen vessel unto Me to bear My name among the
   Gentiles." And he did bear it, my Brothers and Sisters! Going into
   regions beyond that he might not build on another man's foundation, he
   became a master bui1der for the Church of God. How indefatigably did he
   labor! With what vehemence did he pray! With what energy did he preach!
   Slander and contempt he bore with the utmost patience. Scourging or
   stoning had no terrors for him. Imprisonment, yes, death itself, he
   defied--nothing could daunt him! Because the Lord had saved him, he
   felt that he must, by all means, save some. He could not be quiet.
   Divine love was in him like a fire and if he had been silent, he would,
   before long, have had to cry with the Prophet of old, "I am weary with
   restraining." He is the man who said, "Necessity is laid upon me, yes,
   woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel." Paul, the extraordinary
   sinner, was saved that he might be full of extraordinary zeal and bring
   multitudes to eternal life! Well could he say--

   "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!"

   Now, I will pause here a minute to ask a question. You profess to be
   converted, my dear Friend. What relation has your conversion already
   had to other people? It ought to have a very apparent one. Has it had
   such? Mr. Whitefield said that when his heart was renewed, his first
   desire was that his companions with whom he had previously wasted his
   time might be brought to Christ. It was natural and commendable that he
   should begin with them. Remember how one of the Apostles, when he
   discovered the Savior, went immediately to tell his brother? It is most
   fitting that young people should spend their first religious enthusiasm
   upon their brothers and sisters. As to converted parents, their first
   responsibility is in reference to their sons and daughters. Upon each
   renewed man, his natural affinities, or the bonds of friendship or the
   looser ties of neighborhood should begin to operate at once, and each
   one should feel, "No man lives unto himself."

   If Divine Grace has kindled a fire in you, it is that your fellow men
   may burn with the same flame! If the eternal fount has filled you with
   Living Water, it is that out of the midst of you should flow rivers of
   Living Water! You are blessed that you may bless--whom have you
   blessed? Let the question go round. Do not avoid it. This is the best
   return that you can make to God--that when He saves you, you should
   seek to be the instruments in His hands of saving others! What have you
   done? Did you ever speak with the friend who shares your pew? He has
   been sitting there for a long time and may, perhaps, be an unconverted
   person--have you pointed him to the Lamb of God? Have you ever spoken
   to your servants about their souls? Have you broken the ice
   sufficiently to speak to your own sister, or your own brother? Do
   begin, dear Friend.

   You cannot tell what mysterious threads connect you with your fellow
   men and their destiny. There was a cobbler once, as you know, in
   Northamptonshire. Who could see any connection between him and the
   millions of India? But the love of God was in his bosom and Carey could
   not rest till, at Serampore, he had commenced to translate the Word of
   God and preach to his fellow men! We must not confine our thoughts to
   the few whom Carey brought to Christ, though to save one soul is worthy
   of a life of sacrifice--but Carey became the forerunner and leader of a
   missionary band which will never cease to labor till India bows before
   Immanuel! That man mysteriously drew, isdrawingand willdrawIndia to the
   Lord Jesus Christ! Brother, you do not know what your power is! Awake
   and try it!

   Did you never read this passage--"You have given Him power over all
   flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given
   Him"? Now, the Lord has given to His Son power over all flesh, and with
   a part of that power Jesus clothes His servants. Through you, He will
   give eternal life to certain of His chosen--by you and by no other
   means will they be brought to Himself! Look about you, regenerate man!
   Your life may be made sublime. Awaken yourself! Begin to think of what
   God may do by you! Calculate the possibilities which lie before you
   with the eternal God as your helper! Shake yourself from the dust and
   put on the beautiful garments of disinterested love to others and it
   shall yet be seen how grandly gracious God has been to hundreds ofmen
   by having converted you!

   So far, then, Paul's salvation, because it had so clear a reference to
   others, was a pattern of all conversions. Now, secondly--

   II. PAUL'S FOREMOST POSITION AS A SINNER DID NOT PREVENT HIS BECOMING
   FOREMOST IN

   GRACE AND, HEREIN, AGAIN, HE IS A PATTERN TO US.

   Foremost in sin, he became also foremost in service! Saul of Tarsus was
   a blasphemer and he is to be commended because he has not recorded any
   of those blasphemies. We can never object to converted burglars and
   chimney-sweepers of whom we hear so much, telling the story of their
   conversion. But when they go into dirty details, they had better hold
   their tongues! Paul tells us that he was a blasphemer, but he never
   repeats one of the blasphemies. We invent enough evil in our own hearts
   without being told of other men's stale profanities. If, however, any
   of you are so curious as to want to know what kind of blasphemies Paul
   could utter, you have only to converse with a converted Jew and he will
   tell you what horrible words some of his nation will speak against our
   Lord! I have no doubt that Paul, in his evil state, thought as wickedly
   of Christ as he could--considered Him to be an imposter, called Him so,
   and added many an opprobrious epithet. He does not say of himself that
   he was an unbeliever and an objector, but he says that he was a
   blasphemer, which is a very strong word, but not too strong, for the
   Apostle never went beyond the truth. He was a downright, thoroughgoing
   blasphemer who also caused others to blaspheme. Will these lines meet
   the eye of a profane person who feels the greatness of his sin? May God
   grant that he may be encouraged to seek mercy as Saul of Tarsus did,
   for "all manner of sin and blasphemy" does He forgive unto men!

   From blasphemy, which was the sin of the lips, Saul proceeded to
   persecution, which is a sin of the hands. Hating Christ, he hated His
   people, too. He was delighted to give his vote for the death of
   Stephen--and he took care of the clothes of those who stoned that
   martyr. He hauled men and women to prison and compelled them to
   blaspheme. When he had hunted all Judea as closely as he could, he
   obtained letters to go to Damascus, that he might do the same in that
   place. His prey had been compelled to quit Jerusalem and flee to more
   remote places, but "being exceedingly mad against them, he persecuted
   them unto strange cities." He was foremost in blasphemy and
   persecution! Will a persecutor read or hear these words? If so, may he
   be led to see that even for him, pardon is possible! Jesus, who said,
   "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," is still an
   intercessor for the most violent of His enemies!

   He adds, next, that he was injurious, which, I think, Bengel considers
   to mean that he was a despiser. That eminent critic says--blasphemy was
   his sin towards God, persecution was his sin towards the Church, and
   despising was his sin in his own heart. He was injurious--that is, he
   did all he could to damage the cause of Christ and he thereby injured
   himself. He kicked against the pricks and injured his own conscience.
   He was so determined against Christ that he counted no cost too great
   by which he might hinder the spread of the faith! And he did hinder it
   terribly--he was a ringleader in resisting the Spirit of God which was
   then working with the Church of Christ. He was foremost in opposition
   to the Cross of Christ!

   Now, notice that he was saved as a pattern, which is to show you that
   if you also have been foremost in sin, you also may obtain mercy as
   Paul did! And to show you yet again that if you have not been foremost,
   the Grace of God, which is able to save the chief of sinners, can
   assuredly save those who are of less degree! If the bridge of Grace
   will carry the elephant, it will certainly carry the mouse! If the
   mercy of God could bear with the greatest sinners, it can have patience
   with you! If a gate is wide enough for a giant to pass through, any
   ordinary-sized mortal will find space enough. Despair's head is cut off
   and stuck on a pole by the salvation of "the chief of sinners." No man
   can now say that he is too great a sinner to be saved--because the
   chief of sinners was saved 1,800 years ago! If the ringleader, the
   chief of the gang, has been washed in the precious blood and is now in
   Heaven, why not I? Why not you?

   After Paul was saved, he became a foremost saint. The Lord did not
   allot him a second-class place in the Church. He had been the leading
   sinner, but his Lord did not, therefore, say, "I save you, but I shall
   always remember your wickedness to your disadvantage." Not so! He
   counted him faithful, putting him into the ministry and into the
   Apostleship, so that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the
   Apostles! Brother, there is no reason why, if you have gone very far in
   sin, you should not go equally far in usefulness! On the contrary,
   there is a reason why you should do so, for it is a rule of Grace that
   to whom much is forgiven, the same loves much--and much love leads to
   much service. What man was more clear in his knowledge of Doctrine than
   Paul?

   What man more earnest in the defense of the Truth of God? What man more
   self-sacrificing? What man more heroic? The name of Paul in the
   Christian Church stands, in some respects, very next to the Lord Jesus!
   Turn to the New Testament and see how large a space is occupied by the
   Holy Spirit speaking through His servant Paul! And then look over
   Christendom and see how greatly the man's influence is still felt--and
   must be felt till his Master shall come! Oh, great sinner, if you are
   even now ready to scoff at Christ, my prayer is that He may strike you
   down at this very moment and turn you into one of His children--and
   make you to be just as ardent for the Truth as you are now earnest
   against it, as desperately set on good as now you are on evil! None
   make such mighty Christians and such fervent preachers as those who are
   lifted up from the lowest depths of sin and washed and purified through
   the blood of Jesus Christ! May Grace do this with you, my dear Friend,
   whoever you may be.

   Thus we gather from our text that the Lord showed mercy to Paul. That
   in him, first, it might be seen that prominence in sin is no barrier to
   eminence in Grace, but the very reverse! Now I come to where the stress
   of the text lies.

   III. PAUL'S CASE WAS A PATTERN OF OTHER CONVERSIONS AS AN INSTANCE OF
   LONG-SUFFERING.

   "That in me, first, Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering
   for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe." Thoughtfully
   observe the great long-suffering of God to Paul. He says, "He showed
   forth all long-suffering." Not only all the long-suffering of God that
   ever was shown to anybody else, but all that could be supposed to
   exist--all long-suffering--

   "All Your mercy's height I prove, All its depth is found in me,"

   as if he had gone to the utmost stretch of his tether in sin--and the
   Lord had strained His long-suffering to its utmost!

   That long-suffering was seen, first, in sparing his life when he was
   rushing headlong in sin, breathing out threats, foaming at the mouth
   with denunciations of the Nazarene and His people. If the Lord had but
   lifted His finger, Saul would have been crushed like a moth! But
   Almighty Wrath forbore and the rebel lived on. Nor was this all--after
   all his sin, the Lord allowed mercy to be possible to him. He
   blasphemed and persecuted at a red-hot rate--and is it not a mar-

   vel that the Lord did not say, "Now, at last, you have gone beyond all
   bearing, and you shall die like Herod, eaten of worms"? It would not
   have been at all amazing if God had so sentenced him. But He allowed
   him to live within the reach of mercy and, better still, He in due time
   actually sent the Gospel to him and laid it home to his heart. In the
   very midst of his rebellion the Lord saved him! He had not prayed to be
   converted, far from it! No doubt he had that very day along the road to
   Damascus profaned the Savior's name and yet mighty mercy burst in and
   saved him purely by its own spontaneous native energy! Oh mighty Grace,
   Free Grace, victorious Grace ! This was long-suffering indeed!

   When Divine Mercy had called Paul, it swept all his sin away, every
   particle of it--his blood shedding and his blasphemy, all at once, so
   that never man was more assured of his own perfect cleansing than was
   the Apostle! "There is therefore now," he says, "no condemnation to
   them which are in Christ Jesus." "Therefore, being justified by faith,
   we have peace with God." "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
   elect?" You know how clear he was about that-- and he spoke out of his
   own experience! Long-suffering had washed all his sins away. Then that
   long-suffering, reaching from the depths of sin, lifted him right up to
   the Apostleship, so that he began to prove God's long-suffering in its
   heights of favor. What a privilege it must have been to him to be
   permitted to preach the Gospel! I should think sometimes when he was
   preaching most earnestly, he would half stop himself and say, "Paul, is
   this you?" Especially when he went down to Tarsus, he must have been
   surprised at himself and at the mighty mercy of God. He preached the
   faith which once he had destroyed! He must have said many a time after
   a sermon, when he went home to his bedchamber, "Marvel of marvels!
   Wonder of wonders, that I who once could curse have now been made to
   preach--that I, who was full of threats and even breathed out
   slaughter, should now be so Inspired by the Spirit of God that I weep
   at the very sound of Jesus' name and count all things but loss for the
   excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord!"

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, you do not measure long-suffering unless you
   take it in all its length from one end to the other and see God in
   mercy not remembering His servant's sin, but lifting him into eminent
   service in His Church. Now, this was for a pattern, to show you that He
   will show forth the same long-suffering to those who believe! If you
   have been a swearer, He will cleanse your blackened mouth and put His
   praises into it! Have you had a black, cruel heart, full of enmity to
   Jesus? He will remove it and give you a new heart and a right spirit!
   Have you dived into all sorts of sins? Are they so shameful that you
   dare not think of them? Think of the precious blood which removes every
   stain! Are your sins so many that you cannot count them? Do you feel as
   if you were almost damned already in the very memory of your life? I do
   not wonder at it, but He is able to save to the uttermost them that
   come unto God by Him! You have not gone farther than Saul had gone and,
   therefore, all long-suffering can come to you and there are great
   possibilities of future holiness and usefulness before you! Even though
   you may have been a street-walker or a thief, yet if the Grace of God
   cleanses you, it can make something wonderful out of you! Full many a
   lustrous jewel of Immanuel's crown has been taken from the dunghill!
   You are a rough block of stone, but Jesus can fashion and polish you
   and set you as a pillar in His Temple!

   Brother, do not despair! See what Saul was and what Paul became--and
   learn what you may be! Though you deserve the depths of Hell, yet Grace
   can lift you up to the heights of Heaven! Though now you feel as if the
   fiends of Hell would be fit companions for such a lost spirit as
   yourself, yet believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall one day walk
   among the angels as pure and white as they! Paul's experience of
   long-suffering Grace was meant to be a pattern of what God will do for
   you--

   "Scripture says, 'Where sin abounded, There did Grace much more
   abound.' Thus has Satan been confounded, And his own discomfit found.
   Christ has triumphed! Spread the glorious news around! Sin is strong,
   but Grace is stronger! Christ than Satan more supreme! Yield, oh, yield
   to sin no longer, Turn to Jesus, yield to Him-- He has triumphed!
   Sinners, henceforth Him esteem."

   Again--

   V. THE MODE OF PAUL'S CONVERSION WAS ALSO MEANT TO BE A PATTERN. And
   with this I shall

   finish. I do not say that we may expect to receive the miraculous
   Revelation which was given to Paul, but yet it is a sketch

   upon which any conversion can be painted. The filling up is not the
   same in any two cases, but the outline sketch. Paul's conversion would
   serve for an outline sketch of the conversion of any one of us. How was
   that conversion worked? Well, it is clear that there was nothing at all
   in Paul to contribute to his salvation. You might have sifted him in a
   sieve without finding anything upon which you could rest a hope that he
   would be converted to the faith of Jesus! His natural bent, his early
   training, his whole surroundings and his life's pursuits all lettered
   him to Judaism and made it most unlikely that he would ever become a
   Christian. The first Elder of the Church that ever talked to him about
   Divine things could hardly believe in his conversion. "Lord," he said,
   "I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he has done to Your
   saints at Jerusalem." He could hardly think it possible that the
   ravening wolf could have changed into a lamb! Nothing favorable to
   faith in Jesus could have been found in Saul--the soil of his heart was
   very rocky, the plow could not touch it and the good Seed found no
   root-hold. Yet the Lord converted Saul and He can do the same by other
   sinner, but it must be a work of pure Grace and of Divine power, for
   there is not in any man's fallen nature a holy spot the size of a pin's
   point on which Grace can light! Transforming Grace can find no natural
   lodging in our hearts--it must create its own soil and, blessed be God,
   it can do it, for with God all things are possible! Nature contributes
   nothing to Grace and yet Grace wins the day! Humbled Soul, let this
   cheer you! Though there is nothing good in you, yet Grace can work
   wonders and save you by its own might!

   Paul's conversion was an instance of Divine power and of that alone,
   and so is every true conversion. If your conversion is an instance of
   the preacher's power, you need to be converted again! If your salvation
   is the result of your own power, it is a miserable deception from which
   may you be delivered! Every man who is saved must be operated upon by
   the might of God the Holy Spirit--every jot and tittle of true
   regeneration is the Spirit's work! As for our strength, it wars against
   salvation rather than for it. Blessed is that promise, "Your people
   shall be willing in the day of Your power." Conversion is as much a
   work of God's Omnipotence as the Resurrection--and as the dead do not
   raise themselves, so neither do men convert themselves!

   But Saul was changed immediately. His conversion was once done and done
   at once. There was a little interval before he found peace, but even
   during those three days, he was a changed man, though he was in
   sadness. He was under the power of Satan at one moment and in the next
   he was under the reign of Grace! This is also true in every conversion.
   However gradual the breaking of the day, there is a time when the sun
   is below the horizon and a moment when it is no longer so. You may not
   know the exact time in which you passed from death to life, but there
   was such a time, if you are, indeed, a Believer! A man may not know how
   old he is, but there was a moment in which he was born. In every
   conversion there is a distinct change from darkness to light, from
   death to life, just as certainly as there was in Paul's. And what a
   delightful hope does the rapidity of regeneration present to us! It is
   by no long and laborious process that we escape from sin! We are not
   compelled to remain in sin for a single moment. Grace brings
   instantaneous liberty to those who sit in bondage. He who trusts Jesus
   is saved on the spot! Why, then, abide in death? Why not lift up your
   eyes to immediate life and light?

   Paul proved his regeneration by his faith He believed unto eternal
   life. He tells us over and over again in his Epistles that he was saved
   by faith, and not by works. So is it with every man! If saved at all,
   it is by simply believing in the Lord Jesus. Paul esteemed his own
   works to be less than nothing and called them dross and dung, that he
   might win Christ, and so every converted man renounces his own works
   that he may be saved by Grace alone. Whether he has been moral or
   immoral. Whether he has lived an amiable and excellent life, or whether
   he has raked in the kennels of sin, every regenerate man has only one
   hope--and that is centered and fixed in Jesus alone! Faith in Jesus
   Christ is the mark of salvation, even as the heaving of the lungs or
   the coming of breath from the nostrils is the test of life. Faith is
   the Grace which saves the soul and its absence is a fatal sign. How
   does this fact affect you, dear Friend? Have you faith or no?

   Paul was very positively and evidently saved. You did not need to ask
   the question, "Is that man a Christian or not?" for the transformation
   was most apparent! If Saul of Tarsus had appeared as he used to be, and
   Paul the Apostle could also have come in, and you could have seen the
   one man as two men, you would have thought them no relation to one
   another. Paul the Apostle would have said that he was dead to Saul of
   Tarsus, and Saul of Tarsus would have gnashed his teeth at Paul the
   Apostle! The change was evident to all who knew him, whether they
   sympathizes in it or not. They could not mistake the remarkable
   difference which Grace had made, for it was as great as when midnight
   brightens into noon. So it is when a man is truly saved--there is a
   change which those around him must perceive. Do not tell me that you
   can be a child at home and become a Christian, and yet your father and
   mother will not perceive a difference in you! They will be sure to see
   it. Would a leopard in a menagerie lose his spots and no one notice it?
   Would an Ethiopian be

   turned white and no one hear of it? You, masters and mistresses, will
   not go in and out among your servants and children without their
   perceiving a change in you if you are born-again! At least, dear
   Brother or Sister, strive with all your might to let the change be very
   apparent in your language, in your actions and in your whole conduct.
   Let your conversation be such as becomes the Gospel of Christ, that men
   may see that you, as well as the Apostle, are decidedly changed by the
   renewal of your minds!

   May all of us be the subjects of Divine Grace as Paul was--stopped in
   our mad career, blinded by the glory of the heavenly Light of God,
   called by a mysterious Voice, conscious of natural blindness, relieved
   of blinding scales and made to see Jesus as one All-in-All. May we
   prove in our own persons how speedily conviction may melt into
   conversion, conversion into confession and confession into
   consecration!

   I have done when I have enquired how far we are conformed to the
   pattern which God has set before us. I know we are like Paul as to our
   sin, for if we have neither blasphemed nor persecuted, yet have we
   sinned as far as we have had opportunity. We are also conformed to
   Paul's pattern in the great long-suffering of God which we have
   experienced. And I am not sure that we cannot carry the parallel
   farther--we have had much the same Revelation that Paul received on the
   way to Damascus, for we, too, have learned that Jesus is the Christ! If
   any of us sin against Christ, it will not be because we do not know Him
   to be the Son of God, for we all believe in His Deity because our
   Bibles tell us so. The pattern goes so far--I would that the Grace of
   God would operate upon you, unconverted Friend, and complete the
   picture by giving you like faith with Paul. Then will you be saved as
   Paul was! Then, also, will you love Christ above all things, as Paul
   did, and you will say, "But what things were gain to me, those I
   counted loss for Christ. Yes, doubtless, and I count all things but
   loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord." He
   rested upon what Christ had done in His death and Resurrection, and he
   found pardon and eternal life at once and became, therefore, a devoted
   Christian!

   What do you say, dear Friend? Are you moved to follow Paul's example?
   Does the Spirit of God prompt you to trust Paul's Savior and give up
   every other ground of trust and rely upon Him? Then do so and live!
   Does there seem to be a hand holding you back and do you hear an evil
   whisper saying, "You are too great a sinner"? Turn round and bid the
   fiend depart, for the text gives him the lie. "In me, first, has Jesus
   Christ showed forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which
   should hereafter believe on His name." God has saved Paul. Back, then,
   O devil! The Lord can save any man, woman or child and He can save me!
   Jesus Christ of Nazareth is mighty to save and I will rely on Him. If
   any poor heart shall reason thus, its logic will be sound and
   unanswerable. Mercy to one is an argument for mercy to another, for
   there is no difference, but the same Lord over all is rich unto all
   that call upon Him!

   Now I have set the case before you and I cannot do more. It remains
   with each individual to accept or refuse. One man can bring a horse to
   the trough, but a hundred cannot make him drink. There is the
   Gospel--if you want it, take it--but if you will not have it, then I
   must discharge my soul by reminding you that even the gentle Gospel
   --the Gospel of love and mercy has nothing to say to you but this, "He
   that believes not shall be damned."--

   "How they deserve the deepest Hell, That slight the joys above! What
   chains of vengeance must they feel Who break the bonds of love!"

   God grant that you may yield to Almighty Love and find peace in Christ
   Jesus!
     __________________________________________________________________

Fathomless

   (No. 3368)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Your judgments are a great deep." Psalm 36:6.

   CONSIDER the word, "judgment," in whatever light you please, this
   sentence is true. There is much of mystery connected with the terrible
   calamities which afflict the earth, devastate nations, destroy cities
   and sweep away the relics of the past. There is much of mystery about
   the judgments of God upon the wicked in this life--how they prosper for
   awhile and are suddenly cut down--how they grow fat like oxen and then
   are taken away to the shambles. The judgments of God regarding the
   wicked in the world to come are also "a great deep," not to be spoken
   of with levity. A solemn subject is that of the future punishment of
   the ungodly--"a great deep," a deep where some, I am afraid, speculate
   so deeply that the risk they run is imminent--they may drown themselves
   in Hell.

   But I prefer tonight to take the text as it may refer to God's dealings
   with His own people. He deals with them in judgment, not, I think,
   penally, vindicating the inflexible justice of the Law by the terrible
   vengeance He inflicts on the transgressor as He will deal with the
   wicked at the last dread assize. I mean not that. I rather interpret it
   of the salutary discipline and painful chastisements of God's hand
   which are called "judgments" in Scripture. They do not come by chance,
   nor upon us at all merely as a matter of sovereignty, but they are sent
   in wisdom, because God judges them to be necessary. They are weighed
   out to us with discretion--given to us by prudence. It is a sweet name,
   I think, for afflic-tion--not that I look upon affliction as a judgment
   upon me for sin, which I cannot do, now that I have seen sin punished
   in Christ, but I look at my afflictions as being sent to me according
   to the all-wise judgment of a kind Father, not at all without
   consideration, but always according to His Infinite wisdom and
   prudence, dealt out in measure and at proper times, according to the
   Infinite judgment and wisdom of God. In a word, they are called,
   "judgments," not because they are judicial, but because they are
   judicious!

   Now, these dealings of God with His servants, always wise and prudent,
   are frequently like great deeps. This evening I shall simply work out
   three or four thoughts which arise out of that metaphor.

   I. THE DEALINGS OF GOD WITH HIS PEOPLE ARE OFTEN UNFATHOMABLE.

   We cannot discover the foundation or cause and spring of them. Some of
   God's servants who are earnestly desirous to provide things honest in
   the sight of all men, though they are industrious and energetic and use
   proper prudence, do not find themselves able to prosper in trade. They
   are thwarted in all their purposes. There seems to be a kind of
   fatality connected with all their enterprises. If they do but touch a
   business or a bargain which will turn into gold with the traffic of
   others, it melts under their hand into dross. Now, it is not always
   that this can be explained. "Your judgments are a great deep"--a matter
   to be perceived as a fact, but not to be explained by reasoning.

   Sometimes in a family a dear child is born and is a great comfort to
   its parents. It seems, indeed, to be sent in love, to heal some old
   wound and to make the house happy! And then just as suddenly as it
   came, it is removed. Why? Ah, here, again, is another deep which a
   mother's anxious heart would like to fathom, but which it is not for
   her to explore. It is a great deep.

   Children will be spared to us and just when they are ripening to
   manhood and womanhood, and we hope to see them settled and established
   in life, it happens--as it happened to one of our beloved friends in
   this Church this afternoon-- that we have to stand at the open grave,
   and say, "Earth to earth, dust to dust." Why God takes away the holy
   and the good, the amiable and the lovely when they appeared to be most
   useful, we cannot understand. It is a great deep.

   Oftentimes, too, it happens that when a man is surrounded by his family
   and all his household are dependent upon his exertions with a business
   just beginning to prosper, while he bids fair to live for many years,
   he is cut down as in a moment--his wife is left a widow--his children
   are orphans. He seems to be taken away at the very worst time, just
   when he could least be spared. The anxious wife may say to herself,
   "Why is this?" but she can only say in return, "I cannot comprehend it,
   it is a great deep."

   I might thus go on recounting instances, but they have transpired
   before us all in our lifetime. And if they have not occurred to us yet,
   they certainly will. Trials and troubles will come upon us quite beyond
   our measuring line. We shall have to do business in deep waters where
   no plummet can by possibility find a bottom! "Your judgments are a
   great

   deep."

   But why does the Lord send us an affliction which we cannot understand?
   I answer, Because He is the Lord. Your child must not expect to
   understand all his father does, because his father is a man of ripened
   intellect and understanding, and the child is but a child. You, dear
   Brother, however experienced you may be, are but a child and, compared
   with the Divine mind, what intelligence have you? How can you expect,
   therefore, that God shall always act upon a rule which you shall be
   able to understand? He is God and, therefore, it becomes us oftentimes
   to be dumb, to sit in silence and feel and know it must be right,
   though we equally know we cannot see how it is so.

   God sends us trials of this sort for the exercise of our Divine Graces.
   Now, is there room for faith? When you can trace it, you cannot trust
   it. If you can understand all that He does, there is room, then, for
   your judgment rather than for your faith and for your reliance on His
   judgment. But when you cannot understand it, submit yourself to Him!
   Say, "I know that God is good. Though He slays me, yet will I trust in
   Him; though I walk in darkness and see no light, yet shall not an
   unbelieving word cross these lips, for He is good and must be good,
   become of me what may." Oh, then it is that faith is faith, indeed--the
   faith that brings glory to God and strength to your soul! Here is room,
   too, for humility. Knowledge puffs up, but the feeling that everything
   is beyond our knowledge, that we are nonplussed and cannot
   under-stand--the sense of ignorance and incapacity to understand the
   dealings of God--brings humility to us and we sit down at the foot of
   Jehovah's Throne. Beloved, I think there is hardly a Grace which the
   Christian has which is not much helped by the deeps of God's judgments.
   Certainly love has frequently been developed to a high degree in this
   way, for the soul at last comes to say, "No, I will not ask the
   reason--I will not desirethe reason--I do so love Him! Let His will
   stand for a reason. That shall be enough for me. It is the Lord--let
   Him do what seems good to Him." We love not those whom we are always
   bringing to book and questioning about all they do, but when love comes
   to perfection it admires all, it believes all to be right and to be
   perfect. And so, when love comes to perfection with reference to the
   most perfect God, then it is that everything that is done is endorsed
   without examination--everything, even though it is shrouded in
   darkness--is believed in without a question. It must be right, for You,
   Lord, have done it!

   Many other reasons why God calls His people thus to feel His judgments
   occur to me. One I may give, then I will leave this point. We have sins
   which we cannot fathom, dear Brothers and Sisters, and it is little
   marvel, therefore, if we have also chastisements which we cannot
   fathom! There are depths of depravity within our heart that call for
   other deeps, as deep calls unto deep, and there are consequences of sin
   within us which we are not able yet to reach, consequences that are
   following us in secret and damaging us in very vital point. It needs
   that the medicine should be of a searching kind to follow the disease
   into the recesses of our soul where understanding cannot pry. Some of
   those deep judgments are like secret, potent, subtle medicines,
   searching out certain secret devils that have found their way into the
   caverns of our spirit and hidden there. Perhaps an affliction which I
   can understand is meant to direct my attention to some known sin-- but
   it may be that the trial which I cannot understand is dealing deadly
   blows against a mortal ill, which, if not thus destroyed, might have
   been solemnly prejudicial to my own spirit.

   I leave that thought with you--expect that God's judgments will
   sometimes be unfathomable. In the next place--if God's judgments are a
   great deep--

   II. THEN THEY ARE SAFE SAILING.

   Ships never strike on rocks out in the great deeps. Children, perhaps,
   may fancy that a shallow sea is the safest, but an old sailor knows
   better. While they are off the Irish coast the captain has to keep a
   good look out, but while he is crossing the Atlantic he is in far less
   danger. There he has plenty of room and there is no fear of quicksands
   or of shoals. When the sailor begins to come up the Thames, then it is
   that there is first one sandbank and then another, and he is in

   danger, but out in the deep water, where he finds no bottom, he is but
   little afraid. So, mark you, in the judgments of God. When he is
   dealing out affliction to us, it is the safest possible sailing that a
   Christian can have. "What?" says one, "trial safe?" Yes, very safe. The
   safest part of a Christian's life is the time of his trial. "What? When
   a man is down, do you say he is safe?" "Yes, for then he need fear no
   fall! When he is low, he need fear no pride. When he is humbled under
   God's hand, then he is less likely to be carried away with every wind
   of temptation. Smooth water on the way to Heaven is always a sign that
   the soul should keep wide awake, for danger is near! One comes at last
   to feel a solemn dread creeping over one in times of prosperity. "You
   shall fear and tremble because of all the good that God shall make to
   pass before you," fearing not so much lest the good should depart as
   lest we should make an ill use of it and should have a canker of sloth,
   or self-confidence, or worldliness growing up in our spirits! We have
   seen many professed Christians who have made shipwreck--in some few
   instances it has been attributable to overwhelming sorrow--but in ten
   cases to the one, it has been attributable to prosperity! Men grow rich
   and, of course, they do not attend the little Chapel they once went
   to--they must go somewhere where a fashionable world will worship! Men
   grow rich and immediately they cannot keep to that road of self-denial
   which once they so gladly trod. The world has got into their hearts and
   they need to get more. They have got so much and they must get more! An
   insatiable ambition has come over them--and they fall--and great is the
   sorrow which their fall brings to the Church! Great the mischief which
   it does to the people of God!

   But a man in trouble--did you ever notice a real child of God in trial?
   How he prays! He cannot live without prayer! He has got a burden to
   carry to his God and he goes to the Mercy Seat again and again. Notice
   him under depression of spirits. How he reads his Bible! He does not
   now care for that lighter literature which beguiled him many an hour
   before. He needs the solid promise, the strong meat of the Kingdom of
   God! Do you notice now how he hears? That man does not care a fig for
   your flowers and your fine bits of rhetoric--he needs the Word of God!
   He needs the naked Doctrine. He needs Christ! He cannot be fed on whims
   and fancies. He cares a great deal less about theological speculation
   and ecclesiastical authority--he needs to know something about eternal
   love, everlasting faithfulness and the dealings of the Lord of Hosts
   with the souls of His people, of the Covenant and of the suretyship
   engagements of Christ! Ah, this is the man who, if you notice him,
   walks tenderly in the world. He walks holding the world with a very
   loose hand. He expects to be often in the way, and hopes to be up out
   of the way, for the world has lost its attraction for him!

   I say again, God's judgments are a great deep, but they are safe
   sailing and, under the guidance and Presence of the Holy Spirit, they
   are not only safe but they are advantageous. I greatly question whether
   we ever grow much in Grace, except when we are in the furnace! We ought
   to do so. The joys of this life with which God blesses us ought to make
   us increase in Grace and gratitude, ought to be a sufficient motive for
   the very highest form of consecration, but, as a rule, we are only
   driven to Christ by a storm--the most of us, I mean. There are blessed
   and favored exceptions, but most of us need the rod, must have it and
   do not seem to learn obedience except through chastening--the
   chastening of the Lord! Here I leave that second thought. Thirdly,
   God's judgments are a great deep-- III. BUT THEY CONCEAL GREAT
   TREASURE.

   Down in those great depths, who knows what there may be? Pearls lie
   deep there--masses of precious things that would make the miser's eyes
   gleam like a star. There are the wrecks of old Spanish galleons lost
   these centuries ago and there they lie, huge mines of wealth, but far
   down deep! And so with the deep judgments of God. What wisdom is
   concealed there, and what treasures of love and faithfulness and what
   David calls, "very tenderness," "for in very tenderness," he says,
   "have You afflicted me." There is as much wisdom to be seen in some of
   the deep afflictions of God--if we could but understand them, we would
   see as much wisdom in them as in the creation of the world! God smites
   His people artistically. There is never a random blow. There is a
   marvelous degree of skill in the chastening of the Lord. Hence we are
   told not to despise it, which, in the strongest meaning of it, means
   that we are to honor it! We honor the chastisements of our parents, but
   infinitely more the chastisements of God. "For they verily chastened us
   for a few days after their own pleasure, but He for our profit," and
   there is a way of chastening us for profit.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, I said there were treasures concealed in the
   great deeps which we cannot yet reach, and so in the great deeps in
   which God makes us to do business there are great treasures that we
   cannot come upon at present. We do not, perhaps, as yet, receive, or
   even perceive, the present and immediate benefit of some of our
   afflictions. There may be no immediate benefit--the benefit may be for
   hence and to come. The chastening of our youth may be intended for the
   ripening of our age. "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his
   youth." The affliction of today may have no reference to the
   circumstances of today, but to the circumstances of 50 years ahead! I
   do not know that that blade required the rain on such a day, but God
   was looking not to February as such, but to February in its relation to
   July, when the harvest should be reaped. He considered the blade not
   merely as a blade and in its present necessity, but as it would be in
   the full corn in the ear. There are certain marks that an artist makes
   upon the block that you cannot see the reason of as yet--and they spoil
   the apparent likeness of the block and marble to the image which you
   know he wishes to produce--but then those lines are to be worked out,
   by-and-by! They are scratches now, but they will be lines of beauty
   soon, when he comes to finish them. So, a present trial may even lame
   us for present service, damage us--I will even go the length of
   saying--for years to come and make us go groaning and brokenhearted, so
   as to be of comparatively little service to the Church and of very
   little joy to ourselves. But then afterwards--afterwards as Paul puts
   it--it bears the peaceable fruits of righteousness in those that are
   exercised thereby. Why will you not let the Lord have time? Why will
   you be in a hurry? Why will you stand at His elbow and perpetually say,
   "Explain this today and show me the motive and reason of this in this
   present hour"? A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday when
   it is past, and as a watch in the night! The mighty God takes mighty
   time in which to work out His grand results! Therefore, be content to
   let the treasures lie at the bottom of the deep for awhile. But then
   faith may see them. Faith can make the deep translucent till it sees
   the treasure lying there--and it is yours and though you may not at
   this hour be able to be at it--yet you shall have it, "for all things
   are yours." Everything that is stored up in the great deep of the
   Eternal Purpose, or in the deep of the manifest judgment, everything
   there belongs to you, O, Believer! Therefore rejoice in it and let it
   lie there till such a time as God may choose to raise it for your
   spiritual enrichment. God's judgments are a great deep--

   IV. AND THEY WORK MUCH GOOD.

   The great deep, though ignorance thinks it to be all waste--a salt and
   barren wilderness--is one of the greatest blessings to this round
   world! If, tomorrow, there should be "no more sea," although that may
   one day be a blessing, it would not be so today, but the greatest of
   all curses! It is from the sea that there arises the perpetual mist
   which, floating by-and-bye in mid-air, at last descends in plenteous
   showers on hill and vale to fertilize the land. The sea is the great
   heart of the world--I might say the circulating blood of the world! We
   must have it. It must be in motion. Its tides, like a great pulse, must
   be felt, or the world's vitality would cease. There is no waste in the
   sea--it is all needed. It must be there. There is not a drop of it too
   much. So with our afflictions which are Your judgments, O God! They are
   necessary to our life, to our soul's health, to our spiritual vigor.
   "By all these," said one of old, "do men live, and in all these is the
   life of my spirit." Rising up from my trouble is the constant mist
   which is afterwards transformed into sacred dew, which moistens my
   life. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted," said David.
   "Amen!" say all the afflicted ones. A thousand sick beds shall bear
   witness to the blessedness of the trial. A thousand losses and crosses
   that have been borne by the faithful now help the sweetness of the
   harmony of everlasting hymns in the land of the blessed. "Oh, blessed
   cross," said one, "I fear lest I should come to love you too much! 'Tis
   so good to be afflicted!" May God grant to us that at all times,
   instead of trying to fathom the deep, we may understand that it is
   useful to us and be content. Lastly, if God's judgments are a great
   deep--

   V. THEN THEY BECOME A HIGHWAY OF COMMUNION WITH HIMSELF.

   We thought at one time that the deep separated different peoples--that
   nations were kept asunder by the sea. But lo, the sea is today the
   great highway of the world! The rapid ships cross it with their white
   sails, or with their palpitating engines they soon flash across the
   waves. The sea is the world's great canal--a mighty channel of
   communication. And so, Brothers and Sisters, our afflictions--which we
   thought in our ignorance would separate us from our God--are the
   highway by which we may come nearer to God than we otherwise could!
   They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business on the great
   waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.
   You that keep close in shore and have but small trials, you are not
   likely to know much of His wonders in the deep--but if you are made to
   put out far to sea, where deep calls unto deep and the noise of God's
   waterspouts astounds the spiritual mariner, then it is that you shall
   see God's wonders--wonders of faithfulness, wonders of power, wonders
   of wisdom, wonders of love! You shall see them and you shall rejoice to
   see them! These troubles shall be as fiery chariots to bear you up to
   God. Your afflictions, wave upon wave, shall wash your soul, like a
   tempest-tossed boat, nearer to the haven. Oh, but this is a blessed
   thing when God's judgments bring us nearer to Him! Old Quarles has a
   quaint idea when he represents God as swinging

   a flail in judgment--he says if you would get away from it, you must
   got close to His hands, and then you are out of the reach of the swing
   of the blow. Get close up to God and He will not smite! Get near to God
   and the trials cease!

   You know, trials are sometimes weights to keep men down, but you have
   seen many a machine in which one weight going down lifts another weight
   up. And there is a way by faith of adjusting the consecrated pulleys so
   that the very weights of your affliction may lift you up nearer to God!
   The bird with a string and a stone to its feet cannot fly and yet there
   is a way that God has of making His birds fly even when they are tied
   to the ground! They never mounted till they had something to pull them
   down! Never ascended till they were compelled to descend! They found
   the gates of Heaven not up there, but down here! The lower they sank in
   self-estimation, the nearer they came to the everlasting God who is the
   foundation of all things!

   Thus, Brothers and Sisters, I have brought you to the last thought--may
   the Holy Spirit bring you to make it your own. May God's deep judgments
   lead you to deeper communion.

   Dear child of God, you that are in trouble tonight, the voice of that
   trouble is to you--get nearer to God! Get nearer to God. God has
   favored you, favored you with an extraordinary means of growth in His
   Grace. To use Rutherford's simile, He has put you down in the wine
   cellar in the dark. Now begin to try the wines on the lees
   well-refined. Now get at the choice treasures of darkness! He has
   brought you on to a sandy desert--now begin to seek the treasures that
   are hid in the sand. Believe that the deepest afflictions are neighbors
   always to the highest joys and that the greatest possible privileges
   lie close by the darkest trials. If the bitterer your sorrow, the
   louder your song at the last--there is a reason for that--and that
   reason faith may discover and experience live upon.

   May God bless the tried ones here! But there are some here, perhaps,
   who are in trial and have no God to go to. Poor souls! Poor souls!
   Poverty and no God! Sickness and no God! A life of toil, and no Heaven!
   A slavery of penury on earth and then driven forever away from God's
   Presence! Oh, how pitiable! How pitiable! Pity yourselves and remember
   that it need not always be so. You may have a Heaven, you may have
   present bliss. Here is the Gospel--"He that believes and is baptized
   shall be saved." Oh, if you can but trust Him who bled upon the Cross,
   you shall have comfort for your present trouble! You shall have pardon
   for your past, present and future sins! The Lord bless each one of you,
   for Christ's sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALMS 73; 37:1-10.

   TITLE, "A PSALM OF ASAPH." He was a great singer, but he could not
   always sing. In the first part of the Psalm he felt rather like
   groaning than singing--and you shall find that those who sing the
   sweetest the praises of God sometimes have to hang their harps upon the
   willows and are silent. The strong temptation through which Asaph
   passed is one which is very common. You find another account of it in
   the 37th Psalm. It may help your memory to notice that it is the 37th
   and the 73rd Psalm (transpose the figures) which are both upon the same
   subject--the temptation caused to the people of God by the prosperity
   of the wicked.

   Verse 1. Truly, God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean
   heart It must be so. Whatever argument my soul may hold about it, I
   will set that down, to begin with as a certainty--"Truly, God is good
   to Israel." He cannot be unkind or unfaithful to His own people! It
   cannot be possible, after all--however things may look--that God is a
   bad God and a bad Master to His own servants!

   2. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well near
   slipped. Am I, then, one of His people or not? I know He is good to
   them, but how about myself? Perhaps some here will never question
   themselves in that way, and if they were led to do so, they would think
   it was of the devil. I do not think so. I think it is rather of the
   devil to keep us from questioning ourselves. I remember what Cowper
   said--

   "He that has ne ver doubted of his state, He may--perhaps he may--too
   late." Let us delight in full assurance, but let us keep very clear of
   presumption and that assurance which cannot bear self-examination is
   presumption, depend upon it! When a man declines to search himself and
   test himself, there is something

   doubtful, if not rotten in his estate--and it is time he began to say,
   "As for me, my feet were almost gone: my steps had well near slipped."
   This is how it came about--

   3. ForI was envious at the foolish, when Isaw the prosperity ofthe
   wickedI know that wicked men are fools. Asaph and David had often said
   that before. Yet says he, "I was a greater fool, still, that I was
   envious of these fools--when I saw the prosperity of the wicked."

   4, 5. For 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. Many of them keep up a hypocritical profession through
   a long life and die in a stupefaction--so that conscience never awakens
   and they pass out of the world loaded with guilt--and yet talk about
   being accepted before God! How can this be? Where is the justice of it?

   6. Therefore pride compasses them about as a chain. As kings wear
   chains of gold, so is their pride to them.

   6. Violence covers them as a garment They are not ashamed of it. They
   get to be so bold in sin that they wear it as an outside cloak!

   7. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could
   wish Superfluities! They never have to ask where a meal will come from.
   They have more than they need.

   8. They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they
   speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens.Such big
   mouths--such blasphemous words--have they, that they attack God
   Himself! There is nothing too high for them to drag it down--nothing
   too pure for them to slander. "They set their mouth against the
   heavens."

   9. And their tongue walks through the earth.Like the lion seeking its
   prey, they take long walks in their slander. Nobody is safe from them.

   10. 11. Therefore his people return here: and waters of a full cup are
   wrung out to them. And they say, How does God know? And is there
   knowledge in the Most High?'God's sorrowing children have to drink of
   the bitter cup while these proud ones are eating of the fat of the
   land!

   12-14. Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they
   increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed
   my hands in innocence. For all the daylong have I been plagued, and
   chastened every morning. When Asaph got into this unbelieving state of
   mind, it looked as if all his care of his character and all his desire
   to serve God were wasted, for the wicked prospered, while he was
   chastened! It is a strong description which he gives of his state. "All
   the daylong have I been plagued." Not by the half-hour, but by the
   whole day--plagued and weeping as soon as he was out of bed--chastened
   every morning! He almost seemed to be sorry that he was a child of God,
   to be so roughly handled. He almost, but not quite, wished that he
   could take the portion of the wicked, that he might enjoy himself as
   they did and might prosper in the world as they did.

   15. If I had said, I will speak thus, behold, I would have offended
   against the generation of Your children. That was very wise of Asaph.
   He thought, but he did not speak. Some persons say, "You may as well
   out with it." You may as well keep it in! No, a great deal better--if
   you have it in your own heart, it will grieve yourself--but if you
   speak it out, you will grieve others. If you wear sackcloth, Brothers
   and Sisters, wear it round your own loins, but do not wear it as your
   outside garment. There is enough sackcloth in the world without your
   flaunting it before everybody else's face! If you must fast, remember
   your Master's words, "You, when you fast, anoint your head and wash
   your face, that you appear not unto men to fast." He gave us that
   precept in order to avoid Pharisaic ostentation, but we may also follow
   it from another motive, namely, that we may not spread sorrow in the
   world. There is enough of depression of spirit, enough of despondency,
   enough of heartbreak without our saying a word to increase it among the
   sons of men--

   "Bear and forbear, and silent be-- Tell no man your misery,"

   lest you bring another into it, unless, indeed, you meet with a strong
   man who can help you. Then you may tell your sorrow to get relief. But
   tell it not to the children.

   16. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me. "Too
   painful" to keep it. "Too painful" to speak it out and grieve other
   people.

   17. Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood their end.
   Asaph went to his God. He got to Christ, whom he foresaw, for the
   Person of Jesus Christ is the sanctuary of God! Some people call these
   buildings sanctuaries. They have no authority for so doing. "God dwells
   not in temples made with hands." He may have done so under the Old

   Covenant, but not now. Christ is the sanctuary of God and when we get
   to Him and come into fellowship with God in Him, then we begin to learn
   something! "Then understood I their end."

   18. Surely You did set them in slippery places. There they are--on a
   mountain of ice, bright and glittering! Up aloft, where others see,
   admire and wonder at them. But oh, how dangerous their pathway!

   18. You cast them down into destruction. They are not left to slip, but
   a hand overthrows them--flings them down from the heights of their
   prosperity to the depths of unutterable woe!

   19, 20. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are
   utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakes, so, O Lord,
   when You awake, You shall despise their image. As if God slept today
   and let these images of prosperity exist as in a dream, but by-and-by
   He wakes. His time of judgment comes and where are these prosperous
   men? They have gone. The "baseless fabric of a vision" has melted into
   thin air and "left not a wreck behind." It is not. It is gone!

   21. Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. I felt a
   heart-pain. I felt my whole nature go amiss, as if there had been
   calculi causing the deepest possible misery in my reins.

   22. So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before You. I saw
   no farther than a goose! Like a beast that cannot look into the future,
   I judged these men by today--by the pastures in which they fed and the
   fatness which they gathered there. "I was as a beast before You." Now
   notice the splendid connection of these two verses. I will read them
   again--the 22nd and the 23rd . "So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as
   a beast before You."

   23. Nevertheless I am continually with You: You have held me by my
   right hand. What a strange mixture a man is! And a godly man is the
   strangest conglomerate of all! He is a beast and yet continually with
   God. View him from one side--he is ignorant. View him from the other
   and he has an unction from the Holy One and he knows all things! View
   him from one point of the compass and he is naked, and poor, and
   miserable! View him from another quarter and behold he is complete in
   Christ and "accepted in the Beloved!" They know not man who do not know
   that every true man is two men!

   24. You shall guide me with Your counsel, and afterward receive me to
   Glory. I, the fool that envied fools, yet, "You shall guide me with
   Your counsel, and afterward receive me to Glory."

   25. Whom have I in Heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I
   desire beside You. Now he has got out of the temptation! He is not
   going to seek for prosperity that he may rival the wicked in their
   wealth. No! He sees that in having God, he has all he needs. Even
   though he should continually be plagued all the day long, and chastened
   every morning, his portion in God is quite enough for him. He will not
   murmur anymore!

   26. My flesh and my heart fails. I see what a poor thing I am. I
   allowed my flesh and my heart to get the mastery over me and I got
   caught in this trap.

   26, 27. But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.
   For, lo, they that are far from You shall perish: You have destroyed
   all them that go a whoring from You. A strong word, but none too
   forcible, for every heart that seeks delight away from God is an
   unchaste heart. It has got away from true purity even for a moment in
   pouring out its love upon the creature.

   28. But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in
   the Lord GOD, that I may declare all Your works.

   PSALM 37. Verse 1. Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be
   you envious against the workers of iniquity. A common temptation. Many
   of God's saints have suffered from it. Learn from their experience.
   Avoid this danger. There really is no power in it when once the heart
   has come to rest in God. But it is a sad affliction until the heart
   does get its rest. "Fret not because of evildoers."

   2-4. For they shallsoon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the
   green herb. Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shall you dwell in the
   land, and verily you shall be fed. Delight yourself also in the LORD.
   Make Him your delight, and take care that you do really delight. Feel a
   fullness of joy in Him.

   4. And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Because when the
   heart delights in God, then its desires are all such as God can safely
   grant. He does not say to every man, or even to every praying man, "I
   will give you the desires of your heart," but, "Delight yourself in the
   Lord," and then He will.

   5. Commit your way unto the LORD. Give it up to Him to rule it, and to
   guide you and lead you in every step. "Commit your way unto the Lord."

   5, 6. Trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass. And He shall
   bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the
   noonday. It is better to trust our character with God than with the
   ablest counselor. Scandal may pass over a fair name for a while and
   cloud it, but God is the avenger of all the righteous! There will be a
   resurrection of reputations, as well as of persons at the Last Great
   Day. Only we must commit it to God.

   7, 8. Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him: fret not yourself
   because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings
   wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not
   yourself in any wise to do evil A fretful spirit soon comes to be an
   angry spirit--and when we begin to be jealous of evildoers, we are very
   apt to become evildoers ourselves! Many an honest man has snatched at
   hasty gain because he was envious of the prosperity of the unrighteous.
   And then he has pierced himself through with many sorrows in
   consequence. But "fret not yourself in any wise to do evil." There is
   an old proverb that it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
   Therefore, when you are in temporal trouble, ask the Lord to fill you
   with His Grace, for then you will stand upright and, by-and-by, you
   shall be delivered.

   9. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD,
   they shallinherit the earth. If there is anything good to be had here,
   men that wait upon God shall have it! If there is any grain of wheat
   amidst these heaps of chaff, Believers that are trusting the Lord shall
   find them!

   10. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be. How transient
   are their joys! Their wealth which they accumulate, the beauty which
   they think is upon their estate--all this is but as the painted colors
   of the bubble, which is scarcely seen before it vanishes. Will you envy
   this? Will you envy a little child his playthings, which will be broken
   in an hour? Will you envy a madman the straw crown which he plaits and
   puts upon his head when he thinks himself a king? Oh, be not so
   foolish! Your inheritance is eternal and you are immortal! Why should
   you envy the creature of an hour? "For yet a little while, and the
   wicked shall not be."

   10. Yes, you shall diligently consider his place. His mansion, his
   house, the grand figure that he cut in society.
     __________________________________________________________________

Man Humbled, God Exalted

   (No. 3369)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, OCTOBER
   4, 1886.

   "And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of
   men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that
   day." Isaiah 2:17.

   THIS is the case when God visits a nation with terrible judgments. When
   the Jews were led away captive into Babylon, the great men of the land
   were bound in chains and treated as common slaves. And as they marched
   across the weary wilderness, the iron entered into their souls. Then
   was the loftiness of their spirit bowed down and the haughtiness of the
   king and the princes, who laughed at the Prophet, was laid low.

   So also when God is pleased to send famine upon a land, then again man
   has to humble himself. It is not easy to say, "I am my own. Who is Lord
   over me?" when the barn is empty and when the wine vats no longer burst
   with new wine. Famine is a wondrous leveler--and when the king of
   Samaria went through his straitened cities--where women had eaten their
   own children in the straitness of the siege, I think there was none
   brought so low as the king--none so humbled as the highest and none so
   base as the haughtiest!

   It is so, too, when pestilence comes. With equal foot, it kicks at the
   door both of the palace and of the cottage. Then the prince must mourn
   because his first-born dies--and majesty must sit in weeds when
   desolation is in the palace.

   God has wondrous ways of making men feel that they are but dust, but
   when nothing else can serve His turn He will sweep whole dynasties
   away, as men remove an anthill when it has become a nuisance. Yes, He
   will shake mighty nations, and make "eternal cities," as they were
   called, only to stand as the memorials and the wrecks of greatness! The
   Lord, in all the works of Providence hitherto, if you analyze the pages
   of history, you will find has been constantly bringing down high looks
   and making the haughtiness of man to be humbled. Indeed, this seems to
   be God's great work! And if any man should say to me, "What is God
   doing?" I would answer, "He is lifting up the lowly and he is casting
   down the proud! He seems always to be engaged in this, as though it
   were His natural work and He delighted in it--the taking down of those
   nests that were built among the stars--and the stooping in the
   almightiness of His love to pick up the beggar from the mire and set
   him among the princes, even among the princes of His people."

   What is thus constantly being done in His Providence will be continued
   to be done until the haughtiness of man shall be completely driven
   away--until in this world there shall be no place for any majesty, but
   the majesty of the King of kings--until beneath the cape of Heaven
   there shall be but one name before which men shall bow, one Throne
   which alone shall be august in men's minds and only one name by which
   all the families of the earth shall be named! "In that day," when all
   the earth shall be filled with His Glory, as the waters cover the sea,
   it shall be said, "He has thrown down the high looks ofman and the
   Lord, alone, is exalted!"

   But I want to come to something more distinctly personal to ourselves.
   This text is certainly true, though in so applying it we may seem to be
   wresting it from its original setting and connection, it is certainly
   true in the economy of Grace. Man in all matters of religion and in all
   his dealings with God, is proud, but it is amazing how apparently
   humble men will be when they worship false gods. They will cut
   themselves with knives and roll themselves in the mire. We have known
   some votaries to kneel before the representation of the Virgin Mary and
   lick the very pavement with their tongues by way of penance--and
   perform the most degrading rites in honor of their false gods. Man
   seems to be humble enough in his dealings with a false deity, but as
   soon as ever he comes to deal with the true God, the first things that
   have to be got out of him are his pride, his high looks, his
   haughtiness- Oh, strange is it that before the Majesty of Heaven a worm

   of the dust should think himself great, and that in the blaze of the
   infinite purity of the thrice-holy God a mass of corruption like man
   should fancy himself to be good! But so it is! One of the greatest
   works of Grace in the heart is to humble our pride.

   Going now into this subject with as much brevity as possible, we shall
   observe, in the first place, that--

   I. THE PLAN OF SALVATION, ITSELF, AIMS AT THE BOWING DOWN OF THE
   LOFTINESS OF MAN AND AT THE EXALTATION OF GOD.

   This is very apparent to us at once when we remember that there is no
   plan of salvation at all for man except as a sinner The plan of
   salvation necessarily considers man as needing salvation and as being
   lost. Its very first promise is forgiveness, which implies sin. It
   begins to talk with man of pardon and justification, which implies
   guilt and a lack of righteousness. If there is anybody here that is not
   a sinner, there is nothing in the Bible for him! As old Wilcox well
   observes, "Christ can save everybody except the self-righteous." He
   came into the world to save sinners, but not the righteous. He is the
   Physician for any form of disease, except that form of disease which
   consists in not being diseased. "The whole," says He, "have no need of
   a physician, but they that are sick." If you are a sinner, there is
   some relation between you and Christ. But if you proudly say in your
   heart, "I am better than other men. I am not as the thief, or the
   harlot. I need not wash in the fountain which they need so much, for I
   am clean." I tell you, man or woman, there is no Christ for you, no
   pardon for you, no justification for you, no Heaven for you! Your
   self-righteousness, like an iron bar across the gates of Paradise,
   shuts you out forever! Your good works can do for you what your sins
   need not do--they may ruin your soul forever by making you too proud to
   come to Christ. The plan of salvation appeals to men as sinners! It
   comes to them on no other terms but as sinners--and thus it is
   evidently meant to bring down man's high looks.

   Moreover, it not only treats men as sinners, but as dead sinners. There
   is not a complimentary word to human nature within the covers of the
   Bible. It says, "You has He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and
   sins"--and this was said of New Testament saints who had warm praise
   from the Apostle Paul! They had been originally dead. If you want an
   image of human nature, you will find it in the rottenness of Lazarus
   when he had been dead four days! The Gospel comes to give life to the
   dead! It comes to deal out everlasting life to those who have lost it
   and could never have obtained it except as a gift from Heaven. Now, is
   not this humbling to the high looks of men? What? Must it be so--that I
   must see, "Death," written upon all my hopes, upon all my doings, upon
   all my willings? Must all these be written down as being dead things?
   It must be so. And if you do not know this, you do not know vital
   godliness as yet, for the Grace of God deals with you in your natural
   estate as being lost and utterly ruined and undone!

   Another humbling point in the plan of salvation is that it distinctly
   informs the sinner that the way of salvation is in no sense or manner
   in himself, but is altogether in Another. I t tells him that if he is
   saved, his salvation is entirely the work of Him who, though He was
   God, yet condescended to become Man that He might lift manhood up into
   companionship with Godhead! It says the sinner, when he prostrates
   himself upon his knees, "Your prayers are well enough, but they avail
   not with the Eternal Father to put away sin. Blood! Blood! Blood must
   flow, not tears alone!" It tells the sinner that all his merits and his
   good works cannot obtain salvation for him. It bids him look to Christ
   and mark the crimson currents as they spring from those matchless
   wounds, that mouth of mercy, those gates of Paradise, those fountains
   of immortality, those sources of all our richest treasure and abiding
   peace! It tells the sinner that the head that once was crowned with
   thorns must be crowned with the glory of His salvation, if he is saved
   at all, and that the Man who was despised and spat upon when here below
   must be honored and adored above by him as his Savior, and his only
   Savior, or there is no salvation for him! This, too, has a tendency to
   bring down the high looks and to lower the haughtiness of man.

   Perhaps, however, there is nothing in the Gospel which grates more upon
   some men's pride, touching, as it were, the very marrow of their bones,
   than the Doctrine, not only that man is a sinner, and a dead sinner,
   and is saved by the work of Another, but that the very will to be saved
   is determined not so much by himself as by God. I do not know a text
   that makes a sinner grind his teeth more than this one--"So then, it is
   not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows
   mercy." You remember that amazing expression of the Savior's, "You will
   not come unto Me that you might have life." "You have a will. You are
   responsible. You are free agents, but that will of yours, you have so
   wickedly set against Me that you will not come unto Me that you may
   live! You refuse Me--you will not accept My Grace--you will sooner
   starve than come to the feast of mercy." Many a man has turned on his
   heel and said, "I will not hear this any

   longer," and then we are reminded of those who left the Master because
   of certain Truths of God which He taught, and we say, "Will you also go
   away?" Oh, you who have had your haughtiness brought down, I believe
   you will be swept out of that idea and will acknowledge that you never
   came to Christ of your own free will, but only of Sovereign Grace. You
   do not deny it, for you are always conscious of it, that unless your
   will had been moved by Sovereign Grace, and constrained by the blessed
   interposition of the Divine Spirit, you were as obstinate as the heifer
   unaccustomed to the yoke, kicked against the pricks and would not come
   to Christ that you might have life! Now, this part of the plan of
   salvation tends to bring down high looks.

   There is another point which I must notice and which is not always
   understood, but it is a mighty bringer-down of high looks, viz., the
   understanding of this--that our depraved nature is not in the plan of
   salvation supposed to be either improved or improvable. Are you
   startled at such an assertion? Well, if you have read the Word of God,
   you will have found plenty of warrant for it. All that God Himself can
   do for your depraved nature as it now stands is to kill it and let it
   be buried when dead! The ordinance of Baptism is intended to set forth
   this very Truth of God--that you must be dead and buried to the old
   life, and the new and true life that you are henceforth to live does
   not spring out of the ashes of the old, like the phoenix out of the
   ashes of the departed one, but is an emanation of the Holy Spirit!
   "Created anew in Christ Jesus." It is not that the carnal man is ever
   reconciled to God, for it is plainly declared that it is "enmity
   against God," and cannot be reconciled! The carnal mind cannot even
   understand spiritual truth! The carnal mind knows not the things which
   are of God, for they are spiritual and must be spiritually discerned.
   The process by which a man is practically saved is this--a new nature
   is put into us! That new and incorruptible nature immediately begins to
   contend with the old Adam, "the body," as Paul calls it, "of sin and
   death." This causes a conflict, a conflict which is constantly
   maintained, and which at certain times is extremely intense and makes
   the subject of it to cry out, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
   deliver me from the body of this death?" Or, "From this body of death,
   this death which has taken such a tangible form as to be to me a
   realizing tangible thing--a very body of death--who will get me rid of
   it?" He does not ask that it may be improved, but that he may be
   delivered from it! He does not ask that it may be changed, but that a
   new nature may come in and trample it down and rise superior to it!

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, how humbling this is! To think that all
   Christ found in me when He met with me was so utterly good-for-nothing
   that all He could do with it was to bury it--and all the life that I
   had when Christ met with me was in His sight such death that He had to
   quicken me with an entirely new life--and to make the old life die
   daily! Happy, happy day when it is completely dead and gone and the new
   life, delivered from the bondage of corruption, shall rise into Glory!
   Now, this is a humbling Doctrine. I am, however, persuaded that it is
   both a Doctrine declared in God's Word and a Doctrine verified by human
   experience, so far as that experience is Christian experience. All this
   is intended by our gracious God to bring down the high looks of man and
   to humble the haughty and the proud.

   But now, in the next place, while the plan of salvation aims at this--

   II. THE FIRST WORK OF SALVATION ALSO SECURES IT TO A VERY LARGE EXTENT.

   When the Grace of God comes into a man, it comes with an axe in its
   hand. It does not come at first to build up, but to pull down. I think
   we should beware of being too suddenly filled with strong confidence
   and assurance. I do not say beware of too suddenly believing in Christ!
   That is a blessed thing and is a sinner's present business. When the
   Holy Spirit gives faith--joy and peace come immediately. But I believe
   that, as a general rule, God strips before He clothes, and when He
   means to build a house for His own indwelling, He does what every wise
   architect does--He first digs out the deep foundations. An early work
   of Grace in the soul is conviction of sin. We who speak to hundreds and
   thousands of souls--for we speak without exaggeration when we say we
   have seen thousands of souls under conviction of sin--we observe this,
   that conviction of sin is a wondrous puller-down. When a man begins to
   feel his sin lying heavy upon his heart, when his iniquity is
   continually before him, as David puts it in the 51st Psalm, then his
   high looks are gone. Have you ever seen a rich man in the anguish of
   conviction? You would not know him from a beggar then! His purse-pride
   has gone! All his wealth gives him but little comfort. "My sin! My sin!
   My sin!" he says. "Would to God I were as poor as the paupers in the
   workhouse, if I were but rid of my sin! What is my wealth while I have
   my sin?"

   Have you ever seen the man of knowledge, the man who knows everything,
   the sharp, quick, critical man, who takes everybody up and thinks he
   can set all the world right--have you ever seen him under a sense of
   sin? He feels himself to be a fool at once, and would sit down on a
   form with the infant class in a school if there he might learn of a
   Savior, being content to give up all his wisdom and to be a babe in
   Christ! And have you ever observed the man who was naturally of a high
   and haughty disposition, who reared up among his fellows--have you ever
   seen how he acts when God's hand is on him? Why, he would hide himself
   anywhere--and he envies even the meanest and most obscure of the
   children of God! Once get a sight of sin, and those things which now
   prop us up will all give way and we shall be beggars in the face of all
   the world when once we see how exceedingly sinful a thing our sin is!
   Some of us have passed through this season of deep penitential humbling
   before the Lord and we can bear our witness that when the Lord casts us
   down, there is nothing that can lift us up but the hand of the Lord
   Himself! For when we did try to rise, our wings melted like the wax
   wings of Icarus and we fell to the ground broken in pieces.

   But if conviction humbles, let me say that conversion humbles a great
   deal more! It is thought, perhaps, by you that as soon as you find
   pardon you will not be so humble as you were. Distrust the pardon that
   does not humble you! Be persuaded that the forgiveness which does not
   make you lie low in the dust is no forgiveness at all, but a mere fancy
   of your infatuated heart! When the Lord pardons a sinner, that sinner
   feels that he could sink and go out of sight. As soon as Peter's boat
   began to fill, it began to sink--and as soon as our boat gets full of
   mercy it begins to sink! Peter, too, said, "Depart from me, O Lord, for
   I am a sinful man." And so we feel as if the abundance of God's mercy
   taught us more than ever a sense of sin. I do not think that a sense of
   sin is such a heart-breaking thing as a sense of mercy, for sometimes a
   sense of sin is attended with a despair which steels the soul and makes
   the mind hardened against God. A criminal may know himself to be
   guilty, very guilty, but yet if he feels sure that there is no mercy
   for him, he is like a hunted stag at bay which turns upon its
   oppressors and fights for dear life. But when a man is conscious of
   guilt, and then receives a free pardon from his offended God, then he
   knows not what to do! He is broken in heart, first with his
   unworthiness, and next with the mercy of God! God compares His Word in
   one place to a hammer, and in another place to a fire. Now, why are the
   two put together? Why, because there are some rocks, which, after a
   line of fire has been made across them, will crack readily in a fissure
   as soon as the hammer is used! Now, the hammer of conviction, when it
   comes upon the cold heart, frozen with despair, may break that heart,
   but oh, when the fire of God's love comes and the hammer, too, then
   surely the rock gives way and our stubborn will flies into pieces
   before the Lord, broken by His fire--

   "Dissolved by Your goodness, I fall to the ground, And weep to the
   praise of the mercy I've found." Some say they do not believe this
   point. If there is anyone of you who has passed through conviction of
   sin without soul-humbling, I pray God to show you that such a
   conviction of sin as you have had is not the work of His Spirit! If you
   have not been led to see this, then, whatever you may have seen of the
   corruption of your own heart, you have not seen yourself aright. And,
   on the other hand, if, in coming to Christ, you have been able to keep
   anything with which to feed your pride, anything in which you can
   glory, anything of which you can say, "This is mine. This is not
   Christ's. This came from my own good nature and excellent disposition
   and not from the Most High"--then you have need to go to Christ again,
   for you have never yet been to Him aright! All that our unregenerate
   nature spins must be unraveled. All the pottery that unregenerate
   nature burns in her kiln shall be broken as with a rod of iron! But
   that which comes from Christ is grounded, bottomed, and stayed upon the
   rock of Eternal Mercy! That shall stand, and only that! Oh, this is
   indeed the way in which God, in the hearts of His people, brings down
   the loftiness of man, lays low his haughtiness and makes the Lord,
   alone, to be exalted! Thirdly--

   III. THIS SAME WORK IS CARRIED ON IN THE AFTER-WORKS OF GRACE.

   I cannot single out all these--it would take too long for this
   evening--but let us just pick out four of the works of Grace in a
   Christian in his advance in the spiritual life.

   The first is his growth in Grace. I am sure that as the Christian grows
   in Grace, he grows in humility. Or, at any rate, if there is a growth
   which is not accompanied by a deeper sense of unworthiness and
   feebleness than existed before, then it is a supposed growth, not a
   real one! The farmer is very glad when he sees his root plants growing
   upwards for a time. He likes to see the green leaf, but he will shake
   his head to the boy who is pleased with the green leaf only. "Oh," he
   says, "I want to see it grow downwards as well as upwards--I want the
   root--that is the most precious thing." If it does not grow in the
   root, in the underground part, it is but of little value to him. It is
   well for the Christian, when he has plenty of humility and when he can
   spread out the very roots of his life and draw up nourishment from the
   precious Word of God. We must grow in humility! It was remarked by an
   excellent Divine that growing souls think themselves nothing,

   but that grown saints think themselves lessthan nothing, and I suppose
   that when they are fully grown they fail to find language in which to
   express their sense of insignificance! The Apostle Paul, I suppose,
   committed an error in grammar when he said, "Less than the least of all
   saints." It may be bad grammar, but it is precious truth! Everyone who
   has come to such knowledge as the Apostle--and I am afraid there are
   not many of us who have grown to that!--can truly say that he is "less
   than the least of all saints." As the Lord then enables us to grow in
   Grace, Brothers and Sisters, our proud looks will come down and God
   will be exalted!

   In the next place, if the Lord Jesus Christ shall favor us with
   communion with Himself, i t will have the same result. You have
   sometimes, in happy moments, been with the Savior on the Mount. We
   scarcely like to speak of these things here, but we have had times
   when, before we were aware, our souls made us like the chariots of
   Amminadib. But no chariot of Amminadib could have set forth our
   rapture! We have had such fellowship with Jesus that, though these eyes
   have never seen Him, yet we have been conscious of His Presence, joyful
   and sure that He was near! He has kissed us with the kisses of His
   lips--His love has been better than wine. Now, no man ever came out of
   the place of communion proud. If there is one thing that always goes
   with it, it is a prostration of spirit in the Presence of the precious
   Savior! See Jesus and be proud? Impossible! Lean your head upon that
   bosom and be exalted? Impossible! You will feel, when you have seen the
   Lord, that henceforth you must blush to think that you are so little
   like He and love Him so little. This is another way in which God brings
   down our high looks--it is a very blessed way of doing it--may He use
   it more and more!

   A third way of bringing down our high looks is really to make His
   children practically active. It is thought by some that activity and
   usefulness have in them a strong tendency to lift us up in pride. I
   suppose they have, but I believe that idleness has far more--that
   nobody is so proud of his strength as the man who has never tried it
   and that very likely some of those gentlemen who are so apt to pray for
   the workers lest they should be exalted, and who sit down and do
   nothing themselves--are much the prouder people of the two! Let me say
   to you, Brothers and Sisters, that of all the temptations that the
   workers have, they are not so often tempted to pride as they are to
   some other things. Take the preacher, for instance, who has to preach
   twice a day and be the pastor of a multitude of souls. Well, he
   succeeds upon some one occasion, but he has no time to cradle himself
   upon that because the trumpet sounds for another battle--and he has to
   feel that he needs fresh strength! He cannot lift up the banner, for he
   has to sharpen his sword again! When nightfall comes, he has still some
   work to do for his Master and the first ray of the morning's light sees
   him still busy. He has no time to congratulate himself upon what he has
   performed! He is compelled to--

   "Forget the steps already trod, And onward press his way."

   I should prescribe to any Christian here tonight, who feels tempted to
   pride, to attempt some great work for Christ that is a little above his
   present strength! And when he has done--to let him try something a
   little above even that! And if he can do that, to go still further! If
   you always have something on hand more than you can do, and which puts
   a strain upon your faith and upon your earnestness, I believe it will
   be one of the best cures for pride and one of the best things, through
   God the Holy Spirit's power, to make you see your own insufficiency and
   to bring your haughtiness down.

   Well, dear Brothers and Sisters, so base are we naturally that the
   fourth way of bringing us down is the most common one--not by communion
   with Christ, nor by activity, so much as by affliction. Must it always
   be that? Must it always be that? They are bad children who always need
   the rod, but there are some Christians who seem as if they never would
   obey without it! "Be you not as the horse and the mule, which have no
   understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle lest
   they come near unto you." Oh, what hard mouths we have and with what a
   sharp bit of affliction are we driven--and how we champ that bit,
   sometimes, and would gladly get it out of our mouths! And if we could
   do so, we would dash on to our own destruction! The only way that God
   has to keep us right is to give us, every now and then, a touch with
   His whip. Blessed be God for it! It is hard to bear, but oh, how
   profitable it is! Blessed be God for slander! It cuts us to the quick,
   but oh, how beaded with blessings has it been to us! Blessed be God for
   depression of spirit! We have groaned under it, some of us, till our
   life has become a burden to us--but if we had not been so depressed
   when alone, we would never have been able to bear the prosperity which
   God has given us abroad! We thank His blessed name, for by all these
   means, in some way or other, the loftiness of man shall be brought
   down, the haughtiness of man shall be made low and the Lord alone shall
   be exalted!

   Let us look forward to the works of Grace which are yet incomplete, but
   which are soon to be completed. Let us anticipate the day when the
   Spirit of God shall complete His great work--when the old nature in us
   shall be utterly conquered and when the new nature, born of God--shall
   reign in its greatest vitality and fullest development!

   Then shall we be, before the Eternal Throne, without spot or wrinkle,
   or any such thing, covered with the robe of Christ's righteousness and
   decked with the jewels of our perfected salvation! Then, indeed, shall
   every haughty look be gone and every proud thought be banished! And in
   that day the Lord alone shall be exalted! Then shall our one song be,
   "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name be the Glory. Unto Him
   who loved us and loosed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made
   us kings and priests unto God, unto Him be glory forever and ever." I
   shall not detain you much longer, but we ought not to leave this
   subject without mentioning yet another Truth of God that our text
   suggests.--

   IV. THE EFFECT OF THE WORKS OF GRACE WHICH GOD DOES IN HIS CHURCH AT
   LARGE IS TO

   BRING DOWN THE LOFTINESS OF MAN.

   Dear Friends, we believe, and some of us believe it very firmly, that
   God is going to visit our Churches with a revival. We have seen
   indications of the coming blessing. In connection with this one Church,
   and it is but an instance of several others, the very presence of this
   multitude on a Thursday evening is, to some of us, one of the most
   hopeful signs that there is a spirit of inquiry growing! And on Monday
   evenings I see the greater part of this area filled with people who
   come only to pray. I am not conscious of having stirred you up
   particularly of late, but I have seen a very marked change over the
   whole face of things. Why, for the last two or three months, our
   friends who keep the gates outside, although we have always had as many
   as we could by any process hold, yet find themselves now compelled to
   shut the gates in the face of hundreds and even of thousands--although
   before we scarcely knew where to put those who came within the walls,
   yet there were not so many sent away! The mass who come here has become
   perfectly astounding to us all. We can hardly realize it. We think it
   is a good sign if they are willing to hear--and when they will come and
   even tread upon one another in their desire to hear the Gospel! But a
   better sign than that is that last Tuesday week, that day of fasting
   and of prayer, left an impression on the ministers present which they
   can never forget. And last Tuesday, when we met in our association, the
   ministers present all said, "Why cannot we have such a day of fasting
   and prayer?" Ah, indeed, why not? We all agreed that there should be
   such a day. Then when the delegates and representatives of most of the
   Baptist Churches in London came, they said, "Cannot we come?" Well, we
   had not thought of that. "Oh," they said, "you cannot keep us out! We
   should like to consecrate a whole day to fasting and prayer." "Yes," we
   replied, "we are right glad to find your hearts so warmed to it." Some
   asked if all the deacons and elders of Baptist churches could not come,
   and they were told, "Yes, certainly." And I believe that on Monday, the
   5th of November, you will find us by hundreds met together to spend the
   day, from ten until six, in humiliation and prayer to God for a
   blessing!

   This came so spontaneously, without any plan or proposal, everybody
   desiring it, that I took it at once as being a token for good! I am
   glad that the good old Puritan preaching and fasting has come back to
   our Churches. There are certain demons that afflict mankind, that will
   not go forth without prayer and fasting, and when many are not only
   willing, but eager to spend a day entirely for this, it is a good sign!
   God never sets us praying and longing without meaning to bless us, only
   here is the point--as sure as ever God blesses us, He will be sure to
   take us down. We are mistaken if we think He is going to bless us for
   our own exaltation! If any of you want a blessing for your own
   self-glorification, you will be wonderfully mistaken! If I, as your
   pastor, should ask for the conversion of sinners that I might be able
   to say, "Oh, there are so many added to the Church in a year," I shall
   not get it, or if it should come, there will come with it some stinging
   rebuke that will make the soul cry out to God! You must mind that God
   is in it and then we shall have the blessing! And the only thing that
   will hinder it is our getting any sinister motive, or any idea that we
   can exalt ourselves! I say, Brothers and Sisters, that if we seek God's
   blessing for the mere extension of our denomination, we shall seek it
   from a wrong motive. We must seek it for God's Glory and for that only,
   for the Lord will bring down our high looks as well as the high looks
   of other people! And the more He loves us, the more will He be sure to
   do this, for what He will not tolerate in sinners, He will not bear in
   His saints. What I cannot put up with in strangers, I will never endure
   in my own friends, and so will the Lord chasten His people if they are
   proud and haughty. Let us then wait and expect to receive a blessing,
   but let us also expect to be humbled by it. Lastly--

   V. WHERE DEEDS OF MERCY DO NOT PROVE THE TRUTH OF THIS, DEEDS OF
   JUSTICE WILL CONFIRM IT.

   I will say but a few sentences, but let them be caught by your ears and
   seized by your hearts. In this house tonight there are some of you who
   are not reconciled to God by the death of His Son. You have never
   humbled yourselves and taken the Lord's Christ to be your only hope.
   Now, mark this--if you will not come down by Grace, you must and shall
   come down by judgment! You will be humbled, Sinner, if not to
   penitence, then to remorse! If not to hopeful conversion, to hopeless
   despair! Every high look shall be brought down in the day when He shall
   sit upon the Great White Throne and call the quick and the dead to
   judgment. "Rocks, hide us! Mountains, fall upon us! Hide us from the
   face of Him that sits on the Throne!" Who said that? Why, the very man
   who once said, "Lord, I thank You that I am not as other men are." Yes,
   Sirs, and the very man who once said, "Who is the Lord that I should
   obey Him?" He it is who now cries, "Hide me, hide me from the accusing
   face." Behold, you despisers, wonder and perish! If you will not be
   humbled at the Cross, you shall be humbled at the Throne of Judgment!
   If mercy wins you not, judgment shall subdue you! If you will not bend,
   you shall break! He who will not melt in the fires of love shall be
   consumed in the furnace of wrath! Oh, my Hearer, what a dread
   alternative is this! "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish
   from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little! Blessed are all
   they that put their trust in Him!"

   There is a wonderful power in humiliation. Ahab humbled himself and
   though it was not with a saving humility, yet the curse did not fall
   upon him as it would have done. Even in a natural humiliation there may
   be some withdrawal of temporal chastisement, but if the Lord shall give
   you true brokenness of heart, remember it is written, "A broken and a
   contrite heart, O God, You will not despise." There is not one word in
   the Bible against a humble soul. There is not one curse against a
   sinner who feels his need and comes empty-handed! Come, poor needy one,
   poor helpless one, you ruined sinner, without any hope of yourself, you
   bankrupt sinner, come--

   "'Tis perfect poverty alone,

   That sets our soul at large.

   While we can call one mite our own,

   We have no full discharge."

   When we have done with self and with all self's hopes, projects and
   plans--and trust only in the finished work of Jesus--then may we
   rejoice, for we are saved and saved eternally!
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Leader Through the Darkness

   (No. 3370)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE MILDMAY PARK CONFERENCE, 1890.

   "Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who
   walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the
   Lord and rely upon his God." Isaiah 50:10.

   "Behold I have given him for...a leader " Isaiah 55:4.

   I DESIRE to speak to you, dear Friends, not only of Jesus as our
   Leader, but of following Him in the dark. Can you see Jesus in the
   dark? Yes. We sometimes see Him better in the dark then in the light.
   If you will go outside in the daytime and look up, you will not be able
   to see a single star. But if you will get into the bucket of a well and
   go down into the darkness, very soon you will behold the stars. To
   descend may sometimes be the shortest way to ascend. Certainly, to
   suffer is the road to the land where there is no suffering--and to be
   in present darkness may be the nearest way to eternal light. All light,
   but that which comes through Christ, Himself, hinders rather than helps
   our sight of Him. He is best seen by His own light. Begone, sun!
   Begone, moon! Begone, you candles! He is the Sun of Righteousness and
   where He is, there is light enough! All earth-born light hinders the
   vision of His face. I fear that many, trusting in the greatness of
   their mental light, have become blind to the Glory of God in the face
   of Jesus Christ. Blessed is he who sees Christ by Christ--the Crucified
   in the light of His five wounds--the Risen One by the brilliance of His
   own life!

   Darkness--can it fall upon a child of God? He is a child of
   light--shall he walk in darkness? Not in darkness in the sense of
   ignorance, sin and death, but in the sense of gloom and sorrow! Saints
   may have much of it. The heir of Heaven sometimes knows a midnight. But
   if he is with Jesus, following Him as his Leader (and that is my
   topic), then he is in a safe condition. The words of one of our songs
   are ringing in my ears--

   "Anywhere with Jesus!

   Anywhere with Jesus!" Better in the dark with Jesus than in the light,
   yes, than in Heaven, itself, without Him--

   "Not all the harps above

   Can make a heavenly place,

   If Christ His residence removes,

   Or but conceals His face."

   Give us Christ and we will make no hard terms about darkness, or light!
   Only let us be with Him and it is enough. "Forever with the Lord" is
   only another word for glory everlasting!

   Adam, I suppose, was created in the daylight and he wandered about in
   the Garden enjoying his God and the fair works which surrounded him.
   When night came on, darkness was a new phenomenon to him. He must have
   wondered at it, but since he had no sin, his childlike trust in God
   would not permit him to be afraid. He laid himself down to rest without
   a fear. It was a memorable night for him. In the dark he lost
   something, but the loss was a great gain. In the morning, when he woke
   up, he found someone there--the very one he needed. She was there, whom
   the Lord had made for him, since, "it was not good that man should be
   alone." So have you and I found the darkness coming on and we have been
   distressed for a moment--but when we have thought of God we have found
   rest. Then we may have lost a good deal in the darkness, as we thought,
   for we were conscious of an inward pain taking away what we thought to
   be a vital part of ourselves--but when we came out of the gloom into
   the morning light, a joy was ours which we had not known before--a joy
   that has been our companion and our comfort to this very day! Brothers
   and Sisters, I have lost nothing by the darkness. I say, "I," for
   everyone must bear witness for himself. I believe every child of God
   can say the same. Do not

   the dews fall at eventide? Could we bear the perpetual shining of the
   burning sun? Is not the morning freshness so great a joy that it
   compensates us for the night by which we reach it?

   As I thought over my theme, "Jesus, our Leader in the Dark," I began to
   fall in love with the dark. There are two parts to my subject--if one
   seems gloomy, the other is bright enough! Following Christ is a
   lightsome theme! The darkness may be very dark, but I say I have almost
   fallen in love with it when Jesus comes to me therein and makes it His
   pavilion! Rutherford declared that the cross which he carried for his
   Lord at last came to be so dear to him that he was half jealous of it,
   lest he should begin to love the cross with a love rivaling his love to
   his Lord! Darkness of soul in itself is horrible, but the rich fruit it
   has brought to us has made us cease to dread it. We now can thank God
   that the evening and the morning make up the day--and the evening is as
   much a part of the day as the morning. The nights of our lives are as
   rich as the days. The agony is as useful as the rapture. The depression
   as instructive as the exaltation. Let us think, then, of--

   I. THE DARKNESS THAT CHRISTIANS MAY KNOW.

   Well, surely we may say, first, that in some respects we are always in
   the dark while here below. We must wait with patience "until the day
   breaks and the shadows flee away." Our Lord here on earth may be said
   to have been always in the dark in comparison with the Glories which He
   left, in contrast with the bliss that He has reassumed. To be here at
   all, was to Him to be in the dark. The ever-blessed Son of the Father
   was away from the home country and its splendor--he was among sinners
   and His heart was pained with human sin, His ears were vexed with
   ungodly speeches, His eyes were filled with tears because of obstinate
   rebellions! He was all tenderness and yet His soul was among lions. It
   must have been a constant trial to His holy, sensitive spirit to have
   dwelt in the midst of sinners. So in a certain sense we, also, are
   always in the shade compared with what is coming. "It does not yet
   appear what we shall be." He is coming! He is coming! The axles of His
   chariot are hot with speed. He cries, "Behold, I come quickly." When He
   comes, the Glory of His Presence will make the greatest joys that we
   have ever known to seem but twilight, as compared with the full day of
   His appearing! If His life was so truly in darkness, we must not wonder
   if our lives are the same.

   We are not, however, dependent upon natural light any more than He was.
   If a Christian can only be happy when his feelings are right, I should
   be afraid that he is trusting in his feelings! If you are only
   confident when your frames are delightful, I should be afraid that you
   are resting in your frames and feelings! Faith is a principle which has
   its root, deeper feelings. We believe whether we see or not. We believe
   whether we feel or not. We believe in Christ upon the testimony of the
   Father concerning Him--that testimony is enough for us even if there
   are no attendant signs. Our happy experience of salvation is a pleasant
   confirmation of the Word of the Lord! And when it seems to fail us, we
   still believe. God is not changed because we tremble! Christ is not
   altered because we are in fear! The ground on which we stand for
   salvation is not our attainments, nor our experiences, nor our
   communions. We stand upon the finished work of Christ in which we
   believe, whether it is dark, or whether it is light. The young
   Christian will say, "I believe that I am saved because I am so happy."
   He is no more correct than the old Christian would be if he should say,
   "I believe that I am saved because I am unhappy." Let me explain
   myself. The value of feeling depends upon its cause. All happiness in
   the young man is not a proof of piety. He might be happy if he had
   received a large legacy, or had been invited to a party of pleasure.
   All unhap-piness in the old Christian is not good evidence of Grace--by
   no means would such an assertion stand! And yet, if we sigh and cry
   because of the abominations of the city, we have therein a strong
   evidence of our being on the side of Christ and righteousness. If we
   mourn our imperfections and lack of spotless holiness, our very sighing
   and crying are proofs of heavenly life and salvation! The heart is
   clean, and the course of the soul is heavenward when the heart can
   never be satisfied with anything short of perfect holiness.

   Had we not been quickened, and quickened to a high degree, too, we
   would have been content with dim signs of holiness. But now nothing but
   perfection will content us--we are unhappy when even the least mist
   comes between us and God--and these feelings prove how much we love Him
   and how our very element is to dwell in unbroken communion with Him. We
   are not dependent, therefore, upon happiness or unhappiness as the
   ground of our confidence. Christ loved me and gave Himself for me--this
   is the Rock upon which I stand! He died effectually for every soul that
   trusts Him. I trust Him and this is the token that He has redeemed me
   from my sins. I am His. Here is my rock of refuge! I stand on Christ's
   righteousness, be it dark or light. The ground of a Christian's faith
   is not moved in the least degree by the time of his spiritual day, or
   the state of wealth in his experience. Could we sit forever on the top
   of Tabor, we would be no

   safer than if we were made to dwell always in the Valley of
   Humiliation, longing for brighter days. Christ! Christ! Christ! In Him
   we are safe!

   Yet, dear Friends, there are glooms which fall to the lot of some of
   God's best people. I would have you beware, my Brothers and Sisters who
   have made a great advance in Grace, and are very joyful in the Lord, of
   judging your fellow Christians. I have noticed with sorrow on the part
   of some, whose shoelaces I am not worthy to unloose, that,
   nevertheless, they are hard towards the lambs and the lame of the
   flock. Because they have not reached your own high attainments, do not
   condemn them! If you have strong faith, you may condemn unbelief, but
   do not condemn weak Believers, who may have beautiful points of
   character, although they are as yet mere babes in Grace! Have you never
   heard of the strong cattle, of whom the Lord said, "Because you have
   thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with
   your horns till you have scattered them abroad; therefore will I save
   My flock and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between
   cattle and cattle." Beware lest you become proud of your attainments
   and unkind to those beneath your level! I believe that there is such a
   thing as being so long in the light that you do not believe that others
   are in the dark. Or, if they are, you judge them to be weak and foolish
   and you are apt to scold them. Brother, you cannot scold the darkness
   into light! A little sympathy will do far more than what you are
   pleased to call faithful upbraiding. That word, "faithful," sometimes
   means, "cruel."

   None can doubt that some excellent children of God are often in gloom
   through bodily sickness and weakness. There are forms of sickness which
   bring no depression with them. You might suffer from them through life
   and never be saddened. But there are certain forms of disease which
   touch not only the bone and the flesh, but also the mind. The pain of
   the mind encroaches upon the spirit and the spirit is darkened with
   trouble. "Oh, but they ought not to be troubled." Granted, but they are
   troubled, and I have noticed this--that your very strong men, yes, and
   your very strong ministers, too, who can say rather sharp things about
   the weak--and may be justified in saying them, yet, nevertheless, are
   not themselves beyond incurring the same rebukes! Great teachers may
   not make good sufferers. When the hot iron touches them, it is another
   thing from what it seemed to be. It sounds fine for them to say that we
   ought not to be cast down, but ask their wives what these strong men
   are like when their head aches, or their heart is out of order! When
   nights grow long and weary with sleeplessness, do they show all the
   faith of which they now speak? Ah, Brothers, the flesh is weak!

   But our Lord knows all about sickness--"He Himself took our infirmities
   and bore our sicknesses." No form of sickness is beyond the sympathy of
   Jesus. Nothing is sweeter or more reviving than His fellow feeling. One
   does not know how sympathy works so effectively, but it does operate
   marvelously. A little girl said to her mother, "Mother, poor Widow
   Brown has asked me to come in every day and see her. She says that I
   comfort her so! Mother, I don't know anything that I do to comfort her.
   I would wipe all her tears away if I could, but when she sits and
   cries, I go and put my cheek against hers and I cry, too. And she
   kisses me and says that I comfort her." Just so. One poor human being
   can cheer another by fellow feeling, but how much more can Jesus do it!
   Oh, to feel your Master's tears drop on your cheek! When you are
   weeping, then you read that "Jesus wept."--

   "In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows had a part."

   Another cause of great gloom is frequent with us--it is bereavement I
   will not say much about it, lest I needlessly draw up the sluices for
   many a widow, or wifeless husband, or fatherless child. How often does
   the mourner judge that he has laid the best part of himself in the
   grave! However dear they were, they could not stay with us--perhaps,
   because they were so good that it was necessary that Christ should have
   them away from earth. He prayed for them, "Father, I will that they be
   with Me where I am"--but we kept on praying the other way--"Father, we
   will that they be with us where we are." Our Lord's prayer conquered
   ours! It should do so, for they were more His than ours since He had
   bought them with His blood. We should never pray against our Lord, but
   when we do, may His prayer always have the preference, as it will. Yet
   bereavement has brought many a Mary and Martha very low.

   "Jesus wept" at the grave of Lazarus. Here, too, we see that the Master
   is near akin unto us. I believe that if we want to know the weeping
   Savior, we must weep. We always see our Lord, to a great extent, like
   ourselves. If we are pilgrims, He comes to us as a wayfarer, as He did
   to Abraham. If we are in conflict, like Jacob, He comes to wrestle with
   us. If we are in trouble, He meets us, like Moses, at the burning bush.
   If we are soldiers, like Joshua, He meets us as Captain of the Lord's
   host. If Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are in the furnace, the Son of
   God makes the fourth in the fire! As we

   are, so does He become, that as He is, so may we become! Our
   bereavements are a part of the way in which we see and follow our Lord.

   And poverty, too. Many of you have never known poverty. I do not wish
   that you should, for poverty is a very heavy cross to many of the
   children of God. It hinders them when they would give to the Lord's
   cause and hampers them in their work for Him. This, perhaps, is not so
   lamentably true as they think. When poverty involves crushing toil,
   long hours of labor and scarcely enough bread to keep body and soul
   together, then it is, indeed, a burden. Dire poverty has hung like a
   cloud over many a child of God. There is a poverty which the poets
   love--it dwells in a thatched cottage whose porch is overgrown with
   woodbine. Perhaps if the poets had rheumatism through the wind blowing
   through the decaying walls, they might not sing of it quite so sweetly.
   But in London we have a poverty that has neither porch nor
   woodbine--poverty that has no cottage, but a single room where scarcely
   the decencies of life can be preserved. Beloved, it you have to suffer
   from this gloom, remember that the Son of Man had not where to lay His
   head.

   Another gloom has shadowed many here present in their measure and upon
   some, in special, it has loomed tempestuously. It is the cloud of
   slander and reproach If you have preserved your garments unspotted. If
   you have sought nothing but the Glory of God and yet you find
   everything that you do misrepresented, your words misconstrued and
   yourself abused--this is truly a trial. Slander is no bed of roses, nor
   a test to be desired but, oh, how easy is it then to see Jesus and how
   sweet it is to follow Him! "He was despised and rejected of men." If
   they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, they have not left
   another name that is bad enough for us! We might in very modesty wish
   to have a name a little lower than our Lord's, guided by the same
   motive which made a great saint consider ordinary crucifixion too great
   an honor and, therefore, entreated to be nailed to the cross with his
   head downwards! Would you not be content to be called something worse
   than Beelzebub? Might you not gladly accept such a name as winebibber
   and madman, that you might come in behind your Leader? "Consider Him
   who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself," and then
   sing--

   "If on my face, for Your dear name, Shame and reproach may be, I'll
   hail reproach, and welcome shame, For You'll remember me!"

   Gloom also falls upon the Christian in time of desertion. I do not know
   whether Judas had sons and daughters, but I have seen several persons
   who bear a family likeness to that son of perdition. "He that eats
   bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me," is a sentence often
   repeated. "It was not an enemy that reproached me--then I could have
   borne it-- but it was you, a man my equal, my acquaintance. We took
   sweet counsel together and walked unto the house of God in company."
   This, also, is an oft-told tale. Yet fret not too much because of
   ingratitude, fickleness and treachery. Is it not written, "Cursed is he
   that trusts in man"? All men are liars! Can you not be content to take
   the inevitable? Your Master had His Judas. Shall not you have yours?
   "Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled." It may be so with you
   all the more because you desire to be faithful to your Lord.

   The worst cloud of all, I think, is deep depression of spirit
   accompanied with the loss of the Light of God's Countenance. Sickness,
   poverty, slander--none of these things are comparable to depression!
   "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit
   who can bear?" Do you know what exceeding heaviness means? I pray that
   you may have but very little of it, but if you do have it, remember Him
   who said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Those words were
   once a great comfort to a child of God dying in despair. Though an
   eminently gracious man, he was in the dark. He could not find his God
   and he knew that he was soon to pass into eternity. I do not think our
   heavenly Father often puts His children to bed in the dark, but if He
   does, they will wake up in the Light of God in the morning! This man of
   God said to the minister who visited him, "O Sir, although I have
   trusted Christ for years and have served His cause, I have lost Him.
   What will become of a man who dies feeling that God has deserted him?"
   The wise pastor answered him, "What became of the Man who, just before
   His death, cried, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' Is He not
   on the highest Throne of Glory even now?" The sick man's mind was
   lightened in a moment! He began to say, as the Lord Jesus did after the
   dark sentence, "Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit," and he
   died in peace. Yes, God loves His people quite as much when He leaves
   them in the dark, as when He sets them at His right hand in the Light!
   Measure not God's love by His Providences, nor even by His
   manifestations of them. Measure it by the gift of the Only-Begotten,
   for Jesus is the only measure of the immeasurable love of God our
   Father! Yes, a child of God may be in depression for many a year.
   Timothy Rogers was the victim of despondency for many years and yet he
   came out into the

   Light and then wrote his experience in his memorable book, Trouble of
   Mind, which has been of great service to others in like condition. I
   hope that none of you will wish to be in soul darkness. Some trembling
   people acquire a sort of perpetual palsy of fear. They have become so
   shut up in doubt that they are afraid to come out of it into the light
   of faith. Come out of your hiding places, you troubled ones! Do not
   make yourselves one line lower in spirits than you can help! But if you
   should be long in depression and that depression should turn to
   despondency, and that despondency should curdle into despair, believe
   in God! Say with Job, "Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him." If
   I cannot see His face with delight, yet in the shadow of His wings will
   I rejoice!

   I come now to the more specially practical part of my sermon.

   II. THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH THIS DARKNESS IS PERMITTED.

   There were three aspects of the darkness which our Lord endured in
   which we should resemble Him. First, He was in darkness for education.
   ' 'Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which
   He suffered." Our Mediator went to school and His schoolbooks were "the
   things that He suffered." Do we learn much out of any other books? Is
   not our best schoolmaster the one named Adversity? Are not our best
   schoolbooks printed in the old black letter? We make but small account
   of any other. Our Lord Jesus learned obedience. Some people, when they
   get into the dark, think that they can make no progress, but must lie
   still. Say not so! Our greatest progress should be made in the dark. We
   should grind most when the wind blows hardest. A friend of mine went to
   Australia and on board of his ship there were a number of gentlemen of
   different degrees of ignorance, one of whom was a complete greenhorn.
   He had never been to sea before. I do not think he had been anywhere
   else. When it came to be night, he said, "Where do they put up
   tonight?" My friend said, "What do you mean?" He replied, "You do not
   mean to say that they will go on sailing in the dark?" "Certainly,"
   replied my friend. But the other said, "Why, they may run into
   something, for they cannot see their way." "No," my friend answered,
   "and they will not see their way till we get to our destination, unless
   they touch at the Cape! And they will travel as fast in the night as in
   the day." So they did. Who but a fool would have thought otherwise?

   Growth in Divine Grace must go on in the dark, as well as in the light.
   I have been told that plants do most of their growing at night. Surely,
   Christ's plants grow very fast after a period of darkness which has
   been sanctified to them. I half wish for some friends that I know that
   they might have just a day or two of darkness. I hope I am not unkind.
   I know one who would wish to sympathize if he could, but he has never
   had an illness. And when he does sympathize, it is a remarkable thing
   that he should be able to do it. You think of him with wonder, as you
   would think of an elephant picking up a pin! He does it, but it seems
   out of his line--it does not come to him naturally. Our Lord learned
   obedience towards God through His sufferings. If you think of it
   deeply, it was a very great lesson for Him to learn. The Ruler of
   Heaven and earth, whose will was Law, had to learn obedience! He
   speaks, and legions of angels fly at His commands--and yet He has to
   learn to obey! Now that He is here on earth, in the fashion of a man,
   He becomes an obedient Servant. Have you and I ever learned that
   lesson? It is not every Christian that has learned obedience of the
   commonest sort. I know some Christians who would think it dreadful to
   obey ecclesiastically. "Obey them that have the rule over you," is not
   a pleasant Scripture to them. They will have no pastor. Nobody ever was
   set over them. I am sure I am devoutly grateful that I was not, for it
   would be a very uncomfortable office to guide such unruly spirits!
   Obedience is one of the lessons of wisdom which this age needs to
   learn, for everybody must be master or mistress nowadays. We all desire
   to rule and we all feel that we could do it far better than the present
   leaders are doing! He who has the least wisdom and has failed in
   business half a dozen times, is the very person who believes himself to
   be the most fitted to be Prime Minister! We do not love obedience, but
   we have to learn it. The rod is our Teacher's instrument--this
   darkness, this heaviness, is pressing us into true service. We are now
   to follow Jesus in the dark by learning obedience as He learned it. The
   Lord prosper us in this!

   We have next to learn sympathy. I have hinted at that already. "We have
   not an High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our
   infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
   sin." Our glorious Elder Brother learned sympathy by suffering! By His
   passion He learned compassion. Whenever we suffer, let us regard it as
   a part of our education and so follow Christ closely to learn of Him,
   as He learned of the Father. See yonder text, "Take My yoke upon you,
   and learn of Me; and you shall find rest unto your souls!" First we
   come to Him by faith and He gives us rest. That is one sort of rest.
   Then, by obedience, we take His yoke upon us and we learn of Him, and
   we find rest-- another degree of rest. The one is given and the other
   is found, but there is no finding the second rest except with the yoke
   upon our shoulders and learning of Christ!

   Education in the dark helps to keep us from self-dependence. I
   sometimes sing--

   "If today He deigns to bless us With a sense of pardoned sin, He
   tomorrow may distress us, Make us feel the plague within-- All to make
   us

   Sick of self, and fond of Him."

   The Angel wrestled with Jacob. We usually speak of Jacob's wrestling
   with the Angel. I suppose that he did so wrestle, for there cannot be a
   wrestle at all without two being in it. But the main point of the
   conflict was that the Angel wrestled with Jacob. What wrestling God has
   had with us to get our self out of us! We are such Jacobs--we are
   plotting, scheming--and crafty. God would beat us down as to this
   fleshly wisdom and when He has laid us low as Jacob and made us lame,
   then He will knight us, and we shall come off the field as prevailing
   princes, or Israels! The death of self-dependence is the joy and
   triumph of faith! And this often comes through darkness. God bless the
   darkness, then, for our education--and may we follow Christ by complete
   obedience to God!

   I spoke of three things. The second is for usefulness. Our Lord went
   into the dark to save the guilty sons of men. We cannot follow Him in
   the central darkness, where all the storm clouds gathered, for that was
   Substitutionary. Into that awful winepress, where He went alone as our
   Sacrifice, we would not think of intruding! But nevertheless, there is
   a cup of which He has said--"You shall indeed drink of the cup that I
   drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall you be
   baptized." We have no atonement to make. "It is finished." Yet for the
   ingathering and saving of the elect of God, it is necessary that the
   Church of God, in many of its members, should pass into the darkness.

   I will tell you a story. It shall be none the worse because it is of
   myself, for we are gathered here to bear and hear personal testimony.
   One Sunday I preached a sermon from this text--"My God, My God, why
   have You forsaken Me?" What I then spoke was in the agony of my heart,
   for I felt that I was, myself, for a while, forsaken. Such was the
   sorrowful dread of my spirit.

   I could not tell why I should have been made to feel in this way. I was
   not sick. I could see no physical cause. I had not wandered from God
   and I could see no moral cause. But after the sermon there came into
   the vestry a man of about sixty, whose very hair seemed to stand on end
   and his eyes were bright with a strange luster. He took my hand and
   stood and held it, and wept. I looked at him and I saw that I had
   before me a man dazed, if not crazed. "Birds of a feather will flock
   together." It struck me that he was a madman and I was not much
   mistaken. Then he said to me, "Nobody ever preached my experience
   before! I have now been for years in a horrible gloom of great darkness
   and could not find God, but this morning I learned that I was not the
   only man in the thick darkness, and I believe that I shall get out." I
   answered, "Yes, that was the reason why I was put into the dark, that I
   might help you. And now that I know the reason, I am already out of the
   prison!"

   I had many interviews with that man. I piloted him back from the gulf
   of insanity. I was enabled, by God's Grace, to lead him into joy and
   peace, so that he could resume his daily calling. The Lord's servants
   have to experience many things which are not so much for themselves as
   for usefulness towards others--and we ought to be content to have it
   so. You cannot help a man if you know nothing about him and, therefore,
   the Lord sends you into many a thick wood and dark valley that you may
   meet with His own redeemed in their wanderings. If you did not know the
   wilderness, how could you act as a guide through it? So it is for
   usefulness that God calls us there--and as Jesus went there to save,
   let us learn from Him the great Grace of self-sacrifice!

   I have done when I have added the third thing. Darkness may come over
   the soul that we may give glory to God. Our Lord Jesus passed through
   the darkness that He might glorify the Father's name. The lesson which
   He set before us was that He still believed. Read the 22nd Psalm. See
   there the faith of the much hunted "hind of the morning." He goes back
   to his early infancy, when God cared for him. "You are He that took me
   out of the womb." He goes back to ancient history--"Our fathers trusted
   in You: they trusted, and You did deliver them." Read that Psalm
   carefully and mark that the sufferer's faith never failed him. Dear
   Friends, can your faith stand in trial? "I have great faith," says one.
   Yes, there was a staff that stood by a brook and looked at the
   reflection of his antlers in the water, and said, "What fine horns I
   have! My friends in the herd no sooner hear the bay of a dog than they
   take to their heels. But I, with such fine horns, will fight any dog,
   or, for that matter, any pack of hounds! Let them come up and they
   shall see what my horn can do." So he said--and he was a fine fellow,
   was he not? Landseer might have been proud to sketch him! That is the
   very picture of a

   man full of untried faith. Presently there was heard the yelp of some
   poor puppy--and where was our stag? His heart was not as strong as his
   horns and his legs were carrying him far away from the dog! So it is
   with untried faith. You must not be sure of it for a moment. Fear will
   destroy it in the day of trouble.

   Our Lord had abundant and abiding faith. I will only quote one instance
   of it--His faith in prayer to God in Geth-semane. There are two parts
   in that wonderful prayer of His in the garden. "O My Father, if it is
   possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but
   as You will." We dwell too exclusively upon the full surrender at the
   end-- please notice the prayer itself. "If it is possible, let this cup
   pass from Me." When you are in the dark, go to God and plead with Him
   to take the gloom away! Ask Him to take the cup from you--and be bold
   to go as far as your Lord did--which is a very long way, indeed, for He
   said, "If it is possible." Go to that length! I would encourage the
   child of God in the dark to "possess his possessions," to make real use
   of promises and expect help. We do not always trust God as being what
   He declares Himself to be, but sometimes if we would but do so, our
   darkness would come to an end! I remember in my own case, after a
   period of continued pain with little sleep, I sat up, as best I could,
   one morning in my bed, in an agony of pain--and I cried to the Lord for
   deliverance. I believed fully that He could deliver me then and there,
   and I pleaded my sonship and His Fatherhood. I went the length of
   pleading that He was my Father and I said, "If it were my child that
   suffered so, I would not let him suffer any longer if I could help him.
   You can help me. And by Your fatherly love I plead with You to give me
   rest." I felt that I could add, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as
   You will." But I did the first thing, first--I pleaded with my Father
   and went first where Christ went first, saying, "My Father, if it is
   possible, let this cup pass from me." I shall never forget my success
   in this appeal! In real earnest I believed God to be my Father and
   threw myself upon Him-- and within a few minutes I dropped back upon
   the pillow, the pain subsided, and very soon I slept most peacefully.
   God loves us to believe Him and to plead earnestly with Him, for even
   if He does not think it best to grant our request, He will be pleased
   for us to go on to number two and, with full submission cry,
   "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."

   You can hardly prove that you have any will to surrender if you have
   not first brought it before the Lord in fervent prayer! Pray about the
   matter up to the hilt, and then sheathe the prayer in submission, if it
   is not the Lord's will. O Brothers and Sisters, let us learn this last
   virtue! Faith healing is grand, but faith enduring is grander! Glorify
   God by believing that His will is right and that the strokes of His rod
   are kind. Use both edges of the sword of faith! Believe for deliverance
   fromsorrow, or for deliverance insorrow. Anyhow, honor the Son by fully
   trusting Him. This is the way to follow your Leader, who said, "I will
   put my trust in Him."

   Oh, that the Lord our God may be with you all in the hour of darkness!
   If it is not so now, may it may be very soon! I would have you lay by
   these Truths of God in store for future use. When one is very happy,
   the suspicion lurks at our feet that this is too good to last.
   Therefore, the poet of experience said--

   "We should suspect some danger near When we perceive too much delight."

   Let it, then, be settled in your minds that you will trust only in the
   Lord and keep your expectation only upon Him. Come fair, come foul,
   come wind, come rain, come hail, come tempest, or come all the
   brightness of a fruitful summer, it shall make no difference to us, for
   ours is not the confidence which changes with the weather, but that
   which has its foundation among things eternal and immutable--

   "And when your eye of faith is dim, Still hold on Jesus, sink or swim!
   Still at His footstool bow the knee And Israel's God, your strength
   shall be!"
     __________________________________________________________________

Two Choice Benedictions

   (No. 3371)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   DECEMBER 26, 1867.

   "Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, on this wise you shall
   bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless you, and
   keep you: the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto
   you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. And
   they shall put My name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless
   them." Numbers 6:23-27.

   "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
   communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen."

   2 Corinthians 13:14.

   IT seemed to me that as this was the last of the Thursday evenings of
   the dying year and I should no more meet some of you who only come here
   on Thursday evenings during this year, it would be well for us to close
   the year as our Master closed His life on earth, with a
   benediction--and, oh, it will be a rich enjoyment in the year to come
   if, by God's Grace, we shall be able to grasp and make our very own the
   precious things which are here presented to the whole redeemed family
   of the living God! I shall begin, therefore, first of all with--

   I. THE AARONIC BLESSING.

   This was pronounced at the close of the public tabernacle service when
   the people were about to separate, the one from the others. It is said
   by the Rabbis to have been only spoken at the morning sacrifice, but
   not in the evening because, say some, the old faith of the few gave
   them the early blessing. But it remained for Christ to come in the
   eventide of the world, at the end of time, to give us the evening
   blessing, the blessing of the great, eternal, evening Sacrifice.

   It is worthy of notice that the word, Jehovah, which is put in capital
   letters in our English version, occurs three times--three
   blessings--and each time the word has a different accent in the
   original Hebrew. And the Rabbis, although they did not know the meaning
   of it, or pretended not to know, yet all agree that there is some
   significant mystery therein. The word would not be accented thus
   differently unless there were some different shade of meaning intended.
   I believe we have here the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. "The
   Lord bless you and keep you." Is that the blessing of the Father? "The
   Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you." Is that
   the blessing of the Son? "The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
   and give you peace." Is that the blessing of the great forgiving Holy
   Spirit? I think it is very likely. At any rate, this threefold blessing
   from the Jehovah, whose name is mentioned three times, may direct our
   thoughts to the glorious Trinity, the Trinity in Unity, whom we cannot
   understand, but on whom our faith rests and in whom our love finds
   delight and repose!

   Let us look at these three blessings. "The Lord bless you and keep
   you." When we bless God there is nothing more than well-saying and
   well-wishing. But when God blesses us, it is well-doing! We cannot
   bless God in the sense of giving to Him so as to add to His riches or
   to His Glory, for He is the infinitely great, the inconceivably
   glorious and nothing that we can do can add to Him. We can only bless
   Him by expressing our thanks to Him, paying to Him our reverent love.
   "The Lord lives, and blessed be my Rock." "Blessed be the name of the
   Lord from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same." But
   when God blesses us, I say, it is well-doing! He blesses us in our very
   creation and much more in our new creation. It is a blessed thing to be
   born, but a much more blessed thing to be born-again! He blesses us in
   our food--but much more in giving us Christ who is the Bread to keep
   alive and nourish our soul's best life! We are blessed in being
   clothed, but infinitely more blessed in being wrapped about in the
   Righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is a

   blessing to be a member of a kind, loving, happy family--but it is an
   unspeakable blessing to be a member of the family of Christ and adopted
   into the family of God!

   What a blessing it is, my Brothers and Sisters, to have sin pardoned,
   to have righteousness imputed, to have sanctifi-cation worked in us--in
   short, to enjoy all the privileges and benedictions of the New
   Covenant! Now, I think some of us can say, "God has blessed us, oh, how
   richly." Blessed us sometimes when we did not perceive the blessing,
   for many of God's mercies come, as it were, in at the back door of our
   house. We do not see the mercies, and when we do, we are too often
   ungrateful and forget them. What blessings we have received in
   trouble--in deliverance from trouble--in sustaining us in it! Oh, what
   blessings have we not had? Some of you, perhaps, have had very
   remarkable mercies during the year. Now, while the blessing is
   pronounced, "The Lord bless you," let your reply be, "The Lord has
   blessed me!" This will encourage you to expect that He will continue to
   do the same. And what blessings, my dear Friends, may we hope will be
   in store for us during the coming year? Many troubles, I have no doubt,
   are in store for us. If we were to have a telescope here this evening
   and we could look through it and see the future, those would be very
   foolish who looked! He would be the wise man who said--

   "This will set my heart at rest-- What my God appoints is best."

   For if that telescope were here and you were trying to look through it,
   you would be sure to breathe on the glass with your hot breath--and in
   your anxiety you would see nothing but clouds and darkness--whereas,
   very likely, there would be nothing of the sort there. Leave that
   matter with your God! The future, though it may possibly have trial and
   trouble, will still be blessed if you are God's servant. One thing
   there is of which you can be quite confident--He has said, "I will
   never leave you, nor forsake you." Another thing will also be
   fulfilled, "As your days, so shall your strength be." You are very
   poor, are you? Yet, at any rate, none can rob you of this
   assurance--"Your bread shall be given you: your water shall be sure."
   If you are fearing many trials, this promise is your special
   fortifying--"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and
   through the rivers, they shall not overflow you: when you walk through
   the fire, you shall not be burned: neither shall the flame kindle upon
   you." You have God's word for it, "Fear you not, for I am with you: be
   not dismayed, for I am your God." If, during the next year, it is
   appointed unto you to die, you may still say, "Yes, though I walk
   through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You
   are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." "The Lord bless
   you." As I say that to each Believer here, knowing that the Lord will
   so bless you, may your soul look forward, not with dread, but with
   hope! "The Lord bless you" was the wish of the priest under the old
   Law, and it is always the Nature of God to confirm what He bids His
   servants desire. "The Lord bless you."

   Now, observe the blessing which is said to spring out of that, "The
   Lord bless you, and keep you." And no small mercy it is to be kept by
   God! Where would we be if He did not keep us in a moral and spiritual
   point of view, yes, and in a natural point of view, too? It is God that
   keeps our lives from death and our bodies from perishing. Perhaps,
   during the past year, some of you have been kept when in storms at sea,
   or when you have been upon a railway, or when you have passed through
   places infected with disease. It is no small privilege to hear the Lord
   say, "He will give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your
   ways: they shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot
   against a stone." The Lord has blessed us and kept us in that sense
   during the past year. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, what a privilege to be
   kept from falling into sin! He is ill-kept who is his own keeper! He is
   worse kept who has his brother for his keeper! But he is splendidly
   kept who has God to be his shield on his right hand, his glory and his
   defense.

   During the past year we have seen some high professors put out like
   candles and the foul odor of their fall has filled the Church with
   nausea and depression. We have known some who were like bright stars
   who have turned out to be only meteors--and their once dazzling
   brilliance has suddenly died out in greater gloom. Why are we still
   kept? We have had enough temptation to cast us down! Enough tinder
   here, inside our hearts, to have made a great blaze! How is it we are
   still unburned and walking in the paths of righteousness?

   Must we not say, "The Lord has blessed us and kept us"? Let us, then,
   without reserve, commit our souls to Him for the future. Let us not
   fancy that we shall not fall. Oh, that is a thought that is very apt to
   twine itself around us like a serpent! "I am not so giddy as some
   people! I am not at all likely to do what some young people have done
   and get into this sin, and that sin. I have had so much experience, I
   shall be able to stand!" That is the very man that is likely to fall!

   We are never so weak as when we think we are strong, and never so
   strong as when we know we are weak and look out of ourselves to our
   God! Distrust self, then. There would not be such a supplication as,
   "The Lord bless you and keep you," if you did not need keeping. Trust
   in God for your help. If you fear temptation, let this be your prayer,
   "Lead us not into temptation," and if you trust in God, you will pray,
   "Deliver us from evil." You will be tempted during the year that is
   soon coming, but He will, with the temptation, make also a way of
   escape. He will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able to
   bear! You shall go through the wilderness leaning on your Beloved and
   you shall not slip, though the way is ever so smooth, nor trip, though
   the road is ever so rough. You shall be upheld, for God is able to hold
   up in perfect safety those who stay themselves upon Him. "The Lord
   bless you and keep you." Holy Father, we breathe the prayer to You as
   we read this blessing! Pronounce it upon us now by the mouth of Your
   own dear Son, and let us now and until life's latest hour be kept by
   the power of God through faith unto salvation!

   Now, take the next blessing bestowed, through Aaron, upon the people.
   "The Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. "I
   understand by the expression, "The Lord make His face to shine upon
   you," His being completely reconciled to us. As they would say in the
   Hebrew, a man's face frowned, his countenance fell, when he was at
   enmity or angry with another. But when he was his friend and genial
   towards him, then his face revealed it, it began to beam or shine! Now,
   this is the blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is through Him that
   God's face is made to shine upon us. The Lord would have no favorable
   regard towards a sinner as such while his sins still lay upon him
   because of impenitence and lack of faith. The Lord's love might come to
   him as an elect creature, but viewing him merely as a sinner, he would
   be the subject of Divine disapprobation!

   But when the sinner is washed in the blood of Christ, when the sinner
   is justified through the righteousness of Jesus, then the Lord looks
   upon him with pleasure. That very man who was an heir of wrath becomes
   a child of love! and he who would have been driven from God's Presence
   with, "Depart, you cursed," is established in Christ's heart with
   "Come, you blessed." Now, dear Friends, I hope many of us have already
   received, during the past year, this great blessing, "The Lord make His
   face to shine upon you." Don't you feel that you have, tonight, to look
   up to God and do not feel any fear? You know that He is not frowning
   upon you! He is reconciled unto you--you are reconciled unto Him. You
   may say, "Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of Your
   anointed." And you are persuaded that as God looks upon Christ, and
   upon you in Christ, you are well-beloved in Him. Well now, as it has
   been, so it shall be, for if God once makes His face to shine in the
   sense of His favor, He never takes that favor away! You may not see it.
   You may think He is angry with you and, in another sense, He may be,
   but legally, and so far as concerns the Law and its power of
   condemnation, there is not a single thought of anger in the mind, or
   feeling of displeasure in the heart of God towards any one of those who
   rest in Jesus!

   You are accepted in the Beloved. God sees no sin in Jacob, neither
   iniquity in Israel. As He looks upon them in His Son, He sees them
   without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.

   " The Lord make His face to shine upon you." Well, and what springs out
   of that? Why this, "and be gracious unto you." Because God is thus
   favorable towards us through His dear Son, Divine Grace comes to us.
   And what a great, all-comprehending word is that! Grace! It has many
   meanings and includes a whole universe of blessing! Grace--it is the
   free and undeserved favor of God! Grace--it is the mighty operation of
   that favor, effectually working in them that believe! Grace--it is that
   which enlightens us to see our lost estate--that which leads us to see
   the All-Sufficiency of Christ! Grace--this works faith in us, gives us
   love to God! Grace creates our hope, carries on the work within our
   souls and completes it, too! Grace--it is a term so comprehensive that
   I would need the whole of this evening, yes, and longer, too, to
   enumerate the mighty catalog comprised and packed, as it were, in this
   golden casket of the word, Grace! "The Lord be gracious unto you."
   Well, now, Beloved, He has been gracious to us in the past. Oh, the
   Grace of God to me!--

   "Oh, to Grace how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be!"

   Can you say the same? Look at what a sinner you have been and yet how
   favored! Look at your backslidings! Look at your ingratitude and yet
   His mercy does not cease--

   "Oh, to Grace how great a debtor!" Let your hearts say it, if your lips
   do not. And now, Beloved, He will be gracious to you in the future as
   He has been in the past. Every mercy received is a pledge of mercies
   yet to come! He knew what He was doing when He began with us

   and, therefore, He will not leave off. If He had meant to destroy us,
   He would not have shown us such things as these. The great Master
   Worker would not have built the house so far if He did not mean to
   finish it. All His previous Grace and glory will be wasted and
   evaporate if He should not complete His redeeming work. Therefore, I am
   sure that after advancing so far with His glorious purpose, He will
   finish it and, if necessary, in the teeth of men and devils! He has
   begun and His right arm, which always goes with His Grace, will surely
   carry it through to the end. "The Lord make His face to shine upon you,
   and be gracious unto you."

   But now, thirdly, "The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give
   you peace. " Is this the voice of the Holy Spirit? Whether it is so or
   not, does not greatly matter to us tonight. "The Lord lift up His
   countenance upon you." Does not this mean, "The Lord give you a
   conscious, a delightful sense of His favor"? Wishing to see a
   difference--I will not insist upon it--wishing to see a difference, I
   put the second blessing as meaning God's being reconciled. But the
   third blessing as meaning God manifesting that reconciliation and
   giving His children the enjoyment of His favor. Now, God's people do
   not always have this--it is not always sunshine. "The evening and the
   morning were the first day," and there is evening as well as morning in
   the day of God's people. God always loves His people, but His people do
   not always know it. Because of their sins, they do not always enjoy it.
   Oh, what a blessing it is when the Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of
   God in the soul--when we can say, "Truly our fellowship is with the
   Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ." When we get out of these mists
   and fogs and can see the sun once more shining clear and bright,
   Beloved, it is Heaven on earth! It is the true ante-past of Heaven
   above, when the Lord lifts up His countenance upon you! I have no doubt
   the original allusion is to a father whose child has done wrong and he
   says, "Now, Sir, get out of my sight, you have grieved and vexed me.
   You shall not see my face." The child goes upstairs to bed--anywhere
   out of his father's sight. And after a while, when the father hears he
   has been penitent and sees his tears, he smiles again upon him, gives
   him a kiss and presses him to his heart. May God the Holy Spirit give
   us just that! May everyone of us have it!

   We have, some of us, had it during the past year. We grieve to confess
   that we did backslide, but when we returned again, we found Him just as
   willing to receive us as at the first and He lifted up His countenance
   upon us once again! We said, "Restore unto me the joy of Your
   salvation," and He did so! We asked Him to take away His wrath from us,
   and we found that "His anger is but for a moment." When weeping came to
   us for a night, joy appeared in the morning. It will be just the same
   with us during the next year. If we transgress and repent, and return
   to Him, we have an actual promise that He will forgive us. Now, what
   says the text? "The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you
   peace." There is no peace like the peace which we have with God, and no
   peace with God like that which comes from a sense of His assured love!
   And belief in Christ for the pardon of sin gives us the blessing of
   non-condemnation. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace
   with God through Jesus Christ our Lord." But this sense of
   non-condemnation may sometimes be destroyed through weakness of faith.
   We may be brought very low and our peace may be disturbed, but when we
   come back to the Cross, and look once more to Him who died there, He is
   our peace and we see in Him that our peace is made with God--and then
   our peace becomes like a river, and our righteousness like the waves of
   the sea! I think it would be impossible for me to describe peace. You
   must feel it to know it. Peace with God is like that clear shining we
   sometimes see after a heavy shower of rain. With the thunder and
   lightning it seemed as if Heaven would be torn in pieces and all the
   earth shaken, and then, suddenly, it is all over and the sun shines
   forth! There is a rainbow with its many colors on the clouds, and all
   the flowers lift up their drooping heads, each one loaded with a
   gleaming benediction--and all the earth fragrant and smiling and
   seeming to steam forth the incense of gratitude! Now, after the storm
   of the conviction of sin, when the Spirit of God comes, it is as quiet
   and peaceful as that. And after a storm of trouble--and I know what
   that means--after a hurricane of trial, we can take all our distresses
   and cares and lay them down at God's feet and feel that we need not
   care about them anymore!

   But if my Father did not undertake them, I would not, for I cannot. He
   has promised He will, if I cast my cares upon Him. You sometimes walk
   out of this place when God has blessed your soul and feel, "Now, I do
   not know what may happen, and really I do not care what does. My heart
   is resting on my God--I have left it all to Him and I am sure it will
   be right, whatever may come." Like Jonah, you may lose your gourd, but
   you cannot lose your God! You may see dark weather before you, but
   still you can go to Him who cannot fail you--and there shall your soul
   have repose. Now, that is the peace of God which passes all
   understanding and, therefore, it must surpass all expression. The peace
   of God which can only be known by the man who enjoys it--a peace which
   the world does not give and cannot destroy, but which

   Heaven, itself, can work in the soul! Now, may we have this blessing,
   "The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace."

   If we stopped here tonight and went no further, provided we got these
   blessings and fed upon them, it would be quite enough. Let me just read
   that text again clearly. "The Lord bless"--now the next word is the
   very pith of it, and let it be read now to each one of you, my good
   Sisters and Brothers, you who are young in years and young in Divine
   Grace, never mind who it is, so long as you are resting upon
   Christ--Jesus, the great High Priest, speaks from the eternal Glory and
   He says, "The Lord bless you." "Oh, but I do not deserve it!" Just so,
   but, "the Lord Bless you." "I am so unworthy, I am so backsliding!"
   Yes, but the Lord Jesus Christ knows all, covers all. We will read it,
   then, "The Lord Bless you-- you, and keep you: the Lord make His face
   to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you: the Lord lift up His
   countenance upon you, and give you peace." Oh, have you got that worked
   into your very hearts? It will be like a bundle of myrrh that you may
   keep in your bosom and it will sweeten your soul the whole year round,
   making you to know that you are blessed in and of the Lord who made
   Heaven and earth!

   Now, I shall ask your attention for a little while to the second
   blessing, that spoken in God's name by the Apostle Paul, in the Second
   Epistle to the Corinthians. "The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
   Amen." Here we have--

   II. THE NEW TESTAMENT BENEDICTION.

   This second blessing is precisely like the first as to its essence and
   substance. But there is some little difference as to the expression and
   circumstance. The first thing that strikes me in reading it through, as
   it almost always does when I pronounce it, is this--you notice it
   begins with the Lord Jesus Christ The Lord Jesus is the Second Person
   of the blessed Divine Unity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--but this
   benediction begins with the Son of God. Why is that? In the order of
   Doctrine and fact, all infinite blessings begin with the Father. He is
   the Fountainhead of Creation. He is the Fountain, Christ the channel
   and the Holy Spirit produces the grand results. Father first, Son next,
   Spirit third. But in the order of experience--the order in which the
   blessing comes--it is always the Son first. "No man comes unto the
   Father but by Me." Not the Father first, but the Son first! What a
   sinner learns to comfort him first is not that the Father loves Him.
   No. He learns first of all that Jesus Christ died for sinners because
   God loves Him--and so he puts his trust in Him. The first thing a poor
   Believer gets, then, is Grace through Jesus Christ. After that,
   perhaps, he may sometimes think that God the Father has no love towards
   him, but as he begins to read his Bible and to experience more of
   Divine Grace in his heart, he finds that God the Father is full of
   love. So, then, he goes on and gets the love of God the Father. And
   when he knows this, perhaps he often wonders what communion may be of,
   and fellowship. And when he hears some of those delightful hymns which
   we sing at the Lord's Supper, he thinks he shall never get to them--to
   talk with God, to have communion with Christ--but, by-and-by, as the
   Lord leads him on, from being a babe, he grows to be a man and he gets
   into communion with the Holy Spirit. Babes in Grace know "the Grace of
   our Lord Jesus Christ." But as they grow they discover "the love of God
   our Father." And as they grow still more, they come to "the fellowship
   of the Holy Spirit." The three things are put in the order of
   experience, not in the order of fact, nor the order of Doctrine.

   Having noticed that, just observe the three blessings as they come.
   "The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ"You know the Grace of our Lord
   Jesus Christ, that, "though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became
   poor, that you through His poverty might be made rich." You know His
   great poverty--you know His great Grace which brought Him from yonder
   starry heavens to lie in a manger, to live in obscurity for 30 years
   and to die upon the Cross in pains that cannot be told. Now, Grace
   comes to us through Christ and, therefore, it is said, "by His Grace."
   He is the golden pipe through which it all flows. Believing in Him, we
   receive the mercy of God! Coming through Him to the Mercy Seat, we
   obtain unnumbered favors by virtue of our union with Him. As the branch
   derives sap and then fruit from the vine, we derive Grace from Him. He
   is to us the channel of all the good gifts of our heavenly Father. "May
   the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all."Be with you all--it
   is not in the singular--it is not to each one. It is, "with you
   all,"because the genius of the Gospel is expansive. You notice the
   Redeemer's prayer. It is not My Father. No, but "our Father which are
   in Heaven " And the Gospel's benediction, though it is
   personal--blessed be God for that--yet it is also expansive--"be with
   you all." We are to think of all our Brothers and Sisters. When we get
   a blessing, we are to look upon ourselves as part of the Divine family.
   When we come together to break bread, we do not come, each one
   alone--though it would be the Lord's Supper if only one man were
   there--but we come there in humble fellowship, one with the other!
   "Eat, drink you all, of this," said Christ. "Take, eat, this is My
   body." He would have all His disciples come there and partake. And so
   with this blessing of the Grace of Jesus Christ--may it be with you
   all!

   Has it been with us all during the past year? There are not so many
   here tonight as usual. May I, therefore, put the question to each one
   personally? Has it been with you--and you--and you? Have you, my
   Hearers, known daily the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Have you stood
   by faith at the foot of the Cross and felt that you rested your all on
   Him? If so, I know you possess His Grace. He it is who has given you
   power to trust Him wholly and absolutely. All the Grace there is in His
   great heart and mind belongs to you!--

   "Plenteous Grace with Him is found,

   Grace to cover all our sins.

   May the healing streams abound,

   Make and keep us pure within."

   May it be with you all!

   Next comes "the love of the Father "It is from the love of God that
   everything blessed and blessing springs. We must not imagine that Jesus
   Christ died to induce His Father to love us--a very foolish and
   pernicious idea that! God the Eternal Father always loved His people
   and Christ has removed the sin which restrained the shinings of the
   most glorious manifestations of that love--but He loved before Christ
   died. You know you can boast--

   " 'Twas not to make the Father's love

   Towards His people sure,

   That Jesus came from realms above!

   'Twas not the pangs He bore

   That God's eternal love procured,

   For God was Love before."

   That fountain sprung up eternally! It was a well that needed no
   digging. Oh, dear Friends, I trust we know what the love of God means.
   Has it not been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is
   given unto us? We shall know it in years to come, for where it once
   takes possession it never departs. Once in Christ, in Christ forever!
   In Christ's love you have begun a banquet which will never end. "May
   the love of God be with you all," is meant for all God's people. But is
   that love present with all? If you have not tasted God's love, you do
   not know what life, true life, means. The richest, the most celestial,
   the most transporting joy that mortal mind can know is a full assurance
   of the love of God! Dear Hearer, do you love Christ? Can you answer the
   question, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me?" Then, if you have love
   for Christ, pure and true love and trust, if it is the fruit of God's
   love to you, then be of good cheer! May the love of the Father be with
   you all your days!

   Then comes "the communion of the Holy Ghost " A very ugly word
   that--"Ghost." A better translation of the original Greek word would
   be, "Spirit." "Holy Spirit," and I sometimes wish that we always called
   Him by that name. It is far more expressive. The word, "ghost," bears
   such a strange and weird meaning, now, that it were better in this
   connection entirely to abandon it! The word, "communion," means not
   only the Holy Spirit coming to us and having converse with us, but
   communion means copartnership. When the Churches in Macedonia made a
   collection for the poor Church in Judea, Paul called the collection,
   "communion," because by means of giving money to the Church in Judea
   they had a fellowship, something like having all things common--that is
   the perfection of fellowship!

   Now, the Holy Spirit, if I may use the expression, has all things
   common with God's people. He gives to them all things. "He shall lead
   you into truth." What the Spirit knows and teaches us, we are able to
   bear. He knows the mind of God. He makes intercession for the saints
   according to the will of God. He gives us to participate in all that He
   possesses. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of peace. He gives us peace.
   He is the Spirit of holiness and sanctification--rather, He is the
   Spirit of light--He kindles light in our souls. He is a sacred fire. He
   baptized the Church in fire. Everything that the Holy Spirit is and
   has, He is and has for the Church of God and in common with the Church
   of God! Now, what an unspeakable blessing this is, to enter into a
   sacred copartnership with God the Holy Spirit! To talk with Him, to
   live with Him, to feast with Him, to have Him to be ours and for us to
   be His! Now, may such a communion as this be with us! I question
   whether we have ever got up to the fullness of this.

   I think I told you the other evening the story of a good woman who was
   a little distressed in her mind and who, in reading the passage, "Your
   Maker is your Husband," said, "Now, I won't be distressed any longer.
   When my husband

   was alive, I took care to live up to my income and now I will take care
   to live up to my heavenly Husband's income." Oh, I wish to get hold of
   living up to God's income, for all He has is given to His people! What
   rich lives we would have if we were to participate in all that He has!
   We would be continually feeling His power in our souls. Have we done
   this? May each one of you say, "Lord, give me to know the communion of
   the Holy Spirit all my days, until I shall be taken up to dwell where
   You reveal Yourself without a veil between!"

   Now, in closing, you see the difference between the two benedictions is
   this--the second blessing is really exhibited, the first a little
   veiled--something like Moses, when his face was too bright for the
   people to look upon, he put a veil upon his face. So the blessing Aaron
   pronounced is not so distinct or clear as the Apostolic blessing. Note,
   again, that the blessings in the second benediction are deeper--they
   are traced up to their source in the Triune Godhead, "Grace, love and
   communion." The one is a deep, the other a great deep. Note, yet again,
   that they are wider. The blessings of the Old Testament are individual
   and personal--to "you." The blessings in the New Testament are to the
   Corinthian Church and to all the Churches--"with you all."

   In the first case there was a confirmation and in the second case there
   is one also--"Amen," which is the Divine confirmation of this
   benediction.

   But I notice in the Apostolic benediction there is one thing which
   there is not in the first, namely, the communion, that is, the
   privilege--the privilege which comes to a child of God in this age of
   bliss when Christ is fully revealed. Did you ever notice that when John
   was born, an angel appeared to his father, Zacharias, to announce that
   Christ was come? No sooner did that bell begin to ring to tell that
   Christ was coming, than what happened? The greatest blessing was about
   to be pronounced and, therefore, the smaller blessing had to be
   silenced. When Zacharias came out, he was expected to bless the people,
   but what did he do? He could not speak a word--he was speechless and he
   beckoned with his hand--and that morning the assembly went home without
   the benediction! The priest could not pronounce it. Now, I dare say
   they said one to another, "What a strange thing it was. We always had
   that benediction before, 'The Lord bless you, and keep you,' but this
   morning the priest could not speak a word." You and I know what that
   means. We must stop that one because there is a better coming! God
   seemed, as it were, to give notice to His people, "I am about to hush
   the voice of Aaron because Melchisedec is coming. I am about to stop
   the sound of the symbolic, because the real Priest is coming. I am
   about to hush the voice of Zacharias because the Son of God is now to
   appear and declare that the fullest blessing of Jehovah will rest upon
   His people."

   Now, let us go our separate ways tonight, guided home, I trust, safely
   and rightly. And let us feed upon and make our soul's bread the two
   precious texts that have been before us. And I am not afraid but that
   you will be like those who went out to gather the manna--you shall each
   have enough! He who needs much shall have in abundance and he who
   requires little shall have no lack. Let us close by singing the
   blessing and go our way to turn all life into a song of gratitude for
   God's rich benedictions! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Conversion and Character

   (No. 3372)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison,
   and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas
   prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And
   suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the
   prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and
   everyone's chains were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking
   out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened, he drew out his
   sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had
   fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do yourself no harm:
   for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and
   came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas. And brought them
   out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe
   on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and your house. And
   they spoke unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his
   house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their
   stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, immediately. And when he had
   brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced,
   believing in God with all his house." Acts 16:24-34.

   THE work of God at Philippi went on very quietly and successfully in
   the hands of Paul and Silas. It was the commencement of the Gospel in
   Europe and very auspicious were its circumstances. The good work was
   intimately connected with Prayer Meetings, which for this reason should
   always wear a charm for Europeans.

   Godly women met together for devotion. Paul spoke to them and
   households were converted and baptized. The work went on delightfully,
   but the devil, as usual, must put in his foot! To any who judged
   according to the sight of the eyes, it must have seemed a most
   unfortunate circumstance that a poor woman having a spirit of
   divination came in Paul's way. It was a sad ruffling of the gentle
   stream of prosperity when, on account of his casting the demon out of
   her, the Apostle and his companion were dragged by the mob before the
   magistrates, shamefully beaten and thrown into prison. Now the
   preacher's mouth would be stopped, as far as the people of Philippi
   outside the jail gates were concerned. No more of those delightful
   Prayer Meetings and Bible readings and opening up of the Scriptures.
   Surely there was cause for the deepest regret. It might have appeared
   so, but like a great many other incidents connected with Christian
   work, the matter could not be judged by the outward appearance, for the
   Lord had a secret and blessed design which was being answered by the
   apparent disaster! Servants of Jesus Christ, never be discouraged when
   you are opposed, but when things run counter to your wishes, expect
   that the Lord has provided some better thing for you! He is driving you
   away from shallow waters and bringing you into deeper seas where your
   nets shall bring you larger draughts. Paul and Silas must go to prison
   because a chosen person was to be converted in the prison who could not
   otherwise be reached!

   No, it was not only one person who was to be saved, but Eternal Love
   had fixed its eyes upon a whole house! The members of this elect family
   could by no other means be brought to Christ but through Paul and Silas
   being cast into prison! And, therefore, into prison they must go--to do
   more by night in their chains than they could have done by day if they
   had been free--and to bring to Christ some that would be more
   illustrious trophies of the Grace of God than any they could have
   gathered had they been preaching in the streets of Philippi! God knows
   where it is best for His servants to be and how it is best for them to
   be! If He foresees that they will do more good with their backs scarred
   than they would have done if they had escaped the flagellation, then
   their bodies must bear the marks of the Lord Jesus and they must
   rejoice to have it so! Brothers and Sisters, we do not like the sick
   bed--we would not choose aching limbs-- especially those of us who are
   of an active disposition and would be perpetually telling out the love
   of Christ! And yet in our temporary imprisonment we have seen the
   Lord's wisdom and have had to look back with thankfulness upon it. Oh,

   children of God, your Father knows best! Leave everything in His hands
   and be at peace, for all is well. May the Holy Spirit work quietness of
   heart in you.

   Our subject is the jailer of Philippi and, first, we shall say a little
   as to what kind of man he was before conversion. Secondly, we shall
   consider what was the occasion of his conversion. And then, thirdly, we
   will notice what sort of convert he made when the Grace of God brought
   him to Jesus' feet.

   First, then--

   I. WHAT SORT OF MAN WAS THIS JAILER BEFORE HIS CONVERSION? He is a
   remarkable instance of the power of Divine Grace, but he ought not to
   be spoken of as a notably great transgressor, for of this there is no
   trace, whatever! He was, like ourselves, full of sin and iniquity, but
   we find no record of anything especially bad about him. I see no reason
   why Mr. Wesley should so severely stigmatize him as he does in his
   lines--

   "What but the power which wakes the dead Could reach a stubborn
   jailer's heart, In cruelty and rapine bred, Who took the ancient
   murderer's part? Could make a hardened ruffian feel, And shake him over
   the mouth of Hell?" On the contrary, we shall be able to show that the
   jailer's salvation is an instance of the Grace of God saving one of an
   admirable moral character, one in whom there were most commendable
   points--a man of such regularity and decision that he was not so much
   saved from vice as from self-righteousness! I take it, from the little
   we know of him, that he was a fine specimen of stern Roman
   discipline--a man full of respect for those in authority and prompt in
   obedience to orders. He was a jailer and he had to act, not on his own
   responsibility, but on the command of others, and this he scrupulously
   did. When we read, "having received such a charge, "we infer that he
   carefully followed the tenor of his orders and attentively observed the
   weight which the magistrates threw into them. He, therefore, thrust the
   Apostle and his friend into the inner prison and made their feet fast
   in the stocks. You can see that he was thorough-going in obedience to
   authority, for afterwards, although he might have liked to retain the
   Apostle and Silas in his house, yet, when the magistrates sent him
   word, he spoke to his beloved guests as an official was bound to do,
   waiving, in some respects, the friend, and tersely saying, "The
   magistrates have sent to let you go. Now, therefore, depart and go in
   peace." It strikes me that he was an old soldier--a legionary who had
   fought and done rough work in his younger days and then settled down,
   appointed on account of his good behavior to the important post of
   governor of the jail of Philippi. With his family about him, he
   occupied himself in attending to his duties as a jailer and carried
   them out with the strictest regularity. For this he is to be
   commended--for it is expected of men that they be found faithful.

   I say, then, that I regard him as an instance of a man whose mind was
   molded according to the Roman type, a person subservient to discipline
   and strict in obedience to rule. I grant that there was a little
   harshness about his fulfilling the orders concerning Paul and Silas,
   for he seems to have "thrust" them into the dungeon with some violence.
   But we cannot object to their being placed in the inner prison, or to
   their feet being made fast in the stocks, because his orders were that
   he should keep them safely--and he was only doing his best to secure
   this. He was not responsible for the order of the magistrates and when
   the prisoners were brought to him fresh from the lictor's rods with a
   strict charge, what was he to do but to obey it to the letter? He did
   so and does not deserve to be called a ruffian for it. His ruling idea
   was that he was a servant of the government and bound to carry out his
   instructions--and was he not right? Such men are very necessary in
   government employ--I cannot tell how public business could be done
   without them.

   Notice that before he went to bed he saw that the prison doors were all
   fastened and the lights put out. Even Roman jailers were open to bribes
   and though lights had to be extinguished at a certain hour of the
   night, it was still possible to burn your lamp if you placed a little
   oil upon the jailer's palm. But there was no lamp in the jail of
   Philippi, for when the keeper, himself, needed a light, he had to call
   for it. All lamps were out at the proper time and all chains were on
   every person--for the narrative says that, by the earthquake, "Every
   man's chains were loosed," which they could not be if they were already
   unbound. The inmates were all secured in their cells and the whole
   building was in due order. This shows that the keeper of the prison
   attended to his business thoroughly, nothing turning him aside from the
   most correct observance of his instructions.

   Well, all being shut up, he has gone to bed and is fast asleep, as he
   should be, in the middle of the night, so as to be fit for his
   morning's work But what happens?--

   "Paul and Silas, in their prison,

   Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen!

   And an earthquake's arm of might

   Broke their dungeon gates at night" See how every timber in the house
   quivers and he awakes out of his sleep! What is his first thought? To
   my mind, it is fine to observe that he has no terror for himself or
   family, but at once rushes from his room to look to the prison below.
   Seeing the prison doors open, he was alarmed. He does not seem to have
   been in any alarm about his wife and his family, though the earthquake
   must have shaken the rooms in which they were, but his one concern was
   his prison and its contents. Under the seal and authority of the Roman
   Emperor, he was bound to keep the prisoners safe--and when he wakes,
   his first thought concerns his duty. I wish that all Christians were as
   faithful in their offices as this man! When as yet he was
   unenlightened, he was faithful to those who employed him. It is a grand
   thing when a man, placed in an office of responsibility, has his work
   so much upon his mind that if he starts up in the middle of the night
   and finds the floor under him reeling with an earthquake, the main
   thing he thinks about is the duty which he has engaged to fulfill. It
   ought to be so with Christian servants, with Christian trustees,
   managers and confidential clerks--and indeed with all Christian men and
   women placed in offices of trust! Your chief concern should be to be
   found faithful--it was so with the jailer.

   Now notice, as he finds the prison doors open, this stern Roman fears
   that he shall be disgraced, for he feels sure that the prisoners must
   have fled. Naturally they would escape when the doors were open and as
   he could not confront the charge of unfaithfulness in his office, he
   drew his sword in haste and would have killed himself. For this
   proposed suicide he is to be most severely censured, but still note the
   stern Brutus-like fidelity of the man. He cannot endure the charge of
   having allowed his prisoners to escape, but would rather kill himself.
   Is it not singular that this Philippi was the place where Cassius
   committed suicide? Where Brutus also slew himself? Here this man would
   have added another name to these who laid violent hands upon
   themselves--and all because he feared that he would lose his character?
   He preferred death to dishonor. All these things show that he was a man
   sternly upright and determined to perform his duty. I am always doubly
   glad when such men are saved, because it does not often happen--such
   persons too often wrap themselves up in the sense of having walked
   uprightly towards their fellow men. And because after the lapse of many
   years, they stand high in public esteem and everybody says the country
   never had better servants, they are apt to forget their Master in
   Heaven and their obligations to their Lord--apt to have a blind eye
   towards their own shortcomings and to be little inclined to sit as
   little children at the feet of Jesus, unless some wondrous deed of
   Divine Grace is worked upon them! Hence we admire the Grace of God
   which brought such a man trembling to the Apostle 's feet!

   The jailer was a person of few words. He was not a great talker, but a
   prompt actor. We only know three things that he said. First, he called
   for a light. And next he cried, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" a
   terse, laconic question-- respectful, earnest, to the point, having not
   a word too much or too little in it. His other speech to Paul was of
   the same order when he said, "The magistrates have sent to let you go.
   Now, therefore, depart and go in peace." You would not expect a jailer
   to use very flowery language--he was accustomed to measure his
   syllables when he spoke to his prisoners, never uttering a word beyond
   the statute in that case made and provided. Thus he had acquired a
   hard, businesslike style of speech. Men of such a type are often cold
   as so many statues. We find it hard to warm their hearts and,
   therefore, we bless the Grace of God which made this man's heart to
   burn within him and snapped the bonds of cold routine, so that, after
   his conversion, he feasted the ministers of Christ and rejoiced with
   all his house!

   It may be well to make one more remark. It is evident that he was a man
   of action, of precision and decision. Once let him know what is to be
   done, and he does it! He acts as a man under authority having wardens
   under him. He says to this man, "Go," and he goes. And he acts
   mechanically as his superiors command him. He was a man who, I suppose,
   opened the prison doors always to a minute at the right time in the
   morning for those who went out to exercise, measured out the meals of
   the prisoners to the ounce and shut up the cells and put out the lights
   exactly at the fixed hour at night. I see it in him. Precise obedience
   is his main point. When he was bid to believe, he believed. He was also
   immediately baptized. What he lacked in speech, he made up in deeds. He
   obeyed the Lord Jesus immediately, then and there. I love to see a man

   brought to Christ who has orderliness and decision about him. Some of
   us are rough beings, needing a deal of combing to bring us into shape.
   But certain others are shapely after their way from the first and all
   that they need is spiritual life. When the Divine Life comes, their
   habits are in beautiful consistency with the inward law of obedience
   and holy order. Still, it is not often that persons of this class are
   saved, for these very orderly people frequently think that they have no
   sin and so the warnings addressed to sinners do not come home to them.
   For instance, a man says, "Never since I took my position as manager of
   my master's business have I wasted an hour of his time, or a shilling
   of his substance." This is well, but the devil is ready with the
   suggestion, "You are a good and faithful servant. What need have you to
   humble yourself before Christ and seek His mercy and Grace?" It is a
   most blessed thing when this tendency is overcome. I see the Divine
   splendor of Grace as much in the conversion of the faultless moralist
   as in the repentance of Manasseh, or of that woman who was a sinner, of
   whom we spoke a little while ago. It is as hard to deliver a man from
   self-righteousness as from unrighteousness, as difficult to deliver one
   man from the frostbite of his own orderliness as to save another from
   the heat of his unbridled passions. Converts like the jailer are very
   precious and very sweetly display the love and power of God! Now,
   secondly--

   II. WHAT OCCASIONED THE JAILER'S CONVERSION?

   The narrative is short and we cannot, therefore, get much out of it. I
   think, however, that we are warranted in believing that this man had
   received some measure of instruction before the earnest midnight cry
   of, "What must I do to be saved?" Perhaps the often repeated testimony
   of the Pythoness had been reported to him, for it must have been a
   matter of general notoriety throughout the town of Philippi that this
   woman, who was supposed to be inspired, had testified that Paul and
   Silas were "servants of the Most High God." It is also very possible
   that when he was fitting on the irons to these holy men and roughly
   thrusting them into the inner prison, their quiet manner, like sheep at
   the slaughter, and perhaps their godly words, also, may have carried
   information to his mind. What he saw and heard did not savingly impress
   him, for he showed the Apostles no sort of courtesy, but, as I have
   already said, was somewhat harsh with them. "He thrust them into the
   inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks," so that at that
   time he had no belief in their mission and but small respect for their
   character. He felt, it is clear, no compunction, for he went up to his
   chamber and fell asleep--nothing of any importance was on his mind,
   notwithstanding what the Apostles may have said to him. A young Divine
   in a flowery sermon described the jailer as converted through hearing
   Paul and Silas sing at midnight. A very beautiful picture he made of
   it, but it had the drawback of being untrue, for the jailer did not
   hear them sing. "The prisoners heard them," for they were all down in
   the vaults under the jailer's house, but it is clear that the keeper of
   the prison did not hear them, for he was asleep until the earthquake
   startled him.

   I have also heard it said that he was converted through fear of
   death--a most ridiculous remark, for how could he be afraid to die who
   was going to kill himself? No, he was too brave a man to be moved by
   terror. He was afraid of nothing but of being suspected of neglect of
   duty. He was a soldier without fear and without reproach, dreading
   dishonor infinitely more than death! He was a stern disciplinarian and
   thought little of his own life or the lives of others. He would have
   ridden in the charge of Balaclava, with all the rest of them, bravely
   enough--

   "His not to reason why-- His but to dare and die."

   You can see that it was not fear that brought him to the feet of the
   Apostle. I do not doubt that some are brought to Christ by fear of
   death, but one is a little suspicious of such conversions--for he who
   is frightened to the Savior by fear of death may possibly run away from
   Him when he perceives that his fear has no immediate cause.

   Others, too, have thought that he was made to tremble because he was
   afraid of being brought before Caesar for permitting his prisoners to
   escape. That fear may have hurried him into the desperate intent of
   suicide, but it was not the cause of his conversion, for all distress
   upon that point was gone before he cried out, "Sirs, what must I do to
   be saved?" In fact, he came to Paul and Silas because that fear had
   been banished by hearing the calm and brave voice of the Apostle as he
   said, "Do yourself no harm: we are all here." It was not even a fear of
   censure from the magistrates which compelled him to tremble, for that,
   also, had been removed by finding the prisoners still in their cells.
   And though the whole of these things together make up the circumstances
   of his conversion, they cannot be put down as the cause of it, since
   this last, especially, had ceased to operate upon him when he fell
   trembling at the Apostle 's feet.

   What was it, then, which led to the jailer's faith and Baptism? I
   answer, partly the miracle that the doors were opened and the
   prisoners' chains loosed by an earthquake. And coupled with that, the
   fact that none of them had escaped. What gladness filled his bosom! He
   would not be arraigned, after all, for being unfaithful to his trust.
   How strange that the prisoners were all there. What a conflict was
   there in his spirit! What anxiety and what sudden quelling of his
   alarm! There was no need to commit suicide lest he should be blamed,
   for there was nothing for which to blame him. What a deliverance for
   him! An awful power was abroad and yet it had taken care of him. A
   mingled feeling of mystery and gladness created astonishment and
   gratitude in his bosom. He could not make it out, it was so
   singular--he had been brought to the verge of a precipice--and yet was
   safe. "Do yourself no harm: we are all here," rang out like music in
   his ears! He felt a solemn awe of those two prisoners whose voices had
   reassured him. Their voices had been to him as the very voice of God
   sounding forth along those corridors out of the innermost cells. Their
   bold, truthful, confident, calm tones had astonished him! He had seen
   before something very singular about those two men, but now the very
   tone in which they conveyed to him the glad intelligence which banished
   his worst fear filled him with deep reverence towards them--and he
   feels that no doubt these men are the servants of the Most High God
   and, therefore, he calls for a light, breaks in upon their darkness and
   brings them out.

   While this was transpiring, he was brought very near to the world to
   come by the fact of the sword having been so near his breast, by the
   earthquake that had started all the stones of the dungeon, by the
   singular power of God miraculously holding every freeman as fast as if
   he had been bound and by the presence of men whom he perceived to be
   linked with Deity. This nearness to things unseen caused him to look
   over his past life. He was calm, despite the confusion of the night,
   for he was not a man to be frightened. But conscience, which in him was
   quick and prompt, from the very habit of obedience, reviewed his past
   life, judged it and condemned it--and he felt that he was a lost man
   because of his multiplied shortcomings before the Living God, whose
   servants were there present. For this reason he cried out, "Sirs, what
   must I do to be saved?" It was none other than the blessed and eternal
   Spirit, unfolding before him his life which he had thought to be so
   correct, making him to see the evil of it and striking him down with a
   sense of guilt and a dread of consequent punishment! So far we trace
   his convictions to an awakened conscience visited by the Spirit of God.

   His full conversion grew out of the further instructions of the
   Apostles. That answer was very like his short question in fullness of
   meaning--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and
   your house." This was condensed Gospel for him. And then followed a
   blessed commentary upon it, when the Apostle spoke the Word of the Lord
   both to him and to all his house. All this lit up his mind, which was
   already willing to receive the Truth of God, a mind which, from the
   very habit of obedience, was quick and prompt to accept the sway of the
   Lord Jesus. He received the Word of God in the love of it most sweetly,
   God the Holy Spirit blessing it to him while he listened. There was
   plain teaching and a simple heart to receive it--and the two together
   made quick work of it and made resplendent that strange midnight which
   was, henceforth in that house, regarded as the beginning of days!

   Now, dear Friend, I want you to thank God for the circumstances which
   surround any man's conversion, for all things are well ordered. If the
   Lord has been pleased to call you by His Divine Grace, do not begin
   judging your conversion because the circumstances were not very
   remarkable! And do not suspect your friend's sincerity because there
   was no earthquake in connection with his new birth, for the Lord may
   not be in the earthquake, nor in the wind, nor in the fire, but in that
   "still small voice" which calls the heart to Jesus! The matter is not
   how you came to Christ, but are you there? It is not what brought you,
   so much as Who brought you. Did the Spirit of God lead you to
   repentance? Are you resting at the Cross? If so, then, whether, like
   Lydia your heart was gently opened, or, like this jailer, you were
   startled and awakened, and thus made to perceive grand Truths to which
   you had been a stranger before--it does not matter as long as Christ is
   believed in and your heart yields itself to His blessed sway! Our third
   point--and may the Spirit of God help us in it--is to notice--

   III. WHAT SORT OF CONVERT THIS MAN MADE.

   First, you are quite sure he made a very believing convert. The Gospel
   command came to him--"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall
   be saved, and your house"--and he did believe, believed firmly, without
   raising questions or discussions, without delays, or hesitations! How
   many there are among those whose conversion we seek after who meet us
   always with a, "but." We put the Truth of God plainly and they reply,
   "Yes--but--." Then we go over it again and put it in another shape, and
   they still say, "But." We tell them that salvation is by believing in
   Jesus Christ and they answer "but." This man, however, had no, "buts."
   He was told to believe and he did believe--and who would not--who knows
   how true the Gospel is? Who will not believe what is true? Who will not
   rely upon that which is Divinely certified? Why should we reject what
   thousands have proved to be true by a gladsome experience? Ah,
   Unbelief, what an enemy you are to multitudes who hear the Gospel! But
   you were utterly cast out of the jailer--he heard the command to
   believe and, though he had received slender instruction, he
   nevertheless believed unto eternal life. He was a convert full of
   faith!

   Next, what a humble Christian he was. He fell down at the feet of the
   servants of God, not feeling himself worthy to stand in their presence.
   And then, though their jailer, he took them up into his house and
   waited upon them with gladness. The man who is really born-again does
   not demand the best seat in the synagogue, nor disdain to perform the
   meanest service. It is poor evidence of a renewed heart when a man must
   always be the fore horse in the team, or else he will do nothing at
   all! He who knows the Lord loves to sit at Christ's feet--the lower the
   place, the better for him. He is even glad to wash the saints' feet,
   yes, he thinks it an honor! If you Christian people must dispute about
   precedence, always fight for the lowest place! If you aspire to be last
   and least, you will not have many competitors--there will be no need to
   demand a poll, for the lowest seat is undisputed. Humility is the way
   to a peaceful life--and the jailer began to practice it in his behavior
   to his prisoners, who were now his pastors!

   What a ready convert he was! In that one midnight he passed through
   several stages--hearing, believing, baptizing, service, rejoicing and
   fellowship--and all within an hour! No long waiting for him! I wish
   more converts were like he. What slow coaches we have to deal with. You
   travel by broad-wheeled wagon to Heaven, even you who rush along by
   express train in the world's business! Yes, you must attend to the
   world, and my Lord and Master may wait your convenience, as Felix puts
   it! But this should not be. As soon as you know what your Lord would
   have you to do, every moment of unnecessary delay is a sin! The jailer
   had been prompt in other duties and he was just as decided with regard
   to Divine things! He was such a convert as we like to have in our
   Churches to set an example of quick obedience to the Great Captain of
   our salvation. Soldierly habits sanctified by Grace are greatly needed
   in the Church of God--would God we saw more of them!

   Then see what a practical'convert he was! "He took them the same hour
   of the night and washed their stripes, and set meat before them." All
   that he could do, he did at once, and his wife and children were all
   busy to help him. It is not easy to fit up a feast in the middle of the
   night, but the good wife did her best--cold meats were brought forth
   from the stores and such good cheer as they had was set out so that the
   two good men, who, no doubt, needed refreshment, were sufficiently
   supplied. I think I see that midnight festival even now! How the young
   children caught up every word which was spoken by the holy men and how
   glad they were to see them at their table! They all believed and were
   all baptized, and therefore they were all eager to do something for the
   men of God. How pleased they were to fetch the good men up into the
   best parlor--how eager to put them into the easiest chairs and let them
   sit in comfort, or recline at their ease. They did not wait till
   morning, but showed kindness without delay! This is the sort of convert
   the Church needs--one who delights to serve the Lord and is no sooner
   converted than he sets to work in his own hearty way! May the Lord send
   us scores of such conversions!

   Friend, have you ever done anything for the Lord or His cause? "No,
   Sir. Nobody has set me anything to do." What? Live in these busy times
   and needsomebody to find you Christian employment? Why, you are not
   worth setting to work! He who lives in a great city and cannot find
   something to do for God had better not get off his knees till he has
   asked his Lord to have mercy upon his lazy soul! Here are people dying
   all round us, and being lost forever through ignorance, drunkenness and
   sins of every kind--and yet a young man of 21 stands up and says that
   he cannot find anything to do! You are idle. You are very idle! Does
   not Solomon say, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your
   might?" You need not open your eyes to find good work to do, only put
   out your hand and there it is! For the love of Jesus, begin to serve
   Him as this jailer and his wife and family did!

   Notice, again, that they were very joyful converts. He "rejoiced,
   believing in God with all his house." The Apostle was happy that night.
   His poor back was smarting, but his heart was leaping within him! And
   Silas, too, who had shared the scourging, he also shared the joy! How
   lovingly the jailer looked upon his two instructors, how tenderly he
   washed their stripes. As he had thrown them into the inner prison, so
   he brought them into his own house. What overflowing joy was in his
   heart! I think while he was waiting at the table, he would, every now
   and then, stop and wonder at what Di-

   vine Grace had done! Would he not ask the Apostle to teach him that
   Psalm which had been sung below stairs? I am sure he would have sung
   heartily had he known that hymn which you so much delight in, wherein
   each one declares--

   "I am so glad that Jesus loves me!" Joy ruled at that midnight feast,
   and well it might, for the prison had become a palace and the jailer an
   heir of Heaven!

   This man was an influential'convert, for, through this conversion, all
   his house was led to believe. And he was also a sensible convert, which
   is worth notice, for it is not every Christian that is wise and
   prudent. Some zealous people are in a hurry to give up their secular
   callings. Such would say, "I cannot be a jailer any longer. I must give
   it up." A Roman jailer would have much to do which would grate upon
   Christian feelings, but there was nothing positively wrong in the
   office. Somebody must be jailer and who so fit for the post as a man
   who knows the Lord and will, therefore, manifest a gentle, humane
   spirit? Who so fit to have poor creatures entrusted to him as one who
   will not swear at them, or treat them roughly, but who will seek their
   good? Why, I think if a man wanted to be a missionary to those who
   needed him most, he might desire to be a jailer, for he would be sure
   to get at the very people who most require the Gospel! The Phi-lippian
   convert was in his right place, and instead of saying, "Ah, I must give
   up my situation and live with Christian people," he was wise enough to
   stay at the jail and abide in his calling.

   Observe that when the magistrates tell him that Paul is to go, he does
   not violate their order out of zeal for the faith. He had no right to
   keep Paul as a guest in his house against the magistrates' will, or he
   would gladly have retained him. But being bound by his office and by
   the fact that his apartments were part of the jail, when Paul was told
   to go, he said to him, "Now, therefore, go in peace." The words look
   somewhat curt, but no doubt he uttered them in such a kind and
   courteous manner that the Apostle quite understood him. Then Paul went
   down to Lydia's house and I dare say the jailer came down to see him
   there, so that if they could not meet at the jail without breach of
   regulations, they could meet at Lydia's hospitable abode. He was quite
   right in maintaining the discipline of the jail and his sincere
   affection for the Apostle at the same time.

   My own belief is that he and Lydia were ever afterwards two of the
   kindest friends that the Apostle ever had--and were chief among those
   who contributed of their substance to his necessities. Paul took no
   money from any but the Phi-lippians. Though other Churches offered to
   contribute, Paul declined. But when the Philippians sent to him once
   and again, he accepted their gifts as a sacrifice of sweet smell. He
   said within himself, "All the family send this gift. All Lydia's
   household and all the jailer's household are Believers, so that no
   member of the family will grudge what is sent to me." One likes to see
   brought into the Christian Church those who will continue in their
   business and make money for Jesus Christ and lay themselves out to
   serve the Lord in a practical fashion. Many a man gets into a pulpit
   and spoils a congregation who, if he had stuck to his business and made
   money that he might help the poor, or aid the cause of missions, or
   support the Church of God, would have been more truly serving the great
   cause. He was a sensible convert, this jailer, and I rejoice in him!

   And now, if I have been addressing anybody not a jailer, but a person
   in a position of trust, and if you have a feeling that you have done
   faithfully, I am glad of it. I am not going to dispute your claim to
   integrity towards man, nor to undervalue honesty and faithfulness, but
   oh, remember, you need to be saved! Notwithstanding your moral
   excellence, you will be lost unless you believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ! Do see to this. May the Holy Spirit lead you at once to accept
   the Gospel of Grace, for you need it even as others. May you become a
   firm Believer in Jesus, and may the Church find in you a willing and
   earnest helper.
     __________________________________________________________________

Man's Scorn and God's Succor

   (No. 3373)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING, MAY
   12, 1867.

   "My friends scorn me; but my eyes pour out tears unto God." Job 16:20.

   WE know that Job's sorrows were recorded, not for his honor, but for
   our profit. We are told to consider the patience of Job and truly we
   might often be sustained, cheered and comforted if we would but look
   upon that Patriarch in the depths of his grief. We are "born to sorrow"
   and if our cup is not embittered with it tonight, we must not expect to
   be long without a taste of the gall in our mouths.

   There is one particular sorrow, however, which appertains to the early
   days of our spiritual life, concerning which I intend to speak tonight.
   It is the sorrow caused by the scorning of us by our friends. This
   becomes a very little sorrow to us in later days, but at the first it
   is a "trial of cruel mocking," and a very severe one. I suppose the
   advanced Christian at last can even come to "rejoice in tribulations"
   of this sort--he counts it to be an honor--he rejoices and is
   exceedingly glad when men say all manner of evil against him falsely
   for Christ's name's sake. But at the first there is nothing, perhaps,
   more staggering to the young Christian than to find that his "worst
   foes" are they of his own household and that they who should have
   cherished and nurtured in him the piety which is so excellent a flower,
   do their cruel worst to nip it in the bud!

   Without further preface, therefore, we shall try, as the Holy Spirit
   shall teach and help us, to speak to you upon a very common trial, '
   'My friends scorn me." And then, yet again, meditate on a remarkable
   resort and exercise, ' 'But my eyes pour out tears unto God." First,
   then, let us think upon-- I. A VERY COMMON TRIAL.

   "My friends scorn me." What is it they do? They scorn me. I shall apply
   the text tonight to scorn on account of religion. It is lately, my dear
   young friends--I address myself particularly to you--it is lately that
   you have been impressed. It is lately that you have considered your
   ways. There has been an evident alteration in you. You have become of a
   serious cast of mind. You are now a seeker--you desire salvation. For
   this reason your friends scorn you. Perhaps they say that you are so
   miserable that they cannot bear your company. Probably the remark is
   correct and you feel it to be so, but they do not know that this misery
   of yours will end in perfect joy. They do not comprehend this rough
   plowing of your soul, which is preparatory to the joyful harvest. They
   do not understand that the good Physician often uses the lancet and
   opens wide the wound before He comes with His downy fingers to close it
   and to heal it. You are miserable and you might expect them, therefore,
   to be the more gentle with you and to help your faith as much as
   possible, but instead of that, they continually tell you that your
   company is altogether unbearable--and so they scorn you. Meanwhile,
   they also insinuate that the attention which you are now paying to
   religious matters is with a sinister motive and design. They say that
   you are a hypocrite! They cannot understand that there can be such a
   thing as religious sincerity. To them it is all hypocrisy. They suppose
   that all those who seek to live godly lives in Christ Jesus are merely
   making a pretense with a view to some personal advantage. Do not be
   surprised if they insinuate that you "cant," if they mimic any tone
   that may be peculiar to you--if in any and every way possible they
   throw in your face the insinuation that you are false and hypocritical.
   And, perhaps, they also twit you with your faults, which are, alas, too
   many--and are near the surface--and so very easily visible to them.

   The old proverb says, "It is easy enough to find a stick with which to
   beat a dog," and it is very easy for our friends with whom we live to
   rake up some fault of ours, to exaggerate it, and then to strike us as
   hard as they can with it! Very

   difficult, indeed, would it be for us to live so as to give them no
   such opportunity. Even when most careful, our very carefulness is
   sneered at as sanctimoniousness! And if we are particular, then we are
   severe, rigid, and, worst of all, "Puritanical."

   So that, do what we will, we must expect to have faults laid at our
   door. This is hard to bear. Your friends, in this respect, scorn you.
   And all the while they also tell you that, make what pretences you may,
   it is not at all likely that any good will come out of your religion.
   It is, they say, an old wives' fable and a cunning story. They have
   never proved the power of it in their own souls--they know no better
   and, therefore, they tell you to eat, drink, and be merry--fools as
   they are to think that this poor flesh and blood ought to have the
   first care before the soul that is born for better things! Fools, I
   say, as they are, to think that it ever can be wisdom to live for this
   little span of time and to forget eternity, which knows no end! Yet
   they will tell you to live while you live, that a bird in the hand is
   worth two in the bush, to snatch the present joy. They say, "Let us eat
   and drink, for tomorrow we die and leave the spirit-world and the land
   that is to be revealed to those speculative minds who may care for such
   things!" And so, with a hoarse laugh, they would dismiss religion from
   you, or persuade you, if possible, to forget it. But, my dear Friends,
   you cannot forget it, for if God is dealing with you! His arrows stick
   fast in the soul. When the Spirit of God comes to deal with a man, if
   all the devils in Hell and all the sinners on earth should laugh around
   him all day long, it would only drive the shafts deeper into his soul!
   He who has never felt the power of the world to come is easily driven
   out of his profession, but he who has once been plowed and harrowed by
   the mighty Plowman of Conviction can never forget it! I recollect when
   my sins lay heavy upon me. I would not have been ashamed to have stood
   up before a parliament of kings and said that I knew sin to be
   exceedingly sinful, and that I thought that the sentence of my
   condemnation had gone forth from God. Yet, as to having any Scriptural
   thoughts, they were squeezed out of me by the rough hand of my
   conscience. I knew that sin was evil before God and that sin would
   destroy my soul. How could I doubt it when the hot sweat of horror
   stood on my brow at the thought of my past life? Doubts then soon fled
   to the winds! Ah, if God is so dealing with you, sore as the trial is,
   of being mocked by unbelieving friends, you will bear it and will come
   out of the ordeal none the worse! But still, meanwhile, I remind you
   that Job himself had to say, "My friends scorn me."

   Who are these people who scorn you? They are your friends and that
   makes it the harder to bear. Caesar said, "Et tu Brute?"--"And you,
   Brutus? Do you stab?" So, too, one of our Lord's sharpest griefs was,
   "He that eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me." It is
   hard for a young Christian to be persecuted by the father to whose
   judgment he has always looked up with respect. Harder still is it for a
   Christian woman to find the partner of her bosom steeled against her
   for the Truth of God's sake. Oh, how they can get at our hearts, these
   husbands and these wives of ours--and if they happen to be enemies of
   Christ, what wounds they can make! "My friends scorn me." You would not
   mind if it were merely the workpeople in the shop. You could escape
   from them, but you cannot escape from your own family. You would not
   mind it if the ribald herds around you mocked and taunted you, but some
   of your friends are people of excellent character in all points but
   one! One thing they lack, but the other things they have in such a
   degree that you almost blush to think that they excel you--and then it
   is very difficult to have a jeer from such. You had hoped that they
   would sympathize with you, instruct you and encourage you--but the very
   people to whom you looked for assistance have turned against you! One
   thing let me say--if those who have thus scorned you are merely
   "friends," and are not related to you, they prove that they are nottrue
   friends--part from their company, I pray you!

   But if they are those with whom Providence has united you with such
   bonds, that you must look upon it as being a part of the cross which
   you have to carry, well, then, you must take up that cross daily, even
   though it is a heavy and painful one, that you may follow your Lord and
   Master, Jesus Christ! When the three holy children were cast into the
   furnace, it was at least out of doors and away from their dwelling. And
   but for God's rescue it would have destroyed them. But to have a
   furnace indoors and to have it always blazing--to go home every night
   into that furnace and to feel each day that the coals are heaped upon
   you, and still to hold on and refuse to bow the knee to evil, but still
   remain the true servant of Jesus Christ--oh, the ordeal is terribly
   severe! Job said that his enemies scorned him and why should you be
   allowed to escape, or expect to come off better than Job? I do trust
   that this will be in the nature of a good thing for you. It will make
   you feel less dependent upon an arm of flesh. It will drive you to God
   and I am sure that those make the strongest Christians who have to come
   out most distinctly and separately from their fellows. It is the very
   best enjoyment. The Covenanters tell us in their lives that the
   happiest seasons they ever had were among the bogs, swamps, mountains

   and the brown heath of Scotland when Claverhouse's dragoons were after
   them! Then Christ seemed doubly precious to them, when the world had
   cast them out on the heath. Oh, there is no talk with Christ so sweet
   as that which He gives His people when they walk up the bleak side of
   the hill with Him, with the snow blowing in their teeth! Then He covers
   them with the mantle of His love and lets His soul out in springs of
   love, comfort and delight to them! Some of you who do not have
   persecution might almost wish to have it that you might know those dear
   delights, those intimate communing which Christ gives to His people in
   the day of battle and in the time of torment! Your friends may scorn
   you, but "there is a Friend that sticks closer than a brother." Come to
   Him and He will not scorn you, but will be your great Comforter!

   Your friends scorn you, but why do they do so? They do it you know not
   why. If it is on account of religion, I think I know the philosophy of
   it. They scorn you because you are different from them. I saw a canary
   light on the roof of a house opposite to a window where I was
   standing--and in almost a second afterwards some 30 or 40 sparrows
   surrounded it and began pecking away at it--and the reason was very
   obvious. It was of a different color from themselves. If it had been a
   sparrow, of their own dark, smoky, dusty hue, they would have let it
   alone. But here was a golden-winged stranger from the sunny isles and
   they must persecute it! And so, if you are a bird of paradise, you will
   find that word of the Prophet to be true, "My heritage is unto me as a
   speckled bird--the birds round about are against her." So you will find
   the birds round about you--the ravens, hawks and vultures--against you.
   You are not understood, you know. If you are a true Christian, you
   cannot be understood! The greatest puzzle to a worldly man is a
   Christian! He is moved by motives which the worldling cannot
   understand. He is influenced by fears and hopes to which the worldling
   is a total stranger. They did not know your Lord--why should they know
   you? They crucified the Lord of Glory, not understanding that He was
   God, and so "it does not yet appear" what you are, nor does the world
   value you at your proper worth. Do not be astonished at it--it is
   partly malice and partly ignorance that leads men to scorn you! If, my
   dear Friend, you are a thorough-going Christian, you must not expect to
   escape scorn! Your life is a standing protest against the lives of
   others! You fear God, and they do not. You cannot live as they live.
   You cannot talk as they talk and when they note even your silence, it
   becomes provoking to them! If the world could have its way, it would
   not have a Christian living in it. "No," the worldlings would say,
   "That man is a living provocation to our conscience--he thrusts thorns
   into our pillows and will not let us rest." I am thankful if this is
   the case with you. And if so, it accounts for very much of the scorning
   which your friends pour upon you. I will not dwell upon the subject,
   however. You will have to find out the reason probably in your later
   experience.

   But now, what is the best thing for you to do if your friends scorn
   you? Well, do not defend yourself! Do not get bad-tempered about it. Do
   not answer them. The best reply is, in most cases, complete silence.
   Only speak when you are quite sure that it is better to speak than to
   hold your tongue. Never give scorn for scorning. Remember that a
   worldly man may resist evil if he will, but Christ says to his friends,
   "I say unto you, resist not evil, and when you are smitten on one
   check, turn the other also." I know that many of those good old
   non-resistance texts are looked upon as being quite out-of-date--as
   part of the Bible that is not to be preached. Well, when I get
   information from the skies that the text is to be covered over or
   silenced, I will say nothing about it--but as long as I find it there,
   I must say to you that that which men of the world call "pluck" and
   "fine spirit" very often comes only from the devil! Why are there
   fights and wars? They come from your own lusts. The Christian's only
   answer to the persecutor is the answer of the anvil to the blows of the
   hammer. He bears them, bears, bears them and breaks the hammer by
   bearing them! This is how the Christian Church triumphs. She has never
   made a good hand at carnal weapons. It was an ill-day for our Puritan
   sires when they took up arms. It did religion no good in this land, but
   I believe, threw it back for a long time. It is for the Christian
   Church to suffer and to suffer on in confidence and in faith, and to
   make the world see that the anvil will outlast a thousand sets of
   hammers and will triumph when they are all broken to dust! You, dear
   Friends, especially will find it to be your wisest, as well as the most
   Christian course, to bear everything that is put upon you and to make
   no return except by being more kind and more generous than ever towards
   those who are most unkind to you!

   Let me say, however, take care that you do not give any cause of
   offense. It is very easy for a man to make a martyr of himself when it
   is not his religion, but his particular way of holding it that brings
   on the martyrdom. Some people, really, are so ferocious in their
   convictions, so grim in their conscientiousness and so continually
   obtrusive that if they are persecuted, it is their mannerthat is
   persecuted and not the Gospel which they profess to hold! Do not give
   people an opportunity of opening their mouths against you, but pray God
   to make you very wise, so that, as in Daniel's case, they may find
   nothing against you, save only touching the Lord God whom you worship.
   And then, that being done, if you are still scorned by your friends,
   look upon it as coming from God's hands and that will very much soften
   it. Ask the Lord what is His purpose in it, what lessons He has to
   teach you. It may be it is to keep your pride down, or to strengthen
   you for some future conflicts or labors in His cause. And when you have
   waited upon Him for direction, rejoice and be exceedingly glad that you
   are permitted to suffer at all for Christ's sake and so in patience you
   shall possess your souls. Walk uprightly before God, live as Christ
   lived and, my dear Friend, the day will come when you shall have
   outlived all this enmity and when those who now mock you will respect
   you. "When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to
   be at peace with him." At such a time, it may be some will be won by
   your gentleness and your holy conversation to become Christians, too,
   and what a joy that will be to you!

   Now, I know that what I have been saying does not belong to a great
   many of you. But still, I must sometimes take texts which will apply to
   these special cases, especially as just now there are many who have
   been saved at the Agricultural Hall, and here, and elsewhere, and to
   whom the struggle for conscience' sake is quite a new thing. And a word
   or two by way of comfort to them I am sure you will not grudge. And now
   we shall turn to the second part of the sermon, and we find the
   Patriarch engaged in--

   II. A REMARKABLE RESORT AND EXERCISE.

   His friends were scorning him, but he did not answer them. He had a
   sharp word or two, certainly, but still, the direction of his mind and
   the bent of his spirit went another way. He thought of God and forgot
   them. Herein is wisdom. When you are perplexed with a trouble, when you
   are mortified by some wicked person, do not let that thing always fret
   you. Have you ever noticed how you may torment yourselves with some
   little thing if you like? There is a fly in the room and that fly may
   be almost as much a trouble to you as though it were an eagle if you
   let its buzz be always in your ears. And if you keep on thinking about
   that buzzing fly, you can magnify it into a big dragon with wings. But
   if you forget it, and go on with your writing or your needlework, the
   fly may buzz away 50 times as much, but it will not trouble you! It is
   a very blessed thing, when, having a care which you cannot get over,
   you take it to God in prayer and so get over it. I will tell you what I
   have sometimes done with some of my difficulties. I have turned them
   over--I have looked at them in all shapes and ways--I have considered
   every way of getting over them. I have been vexed, troubled and
   distressed for the time, and at last I have come to feel, "Well now, I
   cannot do anything with this. It is a hard shell--I cannot crack it.
   But I have frequently been enabled by Grace to deliberately take that
   matter and put it upon the shelf and say, "By God's Grace I will never
   think about that again as long as I live--I have done the best I could
   with it, Lord, and if it does not get right, that is now Your business
   and not mine--I will be done with it forever." Sometimes you will find
   that the trouble will get right as soon as you leave it alone. It is
   just your meddling with it that makes the difficulty. You do not see
   that at the time, but as soon as you just get out of the way, the whole
   thing becomes right at once! God's wheels of Providence grind much more
   accurately than any of the wheels of our mental calculations. And when
   we are altogether out of joint, then it is that God comes in and shows
   us what His wisdom and power can do. Leave, then, the scorning friends,
   and betake yourselves to your God!

   It is a very great mercy, let me say, that we may go to God when we are
   cast out by our friends--that if there are no other ears that will
   listen, God's ears will always listen--and that if in all the earth
   there should not remain a sympathizing heart, there is the heart of the
   Man, Christ Jesus, still to be appealed to! And we shall never appeal
   to the sympathies of the Son of God in vain. Oh, my Brothers and
   Sisters, when every other door is shut, the door of God's Grace is
   always open! Let all other ports be blocked, your vessel can always run
   into that one harbor which all the devils in Hell cannot close--the
   harbor of infinite love and unfailing care. "Trust you in the Lord
   forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." In your
   darkest seasons, your very worst times--fly to your God and He will
   deliver you!

   It seems from the text, however, that all Job could do was to pour out
   from his eyes a flood of tears. The word, "tears," is not in the
   original Hebrew, but it is put into the translation, as it is supposed
   to give simpler sense to our ears. His "eyes poured out," however, by
   which he meant that he did not so much pour out tears as his very
   heart, itself. As that grand old expositor, Joseph Caryl, says, "Job's
   heart was hot within him and the steam of his fierce trouble distilled
   itself in drops of tears which fell upon the ground." It was Job's
   inmost soul that he poured out before God. Now, there are many kinds of
   tears, but the best kind are those described in the text, "Tears unto
   God." What a capital sermon somebody might make out of that! "Tears
   unto God"! Tears not poured out to men, nor unto the earth, nor unto
   myself,

   but unto God! Tears put into His bottle. Libations poured at the foot
   of His altar. Tears wept for God--for God to see, for God to hear, for
   God to think upon--for God to accept. Not tears for tears' sake, but
   tears like those of the penitent, tears in the privacy of one's
   loneliness, tears only unto God! I hope, dear Friends, there are some
   among us who know the meaning of these tears. Some of you, I trust, are
   even now pouring forth the tears of repentance. Oh, those are blessed
   tears, tears of repentance that are tears unto God! It sometimes falls
   to my lot to have to talk to people about their sins. Sometimes they
   wish that I should do so and when I have tried to set their sins in
   their true light, tears have come. There have been tears because the
   offense has damaged the young man's character. Tears because it injured
   the young man's friends. Tears because a mother was grieved. Well now,
   when I have seen all these tears, I have been glad of them, such as
   they were, but they are not all the tears that we need. If you can only
   get one tear because the sin grieved God, it is worth a whole bottleful
   of the other tears! To see sin in the light of God's Countenance is to
   truly see it. David hit the nail on the head when he said, "Against
   You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight." My
   dear Hearer, you may be very sorry that you did wrong because it
   brought you into trouble. You may be very sorry, indeed, because you
   cannot take the position in life which you once occupied--but that is
   not a repentance that can serve you before God! But if you are sorry to
   think that you have grieved God. If, like the prodigal, you say,
   "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in Your sight"--these are
   tears unto God and are such as He receives!

   The next kind of tears unto God are the tears of desire. I wish these
   were more frequent. Those are the prayers that prevail with God which
   are well salted with tears. I am afraid that the most of us do not pray
   as we should, but if we want to prevail, like Jacob, we must remember
   that Jacob wrestled with the Angel and then he prevailed. Weeping,
   which reveals the soul's wrestling, will often do what nothing else can
   in bringing us great benedictions.

   We have all felt the power of tears over our own feelings and
   affections, but the power of tears over God, who shall describe it? The
   blood of Jesus secures all He wills, and when our tears look towards
   and plead the blood of Jesus, then those tears cannot be refused.

   My dear Hearer, if you cannot get peace, do not cease praying until you
   have obtained it. If you long for your sins to be pardoned and have
   been praying a long time for this--it may be for weeks or months--pray
   again tonight and do not give up praying until you know you have
   prevailed with God. Can you bear to perish? Can you endure to be cast
   away? If you cannot, then be importunate! Lay hold upon the horns of
   the altar and let this be your vow, "I will not let You go, except You
   bless me." Then, when it comes to tears, you will get it. When it comes
   to your very soul being poured out before God, then shall God say unto
   you, "Your sins are forgiven you. Go in peace."

   Once more. These tears may be tears shed on behalf of others. We would
   prevail for the salvation of others if we thought more of their cases
   when on our knees, and worked our souls more thoroughly into tempests
   of sacred and holy passion on their behalf. We cannot expect to see our
   children saved unless we can weep over them. We must not expect to see
   our congregations blessed unless our soul bleeds for that congregation.
   And when I say, "tears," I do not mean those drops from only the eyes,
   for some of us could not cry if our souls depended on it, and yet we
   may, though we let fall no watery tears, shed some of the best
   tears--tears dropping like sweet-smelling myrrh upon the altar of the
   all-seeing God! Oh, we must get to feel that we cannot let men die! We
   must get to feel as if we should die ourselves if they were lost! We
   must feel so desperately in earnest about it that we cannot sleep, nor
   go our way in peace unless such-and-such persons be turned unto God and
   find peace in Jesus! If this is our spirit, we shall have our desire
   and we shall see our beloved ones saved.

   Thus, then, it seems that Job, instead of dealing with his enemies,
   spent his time in dealing with his God, and as words failed him, he
   took himself to the more potent rhetoric of tears and so melted his way
   into God's heart, resting by faith upon the merits of the Redeemer who
   was yet to come! Do the same, my dear Friends, and God will give you
   the blessing you need!

   But some of you say, "I would never think of weeping before God! I have
   no dealings with God." No, but He will have dealings with you. If you
   should not now repent of your sins, you shall repent some day, but that
   shall be when repentance is too late! Tears of repentance here on earth
   are signs of Divine Grace, but tears of sorrow in Hell are only signs
   of bitter and destroying remorse! "There shall be weeping, and wailing,
   and gnashing of teeth." Oh, may God the Holy Spirit convict us of sin
   here and now, while there is a hope of mercy, that we may fly to Jesus'
   wounds, be washed in His blood and be saved--for if not, rest assured
   that we shall be convicted of sin one day when sin can never be
   pardoned, but the undying worm of self-accusing shall gnaw at our
   consciences forever, and forever and forever! Ah, my dear Hearer, do
   not boast because you cannot repent! Do not play the fool after that
   fashion, but rather ask God to break your heart of sin and so help you
   to repent! A tender conscience is such a blessing that you may well
   bemoan yourselves until God bestows it. Remember, however, that Jesus
   Christ can give a tender heart. It is one of the blessings of the
   Covenant of which He is the Surety. "A new heart also will I give them,
   and a right spirit will I put within them. I will take away the stony
   heart and give them a heart of flesh." Plead that Covenant promise! And
   if you plead it now, believing in Jesus and trusting in Him, you shall
   get that new heart! You shall get a heart that can weep before God and
   so you shall be accepted through the righteousness of Jesus and your
   tears and your supplications shall prevail!

   I may never speak to some of you again, but oh, I should like to leave
   that thought with you that to suffer for Christ is honor and that to
   weep before the Lord is the truest pleasure! But if you have despised
   in your heart those that are persecuted, remember that day when Christ
   shall come, and all His holy angels with Him! If you laugh at
   Christians now, you will no longer laugh, but lament then! Your song
   then--or rather wail--shall be very different from the one you sing
   now. Oh, may you now, while yet life lasts, and the day of mercy is not
   over, seek Jesus, cast in your lot with His people, take up His Cross,
   that by-and-by you may wear His crown, suffering now--if necessary--in
   sharing His reproach and shame, that then you may be delighted with His
   Glory!

   The Lord Himself grant it to everyone of you! Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM22:1-22; SONG OF SOLOMON
   1:1-7,2:1-7.

   PSALM22.

   Stand and look up at Christ upon the Cross and look upon these words as
   His. He Himself is the best exposition of this wondrous Psalm.

   Verses 1, 2. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so
   far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring? O My God, I cry
   in the daytime, but You hear not; and in the night season, and am not
   silent. Gethsemane!--there is the key--a prayer unanswered at that
   time--"If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me." It was not
   possible. He must drink it. "In the night season I am not silent."

   3. But You are holy, O You that inhabit thepraises ofIsrael. No hard
   thoughts of God, even when He was forsaken. A forsaken Christ still
   clings to the Father and ascribes perfect holiness to Him.

   4-6. Our fathers trusted in You: they trusted, and You did deliver
   them. They cried unto You, and were delivered: they trusted in You, and
   were not confounded. But I am a worm, and not a man: a reproach of men,
   and despised of the people.How low did Christ descend for our sakes not
   only as low as man, but still lower! Never was godly man forsaken of
   God, and yet Jesus was--so He is lower than we are while He hangs upon
   the tree "a reproach of men, and despised of the people."

   7, 8. 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. Was not
   this just what they said at the Cross? Ah, little did they know that He
   saved others--Himself He could not save, because a matchless love held
   His hands there, as with diamond rivets.

   9, 10. But You are He that took Me out of the womb: You did make Me
   hope when I was upon My mother's breasts. I was cast upon You from the
   womb: You are My God from My mother's belly. He remembers His wonderful
   birth. He was God's, indeed, from the very first.

   11. Be not far from Me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
   They have all gone. Peter and all the rest have fled. There is none to
   help. And there stand the Scribes and Pharisees and the great men of
   the nation.

   12-14. Many bulls have compassed Me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset
   Me round. They gaped upon Me with their mouths, as a ravening and a
   roaring lion. I am poured out like water All dissolved--nothing could
   hold together-- quite spent and gone.

   14. And all My bones are out of joint: My heart is like wax. He felt
   the inward sinking fever brought on Him by the wounds He had upon the
   Cross. "My heart is like wax."

   14-16. It is melted in the midst of My body. My strength is dried up
   like a potsherd: and My tongue cleaves to My jaws: and You have brought
   Me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed Me. There they
   are--the cruel multitude--thrusting out the tongue and hooting at Him.
   "For dogs have compassed Me."

   16. The assembly of the wicked has enclosed Me. The hind of the morning
   is now surrounded by the dogs. He cannot escape.

   16, 17. They pierced My hands and My feet. I may count all My bones:
   they look and stare upon Me. Horrible, to the tender, modest soul of
   Jesus, were those vile stares of the ribald multitude as they gazed
   upon Him.

   18-22. They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture.
   But be not You far from Me, O LORD: O My Strength, hasten You to help
   Me. Deliver My soul from the sword; My darling from the power of the
   dog. Save Me from the lion's mouth: for You have heard Me from the
   horns of the unicorns. I will declare Your name unto My brethren: in
   the midst of the congregation will I praise You. The sun that was
   darkened, now shines again. The Savior's griefs are over. A calm is
   spread over His mind. He is about to say, "It is finished!" and His
   heart is comforted. We leave that passage there.

   SONG OF SOLOMON 1.

   Now, concerning our love to Him, let us read a few verses of the Song
   of Solomon, first Chapter. You have been introduced to the Beloved, red
   with His own blood, but never so lovely as in His passion.

   Verses 1, 2. The song of songs, which is Solomon's. Let Him kiss me
   with the kisses ofHis mouth. No name. Is any name needed? What name is
   good enough for Him, our best Beloved? He plunges into the subject
   through excess of love! He forgets the name. "Let Him kiss me with the
   kisses of His mouth."

   2, 3. For Your love is better than wine. Because of the savor of Your
   good ointments Your name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the
   virgins love You. There is such a sweetness in the name. It is not like
   a box of ointment shut up, but like a sweet perfume that fills the
   room. For the merits of Jesus are so sweet that they perfume Heaven
   itself! It was not on Calvary alone that that sweet ointment was
   known--it was known in the Seventh Heaven!

   4. Draw me, we will run after You.We want to get near to Christ, but we
   cannot. "Draw me," we cry, "we will run after You."

   4. The king has brought me into His chambers: we wiil be glad and
   rejoice in You, we will remember Your love more than wine: the upright
   love You. The wine shall help us to remember Him tonight when we come
   to His Table, but we will remember Him more than wine.

   5. I am black, but comely, O you daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents
   of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. A strange contrast is a Believer.
   He is black in himself, but he is comely in Christ. In himself he is
   foul as the smoke-dried tents of Kedar--but in his Lord he is as comely
   and rich as the curtains of Solomon!

   6. 7. Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun has looked
   upon me. My mother's children were angry with me: they made me the
   keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me,
   O You whom my soul loves, where You feed, where You make Your flock to
   rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turns aside by the flocks
   of Your companions? A few verses of the next Chapter.

   CHAPTER 2

   Song of Solomon 2:1. I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the
   valleys. So He is, and much more than that--

   "Nature, to make His beauties known, Must mingle colors quite unknown."

   So rich is He--rose and lily both in one--

   "White is His soul, from blemish free, Red with the blood He shed for
   Me."

   2. As the lily among thorns, so is My love among the daughters.His
   Church stands out like a fair lily in a thorn-brake--separate and
   distinct--often suffering, standing where she does not wish to be, but
   all the lovelier by contrast. But if Christ praises His Church, she
   praises Him again.

   3, 4. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved
   among the sons. I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His
   fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and
   His banner over me was love.So full of joy is she that she can bear it
   no longer. She seems ready to faint with bliss!

   5-7. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for Iam love sick.
   His left handis under my head, andHis right hand does embrace me. I
   charge you, O you daughters of Jerusalem--By every lovely, timid,
   tender, chaste thing--

   7. By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that you stir not up,
   nor awake my love, till He please. If I have fellowship with Him--if I
   am near His Cross--if I am drinking in His love, oh, do not hinder me!
   Do not call me away! Do not break the spell, but let me go on with this
   blessed daydream, which is truer than reality, itself, till I see Him
   face to face, when the day breaks and the shadows flee away!
     __________________________________________________________________

Sin's True Character

   (No. 3374)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Exceedingly sinful." Romans 7:13.

   INTO the connection of these words our time, which is very short this
   evening, will not permit us to enter. It was something like this--Paul
   was showing that the Law could not make a man holy and he observes that
   he had, himself, found that when the Law came into his heart, it
   excited in him a desire to act contrary to its precepts. There were
   some actions which he would not have thought of performing until he
   found that they were forbidden--and then immediately he felt a desire
   to do them at once! To this a grave objection was raised. This were to
   make the Law aid and abet sin! Not so, replies the Apostle--it was not
   the Law that made him sin, for the Law is good--but it was the
   sinfulness of his heart that could thus turn that which was good into
   an occasion of evil. He further showed that this was the very design of
   the Law as given by Moses--to make clear how sinful sin was. The
   purpose for which it was sent was not to make men holy, but to make men
   see how unholy they were! It was not the cure of the disease, much less
   the creator of it, but it was the revealerof the disease that lurked in
   the constitution of man!

   Now, what I want to call your attention to is that Paul here calls sin,
   "exceedingly sinful." Why didn't he say, "exceedingly black," or,
   "exceedingly horrible," or, "exceedingly deadly"? Why, because there is
   nothing in the world so bad as sin! When he wanted to use the very
   worst word he could find to call sin by, he called it by its own name
   and reiterated it--"sin," "exceedingly sinful." For if you call sin,
   black, there is no moral excellency or deformity in black or white.
   Black is as good as white and white is as good as black. And so you
   have expressed nothing. If you call sin, "deadly, "yet death in itself
   has no evil in it compared with sin. For plants to die is not a
   dreadful thing, rather it may be a part of the organization of Nature
   that successive generations of vegetables should spring up and, in due
   time, should form the root-soil for other generations to follow. If you
   call it, "deadly," you have said but little. If you need a word, you
   must come home for it. Sin must be named after itself! If you need to
   describe it, you must call it, "sinful." Sin is "exceedingly sinful"

   The text may suggest a broad argument and a special application. Our
   endeavor shall be to show you, then, that sin is in itself,
   "exceedingly sinful" and yet there are some signs of which it may be
   said with peculiar emphasis that they are "exceedingly sinful."

   I. SIN IS IN ITSELF "EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL."

   It is rebellion against God and "exceedingly sinful" because it
   interferes with the just rights and prerogatives of God. That great
   invisible Spirit whom we cannot see, whom even our own thoughts cannot
   encompass, made the heavens and the earth and all things that are--and
   it was His right that what He made should serve His purpose and give
   Him Glory. The stars do this. They jar not in their everlasting orbits.
   The world of matter does this. He speaks and it is done. The sun, the
   moon, the constellations of Heaven, yes, and the terrestrial forces,
   even the billows of the sea and the ravings of the wind--all these obey
   His behests. It is right they should. Shall not the potter make of the
   clay what he wills? Shall not he who uses the axe, fashion what he
   chooses for his own pleasure? You and I, favored in our creation--not
   inanimate clods, not worms having only sensations, without
   intellect--we who have been favored with thought, emotion, affection,
   with a high spiritual existence. Yes, with an immortal existence--we
   were especially bound to be obedient to Him that made us. Ask your
   conscience, do you not feel that God has rights towards you? Ask
   yourselves, if you make or preserve anything, call it your own and it
   is your own--do you not expect it to answer your end, or do your
   bidding? Why have you forgotten Him that made you? Why have you spent
   your powers and faculties for anything but His Glory?

   Ah, it is "exceedingly sinful" when the crown rights of Him upon whose
   will we exist are ignored, or impudently contravened! Yet according to
   the part we take in sin, we trample on His edicts and set at nothing
   His jurisdiction.

   How exceedingly sinful is this rebellion against such a God! Muse on
   His attributes and consider His majesty, for He is not merely
   infinitely powerful, wise, all-sufficient and glorious, but He is
   supremely good! He is good to the fullest extent of goodness! He is a
   God whose Character is matchless! Not like Jupiter, to whom the
   heathens ascribed every vice, nor like Juggernaut, the bloody god of
   Hindustan! He is a pure and holy God whom we worship! Jehovah, glorious
   in holiness, fearful in praises. Now, it is conceivable that if God
   were some vast Being who had a natural right to our service, yet if His
   Character--(forgive, great God, the supposition!)--were severe without
   pity, rigorous without clemency, harsh without forbearance, there were
   some pretense why daring spirits should lead a rebellion against the
   oppressor. But our Father, God, the great Shepherd-King--who shall
   frame an excuse when we, for a single moment, revolt against Him, or
   lift a finger against His will? It were Heaven to serve Him! The angels
   will tell you this! It were bliss to do His will. The perfect spirits
   all proclaim this! Ah, sin is base, indeed, a rebellion against a
   monarch's gentlest sway, an insurrection against parent's most tender
   rights, a revolt against peerless benignity! Oh, shame on you, Sin! You
   are, indeed, "exceedingly sinful!"

   What an aggravation of the sinfulness of sin is this--that it rebels
   against laws of which all are just! The table of the Ten Commandments
   contains not one commandment but what is founded upon the essential
   principles of right. If a law were proclaimed in England which violated
   the principles of equity, to break that law might be the highest duty!
   But when the laws of our country are just and right, it is not only an
   offense against the natural power of the State, but an offense against
   the understanding and the conscience of right when a man breaks such a
   statute! God's Laws have not only the Divine Authority, but they have
   also this recommendation, that they are all harmonious and adapted to
   the relations of our being. Was it not the State of Massachusetts that
   at first passed a resolution when they were about to make statutes,
   that they would be governed by the Laws of God until they found time to
   make better? Will they ever find opportunity to make better? Could any
   man strike out a clause and improve it? Could he add a sentence and
   mend it? No! The Law is holy, just and good! And, rightly understood,
   it naturally forbids evil and simply commends good--only good! Oh, Sin!
   You are sinful, indeed, that you should dare to revolt against that
   which in itself is right and just, virtuous and true!

   Moreover, Brothers and Sisters--this may touch some of us to the
   quick--sin is "exceedingly sinful" because it is antagonistic to our
   own interest, a mutiny against our own welfare. Selfishness is a strong
   principle in us all. That which is good for us and personally
   advantageous should be regarded with tenacious attachment and were we
   wise, would be pursued with strong enthusiasm. Now, whenever God
   forbids a thing, we may rest assured it would be dangerous. God's
   commands are just like those notices, more suggestive of kindly warning
   than of stern prohibition, which we see upon the park waters in the
   days of frost, "Dangerous." God simply tells us that such-and-such a
   thing is fraught with peril, or it leads to destruction. What He
   permits or commends will be, if not immediately, yet in the long run,
   in the highest degree promotive of our best interests. God does but, as
   it were, consult our well-being and prosperity when He gives us Laws.
   Doesn't it seem a vicious thing, indeed, that a man will recklessly
   dare to slight himself in order to sin against his Maker? God says to
   you, "Do not thrust your arm in the fire." Nature says, "Do not do it."
   And yet when God says, "Do not commit fornication or adultery, do not
   lie, do not steal"--when He says, "Draw near to Me in prayer, love Me,"
   these commands are in themselves as naturally wise as the injunction
   not to thrust your hand into the fire, or the counsel to eat and drink
   wholesome food when hunger and thirst require! Yet we spurn these
   commands. Like a child that is bidden not to drink of the poison cup,
   but will drink of it. Like a child that is refused the sharp tool lest
   he cut himself. And he will cut himself--not believing in his father's
   wisdom, but credulous of his own judgment because the cup looks sweet,
   it must be harmless--because the edged tool glitters, it must be a
   proper plaything! Know it, man, you do, when you sin, cut and tear
   yourself! Who but a madman would do that? If you neglect to do the
   right, you neglect to feed yourself with that which nourishes, and to
   clothe yourself with that which is comely! Who but an idiot would lend
   himself to such folly? Yet sin has made us such idiots and such madmen
   and, therefore, it is "exceedingly sinful!"

   Sin, if we rightly consider it, is an upsetting of the entire order of
   the universe. In your family you feel, as a father, that nothing can go
   smoothly unless there is a head whose discretion shall regulate all the
   members. If your child should say, "Father, I am determined in this
   family that, whatever your will is, I will resist it, and whatever
   mywill is, I will

   abide by it and always carry it out if I can," what a family that would
   be! How disorganized! What a household! Might we not say, what a Hell
   upon earth? There sails tomorrow a ship from the Thames under command
   of a captain, wise and good, who understands the seas. But he has
   scarcely reached the Nore before a sailor tells him that he shall not
   obey, that he does not intend either to reef a sail, or to do anything
   aboard the vessel that he is bid to do. "Put the fellow in irons!"
   Everybody says it is right. Or a passenger coming up from the saloon
   informs the captain that he does not approve of his authority and,
   throughout the whole of the voyage he intends to thwart him all he can.
   If there is a boat within hail, put that fellow on shore and do not be
   concerned if he lands in a muddy place! Get rid of him somehow!
   Everybody feels it must be. You might as well scuttle the ship and cut
   holes in her sides, as tolerate for a moment that the rightful central
   authority should be unshipped, or that every man should determine to do
   what is right in his own eyes! The happiness of everybody on board that
   vessel will depend upon order being kept. If one man is to do this, and
   another to do that, you might almost as well be shut up in a cage with
   lions, as be in such a vessel! Now, look at this world--it is but a
   floating ship on a larger scale--and who ought to be Captain here but
   He who made it, for His mighty hand alone can grasp that awful tiller!
   Who can steer this gigantic vessel over the waves of Providence--who
   but He? And who am I, and, my Hearer, who are you that you should say,
   "I will ignore the Lord High Admiral! I will forget the Captain! I will
   rebel against Him"? Why, if all do as you do, what is to become of the
   whole vessel, what of the whole world? When disorder is introduced,
   confusion, sorrow, dismay and disaster will be sure to follow!

   If you want proof that sin is exceedingly sinful, see what it has done
   already in the world. Lift up your eyes and survey that lovely garden
   where every beautiful creature, both of bird and beast, and every
   flower of unwithering loveliness, and everything that can delight the
   senses are to be discovered in the sunlight. There are two perfect
   beings, a man and a woman, the parents of our race-- then enters sin.
   The flowers are forthwith withered, a new wildness has seized upon the
   beasts, the ground brings forth her thorns and thistles and the man is
   driven out in the sweat of his face to earn his daily bread! Who
   withered Eden? You did, accursed Sin! You did it all! See there--but
   can you bear the sight?--clouds of smoke, rolling pillars of dust, the
   sound of clarion, the yet more dreadful boom of cannon! Listen to the
   shrieks and cries! They flee--they are pursued--the battle is over!
   Walk over the field. There lies a mangled mass of human bodies cut and
   torn, riddled with shot, skulls splintered with rifle balls, pools of
   blood! Oh, there is such a scene as only a fiend could gaze on with
   complacency! Who did all this? From where come wars and rumors but from
   your own lusts and from your sins? Oh, Sin, you are a carnage-maker!
   Sin, you cry, '"Havoc," and immediately let loose the dogs of war!
   There had been none of this had you not come. But the spectacle
   multiplies in our vision. All over the world you have but to wander and
   you see little hillocks more or less thickly scattered everywhere. And
   if you analyze the dust that blows along the street and interrogate
   every grain, it will probably tell you it was once a part of the body
   of some man who in generations past died painfully and rotted back to
   mother earth! Oh, the world is scarred with death! What is this earth
   today, but a great Aceldema--a field of blood, a vast cemetery? Death
   has worm-eaten the world through and through. All its surface bears
   relics of the human race. Who slew all these? Who slew all these? Who,
   indeed, but Sin? Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death!

   Should your venturous wings of imagination dare the flight to a land
   that is full of confusion and without any order, I scarcely dare ask
   you to follow me, nor if you couldfollow, would I venture to lead the
   way across the stream that parts the land of mortals from the regions
   of the immortals! Across that valley of the shadow of death, you might
   look on the gloomy region of wretched souls where their worm dies not,
   and their fire is not quenched--if you dared to peer into that dismal
   pit that has no bottom, that place wherein spirits condemned of God are
   put away forever and forever from all light of hope and restoration!
   But you shudder even as I shrink back in very horror from that place
   where God's wrath burns like a furnace--and the proud that do
   wickedness are as stubble--and the nations that forget God are forever
   consumed! Who lit that fire? Where is he that kindled it? It is Sin!
   Sin did it all. No man is there except for sin. No man that ever
   breathed was ever cast away except as punishment most just, for sin
   most grave! Sin is, indeed, "exceedingly sinful." Not even now have I
   reached the climax, nor must I venture the description. The worst phase
   is neither death nor Hell. But on Calvary's tree the Lord, Himself, who
   loved us and came to earth to bless us, proved the sinfulness of sin
   when Sin nailed Him to the tree and pierced His side. And sinners,
   rejecting Him with many a jibe and sneer, exclaimed, "We will not have
   this Man to reign over us." In the agonies of Jesus, in the shame and
   spitting, in the woes and anguish

   that He endured, we read the sinfulness of sin, written as in capital
   letters, that even the half-blind might see! Oh, Sin, murderer of
   Christ, you are "exceedingly sinful!" My time has failed me, or I had
   meant to have enlarged upon--

   II. SOME PARTICULAR SINS THAT ARE EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL ABOVE ANY ORDINARY
   TRANSGRESSION.

   I mean sins against the Gospel. I will just give the catalog, that
   everyone here who is honest with himself may search and see whether he
   is guilty. To reject loving messengers sent from God, godly parents,
   earnest pastors, affectionate teachers--to reject the kind message that
   they bring and the yearning anxiety that they feel for us is
   "exceedingly sinful!" To resist the loving Gospel which talks to us
   only of mercy, pardon, adoption and redemption from Hell and exaltation
   to Heaven--to reject that is "exceedingly sinful!" To resist the dying
   Savior whose only motive in coming to earth must have been love, whose
   wounds are mouths that preach His love, whose death is the solemn proof
   of love--to despise, to neglect, to ignore Him--this is "exceedingly
   sinful!" To sin against Him after having made a profession of loving
   Him. To come to His Table and then go and sin with the ungodly. To be
   baptized in His name and yet to be unjust, dishonest, unrighteous--this
   is "exceedingly sinful!" To be numbered with His Church and yet to be
   of the world. To profess to be His followers and yet to be His
   enemies--this is "exceedingly sinful!" To sin against light and
   knowledge. To sin knowing better. To sin against conscience. To push
   conscience to one side. To do violence to one's better self. To sin
   against the Holy Spirit, against His admonitions, warnings, promptings,
   invitations--this is "exceedingly sinful!" To go on sinning after you
   have smarted. To continue to sin when sin costs you many pains and
   difficulties. To push onward to Hell, as if riding a steeple-chase,
   over post, and bar, and gate, and hedge, and ditch--this is
   "exceedingly sinful!"

   Some of you here, tonight, are in this, exceedingly sinful. Oh, How I
   have pleaded with some of you! I have cried to you to come to Jesus. I
   have warned some of you again and again. If I am called to make answer
   at the judgment bar, I must say, "Amen," to the condemnation of many of
   you! I shall be obliged to confess that you knew better--that some of
   you drink when you know how wrong it is! That some of you can swear.
   That some of you are thieves. Some of you sin with a high hand and yet
   I scarcely know why you come to this Tabernacle again and again and
   again! You love to hear my voice and yet you cling to your sins--your
   sins that will surely damn you! Let me be clear of your blood! I will
   not mince matters with you or talk with you as if you are all saints
   when I know you are not--and as if you are all going to Heaven, when,
   alas, many of you are still swiftly spreading your wings to fly
   downward to Hell! Oh, may God arrest you, or otherwise the brightness
   and the light in which you sin will make your sin the darker and the
   plainer--and the warnings you hear will make your condemnation the more
   overwhelming when it comes!

   But why must it come? Why will you die? Why are you set on sin? Why do
   you love mischief? I see often in the gaslight of my study poor gnats
   come flying in if the window is but ajar--and how they dash against the
   flame--and down they fall, but have scarcely recovered strength before
   up they fly again unto their destruction! Are you such? Are you mere
   insects, without wit, without knowledge? Oh, you are not, or else were
   you excusable! Come to my Savior, poor Souls! He is still willing to
   receive you! A prayer will do it. Breathe the prayer! A broken heart He
   will not despise. A look at Him will do it. A faint glance at Jesus
   pleading for you will do it! Holy Spirit, make them give that glance!
   Oh, by Your Irresistible Power, compel them to look and live! Oh, it
   shall be! God be thanked, it shall be! You shall look tonight and God
   shall have the Glory! And though you are "exceedingly sinful," yet
   shall you, through the precious blood, be fully forgiven--and I hope
   exceedingly grateful for the great forgiveness which Jesus brings! The
   Lord bless you, for His name's sake. Amen.

   [The original title of this sermon is "SIN'S TRUE QUALITY."]

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 51; ROMANS 7:7-25.

   PSALM51.

   There are many sweet notes in Christian music, but to my own heart
   there is none so soft, tender, sweet as the note of repentance. Full
   assurance rings out her clarion trumpet strain and we ought to be able
   to send it forth, but sometimes we are unable. Conquest over sin gives
   us Miriam's timbrel to dance to and it is well, but everyday use
   commends me to

   the harp strings of penitence! We ought always to be able to play on
   those strings. They always fit our guilty fingers. They are always
   sweet to the ear of the Most High. Mr. Rowland Hill used to say that
   there was one friend of his whom he could not take to Heaven and whom
   he thought he would regret to leave--and that was sweet repentance. I
   suppose when God wipes every tear from our eyes we shall not be able to
   weep for sin, but until then--

   "Lord, let me weep for nothing but sin,

   And after none but Thee--

   And then I would--oh that I might!)--

   A constant weeper be,"

   for these bitter sweets--these sweet bitters--are almost the choicest
   of our sorrow joys or joyful sorrows that we have this side of Heaven!
   Thus David sings.

   Verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness,
   according unto the multitude of Your tender mercies blot out my
   transgressions. And really, Brothers and Sisters, if we cannot feel
   that we have need to say, "Have mercy upon me," and if, indeed, this is
   not the habitual language of our soul, there must be something more
   wrong about us than even open sin! Not to be able to confess sin and
   not to be able to mourn it is one of the direst states of sin--in which
   even sin can be found--but to be able to say from the very soul, "Have
   mercy upon me--blot out my transgressions," indicates that there is a
   soundness still in us by Divine Grace. Do you notice what a quick eye
   David has here for the softer attributes of God? Did ever any man put
   words together more pleasantly? "According to Your loving
   kindness"--"according to the multitude of Your tender mercies." God
   never looks more beautiful than when He is seen through a tear! If,
   under a sense of sin, you see Him as the strangely forgiving God, oh,
   how pleasant a God He is, and how our hearts love Him!

   2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. It
   is not the punishment. The child of God has got away from the legal
   fear that dreads the punishment. The sin--the sin--is that which he
   loathes and hates. "Lord, get rid of it. I seem to need double
   cleansing. Wash me! Wash me thoroughly! And when You have done that,
   cleanse me, for there are stains that washing will not get out. Try
   fire, Lord, if water will not do it, but somehow wash me thoroughly
   from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin."

   3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
   It is thrown out on the surface. Health comes back when the disease
   manifests itself by an outward eruption. It is when you do not
   acknowledge it--it is when it is not before you--when you cannot
   perceive it--will not confess your sin--it is then that it is at the
   heart-strings killing you, murdering you! Confessed sin has the teeth
   taken out of it, but sin that is not felt and known, and still is
   there, breeds the canker of self-conceit and pride--and is deadly to
   the heart.

   4. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your
   sight: that You might be justified when You speak, and be clear when
   You judge.For in sin, this is the essence of it--that it is sin against
   God. You cannot get the worldly man to feel that. "I have done no hurt
   to my neighbor. I have not injured society." But how different it is
   with the child of God! It is against Godthat he has sinned. What if he
   has never left his chamber--if he has never done an action or said a
   word? Yet that proud heart of his that rebelled when he was full of
   pain--that murmuring spirit that would not accept the Lord's will--that
   is enough to lay him in the dust--and he mourns it and confesses it.
   "Against You, You only, have I sinned."

   5. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity: and in sin did my mother conceive
   me. It is not merely that I sinned, but I am sin! I am a lump of sin--a
   heap of iniquity--by nature so. It is not merely in me, but it isme--my
   very self! It is in my blood, my bones, my marrow. O God, can You
   cleanse me from this?

   6. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part
   You shall make me to know wisdom. And sin is a lie, and sin is folly.
   God desires truth and wisdom. Can He give us both of these? Yes, and He
   will--only let us acknowledge the untruthfulness and confess the
   stupidity, and put ourselves into His hands for His Infinite Grace to
   deal with us and He will yet do it. "In the hidden part You shall make
   me to know wisdom."

   7. Purge me with hyssop, and Jshall be clean: wash me, and Ishall be
   whiter than snow. "With hyssop." Just as the priest took the bunch of
   herbs and put it into the basin full of blood, and stirred it round and
   round till he soaked the hyssop in the crimson and then sprinkled it
   upon the penitent, oh Lord, apply the blood of Christ to my soul! Purge
   with me hyssop"--

   "And I shall be clean."

   I shall not be clean any other way. This is the only cleansing and
   purgation by the sacrificial Atonement. And You alone must do it. Lord,
   do it now!

   8-9. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have
   broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my
   iniquities.I do not want to hear it unless You make me to hear it. I
   would not be comforted unless You comfort me. Dread above everything,
   dear Friends, false comfort--false judgments of yourselves--high
   motions about your own attainments--grand ideas of your own standing in
   yourselves.

   10. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within
   me. For there must not merely be a creation, but a daily renewal, or
   else what You have once created will soon be blotted and marred as Your
   first natural creation was. Go on from day to day to make and keep my
   heart pure within.

   11. Cast me not away from Your Presence; and take not Your Holy Spirit
   from me. Do not fling me away as a man pulls up a weed by the roots and
   throws it on a dunghill--

   "Take not your Holy Spirit from me." Oh, how often will the child of
   God have to pray this prayer? The Holy Spirit is in him and he knows
   it, but he grieves the Spirit--and when his heart is very tender this
   is his daily fear--lest the Spirit of God should depart from him. "Take
   not your Holy Spirit from me."

   12. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me with Your
   free spirit I did know it once. What joy it is--the joy of Your
   salvation! Give it back to me, O Lord. I cannot live on the old mercy!
   The recollection does not satisfy. It only makes me hunger. "Restore
   unto me the joy of Your salvation."

   13. Then will I teach transgressors Your ways; and sinners shall be
   converted unto You. Nobody ever teaches the mercy of God so well as he
   that tastes it. Sinner, do you know what a good God my Lord Jesus is?
   He has forgiven my innumerable sins and, therefore, I love to speak of
   Him, and to speak of Him to such as you are, such as I am. "He is able
   to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him." Dear Friends,
   if you know the Savior, be sure you tell all you know! Or if you cannot
   tell it all, tell as much as you can, and as long as you have got
   breath! And it may not be long. You may not have many more
   opportunities, for sickness comes so suddenly and puts the strong man
   aside so soon. Do use for God what time you have and tell of His love
   while you are yet in the land where men can hear it, and where you can
   speak of it. Let this be your prayer--"Then will I teach transgressors
   Your ways, and sinners shall be converted unto You."

   14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, God of my salvation: and my
   tongue shall sing aloud of Your righ-teousness.He said that he would be
   a preacher? No, he said that he would be a singer. God's people feel
   that they cannot do too much when they get a sense of pardoned sin.
   They will be both preacher and presenter! They will preach! They will
   sing! They will have all the irons in the fire. They will not be afraid
   of turning their faculties to too many accounts.

   15-17. O Lord open You my lips; and my mouth shall show forth Your
   praise. For You desire not sacrifice; else would I give it: You delight
   not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a
   broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.What a sweet
   verse that is! Have you got a broken heart tonight, dear Friend, and do
   you feel almost ashamed to bring it, because it is in such a broken
   condition? It is in the best possible condition! I have read accounts
   of meetings of God's saints met by the ten days together and talking
   all about great things that have been done for them and from the first
   to the last no indication of a broken heart or of a contrite spirit! I
   confess I could not understand it and did not want to understand it. I
   would rather stand with the poor publican behind the door five minutes
   and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner," than sit ten days with
   perfect brethren to magnify and glorify God about what I thought He had
   done for me, because I am persuaded that in the latter case I should be
   always in danger of magnifying myself, rather than God--whereas in the
   former case I should be near the truth, and near where I ought to be.
   Oh, keep to this--"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken
   and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

   18, 19. Do good in Your good pleasure unto Zion: build You the walls of
   Jerusalem. Then shall You bepleased with the sacrifices of
   righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall
   they offer bullocks upon Your altar. Notice this. David felt that he
   had done something to pull down the walls of Zion. His bad example
   would do mischief to the cause of God and his prayer to be forgiven is
   not a selfish one, which deals only with his own particular

   blessing, or his own desire for mercy. He wants the Church to prosper!
   He wants God's work to go on and so he cannot close the prayer, even of
   a penitent and broken heart, without crying, "Build You the walls of
   Jerusalem." In proportion as we think less of ourselves we shall think
   more of the Church of God, and more of the work of God in the land. To
   despise yourself is the way to honor God and His people. But when you
   honor yourself, you will first despise others, and it will go on by
   degrees to a dishonoring of God, Himself, from which may the Lord save
   us!

   ROMANS 7.

   This is Paul's own account of his inward conflicts. He longed to
   conquer sin. He wanted to become a free man and live always a godly and
   holy life, but he found that there was a battle within his nature.

   Verse 7. What shall we say then?Is the Lawsin? God forbid! No, Ihadnot
   known sin, but by the Law: for Ihadnot known lust, except the Law had
   said, You shall not covet.There are some who hope to overcome their
   evil propensities by the Law of God. They think that if they can know
   and feel the authority of the Law of God, that will have an awe over
   their minds and they shall become holy. Now the Law is, in itself,
   supremely holy. It cannot be improved. We could not add to it, or take
   from it without injuring it. It is a perfect Law! But what is its
   effect upon the mind? When it comes into an unrenewed mind, instead of
   checking sin, it causes sin! The Apostle says that he had not known
   lust, except the Law had said, "You shall not covet." There is a
   something about us which rebels against law the moment we come to it.
   There are some things we should never think of doing if we were not
   prohibited from them--and then there becomes a tendency at once in this
   vile nature of ours to break the Law of God.

   8. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, workedin me allmanner
   of concupiscence. For without the Law sin was dead.If there had never
   been any Law, there could not have been any sin, because sin is a
   breaking of Law! The Law is good. We are not speaking about that. The
   Law is necessary, but still, such is our nature that the very existence
   of Law argues and creates the existence of sin. And when the Law comes,
   then sin comes immediately. "Without the Law sin was dead."

   9. For I was alive without the Law once.I thought that I was everything
   that was good. I imagined that I was doing everything that was right. I
   felt no rebellion in my heart. I was alive.

   9. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. I kicked at
   that commandment. My holiness was soon gone. The excellence which I
   thought I had in my character soon vanished for I found myself breaking
   the Law of God.

   10-13. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be
   unto death For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me,
   and by it slew me. Therefore the Law is holy, and the commandment holy,
   and just, and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God
   forbid! But, sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that
   which is good: that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly
   sinful There was sin in his nature, but he did not know it. But when
   the commandment came, then that evil nature said, "I won't keep that
   commandment," and it took occasion at once to show itself by breaking
   that commandment. It was something like a medicine which many a wise
   physician has given to his patient. There is a deadly disease in the
   internals of the man and he gives him a medicine that throws it out.
   You see it on the skin. You feel the pain of it. It would have been his
   death anyhow. It can only be his death now, but now it is a part of the
   process of the cure to bring the disease where it can be seen. And so
   the Law comes into a man's heart and because of the rebellion of his
   nature, he kicks against the Law and sins. It does not make him sinful.
   It only shows that he wassinful, for a perfect Law would not make a
   perfect man sin! It would lead and guide him in the way of holiness.
   But a perfect Law coming into contact with an imperfect nature soon
   creates rebellion and sin. It is an illustration that is not good
   throughout, but still it is of some use. You have seen quicklime--you
   throw water on it. The water is of a cooling nature. There is nothing
   in the water but that which would quench fire, and yet when it is
   thrown upon the lime the consequence is a burning heat! So is it with
   the Law cast upon man's nature. It seems to create sin. Not that the
   Law does it of itself, but, coming into contact with the vicious
   principles of our nature, sin becomes the product of it. It is the only
   product. You may preach up the Law of God till everybody becomes worse
   than he was before. You may read the Ten Commandments till men learn
   what to do in order to provoke God! The Law does not create holiness.
   It never can.

   14. For we know that the Law is spiritual: but I am carnal Fleshly.

   14. Sold under sin.Even now that I have become a Christian and am
   renewed by Grace!

   15. For that which I do, I allow not.I often do that which I do not
   justify, which I do not wish to do again, which I abhor myself for
   doing.

   16. For what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do. This
   is the Believer 's riddle. To say that this is not a Believer's
   experience is to prove that the man who says it does not know much
   about how Believers feel. We hate sin and yet, alas, alas, we fall into
   it! We would live perfect lives if we could, we that are renewed. We
   make no justification for our sin--it is evil and abominable--yet do we
   find these two things warring and fighting within.

   16. If, then, I do that which I would not, I consent unto the Law that
   it is good. My inmost heart says the Law of God is good, though I have
   not kept it as I wish I had--yet my very wish to keep it is the consent
   of my nature to the goodness of that Law--and proves that there is a
   vitality about me which will yet throw out the disease and make me
   right in the sight of God.

   17. Now then it is no more I that do it The real "I," the true "I," the
   new-born "ego." Thank God for that--to have a will to do good, to have
   a strong, passionate desire to be holy! "To will is present with me."

   17. But sin that dwells in me.I would be earnest in prayer, and my
   thoughts are distracted. I would love God with all my heart, but
   something else comes in and steals away a part of it. I would be holy
   as God is holy, but I find myself falling short of my desires. So the
   Apostle means.

   18-20, For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good
   thing: for to wiil is present with me: but how to perform that which is
   good I find not For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which
   I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I
   that do it The true and real "I."

   20. But sin that dwells in me.Oh, this accursed indwelling sin! Would
   God it were driven out. We do not say this to excuse ourselves--God
   forbid--but to blame ourselves that we permit this sin to dwell within
   us! Yet must we rejoice in God that we are born-again, and that this
   new "I," the true "I," will not yield to sin, but fights against it!

   21. I find then a Law. Or rule.

   21-24. That, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I
   delight in the Law of God after the inward man. But I see another Law
   in my members, warring against the Law of my mind, and bringing me into
   captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that
   I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?Now, the more
   holy a man gets, the more he cries in this fashion. While he is low
   down in the scale, he puts up with sin and he is uneasy. But when he
   gets to see Christ and get somewhat like He, the more nearly he
   approximates to the image of his Master, the more the presence of the
   least sinful thought is horrifying to him! He would, if he could, never
   look on sin again--never have the slightest inclination to it, but he
   finds his heart getting abroad and wandering when he would tether it
   down, if he could, to the Cross and crucify it there. And so the more
   happy he is in Christ the more desperately does he cry against the
   wretchedness of being touched with sin, even in the least degree. "Oh,
   wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
   death?"

   25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It will be done! I shall
   be delivered. I shall be perfect--

   "Oh, blissful hour! Oh, sweet abode! I shall be near and like my God."
   Oh, to be without fault before the Throne of God--without tendency to
   sin, without the possibility of it, immaculately clean, with a heart
   that sends forth pure waters like the River of Life that flows from
   beneath the Throne of God! This is our portion! We are looking for it,
   and we will never rest until we get it, blessed be His name. "I thank
   God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

   25. So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God. With the new
   nature.

   25. But with the flesh, the law of sin. With the flesh--this old
   rubbishing stuff that must die and be buried, and the sooner the
   better! With my old corrupt nature I serve the law of sin. But what a
   mercy it is that the next verse is that, notwithstanding that, "There
   is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,
   who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."
     __________________________________________________________________

Standing and Singing

   (No. 3375)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY
   31, 1867.

   "My foot stands in an even place; in the congregations will I bless the
   Lord." Psalm 26:12.

   You will remember our taking a pathetic verse for our meditation, some
   little while ago, which was the prayer of a saint in trouble, whose
   prayer was, "Look upon my affliction and my pain." [See Sermon #741,
   Volume 13--a troubled prayer.] We must now look upon the reverse of the
   picture and think

   upon a Christian in prosperity and joy and, perhaps, as there may have
   been some comfort to afflicted souls before, so there may be some
   instruction tonight to those who are prosperous.

   It is worthy of remark, at the outset, that the condition of a
   Christian cannot readily be judged by anyone but himself. Certainly his
   outward condition is a very unfair test of his real state. When Paul
   and Silas had been scourged and laid with their feet fast in the
   stocks, they seemed to others to be very miserable. But when, in the
   dead of the night, they began to sing God's praises and the prisoners
   heard them, they proved themselves to be among the happiest of men! So
   was it with David. When the Psalmist wrote this song, he was slandered
   and vilified--every evil thing was laid to his charge. This was the
   case externally, and yet within, his mind was at such perfect peace
   that he could say, "My foot stands in an even place."

   It seemed to the common onlooker as though his foot would slip, as
   though he were like one hurled from the Tarpe-ian rock to be certainly
   dashed to pieces--but his soul's experience was the absolute reverse of
   this. He seems to say to them all, "Hoot at me if you will! Seek to
   trip me up as you please! God is high above you all, and in Him I shall
   still stand my ground, for, blessed be His name, notwithstanding every
   attempt of the enemy to throw me down, my foot stands in an even place
   and in the congregation will I bless the Lord."

   There are two things in the text to which I would call your attention.
   The first is a Believer in a happy position. And the second is, a
   Believer engaged in a happy occupation. His "foot standing in an even
   place," a happy position. "Praising and blessing God," a happy
   occupation. We have here, first, then--

   I. A BELIEVER IN A VERY HAPPY POSITION.

   Now, what does he mean by his "foot standing in an even place"? Well,
   is it not the very worst evil that a genuine Christian can suffer to
   fall into sin? To fall finally, would, of course, be our everlasting
   ruin. To fall at all, in any sense, is our greatest grief. Every true
   child of God would sooner sorrow a thousand times than sin once. His
   Father's rod he has learned to love, but sin, even when it is the
   choicest pleasure, he has learned to hate. "Lord," he says, "allow me
   to go anywhere except into sin. If the way is rough, so be it, if it is
   Your way, I will bless You for being in it. But if the road is ever so
   smooth, allow not my feet to tread it, if it is Bye-Path Meadow." The
   worst evil that can befall a Christian, I say, is to fall into sin and
   continue to do so. On the contrary, one of the richest blessings that a
   Christian can enjoy is to be kept aright in his walk and
   conversation--year after year to wear a spotless character--year after
   year to be such an one as Daniel, that even the man's enemies can find
   nothing against him except touching the Law of his God. Oh, this is a
   great honor! This is a rare jewel! There are some of God's servants who
   will get to Heaven who never wore this jewel. They have been the Lord's
   people, but yet their slips and falls have given them broken bones and
   troubled hearts--and they have been saved at the last "so as by fire."
   But it is a choice mercy if the child of God is able not only safely to
   get into the harbor, but to get into the harbor without having touched
   a rock, without having sunk in a quicksand, without

   having suffered shipwreck--not only to come safely to Heaven, but to
   have "an abundant entrance ministered to him" into the Kingdom of our
   Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

   Now, dear Friends, the standing which is spoken of in the text relates
   to the secure standing of the child of God in respect to sin--and it
   may be understood in two senses. Sometimes the Christian is in an even
   place with regard to common, outward sin. And secondly, he is at all
   times in an even place with regard to the sin of other men--there he
   stands in such an even place that sin touches him not.

   First, I say there are some Christians who may take the language of the
   text in regard to outward sin and thank God that they are not just now
   exposed to vehement temptations. They are not journeying in slippery
   places, but their foot stands in an even place.

   This may be occasioned by several causes. Sometimes it is caused by
   Providence. My Brothers, you have, perhaps, sometimes wished that you
   were rich. You have been in a little way of business and you have
   thought, "I wish I had a larger capital that I might launch out a
   little, that I might speculate, that I might get a larger income and
   accumulate at a faster rate." Ah, you do not know. Those high places
   are slippery places, as some of late have proved to their own sorrow.
   You have need, instead of asking God to put you there, to thank Him
   that you are not so rich, that you are not therefore subject to the
   peculiar temptations incidental to great transactions of business, or
   great accumulations of gold. Comparatively, you may sit down and thank
   God that you are not in this position, but that your "foot stands in an
   even place."

   You may be thankful, too, if you are not extremely poor, for extreme
   poverty, like extreme wealth, is a very dangerous position. When a
   person is extremely poor, he may be tempted to steal. If he should be
   able to overcome that, he will be tempted to envy and may be very
   jealous of those who are better off than himself. And I do not know a
   more miserable spirit than an envious one! Nothing can be more
   un-Christian than to be angry with my fellow man because he happens to
   have more of outward good, and of inward excellence, too, perhaps, than
   I may happen to have. Thank God that your lot is cast in the middle
   place! If Agur's prayer is fulfilled in you--"Give me neither poverty
   nor riches"--if you have just enough to have food and raiment, be
   content therewith and say, "I thank God that Providentially I am not
   exposed to the temptations of fashion and all its mazes, and I am not
   thrust into the temptations of penury with all its grief--in that
   respect my foot stands in an even place."

   How many a young man is dazzled with the idea of fame! "Ah" he thinks,
   "if I could but carve my name on that rock! If I could, I would mount
   higher than that last, and carve my name high up there!" Yes, but how
   many have rolled back, have tried to scale the battlements and have
   fallen to the bottom, mangled corpses?--

   "The path of glory leads but to the grave!" Be thankful, young man, if
   God should mark out for you a quiet path of usefulness in the Sunday
   school, or in some village station, or in some place where, in the
   midst of your little family, you may bring your children up as a godly
   parent should, and at last, before the clods of the valley shall close
   over you, you may have, before you go hence, to thank God that your
   foot stood in an even place, though it might have slipped if you had
   been called to a more dangerous point on the hill! It is best for us to
   be thankful for the position in which Providence has placed us, for I
   suppose that most of us now present will see that we are not peculiarly
   exposed to either of the extremes and, therefore, in that sense our
   "foot stands in an even place."

   Sometimes this is the case not so much with regard to our own
   condition, as to the place of our abode and the surroundings of our
   family circle. How many of you young people ought to bless God that you
   are converted and live where you do! I know the temptation with some
   young persons is to wish to get away from the parental roof very early
   and to try to set up on their own account. Young woman, if you have a
   godly father and a godly mother, be in no great hurry to go away from
   the hearth where piety has been your joy! Young man, if you are
   apprenticed with godly people, do not be in such hot haste to be away
   from the place. This is a wicked city and for every place where a young
   man's foot may stand "in an even place" in it, there are 50 places
   where it will need all the Divine Grace he has and a great deal more
   that only God can supply, to keep him from giving way to temptation!

   I am afraid that now-a-days, such is the general business habit, as we
   say, and the fastness of our living, that many of our young people do
   not think enough of religious privileges. I have read of a Jew who
   would not trade in a certain town because there was no synagogue in
   it--he said he would rather be at another place because there was a
   synagogue there.

   And what the Jew felt in this respect, surely the Christian ought to
   feel far more! If you have to put up with far less money, yet if you
   have an opportunity of hearing the Gospel, and mixing with God's
   people, be not in a haste to throw away your golden privileges for the
   sake of those poor brazen gains which are pitiful in comparison with
   spiritual wealth! It is a wonderful mercy--a mercy which some of my
   dear Friends now present would prize very much if they could have
   it--it is a wonderful mercy, I say, to live in the midst of godly
   people! Contrast it to the living with the ungodly! There are those in
   this place now who, when they go home from this place of worship
   tonight, will hear oaths and blasphemy before they fall asleep. They
   will probably be startled in the morning by hearing the name of God
   profaned. Their religion provokes the animosity of their dearest
   friends! They cannot be at their work without hearing ribaldry and
   without being selected to be the butt of all the archers who shoot at
   them, sorely wound them and grieve them--for though there are no
   burnings at the stake now-a-days, yet there are "trials of cruel
   mocking," and these "mockings" are sometimes very "cruel" indeed! There
   is all the difference between the plant in the sheltered corner of the
   garden and the other plant set out in the wild, bleak waste for every
   frost to nip! Be thankful, dear young friends, yes, and let us be
   thankful who are not so young, if we are placed in a position where we
   are not continually exposed to the vicious example, or to the frowns of
   gainsayers. Let us say thankfully with David, "My foot stands in an
   even place in that respect: and in the congregation will I bless the
   Lord for it."

   Besides this, our foot may be kept by Providence and Grace combined.
   Providence may have placed us where the ministry is instructive and
   established--and then our foot stands in an even place. I have known
   some shepherds of flocks and, in the short time in which it has been my
   privilege to preside here, I think I have seen them veer to all points
   of the compass. There are some I know now whose particular position in
   theology no one ever did know and, I suppose, will never be able to
   ascertain, for there seems to be no definite teaching, no declaration
   of Doctrines, no laying down of established Truths of God! And, mark
   you, it is a great mercy when the Lord teaches us something and makes
   us know what we do know, and when what we hear we understand and
   receive into our souls by the teaching of the Holy Spirit! It is a
   great mercy when we are not carried away by this fanaticism, nor the
   other enthusiasm, but when we are cast into connection with people who
   hold fast to the faith which is delivered to them and are not to be
   carried about by every novelty, but are conservative of the grand old
   Truths and hold fast to the Doctrines of the Cross of Christ! It may
   have been the lot of some of you, dear Friends, to sometimes be members
   of one church and sometimes of another--sometimes of a church given to
   quarrel and to break up, or, on the other hand, members of churches
   that are taken up with every novelty. Oh, be thankful that you have,
   many of you young Christians, round about you, fathers in Christ and
   matrons in Israel who confirm you in the faith, under God, and through
   whom your foot has been made to stand in an even place. For this mark
   of Grace, bless the Lord!

   But to go still farther. Sometimes the Christian may thank God for his
   standing, not so much because of his position in life, nor because of
   the outward means of Grace, but because of the inward establishment and
   spiritual growth which God the Holy Spirit has given him. Oh, what a
   mercy it is, Christian, if your experience has been your own and you
   are come at last to a settled state of rest of heart! The devil
   sometimes says to you, "You will never be able to attain to the Glory
   and the Kingdom--you will never overcome your foes." But you can say,
   "Ah, in this respect my foot stands in an even place, for I know whom I
   have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I
   have committed unto Him until that day." Sometimes your outward
   troubles are very many and the fear is that they will be too much for
   you--but oh, what a mercy it is to be able to stand in an even place in
   that respect, and say, "Goodness and mercy followed me all the days of
   my life, and I am persuaded that they always will. Yes, though I walk
   through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God
   will be with me to be my Stay!" When experience and patience have
   produced in us unstaggering faith in God, what a blessed life we lead!
   But the unbelieving heir of Heaven, the man of little faith and little
   confidence in God--he is blown about by every wind and every difficulty
   staggers him--he is ready to weep under every trial! But the true
   Christian knows that these light afflictions, which are but for a
   moment, will work out for him a far more exceedingly and eternal weight
   of glory! He believes that Jesus walks the stormy waters. He can hear
   Him say, "It is I," and he is not afraid. He feels that he cannot
   suffer shipwreck while Christ is in the vessel with him and, therefore,
   if not always rejoicing, yet he is calm and patient, waiting for the
   salvation of the Lord. I think I know some of you who have been for
   years in this condition. You are not now as you used to be--all in
   Heaven one day and all in the depths the next. You are not so readily
   excited as you once were. An earnest Prayer Meeting fills you with holy
   joy, but it does not transport you quite out of the body as it once
   did. On the other hand, if some sharp affliction should come upon you,
   it still distresses you, but it does not perplex you and cast you into
   despair as it would once have done! You are no longer an infant, but
   you have become a man or woman in Christ Jesus! You have grown strong.
   You are rooted, grounded, and settled in the faith! Now, be very
   tranquil, dear Friends, and thankful that you can say concerning these
   things, "I am not to be moved by them--temptations that were once
   formidable to me are so no longer, for I know the promise and the
   faithfulness of my God--and my foot stands in an even place."

   Once more. This may sometimes be peculiarly true of the Christian, when
   he has been enjoying near, dear, and ripened fellowship with the Lord
   Jesus. We sometimes stand on Tabor with our transfigured Lord! It is
   not always Geth-semane. It is sometimes the mount of the first Glory
   and sometimes whatever occurs has no more effect upon us than tempests
   upon solid rocks! The joy of the Lord, the Presence of our Savior, the
   light of His love, the feast at His banqueting table--these things
   become so all-absorbing to us that we can say with Dr. Watts--

   "Let earth against my soul engage,

   And hellish darts be hurled.

   Still I can smile at Satan's rage,

   And face a frowning world."

   Such a soul, all taken up with Divine Love, sitting at the feet of
   Christ with Mary, has neither room nor time for Martha's cares and
   encumbrances, but can rejoice and say, "My heart is fixed, oh my God!
   My heart is fixed, I will "sing and give praise." Such an one may be
   poor and yet cannot be poor! Such an one may be sick and yet must be
   well! Such an one may be alone and yet not alone, for his Lord is with
   him! I wish that you and I could more often say in this respect, "My
   foot stands in an even place, and in the congregation I will bless the
   Lord."

   Now you can see that all this view of the text is but occasional. But
   there is a view of the text that is permanent. As I have already said
   with regard to the great sin, the sin which is unto death, the sin
   which would destroy a Christian, every child of God may at every time
   say, "My foot stands in an even place." The child of God may sin, but
   he cannot sin away his birthright. The heir of Heaven may fall, and he
   may fall foully, too, but though he falls seven times, he shall be
   lifted up again--and the eternal hand of God shall keep him, even to
   the end! Beloved, it is our mercy to believe that--

   "Once in Christ, in Christ forever, Nothing from His love can sever."

   If you stand on the Rock of Ages, my dear Brothers and Sisters, you
   stand on a Rock which never can reel beneath you, and from which no
   power, either earthly or infernal, can ever tear you! If you are in the
   hands of Christ, you know what He says--"No one is able to pluck them
   out of My hands; My Father which gave them to Me is greater than I, and
   none is able to pluck them out of My Father's hands." Oh, how safe they
   are, then, in the hands of Christ, first, and in the hands of God
   after--as if to give a double security, a two-handed guarantee--the
   power of Christ and the power of the Eternal Father being both
   guaranteed to the safety of the Believer!

   But may the Believer ever say within himself that he is safe? Beloved,
   he may never say that he is safe in himself! No, that were, indeed, but
   a lie! But he may always say that he is safe in Christ Jesus. He may
   never say, "My mountain stands firm; I shall never be moved." But he
   may say--

   "My life is hid with Christ in God, Beyond the reach of harm,"

   And, "Because He lives, I shall live also." He may not say, "I know
   that I, by my own strength, shall persevere to the end." But he may
   say, "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to
   keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day." The
   perseverance of the Christian is not ensured by the Christian's resolve
   to persevere unto the end, nor by the Christian's own power, nor by any
   plans which the Christian can adopt! That perseverance is secured by
   the promise of Christ, by the energy of the Spirit, by the watchfulness
   of God and by the faithfulness of God to His own Covenant!

   Oh, Christian, how happy are you to be loved with an everlasting love,
   to have your name written in an Everlasting Covenant, to know that if
   your house is not so with God, yet He has made with you an Everlasting
   Covenant, ordered in all things and sure! Your foot stands at all
   times, in this respect, in an even place where justice and mercy are
   sweetly balanced, where justice and truth have taken away all
   irregularities, where the path is even and plain! Oh, let your tongue
   sing praises unto the Lord!

   And now just a few words, and only a few words, though as earnest as
   possible, upon-- II. THE CHRISTIAN'S HAPPY OCCUPATION.

   The Psalmist says, "In the congregation will I bless the Lord," and
   surely we ought to do the same. Oh, think, dear Friends, in your own
   remembrance, how many professors have perished! I scarcely dare to look
   back upon them. They once floated as calmly upon the surface of the sea
   as you or I do. There they are. I see the broken hulks, the boards and
   broken pieces still tossing upon the surf! Can you see the corpses as
   they strew the ocean--corpses of warriors apparently as brave and as
   well armed as we are! There is Demas, he has made shipwreck. There is
   Judas, too, the first son of perdition. Now, Brothers and Sisters, if
   we have been kept, if our feet have been made to stand in an even place
   and we do not bless the Lord, the very stones will cry out against us!
   Why is it that we have not fallen into sin as many others have done?
   Why, indeed, but that the Grace of God has prevented us? There was
   everything in us that would have led us into the same mischief--the
   same sin, the same unbelief, the same evil habit of departing from the
   living God--and if it had not been for preventing Grace which has held
   us fast, we would have made shipwreck as well as others! Let us praise
   God if, after 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, or perhaps more, we are still
   spared to stand in the midst of the Christian Church upholding our
   integrity! Surely we ought to say, "In the congregation will I bless
   the Lord."

   And then, again, as the Christian ought to do it, so it is the best
   thing that he can do, for nothing can be more useful to him. I fancy if
   we praised God when we are in the enjoyment of mercies, we would keep
   mercies longer. If God had more gratitude from us when we are well, He
   would help us to continue in good health, but He knows that we need to
   be sick, sometimes, to make us know the value of health and, therefore,
   He sends us to the bed of sickness that we may learn a lesson of
   gratitude? And if we were more grateful, we might, perhaps, be spared
   some of our troubles. And so while we are kept standing, if we bless
   the Lord for it, it may be that He will continue thus to keep us, but
   if not, He may allow us to slip in order that we may learn where our
   great strength lies--and may thenceforth praise His name! Christian, to
   praise God will be of the utmost service to you. The fact is, you must
   praise somebody--and if you do not praise God, you will slip into
   praising yourself--and that will make you hateful in God's esteem, for
   the Lord hates a proud look. If you once begin to say, "It is my own
   goodness and the excellency of my natural temperament that have kept
   me," you will soon come down--and great will be the fall thereof. But
   if you praise God, it will keep you from, self-conceit.

   To praise God is, also, one of the sweetest medicines for worldliness.
   Most medicines are very strange--sour or bitter. I sometimes think
   doctors make them thus, for many persons would not think them effectual
   if they were not nasty! Probably there might just as well be sweet
   medicines as bitter. I do not know why there should not be. Certainly
   praise, though it is sweet and pleasant, is profitable and curative,
   too!

   It will cure you of worldliness quite as much as will sorrow. If you
   sit down to a loaded table and bless the Lord for it, the abundance
   will not give you "fullness of bread." If you go abroad in the world
   and God increases your wealth, and you are grateful for it, it will not
   eat as does a canker, nor injure you, but the gratitude you have will
   be a sweet corrective force to keep you from being a mere
   earth-grubbing mole--as you would have been if you had not been lifting
   your eyes to Heaven and mounting up on the wings of praise, as the
   eagle does, with his face towards the sun! Praise God that you have
   been able to bear your prosperity and you will probably have a longer
   time of it, and you will get good out of it. Moreover, as you ought to
   praise God and it is useful to praise God, so let me say that it is
   honorable to God that you should praise Him. There ought to be somebody
   to speak well of Him, for this wicked world is constantly abusing Him.
   If a man's own children do not praise him, where can he expect to have
   a good name? Oh, you who are the children of God, I am afraid you
   sometimes give your God a bad Character! Those long faces of yours.
   Those dolorous tales about Providential afflictions--when they hear and
   see these, the world says, "Ah, we always said so--they are a miserable
   set and they serve a very hard Master!" But it is a gross lie! There
   never were servants that had such a good Master as we have! We love His
   House! We love His service! We love His wages! We love Him! We are the
   happiest people in all the world and though the worldling will have it
   that we must be wretched because we are religious, we reply, "Our
   religion is our joy and our comfort! It is our delight and our bliss!
   We wish we had more of it! We serve a blessed God and we will speak
   well of His name."

   To bless the Lord, while it is honorable to Him, will often be useful
   to our fellow creatures, and this should be the most practical point.
   David said, "In the congregation will I bless the Lord," by which I
   understand he felt that his blessing God might be useful to others,
   else he might have shut himself up in his room and praised God there.
   David was not

   like some of whom we know. I hear of some about the country who say, "I
   shall not go to the place of worship in my village. I cannot get on
   with the minister. I buy Mr. So-and-So's sermons and I find more Truth
   in them, so I shall stay at home." You remember the view the Apostle
   took of this when he wrote, "Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves
   together, as the manner of some is"--a very bad manner, let me say, by
   the way the Apostle mentions it! If there are a few people of God
   anywhere, join with them, and if they are such a people as you cannot
   think of joining as people of God, open a place of your own! Make it a
   point of conscience that where you have a house, God shall have one,
   and that where there is a tent for you, there shall be an altar for
   Him! How much might the Kingdom of God spread if Christian people
   everywhere took care of this! David could have praised God alone, it is
   true, but he was not satisfied with it. He loved that genial warmth,
   that glow of holy fire which always comes when hearts come together.
   And so he says, "In the congregation will I praise the Lord."

   There are several ways of doing this. You may praise the Lord, you
   know, by singing--and what a delightful employment that is! I sometimes
   wish we all knew how to sing. It is very well for us to sing our best,
   but that best might be a great deal better. Our Moravian friends can,
   nearly all of them, sing, and if you were to go to their settlement you
   would find all of them able to join in the sacred song. It is miserable
   work where there are two or three fellows in white surplices who get up
   to praise God, or where there is a big machine out of which the music
   is brought. I suppose the Lord does have mercy upon such folly, but how
   there can be anything like spiritual worship coming from a box of pipes
   I cannot understand! The hearts of God's people praise Him out of
   living organs! We must bring something like spiritual worship and when
   we have learned to praise God with the understanding as well as with
   our hearts, surely it will be none the less acceptable to Him, but all
   the more! He ought to have the best of the best and when we bring Him
   our praise it should be the best praise that it is possible for even
   hearts to make!

   But there are other ways of blessing Him. You who cannot sing, can
   perhaps praise Him by your preaching. Oh, how we can help the Lord when
   we speak well of His name from the pulpit! It enlarges the scope and
   sphere of our praise when we can call upon hundreds, or on these
   occasions here, in this house, upon thousands of others, and say, "Oh,
   magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together! Come, let
   us bow down and worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker--let us
   come into His Presence with thanksgiving and unto His courts with joy."
   It is sweet work to preach when our preaching is blessing God!

   Some of you cannot preach and you cannot sing. Well, you can bless God
   by your conversation. May the Lord give us many of His servants to
   bless Him in the farmyard, in the counting-house, behind the counter
   and in the factory! To bless Him when they are driving their carts,
   whose hearts are so full of praise that they naturally speak well of
   God as they speak well of some good friend who has helped and prospered
   them! Let me enlist you to bless God this very night before you go to
   bed--bless Him, I mean, in talking to someone else to whom your
   testimony for God may be blessed. Now, I charge you--you who love the
   Lord Jesus Christ and are His followers--if He has treated you badly,
   tell of it, speak honestly!

   If you have found Him to be a hard Master, tell it to warn others
   against Him! But I know you cannot! You dare not say a word against
   Him, though you can say ten thousand words for Him--and would do so if
   it were not for your bash-fulness. You can all say--

   "Lord, unloose my stammering tongue. Who should louder sing than I?"

   Tell others that you have tasted and handled the good Word of Life,
   that you have found it a delightful thing to weep the tears of
   penitence, to turn with faith to the Savior and trust in Him. Do you
   say, "To whom shall I tell it?" Go, husband, tell it to your wife! My
   good Sister, tell it to your husband! Tell it to your child! Tell it to
   your brother! "Andrew first finds his own brother, Simon Peter." You go
   and do the same! Tell others and so help them to praise Him, too!

   And there is another way of blessing God, even without much time. A
   Christian can bless God by his life. I heard somebody say of a
   Christian Brother at Manchester that "he preached with his feet." Ah,
   that is a noble way of preaching! May we have many such preachers! That
   is to say, by practical living, by walk and conversation. May you
   praise God by your consistent cheerfulness! There are Brothers and
   Sisters in this place to look at whose face is always enough to make
   one feel happy! They are not better nor richer than many I know of, but
   they seem always happy. They seem to live with Jesus--and when they
   speak, they speak well of Him. I am sure they are the most likely
   people to bring in converts.

   Ask the Lord to make your face to shine. Pray that you may look at Him
   until you are changed from glory unto glory! You know what that
   means--that the Glory there is in Christ may come upon you--from glory
   to glory--that your face may shine like that of Moses, the Light of
   God's Countenance being upon you through your praising and blessing

   Him!

   I am afraid my sermon has no relation to some here present, but I ask
   them whether God has not been good to them in many respects. They have
   been kept alive--let them be grateful for the mercies they have and let
   their gratitude lead them to penitence, to think that they have sinned
   against so good a God! Ah, my Hearers, if you will but repent and come
   to Him, He will be found of you. Knock and His door will be opened.
   Speak to Him and He will hear and listen to you! Trust in the Lord
   Jesus Christ and He will wash you in His blood and bring you to His
   Father's right hand in the Kingdom! The Lord bless these words, spoken
   in much conscious weakness, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM37:17-40.

   17. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholds
   the righteous. They must stand, therefore, for how shall he fall whom
   God upholds?

   18-19. The LORD knows the days of the upright: and their inheritance
   shall be forever They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the
   days of famine they shall be satisfied. These are bad times now.
   Everyone complains and, indeed, there seems to be abundant cause, for
   distress is universal. But let us fall back on the promise. "In the
   days of famine they shall be satisfied."

   20-23. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall
   be as the fat of lambs: they shall be consumed; into smoke shall they
   vanish away. The wicked borrow and pay not again: but the righteous
   show mercy and give. For such as are blessed of Him shall inherit the
   earth: and they that are cursed of Him shall be cut off The steps of a
   good man are ordered by the LORD: and He delights in his way. There is
   a mutual delight, you see. If we delight in God, God delights in us. He
   delights in the conduct of His people. When they walk with Him, He
   takes pleasure in every step that they take. What do you say, Brothers
   and Sisters? Have you tried to live today so that God may take pleasure
   in you? He cannot do it if we have lived carelessly, or fruitlessly, or
   selfishly. But when we live to Him, then the Lord delights in our way.

   24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD
   upholds him with His hand. Just going to fall, but in came the
   interposing hand. Grace catches us up when sin would throw us down.

   25. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the
   righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. It was so unusual a
   thing that David had never seen it. I have several times seen the seed
   of the righteous begging bread, but in every case it has been because
   of their drunkenness or their laziness, or because of their own vice
   which they brought upon themselves. But, as a rule, God takes care of
   the children of His children. He does not allow them to want. They may
   be brought into great straits, but He will not permit them to come to
   beggary.

   26-29. He is always merciful, and lends; and his seed is blessed.
   Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell forever-more. For the LORD
   loves justice, and forsakes not His saints; they are preserved forever:
   but the seed of the wickedshall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit
   the land, and dwell therein forever. There is a grand time coming (oh,
   that God would hasten it!) when truth and righteousness shall rule the
   earth, and then shall the godly have their portion! At the present
   time--

   "Every prospect pleases, And only man is vile."

   But the day shall come when the vile person shall cease from off the
   earth and the saints shall have the Kingdom.

   30. The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, and his tongue talks of
   justice.You may often judge a man by his mouth. The physician looks at
   the tongue to see how the man is--and so is a righteous man known by
   his mouth and his tongue, for he talks ofjustice.

   31-40. The Law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall
   slide. The wicked watches the righteous, and seeks to slay him. The
   LORD will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.
   Wait on the LORD, and keep

   His way, and He shall exalt you to inherit the land: when the wicked
   are cut of, you shall see it. I have seen the wicked in great power,
   and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and,
   lo, he was not: yes, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the
   perfect man and behold the upright. For the end of that man is peace.
   But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the
   wicked shall be cut off. But the salvation of the righteous is of the
   LORD: He is their strength in the time of trouble. And the Lord shall
   help them, and deliver them: He shall deliver them from the wicked, and
   save them, because they trust in Him.
     __________________________________________________________________

God's Answer to Persistent Prayer

   (No. 3376)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 2,
   1868.

   "There is a sound of abundance of rain." 1 Kings 18:41.

   FROM the narrative we may learn that things can never be so bad but
   what God can bring deliverance in His own time. The country had been
   parched in Palestine for three years. Travelers in the East will tell
   you how brown and burned that country looks at all times, but how it
   must have appeared when the clouds cleaved together and all the
   pastures were turned to dust, I can scarcely conceive. It must have
   been a terrible and piteous sight when the cattle had perished and the
   people were ready to die through famine and hunger. Yet, bad as it was,
   when the clouds had long ago vanished, when the children of three years
   old did not know what a drop of rain meant, when the skies seemed to be
   as brass above the heads of poor tortured mortals, then it was that the
   word of God came to Elijah, saying, "There shall yet be rain." Courage,
   then! If the times should be full of danger, if there should be
   forebodings in the hearts of the bravest, if infidelity should threaten
   to put out the light of the Gospel, or if Romanism should seem to blot
   out the name of Christ from under Heaven, yet God can still appear! And
   if any one Church is left and the Lord commands the clouds that they
   rain no rain upon her, her hedges be broken down, the wild boars out of
   the woods waste her and she seem to be utterly left, yet at the last
   hour of the day, when her hope all but expires, Jehovah, her Friend,
   may come to help her! And so with us personally--if we are brought to
   the last handful of meal in the barrel and the last drop of oil in the
   cruse--if we are brought so low that now it seems relief would come too
   late, or could not possibly come at all, the Lord, who has His way in
   the whirlwind and who makes the clouds the dust of His feet, can now
   come from above! On cherubim and seraphim, right royally can He descend
   in speedy flight and bring help to His needy servants! Let us,
   therefore, drive despair away! There is no room for that in Jehovah's
   world! As long as He still reigns, let the earth rejoice and let His
   people wait upon Him in hope.

   Further, we learn another lesson, namely, that when prayer has been
   exercised concerning anything, it is our duty and our privilege to
   expect the answer!

   We sometimes pray and receive nothing--but it is in most cases because
   we have asked amiss. Or if we are quite sure that our request was a
   right one, yet we have forgotten the canon or the Law which says, "Let
   him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavers is as the waves
   of the sea driven by the wind and tossed: let not that man expect to
   receive anything of the Lord." Now, if we ask believingly, we are quite
   sure to ask expectantly! We shall go up to the top of Carmel to look
   for the cloud if we have believingly sought for the rain. We shall send
   Gehazi yet seven times if he perceives no sign of mercy at the
   first--and we shall continue in importunate prayer--still believing
   that Jehovah cannot lie and will, as surely as He lives, be as good as
   His word and fulfill His promise to those who trust Him.

   How bold it was of Elijah to go to Ahab, even before that cloud had
   been seen, before he had sent his servant to look for it, and to say to
   him, "There i s a sound of abundance of rain!" What was that sound? I
   know not. I do not suppose that Ahab heard it, or that anyone else,
   except Elijah, recognized it. The ears of true faith are very quick and
   keen. She hears the coming of the blessing, the footsteps of the angels
   as they draw near, by way of Jacob's ladder. God has heard her, and she
   hears her God! God is quick to hear her whispers and her thoughts--and
   she knows "the secret of the Lord," for it "is with them that fear
   Him." And long before the eyes have seen, or the ears have heard, or it
   has entered into the heart of man to imagine it, she perceives that the
   blessing is coming! There are certain sacred instincts which belong to
   the faith of God's elect, which faith always comes from God. We must
   remember its Divine origin and that it

   keeps up its acquaintanceship with the Eternal Father by whom it was
   begotten. Like the shell picked up from the deep sea which always
   continues to whisper hoarsely of the sea from which it came, so faith
   continues to hear the sound of Jehovah's goings. If none else hears
   them, she perceives them!

   I thought of using this fact tonight as an illustration of the Truth of
   God that there are certain signs which faith can see of a coming
   revival in a Church. We will take that first. Then, there are certain
   tokens which faith can perceive of coming joy and peace in an
   individual heart--of that secondly. In the first place--

   I. THERE ARE CERTAIN SIGNS AND TOKENS FOR GOOD WHICH PRAYERFUL FAITH
   CLEARLY PERCEIVES WHEN AN AWAKENING--A GENUINE REVIVAL--IS ABOUT TO
   COME.

   What are these signs? I do not know that they are perceptible at this
   time throughout the Churches of London. I do not know that they are
   perceptible anywhere, but I do know that wherever they are, they are
   the shadows which coming events cast before them! And one of the first
   of them is this--a growing dissatisfaction with the present state of
   things and an increasing anxiety among the members of the Church for
   the salvation of souls. To have no conversions is a very dreadful
   thing, but to be at ease without seeing conversions is at all times
   more dreadful! I could bear a suspension in the increase of the Church,
   I think, with some degree of peace of mind if I found all the members
   distressed and disturbed about it!

   But if we should ever come to this pass--God grant we never may!--that
   we shall see no conversions and yet shall all of us say, "Still, still
   our place is well attended. There are such-and-such persons who
   come--we ourselves are fed with spiritual food and, therefore, all is
   well." I say, if it ever comes to that, it will be a thing to mourn
   over, both by day and night, for it will be a token that the Spirit of
   God has for a while forsaken us! Oh, that the Churches in London where
   the congregations are but small, and where the conversions are but few,
   would be clothed in sackcloth and cast ashes upon their heads! Oh, that
   they would proclaim a day of fasting and humble themselves before the
   Lord in the bitterness of their souls, for when it came to this,
   Jehovah's hand would turn towards them in bounty and they would soon
   become the joyful mothers of children! As long as a Church is satisfied
   to be barren, she shall be barren! But when she cries out in the
   anguish of her spirit, then shall Jehovah remember her. He hears the
   cries of His people, but when she will not cry and is at ease in
   desolate circumstances, then the desolation shall continue and the
   sorrows be multiplied!

   Dear Friends, it should be a matter of personal heart-searching for you
   how far any of you are at ease in Zion, how far you are satisfied
   without doing good yourselves, for in proportion as you are such, you
   are tainting the Church with evil. But, on the other hand, let me
   enquire whether you have learned to sigh and cry for all the sin of
   this huge city, for all the abominations of this, our country? Let me
   ask whether you ever laid to heart the teeming millions of the heathen
   populations who are dying without a Savior? If you do this--and if all
   of us do it--it cannot be long before God shall look upon the earth and
   send a shower of Divine Grace, for that anxiety in Christian heartsis
   the sound of the coming of abundance of rain!

   Another indication of a large blessing near at hand is when this
   anxiety leads Believers to be exceedingly earnest and importunate in
   prayer When, one by one, in their own chambers they become the King's
   remembrancers and plead with Him day and night. When by twos and threes
   in the family, the prayer becomes fervent and grows into a passionate
   cry, "Oh, God, remember the land and send a blessing!" When in the
   Churches, the spirit of prayer needs not to be excited by appeals from
   the pulpit, but is general and spontaneous! When the members make it a
   matter of regular conscience and joyous privilege to attend the Prayer
   Meetings and when there they do not preach sermons, nor deliver
   themselves of doctrinal disquisitions to their fellow men, but are like
   Elijah when he knelt at Carmel with his head between his knees, or else
   like Jacob, at Jabbok, when he said, "I will not let You go, except You
   bless me." Then be sure of the blessing coming, for this sign never yet
   failed! Whenever and wherever there is this abounding prayer, there
   must be abounding blessing before long! Baal's worshippers may pray to
   him and he may not answer them. They may cut themselves with stones and
   cover his altar with their blood, but Jehovah always looks to the
   earnestness of His people and will surely avenge His own elect, though
   He bears long with them. He will give them the desires of their hearts!
   May we see--as we have seen it in this Church--may we see it renewed
   among us--may we see it in every part of Christendom, in every Church
   in London, in every Church throughout the whole British Empire, in
   America and wherever there are Believers--a deep and awful anxiety for
   souls that will not let Believers be quiet, but will give them to
   exercise an incessant pleading with God which will stir up His strength
   and cause Him to make bare His arm!

   A third sign, and a far more approximate one because it is the result
   of the other two, is when ministers begin to take counsel, one with
   another, and to say, "What must we do?" The Church is earnest. We, too,
   share the fervor. What must we do that we may be more useful, that we
   may win more for Christ?" It becomes the sign of a great blessing when
   men in the ministry will preach the Gospel more fully, more simply,
   more affectionately, more in dependence upon the Holy Spirit than they
   have ever done before. In proportion as elocution shall be less
   regarded, rhetoric be less honored, long words less admired--but
   simplicity, plainness of speech, boldness and earnestness shall be
   sought after--in that proportion, depend upon it, the blessing will
   come! In vain the prayers of God's people and all their tears in that
   place where the ministry gives forth an uncertain sound!

   How shall God bless His vineyard by a cloud in which there is no rain?
   How shall He water the plants of His own right hand planting from a
   cistern that holds no water? Ah, Brothers, if any of you have been
   guilty of expounding philosophical themes when he ought to have been
   preaching the simple Gospel--if we have been guilty of trying to get
   poetic sentences and flowery periods when our sentences ought to have
   been short and sharp like daggers in the consciences of men! If we have
   lifted up a mere dogma instead of exalting Christ, and have preached
   the letter and forgotten the spirit, may God forgive us this great
   offense and help us, from this time forward, to begin to learn how to
   preach, to begin to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him how to
   touch the springs of the human heart and, by His Spirit's power, lead
   men to cry, "What must we do to be saved?"

   Brothers in Christ who preach the Gospel, it is in no spirit of mere
   criticism of the general ministry that I have offered these sentences!
   It is rather in criticism of us all and loving counsel to us all. If we
   are to obtain a blessing, depend upon it, we must come nearer to the
   Cross! We must get to value human knowledge less and to value Christ
   infinitely more! And then, having these, we must cry aloud and spare
   not--and our message must always be concerning salvation. We must leave
   for a time the more difficult and deep things of God and we must keep
   hammering away at this one thing with all our might--that Jesus Christ
   came into the world to save sinners and that whoever believes in Him
   shall not perish, but have everlasting life! Where this shall became
   commonly the case, there shall be the sound of an abundance of rain!
   God send us more Haliburtons, more McCheynes, more Harrington Evans,
   more men of the stamp of John Newton, Mr. Whitfield and the
   Wesleys--and when we have these, we may take it as an indication that
   God is blessing us and that it is a sound of abundance of rain!

   I have not quite concluded the list of these favorable tokens. There
   will be a certainty that the rain is falling. The first few drops will
   be wetting the sensitive pavement of the Christian Church when we shall
   see the Doctrine of individual responsibility fully felt and carried
   out into individual action. I believe--I do not know whether there are
   any of you among them--that there are a great multitude of Christian
   people who think that religion is a thing for ministers and that
   ministers ought to do all they can for the spread of the knowledge of
   the true religion. Of course, they include City Missionaries, Bible
   women and good people who can give all their time to such work! But the
   notion that every saved man is to be a minister in some sense, that
   every converted woman has also her share of ministry to perform for
   Christ, that it is not one member of the body that is to be active,
   while all the others are to be torpid and idle--of this they do not
   dream! When it shall be believed that there is as much work for the
   foot as there is for the head and as much for the uncomely parts as for
   those that have abundant comeliness--when the poor shall feel that the
   Church cannot do without them and the rich shall perceive that they
   have their work to do in the circles in which they move--when the
   illiterate shall talk of Christ as well as the educated. When the
   nurse-girl, the servant in the kitchen, the workman at the loom and
   plow shall all be moved by one common impulse--when the Divine
   enthusiasm shall blaze in the learned and in the ignorant, when it
   shall flash up in the heart of the members of Parliament, when it shall
   be found in the highest and lowest places of the land--when every
   Christian shall feel that he is not his own, but bought with a
   price--when he shall see the blood-mark stamped upon him and say with
   the Apostle, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," when the
   consecrated life shall be lived, not in cloisters and nunneries, but in
   cottages, mansions, palaces--in the abodes of wealth and fashion as in
   the dwelling places of poverty. When God's men go out into the world as
   God's men, feeling that they are to live for Him fully, as Paul lived
   for Him fully, feeling that for them to live is indeed Christ--then,
   Brothers and Sisters, there will be a sound of an abundance of rain!

   Verily, verily, I say unto you, you need not think of the conversion of
   Japan, India and China, nor of Ethiopia's turning unto God--we,
   ourselves, need to be converted to God first! The Church of God is not
   fit to have a great blessing yet. If she is not first of all baptized
   in the Holy Spirit and in fire, she will not be qualified to do the
   great deeds that God intends her to do before long. The world shall be
   saved, but the Church must first be quickened. The nations shall be
   converted, but the Church of God must, first of all, be awakened! The
   fire shall go forth from Zion, but it must first burn furiously upon
   Zion's own hearth! Out of nothing comes nothing--and if the Church
   degenerates into nothing, she will do nothing. It is only when she
   possesses the Divine Life in the fullest vigor, that she shall be
   capable of doing work for God which shall glorify the name of the Lord
   Jesus! The Church has now got all the conversions that she is qualified
   to get. God always gives every Church as big a blessing as it is fit to
   have--and if it qualifies itself for more--it shall have more! God
   treats His Churches as parents treat their sons. They give them but
   little money when they are children--a penny will do--but when they get
   to be young men, they shall have yet more. We have but little because
   we are fit to possess and use but little. We are not faithful in what
   is given to us--and if the one talent often lies wrapped in a napkin,
   how can we expect to have five or 10 entrusted to us?

   God stir up His Church, then, in the manner which I have tried to
   depict, and there will be "a sound of abundance of rain." And now to
   change the line of thought, I want to--

   II. HAVE A FEW MINUTES' QUIET TALK WITH PERSONS WHO ARE DISPIRITED.

   Some of you have got into Giant Despair's castle. You have had a taste
   of his cruel crab tree cudgel lately. You have been taken to see the
   dead men's bones outside the castle and you have been told that there
   is nothing for you but destruction. Now, there is, I believe, to such
   as you are, with all your sad distress of mind, an indication that the
   famine and drought of your soul shall soon end. Such a condition as
   yours cannot always be. There are always signs of abundance of rain.
   Perhaps there are some such signs now in you!

   This is one--God always means to bless us when He empties us
   completely--when we get to know that we are nothing and have nothing
   unless He fills us with His hidden treasure! If you were self-confident
   and felt that you could rally yourself--that you had still some stores
   to fall back upon--it is very likely that your present state would
   continue. But if you are brought to the ground, you cannot go any lower
   and you shall soon be lifted up! If it has come to be the darkest hour
   in the night, the day will soon dawn, the first beams will soon streak
   and redden the horizon! When you become so poor and needy that you dare
   not trust yourself in anything--when you feel as if you scarcely could
   open your mouth, but cry, "Open You my lips"--when you feel as if your
   wisdom were all turned to folly and your wit all gone, like a man at
   sea, staggering to and fro, reeling like a drunken man. When you feel
   that you cannot help yourself, then remember the old proverb that
   "man's extremity is God's opportunity." You must empty the pitcher
   before you can fill it! You must get the purse emptied of all the bad
   money before you can put in the genuine coin. You must throw the chaff
   out of the bushel before you can put in the wheat. And God is emptying
   you of your self-sufficiency and carnal trust in order that now there
   may be a full Christ for empty sinners, a rich Christ for
   poverty-stricken sinners! If you have got a moldy crust of your own,
   you shall not have the Bread of Heaven. If you have one brass farthing
   left of your own merit, you shall not have Christ--

   "'Tis perfect poverty alone

   That sets the soul at large--

   While we can call one mite our own,

   We get no full discharge!

   But let our debts be what they may,

   However great or small,

   As soon as we have nothing to pay,

   Our God forgives us all!"

   Now, your being nothing and having nothing--your being helplessly
   bankrupt in spiritual affairs--is a token for good and I thank the
   Master for it!

   There is sure to be a sign of abundance of rain, too, when your soul
   begins to be unutterably miserable apart from Jesus Christ. If you
   could find comfort in the joys of this world, I would fear it would be
   a long while before you would find peace. But if pleasures which were
   once so sweet have now become insipid or distasteful. If social joys
   are now shunned because you have an aching void within your heart which
   these cannot fill. If you get alone and sigh and cry because you
   need--you need, you scarcely know what--but still you feel you cannot
   rest until you find your God! That unrest, that dissatisfaction,
   disturbance, longing, sighing and pining all are good signs! "Blessed
   are they that hunger and thirst after

   righteousness, for they shall be filled." I think I can hear in that
   longing of yours a sound of abundance of rain! But there are better
   signs than any you can see in yourselves, for the most comfortable
   evidences we can ever bring from self are generally but miserable
   comforters, like those of poor Job. They begin by comforting and end by
   making us more wretched than before.

   But here are some things that are signs of abundance of rain. The first
   is, God has given His Son to die for sinners. You are a sinner. You
   know it and you feel it. Now, a sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy
   Spirit has made him so by declaring that Christ came to seek and to
   save just such! If God has given His dear Son to bleed upon the Cross
   as a Substitute for guilt, surely He will deny nothing! "He that spared
   not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not, with
   Him, also freely give us all things?" Stand at the foot of the Cross
   and as you hear the blood of Jesus falling, drop by drop, surely in the
   ears of faith there is a sound of abundance of rain!

   But He lives. He is gone from the Cross to Heaven where He lives and
   intercedes before His Father's face. "Therefore also," it is written,
   "He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him,
   seeing that He ever lives to make intercession for them." If you hear
   the voice of Jesus pleading with authority before the Father's Throne,
   you feel certain that God will not refuse His Son's request, but will
   do to Him according to His petition. So that here is another sound of
   abundance of rain! "He made intercession for the transgressors"--that
   is you again. He makes intercession for such as you are! Give Him,
   then, your cause to plead, nor doubt the Father's Grace.

   Another blessed sign of an abundance of mercy for poor burdened souls
   is the gift of the Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit has been given to us. It
   is a thing that we are to pray for, that the Holy Spirit may be poured
   out, but the Holy Spirit is poured out, was given to the whole Church
   on the day of Pentecost in order that He might abide with us forever!
   The Holy Spirit, then, is here--the Head of the present dispensation,
   ruling and reigning in the hearts of His people. But why does He come?
   To convince of sin, to give us repentance, to show us Christ, to lead
   us to Christ, to work faith in us, to breed all the spiritual Graces
   within our souls.

   Oh, Friends, however barren and dead we may be, the Holy Spirit can
   quicken us! And in the fact that He is given to His people there is
   another sign of abundance of rain.

   But I think there is another we must not forget--and that is that there
   is a Mercy Seat. I like, when I feel my own sinfulness and corruption,
   to think that there is still a Mercy Seat. There it stands. I may not
   have gone to it as I ought. I may feel as if I never could go to it as
   I ought. My heart may be as heavy as a stone, but there is the Mercy
   Seat and God does not mean not to bless me, or He would have taken that
   Mercy Seat away! He would have said, "No, I forbid you to pray. I will
   never hear you again." But as long as there stands that blood-sprinkled
   Mercy Seat, why, who is it meant for? It is surely meant for the needy!
   It is meant for those who need to pray--and the blood upon it is an
   evidence that it is meant for the guilty who need pardon--

   "The Mercy Seat is open still, Here let my soul retreat" The very fact
   that I may pray is another sign of an abundance of rain!

   And once more--is it not a sign of an abundance of mercy to a poor
   devil-dragged sinner who has been dragged, as it were, through a whole
   forest of temptations, through the brambles and briars of his sins, who
   is all wounded, torn, ragged and bleeding--is it not a sign of mercy to
   him that there is the invitation always ringing from the Gospel, '
   'Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give
   you rest"? Always does that invitation stand! Never does it cease to
   call! This silver trumpet always sounds! The bell is always ringing--

   "Come and welcome, Sinner, come!" "Ho, everyone that thirsts, come to
   the waters, and he that has no money, let him come: yes, come, buy wine
   and milk, without money, and without price." Why that invitation? Is it
   mockery? Is it scorn or sarcasm? Does God invite intending to repulse?
   Does He set open the door of mercy meaning to shut it in the sinner's
   face? Impossible! God is willing to receive and bless, for God invites
   most freely. And, mark you, He does more than invite--He commands--and
   with the command there is a threat! "He that believes and is baptized
   shall be saved; He that believes not shall be condemned." He makes it a
   sin not to believe--a sin not to have mercy upon yourselves--a sin not
   to take the mercy which He freely gives! Yes, He makes this the
   greatest of all sins. This is the sin which causes men to perish, that
   they believe not in Christ. "He that believes not is condemned already,
   because He has not believed on the Son of God." Now, see how

   hearty God is in this matter. He first invites--will He reject you?
   Next, He commands you to come--can He cast you away when you do as He
   bids you do? Then He threatens you, if you do not come. How His heart
   of generosity is displayed here! He cannot refuse to save you if you
   trust Him. You, blackest, worst and vilest, if you trust Him, He cannot
   refuse you! He has threatened to destroy you if you do not trust--can
   He destroy you if you do? What a God were that! No! Cast yourselves
   upon Him! Fall flat upon the promise which He gives you in His dear Son
   and surely, so doing, you shall feel that great rain for which your
   thirsty soul is longing, for the very invitation is a sound of
   abundance of rain!

   Christian Brothers and Sisters, I dare say some of you sometimes get
   very dry and feel as if you need an abundance of rain. Well, that very
   sense of need, that inward craving, will be a sign of its coming!
   Continue much in prayer, even when you do not get a blessing in it. An
   esteemed clergyman gives this advice to his friends--if they have not
   liberty in prayer, to be sure and use a form! I think that is about as
   bad advice as he could possibly have given! When you feel you have not
   liberty in prayer, pray in order to get liberty! Do not leave the Mercy
   Seat till you do, but put up with no makeshifts. Do not resort to any
   of those legs of wood, iron and stone. Get to have real and living
   fellowship with Christ and dread above all things, the possibility of
   sham religion being put in the place of the real, living thing! Never
   be satisfied, dearly Beloved, until you live every day in communion
   with Christ! Do not be content without the abiding Presence of that
   gracious Sun of your soul, your blessed Savior! Without Him, this life
   is a very death--and the thought of the world to come a torment to the
   spirit! And when you feel you cannot do without Him, without the
   reality of His assured Presence. When services will not do and the
   Bible, itself, will not do. Without getting Him, without getting
   heart-work and spirit-work, without getting the soul and sustenance of
   it--then it is that before long an abundant blessing will drop upon
   your soul!

   The Lord make us uneasy and wretched out of Him--make us hungry and
   thirsty apart from Him! The Lord make us covetous beyond all
   covetousness after Him, dissatisfied beyond all peace of mind apart
   from Him! And when we get to that, He will feed us with bread to the
   fullest and give us the wines on the lees well-refined, that we may
   drink and rejoice! May God give a blessing to these words for Jesus'
   sake. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: MATTHEW 7.

   While we are reading, let us also be adoring at the same time, for the
   words of Christ have a gracious Divinity about them. They are Infinite.
   They are Omnipotent. There is a kind of life in them--a life which
   communicates itself to those who hear them. Our Savior did not preach
   sermons--He preached texts. All His sermons are full of golden
   sentences, not hammered gold leaf, like those of men, but ingots of
   solid gold and the gold of that land is good, the most fine gold. There
   is none like it. Thus He preaches in the seventh Chapter of Matthew.

   Verse 1. Judge not that you be not judged. Set not up for critics,
   especially in the act of worship. Probably there is no greater
   destroyer of profit in the hearing of the Word of God than is the
   spirit of carping criticism.

   1, 2. Judge not that you be not judged. For with what judgment you
   judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be
   measured to you again. When the Lord comes in judgment, He might almost
   decline to mount the Throne, for He might say, "These men have already
   tried and condemned each other--let their sentences abide." If He were
   to judge us as we have judged others, who among us would stand? But we
   may rest assured that our fellow men will usually exercise towards us
   much the same judgment that we exercise towards them.

   3. And why do you behold the speck that is in your brother's eye, but
   consider not the beam that is in your own eye? It is a beam. You do not
   see it because it is in your own eye. How is it that you can be so
   severe towards that which is in another, and so lenient towards
   yourself?

   4, 5. Or how willyou say to your brother, Let mepull the speck out
   ofyour eye and, behold, a beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First
   cast out the beam out ofyour own eye; and then shall you see clearly to
   cast out the speck out ofyour brother' eye. There may be, dear Friends,
   a great deal of hypocrisy about us, of which we are not aware, for when
   a man sees a fault in another and tells him of it, he says, "You know I
   am a very plain-spoken person. There is no hypocrisy about me." Well,
   but there is, and, according to the Savior's description, this may be
   sheer hypocrisy because meanwhile in your own eye there is something
   worse than you see in your fellow, and this you pass over! And this is
   simply

   untruthful dealing and it amounts to hypocrisy. If you were really so
   zealous to make people see, you would begin by being zealous to see,
   yourself! And if you were so concerned to have all eyes cleansed from
   impurity, you would begin by cleansing your own, or seeking to have
   them cleansed.

   6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls
   before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again
   and tear you to pieces. It is a pity to talk about some of the secrets
   of our holy faith in any and every company. It would be almost profane
   to speak of them in the company of profane men. We know that they would
   not understand us--they would find occasion for jest and ridicule and,
   therefore, our own reverence for holy things must cause us to lay a
   finger on our lips when we are in the presence of profane persons. Do
   not let us, however, carry out one precept to the exclusion of others!
   There are dogs that eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's
   table. Drop them a crumb. And there are even swine that may yet be
   transformed--to whom the sight of a pearl might give some inkling of a
   better condition of heart. Cast not the pearls before them, but you may
   show them to them sometimes when they are in as good a state of mind as
   they are likely to be in. It is ours to preach the Gospel to every
   creature--that is a precept of Christ, and yet all creatures are not
   always in the condition to hear the Gospel. We must choose our time.
   Yet even this I would not push too far. We are to preach the Gospel in
   season and out of season. Oh, that we may be able to follow precepts as
   far as they are meant to go, and no further.

   7. Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find; knock, and
   it shall be opened unto you. This is the simplest form of prayer.
   Follow up your prayer by the effort. "Knock, and it shall be opened
   unto you." Add force to your petitions and to your prayers. If the door
   blocks the way, knock until it is opened.

   8. For everyone that asks, receives, and he that seeks, finds, and to
   him that knocks, it shall be opened. One way or another you will get
   the blessing if you are but persevering! And blessed is the man who is
   a master of the art of asking, but does not forget the labor of seeking
   an entrance through the importunity of knocking!

   9. 10. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread,
   will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a
   serpent?Our Lord will give us the real thing. Sometimes we would be
   quite satisfied with an imitation of it. And sometimes we have to wait
   and be prepared for the reception of the real thing--it is infinitely
   better for us to wait for months than immediately to get a
   stone--better to wait for a fish than the next moment to have a
   scorpion! There were some in the wilderness who asked to be satisfied,
   and they were so, with the flesh of quails. They got their stones, they
   got their scorpions. But the Lord's people may sometimes find that they
   have to wait a while. God will not give to them that which is other
   than good for them.

   11, 12. If you, then, being evil, know how to give goodgifts unto your
   children, howmuch more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good
   things to them that ask Him? Therefore all things whatever you would
   that men should do to you, do you even so to them: for this is the Law
   and the Prophets. Wonderful condensation of the two tables of the Law!
   God help us to remember it. This is a golden rule and he that follows
   that shall lead a golden life.

   13, 14. Enter you in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and
   broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are which go
   in that way. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which
   leads unto life, and few there are that find it.Do not be ashamed of
   being called narrow! Do not be ashamed of being supposed to lead a life
   of great precision and exactness. There is nothing very grand about
   breadth, after all. And I have noticed one thing--the broadest men I
   have ever met with in the best sense, have always kept to the narrow
   way, and the narrowest people I know are those who are so fond of the
   broad way! I could indicate some literature which professes to be
   exceedingly liberal--it is liberal, indeed, in finding fault with
   everybody who holds the Gospel, but its tone is bitterness, itself,
   towards all the orthodox! Wormwood and gall are honey compared with
   what the liberal people generally pour out upon those who keep close to
   the Truth of God! I prefer to cultivate a broad spirit to a narrow
   heart--and then to talk about the breadth of the way.

   15. Beware of false prophets.But as long as he is a prophet, people
   will respect him. Do not find fault with him, he is a clever man.

   15-25. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing,
   but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shallknow them by their
   fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even
   so, every good tree brings forth good fruit: but a corrupt tree brings
   forth evil fruit A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can
   a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit Every tree that brings not forth
   good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Therefore by their
   fruits you shallknow them. Not everyone that says unto Me, Lord, Lord,
   shall enter into the Kingdom ofHeaven; but he that does the will of My
   Father which is in Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord,
   have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name have cast out
   devils; and in Your name done many wonderful works? And then will I say
   unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me, you that work iniquity.
   Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will
   liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock And the
   rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon
   that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.For the
   best man will be tried, and perhaps all the more because he is such!

   26-29. And everyone that hears these sayings of Mine and does them not,
   shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the
   sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
   and beat upon that house: and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
   And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people
   were astonishedat His Doctrine. For He taught them as one having
   authority, andnot as the scribes.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Greatest Wonder of Grace

   (No. 3377)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And I was left" Ezekiel 9:8.

   SALVATION never shines so brightly to any man's eyes as when it comes
   to himself. Then is Divine Grace illustrious, indeed, when we can see
   it working with Divine power upon ourselves. To our apprehension, our
   own case is always the most desperate and, therefore, mercy shown to us
   is the most extraordinary! We see others perish and wonder that the
   same doom has not befallen ourselves. The horror of the ruin which we
   dreaded and our intense delight at the certainty of safety in Christ
   unite with our personal sense of unworthiness to make us cry in
   amazement, "And I was left."

   Ezekiel, in vision, saw the slaughter men smiting right and left at the
   bidding of Divine Justice. And as he stood unharmed among the heaps of
   the slain, he exclaimed with surprise, "I was left." It may be the day
   will come when we, too, shall cry with solemn joy, "And I, too, by
   Sovereign Grace, am spared while others perish." Special Grace will
   cause us to marvel. Emphatically will it be so at the Last Dread Day.

   Read the story of the gross idolatry of the people of Jerusalem as
   recorded in the 8th Chapter of Ezekiel's prophecy, and you will not
   wonder at the judgment with which the Lord at length overthrew the
   city. Let us set our hearts to consider how the Lord dealt with the
   guilty people. "Six men came from the way of the higher gate, which
   lies toward the north, and every man with a slaughter weapon in his
   hand." The destruction worked by these executioners was swift and
   terrible--and it was typical of other solemn visitations. All through
   history the observing eye notices lines ofjustice, red marks upon the
   page where the Judge of all the earth has at last seen it necessary to
   decree a terrible visitation upon a guilty people. All these past
   displays of Divine Vengeance point at the coming judgment even more
   complete and overwhelming. The past is prophetic of the future! A day
   is surely coming when the Lord Jesus, who came once to save, will
   descend a second time to judge! Despised mercy has always been
   succeeded by deserved wrath--and so must it be in the end of all
   things. "But who may abide the day of His coming? Or who shall stand
   when He appears?" When sinners are smitten, who will be left? He shall
   lift the balances of Justice and make bare the sword of execution. When
   His avenging angels shall gather the vintage of the earth, who among us
   shall exclaim in wondering gratitude, "And I was left."? Such an one
   will be a wonder of Grace, indeed, worthy to take rank with those
   marvels of Grace of whom we have spoken in many former discourses in
   this place! To each one of you, I put this enquiry--Will you be an
   instance of sparing Grace, and cry, "And I was left"?

   We will use the wonderfully descriptive vision of this Chapter that we
   may, with holy fear, behold the character of the doom from which Grace
   delivers us. And then we will dwell upon the exclamation of our text,
   "I was left," considering it as the joyful utterance of the persons who
   are privileged to escape the destruction. And lastly, the emotions
   which the escaped feel.

   By the help of the Holy Spirit, let us solemnly consider--

   I. THE TERRIBLE DOOM from which the Prophet in vision saw himself
   preserved, regarding it as a figure of the judgment which is yet to
   come upon all the world.

   Observe, first, that it was a just punishment inflicted upon those who
   had been often warned--a punishment which they willfully brought upon
   themselves. God had said that if they set up idols, He would destroy
   them, for He would not endure such an insult to His Godhead. He had
   often pleaded with them, not with words only, but with severe
   Providences, for their land had been laid desolate, their city had been
   besieged and their kings had been carried away captive! But they were
   bent on backsliding to the worship of their idol gods. Therefore, when
   the sword of the Lord was drawn

   from its scabbard, it was no novel punishment, no freak of vengeance,
   no unexpected execution. So, in the close of life, and at the end of
   the world, when judgment comes on men, it will be just and according to
   the solemn warnings of the Word of God. When I read the terrible things
   which are written in God's Book in reference to future punishment,
   especially the awful things which Jesus spoke concerning the place
   where their worm dies not and their fire is not quenched, I am greatly
   pressed in spirit. Some there are who sit in judgment upon the Great
   Judge and condemn the punishment which He inflicts as too severe! As
   for myself, I cannot measure the power of God's anger--but let it burn
   as it may--I am sure that it will be just. No needless pang will be
   inflicted upon a single one of God's creatures! Even those who are
   doomed forever will endure no more than Divine Justice absolutely
   requires, no more than they, themselves, would admit to be the due
   reward of their sins if their consciences would judge aright. Mark you,
   this is the very Hell of Hell that men will know that they are justly
   suffering. To endure a tyrant's wrath would be a small thing compared
   with suffering what one has brought upon himself by willful wanton
   choices of wrong. Sin and suffering are indissolubly bound together in
   the constitution of Nature--it cannot be otherwise, nor ought it to be.
   It is right that evil should be punished. Those who were punished in
   Jerusalem could not turn upon the executioners and say, "We do not
   deserve this doom"-- every cruel wound of the Chaldean sword and every
   fierce crash of the Babylonian battle-axe fell on men who in their
   consciences knew that they were only reaping what they themselves had
   sown! Brothers and Sisters, what wonders of Grace shall we be if, from
   a judgment which we have so richly deserved, we shall be rescued at the
   last!

   Let us notice very carefully that this slaughter was preceded by
   separation which removed from among the people those who were distinct
   in character. Before the slaughter men proceeded to their stern task, a
   man appeared among them clothed in linen with a writer's inkhorn by his
   side, who marked all those who in their hearts were grieved at the evil
   done in the city. Until these were marked, the destroyers did not
   commence their work. Whenever the Lord lays bare His arm for war, He
   first gathers His saints into a place of safety! He did not destroy the
   world by the flood till Noah and his family were safe in the ark. He
   would not suffer a single fire drop to fall on Sodom till Lot had
   escaped to Zoar. He carefully preserves His own--flood, nor flame, nor
   pestilence, nor famine shall do them harm! We read in the Revelation
   that the angel said, "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the
   trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads."
   Vengeance must sheath her sword till Divine Love has housed its
   darlings. When Christ comes to destroy the earth, He will first take
   away His people. Before the elements shall melt with fervent heat and
   the pillars of the universe shall rock and reel beneath the weight of
   wrathful Deity, He will have caught up His elect into the air, so that
   they shall be forever with Him! When He comes He shall divide the
   nations as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats--no sheep of His
   shall be destroyed! He shall without fail take the tares from among the
   wheat, but not one single ear of wheat shall be in danger. O that we
   may be among the selected ones and prove His power to keep us in the
   day of wrath! May each one of us say, amid the wreck of matter and the
   crash of worlds, "And I was left." Dear Friend, do you think you are
   marked on the forehead? If at this moment my voice were drowned by the
   trumpet of Resurrection, would you be among those who would awake to
   safety and glory? Would you be able to say, "The multitude perished
   around me, but I was left"? It will be so if you hate the sins by which
   you are surrounded and if you have received the mark of the blood of
   Jesus upon your soul! If not, you will not escape, for there is no
   other door of salvation but His saving name! God grant us Grace to
   belong to that chosen number who wear the Covenant seal, the mark of
   Him who counts the people!

   Next, this judgment was placed in the Mediator's hands. I want you to
   notice this. Observe that according to the Chapter, there was no
   slaughter done except where the man with the writer's inkhorn led the
   way. So, again, we read in the 10th Chapter that, "One cherub stretched
   forth his hand from between the cherubims into the fire that was
   between the cherubims and took, thereof, and put it into the hands of
   him that was clothed with linen; who took it and went out," and cast it
   over the city. See this! God's Glory of old shone forth between the
   cherubim! That is to say, over the place of Propitiation and Atonement,
   and as long as that glow of light remained, no judgment fell on
   Jerusalem, for God in Christ condemns not! But by-and-by "the Glory of
   the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the
   threshold of the house," and then judgment was near to come! When God
   no longer deals with men in Christ, His wrath burns like fire and He
   commissions the ambassador of mercy to be the messenger of wrath! The
   very man who marked with his pen the saved ones, threw burning coals
   upon the city and led the way for the destruction of the sinful. What
   does this teach but this--"The Father judges no man, but has committed
   all judgment unto the Son"? I know of no Truth of God more dreadful to
   meditate upon! Think of it, you careless ones--the very Christ who died
   on Calvary is

   He by whom you will be sentenced! God will judge the world by this Man,
   Christ Jesus! He it is who will come in the clouds of Heaven and before
   Him shall be gathered all nations! And when those who have despised Him
   shall look upon His face, they will be terrified beyond conception! Not
   the lightning, not the thunder, not the dreadful sound of the last
   tremendous trumpet shall so alarm them as that face of injured love!
   Then will they cry to the mountains and hills to hide them from the
   face of Him that sits upon the Throne! Why, it is the face of Him that
   wept for sinners, the face which scoffers stained with bloody drops
   extracted by the thorny crown, the face of the Incarnate God who, in
   Infinite Mercy, came to save mankind! But because they have despised
   Him. Because they would not be saved. Because they preferred their own
   lusts to Infinite Love and persisted in rejecting God's best proof of
   kindness, therefore will they say, "Hide us from the face," for the
   sight of that face shall be to them more accusing and more condemning
   than all else besides! How dreadful is this Truth of God! The more you
   consider it, the more will it fill your soul with terror! Would to God
   it might drive you to fly to Jesus, for then you will behold Him with
   joy in that day!

   This destruction, we are told, began at thesanctuary. Suppose the Lord
   were to visit London in His anger--where would He begin to smite? "Oh,"
   somebody says, "of course, the destroying angel would go down to the
   low music halls and dancing rooms! Or He would sweep out the back slums
   and the drink palaces, the jails and places where women of ill-repute
   congregate!" Turn to the Scripture which surrounds our text. The Lord
   says, "Begin at My sanctuary." Begin at the Churches! Begin at the
   Chapels! Begin with the Church members! Begin with the ministers, the
   bishops! Begin with those who are teachers of the Gospel! Begin with
   the chief and front of the religious world--begin with the high
   professors who are looked up to as examples! What does Peter say? "The
   time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it
   first begins with us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the
   Gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the
   ungodly and the sinner appear?"

   The first thing the slaughter men did was to slaughter the ancient men
   which were before the Temple, even the 70 elders of the people, for
   they were secret idolaters! You may be sure that the sword which did
   not spare the chief men and fathers made but short work with the baser
   sort! Elders of our Churches, ministers of Christ--judgment will begin
   with us! We must not expect to find more lenient treatment than others
   at the Last Great Assize! No, rather, if there shall be a specially
   careful testing of sincerity, it will be for us who have taken upon
   ourselves to lead others to the Savior! For this cause let us see well
   to it that we are not deceived or deceivers, for we shall surely be
   detected in that day! To play the hypocrite is to play the fool! Will a
   man deceive his Maker, or delude the Most High? It cannot be! You
   Church members, all of you, should look well to it, for judgment will
   begin with you! God's fire is in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem! In
   the olden times, the people fled to Churches and holy places for
   sanctuary--but how vain will this be when the Lord's avengers shall
   come forth, since there the havoc will begin! How fiercely shall the
   sword sweep through the hosts of carnal professors--the men who called
   themselves servants of God while they were slaves of the devil--who
   drank of the cup of the Lord, but were drunk with the wine of their own
   lusts--who could lie, cheat, commit fornication and yet dared to
   approach the sacred Table of the Lord? What cutting and hewing will
   there be among the base-born professors of our Churches! It were better
   for such men that they had never been born, or being born, that their
   lot had fallen amid heathen ignorance, so that they might have been
   unable to add sin to sin by lying unto the living God! "Begin at My
   sanctuary." The word is terrible to all those who have a name to live
   and are dead! God grant that in such testing times, when many fail, we
   may survive every ordeal and, through Grace, exclaim in the end, "And I
   was left."

   After the executioners had begun at the sanctuary, it is to be observed
   that they did not spare any except those upon whom was the mark Old and
   young, men and women, priests and people, all were slain who had not
   the sacred sign! And so in the Last Tremendous Day all sinners who have
   not fled to Christ will perish! Our dear babies that died in infancy,
   we believe to be all washed in the blood of Jesus, and all saved--but
   for the rest of mankind who have lived to years of responsibility,
   there will be only one of two things--they must either be saved because
   they had faith in Christ, or else the full weight of Divine Wrath must
   fall upon them. Either the mark of Christ's pen, or of Christ's sword,
   must be upon everyone! There will be no sparing of one man because he
   was rich, nor of another because he was learned, nor of a third because
   he was eloquent, nor of a fourth because he was held in high esteem.
   Those who are marked with the blood of Christ are safe! Without that
   mark all are lost! This is the one separating sign--do you wear it? Or
   will you die in your sins? Bow down at once before the feet of Jesus
   and beseech Him to mark you as His own so that you may be one of those
   who will joyfully cry, "And I was left." Now, secondly, I have to call
   your very particular attention to--

   II. THE PERSONS WHO ESCAPED, who could each say, "And I was left." We
   are told that those were marked for mercy who did "sigh and cry for the
   abominations that were done in the midst thereof." Now, we must be very
   particular about this. It is no word of mine, remember--it is God's
   Word and, therefore, I beg you to hear and weigh it for yourselves. We
   do not read that the devouring sword passed by those quiet people who
   never did anybody any harm--no mention is made of such an exemption!
   Neither does the record say that the Lord saved those professors who
   were judicious and maintained a fair name and reputation until death.
   No, the only people who were saved were those who were exercised in
   heart--and that heart-work was of a painful kind--they sighed and cried
   because of abounding sin. They saw it, protested against it, avoided it
   and, last of all, wept over it continually. Where testimony failed, it
   remained for them to mourn. Retiring from public labors, they sat down
   and sighed their hearts away because of the evils which they could not
   cure. And when they felt that sighing alone would do no good, they took
   to crying in prayer to God that He would come and put an end to the
   dreadful ills which brooded over the land! I would not say a hard
   thing, but I wonder, if I were able to read the secret lives of
   professors of religion, whether I should find that they all sigh and
   cry over the sins of others? Are the tenth of them thus engaged? I am
   afraid that it does not cause some people much anxiety when they see
   sin rampant around them. They say that they are sorry, but it never
   frets them much, or causes them as much trouble as would come of a lost
   sixpence or a cut finger! Did you ever feel as if your heart would
   break over an ungodly son? I do not believe that you are a Christian if
   you have such a son and have not felt an agony on his behalf. Did you
   ever feel as if you could lay down your life to save that daughter of
   yours? I cannot believe that you are a Christian if you have not
   sometimes come to that! When you have gone through the street and heard
   an oath, has not your blood chilled in you? Has not horror taken hold
   upon you because of the wicked? There cannot be much Grace in you if
   that has not been the case. If you can go up and down in the world
   fully at ease because you are prospering in business and things go
   smoothly with you, if you forget the woe of this city's sin and poverty
   and the yet greater woe which comes upon it, how dwells the love of God
   in you? The saving mark is only set on those who sigh and cry--if you
   are heartless and indifferent, there is no such mark on you!

   "Are we to be always miserable?" asks one. Far from it! There are many
   other things to make us rejoice, but if the sad state of our fellow men
   does not cause us to sigh and cry, then we have not the Grace of God in
   us! "Well," says one, "but every man must look to himself." That is the
   language of Cain--"Am I my brother's keeper?" That kind of talk is in
   keeping with the spirit of the Wicked One and his seed--the heir of
   Heaven abhors such language! The genuine Christian loves his race and,
   therefore, he longs to see it made holy and happy. He cannot bear to
   see men sinning and so dishonoring God and ruining themselves. If we
   really love the Lord, we shall sometimes lie awake at night sighing to
   think how His name is blasphemed and how little progress His Gospel
   makes! We shall groan to think that men should despise the glorious God
   who made them and who daily loads them with benefits! It sometimes lies
   upon my heart like a huge mountain which rushes my spirit, to think
   that Jesus should be rejected and that in this land of Bibles, where
   Latimer lit a candle which shall never be put out, the old madness is
   returning and many are again bowing before the images of jealousy which
   the priests have set up! Yes, we have priests among us again! You can
   see them in their long and ugly garments in every street! And women
   have begun to confess to them! Shame! Shame! I marvel that the crimson
   blush does not mantle the cheek of everyone who dares to ask or answer
   the questions appointed for the confessional! And yet the questions are
   asked, modesty is outraged and the multitudes tamely look on!

   My countrymen are going back to Rome! Their fathers' noble blood was
   shed for God and none was left for the veins of their sons. In vain the
   conflicts of the years gone by! In vain a Cromwell's mighty arm and the
   purging of the land! In vain the Puritans driven from their pulpits and
   witnessing in poverty and persecution! Must England go back, again, to
   wear the fetters forged by papal Rome? My God, prevent it! Prevent it
   if it costs the lives of thousands of us, for we would be glad to die
   to save our country from so dire a curse! If you never sigh and cry
   because of the spread of Ritualism, I do not understand you! What stuff
   are you made of? "Oh, but my business goes on exceedingly well." Yes,
   and so does mine when souls are saved, but when they are led away into
   error, my business cannot prosper and I have loss upon loss! I am happy
   enough when I think Christ's Kingdom comes, but nothing beneath the sky
   can give me solid satisfaction if my Lord's work is at a standstill! I
   would to God we were all so taken up with the Glory of God that the
   wickedness of mankind would grieve us to the heart!

   But it was not their mourning which saved those who escaped--it was the
   mark which they all received which preserved them from destruction! We
   must all bear the mark of Jesus Christ. What is that? It is the mark of
   faith in the atoning blood. That sets apart the chosen of the Lord and
   that alone! If you have that mark--and you have it not unless you sigh
   and cry over the sins of others--then in the Last Day no sword of
   justice can come near you! Did you read that word, "But come not near
   any man upon whom is the mark." Come not even nearthe marked ones lest
   they be afraid. The Grace-marked man is safe even from the near
   approach of harm! Christ bled for him and, therefore, he cannot, must
   not die! Leave him alone, you bearers of the destroying weapons! Just
   as the angel of death, when he flew through the land of Egypt, was
   forbidden to touch a house where the blood of the lamb was on the
   lintel and the two side posts, so is it sure that avenging Justice
   cannot touch the man who is in Christ Jesus. Who is he that condemns
   since Christ has died? Have you, then, the blood mark? Yes, or no? Do
   not refuse to question yourself upon this point. Do not take it for
   granted, lest you are deceived. Believe me, your all hangs upon it. If
   you are not registered by the man clothed in linen, you will not be
   able to say, "And I was left."

   This brings me to this last point of which I desire to speak. What
   were--

   III. THE PROPHET'S EMOTIONS WHEN HE SAID, "AND I WAS LEFT"?

   He saw men falling right and left and he, himself, stood like a lone
   rock amidst a sea of blood! And he cried in wonder, "And I was left."

   "Let us hear what he further says--"I fell on my face." He lay
   prostrate with humility. Have you a hope that you are saved? Fall on
   your face, then! See the Hell from which you are delivered and bow
   before the Lord! Why are you to be saved more than anyone else?
   Certainly not because of any merit in you. It is due to the Sovereign
   Grace of God alone! Fall on your face and acknowledge your
   indebtedness--

   "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?"

   "And I was left."

   If a man has been a drunkard and has at length been led to flee to
   Christ, when he says, "And I was left," he will feel the hot tears
   rising in his eyes, for many other drinkers have died in delirium. One
   who has been a public sinner, when she is saved, will not be able to
   think of it without astonishment. Indeed, each saved man is a marvel to
   himself. Nobody here wonders more at Divine Grace in his salvation than
   I do! Why was I chosen, and called, and saved? I cannot make it out,
   and I never shall--but I will always praise, and bless, and magnify my
   Lord for casting an eye of love upon me! Will you not do the same,
   Beloved, if you feel that you, by Grace, are left? Will you not fall on
   your face and bless the mercy which makes you to differ?

   What did the Prophet do next? Finding that he was left, he began to
   pray for others. "Ah, Lord," he said, "will You destroy all the residue
   of Israel?" Intercession is an instinct of the renewed heart. When the
   Believer finds that he is safe, he must pray for his fellow men. Though
   the Prophet's prayer was too late, yet, blessed be God, ours will not
   be! We shall be heard. Pray, then, for perishing men! Ask God, who has
   spared you, to spare those who are like you. Somebody has said there
   will be three great wonders in Heaven--first, to see so many there whom
   we never expected to meet in Glory. Secondly, to miss so many of whom
   we felt sure that they must be safe. And thirdly, the greatest wonder
   of all will be to find ourselves there! I am sure that everyone who has
   a hope of being in Glory feels it to be a marvel and he or she
   resolves, "If I am saved, I will sing the loudest of them all, for I
   shall owe most to the abounding mercy of God!"

   Let me ask a few questions and I have done. The first--and let each man
   ask it of himself--shall I be left when the ungodly are slain? Answer
   it now to yourselves. Men, women, children--will you be spared in that
   Last Great Day? Are you in Christ? Have you a good hope in Him? Do not
   lie to yourselves. You will be weighed in the balances--will you be
   found wanting or not? "Shall I be left?" Let that question burn into
   your souls.

   Next, will my relatives be saved? My wife, my husband, my children, my
   brother, my sister, my father, my mother-- will these all be saved?
   Happy are we who can say, "Yes, we believe they will," as some of us
   can joyfully hope. But if you have to say, "No, I fear that my boy is
   unconverted, or that my father is unsaved," then do not rest till you
   have wrestled with God for their salvation. Good woman, if you are
   obliged to say, "I fear my husband is unconverted," join me in

   prayer. Bow your heads at once and cry unto your God, "Lord, save our
   children! Lord, save our parents! Lord, save our husbands and wives,
   our brothers and sisters and let the whole of our families meet in
   Heaven, unbroken circles, for Your name's sake!"

   May God hear that prayer if it has come from the lips of sincerity! I
   could not endure the thought of missing one of my boys in Heaven--I
   hope I shall see them both there and, therefore, I am in deep sympathy
   with any of you who have not seen your households brought to Christ. O
   for Grace to pray earnestly and labor zealously for the salvation of
   your whole households!

   The next earnest enquiry is, if you and your relatives are saved, how
   about your neighbors, your fellow workmen, your companions in business?
   "Oh," you say, "many of them are scoffers! A good many of them are
   still in the gall of bitterness." A sorrowful fact, but have you spoken
   to them? It is amazing what a kind word will do. Have you tried it? Did
   you ever try to speak to that person who meets you every morning as you
   go to work? Suppose he should be lost? Oh, it will be a bitter feeling
   for you to think that he went down to the Pit without your making an
   effort to bring him to God! Do not let it be so. "But we must not be
   too pushy," says one. I do not know about that. If you saw poor people
   in a burning house, nobody would blame you for being too forward if you
   helped to save them. When a man is sinking in the river, if you jump in
   and pull him out, nobody will say, "You were rude and intrusive, for
   you were never introduced to him!" This world has been lost and it must
   be saved--and we must not mind our manners in saving it. We must get a
   grip of sinking sinners somehow, even if it is by the hair of their
   heads, before they sink, for if they sink, they are lost forever! They
   will forgive us very soon for any roughness that we use, but we shall
   not forgive ourselves if, for lack of a little energy, we permit them
   to die without a knowledge of the Truth of God!

   Oh, beloved Friends, if you are left while others perish, I beseech
   you, by the mercies of God, by the heart of compassion which is in
   Christ Jesus, by the bleeding wounds of the dying Son of God--love your
   fellow men and sigh and cry about them if you cannot bring them to
   Christ! If you cannot save them, you can weep over them. If you cannot
   give them a drop of cold water in Hell, you can give them your heart's
   tears while they are yet in this body!

   But are you in very deed reconciled to God yourselves? Reader, are you
   cured of the awful disease of sin? Are you marked with the blood-red
   sign of trust in the atoning blood? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ? If not, the Lord have mercy upon you! May you have sense enough
   to have mercy upon yourself! May the Spirit of God instruct you to that
   end. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS 8:14-30.

   Verse 14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the
   sons of God. Not those who say they are "the sons of God," but those
   who undoubtedly prove that they are by being led, influenced, gently
   guided by the Spirit of

   God!

   15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear: but
   you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
   We did receive the spirit of bondage once. We felt that we were under
   the Law and that the Law cursed us. We felt its rigorous taxation and
   that we could not meet it. Now that spirit has gone and we have the
   spirit of freedom, the spirit of children, the Spirit of adoption. I
   suppose that the Apostle, when he thus spoke and said, "you," felt so
   much of the Spirit of adoption in his own bosom that he could not talk
   of it as belonging to others alone. He was obliged to include it thus,
   and so he puts it, "You have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we
   cry, Abba, Father." He wanted to intimate that he, himself, was also a
   partaker of this blessed Spirit. And woe to the preacher who can preach
   an adoption which he never enjoyed! Woe to any of us if we can teach
   others concerning the spirit of sonship, but never feel it crying in
   our own souls, "Abba, Father."

   16. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the
   children of God. It corroborates the testimony of conscience. We feel
   that we are the children of God and the Spirit of God comes forward as
   a second, but still greater and higher witness, to confirm the
   testimony that we arethe children of God!

   17. And if children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
   Christ; if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
   together.It is to be all with Him! With Him in the suffering. With Him
   in the glory. With Him in the

   reproach of men. With Him in the honor at the right hand of the Father.
   But if we shun the path of humiliation with Him, we may expect that He
   will deny us in the day of His Glory. 18. For I reckon. Judge, count it
   up, and calculate.

   18. That the sufferings of thispresent time are not worthy to be
   compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.These sufferings,
   however, sharp, are short compared with eternal glory--infinitesimal,
   not worthy to be taken account of--like one drop falling into a river
   and lost in it.

   19-21. For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the
   manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to
   vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who has subjected the same
   in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the
   bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
   There is a future even for materialism. That poor, dusky clod in which
   we dwell is yet to be illuminated with the light of God--and these poor
   bodies which are akin to the dust of the earth, and still remain as if
   they were not delivered, being subjected to pain, and weakness, and
   death--even they are yet to be brought into the glorious liberty of the
   children of God!

   22-23. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain
   together until now. And not only they, but ourselves, also, which have
   the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within
   ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
   body.The soul has obtained its redemption. Therefore, our heart is glad
   and our glory rejoicing. But our body has not yet obtained its
   redemption. That is to come at the Resurrection. Then will be the
   adoption. "Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
   body." Oh, blessed fact! Though now, in common with the whole creation,
   the body is subjected to bondages, yet it shall be delivered and
   we--the whole man, body as well as soul and spirit--shall be brought
   into the liberty of the children of God!

   24-25. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for
   what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it? But if we hope for what
   we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.Ah, Brothers and
   Sisters, if we could be all we should like to be, there would then be
   no room for the exercise of hope! If we had all that we are to have,
   then hope, which is one of the sweetest of the Divine Graces, would
   have no room in which to exercise herself. It is a blessed thing to
   have hope. Though I have heard that faith and hope are not to be found
   in Heaven, I very much question it. I do not think they will ever die.
   "Now abide these three--faith, hope, and love"--for in Heaven there
   will be room, surely, for trust in the ever blessed God that He will
   never cast us out from our blessedness--room for the expectation of the
   Second Advent--room for the expectation of the conquest of the
   world--room for the fulfilled promise of bringing all the elect to
   Glory! Still something to be hoped for! Still something to be believed!
   Yet here is the main sphere of hope and, therefore, let us give it full
   scope. And when other graces seem to be at a non-plus, let us still
   hope. I believe the New Zealand word for hope is "swimming thought,"
   because that will swim when everything else is drowned. Oh, happy is
   that man who has a hope that swims on the crest of the stormiest
   billow!

   26. Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities.And especially our
   infirmities in prayer, for there is where infirmities are mostly seen.

   26. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit
   Himself makes intercession for us with groans which cannot be uttered.I
   should have thought that it would have read, "But the Spirit Himself
   teaches us what we should pray for." But it does more than that. He
   goes beyond teaching us what we should pray for--He "makes intercession
   for us, with groans which cannot be uttered." Do you know what those
   groans are? I am afraid that those who never had groans which cannot be
   uttered will never know anything of that glory which cannot be
   expressed, for that is the way to it. The groans that cannot be uttered
   lead on to unutterable joy!

   27. And He that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the
   Spirit, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the
   will of God.That is the philosophy of prayer. Whatever God's will is,
   the Spirit of God writes it on the hearts of praying saints, and they
   pray for the very thing which God intends to give. As the barometer
   often foretells the weather that is coming, so the spirit of prayer in
   the Christian is the barometer which indicates when showers of blessing
   are coming. It is well with us when we can pray. If we cannot do
   anything else, if we feel that we can pray, times are not so bad with
   us as we might think.

   28. And we know that all things work together for good to them that
   love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. We know
   it! We are assured of it!

   29-30. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
   conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born
   among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also
   called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He
   justified, them He also glorified. No breaking of these links! Where
   God gives one of these blessings, He gives the rest. There is no
   intimation of a failure somewhere in between. The predestinated are
   called, and the called are justified and the justified are glorified!

   31-33. What shall we say, then, to these things? If God is for us, who
   can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up
   for us all, how shall He not, with Him, also freely give us all things?
   Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?Who shall? Who may?
   Who dares?

   33-35. 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 shall separate us
   from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
   persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? All these
   have done their worst.

   36. As it is written, For Your sake we are killed all the daylong; we
   are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But have they divided the
   saints from the love of Christ? Have they made the saints leave off
   loving Christ, or Christ cease from loving His people?

   37-39. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him
   that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor
   angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
   to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
   separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
   For which blessed be the name of the adorable Trinity, world without
   end!
     __________________________________________________________________

God's Prison, Warden and Prisoner

   (No. 3378)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   NOVEMBER 4, 1866.

   "Keep yourselves in the love of God." Jude 1:21

   THIS exhortation is not addressed to all who are here present. It is
   only addressed to those who "are sanctified by God the Father, and
   preserved in Jesus Christ, and called." It is, in fact, addressed only
   to the true Christian who has passed from death unto life--who is a new
   creature in Christ Jesus--and in whom dwells the Holy Spirit. To such
   persons the Apostle Jude says in the text, "Keep yourselves in the love
   of God." To other persons we have this to say--You cannot keep
   yourselves in the love of God, for you never knew what it was to be in
   it. You have lived--with shame and sorrow be it spoken--you have lived
   all this while in a world that is full of God and yet you have never
   perceived Him! You have been a pensioner upon His bounty, clothed by
   His charity, protected by His Providence and yet you have been
   altogether forgetful of the God whom you ought to have loved with all
   your heart, soul and strength! Ah, little do you know what you have
   lost by living without the love of God! The love of God is that which
   fills our mortal existence with the brightness of Heaven and makes us
   feast on immortal joys, even in this vale of tears! If some men were
   born and bred in mines, where they saw not the light of day, I can
   suppose that they would think themselves possibly better off than those
   who had lived above and who had walked abroad in the light. I can
   suppose them to be even conceited because they found themselves better
   able to find their way about in the gloomy caverns below than those
   would be whose eyes had been used to the light--more at home there in
   the gloomy bowels of the earth than the sons of light who had lived
   above. I can imagine their getting much conceit to themselves because
   of their enjoying the darkness which is beneath. But still, what a
   miserable life would it always be to live in that gloom--and what a
   change to be taken suddenly and for the first time from the dark pit
   out into the light--to look upon the green fields, the god of day, the
   flashing waves of the sea and the glories of the starry night! So I can
   conceive many of my hearers having lived so long in the dark world
   where there is no light, that they have acquired the art of living in
   this gloom until they are "wiser in their generation than the children
   of light." They can do a thousand things better than God's people can
   do and they, therefore, perhaps despise the Christian. But oh, my
   Friends, if you could but be brought out into the world of love, the
   world of light, where God, the blessed Sun of Love who floods the earth
   with peace and blessedness could shine upon those darkened eyeballs of
   yours-- if you could but "know the love of Christ which passes
   knowledge"--you would think that you had never lived before and would
   pity yourselves to think you could have spent so many years without
   knowing what true life means! May that come to pass with some tonight!
   Pray, Christian, pray for those who know not God, that He may be found
   of them. Ask for them that mighty Grace may come and meet with them and
   that they may also begin to understand what "the love of God" means!

   But the text is spoken to Christians and we must keep it to them and
   come at once to apply it to the Believer.

   The word, "keep," which is used here, has in it, in the Greek, the idea
   of keeping under a guard, or of keeping a prisoner in custody. There is
   the thought of watchfully regarding one who is likely to escape--and so
   we are told to keep ourselves in the love of God as the warden keeps
   his prisoner in his cell. I do not like to use such a metaphor in
   connection with so sweet a text, and yet I must, and so we will have
   three thoughts. First, we will speak a little about this prison-- oh,
   that we may be always shut up in it!--"the love of God." Secondly,
   about the earnest warden who is told to keep the prisoner And then,
   thirdly, about the free prisoners, "keep yourselves in the love of God.
   "Keep yourselves i n heavenly custody, being never so free and never so
   happy, as when shut up in this Divine enclosure!

   I really do not like to use the text with such a meaning, but I cannot
   very well bring out the meaning of it in any better way. Let us speak,
   then, first of--

   I. THE HEAVENLY PRISON OF "THE LOVE OF GOD."

   There is no restraint about this prison. He who gets into it finds, for
   the first time, true liberty! Then his mind is free from all its
   bondage. Then his faculties find themselves in a sea where they may
   swim. Then are his purest longings gratified. Then are his passions
   allowed to take wing and mount as they will. Then the soul has space to
   float onwards and when it comes fully to the love of God, the new-born
   soul is in its element!

   But what is the meaning of this "love of God," in which we are to keep
   ourselves? It means, first, Believer, that you are to keep your mind in
   the remembrance of the love of God to you. We, alas, forget too often
   what a Friend we have above. Keep up, Christian, the recollection of
   what the Father did for you when He chose you before all worlds! Be
   continually mindful of what the Son did for you when He poured out His
   precious blood upon the Cross and gave His life a ransom for many.
   Never be unmindful of what the Holy Spirit did for you when He called
   you out of darkness into His marvelous light. About the neck of memory
   let the glittering pearls of God's mercy always hang! Take care,
   whatever else you may forget, that you forget not the love of God to
   you! As the Krishna said--

   "Let every idol be forgotten, But oh, my Soul, forget Him not." Let
   your ear be bored to this doorpost of God's love to you! Set this as a
   seal upon your arm and as a ring upon your finger. Brand it into your
   inmost heart and let your soul's core always wear in it the thought of
   God's love to you. Queen Mary said that when she died they would find
   the word, "Calais, "written upon her heart, for the loss of that town
   had grieved her so. But while the Christian lives--for he shall not
   die--there shall always be engraved upon his heart the name of Christ,
   for the love of Christ shall abide there! Yes, we will remember
   You--"we will remember Your love, for Your love is better than wine!"

   The Apostle means, too--Keep yourselves in the assurance of the Divine
   Love. Brothers and Sisters, you have known that Christ loves you. You
   have had it proven to you as clearly as a mathematical demonstration,
   that God loves you. You have even been able to speak in the singular,
   and say, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." There have been
   blessed moments when no ripple of doubt disturbed the glossy surface of
   your calm and peaceful soul. Oh, keep that assurance! Pray that no evil
   doubt may come in to make you think that God does not love you. Ask
   that you may be always able to say, "This is my Beloved: my Beloved is
   mine, and I am His." Do not sometimes climb the mountain and then slip
   down into the treacherous mists of the valley, but ask that you may
   always bathe your forehead in the sunlight of the Divine Assurance of
   the love of God to you! And so keep yourselves in the love of God.

   It means next, keep yourselves in the enjoyment of the love of God. No
   one knows what the enjoyment of the Divine Love is but the man who has
   experienced it. Oh, the calm which a sense of that Divine Love will
   bring to the heart! Our Lord said to the noisy billows of the lake, "Be
   still," and they quickly hushed their raging and there was a great
   calm! But the love of Christ is more than peaceful--it is joyful, it is
   inspiring! The man who has it has a cup filled to the brim and running
   over! And he who drinks of that holy chalice can say, "There is none
   like it." Like the water of the well of Bethlehem by the gate, if any
   of God's people should not be able to get at it, they will sigh for it
   and say, "Oh, that one would give me a drink of that water again!" Some
   of us know what mirth means--we are of a genial nature and can enter
   into the common joys of men. We can sit around the social hearth and
   feel the joys of childhood's prattle and the glee of the little ones.
   We thank God we are not stoics--we can share the joys that are common
   to mankind, but oh, we do proclaim and bear our witness that all the
   joys of earth heaped together are as nothing compared with the bliss of
   having the love of God shed abroad in the heart! The others are but
   common joys, but the love of God is Heaven's own joy! They are but
   husks, which are well enough in their way, but the kernel ofjoy lies in
   a full understanding of the love of God in the soul. Oh, that we could
   always live upon it! That this manna dropped from Heaven every morning,
   that we gathered our omer of it as soon as the sun dawned and fed on it
   till the sun went down! Happy Christians, seek to keep yourselves thus
   in the love of God!

   But, Brothers and Sisters, this is not all. The Apostle also means,
   "Keep yourselves in the power of the love of God." Oh, the power of the
   love of God has in governing and influencing a man! Nothing can master
   a strong temper, a forceful will, an obstinate disposition, or a
   wayward heart like the love of God! Even God's Law is but a frail reed
   compared with

   God's love, which is the rod of Omnipotence. If the love of God is shed
   abroad in the heart, the idols will soon depart and the love of sin
   will take its flight--and the wickedness which you and I could not
   conquer without it will be driven out with this two-edged sword of the
   power of the love of God manifested in the soul! I love to feel myself
   bowed down under this power until I would sacrifice my own interest,
   relinquish all self-seeking, abandon all care of being obedient too my
   own will and be passive in the hand of the Omnipotent Ruler to mold me,
   rule me and govern me just as He wills! We are not like the horse and
   the mule that have a bit in their mouths and that require the rod, but
   when love impels us, our willing feet in swift obedience move and we
   feel it to be a blessed thing to obey His commandments, or even His
   gentle leadings by His gracious Spirit!

   Brothers and Sisters, I pray you take this exhortation in its
   practical, as well as its experimental form. Keep yourselves in the
   love of God, in the manifestation of it Love the souls of your fellow
   men! Pity the poor and needy. Have compassion upon the ignorant and the
   wicked. Let no strangeness nor excess of sin prevent your loving the
   sinner--and let no extravagance or unkindness prevent your forgiving
   one another even unto 70 times seven! Keep yourselves in the love of
   Christ under provocations as multiplied as those which fell upon your
   Master's shoulders and so prove that your charity suffers long and is
   kind, hopes all things, endures all things because it is not mere human
   charity, beautiful as that is, but is the love of God reigning and
   commanding your heart! "Keep yourselves in the love of God" in your
   relations one to another. May no root of bitterness spring up in this
   Church, nor in any other. Love one another as one happy family. Love
   one another, for you will have to dwell together forever in Heaven!
   Bear with each other, as you hope to be borne with by your loving
   Savior. Be knit together in brotherly love! Be as one man--be forceful
   like a phalanx of soldiers marching on to victory. Let the love of God
   reign in your hearts! Let it gleam from your eyes! Let it flash
   radiantly from your countenance! Let it bedew your lips and let its
   savor sweeten your words! Let it give a holy blessedness to your deeds
   and your thoughts!

   Keep yourselves, in all these senses, in the love of God. It is a
   wondrous prison for a man to be in a blessed paradise for him to walk
   in. Paradise had a gate and once Adam never wanted to get out of
   it--just in that sense keep yourselves in this blessed paradise of the
   love of God and wander not from it. And now, secondly and briefly, let
   us say two or three words about--

   II. THE EARNEST WARDEN WHO IS TO KEEP HIMSELF IN THE LOVE OF GOD. This
   warden is not the minister. The minister has to preach and assist me,
   but the minister is not to take care of my soul as though I had nothing
   to do with it. I do not believe in any such nonsense as that you can be
   responsible for other people's souls, so that others may assist you
   with their vigilance. Never, I beseech you, Englishmen and
   Englishwomen, never be such fools as to put yourselves at the feet of a
   priest! Believe that you have as much prevalence with God as these
   pretenders have and that if you go to God, and take your burden of sin,
   you will get it taken off--but if you go roundabout to seek relief and
   pardon through them--you will never get it, for you insult God in the
   way by which you go to work! Oh, may God grant that we may never live
   to see our countrymen so befooled as to put their necks under the
   Romish yoke once again! May England never be beneath a Pope's feet, but
   may we always have too much manliness ever to fall to the snare of this
   cunning fowler! May we always be kept from it and so may always keep
   ourselves in the love of God.

   And now, Mr. Warden, we are to say a word or two to you. See, then,
   your prisoner. He is one, alas, who is very apt at escaping from the
   gracious prison. So infatuated does he become with worldly joys that he
   will oftentimes let his God, his Savior, go. And besides this, there
   are many who are prison breakers and who will break his prison bars for
   him. Shall I tell you their names? There is one fellow called sin. Sin
   will soon prevent your enjoying the love of God. Let the Christian
   hesitate to walk disorderly and he will soon begin to talk lightly of
   his wickedness, and this, again, will soon stop his communion with God.
   Though the Christian shall not perish, yet many of his joys
   shall--though God will keep him so that he shall not be utterly
   destroyed--yet the gladsome sense of the love of God will soon depart
   when sin comes in to lead astray!

   And so it shall be when another breaks the prison, namely, those under
   the command of idolatry. Let your hearts begin to idolize an earth-born
   creature and very soon you will not be able to keep yourselves in the
   love of God. Father, that dear child of yours may become as much an
   idol to you as even the golden calf was to the Israelites! Husband,
   wife, friends, acquaintances, brothers, sisters, our goods, our
   persons, our fame, our reputation--any one of these may be-

   come our idol--and when this is the case, there is no keeping the heart
   in the love of God, for the prison doors are opened and the prisoner,
   unhappily, comes out.

   Warden, if you would keep your prisoner, remember he cannot well come
   out except through the doors, and, therefore, watch well the door by
   which he has communications with the outward world. If you would keep
   yourself in the love of God, Christian, watch yourself well when you
   are in business! Watch yourself when you are in the family. Watch the
   door in private. Watch the communications which you have with the
   ungodly--and as it is here that you would be apt to fritter away your
   joys and lose the richness of your communion--be the more watchful
   here. And, Warden, watch in the night, when it is dark in your soul,
   for many a prisoner has made his escape at nightfall. Watch well when
   trouble comes, lest doubts and fears should come in. And if you would
   lock your prisoner securely in and keep him from escaping from the
   all-surrounding love of God, watch yourself carefully at all times,
   lest by any means you slip from this good way!

   And, Warden, I would recommend you to take care that every bolt in the
   prison door is securely fastened. God has given you certain Gospel
   ordinances and if you would keep yourself in the love of God, read His
   Word, for it will stir you up to bind yourself to Him! Be much in
   private prayer, for this has a force like a bolt to keep out the world
   and keep you in.

   Come to the Communion Table, for at the time when Christ is known in
   the breaking of bread, another bolt is put between you and the world!
   In fine, whatever He says unto you, do it, for in keeping of His
   commandments there is great reward.

   And, Warden, since you have a prisoner to keep who needs much watching,
   load him well with chains. Do you think this is a hard suggestion? The
   chains are such that the more of them the prisoner wears, the more
   free, light, and happy he will be! Shall I tell you how to forge them?
   Forge them on the anvil of meditation! Think of what God did before the
   earth was. Think of eternal love before the day star had begun to
   shine. Think of what Jesus did for you in the Covenant and in the
   suretyship engagements of eternity! Bind about your soul the chain of
   the Savior's pangs and griefs. If you would keep your heart a blessed
   prisoner in the love of God, nail it with nails which pierced the hands
   of Christ and bind it to the pillar where the Lord was scourged! Make
   every drop of blood which Jesus sweat in the Garden and shed upon the
   Cross, to be a course of mighty network bound about your heart to hold
   it a fast prisoner forever!

   Oh Brothers and Sisters, we have indeed enough to bind us to Christ if
   we were not the most willfully forgetful men and women in the world!
   Oh, what has Jesus done for me? Rather, what has He not done for me? He
   is All-in-All and being to me more than all, let me bind the sacrifice
   with cords, even with cords to the horns of the altar! Let the hands of
   a man and the cords of love be cast about this prisoner so that he may
   never get out of the Divine enclosure of the love of

   God!

   I cannot set before you as I would, nor with all the earnestness I want
   to command, the necessity of thus binding your heart to the love of
   Christ, but I will add this. Warden, take care to call in help and
   remember there is One who can help you very efficiently. It is the Holy
   Spirit. You keep yourself in the love of God? Indeed, you cannotdo it
   unless you call in Divine Power. If ever you get the love of God in
   your heart, go down on your knees and ask the Holy Spirit to always
   keep it there! You shall never catch this bird and shall never be able
   to keep it unless the Holy Spirit helps you. Oh, to be crucified with
   Christ! We may well desire it--to be fastened to His Cross so that we
   shall never again desire to wander, but feel ourselves the happy
   bond-slaves, the free servants of our Lord Jesus Christ! And now, time
   flies and we have, thirdly, to say a word or two about--

   III. THE FREE, THE HAPPY AND THE BLESSED PRISONER who is thus exhorted
   to keep himself in the love

   ofGod.

   My dear Brothers and Sisters, if by the help of God we shall be able to
   do this, how happy we shall be. I would make no stipulation of any kind
   if God would grant me one request, namely, that He would keep me in His
   love. If I might but have this request granted, I am sure it would be
   equal to me whether He may have appointed me life or death, or whether
   He may have appointed me weal or woe! It would make no difference where
   one lived, if one lived in the love of God!

   It would make no difference, either, whether one were in wealth or
   poverty, if the love of Christ had consumed all care about self. When
   once the love of God, like a devouring flame, has consumed and
   destroyed all care about self, then we are perfectly happy. It is
   impossible to then be miserable--all that the heart wants is to be kept
   in the love of God--

   for then it would always be in a state of true blessedness! Dear
   Brothers and Sisters, how important it is that we should be happy!
   Moses, without the brightness of his face, would be little more than
   other men. And a Christian without holy joy--what is he? I am certain
   that nothing has done more mischief to Christianity than the loss ofjoy
   of some professors. Why, there are some of you that only dishonor your
   religion by your constant moans and groans! If we are not happy, who
   ought to be? Children of God, heirs of Heaven, accepted in the
   Beloved--all our sins forgiven and we ourselves on the way to
   Heaven--if we do not sing, who can sing? If there is no holy mirth in
   our hearts, no joyous songs set to glorious tunes in our souls as we go
   along our pilgrimage to Heaven, then it must be a miserable world
   indeed! But a happy Christian entices others to Christ. His very face
   and bearing are a Gospel ministry of invitation to others. And those
   otters say, "We will go with you, for we perceive that the Lord is with
   you."

   And there is another thing. If you are kept in the love of God, besides
   being happy, you will be so useful. If we do not enjoy the love of God,
   ourselves, we cannot do much good to others. You will be blessed to
   your families. You will be blessed to the ungodly and you will be
   blessed wherever you are if you are kept in the love of God. I can
   conceive that a man with the love of God in his heart, if he saw a
   stranger here, would be pretty sure to have a word with him and,
   perhaps, the stranger would be very glad. I am sure there are here
   every Sunday a great many people who would be quite willing to have a
   little talk about Divine things and to whom a little private
   conversation might be far more useful than any sermon that I could
   deliver. You who have the love of God in you will look after such--you
   cannot help it. You love, and God loves. God is blessing you and you
   want to bless men--and you will pine and pant to bring others to the
   Savior! I need you, the members of this Church, particularly to have
   the love of God in your hearts just now, so that these daily Prayer
   Meetings of ours may be seasons of great and miraculous power! When a
   cold heart comes into the Prayer Meeting, if it does not hinder, at any
   rate it brings no help--but every warm and loving heart that comes
   increases the general fire. You each bring your bundle of wood, as it
   were, and put it on the hearth, and so it makes one great blaze! Oh,
   when a thousand hearts that are full of love come together, then prayer
   is sure to speed!

   If your heart is full of the love of God, it will keep on going up to
   Heaven in prayer, even when you are at your business or your work, as
   well as when you are in the House of God. Brothers and Sisters, we
   shall yet have great times! God is going to bless us and we shall see
   greater things than the world has ever beheld since the day of
   Pentecost! I trust we are seeking for it and expecting it--and if so,
   we shall get it! Let us seek to have the blessing in ourselves and ask
   to be kept in the love of God!

   It would not do for the farmer to have his men ill in harvest
   time--they must be strong and hearty and robust when they have to reap.
   Oh, that you and I may be made strong to reap here! At such times they
   bring out the big bottle and though some of us do not think that that
   is the best thing that could be done for the workman, yet I would like,
   tonight, to bring out among you the big bottles of the promises of God
   of which you may drink without any fear of getting intoxicated! Oh,
   that you could drink of such a promise as this, "I will be with you,"
   and then, full of strength, go out into the fields and work for Christ
   without weariness! When Heaven begins to open its golden gates and
   throw open its windows, and cast out its blessings, then, at all
   events, let us open the doors of our hearts, throw them wide open in
   expectancy and open the doors of our mouths wide that God may fill
   them! Let us come up to this House and go to our own houses, too, with
   the love of God plenteously shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
   Spirit and let this be always our prayer--

   "Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove,

   With all Your quickening powers.

   Come, shed abroad a Savor's love,

   And that shall kindle ours."

   Now, to many here I am afraid I have been saying some things which are
   no more understood by them than Latin or Greek would be! You could not
   understand it, but there is one thing I want you to understand before
   you go tonight, and that is this, "God so loved the world that He gave
   His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish,
   but have everlasting life," and whoever here believes in Him--that is,
   trusts Christ to save him--shall not perish, but have everlasting life!
   Whatever his past life may have been, however black his character may
   be, if he will but come to the Heavenly Father, through Christ,
   trusting in Christ who bore the punishment for sin, such a man or woman
   or child shall be forgiven! They shall be saved, shall be made a new
   creature, shall go on their way rejoicing! And they will be

   filled with the love of God and, with all the blood-washed, shall pass
   through the pearly gates--and in Heaven shall join with them in singing
   of the love of God, world without end! May you and I have a portion
   there, for Christ's sake.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOHN 14.

   Verse 1. Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe
   also in Me. You will be troubled--that cannot be helped. But let not
   your heart be troubled. You are like a ship and all the water in the
   sea cannot hurt a ship if it is kept outside of her. Let not your heart
   be troubled. How are you to prevent it? Faith is the remedy. You
   already be-lieve--believe more. "You believe in God, believe also in
   Me." "You have a trust in the infinite power of God--believe in Me as
   the Incarnation of His infinite love."

   2. In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would
   have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. There is no room for
   you on earth--there will be in Heaven. If troubles should so multiply
   that it seems impossible to live in them, you shall be carried away
   where you shall live above them. "In My Father's house are many
   mansions." You may depend upon the love of Christ, Beloved, for if
   there were anything dark, mysterious, or distressing which would lead
   you to despair, He would not have kept it back. He treats you frankly.
   "If it were not so, I would have told you. I go and you are sorry that
   I go. It is one source of your sorrow. But I go to prepare place for
   you."

   3. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
   receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.Oh,
   this is ground for sweet comfort, and it ought to yield it to us
   tonight! He has gone, but He will come again. He has not left us
   forever. Space divides us for awhile, but, skipping over the mountains
   like a roe and a young hart, He will come again, even to this poor
   world and to us, His waiting Church, He will come again. Therefore,
   have patience. Let not your heart be troubled. Jesus Christ will come
   very soon.

   4. And where I go, you know, and the way you know. You know where
   Christ is gone. You know how to get at Him. The Throne on which He sits
   is the Throne of Grace. He is gone to the Father, and your prayers will
   find the Father. You know the way. Then frequent it and though as yet
   in your bodies you cannot reach Him, yet in spirit you can. "Where I go
   you know, and the way you know."

   5. Thomas said unto Him, Lord, we know not where You go; and how can we
   know the way?Which was a contradiction of His Master, which Thomas
   ought not to have uttered! He should have put it much rather in the
   form of a question for explanation, than of such a flat denial. His
   Master said, "Where I go you know." Thomas said, "We know not where You
   go." We must take care that we do not contradict Christ! Our unbelief
   would be shamed out of us if we were to look at it and examine it. I am
   persuaded that your faith will be justified the more you examine it,
   till you will discover that faith in God is nothing, after all, but
   sanctified commonsense! So unbelief will appear to be more shameful the
   more you examine it, till you discover at length that it is nothing but
   garish folly. An outrage upon the first principles of wisdom is
   distrust of God!

   6. 7. Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no
   man comes unto the Father, but by Me. If you had known Me, you would
   have known My Father also: and from now on you know Him, and have seen
   Him. This, then, is the main point of knowledge with us--to know
   Christ. All the studies in the world are vain compared with the study
   of Christ Crucified! This is the most excellent of all the sciences. He
   that knows Christ, knows the way, the truth, the life, yes, and God
   Himself!

   8, 9. Philip said to Him, Lord show us the Father, and it is sufficient
   for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet
   have you not known Me, Philip? He that has seen Me has seen the Father;
   and why do you say, then, Show us the Father? The best view of God we
   can ever have is Christ! In the Person of His Son there is more seen of
   God than in all Nature--yes and in all history added to Nature! God has
   given us a full-length portrait of Himself in Jesus, while in all His
   works, we have no more than a mere miniature of Him. Oh, that we knew
   Christ more! Then should we know the Father.

   10-12. Believe you not that Iam in the Father, and the Father in Me?
   The words that Ispeak unto you Ispeak not of Myself: but the Father
   that dwells in Me, He does the works. Believe Me that Iam in the
   Father, and the Father in Me: or else believe Me for the very works'
   sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes on Me, the works
   that I do

   shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go
   to My Father Oh, what strength there is in faith! These are the same
   people who are not to be troubled. They are to rise so much above
   trouble of heart that they are to become performers of works like
   Christ's! Yes, and since Christ has gone and He has endowed us with the
   Holy Spirit, we are to do yet greater works than He did! Oh, to know
   the possibilities of our nature--to know what God can do by us! What
   appears to us as we are, as unable to be done, we may be enabled to do
   through the spirit of God which is in Christ Jesus.

   13, 14. And whatever you shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the
   Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in My
   name, I will do it. It does not mean that every prayer will be
   answered. The power to ask a thing in Christ's name is not given to
   everybody. It is not merely to say at the end of your prayer, "for
   Christ's sake." It is another thing--it is to be able to feel that as
   Christ stood in your place, so you dare stand in Christ's place--and
   what you have asked, you have asked in His name, feeling that what you
   have asked is such that Christ would have asked it. Now, when you can
   feel that, and can feel that Christ puts His seal on what you have
   asked, then you ask in His name! A person cannot always speak in the
   name of another--cannot do it at all unless he has received an
   authorization to do so. Then he stands as that person's deputy--stands
   in his place--speaks in his name. I am sure that nine out of ten of the
   prayers of Christians are not offered in the name of Christ and could
   not be! It would be a sin against Christ for such prayers to be
   supposed to be the prayers of Christ! But when we talk of the Spirit of
   God, and we dare ask in the name and use the seal of Christ--to set His
   signature at the bottom of our petition, then, Brothers and Sisters,
   depend upon it--Christ will do it!

   15. If you love Me, keep My commandments. Oh, some of us would have
   liked Him to have said, "If you love Me, give all your money! Go into a
   convent! If you love Me, perform some wonderful action. Go into the
   streets and preach where you will be hooted. Go to some foreign country
   and get yourself made a martyr." No, no! "If you love Me, keep My
   commandments. Stay at home near your father and mother. If you love Me,
   love My disciples. Let love rule you. And in that place in life in
   which I have set you, try to honor My name by exhibiting My Character.
   If you love Me, keep My commandments."

   16-19. And 1 will pray the Father, and He shall give you another
   Comforter that He may abide with you forever Even the Spirit of Truth;
   whom the world cannot receive, because it sees Him not, neither knows
   Him: but you know Him: for He dwells with you, and shall be in you. I
   will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while,
   and the world sees Me no more; but you see Me: because I live, you
   shall live also. "Yet a little while and the world sees Me no more; but
   you see Me." Now, when the world does not see Him, we still see Him. He
   is present to our faith, though passing from our sight. "Because I
   live, you shall live also." Is He a dead Christ? Then He has a dead
   people for His Church. He is a living Savior! He has a living people
   and they shall no more die than He shall die, "for He, being raised
   from the dead, dies no more; death has no more dominion over Him."
   "Because I live, you shall live also."

   20. At that day you shallknow that Iam in My Father, and you in Me,
   andIin You. What a wonderful union this is--Christ in the Father, the
   saints in Christ and Christ in the saints! These are riddles which are
   not meant for the children of this world--but they who are the children
   of God shall understand them, shall live upon them!

   21. He that has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves
   Me. Not He that preaches about them, talks much about them, boasts
   about a higher life and all sorts of things, but, "He that has My
   commandments and keeps them, He it is that loves Me: and he that loves
   Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest
   Myself to him."

   21, 22. And He that loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will
   love him, and will manifest Myself to him. Judas said unto Him, not
   Iscariot, Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself unto us, and
   not unto the world?If you do manifest Yourself to us, who are only a
   few poor fishermen, You do not extend Your Kingdom much. But if You
   would manifest Yourself to the world in all Your Glory, surely they
   would be surprised and overwhelmed, and Your Kingdom would thus come."
   But that is not Christ's way. His manifestations are for His own: not
   for glitter, but for edification. He comes to bless them--not that He
   may be ostentatious among men.

   23. Jesus answered and said to him, If a man loves Me, he will keep My
   words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make
   our abode with him. Oh, what an honored man that--for the Father and
   the Son to be his guests--to make an abode in his heart!

   24-28. He that loves Me not keeps not My sayings; and the word which
   you hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me. These things have
   I spoken unto you being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which
   is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall
   teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
   whatever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give
   unto you: not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart
   be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard how I said unto
   you, I go away, and come again unto you. If you loved Me, you would
   rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for My Father is greater
   than I. Christ had stooped to take a lower place for our sakes.

   29-31. And now I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it is
   come to pass, you might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with
   you: for the prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me. But
   that the world may know that I love the Father: and as the Father gave
   Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go from here.
     __________________________________________________________________

Rough, But Friendly

   (No. 3379)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore
   every man's money into his sack, and to give them provisions for the
   way: and thus did he unto them." Genesis 42:25.

   AN immense number of persons came down into Egypt from all parts of the
   world to buy corn. Many of these Joseph never saw. Many others came
   into his presence. I do not find that of all who came, he treated any
   of them roughly, except his own brothers. "Strange!" you will say, and
   if you did not know the sequel of the story, it would not only seem
   strange, but cruel. You would not know how to account for such a thing.

   Very like this is the manner of God's Providence. There are thousands
   of people living in this world, with all of whom God deals according to
   wisdom. We all bear trouble in a measure, for, "Man is born unto
   trouble, as the sparks fly upwards."Some have more troubles than others
   and these often happen to be those who are dearest to the Lord. If any
   man escapes the rod, the true-born children of the royal family of
   Heaven never can! Some may sin and prosper, but the righteous, if they
   sin, suffer. The ungodly are permitted to fatten like sheep for the
   slaughter, to have no bands even in their death. Their strength is
   firm, they are not in trouble, as other men, neither are they plagued
   like other men. But as for God's people, the waters of a full cup are
   wrung out to them. Through much tribulation they inherit the Kingdom.
   To them is a special promise which is sure to be fulfilled--"In the
   world you shall have tribulation." Now, if we did not know the end of
   the Lord and His great design in thus dealing with His people, it would
   seem to be a strange, inexplicable mystery that the best beloved should
   be the most afflicted and that the Brothers and Sisters of the reigning
   Savior should be those whom He treats most roughly. Others take their
   sacks of corn and go--these, 'tis true, shall have their sacks filled
   and more--but they shall not go until first there have been some rough
   passages of arms between them and the Brother, who, though he loves
   them so well, speaks so shortly to them!

   Laying it down, then, as a rule, that God's servants will be dealt
   roughly with by their Master, that the Brothers and Sisters of Christ
   must accept it, I shall now proceed to offer a few thoughts, which,
   perhaps, may be comfortable to those of God's people who are in
   trouble. From the text and its surroundings, I gather this Truth of
   God--

   I. WHEN THE LORD IS ABOUT TO GIVE GREAT FAVORS, HE OFTEN DEALS ROUGHLY
   WITH THOSE

   WHO ARE TO RECEIVE THEM.

   Joseph intends to bless his brothers. He has the most liberal of the
   royal designs towards them, but he first deals roughly with them.
   Before the Lord Jesus Christ shall come to give His Church her last and
   most transcendent blessing in His millennial reign of splendor, there
   are vials that are to be poured out. There will be wars and rumors of
   wars. There will be the shaking of Heaven and earth--great distress,
   famine, pestilences and earthquakes. The greater the blessing, the
   greater the trial that shall precede it! So, too, with our own souls.
   When the Lord Jesus Christ intended to save us and to give us a sense
   of pardon of our sins, He began by convincing us of our iniquity. He
   dealt heavy blows at our self-righteousness. He laid us in the dust and
   seemed to roll us in the mire. It seemed as though He delighted to
   tread upon us and to crush our every hope and destroy every fond
   expectation! It was all to wean us from self-righteousness, to pull us
   up by the roots, to prevent our growing and taking fast hold on the
   earth, to compel us to rest in His blood and righteousness and to seek
   our soul's life entirely from Him! That great blessing of salvation
   was, with the most of us, at any rate, preceded by thick clouds and
   tempests! We were convinced of sin, of self-righteousness, of judgment
   to come, and our heart trembled! And afterwards, when He had dealt
   roughly with us, He said, "Your sins, which are many, are all forgiven
   you: go in peace." It seems, then, our experience is general and
   common, that the love letters of our Lord Christ

   have come to us in black envelopes and there has generally been a
   thunderstorm preceding a shower of special mercy! The clear shinings
   have been after the rain. The flood tide has come in most gloriously,
   but there has first been an ebb. It has always been so with us till
   now. I think experienced Christians begin to dread their joy and to
   expect blessings from their sorrows. When things apparently go bad,
   they know they really go well, and when things apparently go well, we
   are very apt to fear and tremble for all the good which God makes to
   pass before us and fear, lest in the dead calm, there may lurk some
   mischief to our souls.

   Why does the Lord deal roughly with His servants when He means to bless
   them? Is it not to keep them sober?High spiritual joys have about them
   an intoxicating element to our poor nature. "Lest I should be exalted
   above measure," said the Apostle, "there was given unto me a thorn in
   the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me." Sometimes the trial
   comes before the mercy, sometimes with the mercy, sometimes after the
   mercy--but a trial and a high degree of spiritual joy are usually
   wedded together so that when you get the one--you may look out of the
   window for the other. 'Tis to keep us sober. Here is a brisk gale of
   spiritual influence upon our fluttering sail. What then? And why? Our
   poor boat would soon be upset, but God ballasts us with a weight of
   affliction, so that the vessel may keep steady amidst the waves. Master
   Brookes gives us a simile in which he shows us the danger there is even
   in the best and most spiritual enjoyments--he says, "Suppose a man
   loved his wife so very dearly and gave her so many rings, jewels and
   earrings, that she prized these and wore them till she began,
   by-and-by, to dote upon her ornaments and to forget her husband? You
   could not blame him if he took these away because he wants her love for
   himself, not for his gifts." Now, instead of taking away these things,
   which it would be necessary for Him to do in order to keep us from
   spiritual ruin, the Lord is pleased to checker our lives. There are the
   bright stripes, or evidences of Grace, and then there are the black
   squares of our troubles and afflictions. In that way an equilibrium is
   kept up--we are balanced--we do not grow top-heavy. And we are enabled
   to walk safely in the ways of the Lord. That is one reason He speaks
   roughly and deals graciously, to keep us sober.

   Is it not likewise, to keep ushumble?When a child of God gets one inch
   above the ground in his own esteem, he gets an inch too high! Whenever
   the man of God says, "I am rich and increased in goods and have need of
   nothing," he is very close to spiritual bankruptcy! None are so rich in
   Grace as those who pine for more. None are so near to fullness as those
   who mourn their emptiness--the men who find their fullness not in
   themselves, but in Christ Jesus the Lord! Brothers and Sisters, those
   10 sons of Jacob must have felt their importance evaporate when Joseph
   put them in prison. Here they were "true men," as they said, "the sons
   of one man," but no respect is paid to the Patriarch or to their
   patriarchal descent. They are put in prison as if they were common
   spies whose fate is generally the most ignoble. Now they begin to think
   of themselves in a very different light from that in which they did
   when they set out with their money in their hands to pay for their corn
   and have their money's worth. They were gentlemen, merchant traders
   when they entered Egypt, but after awhile they seemed like beggars in
   their own esteem and better still, they begin to remember their faults!
   They call to remembrance that they were verily guilty concerning their
   brother. And the Lord never intends us to ride the high horse in
   thinking large things of ourselves. One thing I have always noticed as
   an observer, that whenever any man of God begins to get great, God
   always makes him smart. I think I have never seen a Brother prospering
   in the ministry, or anywhere else, who began to be too large for
   association with his brethren, too good and too holy, perhaps, even to
   meet with common Christians--such a man has never kept up long--that
   balloon has come down--that bubble has, before long, gone to pieces.
   The profession of very extreme holiness has generally ended in the most
   dolorous iniquity and the professed exaltation of the heart on account
   of talent and success has generally led to degradation and shame! Hence
   the Lord, who would not have us exalted above measure, speaks roughly
   to us to keep us humble, as well as to keep us sober.

   Why does He deal roughly with us? Is it not to give us another reason
   for coming to Him? Jacob's sons might not have come down to Egypt
   again. They might have said, "We would rather starve than go to be
   bull-baited by the lord of the land." But when Simeon is in prison they
   must go down. They have a reason for going and a reason which overcomes
   them, let them strive against it as they may! And, child of God, when
   the Lord favors you with His smile and with the light of His
   Countenance, He takes care at the same time to give you a trouble that
   shall compel you to come to the Mercy Seat. Oh, but I think it is a
   blessed thing to go to the Throne of Grace on an errand! Many pray out
   of custom, perhaps that is well, but I believe there is no praying like
   the praying of a man who has got an errand--he who goes to God because
   he needs, must go because he has something to ask for--and these rough
   dealings of God keep us well stocked with

   motives for being much on our knees, for much pleading with the Father
   of Mercies that He would deliver us out of affliction and out of
   temptation--and is not this kindness on our Father's part thus to deal
   roughly with us that He may compel us to the sweet duty of prayer?

   Moreover, Brothers and Sisters, does it not strike you that the Lord's
   rough dealings with His children, when He intends to bless them, have
   the effect of making them see how utterly dependent they are for that
   blessing from Him? Why, Jacob's sons could now see that Joseph could
   lock them up for life, or take away their lives, or could send them
   back, if he pleased, with empty sacks to starve! They were entirely in
   his hands. They had no more power to escape than the dove has from the
   talons of the hawk. So God would have us know that we are entirely and
   absolutely in His hands, as the clay in the hand of the potter. If He
   pleases to withhold His hand, all the world and all Heaven cannot help
   us! If the Lord did not help you, how shall I help you out of the barn
   floor, or out of the winepress? That well stopped, all the world is
   walled up--there are no other bottles that can water you. Child of God,
   you are as dependant today upon the bounty of Heaven as at your
   conversion! A babe in Grace is not more dependent upon God than the
   mature and venerable Christian! Our life is in the hands of Christ. Our
   breath is in His nostrils. Let the foundations of our lives, either
   natural or spiritual, be taken away by a cessation of Divine Power and
   we crumble into spiritual and into physical death! We shall hold on our
   way, glory be to God, but not from any power that is in us, nor through
   our own innate strength! These shall melt away and droop and die under
   the exigencies of our spiritual pilgrimage. It is from the overflowing
   fountains of inexhaustible strength we must derive our supplies and so
   hold on to the end. Thus, treating us roughly makes us like bottles in
   the smoke--we become dry, shriveled up and empty--but still, it leads
   us to see how much the Lord can do for us. Being brought into need, it
   shows that all that is done, is done of His mercy and His
   sovereignty--not of our merit, nor through any concurrent help from
   us--but altogether, utterly and alone of Him!

   Now, child of God, let me put this point to you very plainly. Without
   saying anything further, are you in very deep trouble tonight? Do all
   God's waves and billows go over you? Does deep call unto deep at the
   noise of His waterspouts? Then expect that now some great blessing will
   come of it! That stone on the lapidary's wheel has been cut, and cut,
   and cut again. That other stone in the corner of the shop is but a
   common pebble and he never vexes it upon the wheel, for it is
   worthless. But the more precious the stone is in His esteem, the more
   diligently does He cut its facets. You are dear to God. Therefore is it
   that He tries you again and again, but good shall come of it and you
   shall blaze and sparkle, and glitter with Divine Grace which would have
   been otherwise unknown to you! Your tribulation shall work patience in
   you, and patience shall work experience, and experience hope, and hope
   shall make you not to be ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad
   in you. You are trading in a profitable market! There is no usury so
   heavy as the interest of affliction. The black ships of trouble come
   home laden with pearls of Grace. Therefore, be of good cheer. Take the
   rough usage from your Brother Joseph--you must and will prevai1! But I
   must change the tune. Our next observation upon the text is that while
   the Lord deals roughly with His servants--

   II. HE USUALLY GIVES THEM AT THE SAME TIME PROVISION BY THE WAY so that
   they may be enabled

   to bear His roughness and to endure all the difficulties through which
   they are called to pass.

   You observe Joseph had put Simeon in prison and had treated his other
   brothers very roughly, yet he gave them their sacks full of corn and
   put money into the mouths of their sacks. And then, as a third
   blessing, he gave them provisions for the way. Never does a child of
   God pass through trial without some special provision being made for
   him during his time ofneed.

   But what provision is this? Why, dear Brothers and Sisters, there are
   different provisions according to different needs! Sometimes the child
   of God under trial has a wonderful sense of Divine Love. ' 'Oh, how He
   loves me," he says. There comes stroke after stroke--husband dies,
   child is buried, the property is wasted--yet the dear child says, "I
   cannot weep or repine, for I feel God loves me. I know not how it is,
   but I feel it so fresh and strong upon my soul and I have such a
   wonderful impression of that dear love of His, that it quite overcomes
   my sorrows and takes the edge off my grief." And, let me say, there is
   nothing that under trial can support a soul so well as the love of God
   shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us! To
   know that my Father sees it all and orders all in love--in special love
   to me--oh, this makes the back strong enough to bear a very world of
   trouble and yet not to be wearied!

   At other times God's servants have been fed on a joyous view of the
   Covenant of Grace. I have known some who in their trouble have come to
   understand the deep doctrines of the Word of God as they never
   understood them before and could then say with David, "Although my
   house is not so with God, yet has He made with me an Everlasting
   Covenant, ordered in all things and sure." And as they look to the
   provisions of that Covenant, to the sureness of the Covenant, to the
   blessings of the Covenant, to the everlasting nature of the Covenant,
   their souls have been so ravished and transported with joy that they
   could beat poverty, or pain, or whatever form of roughness their
   heavenly Joseph might choose to put upon them!

   Others of the Lord's people have been sustained in their trouble by a
   delightful outlook to the end of their sorrows and the better land on
   the other side of Jordan. Oh, there have been saints upon sick beds who
   have scarcely felt the torture of their pain or their disease, through
   the excess of bliss they have enjoyed in foretastes of the better land!
   Martyrs have been heard to call the fiery branches a bed of roses! And
   sometimes it has been almost questionable whether they suffered or not!
   The bodily pain must have been there, but the wonderful excitement of
   sacred joy in the thought that they were so soon to be with Christ and
   that their burning pile was but a chariot of fire to bear them to their
   Beloved has lifted them up above the tormenting sensation! They have
   been treated roughly, but they have had such provision by the way that
   they forgot the roughness as they rejoiced with unspeakable joy and
   full of glory! Well may the traveler trip over a rough road when his
   home is so near before him--the glittering spires of the new Jerusalem,
   the everlasting rest, the sweet fields arrayed in living green, the
   rivers of delight--

   "Oh, could we stand where Moses stood,

   And view the landscape o'er--

   Not Jordan's stream nor death's cold flood

   Should fright us from the shore." Roughly treat us as You will, good
   Lord, if we have this money in our sack's mouth and this provision by
   the way, we will be well content!

   The Lord sometimes sustains His people under His own roughness by the
   recollection of their past experiences.''My God, my soul is cast down
   within me; therefore will I remember You from Hermon and from the hill
   Mizar." The faithfulness of God in the past has been so vividly
   remembered that the child of God could not dare to doubt! The evidence
   of God's love was so strong, vehement and fresh in his soul that he
   cried, "Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him; let Him do what He
   will to me, yet do I know that in very faithfulness He has afflicted
   me." He could hear these silver bells, thousands of them, all around,
   above, below, beneath--ringing out this tune--

   "For His mercy shall endure, Ever faithful, ever sure."

   Oh, let the Hell drum be beaten as loudly as the devil can beat it and
   let affliction come from Heaven, earth and Hell all at once--as long as
   we know that God's mercy endures forever, our mouth shall be filled
   with laughter and we shall boast in the name of the Lord!

   The saints of God have also had this provision by the way. In their
   sufferings they have enjoyed a sight of the greater sufferings of
   Christ--

   "Why should I complain of want or distress,

   Temptation or pain? He told me no less.

   The heirs of salvation, I know from His Word,

   Through much tribulation must follow their Lord.

   How bitter that cup, no heart can conceive,

   Which He drank quite up that sinners might live!

   His way was much rougher and darker than mine--

   Did Christ my Lord suffer, and shall I repine?" A sight of the steps of
   the Crucified One has often checked the tears which have been flowing,
   while the enraptured child of God would stand and sing in holy wonder--

   "Christ leads me through no darker rooms

   Than He went through before--

   He that into this Kingdom comes

   Must enter by this door."

   Thus I might continue to show what kind of provision it is that the
   Lord gives by the way, but the time fails me. Indeed, for me to tell
   you of it has nothing to do with receiving it. Oh, child of God, let me
   rather put it close to you and

   may the Holy Spirit comfort you with it! You shall never be sent on a
   journey without provender and you shall never have to go to battle at
   your own charges. If the Lord tries you, it shall never be above what
   you are able to bear, for He will, with the temptation, make a way of
   escape, that you may be able to bear it. He may treat you roughly, but
   He will fill your sack. He may speak sharp words, but He will put your
   money into your sack's mouth. He may take your Simeon and bind him
   before your eyes, but He will give you provision by the way till you
   get to the goodly land where you shall need no more provision and the
   Lamb shall be forever with you--and you with Him! The third lesson
   which we draw from this is that though sometimes the Lord treats His
   people roughly, more roughly than He does any other people, yet--

   III. HE GIVES THEM THE BEST OF THE BARGAIN IN THE LONG RUN.

   These, his brothers, were the only ones Joseph spoke roughly to, but
   they were the only ones upon whose necks he afterwards fell and wept.
   They were the only ones that made the tears come into his eyes. They
   were the only ones of whom he said, "I will preserve you alive." They
   were the only ones for whom he sent the wagons to bring them down,
   saying, "Regard not your stuff, for the whole land of Egypt is yours."
   They were the only ones whom he brought in before Pharaoh and said,
   "Behold my father and my brothers." They were highly favored and they
   dwelt in the land of Goshen and they had rest. Child of God, you will
   have the best of it soon! Even now you are the only ones that Christ
   deigns to call His Brothers and Sisters. You are the only people of
   whom it is written that you are a people dear to Him. You are the only
   people for whom Christ prayed, for He said, "I pray not for the world,
   but for those whom You have given Me out of the world, that they may be
   one." You are the people for whom all things work together for good. As
   many of you as have believed in the Lord Jesus and are resting upon Him
   for salvation, though your path may be rough and thorny, you are the
   only people who have God, Himself, to be your Captain, who have His
   fiery cloudy pillar to be your direction and who shall have the
   everlasting rest, the eternal portion! Be of good courage. Your riches
   in reversion are such that you can smile at poverty. Your rest which is
   yet to come is such that you may well despise the labor which makes you
   eat your bread in the sweat of your face. Your glory which is to come
   so excels that you may forget your poverty and your reproach. Your
   being with Christ will be so superlatively, Divinely blessed, that you
   may well, for awhile, bear to have a rough word or two from Him--

   "Forever with the Lord! Amen, so let it be!"

   When it shall be so, when you are forever with the Lord, if you could
   be ashamed, you would be ashamed and confounded to think that you ever
   murmured, or ever entertained a thought of complaint against the kind
   and gracious God who ordered all things for the best for you to promote
   your profit and His Glory! May that thought cheer you, you who are
   depressed and cast down--and may you go on your way rejoicing!

   As for such as have never trusted Christ, it often makes my heart bleed
   when I talk of these things, to think that I cannot speak to them, that
   I cannot tell them that these comfortable things are theirs. Oh,
   unbeliever, you are an alien and a stranger to the privileges of
   heavenly citizenship! For you there is no blessedness, either now or
   hereafter! Why will you remain an unbeliever? Why will you continue to
   be careless and godless, Christless? I trust the Lord has designs of
   love to you. Leave your sins, for you must either leave them or be
   lost! Trust the Savior. Rely wholly upon His blood and righteousness,
   for there is no other righteousness that can ever help you. But if you
   cast your soul upon Him, it shall be well with you forever! God grant
   that we may all be found in the day of the appearing of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, as Brothers and Sisters who are in allegiance to Him. So may it
   be with you all. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: MATHEW 7:13-29; 15:1-12.

   Verse 13. Enter you in at the strait gate. It is very unpopular. The
   great ones will recommend to you great liberality and breadth. But
   enter yet in at the strait gate.

   13. For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to
   destruction, and many there are which go in there. That is a rule that
   is very unfashionable in these times, but depend upon it, the Lord who
   gave it to us, meant it for all times. That which seems narrow, which
   costs you self-denial--that which is contrary to the will of the
   flesh--that which does

   not seem to charm the eye and fascinate the senses--go after that!
   "Enter you in at the strait gate." You will not be likely to err much,
   or too much on that side. Let this be a gauge to you. That kind of
   preaching which allows you to indulge in sin--that sort of teaching
   which lowers the standard of God's Word for you and makes you think
   more of your own judgment than of the teachings of Christ--away with
   it! Let others have it if they like. "Enter you in at the strait gate,
   for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction,
   and many there are which go in there."

   14. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leads unto
   life, and few there are that find it It is still so. Indeed, none find
   it unless Grace finds them! He who made that gate must go after the
   wandering sheep and bring them through that gate. They will never
   choose it of themselves.

   15. Beware of false prophets. Some honor and esteem all prophets. "Is
   not it a very high office? Is not a prophet a man sent from God?" Yes,
   and no! For the very reason there are counterfeits whom God has never
   sent. Beware of false prophets.

   15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing,
   but inwardly they are ravening wolves. They look just like sheep. They
   look just like shepherds, but it is only their clothing. The mere
   hypocrite is the goat in sheep's clothing. But a false prophet is a
   wolf in sheep's clothing because he can do so much more harm--and will
   do so much more damage to the Church of God!

   16. You shall know them by their fruits. They are sure to come out in
   their actions. If you have not got the knowledge of theology and the
   like, to be able to judge their teaching, yet the simplest persons can
   judge their actions "You shall know them by their fruits," which are
   sure to come out sooner or later.

   16. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?Did you
   ever find a cluster of grapes growing upon a thorn bush? Grapes and
   figs are pleasant fruit, and holy living, true devotion, communion with
   God--these are the things that are sweet to God and to good men. But
   they come not of false doctrine. They are not seen in false prophets.
   Such prophets despise such things as these. They are for worldly ways
   and places of worldly gaiety they can frequent. Not so the servants of
   God!

   17-19. Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit: but a corrupt
   tree brings forth evil fruit A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
   neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit Every tree that
   brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. That
   is what comes of it in the end. It may spread itself abroad and may
   gather much admiration to itself for its verdure, but there is an axe
   being sharpened and a fire being kindled!

   20. Therefore by their fruits you shall know them. You cannot judge
   them by their bark or by the spread of their branches, or by the
   verdure of their leaves, or even by the beauty of their blossoms in
   springtime. "By their fruits you shall know them." The Savior here
   gives us a very earnest and very necessary warning, lest we should be
   deceived, for there are such who are not only deceived by their own
   sins, but deceived by false prophets who are among Satan's best agents!

   21. Not everyone that says unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
   Kingdom ofHeaven. They were very sound in Doctrine. They called Jesus,
   "Lord." They believed in His Deity. Apparently they were very devout.
   They said, "Lord." They worshipped Him. They were very importunate and
   earnest. They said, "Lord, Lord," crying to Him again and again. But
   "not everyone that says unto Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the
   Kingdom of Heaven." External utterances, however orthodox--professions,
   however sound, are not enough!

   21. But he that does the will of My Father which is in Heaven. Oh, dear
   Friends, there must be holiness in us, for without holiness no man can
   see the Lord! It is not knowing the will of the heavenly Father, but
   doing it which is the mark of Divine Election. If God's Grace has
   really entered into us, we, like the Prophets, shall be known by our
   fruits! But if we are not doing the will of our Father who is in
   Heaven, we shall not come to the Heaven where He is!

   22. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied
   in Your name? Yes, so did Balsam. Was not King Saul also among the
   Prophets, and yet neither Balsam nor Saul was accepted of God, but they
   were castaways! "Have we not prophesied in Your name?" A man may be a
   preacher and an eloquent preacher, and he may even have some blessing
   upon his preaching--and yet be cast away forever!

   22. And in Your name have cast out devils? Yes, and there was one that
   cast out devils and he was a devil, himself, namely, Judas Iscariot,
   who also betrayed Him. He went out and worked miracles in the name of
   Christ--and then sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver!

   22. And in Your name done many wonderful works?Yes, and we may do many
   wonderful works and yet be wonderfully deceived! It is not wonderful
   works--it is holy works! Not works that amaze men, but works that
   please God, which are the proof of Grace in the soul. Well, there will
   be some who will be able to say that they prophesied--that they cast
   out devils--that they did wonders.

   23. And then, will I say unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me,
   you that work iniquity. "I was never acquainted with you. I never had
   anything to do with you. I was never on speaking terms with you. You
   never had any fellowship with Me. I never had any fellowship with you.
   Your motives and designs were very different from Mine. I never knew
   you." If Christ once knows a man, He will never forget him. But He
   says, "I never knew you. Depart from Me, you that work iniquity. Get
   you gone--you are none of Mine." Oh, that we might never hear that
   dreadful sentence pronounced upon us in the day when Christ shall come!
   And yet we may be preachers! We may be wonderworkers! We may be famous
   in the visible Church of Christ and yet, He may say, "I never knew you;
   depart from Me, you that work iniquity." These are solemn thoughts. Let
   them sink into your hearts.

   24. Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I
   will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock It was
   the doing of those sayings that was the building on the rock. You may
   hear and only increase your condemnation--but to do what you hear is to
   have a good foundation! This man built his house upon a rock. He was
   not, therefore, free from troubles. Oh, no!

   25. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
   and beat upon that house.Wherever you build, troubles will reach
   you--and if you are a child of God you are sure to have troubles! "A
   Christian is seldom long at ease." The road to Heaven is usually a
   rough one and there are thieves, lions, giants, and all sorts of
   enemies on that road. It was a house built on a rock. But the rain
   descended, the floods came and the wind blew and beat upon that house.

   25. And it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock Is not that
   glorious? "And it fell not." Then the more rain, the more flood and the
   more wind, the more was the house praised for its good foundation and
   for its stability. "It fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." Oh,
   if God has made us holy in life so that we are doing what Christ
   preaches, especially this Sermon on the Mount, of which this is the
   close, then we need not fear all the troubles of life or death, for it
   shall be said, "It falls not, for it was founded upon a rock!"

   26-27. And everyone that hears these sayings of Mine and does them not,
   shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the
   sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
   blew.For fools get into trouble, too! However big a fool you may be,
   you will have big troubles all the same for that. "Many sorrows shall
   be to the wicked." Houses built on sand must still be tried. "And the
   rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds

   blew."

   27. And beat upon that house and it fell: and great was the fall of it
   For it could never be set up again! It was down once and for all. A man
   may fail in life and yet commence again and succeed. But once a
   bankrupt with your souland you are broken forever! "It fell and great
   was the fall of it." Do not believe those who tell you that to lose
   your soul is a small affair which will be made right, by-and-by, by
   either annihilation or restoration. It is all a ruinous lie! This is
   the Truth of God concerning it--"It fell, and great was the fall of
   it."

   28, 29. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the
   people were astonished at His Doctrine. For He taught them as one
   having authority, and not as the scribes. He did not quote this learned
   Rabbi and that--or propose this theory to their thoughtful
   consideration--He spoke the Truth of God and left the Truth to work its
   way upon the minds of men, knowing that many would reject it, for it
   would be a savor of death unto death to them--but knowing, also, that
   some would receive it, whom He had ordained unto eternal life, to whom
   it would be a savor of life unto life. Let us copy our Divine Master's
   example and speak boldly as we ought to speak.

   MATTHEW 15:1-12.

   Verses 1, 2. Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of
   Jerusalem, saying, Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of
   the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. A very
   amazing omission, certainly! But it seems to have struck them as a very
   great crime. "They wash not their hands when they eat bread"--as if the
   commands of God were not enough--men must overload us with their own
   commands, and sometimes the very people who would see us break God's
   commands without being at all distressed are dreadfully shocked if we
   do not keep theirs, showing clearly that they have a higher estimate of
   themselves than they have of God!

   3-6. But He answered and said unto them, Why do you also transgress the
   Commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honor
   your father and mother and, He that curses father or mother, let him
   die the death. But you say, Whoever shall say to his father or his
   mother, It is a gift by whatever you might be profited by me, and honor
   not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have you made the
   commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. The cant said, "I
   cannot give you any help. I have vowed to give it as a subscription to
   the synagogue, or to the temple, therefore I cannot give it to you,"
   and if he could plead that he had given it as a gift in the form of a
   religious offering, he was exempted from assisting his own parents.
   "Well," said Christ, "you do by this make the commandment of God of no
   effect." "You hypocrites"--our Savior is the most gentle of men, but
   how plainly does He talk--and how honestly does He denounce everything
   like hypocrisy!

   7-9. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This
   people draws near unto Me with their mouth and honors Me with their
   lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me,
   teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Now, may God save us
   from these two faults! The first is that of being content with the
   outside worship of God. Unless our very hearts worship, there is
   nothing whatever in the outward performance of religious rites or
   religious worship! Indeed, it is hypocrisy to draw near to God with the
   lips and knees when the heart is not there. The next evil to be dreaded
   is teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Whatever is not
   plainly taught in Scripture is of no binding force upon any conscience!
   And it is evil to invent rites and ceremonies which are not taught in
   Holy Scripture. We must mind what we are doing! If we have not the
   plain warrant of Christ's command for our teachings and our doings, we
   shall rather vex the Spirit of God than honor Him. Whatever our
   intention may be, we have not any right to worship God otherwise than
   according to His own mind. If we do, it will not be worship and not
   acceptable with Him.

   10, 11. And He called the multitude and said unto them, Hear, and
   understand. Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man; but that
   which comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. "And He called the
   multitude and said unto them--"Not that which goes into the mouth
   defiles a man"--not that which he eats and drinks, "but that which
   comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." That is--what he
   says--that is the point.

   12. Then came His disciples, and said unto Him, Know You that the
   Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?Some very kind
   friends are very jealous of the preacher lest he should offend
   anybody--and they will come in all tenderness of spirit and say, "Know
   you that the Pharisees were offended after they heard this saying?"
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Lord's Voluntary Poverty

   (No. 3380)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   FEBRUARY 14, 1867.

   "For you know the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was
   rich, yet for your sakes He became poor; that you, through His poverty,
   might be rich." 2 Corinthians 8:9.

   THE Apostle was anxious to stir up the Corinthian Church to generosity.
   They were a Church of very great talents. They were an unusually gifted
   Church, so that they were able to maintain in their midst a form of
   worship which is not often maintained and could not conveniently become
   the general form in the Christian Church, namely, that a large
   proportion of the members spoke to edification, whereas in most other
   Churches there was no such abundance of spiritual gifts. They were in
   the midst of a city of polished inhabitants and it had pleased God to
   call in that city some of the ablest men. But they seem to have been
   far from taking the front rank in some respects. They needed to be
   exhorted to purge themselves from a sin which no Church had ever
   tolerated that had a ministry, and which only that Church would allow,
   because it was nobody's business to look after it--and so it was not
   looked after. This sin was a great lack of generosity in giving. Now,
   in order to excite the Church at Corinth, the Apostle uses as an
   argument, first of all, the great generosity of the far poorer church
   in Macedonia. He says that in the midst of their poverty, they gave,
   not only up to their power, but generously beyond it. It is right for
   us to stimulate the zeal of one Christian by the example of another
   Christian--and it is the bounden duty of all Believers so to walk that
   they may be worthy to be examples to the rest of the flock.

   But even this argument is a poor one compared with that which the
   Apostle was more constantly using, namely, the example of Christ, the
   Church's great Head and Exemplar. He deals, indeed, an efficient blow
   at all selfishness when, leaving the Churches of Macedonia out of the
   question, he says, "You know the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." Oh,
   that blessed Master of ours! Surely He is useful to us in ten thousand
   ways! There is not a single part of Him--there is no position He takes,
   no action He performs, no word that drops from His lips, no thought of
   His heart, no aspect of His matchless Character that is not serviceable
   to us, His people! Even in His poverty He becomes our Instructor, just
   as in His death He becomes our Savior. Without staying longer in the
   text, we shall, first of all, ask you to consider the example presented
   to us, contemplating it in its various phases. And then, secondly, let
   me, in few but earnest words, urge you to follow His example in acts of
   gratitude.

   I. THE EXAMPLE PRESENTED TO US.

   It is that of our Lord, of whom Paul said, "You know the Grace of our
   Lord Jesus Christ." It seems, then, that Christ's coming from Heaven to
   earth to suffer for us is here called, "Grace." It was an act of Grace
   on His part--an act purely gratuitous! He was not bound to have done
   it. We did not deserve it at His hands. It was no foreseen merit of
   ours, or of any other kind which could have been potent to attract Him
   from the skies and drag Him to the manger and the tomb! But He came as
   an act of free mercy to undeserving sinners. It was Grace which was the
   source and fountain of His coming. That eternal Love of God, by which
   we were first chosen, was the same Love which sent the Savior to redeem
   the chosen. It was that Grace from which all Covenant mercies
   spring--the ancient wellhead of distinguishing Grace-- which brought
   the Savior here! It was because He, being God, was Love. Because He,
   being God, was full of Grace and Truth, that He, therefore, left the
   realms above that He might lift us up to them by His coming down from
   them into the depths of our misery! "You know the Grace of our Lord
   Jesus Christ." We ought to perpetually gaze upon the Cross, I

   think, in the light of its being altogether an act of Grace on Christ's
   part--and the result of Grace towards us on the part of the Divine
   Father. Oh, you see nothing there, Sinners, towards you but Grace--

   "'Tis mercy fills the Throne.

   While wrath stands silent by."

   The wrath falls upon the Savior, but all that you have to see in
   Christ, today, is Grace, pure Grace--Grace to take away the sin which
   made Him bleed--Grace to accept the sinner who was guilty of His death.
   The Cross reveals to us Grace on the Throne of God, Grace at its
   culminating point, Grace triumphant and resplendent in the uttermost
   degree! Who would see Grace, let him behold a bleeding Savior bearing
   the griefs of men upon Himself and suffering in their place. "You know
   the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," the kindness, the bounty, the
   benevolence, the generosity, the compassion, the condescension, the
   tenderness, "the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   And when Paul had thus named the deed which the Savior did and labeled
   it with the title of, "the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," he follows
   it up by mentioning the heights from which the Savior descended--" who
   though He was rich " It has been well observed that this little
   sentence is a clear proof that our Savior had an existence beforeHe was
   born into this world--that, in fact, He was Divine--for it is said
   that, "He was rich, and that He became poor." Now, He never was rich in
   this life--never!

   If it should be said that He was rich at one time with the Holy Spirit,
   as Unitarians have said in order to get rid of the force of this verse,
   then He never did become poor in that sense. There was no period of the
   Savior's life on earth in which it could be said that He was rich, but
   He became poor. It must, therefore, have been in a previous state of
   being that our Lord was rich--and I shall now ask your thoughts to go
   back to the time when Jesus Christ was rich. Poor are our words! They
   are but an accommodation of mortal speech to an immortal theme! "He was
   rich." When we read the word, "rich," it seems, somehow or other, to
   pall the description of what Jesus Christ was, for He was so infinitely
   more rich than anything the world knows by that description! His riches
   were vastly more wealthy than any of the gaudy wealth which the world
   can bring--which is but transient and corruptible wealth! He was rich.
   Yes, but He was something more than that. However, we will make such
   use of the term as we can.

   Jesus was rich in possession. As God over all, having made all things,
   all things were His. He could have said, "The cattle on a thousand
   hills are Mine. Mine, the mines of gold and the secret treasuries of
   silver. Mine, the places where the diamonds sparkle and where the pearl
   emits its gentle ray. All things are Mine! A thousand stars glisten as
   My lamps and all the width of space, so full of the wonders of
   creation--all this is Mine!" He was rich in service. A thousand angels
   waited at His gates. He had but to will it and the strong-winged
   messengers flew upon His errands! They adored Him ceaselessly. Day
   without night they circled His Throne, rejoicing. Even when on earth,
   He said He could pray to His Father and He would send Him twelve
   legions of angels. How much more was this the case when He sat in the
   state of Heaven--and all these were the courtiers that waited before
   His Throne? He was rich in honor No pompous courts of Solomon could
   ever compare with the courts of the Son of God! All glory centered in
   Him. He was "God over all blessed forever," co-equal and co-eternal
   with the Father. To Him the perpetual song. To Him the never ceasing
   incense. To Him the golden harps, to Him the swell of Heaven's highest
   symphonies, for He was adored of all and exalted high above
   principalities and powers, and every name that is named! And He was
   rich in love, which is the best of all wealth! His Father loved Him.
   "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Eternally was that
   a Truth of God and, besides that, there were pure spirits of His own
   creating who loved Him with all the force of their being. He needed not
   our love to make Him rich! There was love enough in God for Him and if
   He had willed it, He could have made a thousand races of nobler
   creatures than ourselves, all of whom would have loved Him with the
   deepest love!

   He was rich, too, in happiness. We cannot conceive of the Savior
   knowing any sorrow, or grief, or need in Heaven. He had all that even
   He could wish for, if such language can be used towards the Infinite
   God. He was essentially and ineffably happiness, itself! Just as we
   believe, concerning the Most High God, that He is unruffled by a care
   and His soul undisturbed by a pang, so was it with the Glorious One who
   afterwards condescended to be crowned with thorns--and to be pierced
   with the spear for our sakes. "He was rich!" Oh, the word, as I have
   said before, is a poor miserable word! It is the best that Paul could
   find, but there is such a grandeur about Christ that if we say He was
   rich in all respects, rich in all conception and rich beyond
   imagination's utmost stretch, rich beyond everything you and I will
   ever be able to con-

   ceive of--even when we got into the celestial state--so rich, so
   Infinite, so glorious, so Divine--this is what He was! "He was rich."

   And yet He considered us! And yet He stooped to us! Oh, my Brothers and
   Sisters, what an example for us to get the same Grace and generosity,
   so that if in any respect we, too, are made rich here, we, too, may be
   as willing to stoop as He was. But, alas, while our stoop is all so
   little, His stoop is all so great!

   Then the Apostle goes on to say, "Though He was rich, yet for your
   sakes He became poor." Not that He was made poor It was not an act of
   Providence that made Him so. He did not become bankrupt. He was not a
   King expelled from His dominions. He was not a fallen Sovereign to whom
   we give shelter and pity, but He "became poor." That is, it was His own
   voluntary act! It was His own cheerful will to become poor! And now I
   cannot help saying that that word, "poor, "does not seem to me to be
   strong enough. It is the best, I suppose, our language can afford, but
   still, there never was poverty like His poverty! It is a word which
   does but skim the surface of the Savior's condescension. He was poor.
   Well, He was poor in the ordinary sense. He was born of humble parents,
   He was not the son of a prince or a mighty one. He was reputed to be
   the carpenter's son. When His mother swaddled Him, she laid Him in the
   manger. He was not like those who are born in marble halls and are
   wrapped in scarlet--He was a plebeian and He took a lowly place even in
   His birth. He is sent to Egypt--He becomes an early exile. Scarcely any
   poverty in the world is like the poverty of the poor emigrant who
   leaves his country either from lack of bread or from fear of life--and
   Jesus Christ and His mother going down to Egypt are the very picture of
   poverty! We are thankful if we have only a little cottage in our own
   land where we may dwell, but in Egypt the Son of God must tabernacle
   for awhile. And when He came back, He sought not His acquaintance among
   even the tradesmen or the middle classes, much less among the lofty and
   the proud in spirit--He put upon Himself the smock frock of the
   country--"a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout"--and
   His intimate acquaintances were the fishermen of Galilee!

   Was it not said of Him by David, "He has exalted One chosen out of the
   people"? And Christ was emphatically chosen out of the people. He was
   with them in all their toils and all their woes--so with them that none
   of them were more poor than He. "Foxes have holes," He said, "and the
   birds of the air have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have not where to
   lay My head." He was so poor that I never read He left a will about His
   worldly goods and chattels. All that He had of personal estate was just
   the garments He wore and those the soldiers parted among them--and
   there He was, naked, dead and indebted to charity! For a tomb, He had
   not even a sepulcher of His own--not a sorry six feet of earth in which
   His sleeping body might have rested in its own freehold--it was a
   borrowed tomb that gave the Savior a refuge. He thus became poor
   outwardly, but what was His poverty inwardly? He was poor as to His
   friends. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied Him. All the disciples
   forsook Him and fled! He was poor in servants, for although He washed
   His disciples' feet, yet they washed not His! And when He came to the
   hour when human sympathy might have somewhat comforted Him, He had to
   say with melancholy pathos, "What? Could you not watch with Me one
   hour?" Oh, so poor has He become that there is not an eye to watch with
   Him in His lonely grief! So poor was He that the comforts which are
   left to the most abject were taken away from Him! No promise beamed to
   shed its light upon His soul. At one time, at any rate, no Presence of
   God made Him glad. He was forsaken of His Father and His God! "E1oi,
   Eloi lama Sabachthani," indicated a poverty of soul quite as deep as
   that naked and mangled body indicated outward poverty.

   He had lost all, or rather had given up all, laid aside everything--His
   crown of Glory exchanged for the thorns of shame. The imperial mantle
   of dominion cast aside that He might wear His own blood! No more
   adored, but spit upon! No longer reverenced, but despised and made the
   offscouring of men! No Throne, but a Cross! No golden cup, but a
   draught of wormwood and of gall! No light and brightness of excessive
   Glory, but the blackness of mid-day--midnight! No life and immortality,
   but, "It i s finished," and the giving up of the Ghost! "Though He was
   rich, yet for your sakes He became poor."

   I wish it were in my power to go farther into this depth tonight, but
   neither my ability nor my time will serve me just now. Let your own
   meditations assist you to peer into the poverty of the Savior--such
   poverty, indeed, as you and I can never know, but, prompted by His
   example, let us not be ashamed to be poor! No, let us not, at the
   thought of being poor, feel any kind of fear about it! Let us rather
   rejoice that in this we shall have fellowship with our Lord and if we
   serve Him we must be poor. If we are obedient to His will, we must make
   a sacrifice of worldly goods and prosperity. Let

   us take joyfully the spoiling of our goods. Let us, like the Master,
   count it all joy when we are thus stripped, for so shall we have
   fellowship with Him "who, though He was rich, yet for your sakes became
   poor."

   The Apostle next calls our attention to the objectives of this
   wonderful condescending stoop of our Lord, namely, ourselves. "For your
   sakes He became poor." For the sake of the Corinthians. For the sake of
   us.

   And oh, where could there be found more unworthy beneficiaries of this
   amazing love than we have been? In contemplating the love which I
   personally received from my Savior, although I wonder at it in itself,
   I have often thought that I could far better understand it if it had
   been given to someone else than when it is shed abroad in my own soul.
   I do not know how it is, but somehow the salvation of the vilest sinner
   that lives does not one half as much surprise me as my own--and I find
   it far more easy to believe in the genuine salvation of any man than at
   times to believe in my own. Why should He love us? Oh, there is an
   amount of unworthiness about each one of us which we cannot see in our
   fellows that makes it amazing that we should have been chosen! Well
   said the Apostle, "His great love wherewith He loved us when we were
   dead in trespasses and sins!" It is by His great love He loves us now
   we are alive, but it is still more wondrous love that He should spend
   His life-blood to buy our humanity when it was in its former state!
   None shall praise God more for His Grace than I will if I get the
   privilege to see Him face to face, for none will be more indebted to
   His distinguishing mercy! I suppose you will feel the same and will,
   each one, resolve in the contest of humility that none of you will
   yield to his fellow, but will each one lie the lowest and sing the
   loudest to the praise of the matchless Lover, this Heavenly Bridegroom
   of our souls! "For your sakes became poor." Not a thorn in that crown
   for Himself, but for your sakes! No spit on those cheeks, no hair
   plucked from them, for Himself--but all for you! For you, the cruel
   lash, as it pitilessly furrowed those holy shoulders! For you, those
   drops of crimson sweat as they stained the cold earth! For you, each of
   those cruel nails! For you, for you, the spear that pierced His side!
   Oh, let each Christian here really seek to lay a claim to have a
   personal interest in the griefs and groans of Jesus! Sweet possessions!
   Oh, to treasure them! Richer than all jewels! Those drops of blood--far
   more priceless than rubies! Those falling tears more sparkling than
   diamonds! Treasure up the love of Jesus! Put it into your souls. Make a
   heart in your heart in which to treasure it! Count it to be the richest
   and most precious thing you can have, or can desire to have--the love
   of Jesus with all its sweetness and everlasting delight! "For your
   sakes He became poor."

   Well, now, if He did all this for the sake of us who are so unworthy,
   what ought you and I to do for His sake, who is so worthy? And if He
   emptied His great Self for us, who are as nothing, shall not we be
   ready to empty our little selves for Him, who is so great?

   If He gave all to us, what less than all can we give to Him? And even
   when we have given all, we shall think it all too little for such a
   Lord and such a Friend! Does Jesus give Jesus, and shall not we give
   all of ourselves?

   The Apostle tells us, however--to conclude the exposition of the verse
   and our contemplation of this great example--that Christ had an
   objective in doing this, and the objective was this--"That you, through
   His poverty, might be made rich." I like the very phraseology, here,
   and think we should read it again..."That you, through His poverty,
   might be made rich." A person joined this Church not long ago who had
   been a member of quite another denomination, in which the doctrine of
   the Second Advent, which we also hold, takes an infinitely more
   prominent place than we are ever likely to give to it, for it is the
   Gospel of their salvation. This woman, however, professed herself to
   have been converted to God, here, and she said, "I was always taught to
   trust in Christ Glorified, but now I come to see that my confidence
   must be in Christ Crucified." This was what Paul preached and it is
   what we preach! I believe it is an error which is growing, that we are
   to be made rich through Christ Glorified. I grant you that we shall be,
   for we are made rich by Christ in any capacity, but the text says it is
   through His poverty that we shall be made rich. The brightest treasure
   that can come to the Christian comes to Him through Christ
   Crucified--we must take care in all our ideas of the Second Advent that
   we do not imagine the coming of a temporalKingdom and a temporalGlory
   and go back to the beggarly elements of the Old Covenant--for if we do
   so we shall miss the true jewel, the spiritualtreasure--the love of
   which is half dying out in the Christian Church! Christ in His poverty
   should be most commonly the object of our contemplation, for it is
   through that poverty that we shall be made rich.

   Now, I want to ask you whether you are rich tonight? If Jesus Christ
   died for you, I am sure He has not missed His intention in so dying
   and, therefore, you are rich! But you say you are poor and you were
   grumbling only an hour ago to think that you were so poor. Come, now!
   Come now! Jesus Christ, though He was rich, became poor--shall He miss
   the

   design of that great renunciation? Shall His plan fail? It is not for a
   moment to be supposed! Well, then, He has made you rich. You cannot
   count your treasures, Christian! A catalog of them would be too long
   for you ever to get through it! You have no estate. You have no barn in
   which to store away your harvest. Perhaps there may be some of you with
   little more belonging to you than the garments in which you have come
   into this sanctuary. But yet--you are rich! Think about this--

   "All things are yours, the gift of God, The purchase of a Savior's
   blood! This world is yours, and worlds to come! Earth is your lodge and
   Heaven your home!"

   You have angels to be your protectors. You have Christ to be your
   Intercessor and your Friend! You have the Holy Spirit, Himself, to be
   your Comforter! The everlasting arms are underneath you. The Divine
   wings are above you. The Divine Glory is within you! Oh, what more
   could you desire? You shall have all the provisions that you need, for
   you shall dwell in the land and verily you shall be fed. Yes, Christ
   has made us rich in the highest possible sense of richness. He does not
   please to make many of His people rich in the common sense. As Luther
   says, He gives the husks to the hogs-- the proper place for them--they
   can relish them and can make the best use of them. I doubt not that he
   was also right in what he said of the whole Turkish Empire, which God
   had given to the grand Turk who was the leading monarch of his day. He
   said, "It is only a bone for a dog." So it is. All the kingdoms of this
   world are but so many bones which the Householder throws out to the
   dogs and lets them devour them as they may. Perhaps all the time the
   child is kept wait-ing--and he may be kept waiting a little while for
   his food because the hour is not yet come--the dog can eat when it
   wills, but the child must eat at the set time which the Father has
   appointed. Let us be thankful if God does not give us our portion here.
   It is one of the things to be dreaded--the having your portion in this
   life! It is said of some that they have their portion in this life--and
   our Lord said of the Pharisees--"Verily I say unto you, they have their
   reward." Oh, let us pray God not to give us our reward here! If we have
   helped the poor and have only received ingratitude, let us be very
   thankful that it proves that our reward is not here! If we labor for
   Christ and are misrepresented, let us be thankful, for again it proves
   that our reward is not of men and in time, but is of God and for all
   eternity! To have our reward, here, and our portion from men is a thing
   to be deprecated with tears, cries and groans! God grant us to know our
   riches to be of a better sort than that which the worldling covets!

   Well, if it is so, that Christ has made us rich, I hope it is not
   fiction or fancy to any of you. You are rich in your soul--you know you
   are! You are wealthy and the argument from this is that you should be
   devoted to your Master. If He has made you rich, serve Him! If He has
   enabled you to be contented, at ease and happy--if you have blessed
   enjoyment in your soul, if you are at peace with God through Jesus
   Christ--who should serve God as you should? Highly favored as you are,
   the very stones would cry out against you if you were not generous in
   your Master's service and praise!

   And this brings me to the last matter, which is, in a few words--

   II. TO EXHORT YOU TO PRACTICALLY CARRY OUT THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST.

   There have been some advanced Christians--I say not this of all--but
   there have been some advanced Christians who literally have been made
   able to carry out the example of the Savior. How should we honor the
   memory of such men as John Wesley, for instance? He might have been a
   fellow--as he was, indeed, of the University--and have had excellent
   compensation. "The Church," so called, was open to him and, no doubt, a
   bishopric would soon have rewarded his exertions and his eloquence. But
   he lived through life purely to serve his Master according to his
   knowledge and conviction. And when an inventory was to be made of his
   plate, he had but two spoons, one at Bristol and one in London. And
   when he died, what had he to leave? His treasure had all gone before
   him into Heaven and he died in poverty, having served his God with all
   he had, and making that the aim of his life--to live with all he had
   wholly to his Master's service! And such have been the lives of some of
   our missionaries. They have cut themselves away from all the claims of
   kindred and have given themselves, like the old Roman heroes in battle,
   who stood upon the sword and consecrated themselves to God. They have
   given themselves up to live and to die with never a thought of gain in
   this world, no, never dreaming of possessing anything as long as they
   lived! Such was Apostolic life and such, I believe, would be more
   common in the Christian Church if a high degree of Divine Grace were
   granted. I do not think it is the duty of most of you, nor that it will
   ever fall to the lot of 99 out of a hundred of you, but there are some
   of you--and there ought to be more--who, being

   called of God to some special work, should feel that if you are rich,
   if you possess rank, if you possess standing in society, you will give
   up the most brilliant, earthly prospect for that yet more brilliant
   prospect of bearing the Cross and inheriting the crown!

   I look forward, if God should ever send a revival of religion in
   England, not only to the time when the poor and the middle-classes
   shall find in their midst consecrated ministers, but when, from the
   very highest spheres of society, there will come to us men who might
   have worn the coronet, but who would rather proclaim the Gospel! Men
   who might have piled up their wealth until it became like Babel's
   tower, but who would rather become poor, that in their poverty they may
   make many rich! It is not given unto all thus to do, but this is the
   dictate of Christianity--and where it can be done absolutely and be
   carried out to the fullest extent, it brings much Glory to God!

   Well, but the principle seems to me to be binding upon us all. I will
   venture to say--and I should not wonder that some of you will not like
   it to be said, that I believe it is anti-Christian and unholy for any
   Christian to live with the objective of accumulating wealth. You will
   say, "Are we not to strive all we can and to get all the money we can?"
   You may do so. You should do so. I cannot doubt but what, in so doing,
   you may do good service to the cause of God. But what I said was this,
   that to live with the objective of accumulating wealth is
   anti-Christian. There are thousands of men and women with whom that is
   the only thing they are living for--to save, save, save--and make a
   fortune! And when they die, what then? Well, then it will be in the
   newspapers that So-and-So died worth so much, and some will say, "Guess
   what worth he died with? It will be talked of all over the city, "Why,
   they paid probate duty on so much!" Yes! Well, now, if you had a
   steward--I will ask you a question--if you had a steward and that
   steward were to die--and you should hear that he died worth £100,000,
   what would you say? You would say, "Ah, I know whose money that was! He
   was only a steward and yet he died worth £100,000? I know where that
   money came from." You would not want to ask the question, but you would
   say, "Ah, he was a thief, an old rogue!" I am not certain whether every
   man is not who does that--at least, unless he happens to occupy a very
   high and prominent position. A man says he is a steward. That is what
   he says, himself. We do not tell him so, but he says he is. He stands
   up and thanks God that he is a steward, but the old fellow has got some
   uncommonly heavy bags about him--more than a steward would have if he
   had handled his master's money properly!

   To say that the most of you ought to spend all you earn would be simply
   ridiculous. To come into the pulpit and say to those of you who are in
   business and so on, that you ought to give all that you have to the
   cause of God every year would be, I think, most intolerable stupidity
   on my part! I do not say that at all! Let your children, by all manner
   of means, have that which they can lawfully claim of you. Make a fair
   provision if you are able to make it. Let your children be liberally
   educated. Let there be no stint in the house so that there should be
   complaints of need there. God has put you into a position and you may
   spend according to your station. What I mean to say is this--if you
   make it your objective in this world to live simply to get together a
   certain amount of money, and die and leave it--you are living with an
   anti-Christian objective and your spirit is apart from the spirit of
   your Lord Jesus Christ!

   My Master did not make a fortune. There is none of you who will leave
   less than He left! We read some time ago of a bishop whose will was
   sworn to be under £150,000, and someone said, "He was a true successor
   of the Apostles, for he would be bound to say that if the Apostle
   Paul's will could have been sworn to, it, too, would have been under
   £150,000." And I think it is very likely that it would!

   Ah, but such an occurrence as that always provokes a sneer in the
   world. They say, "Oh, yes, yes, yes--this is a picture of making the
   best of both worlds!" But it is not the picture of the Savior, living
   wholly for the cause of God and the cause of truth, but quite the
   reverse! I would like to see you, my dear Friends who are poor, feeling
   that out of your poverty it is your privilege to give continually to
   Him who loved you and gave Himself for you, not casting the burden of
   God's work upon the few rich that may be among us, but every man
   honestly taking his share in the Church's burden, which, indeed, is not
   her burden, but her privilege and her delight! I would like to see you
   bring in your gifts to God's treasury, not because you are asked to do
   so, or prompted, or driven to it, but because you love to do it out of
   love to Him. Well, then, those of you who are prospered in
   business--and may there be more of you!--will always find that it will
   sweeten what is left to yourselves if the full and fair proportion is
   given to your Master. I am afraid you will not be likely to imperil
   yourselves, or bring yourselves to poverty by what you do for the cause
   of Christ. Sorry would I be if, by any extravagance or imprudence of
   that kind, such a thing would occur--but on the whole it is not a very
   likely thing--

   so that I need not guard you particularly much against it. But if you
   give to God, you shall find that if you give by shovelfuls, God will
   give it back to you in cartloads! And if you give cartloads, His wagons
   shall be driven to your door and He will bless you in proportion as you
   give to Him!

   I have thus applied the principle to wealth, but it should also be
   applied to everything the Christian has. I hope some of you have a good
   reputation. There was a time when I had one, but preaching the Gospel
   very frequently brings upon you all sorts of misrepresentations. I
   remember pretty well the first stinging article I read in a newspaper
   concerning my-self--as full of lies as an egg is full of meat--and I
   could not help wincing somewhat under it! But I soon learned the lesson
   that I could not afford to keep a reputation if I were a Christian
   minister--that I must be prepared to serve God with all my heart, soul
   and strength--and let man or devils say whatever they liked. I take no
   notice whatever of them, but go on serving God! And I count it a sweet
   thing to sing--

   "If on my face for Your dear name,

   Shame and reproach shall be,

   I'll hail reproach and welcome shame

   If You will remember me."

   Now, there is a young man over yonder who thinks he is a Christian, but
   he has been laughed at by the other young fellows in the shop and he
   has half a mind to give up. What? What? When Jesus Christ, who was
   rich, yet for your sakes became poor, are you ashamed to be laughed at
   by a few simpletons? And there is a young woman here who was placed,
   just now, in a family where they are very godless. She hardly likes to
   show her colors for Christ. Oh, my Sister, think of the Master and of
   the shame and the spitting that He endured for you--and let this mind
   be in you which was in Christ Jesus. Stoop, stoop, my Brother! Stoop,
   my Sister! The way to Heaven is downhill in a certain sense. The way to
   rise is to fall in your own esteem--and when you shall think yourself
   to be less than nothing, and your own reputation, and your own wealth,
   and everything you have to be all Christ's property--and you freely
   give it up to Him, then will you realize what it really is to be a
   Christian--but not till then!

   Would to God some here were wholly devoted to the Master! I have been
   looking to see whether God would raise up among us some unusual
   spirits, some fiery souls, some consecrated men and women who have got
   the old heroic blood of ancient Christendom within their veins! May
   such yet arise and may each seek to follow where the Master leads the
   way to the praise and Glory of His Grace!

   Now, there are some of you who have heard all this, but I have not
   addressed myself to you--and yet I meant you all the while--I mean even
   you who are unconverted. Think of the love of Jesus in coming in the
   flesh and may that sweet love be a sort of latchkey to your hearts with
   which Christ shall open them and let Himself in! If He has knocked and
   you have not opened, I trust He will open the door, Himself, by His own
   love--and may you be His tonight! If you so become His, be really His!
   You have served the devil--now serve Him! If you must serve Christ, do
   not serve Him with half your hearts--serve Him and no mistake. Give Him
   your whole soul. If He is worth having, He is worth having altogether
   and worth giving your whole soul. So may you do--and the Master shall
   have the praise evermore! Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Broken Fence

   (No. 3381)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I went by the field of the lazy mam, and by the vineyard of the man
   void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and
   nettles had covered its surface, and the stone wall was broken down.
   Then Isaw, and considered it well: I looked on it and received
   instruction." Proverbs 24:30-32.

   THIS lazy man did no hurt to his fellow men--he was not a thief, nor a
   ruffian, nor a meddler in anybody else's business. He did not trouble
   himself about other men's concerns, for he did not even attend to his
   own--it required too much exertion. He was not grossly vicious. He had
   not energy enough to care for that. He was one who liked to take things
   easily. He always let well enough alone and, for the that matter, he
   let ill alone, too, as the nettles and the thistles in his garden
   plainly proved! What was the use of disturbing himself? It would be all
   the same a hundred years hence and so he took things just as they came.
   He was not a bad man, so some said of him, and yet, perhaps it will be
   found at last that there is no worse man in the world than the man who
   is not good, for in some respects he is not good enough to be bad! He
   has not enough force of character about him to serve either God or
   Baal. He simply serves himself, worshipping his own ease and adoring
   his own comfort. Yet he always meant to be right. Dear me, he was not
   going to sleep much longer, he would only have forty winks more and
   then he would be at his work--and show you what he could do! One of
   these days he meant to be thoroughly in earnest and make up for lost
   time. The time never actually came for him to begin, but it was always
   coming. He always meant to repent, but he went on in his sin. He meant
   to believe, but he died an unbeliever. He meant to be a Christian, but
   he lived without Christ. He halted between two opinions because he
   could not trouble himself to make up his mind! And so he perished of
   delay.

   This picture of the slothful man and his garden and field overgrown
   with nettles and weeds represents many a man who has professed to be a
   Christian, but who has become slothful in the things of God. Spiritual
   life has withered in him. He has backslidden. He has come down from the
   condition of healthy spiritual energy into one of listlessness and
   indifference to the things of God. And while things have gone wrong
   within his heart and all sorts of mischiefs have come into him and
   grown up and seeded themselves in him, mischief is also taking place
   externally in his daily conduct. The stone wall which guarded his
   character is broken down and he lies open to all evil. Upon this point
   we will now meditate. "The stone wall was broken down."

   Come, then, let us take a walk with Solomon and stand with him and
   consider and learn instruction while we look at this broken-down fence.
   When we have examined it, let us consider the consequences of
   broken-down walls. And then, in the last place, let us try to wake up
   this sluggard that his wall may yet be repaired. If this slothful
   person should be one of ourselves, may God's Infinite Mercy awaken us
   before this ruined wall has let in a herd of prowling vices! First, let
   us take--

   I. A LOOK AT THIS BROKEN FENCE.

   You will see that in the beginning it was a very good fence, for it was
   a stone wall. Fields are often surrounded with wooden fences which soon
   decay, or with hedges which may very easily have gaps made in them. But
   this was a stone wall. Such walls are very usual in the East and are
   also common in some of our own counties where stone is plentiful. It
   was a substantial protection to begin with and well shut in the pretty
   little estate which had fallen into such bad hands. The man had a field
   for agricultural purposes and another strip of land for a vineyard or a
   garden. It was fertile soil, for it produced thorns and nettles in
   abundance--and where these flourish, better things can be produced--yet
   the idler took no care of his property, but allowed the wall to get
   into bad repair and in many places to be quite broken down.

   Let me mention some of the stone walls that men permit to be broken
   down when they backslide. In many cases sound principles were instilled
   in youth, but these are forgotten. What a blessing is Christian
   education! Our parents, both by persuasion and example, taught many of
   us the things that are pure and honest and of good repute. We saw in
   their lives how to live. They also opened the Word of God before us and
   they taught us the ways of right both toward God and toward men. They
   prayed for us and they prayed with us till the things of God were
   placed round about us, and shut us in as with a stone wall! We have
   never been able to get rid of our early impressions. Even in times of
   wandering, before we savingly knew the Lord, these things had a healthy
   power over us--we were checked when we would have done evil--we were
   assisted when we were struggling towards Christ. It is very sad when
   people permit these first principles to be shaken and to be removed
   like stones which fall from a boundary wall! Young persons begin at
   first to talk lightly of the old-fashioned ways of their parents.
   By-and-by it is not merely the old-fashionedness of the ways, but the
   ways, themselves, that they despise! They seek other company and from
   that other company they learn nothing but evil. They seek pleasure in
   places which it horrifies their parents to think of. This leads to
   worse--and if they do not bring their fathers' gray hairs with sorrow
   to the grave, it is no virtue of theirs. I have known young men who
   really were Christians, sadly backslide through being induced to
   modify, conceal, or alter those holy principles in which they were
   trained from their mother's knee. It is a great calamity when
   professedly converted men become unfixed, unstable and carried about
   with every wind of Doctrine. It shows great faultiness of mind and
   unsoundness of heart when we can trifle with those grave and solemn
   Truths of God which have been sanctified by a mother's tears and by a
   father's earnest life! "I am Your servant," said David, "and the son of
   Your handmaid." He felt it to be a high honor and, at the same time, a
   sacred bond which bound him to God, that he was the son of one who
   could be called God's handmaid. Take care, you who have had Christian
   training, that you do not trifle with it! "My son, keep your father's
   commandments and forsake not the law of your mother: bind them
   continually upon your heart and tie them about your neck."

   Protection to character is also found in the fact that solid Doctrines
   have been learned. This is a fine stone wall. Many among us have been
   taught the Gospel of the Grace of God and have learned it well, so that
   we are able to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the
   saints. Happy are they who have a religion that is grounded upon a
   clear knowledge of eternal Truths of God! A religion which is all
   excitement and has little instruction in it, may serve for transient
   use, but for permanent life purposes there must be a knowledge of those
   great Doctrines which are fundamental to the Gospel system. I tremble
   when I hear of a man's giving up, one by one, the vital principles of
   the Gospel and boasting of his liberality! I hear him say, "These are
   my views, but others have a right to their views also." That is a very
   proper expression in reference to mere, "views," but we may not thus
   speak of Truth, itself, as revealed by God that is one and unalterable,
   and all are bound to receive it! It is not your view of the Truth, for
   that is a dim thing, but the very Truth of God, itself, which will save
   you if your faith embraces it. I will readily yield my way of stating a
   Doctrine, but not the Doctrine, itself! One man may put it in this way,
   and another man, another way, but the Truth, itself, must never be
   given up. The spirit of the Broad School robs us of everything like
   certainty. I should like to ask some great men of that order whether
   they believe that anythingis taught in the Scriptures which it would be
   worthwhile for a person to die for-- and whether the martyrs were not
   great fools for laying down their lives for mere opinions which might
   be right or might be wrong? This Broad Churchism is a breaking down of
   stone walls and it will let in the devil and all his crew and do
   infinite harm to the Church of God if it is not stopped! A loose state
   of belief does great damage to any man's mind.

   We are not bigots, but we should be none the worse if we so lived that
   men called us so. I met a man the other day who was accused of bigotry
   and I said, "Give me your hand, old fellow. I like to meet with bigots
   now and then, for the fine old creatures are getting scarce! And the
   stuff they are made of is so good that if there were more of it, we
   might see a few men among us again and fewer mollusks." Lately we have
   seen few men with backbones--the most have been of the jelly-fish
   order. I have lived in times in which I should have said, "Be liberal
   and shake off all narrowness," but now I am obliged to alter my tone
   and cry, "Be steadfast in the Truth of God!" The faith once delivered
   to the saints is now all the more attractive to me because it is called
   narrow, for I am weary of that breadth which comes of broken hedges!
   There are fixed points of the Truth of God, and definite certainties of
   creed--and woe to you if you allow these stone walls to crumble down! I
   fear that the slothful are a numerous band and that ages to come may
   have to deplore the laxity which has been applauded by this negligent
   generation!

   Another fence which is too often neglected is that of godly habits
   which had been formed. The sluggard allows this wall to be broken down.
   I will mention some valuable guards of life and character. One is the
   habit of secret prayer. Private prayer should be regularly offered, at
   least in the morning and in the evening. We cannot do without set
   seasons for drawing near to God. To look into the face of man without
   having first seen the face of God is very dangerous--to go out into the
   world without locking up the heart and giving God the key is to leave
   it open to all sorts of spiritual vagrants! At night, again, to go to
   your rest as the swine roll into their sty, without thanking God for
   the mercies of the day, is shameful! The evening sacrifice should be
   devoutly offered as surely as we have enjoyed the evening fireside. We
   should thus put ourselves under the wings of the Preserver of Men. It
   may be said, "We can pray at all times." I know we can, but I fear that
   those who do not pray at stated hours seldom pray at all! Those who
   pray in season are the most likely persons to pray at all seasons.
   Spiritual life does not care for a cast-iron regulation, but since life
   casts itself into some mold or other, I would have you careful of its
   external habit, as well as its internal power. Never allow great gaps
   in the wall of your habitual private prayer!

   I go a step farther. I believe that there is a great guardian power
   about family prayer and I feel greatly distressed because I know that
   very many Christian families neglect it. Romanism, at one time, could
   do nothing in England because it could offer nothing but the shadow of
   what Christians had already in substance. "Do you hear that bell
   tinkling in the morning! What is that for? To go to church to pray!"
   "Indeed," said the Puritan, "I have no need to go there to pray. I have
   had my children together and we have read a passage of Scripture,
   prayed, sang the praises of God--we have a church in our house." Ah,
   there goes that bell again in the evening. What is that for? Why, it is
   the vesper bell! The good man answered that he had no need to trudge a
   mile or two for that, for his holy vespers had been said and sung
   around his own table, of which the big Bible was the chief ornament!
   They told him that there could be no service without a priest, but he
   replied that every godly man should be a priest in his own house. Thus
   have the saints defied the overtures of priestcraft and kept the faith
   from generation to generation! Household devotion and the pulpit are,
   under God, the stone walls of Protestantism! And my prayer is that
   these may not be broken down.

   Another fence to protect piety is found in weeknightservices. I notice
   that when people forsake weeknight meetings the power of their religion
   evaporates. I do not speak of those lawfully detained to watch the sick
   and attend to farm-work and other business, or as domestic servants and
   the like--there are exceptions to all rules--but I mean those who could
   attend if they had a mind to do so. When people say, "It is quite
   enough for me to be wearied with the sermons of the Sunday. I do not
   want to go out to Prayer Meetings, lectures and so forth"--then it is
   clear that they have no appetite for the Word of God--and surely this
   is a bad sign. If you have a bit of wall built to protect the Sunday,
   and then six times the distance left without a fence, I believe that
   Satan's cattle will get in and do no end of mischief!

   Take care, also, of the stone wall of Bible reading, and of speaking
   often, one to another, concerning the things of God. Associate with the
   godly and commune with God and you will thus, by the blessing of God's
   Spirit, keep up a good fence against temptations, which otherwise will
   get into the fields of your soul and devour all goodly fruits!

   Many have found much protection for the field of daily life in the
   stone wall of a public profession of faith. I am speaking to you who
   are real Believers and I know that you have often found it a great
   safeguard to be known and recognized as a follower of Jesus! I have
   never regretted--and I never shall regret--the day on which I walked to
   the little river Lark, in Cambridgeshire, and was there buried with
   Christ in Baptism! In this I acted contrary to the opinions of all my
   friends whom I respected and esteemed--but as I had read the Greek
   Testament for myself, I felt bound to be immersed upon the profession
   of my faith, and so I was. By that act I said to the world, "I am dead
   to you, and buried to you in Christ, and I hope henceforth to live in
   newness of life." That day, by God's Grace, I imitated the tactics of
   the general who meant to fight the enemy till he conquered and,
   therefore, he burned his boats that there might be no way of retreat! I
   believe that a solemn confession of Christ before men is as a thorn
   hedge to keep one within bounds and to keep off those who hope to draw
   you aside. Of course, it is nothing but a hedge--and it is of no use to
   fence in a field of weeds--but when wheat is growing, a hedge is of
   great consequence. You who imagine that you can be the Lord's and yet
   lie open like a common, are under a great error! You ought to be
   distinguished from the world and obey the Voice which says, "Come you
   out from among them, be you separate." The promise of salvation is to
   the man who with his heart believes and with his mouth confesses. Say
   right boldly, "Let others do as they will! As for me and my house, we
   will serve the Lord." By this act you come out into the King's highway
   and put yourself under the protection of the Lord of Pilgrims--and He
   will take care of you. Oftentimes, when otherwise you might have
   hesitated, you will say, "The vows of the Lord are upon me--how can I
   draw back?" I pray you, then, set up the stone wall and keep it up! And
   if it has at any corner been tumbled over, set it up again and let it
   be seen by your conduct and conversation that you are a follower of
   Jesus Christ--and are not ashamed to have it known!

   Keep to your religious principles like men and do not turn aside for
   the sake of gain or respectability! Do not let wealth break down your
   wall, for I have known some make a great gap to let their carriage go
   through and to let in wealthy worldlings for the sake of their society.
   Those who forsake their principles to please men will in the end be
   lightly esteemed, but he who is faithful shall have the honor which
   comes from God. Look well to this hedge of steadfast adherence to the
   faith and you shall find a great blessing in it.

   There is yet another stone wall which I will mention, namely, firmness
   of character. Our holy faith teaches a man to be decided in the cause
   of Christ and to be resolute in getting rid of evil habits. "If your
   eye offends you"--wear a shade? No--"pluck it out." "If your arm
   offends you"--hang it in a sling? No--cut it off and cast it from you."
   True religion is very thorough in what it recommends. It says to us,
   "touch not the unclean thing." But many persons are so idle in the ways
   of God that they have no mind of their own--evil companions tempt them,
   and they cannot say, "No." They need a stone wall made up of noes! Here
   are the stones, "no, no, No." Dare to be different! Resolve to keep
   close to Christ! Make a stern determination to permit nothing in your
   life, however gainful or pleasurable, if it would dishonor the name of
   Jesus! Be dogmatically true, obstinately holy, immovably honest,
   desperately kind, fixedly upright! If God's Grace sets up this hedge
   around you, even Satan will feel that he cannot get in and will
   complain to God, "have You not set a hedge about him?" I have kept you
   long enough looking over the wall! Let me invite you in and, for a few
   minutes, let us-- II. CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES OF A BROKEN-DOWN FENCE.

   To make short work of it, first, the boundary is gone. Those lines of
   separation which were kept up by the good principles which were
   instilled in him by religious habits, by a bold profession and by a
   firm resolve, have vanished. And now the question is, "Is he a
   Christian, or is he not?" The fence is so far gone that he does not
   know which is his Lord's property and which remains an open common. In
   fact, he does not know whether he is still included in the Royal
   domain, or left to be mere waste of the world's manor! This is for lack
   of keeping up the fences. If that man had lived near to God, if he had
   walked in his integrity, if the Spirit of God had richly rested on him
   in all holy living and waiting upon God, he would have known where the
   boundary was and he would have seen whether his land lay in the parish
   of All-Saints, or in the region called No-Man's-Land, or in the
   district where Satan is the lord of the manor! I heard of a dear old
   saint the other day who, when she was near to death, was attacked by
   Satan and, waving her finger at the enemy in her gentle way, she routed
   him by saying, "Chosen! Chosen! Chosen!" She knew that she was chosen
   and she remembered the text, "The Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke
   you." When the wall stands in its integrity all around the field, we
   can resist the devil by bidding him leave the Lord's property alone!
   "Begone! Look somewhere else. I belong to Christ, not to you." To do
   this you must mend the hedges well, so that there shall be a clear
   boundary line--and then you can say, "Trespassers, beware!" Do not
   yield an inch to the enemy, but make the wall all the higher, the more
   he seeks to enter. O that this adversary may never find a gap to enter
   by!

   Next, when the wall has fallen, the protection is gone. When a man's
   heart has its wall broken, all his thoughts will go astray and wander
   upon the mountains of vanity. Like sheep, thoughts need careful
   folding, or they will be off in no time. "I hate vain thoughts," said
   David, but slothful men are sure to have plenty of them, for there is
   no keeping your thoughts out of vanity unless you stop every gap and
   shut every gate. Holy thoughts, comfortable meditations, devout
   longings and gracious communing will be off and gone if we sluggishly
   allow the stone wall to get out of repair.

   Nor is this all, for as good things go out, so bad things come in. When
   the wall is gone, every passer-by sees, as it were, an invitation to
   enter! You have set before him an open door and in he comes. Are there
   fruits? He plucks them, of course. He walks about as if it were a
   public place and he pries everywhere. Is there any secret corner of
   your heart which you would keep for Jesus? Satan or the world will walk
   in--and do you wonder? Every passing goat, or roaming ox, or stray ass
   visits the growing crops and spoils more than he eats! And who can
   blame the creature when the gaps are so wide? All manner of evil lusts,
   desires and imaginations prey upon an unfenced soul. It is of no use
   for you to say, "Lead us not into temptation." God will hear your
   prayer and He will not lead you there, but you are leading yourself
   into it, you are tempting the devil to tempt you! If you leave yourself
   open to evil influences, the Spirit of God will be grieved

   and He may leave you to reap the result of your folly. What do you
   think, Friend? Had you not better attend to your fences at once?

   And then there is another evil, for the land itself will go away. "No,"
   you say, "how can that be?" If a stone wall is broken down around a
   farm in England, a man does not thereby lose his land, but in many
   parts of Palestine the land is all ups and downs on the sides of the
   hills--and every bit of ground is terraced and kept up by walls. When
   the walls fall, the soil slips over, terrace upon terrace, and the
   vines and trees go down with it! Then the rain comes and washes the
   soil away and nothing is left but barren crags which would starve a
   lark! In the same manner, a man may so neglect himself, so neglect the
   things of God and become so careless and indifferent about Doctrine,
   and about holy living, that his power to do good ceases and his mind,
   his heart, and his energy seem to be gone. The Prophet said, "Ephraim
   is a silly dove, without heart." There are flocks of such silly doves.
   The man who trifles with religion, sports with his own soul and will
   soon degenerate into so much of a trifler that he will be averse to
   solemn thought and incapable of real usefulness! I charge you, dear
   Friends, to be sternly true to yourselves and to your God! Stand to
   your principles in this evil and wicked day! Now, when everything seems
   to be turned into marsh, mire and mud--and religious thought appears to
   be silently sliding and slipping along, descending like a stream of
   slime into the Dead Sea of Unbelief--get solid walls built around your
   life, around your faith and around your character! Stand fast and
   having done all, still stand! May God the Holy Spirit cause you to be
   rooted and grounded, built up and established, fixed and confirmed,
   never "casting away your confidence, which has great recompense of
   reward." Lastly, I want, if I can, to-- ' III. WAKE UP THE SLUGGARD.

   I would like to throw a handful of gravel up to his window. It is time
   to get up, for the sun has drunk up all the dew. He craves "a little
   more sleep." My dear Fellow, if you take a little more sleep, you will
   never wake at all till you lift up your eyes in another world! Wake at
   once! Leap from your bed before you are smothered in it. Wake up! Do
   you not see where you are? You have let things alone till your heart is
   covered with sins like weeds. You have neglected God and Christ till
   you have grown worldly, sinful, careless, indifferent, ungodly! I mean
   some of you who were once named with the sacred name! You have become
   like worldlings and are almost as far from being what you ought to be,
   as others who make no profession at all! Look at yourselves and see
   what has come of your neglected walls. Then 1ook at some of your fellow
   Christians and mark how diligent they are. Look at many among them who
   are poor and illiterate--and yet they are doing far more than you for
   the Lord Jesus! In spite of your talents and opportunities, you are an
   unprofitable servant, letting all things run to waste! Is it not time
   that you bestirred yourself? Look again at others who, like yourself,
   went to sleep, meaning to wake in a little while. What has become of
   them? Alas, for there are those who have fallen into gross sin,
   dishonored their character and who have been put away from the Church
   of God--yet they only went a little further than you have done! Your
   state of heart is much the same as theirs and if you should be tempted,
   as they have been, you will probably make shipwreck as they have done!
   Oh, see to it, you that slumber, for an idle professor is ready for
   anything. A slothful professor's heart is tinder for the devil's
   tinderbox! Does your heart thus invite the sparks of temptation?

   Remember, lastly, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Shall He come
   and find you sleeping? Remember the judgment. What will you say to
   excuse yourself for opportunities lost, time wasted and talents wrapped
   up in a napkin when the Lord shall come?

   As for you, my unconverted Friend, if you go dreaming through this
   world without any sort of trouble, and never look to the state of your
   heart at all, you will be a lost man beyond all question! The slothful
   can have no hope, for "if the righteous scarcely are saved," who strive
   to serve their Lord--where will those appear who sleep on in defiance
   of the calls of God? Salvation is wholly and alone of Grace, as you
   well know--but Grace never works in men's minds towards slumbering and
   indifference--it tends towards energy, activity, fervor, importunity,
   self-sacrifice! God grant us the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, that
   all things may be set in order, sins cut up by the roots within the
   heart and the whole man protected by sanctifying Grace from the wasters
   which lurk around, hoping to enter where the wall is low. O Lord,
   remember us in mercy, fence us about by Your power, and keep us from
   the sloth which would expose us to evil, for Jesus' sake! Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALM 119:1-20.

   It is not easy to see the special subjects that are spoken of by David
   in each of the short portions of eight verses, yet I do not doubt that
   if each portion were carefully examined, we would see that there is
   some thread running through. We have not here simply a number of pious
   sentences about the excellency of God's Word, but we have choice gems,
   each of them set in a golden ring of spiritual intent and purpose. I
   think the first eight verses, all of which begin with that letter
   Aleph, or A, set forth the excellence of abiding in holiness and
   walking continually in the way of the Lord. Not so much the restoring
   and comforting power of the Word, as the blessedness of that Word in
   leading us to conduct ourselves in consistency of character at all
   times.

   Verse 1. Blessed are the undefled in the way, who walk in the Law of
   the LORD. There is another blessing which comes before this. "Blessed
   is the man whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered."
   And we can never know the blessing of this 119th Psalm unless we have
   felt in our own souls that first blessing--the blessedness of forgiven
   sin! But when, through the forgiveness of sin, we are put upon Gospel
   ground and are saved--then, not according to the Law, but according be
   the Gospel--does this blessing come upon us. "Blessed are the undefiled
   in the way." The men who have kept their garments unspotted from the
   world--who from the time of their conversion even until now have been
   under the influence of the Divine Spirit, and so have been enabled to
   walk in holiness without once defiling their garments with any great
   and public sin--who walk in the Law of the Lord, not occasionally, but
   always--whose daily walk is in conformity with the Divine Mind--these
   are truly blessed!

   2. Blessed are they that keep His testimonies and that seek Him with
   the whole heart For he that has most of God, yet needs to seek more. We
   keep the testimonies--those we know, for we are taught of the Lord
   according to the promise, "All your children shall be taught of the
   Lord." Yet we still seek more. With our whole heart we are pressing on
   still to something higher and better! Even the undefiled in the way are
   so, comparatively--they are not absolutely undefiled, so as to be
   absolutely perfect in the sight of God--hence they feel their
   imperfection and they press after something better. They seek Him with
   the whole heart.

   3, 4. They also do no iniquity, they walk in His ways. You have
   commanded us to keep Your precepts diligently. So that if we do, we are
   unprofitable servants. We have done no more than was our duty to do!
   When His Divine Grace has renewed us and has enabled us to walk in all
   sobriety, truthfulness and holiness, even then we have nothing to boast
   of! "You have commanded us to keep Your precepts diligently."

   5. O that my ways were directed to keep Your statutes! "Oh, that I may
   never defile my garments!" And he who has not defiled his garments
   still prays the same prayer that he may be kept still and directed
   still. "Oh, that my ways were directed to keep Your statutes!"

   6. Then shallInot be ashamed, when Ihave respect unto all Your
   commandments. It gives a man boldness. Integrity of heart before God
   breeds sacred courage. He has nothing to be ashamed of and he is not
   ashamed when he has respect unto all God's commandments.

   7. I will praise You with uprightness of heart when I shall have
   learned Your righteous judgments. Not, "I will praise myself." Not, "I
   will take credit, myself, for my clean walking," but, "When You have
   taught me and I learn Your ways, then all the praise shall be rendered
   unto You." This is the fruit of evangelical obedience! Legal obedience,
   even could it be rendered, would be sure to claim the servant's wage
   and take to itself the praise--but the obedience of a child of God
   leads to the laying of honor at Jehovah's feet.

   8. I will keep Your statutes: O forsake me not utterly!Strong
   resolution, but a deep consciousness of weakness and unworthiness--

   "I will, but oh '...how can I do it? Oh, for this, no strength have I--
   My strength is at Your feet to lie. Oh, forsake me not utterly."

   Now, in the next eight verses it seems to me that the subject is
   somewhat different. We have seen the excellence of an undefiled way.
   Now we have before us one who wants to prove the power of the Word to
   keep him in that undefiled way, and so he begins with this question.

   9. How shall a young man cleanse his way?His passions are strong, his
   experience little. His tempers are many--his friends cannot always be
   at his side. "How shall he cleanse his way?" It is very apt to become
   miry. The answer is--

   9. By taking heed thereto according to Your Word. The Word of God will
   keep him in the clean path--will warn him of all the mire into which he
   would have fallen--and if he takes heed to his steps, he shall not
   trip.

   10. With my whole heart have I sought You: O let me not wander from
   Your commandments. There is the young man's fear and it may be the old
   man's fear, too. "I have sought You sincerely and earnestly, but do not
   permit my weaker passions to get the mastery over me--do not suffer me
   in some unguarded hour to be carried captive by my lusts. Oh, let me
   not wander from Your commandments. It were better to die than to wander
   from Your way." The true convert dreads sin! He loathes the very
   thought of the most pleasurable folly. "Oh, let me not wander from Your
   commandments."

   11. Your Wordhave Ihidin my heart, that Imight not sin against You.
   There is the dread, you see--the dread of sinning--the dread of
   defiling his way. So he says that he has adopted this Divine remedy. A
   good division of this text, if anyone would preach from it, is the best
   thing, "Your Word," in the best place--"have I hid in my heart," for
   the best of purposes--" that I might not sin against You."

   12. Blessed are You, O LORD: teach me Your statutes. As if he said,
   "Teach me your statutes that I may be blessed, too. You are a happy
   God. Teach me Your way that I may be happy, too. Blessed are the
   undefiled. Teach me to be so, that as You are blessed, so I may be."

   13. 14. With my lips have I declared all the judgments of Your mouth.
   Ihave rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all
   riches. A man's walking will be right when his delight is of this kind,
   for where the heart goes, the life will go. To some people religion is
   a task. It will never have much power over them. But when it becomes a
   delight, then will their walk be affected by it. A well-known and
   renowned infidel of the last generation, travelling in Wales, said to a
   little girl whom he saw reading her Bible, "Well, my Dear," he said, "I
   see you are getting through your task." "Task, Sir?" she said, "What do
   you mean? I am reading the Bible." He said, "I thought your mother had
   set you a chapter to read." "Oh, no, Sir. If my mother wanted to punish
   me, she would not make me read the Bible. It is the most delightful
   book in all the world and it is a great joy to me when I can get a
   little time alone to read my Bible." It touched his heart. As he
   confessed afterwards, he was delighted to find something like genuine
   religion. And where you find delight in religion, there it is genuine!
   True, genuine religion is like some of the German waters. They come up
   all fresh and sparkling. I like to see the sparkling in it--a little
   sparking religion--a little flash ofjoy and of delight. But very much
   that we get now-a-days is flat, stale, dull, unprofitable. They keep it
   corked, but badly corked, usually, and when we see it, there is nothing
   in it that we should desire it! It is a poor article. God give us
   delight in Himself, for that is true religion!--

   "I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies As much as in all
   riches."

   15. I will meditate in Your precepts, and have respect unto Your ways.
   An excellent way of keeping the life clean is to keep the thoughts
   clean. Our boys are brought to prison by reading the abominable trash
   that is poured forth for juveniles--and many and many a crime has been
   the result of the fiction of the present day! It is often not only
   light reading, but filthy reading, too. If we would read God's Word
   more, and meditate in it better, our hearts would be kept sweet and so
   would our lives!

   16. I will delight myself in Your statutes: I will not forget Your
   Word. God grant that we never may.

   17. Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live, and keep Your
   Word. Does it need much Grace, then, to keep a child of God alive--even
   to keep him alive? Yes, it does! Little Grace will be of no use to us.
   We must have great Grace, for our needs are great. Sometimes our
   troubles are great. At other times our temptations are great. We are
   always in great necessity and You, Lord, must have a large bank, and
   you must give it liberally to us, or else we, poor, penniless beggars,
   must utterly die of need. Merely to live, then, needs the bounty of
   God. "Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your
   Word"--for there is no living in truth, except as we keep the Word of
   God. Those who live in the neglect of God's Word are not living at all,
   but they are dead while they live! God deliver us from such life.

   18. Open You my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your
   Law. They are there, but I cannot see them unless You open my eyes. It
   is not that Your Word is dark, but that my eyes are dim. Yes, by nature
   they are blinded altogether. Oh, You who are the great Physician of the
   blind, open my eyes!

   19. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not Your commandments from me.
   Do you see the drift of that? He says, "I am a stranger here. Then,
   Lord, if You do not become and continue to be my Acquaintance, I am
   altogether alone." It is true of the Christian that he cannot find
   anything here that can satisfy his soul. He must, therefore, have the
   Lord, or else he is in a very sorry case. Oh, Beloved, the more you
   find yourselves strangers in this world, the more are you becoming like
   your God! The Psalmist says elsewhere, "For I am a stranger with
   You."Not, "to You," but, "with You, like You," for God is a stranger in
   this world. Men do not recognize Him or delight themselves in Him. "So,
   since, Lord, I have no other friend, and can find no other satisfying
   portion, hide not Your commandments from me. On the contrary, let me
   see more of You, because I have nothing else."

   20. My soul breaks for the longing that it has unto Your judgments at
   all times. We cannot always say that, for we sometimes wish that our
   hearts would break. Sometimes we sing--

   "My heart rejoice or ache-- Resolve this doubt for me. And if it is not
   broken, break And heal it if it be."
     __________________________________________________________________

Our Lord's Transcendent Greatness

   (No. 3382)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S DAY EVENING,
   DECEMBER 2, 1866.

   "Now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth." Micah 5:4.

   THERE can be no doubt but what the Prophet here spoke of the
   Messiah--of our Lord Jesus Christ. We shall not need to enter into any
   discussion of that subject here, but shall take it at once for granted
   that the passage means, "Now shall the Lord Jesus be great unto the
   ends of the earth." This does not mean that Jesus Christ will be any
   greater than He always is essentially and naturally. As the Son of God,
   He is Infinite in Glory and can be no greater. As King of kings and
   Lord of lords, His Glory fills immensity. Before Him all intelligent
   spirits that are obedient to God pay their constant homage. He is so
   great that as we look up to Him, we can both rejoice in Him as our
   Brother and be humbled in His Presence when we reflect that He is our
   God. Jesus Christ is not to be greater, then, essentially than He now
   is. He is "God over all, blessed forever." The greatness here spoken of
   is not one of essence, but of manifestation. Christ is to be made great
   in the judgment, hearts and understandings of men, as He is at all
   times really great in Himself. When we read in the text, "Now shall He
   be great unto the ends of the earth," we may remember that He is
   already great in Heaven. Albeit that man rejects Him--painful as the
   thought is that multitudes in this world have not even heard His name
   and that multitudes more only know it to revile it--yet there is a
   place where His name is great.

   In every golden street that name is celebrated. The strings of every
   holy harp in Heaven are set to the melodies of His praise. All of "the
   melodious sonnets sung by angel hosts above" are to extol and magnify
   Him. They delight to do Him service. We may comfort ourselves with this
   thought when blasphemy abounds and the love of many grows cold. There
   is at least one shrine where He is always adored--one happier and
   better land where the sound of blasphemy never profanes Him--where He
   is loved, adored and reverenced by every creature!

   And it is also sweet to remember that although Jesus Christ is not as
   yet great unto the ends of the earth, yet He is exceedingly great in
   the hearts of the multitudes of His people. When we meet here tonight,
   a comparatively little band, we are not the only worshippers of the
   Crucified. At this moment the sacred song is going up from tens of
   thousands of sincere hearts in this island. Across the Continent there
   are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal, but who delight to join
   with angels and archangels in singing the praises of Jesus. And far,
   far across the sea, men of our own kith and kin love Him as we do. No,
   no, where is there a place where the name of Jesus is not now known? As
   the wide sea is everywhere whitened with the sails of our commerce, so
   do these swift ships bear in them the servants of God!

   The desert has been heard to ring with the songs of His praises!
   Adventurous missionaries have forced their way to what seemed to be
   impenetrable swamps and deserts that never could be trodden by the foot
   of man--and Jesus Christ's name has been made known--at least as a
   witness againstthe people, even where it has not been received by the
   people. Little is the Light of God, but we thank God we have some
   Light! Few there are that find the narrow road, but still, there is a
   goodly company who, as they march along, sing of Jesus--the way, the
   truth and the life! "The whole world lies in the Wicked One," but, like
   an oasis in the midst of the desert, we can see the Christian Church!
   Like a handful of salt scattered over a mass of putridity, like here
   and there a lamp hung up in the thick darkness, God has a chosen people
   and in their hearts Jesus Christ is great--and shall be great in time
   and in eternity!

   But the text does mean this, that throughout the whole world--north,
   south, east, and west--Jesus Christ shall yet be made great! We will
   speak of this tonight, first, by showing that He deserves to be great.
   Then by reminding you that Godhas decreed that He shall be great.
   Thirdly, by asking you, my Brothers and Sisters, whether you do not
   also agree

   with that decree and now, in His strength, that you will make Him great
   And then I shall close by asking whether there are not some here whose
   hearts, as yet unbowed to His dominion, shall tonight come and
   acknowledge His sway, that they also may feel and proclaim His
   greatness unto the ends of the earth. In the first place, what a task I
   have undertaken in endeavoring to show that--

   I. JESUS CHRIST DESERVES TO BE MADE GREAT!

   Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, it needs an angel to set forth the Person
   of the Lord Jesus, and yet an angel might fail, for an angel was never
   washed in the Savior's blood and never redeemed from wrath by Jesus the
   Substitute! What are my lips but poor, cold clay, and what are my words
   but air, and how shall I, then, set forth the Son of God, the Eternal
   One, "who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we,
   through His poverty, might be rich"?

   Does the world ring with the name of the Conqueror? It was but a few
   years ago that everywhere the name of Napoleon was dreaded and men
   trembled at the very thought of that mighty destroyer of the human
   race. Ah, well, if a conqueror's name always seems to have a spell
   about it which fascinates men with its glitter and its glare, I will
   say that Jesus is a greater Conqueror than all the Napoleons, or
   Alexanders, or Caesars who ever devastated the world, for He has
   overcome that which overcame them!

   Kings as they were, they were often the victims of great sin. Alexander
   drowned himself in the bowl long before he died, for he was the slave
   of drunkenness. But Christ has fought with sin and overcome it, leading
   it captive at His chariot wheels. Behold the conqueror, smitten in the
   breast by the skeleton hand, lies as motionless as the slave he slew!
   Death is the conqueror of conquerors, and casts noble dust upon the
   same grave as the poorest and most ignoble! But my Lord and Master has
   conquered death--

   "He, Hell in Hell laid low, Made sin, He sin overthrew, Bowed to the
   grave, destroyed it so, And death, by dying, slew."

   My Master met Satan face to face and put His foot upon his neck. He met
   sin and trod it as men tread grapes in the winepress! He met Death,
   itself, the master of all, and rent the grave, rolled away the stone
   and proclaimed a Resurrection to the buried sons of men! This Conqueror
   is, and well does He deserve to be made great!

   Some men who will not applaud a conqueror will sometimes speak well of
   a deliverer I saw on the triumphal arch at Milan, at the far end of the
   Corso, a well-deserved encomium on the man who, whether with or without
   his own will, helped at first to snap the chains of Italy. There was a
   grateful recognition on the part of Italy of the deeds of Victor
   Emmanuel and of Louis Napoleon--and the horses of triumph on the top of
   the Arch of Victory seemed well placed as a tribute to one who had
   helped to set a nation free, which long had felt the tyrant's chain. It
   is said that when Macedonia was first set free, the Greeks were
   assembled at their games and they gave to him who freed Greece the name
   of "Sotea" or "Savior," and the shouting was such that they said the
   birds fell dead, astonished! 'Twas an exaggeration, but I can
   understand the joy of a nation when a savior comes to deliver them from
   bondage! But what shouts shall be equal to the praises of the Son of
   God! The fetters He has broken are the fetters of your souls! The
   dungeons from which He delivers are the dungeons of eternal fire! The
   rescue that He brings you is not for this life, only, but for the life
   to come! As everlasting as the age of God is the deliverance which
   Jesus brings! Sound, sound His name abroad! Daughters of music, give
   Him your sweetest notes. Look, the triumphant Hero comes! Now let every
   heart give forth its glad peal of holy joy for all that He has done! He
   deserves to be great, both as Conqueror and as Deliverer!

   In these more peaceful times, too, men are inclined to make those great
   who are full of learning. When a man has penetrated through the shell
   of ignorance and has gotten to the central core of knowledge, men say
   that he is great. We speak of a great geologist, a great mathematician,
   or a great astronomer. Men are proud of their fellow man when he has
   threaded the stars, walked with his staff above and become familiar
   with planet and with comet, as though they were his next of kin! But
   what shall I say of my Lord, for in Him dwells all "the treasures of
   wisdom and knowledge"? To know Him is life and by His knowledge shall
   His righteous one justify many. If you get Christ, you get wisdom! His
   name is "wisdom." Solomon, the wise one, called Him so. He is Wisdom
   without faintest folly, Knowledge without mistake. Oh, let Him, then,
   be made great!

   Great discoverers, too, are highly honored and valued. It was right of
   Her Majesty the Queen to confer knighthood upon those who had bound two
   lands together, moored two distant nations side by side, so that they
   could speak to each

   other in friendly terms. 'Twas well done, good Sirs, to make the depths
   of the sea a highway for human thought! But what has Jesus done? He has
   not merely linked England and America together, but Heaven and earth!
   He has thrown a connecting cable between the sinner, far off from God,
   and the Eternal One who, hating sin, was far off from man. Now, through
   Him we can speak with God and, through Him, God returns an answer to
   the message of our misery and the sigh of our grief! Oh, Brothers and
   Sisters, Christ has established a communication which is swifter than
   the telegraph! "Before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet
   speaking, I will hear." He has bridged a gulf such as no human mind
   ever imagined could be bridged! As far as Hell is from Heaven was man
   from God--but Christ has bridged the chasm! The mountains of our sins
   are greater than a thousand Alps heaped on each other--and they stood
   between us and God--but the Cross has tunneled the mountains and there
   is now a highway for souls to come to God! Now shall He be great,
   indeed, if He gets His just deserts!

   Men also, now-a-days, are wise enough to think those great who show
   great generosity. She is great who goes into the hospital, devoting the
   prime of her days to the relieving of human misery. He is truly great
   who, having acquired wealth, gives it with more than a princely hand to
   build habitations for the poor. He is great who, having won a nation,
   gives it up as freely as he won it and who lives unrestrained by the
   smiles or frowns of kings and is the true, though uncrowned, king, the
   world's hero, whom we all delight to honor! But oh, my Master, my Lord
   Jesus as much excels all these as the sun excels the stars! He gave not
   corruptible things, as silver and gold, but He gave Himself, His heart,
   His soul, His Deity! He gave such a jewel for us that if Heaven and
   earth were sold, they could not buy another like it! He gave Himself
   for us that He might redeem us from iniquity! Speak of entering into
   hospitals? He came unto this great hospital--this huge leper house, the
   world--and He Himself took our infirmities, bore our sicknesses and by
   His stripes we are healed! Speak of the disinterestedness that has made
   men heroes from the mere love of their fellow men? What had Christ to
   gain? Oh, you lamps of Heaven, what had He to gain? Your splendor was
   enough for Him! What could He win but shame, disgrace, abuse, the spit
   on His face and the scourging on His shoulders?

   It was for the love of His enemies, the love of those who hated and
   despised Him and nailed Him to the Cross--it was for this transcendent,
   unparalleled love that Christ came to earth! He deserves to be great
   and I am sure that if you do not think that Jesus Christ is great, it
   is because you do not know Him--

   "His worth, if all the nations knew, Surely the whole world would love
   Him too."

   There is no biography that has ever been written that is like that
   given us by the four Evangelists. There is no story of human sacrifice
   that can rival it, or that can be mentioned in the same breath! Oh,
   men, it was for you He lived! Oh, men, it was for you He died!

   The angels love Him, though for them He laid not down His life--and
   shall men, alone, be dumb, or earth, alone, fast close her mouth and
   refuse to praise Him? The very stones, surely, would speak, if we did
   not say, "Now, shall He be great unto the ends of the earth."

   Thus much upon a theme that defies our power to set forth fully. And
   now, in the second place, the text may be viewed as--

   II. A SOLEMN PURPOSE AND DECREE ON THE PART OF GOD.

   Christ shall be made great to the ends of the earth. There are
   idol-gods that are worshipped by the largest proportion of our race,
   but the idols He shall utterly abolish! The false prophets have more
   followers on earth than Christ has. There are more Muslims than
   Christians of all kinds. But the crescent of Mohamed must wane. The
   Papacy has still a firm hold upon the minds of millions, but, like a
   millstone which is hurled into the flood to rise no more, so must the
   antiChrist of Rome be utterly cast away! Everything that stands in the
   place of Christ must be broken into a thousand shivers, for He must
   reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet! Brothers and
   Sisters, the very signs of the times, as well as the Word of God, lead
   us to the comfortable belief that there should be a wider enlightenment
   of the human mind. It may be, certainly it may be, that the Lord will
   speedily come, but it does not seem to me at all likely that He will.
   We are to live anticipating His coming, as servants who know they will
   have to give an account when He does come. That is the practical
   bearing of the Doctrine upon our life, but there are many prophecies
   yet to be fulfilled which seem to show that He is not coming just now.
   I believe that there will be a gradual enlightenment of the human race.
   I see but little of it at present, but, still, He must be great unto
   the ends of the earth! Hard hearts will melt before the preaching of

   His Gospel. Perhaps they will melt suddenly. Perhaps a nation shall be
   born in a day. That preaching which now wins tens might, if God willed
   it, win hundreds, no, it might win thousands and hundreds of thousands!
   I have never seen any reason why, if God blesses half a dozen in the
   Tabernacle under a sermon, He should not bless the whole congregation!
   I do not see any reason why, if He blesses the preaching of the Word
   here, He should not bless it everywhere! No, I see a great many reasons
   why He should and I hope that He will--and that Pentecost will be
   outdone until we shall talk of that blessed day as being but a trifling
   beginning of a much greater result! Pentecost was only the feast of the
   first-fruits. It was not the harvest. The first-fruits were just one
   sheaf and, surely the harvest is to be much more than that! Let us,
   then, expect far greater things than even Pentecost knew!

   We would not be surprised if news should come, long before these heads
   of ours sleep among the sweet clods of the valley, that there has been
   an awakening through Germany and France--that the Gospel has spread all
   down the Apen-nines--that the Truth of God, as it is in Jesus, has
   shaken Italy from end to end! That Turkey has submitted to the Cross!
   That the Euphrates has dried up its rebellion, that the multitudes of
   India have cast away Vishnu and Siva and bowed before Christ! That
   Confucius is no longer the great philosopher of China, but that the Man
   of Nazareth is the Teacher of millions in that strange people--that
   from Eastern Coast to Western--the people have set their faces towards
   Christ and desire to learn concerning Him! We may be living upon the
   threshold of mighty times. "There were giants upon the earth" in days
   gone by. There may be giants yet again and the Gospel which has crept
   along at a steady pace may yet take to itself its great power and,
   swift as the chariot of the sun, the light of Truth shall fly the whole
   world over! This, then, is God's purpose and decree, "Now, shall He be
   great unto the ends of the earth."

   I want, now, in the third place, to ask Christians here--

   III. WHETHER, AS THIS IS GOD'S DECREE, IT HAS NOT OFTEN ALSO BEEN THE
   EXPRESSION OF OUR

   HEARTS?

   When you and I were first converted, did we not say that we would make
   Him great? And we did try to do it. We began to talk to our friends. We
   got a handful of tracts and gave them away. We tried to get into a
   little cottage to speak about Christ and our resolve then was that, as
   far as ever our power would go, we would make Christ great to the ends
   of the earth! Ah, we have fallen very sadly short of those first days.
   I am afraid we have not kept up our first love, but I wish that every
   Christian here would go back to that first moment when he received his
   pardon and say, "Yes, I have been loved much and, having had much
   forgiven, in God's name, I will love Him much in return. And as far as
   I can, I will make His name great."

   Since that period we have had some very happy seasons. I know that in
   this very House of Prayer we have sometimes felt that we could stay
   here forever. It has been like Heaven below to us, and then we have
   said, "Oh, what will I not give Him? I will consecrate my substance. I
   will use my tongue, my mind, my hands--I will do anything for Him--He
   has loved me so much that I cannot help talking about it! I will make
   my children and all my family know what a precious Savior He is." Oh, I
   wish that we had come to this and that we not only said it, now and
   then, but that it was our prayer night and day and the one comfort of
   our hearts! Beloved, there are some of us who can say before God, the
   Heart-Searching One, that the one thing we care about is to make Jesus
   Christ great. I have sometimes prayed from this platform a prayer which
   has made some of you wonder when I have asked that, if the crushing of
   me might lift Christ one inch higher, it might be done at once. Well,
   it is my daily feeling. I thank God that if it would more honor Him to
   cast me where He wills, if I might but be permitted to love Him and He
   will but love me, the thing may be done and He shall have all the
   praise! While Mr. Tennant was being greatly helped of God in preaching,
   it came to pass on a certain Sunday that a sermon which he had very
   carefully prepared suddenly went from his mind and, instead of
   preaching, he was compelled to be silent. It was a painfully humbling
   thing for him, but it was the means of the conversion of one of his
   hearers, who said, "Then I am to understand that as Mr. Tennant
   preaches so mightily sometimes to the people, but could not preach on
   this occasion, he must have been helped of God before--and so it has
   been God that has spoken to me." This thought pricked the man to the
   heart. Oh, it were a good thing to be made a shame, a blessed thing to
   be a butt, a jest, a jeer, a byword--if Christ were but lifted up
   thereby!

   When Sir Walter Raleigh laid down his cloak and covered the mire for
   Queen Elizabeth's sake, it was, I fear, but a courtier's trick. But for
   Christians to be willing to lose their reputations and even their very
   lives to make Christ glorious--this is the only truly Christian way of
   living! God forbid that we should ever think about sparing or pampering

   self. I saw a good Christian Brother last Friday, whom God has greatly
   blessed. But, when working in a very bad part of London, he used to be
   constantly teased by abominable stories which were made up against him.
   I said to Him, "I see you have got something that no Evangelist can
   afford to have." "What is that?" he said. "Why," was the reply, "you
   have got a good reputation and you must get rid of it for Christ's
   sake. That is to say, live a holy life and then let men call you
   'devil' if they like. Let them lay every sin to your charge, but never
   heed them, never speak nor fight for yourself, but speak and fight for
   your Master! Contend for Him and think it to be your honor and your
   glory to become a butt, an outcast and as the offscouring of all things
   if Jehovah-Jesus may but wear the crown--and you can win but one single
   soul to Jesus Christ forever."

   I think, then, that we are all agreed upon this point. We mean, God
   helping us, to hold fast to this and to do what we can that Jesus
   Christ may be great unto the ends of the earth!

   And now we can spend only two or three minutes in asking the question--

   IV. ARE THERE NOT SOME HERE TONIGHT IN WHOM JESUS CHRIST MAY BE MADE
   GREAT?

   Now, you good people who have never done anything wrong and who have
   got a very good righteousness of your own--I do not ask you to glorify
   Christ--because you cannot! If I wanted to praise up some doctor and
   said, "Now, here he is--he can cure all diseases! Will you come and
   help him to get a name?" I would know that you who were not sick could
   not help him, but the man who was most sick would be the very one that
   would get the doctor the best name if he could cure him! So when
   Christ's name is to be lifted up and we want to preach Him so that He
   may be extolled, you who feel your guilt are the very men who can help
   us! Supposing now, Jesus Christ should take the drunk and wash out his
   mouth and make a sober man of him--and a Christian--would not that make
   Christ to be exalted? And ah, if there should be, even here, a woman of
   an evil and vicious life, and Christ should change her so as to make
   her chaste and ho-norable--oh, how great it would make Him to become!
   And if some black villain has crept in here and one who has said of
   himself that there is no hope of his being converted and no mercy
   possible for him--supposing he should find pardon and peace by
   believing in Jesus? And then suppose he become a preacher of His
   Gospel--would that not make Christ's name to be made great? John Newton
   was once the vilest of the vile and oh, it made London wonder when the
   African blasphemer stood up in the pulpit of the church of St. Mary,
   Woolnooth, to preach the Christ and the Cross which he had so
   blasphemed! And oh, may God make London wonder yet again by taking some
   of the worst of the worst, and saving them, and making them proclaimers
   of the Gospel of His Grace! Why should He not do it? He has often done
   it. Are you willing and anxious that He should do it again? Then cry to
   Him and He will do it!

   Perhaps there is one here who has been a backslider. Ah, Backslider,
   you can make Christ's name great if you come back to Him! Mr.
   Whitfield's brother had once been a very sad backslider. He had gone
   far, far from the way of Christ. At last his conscience was pricked and
   he fell into despair. Sitting at tea one day with the Countess of
   Huntingdon, he said to the Countess, "I know what you have said is very
   proper, and I believe in the infinite mercy and goodness of God, but I
   do not believe in its application to me, for I am a lost man." The
   Countess put down the tea and said, "I am glad to hear it, Mr.
   Whitfield! I am glad to hear it!" "Madam," he said, "I did not think
   you would rejoice and glory in a thing so terrible as that!" "I am glad
   to hear you say you are lost, Mr. Whitfield," she said, "for it is
   written that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which was
   lost." His eyes sparkled and he said, "I thank God for that text, and
   for the extraordinary power with which it has now come into my heart."
   He died that night and God had just sent him the word of peace in time
   to gather him into the fold. Why should not many of you who are lost
   glorify the name of Christ by trusting Him, for He came to seek and to
   save the lost?

   Andrew Fuller was once preaching in Scotland and there was a wicked,
   abandoned woman, whose life had been given up to all sorts of
   filthiness. She noticed that the church was very full and that many
   people were standing outside. So she asked what was doing. They told
   her that an Englishman was preaching. She desired to hear him--she
   pressed into the crowd, as some of you may have done tonight--and Mr.
   Fuller just then used this blessed expression, "Look unto Me, and be
   you saved, all you ends of the earth." "Oh," said the woman, "is there
   an invitation to the ends of the earth? Surely I am one of the ends of
   the earth!" She looked, according to the gracious command, and Christ
   got a good name in that Scottish parish through her being so wondrously
   saved! Oh, I wish He could be great to some of you who are in the ends
   of the earth! I feel as if I could give my eyes, both of them, if
   Christ could but be great with some of you!

   The devil has been great with you. He has had his bit in your mouth. He
   has ridden you, and will yet ride you down to Hell! Will you never kick
   against him? Oh, that Christ might come and lay hold upon your bridle
   and say, "You shall go no further," so turning you into a new course
   and making you willing in the day of His power!

   Last of all, there may be one here who has been an infidel. If there
   is, I only hope that he will yet come to make Christ's name great. I
   remember hearing that Mr. John Cooke, of Maidenhead, was once blessed
   to the conversion of a man when he was preaching upon the unpardonable
   sin. In the town where he preached there was a young man who was a
   member of a club which was very common some 50 years ago, but now
   happily, I hope, extinct, called, "The Hell-Fire Club."

   The object of the club was to meet once or twice a week and each member
   of the club was to invent some new oath or be fined. The young man went
   to hear Mr. Cooke only with the design of picking up some new religious
   phrase that he might turn into a fresh blasphemy and so delight the
   unhappy men with whom he was accustomed to meet at the public-house.

   The subject was, as I have said, the unpardonable sin. And Mr. Cooke
   showed what that sin was not, and who had notcommitted it--and the man
   found, as he listened, that he was one of those who had not committed
   it. He went home and fell, bathed in tears, before God, to think that
   he had gone so far, but had not been permitted to go quite as far as
   the unpardonable sin! That man became a Christian and a useful servant
   of the Lord Jesus. I will be bound to say that "The Hell-Fire Club"
   began to feel that Jesus Christ's name was great! I wish that some of
   you who are practically Hell-Fire men and women might become Heaven 's
   men and women and become so tonight! Oh, it would be a fine thing if
   you went home and your wife should find you saying--instead of cursing
   and swearing--"I think we must pray." How struck she would be! There is
   a good woman here now with her husband--I think they are both to be
   received into fellowship tonight--and what a happy time it was for
   her--though even she then knew little or nothing about Christ-- when
   one night, as they were going to bed, her husband knelt down and
   prayed! She had never heard such a thing before, but after a little
   while she thought she had better pray, too. You cannot do better, good
   woman, when the Lord blesses your husband, than to try to get a
   blessing, too. They could not long pray in quiet--and soon she asked
   how it had all come about--and so she learned that it came to pass that
   God had met with the husband. Oh, I wish He would meet with some of
   you! He has, in His love, turned many a lion into a lamb, and many a
   raven into a dove. Let us all pray this short prayer--

   "Oh, Sovereign Grace, my heart subdue, I would be led in triumph, too!
   A willing captive to my Lord, To sing the triumph of His Word."

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: REVELATION 12.

   Verse 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a woman clothed
   with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
   twelve stars. This is that woman of whom the promise runs, "The seed of
   the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." John saw this in a vision
   in the heavenly places. He saw the Church of God, enthroned, made
   glorious, clothed with the sun, having the brightness of Divine Light
   about her, with all that is variable, changeable as the moon under her
   feet, and upon her head the crown "that her Lord had given her"--twelve
   Patriarchs, twelve Prophets, twelve Apostles, a complete number of
   glorious lights kindled from Heaven!

   2. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to
   be delivered. That Child that is born of her, that Seed of the woman
   that shall bruise the serpent's head is first, Christ, and then all the
   first-born, of whom He is the great Representative.

   3, 4. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great
   red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his
   heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did
   cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was
   ready to be delivered, for to devour her Child as soon as it was born.
   The spirit of evil in the heavenlies fighting with the power of light
   and goodness and Grace, a mysterious being with great power, high
   intelligence, seven heads, ten horns, and having mighty influence over
   multitudes of men, so that

   there were seven crowns upon his seven heads. "And his tail drew the
   third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth." The
   crocodile, which, I suppose, was the earthly figure from which John's
   dream sprang, has great force in its tail and Satan, doubtless of old,
   drew from heaven a number of its stars--other angels fell with him. And
   there are times in the heavens of the Church when the ministers
   fall--they seem to go in companies. Those who should be lights for God
   are into darkness and become teachers of heresy. "He did cast them down
   to the earth." They lost their brightness, they betrayed their earthly
   origin. "And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be
   delivered, for to devour her Child as soon as it was born." Remember
   how he sought to slay Jesus and the like is the case of all the
   man-children born unto God, who will be of service in the Kingdom of
   God. The main attack of the dragon was against the Child--the main
   attack of the power of evil is against Christ and everything Christly.
   If he could destroy the Gospel, he would not care about the Church one
   whit--the woman might go if the Man-Child could be destroyed.

   5. And she brought forth a Man-Child, who was to rule all nations with
   a rod of iron; and her Child was caught up unto God, and to His Throne.
   That is the brief history of the birth of Christ and of His going from
   us. He "was caught up unto God, and to His Throne." God will take care
   of the great principle of truth. If it cannot have a refuge on earth,
   He will find it a refuge in Heaven.

   6. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place
   prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred
   and threescore days. The church of God was long in obscurity. You can
   hardly find it among the Albigenses and Waldenses. It was hidden away
   among the mountains. The Wycliffites, the Lollards and others held fast
   the Truth of God, but history scarcely records their names. The woman
   was in the wilderness, hidden away for many a day. "And there was war
   in heaven." You are not to think of "heaven" as a place, but among the
   heavenlies. John, in a vision, saw the great contending powers of evil.
   He was like the Prophet when he saw a mountain full of horses of fire
   and chariots of fire.

   7. 8. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought
   against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels. And prevailed
   not: neither was their place found any more in Heaven. You remember how
   our Lord, who is the true Michael, the only great Archangel, said at
   the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel, "I beheld Satan as
   lightning falling from Heaven." His power among the heavenlies is gone!
   He was cast out of the place called Heaven. So is he now, by the
   preaching of the Gospel, and by the death of Christ, cast down from
   among the heavenly influences.

   9. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the
   Devil, and Satan which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into
   the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.This was done in the
   olden time as a matter of fact. It is done continually, spiritually, as
   Christ is lifted up and His Gospel gets the victory.

   10. AndIheard a loud voice saying in Heaven, Now is come salvation,
   andstrength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ:
   for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before
   our God day and night.Always at it, this Prince of Evil pretending to
   goodness, and daring to bring accusations against the Holy One of God.
   But he is not permitted, now, to stand in the court--he is hurled from
   his high place. He used his place with a desperate pertinacity of
   malice, accusing the brethren day and night.

   11. 12. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word
   of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
   Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you that dwell in them. Woe to the
   inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come down
   unto you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has but a short
   time. "Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell in them." Let
   great joy be in the hearts of all spiritual beings, whether angels or
   men, for Satan is cast down from among them! But the battle is not
   over--the scene of it is only transferred from the heavenlies to the
   earthly. "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the
   devil is come down unto you having great wrath because he knows that he
   has but a short time." We may expect him to rage more and more as the
   time of his destruction comes nearer and nearer. He is like a bad
   tenant--he will damage the house out of which he is to be ejected. But
   he is to be ejected! And let God be glorified for it!

   13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he
   persecuted the woman which brought forth the Man-Child. He had changed
   his place, but he did not change his nature--and so he still perseveres
   in his attack upon

   God.

   14, 15. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that
   she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is
   nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the
   serpent And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flooddafter
   the woman, that he might cause her to be carrieddaway by the flood.
   Read history and see what fierce and brutal persecutions were used like
   floods against the Gospel of Christ!

   16. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth,
   andswallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. It is
   poor help that the earth can give, and yet God has overruled to make it
   useful. The kings and the powers of this world have for their own
   reasons sometimes protected the Church. It was so in Luther's day. The
   jealousy that was felt of the influence of the Court of Rome
   politically tended to the preservation of Luther and those round about
   him, so that the Gospel was not destroyed. "The earth helped the
   woman," and we may expect that even those political disasters, which we
   often dread, will all tend that way. How often has priestly arrogance
   been put to the blush even for political reasons! We have nothing to do
   with that, but still we can see how God can overrule. It is always
   amiss when a woman begins to help the earth--she has nothing to do with
   that--let the Church leave the State alone. But sometimes it happens
   that in the political Providence of God the earth helps the woman.

   17. And the dragon was angry with the woman, and went to make war with
   the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have
   testimony of Jesus Christ. "And the dragon was angry with the woman."
   If ever you meet with a church of God which the devil likes, it is good
   for nothing! But if it is a true Church of God--if it holds the Truths
   of God and if it walks in holiness, it will always be true! "And the
   dragon was angry with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant
   of her seed." He had destroyed many already with that flood of
   persecution and he kept on a battle with the remnant of her seed,
   "which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus
   Christ." Into the deep mysteries of this passage I have not attempted
   to go, but have simply skimmed the surface. God bless the reading to
   us.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Plowman

   (No. 3383)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Does the plowman plow all day to sow?" Isaiah 28:24.

   UNLESS they are cultivated, fields yield us nothing but briars and
   thistles. In this we may see ourselves. Unless the great Husbandman
   shall till us by His Grace, we shall produce nothing that is good, but
   everything that is evil. If one of these days I shall hear that a
   country has been discovered where wheat grows without the work of the
   farmer, I may then, perhaps, hope to find one of our race who will
   bring forth holiness without the Grace of God. Up to this day, all land
   on which the foot of man has trodden has needed labor and care. And
   even so among men, the need of gracious tillage is universal! Jesus
   says to all of us, "You must be born-again." Unless God the Holy Spirit
   breaks up the heart with the plow of the Law and sows it with the Seed
   of the Gospel, not a single ear of holiness will any of us produce,
   even though we may be children of godly parents and may be regarded as
   excellent moral people by those with whom we live!

   Yes, and the plow is needed not only to produce that which is good, but
   to destroy that which is evil! There are diseases which, in the course
   of ages, wear themselves out and do not appear again among men. And
   there may be forms of vice which, under changed circumstances, do not
   so much abound as they used to do--but human nature will always remain
   the same and, therefore, there will always be plentiful crops of the
   weeds of sin in man's fields--and nothing can keep these under but
   spiritual husbandry carried on by the Spirit of God. You cannot destroy
   weeds by exhortations, nor can you tear out the roots of sin from the
   soul by moral persuasion. Something sharper and more effectual must be
   brought to bear upon them. God must put His own right hand to the plow,
   or the hemlock of sin will never give place to the corn of holiness!
   Good is never spontaneous in unrenewed humanity! And evil is never cut
   up till the plow of Almighty Grace is driven through it.

   The text leads our thoughts in this direction and gives us practical
   guidance through asking the simple question, "Does the plowman plow all
   day to sow?" This question may be answered in the affirmative, ' 'Yes,
   i n the proper season he does plow all day to sow." And, secondly, this
   text may more properly be answered in the negative, "No, the plowman
   does not plow every day to sow--he has other work to do according to
   the season." Our text may be--

   I. ANSWERED IN THE AFFIRMATIVE--"Yes, the plowman does plow all day to
   sow." When it is plowing time, he keeps at it till his work is done. If
   it requires one day, or two days, or 20 days to finish his fields, he
   continues at his task while the weather permits. The perseverance of
   the plowman is instructive and it teaches us a double lesson. When the
   Lord comes to plow the heart of man, He plows all day--herein is His
   patience. And, secondly, so ought the Lord's servants to labor all day
   with men's hearts--herein is our perseverance.

   "Does the plowman plow all day?" So does God plow the heart of man, and
   herein is His patience. The team was in the field, in the case of some
   of us, very early in the morning, for our first recollections have to
   do with conscience and the furrows of pain which it made in our
   youthful mind. When we were little children, we woke in the night under
   a sense of sin. Our father's teaching and our mother's prayers made
   deep and painful impressions upon us--and though we did not then yield
   our hearts to God, we were greatly stirred and all indifference to
   religion was made impossible. When we were boys at school, the reading
   of a Chapter in the Word of God, or the death of a playmate, or an
   address at a Bible class, or a solemn sermon so affected us that we
   were uneasy for weeks! The strivings of the Spirit of God within urged
   us to think of higher and better things. Though we quenched the Spirit.
   Though we stifled conviction, yet we bore the marks of the
   plowshare--furrows were made in the soul and certain foul weeds of evil
   were cut up by the roots, although no Seed of Grace was as yet sown in
   our hearts. Some have continued in this state for many years--plowed,
   but not sown. But,

   blessed be God, it was not so with others of us, for we had not left
   boyhood before the good Seed of the Gospel fell upon our heart! Alas,
   there are many who do not thus yield to Grace, and with them the
   Plowman plows all day to sow. I have seen the young man coming to
   London in his youth, yielding to its temptations, drinking in its
   poisoned sweets, violating his conscience and yet continuing unhappy in
   it all--fearful, unrestful, stirred about even as the soil is agitated
   by the plow! In how many cases has this kind of work gone on for years
   and all to no avail? Ah, and I have known the man come to middle life
   and still he has not received the good Seed, neither has the ground of
   his hard heart been thoroughly broken up! He has gone on in business
   without God--day after day he has risen and gone to bed again with no
   more religion than his horses--and yet all this while there have been
   ringing in his ears warnings ofjudgment to come and chid-ings of
   conscience so that he has not been at peace. After a powerful sermon he
   has not enjoyed his meals, or been able to sleep, for he has asked
   himself, "What shall I do in the end thereof?" The Plowman has plowed
   all day, till the evening shadows have lengthened and the day has faded
   to a close. What a mercy it is when the furrows are at last made ready
   and the good Seed is cast in--to be received, nurtured and multiplied a
   hundredfold!

   It is mournful to remember that we have seen this plowing continue till
   the sun has touched the horizon and the night dews have begun to fall.
   Even then the long-suffering God has followed up His work--plowing,
   plowing, plowing, plowing till darkness ended all! Do I address any
   aged ones whose lease must soon run out? I would affectionately beseech
   them to consider their position. What? Three score years old and yet
   unsaved? Forty years did God allow the manners of Israel in the
   wilderness, but He has borne with you for 60 years! Seventy years old
   and yet unregenerated? Ah, my Friend, you will have but little time in
   which to serve your Savior before you go to Heaven. But will you go
   there at all? Is it not growing dreadfully likely that you will die in
   your sins and perish forever? How happy are those who are brought to
   Christ in early life! But still remember--

   "While the lamp continues to burn, The vilest sinner may return."

   It is late, it is very late, but it is not too late. The Plowman plows
   all day and the Lord waits that He may be gracious to you. I have seen
   many aged persons converted and, therefore, I would encourage other old
   folks to believe in Jesus. I once read a sermon in which a minister
   asserted that he had seldom known any converted who were over 40 years
   of age if they had been hearers of the Gospel all their lives. There is
   certainly much need to caution those who are guilty of delay, but there
   must be no manufacturing of facts! Whatever that minister might think,
   or even observe, my own observation leads me to believe that about as
   many people are converted to God at one age as at another, taking into
   consideration the fact that the young are much more numerous than the
   old. It is a dreadful thing to have remained an unbeliever all these
   years, but yet the Grace of God does not stop short at a certain
   age--those who enter the vineyard at the 11th hour shall have their
   penny and Grace shall be glorified in the old as well as in the young!
   Come along, old Friend, Jesus Christ invites you to come to Him even
   now, though you have stayed away so long! You have been a sadly tough
   piece of ground--and the Plowman has plowed all day--but if at last the
   sods are turned and the heart is lying in ridges, there is hope for you
   yet!

   "Does the Plowman plow all day?" I answer--Yes, however long the day
   may be, God, in mercy still plows! He is long-suffering, full of
   tenderness, mercy and Grace. Do not spurn such patience, but yield to
   the Lord who has acted towards you with so much gentle love!

   The text, however, not only sets forth patience on God's part, but it
   teaches perseverance on our part. "Does the Plowman plow all day?" Yes,
   He does. Then if I am seeking Christ, ought I to be discouraged because
   I do not immediately find Him? The promise is, "He that asks, receives,
   and he that seeks, finds, and to him that knocks, it shall be opened."
   There may be reasons why the door is not opened at our first knock.
   What then? "Does the Plowman plow all day?" Then I will knock all day!
   It may be at the first seeking I may not find--what then? "Does the
   Plowman plow all day?" Then I will seek all day. It may happen that at
   my first asking I shall not receive--what then? "Does the Plowman plow
   all day?" Then will I ask all day. Friends, if you have begun to seek
   the Lord, the short way is, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
   shall be saved." Do that at once! In the name of God, do it at once and
   you are saved at once! May the Spirit of God bring you to faith in
   Jesus--and you are at once in the Kingdom of Christ! But if, perhaps,
   in seeking the Lord, you are ignorant of this, or do not see your way,
   never give up seeking! Get to the foot of the Cross, lay hold of it and
   cry, "If I perish, I will perish here! Lord, I come to You in Jesus
   Christ for mercy, but if You are not pleased to

   look at me immediately and forgive my sins, I will cry to You till You
   do." When God's Holy Spirit brings a man to downright earnest prayer,
   which will not take a denial, he is not far from peace! Careless
   indifference and shilly-shallying with God hold men in bondage. They
   find peace when their hearts are awakened to strong resolve to seek
   until they find! I like to see men search the Scriptures till they
   learn the way of salvation and hear the Gospel till their souls live by
   it! If they are resolved to drive the plow through doubts, fears and
   difficulties, till they come to salvation, they shall soon come to it
   by the Grace of God!

   The same is true in seeking the salvation of others. "Does the plowman
   plow all day?" Yes, when it is plowing time. Then, so will I work on,
   and on, and on. I will pray and preach, or pray and teach, however long
   the day may be that God shall appoint me, for--

   "'Tis all my business here below The precious Gospel Seed to sow."

   Brother worker, are you getting a little weary? Never mind, wake
   yourself and plow on for the love of Jesus and dying men! Our day of
   work has in it only the appointed hours--and while they last, let us
   fulfill our task. Plowing is hard work, but as there will be no harvest
   without it, let us put forth all our strength and never flag till we
   have performed our Lord's will and His Holy Spirit has worked
   conviction in men's souls! Some soils are very stiff and cling together
   and the labor is heartbreaking. Others are like the unreclaimed waste,
   full of roots and tangled bramble--they need a steam plow and we must
   pray the Lord to make us such, for we cannot leave them untilled and,
   therefore, we must put forth more strength that the labor may be done.

   I heard some time ago of a minister who called to see a poor man who
   was dying, but he was not able to gain admittance. He called the next
   morning and some idle excuse was made so that he could not see him. He
   called again the next morning, but he was still refused. He went on
   till he called 20 times in vain, but on the 21st occasion he was
   permitted to see the sufferer and, by God's Grace, he saved a soul from
   death! "Why do you tell your child a thing 20 times?" asked someone of
   a mother. "Because," she said, "I find 19 times is not enough." Now,
   when a soul is to be plowed, it may so happen that hundreds of furrows
   will not do it. What then? Why, plow all day till the work is done!
   Whether you are ministers, missionaries, teachers, or private
   soul-winners, never grow weary, for your work is noble and the reward
   of it is infinite! The Grace of God is seen in our being permitted to
   engage in such holy service--it is greatly magnified in sustaining us
   in it and it will be pre-eminently conspicuous in enabling us to hold
   out till we can say, "I have finished the work which You gave me to
   do."

   We prize that which costs us labor and service--and we shall set all
   the higher value upon the saved ones when the Lord grants them to our
   efforts! It is good for us to learn the value of our sheaves by going
   forth weeping to the sowing. When you think of the plowman's plowing
   all day, be moved to plod on in earnest efforts to win souls. Seek--

   "With cries, entreaties, tears to save And snatch them from the fiery
   wave." Does the plowman plow all day for a little bit of oats or
   barley, and will not you plow all day for souls that shall live
   forever, if saved, to adore the Grace of God, or shall live forever, if
   unsaved, in outer darkness and woe? Oh, by the terrors of the wrath to
   come and the glory that is to be revealed, gird up your loins and plow
   all day!

   I would beg all the members of our Churches to keep their hands on the
   Gospel plow and their eyes straight before them. "Does the plowman plow
   all day?" Let Christians do the same! Start close to the hedge and go
   right down to the bottom of the field. Plow as close to the ditch as
   you can and leave small headlands. What though there are fallen women,
   thieves and drunks in the slums around you, do not neglect any of them!
   For if you leave a stretch of land to the weeds, they will soon spread
   among the wheat. When you have gone right to the end of the field once,
   what shall you do next? Why, just turn around and make for the place
   you started from! And when you have thus been up and down, what next?
   Why, up and down again! And what next? Why, up and down again! You have
   visited that district with tracts--do it again--fifty-two times in the
   year multiply your furrows! We must learn how to continue in
   well-doing. Your eternal destiny is to go on doing good forever and
   ever--and it is well to go through a rehearsal here. So just plow on,
   plow on and look for results as the reward of continued perseverance!
   Plowing is not done with a skip and a jump--the plowman plows all day.
   Dash and flash are all very fine in some things, but not in plowing!
   There the work must be steady, persistent, regular. Certain persons
   soon give it up--it wears out their gloves, blisters their soft hands,
   tires their bones and

   makes them eat their bread rather more in the sweat of their face than
   they care for! Those whom the Lord fills with His Grace will keep to
   their plowing year after year, and verily I say unto you, they shall
   have their reward. "Does the plowman plow all day?" Then let us do the
   same, being assured that one day every hill and valley shall be tilled
   and sown-- and every desert and wilderness shall yield a harvest for
   our Lord--and the angel reapers shall descend and the shouts of the
   harvest home shall fill both earth and Heaven! But, now, somewhat
   briefly--

   II. THE TEXT MAY BE ANSWERED IN THE NEGATIVE. "Does the plowman plow
   all day to sow?" No, he does not always plow. After he has plowed, he
   breaks the clods, sows, reaps and threshes. In the Chapter before us
   you will see that other works of husbandry are mentioned. The plowman
   has many other things to do beside plowing. There is an advance in what
   he does--this teaches us that there is the same on God's part and
   should be the same on ours.

   First, on God's part there is an advance in what He does. "Does the
   plowman plow all day?" No, he goes forward to other matters. It may be
   that in the case of some of you, the Lord has been using certain
   painful agencies to plow you. You are feeling the terrors of the Law,
   the bitterness of sin, the holiness of God, the weakness of the flesh
   and the shadow of the wrath to come. Is this going to last forever?
   Will it continue till the spirit fails and the soul expires? Listen--
   "Does the plowman plow all day?" No, he is preparing for something
   else--he plows to sow. Thus does the Lord deal with you! Therefore be
   of good courage, there is an end to the wounding and slaying--and
   better things are in store for you. You are poor and needy and you seek
   water, but there is none and your tongue fails for thirst. But the Lord
   will hear you and deliver you! He will not contend forever, neither
   will He always be angry. He will turn again and He will have compassion
   upon us. He will not always make furrows by His chiding. He will come
   and cast in the precious corn of consolation and water it with the dews
   of Heaven and smile upon it with the sunlight of His Grace--and there
   shall soon be in you, first the blade, then the ear, after that the
   full corn in the ear--and in due season you shall joy as with the joy
   of harvest! O you who are sorely wounded in the place of dragons, I
   hear you cry! Does God always send terror and conviction of sin? Listen
   to this--"If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of
   the land." And what is the call of God to the willing and obedient but
   this, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved"? You
   shall be saved now, find peace now if you will have done with yourself
   and all looking to your own good works to save you--and will turn to
   Him who paid the ransom for you upon the Cross! The Lord is gentle and
   tender, and full of compassion. He will not always chide, neither will
   He keep His anger forever.

   Many of your doubts and fears come from unbelief, or of Satan, or of
   the flesh--and are not of God at all! Blame Him not for what He does
   not send and does not wish you to suffer! His mind is for your peace,
   not for your distress, for thus He speaks, "Comfort you, comfort you My
   people, says your God. Speak you comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto
   her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned."
   "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a
   cloud, your sins: return unto Me, for I have redeemed you." He has
   smitten, but He will smile! He has wounded, but He will heal! He has
   slain, but He will make alive! Therefore turn unto Him at once and
   receive comfort at His hands. The plowman does not plow forever, else
   would he reap no harvest. And God is not always breaking hearts-- He
   also draws near on heart-healing errands!

   You see, then, that the Great Husbandman advances from painful
   agencies, and I want you to mark that He goes on to productive work in
   the hearts of His people. He will take away the furrows, you shall not
   see them, for the corn will cover them with beauty. As she that was in
   travail remembers no more her sorrow for joy that a man is born into
   the world, so shall you, who are under the legal rod, remember no more
   the misery of conviction, for God will sow you with Grace, and make
   your soul, even your poor, barren soul, to bring forth fruit unto His
   praise and Glory! "Oh," says one, "I wish that would come true to me."
   It will. "Does the plowman plow all day to sow?" You expect, by-and-by,
   to see plowed fields clothed with springing corn--and you may look to
   see repentant hearts gladdened with forgiveness! Therefore, be of good
   courage.

   You shall advance, also, to a joyful experience. See that plowman? He
   whistles as he plows. He does not own much of this world's goods, but
   yet he is merry! He looks forward to the day when he will be on the top
   of the big wagon, joining in the shout of the harvest home--and so he
   plows in hope, expecting a crop. And, dear Soul, God will yet joy and
   rejoice over you when you believe in Jesus Christ and you, too, shall
   be full of joy! Be of good cheer, the better portion is yet to come!
   Press forward to it. Gospel sorrowing leads on to Gospel hoping,
   believing, rejoicing--and the rejoicing knows no end! God will not
   chasten all day, but He will lead you on from strength to strength,
   from glory unto glory,

   till you shall be like He! This, then, is the advance that there is in
   God's work among men, from painful agencies to productive work and
   joyful experience!

   But what if the plowing should never lead to sowing? What if you should
   be disturbed in conscience and should go on to resist it all? Then God
   will make another advance, but it will be to put up the plow and to
   command the clouds that they rain no rain upon the land--and then its
   end is to be burned. Oh, Man, there is nothing more awful than for your
   soul to be left to go out of cultivation--God Himself giving you up!
   Surely that is Hell. He that is unholy will be unholy still. The law of
   fixed character will operate eternally and no hand of the Merciful One
   shall come near to till the soul again! What worse than this can
   happen?

   We conclude by saying that this advance is a lesson to us, for we, too,
   are to go forward. "Does the plowman plow all day?" No, he plows to
   sow, and in due time he sows. Some Churches seem to think that all they
   have to do is to plow--at least all they attempt is a kind of
   scratching of the soil and talking of what they are going to do. It is
   fine talk, certainly, but does the plowman plow all day? You may draw
   up a large program and promise great things, but pray do not stop
   there! Don't be making furrows all day--get to your sowing! I fancy
   that those who promise most, perform the least. Men who do much in the
   world have no program at first--their course works itself out by its
   own inner force by the Grace of God--they do not propose, but perform!
   They do not plow all day to sow, but they are like our Lord's servant
   in the parable, of whom He says, "The sower went forth to sow."

   Let the ministers of Christ also follow the rule of advance. Let us go
   from preaching the Law to preaching the Gospel. "Does the plowman plow
   all day?" He does plow--he would not sow in hope if he had not first
   prepared the ground. Robbie Flockart, who preached for years in the
   Edinboro streets, says, "It is in vain to sew with the silk thread of
   the Gospel unless you use the sharp needle of the Law." Some of my
   Brothers do not care to preach eternal wrath and its terrors. This is a
   cruel mercy, for they ruin souls by hiding from them their ruin! If
   they need try to sew without a needle, I cannot help it, but I do not
   mean to be so foolish myself! My needle may be old-fashioned, but it is
   sharp and when it carries with it the silken thread of the Gospel, I am
   sure good work is done by it! You cannot get a harvest if you are
   afraid of disturbing the soil, nor can you save souls if you never warn
   them of Hell fire. We must tell the sinner what God has revealed about
   sin, righteousness and judgment to come. Still, Brothers, we must not
   plow all day. No, no! The preaching of the Law is only preparatory to
   the preaching of the Gospel! The stress of our business lies in
   proclaiming glad tidings. We are not followers of John the Baptist, but
   of Jesus Christ! We are not rugged Prophets of woe, but joyful heralds
   of Grace. Be not satisfied with revival services and stirring appeals,
   but preach the Doctrines of Grace so as to bring out the full compass
   of Covenant Truth. Plowing has had its turn, now for planting and
   watering! Reproof may now give place to consolation. We are first to
   make disciples of men and then to teach them to observe all things
   whatever Jesus has commanded us. We must pass on from the rudiments to
   the higher Truths of God, from laying foundations to further building!

   And now, another lessen to those of you who are as yet hearers and
   nothing more. I want you to go from plowing to something better,
   namely, from hearing and fearing to believing. How many years some of
   you have been hearing the Gospel! Do you mean to continue in that state
   forever? Will you never believe in Him of whom you hear so much? You
   have been stirred up a good deal--the other night you went home almost
   brokenhearted! I should think you are plowed enough by this time, and
   yet you have not received the Seed of eternal life, for you have not
   believed in the Lord Jesus! It is dreadful to be always on the brink of
   everlasting life and yet never to be alive. It will be an awful thing
   to be almost in Heaven and yet forever shut out! It is a wretched thing
   to rush into a railway station just in time to see the train steaming
   out--I had much rather be half an hour behind time! To lose a train by
   half a second is most annoying. Alas, if you go on as you have done for
   years, you will have your hand on the latch of Heaven and yet be shut
   out! You will be within a hair's breadth of Glory and yet be covered
   with eternal shame! Oh, beware of being so near to the Kingdom of God
   and yet lost--almost, but not altogether saved! God grant that you may
   not be among those who are plowed and plowed, and plowed, and yet never
   sown! It will be of no avail at the last to cry, "Lord, we have eaten
   and drunk in Your Presence and You have taught in our streets. We had a
   seat at the Chapel. We attended the services on weeknights as well as
   on Sundays! We went to Prayer Meetings, we joined a Bible class, we
   distributed tracts, we subscribed our guinea to the funds! We gave up
   every open sin, we used a form of prayer and read a Chapter of the
   Bible every day." All these things may be done and yet there may be no
   saving faith in the Lord Jesus! Take heed lest your Lord should answer,
   "With all this, your heart never came to Me. Therefore, depart from Me!
   I never knew you." If Jesus once knows a man, He always knows him. He
   can never say to me, "I never knew you," for He has known me as His
   poor dependent, a beggar for years at His door! Some of you have been
   all that is good, except that you never came into contact with Christ,
   never trusted Him, never knew Him. Ah, me, how sad your state! Will it
   always be so?

   Lastly, I would say to you who are being plowed and are agitated about
   your souls, go at once to the next stage of believing. Oh, if people
   did but know how simple a thing believing is, surely they would
   believe! Alas, they do not know it, and it becomes all the more
   difficult to them because in itself it is so easy! The difficulty of
   believing lies in there being no difficulty in it! "If the Prophet had
   bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it?" Oh, yes, you
   would have done it and you would have thought it easy, too! But when he
   simply says," Wash, and be clean," there is a difficulty with pride and
   self. If you can truly say that you are willing to abase your pride and
   do anything which the Lord bids you, then I pray you understand that
   there is no further preparation required--believe in Jesus at once! May
   the Holy Spirit make you sick of self and ready to accept the Gospel!
   The Word is near you, let it be believed! It is in your mouth, let it
   be swallowed! It is in your heart, let it be trusted! With your heart
   believe in Jesus and with your mouth make confession of Him and you
   shall be saved! A main part of faith lies in the giving up of all other
   confidences. Oh, give up at once every false hope! I tried once to show
   what faith was by quoting Dr. Watts' lines--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,

   On Your kind arms I fall.

   Be You my strength, and righteousness,

   My Jesus and my All."

   I tried to represent faith as falling into Christ's arms and I thought
   I made it so plain that the wayfaring man could not err therein. When I
   had finished preaching, a young man came to me and said, "But, Sir, I
   cannot fall upon Christ's arms." I replied at once, "Tumble into them
   anyway you can! Faint away into Christ's arms, or die in Christ's arms,
   so long as you get there." Many talk of what they can do and what they
   cannot do, and I fear they miss the vital point. Faith is leaving off
   "can-ing" and "cannot-ing," and leaving it all to Christ, for He can do
   all things, though you can do nothing! "Does the plowman plow all day
   to sow?" No, he makes progress and goes from plowing to sowing. Go, and
   do you likewise--sow unto the Spirit the precious Seed of faith in
   Christ--and the Lord will give you a joyous harvest!

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: MATTHEW 10:16-33.

   Verses 16-25. Behold, Isendyou forth as sheep in the midst ofwolves: be
   you therefore wise as serpents, andharm-less as doves. But beware of
   men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will
   scourge you in their synagogues. And you shall be brought before
   governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the
   Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what you
   shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what you shall
   speak For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of Your Father
   which speaks in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to
   death, and the father the child; and the children shall rise against
   their parents, and cause them to be put to death And you shall be hated
   of all men for My name's sake; but he that endures to the end shall be
   saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee you into another:
   for verily I say unto you, you shall not have gone over the cities of
   Israel till the Son of Man is come. The disciple is not above his
   master, nor his servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple
   that he is as his master, and the servant as his lord. It is more than
   enough, for the disciple might expect to fare worse than his master,
   and the servant to have less comfort than the lord. So it is in worldly
   things--that our Lord and Master has such fellowship with His people
   that He does not put it so, but He says, "It is enough for the disciple
   that he is as his master, and the servant as his Lord."

   25. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much
   more shall they call them of his household?But they cannot call them
   any more or any worse. They have given our Master the blackest of all
   the epithet and any hard and opprobrious titles that can ever be
   applied to us must fall short of these which were applied to Him.
   Surely we ought not to wince--not for a single moment!

   26. Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall
   not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.They may cover your
   name and character with temporary dishonor, but the covering will soon
   break off. Like

   fire hidden under autumn leaves, it will burn up, by-and-by, and there
   will be a resurrection of reputations, as well as of persons! And what
   a wondrous resurrection that will be for those who are cast out as the
   offscouring of all things, when they shall shine forth as the sun in
   the Kingdom of their Father!

   27. What I tell you in darkness, that speak you in light: and what you
   hear in the ear, that preach you upon the housetops.There is a secret
   learning, but there must be a public teaching. Christ takes us aside to
   reveal Himself, that afterwards we may boldly go forth to others and
   tell them what we have learned in private. Oh, child of God, if you
   have a sweet morsel in the chamber by yourself, do not be so selfish as
   to keep it to yourself! Go and tell your Brothers and Sisters, and your
   house, and of the same place, the things which you have learned. If any
   of you have had a very choice experience, and a more than usual
   manifestation of Divine Love, be sure to let others be enriched with
   your riches. Have you found honey? Eat it not all yourself, but, like
   Samson, when he found it in the carcass of the lion, go to father and
   mother, and friends with your hands full of the secret, and let them
   eat it also.

   28. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
   soul: rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in
   Hell Oh, fearful destruction! This is what we may well fear--both body
   and soul to undergo everlasting ruin, broken in pieces and destroyed as
   to all excellency, happiness and peace. This we may fear.

   29. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not
   fall on the ground without your Father He rules over all things, the
   least as well as the greatest! We see His hand in the tempest and we
   look at the black wing of the storm and see that God rides it. But the
   wing of the tiny sparrows, so insignificant in value, is equally
   directed by His power and wisdom!

   30. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Minute is the
   Providence of God, taking care of you, even as to that part of your
   person which is not vital and without which you could still live on.
   "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." The tiniest and most
   insignificant benefits are all ordered by His eternal purpose.

   31-33. Fear you not, therefore, you are of more value than many
   sparrows. Whoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I
   confess also before My Father who is in Heaven. But whoever shall deny
   Me before men--And you see from the connection, that here the denying
   means not confessing. "Whoever shall deny Me before men."

   33. Him will I also deny before My Father who is in Heaven. The
   attempt, therefore, to avoid all publicity in reli-gion--to endeavor to
   slink into Heaven by the back gate--to somehow or other find an
   underground road to salvation, is a futile attempt! Christ requires
   that we should acknowledge Him, seeing that He so graciously
   acknowledges us. He puts it as a solemn command--and I would press it
   upon the conscience of any Believer here who has never confessed his
   faith. You miss, at any rate, the promise here--but you miss some
   others besides. You are walking in the path of disobedience. You are,
   to some extent, guilty of putting Christ to shame, for if others see
   that you are ashamed of Him, they conclude that there is something to
   be ashamed of in Him. Your practice dishonors Him. Why should you hold
   back? Are you not going to take your place among His people? You tell
   me that they have many faults. Have they more than you? If you never
   join a Church till you find a perfect one, you will never join one this
   side of Heaven! And if the Church were perfect when you joined it, it
   would certainly cease to be so then--for you would bring your
   shortcomings and imperfections into it! I have lived among the people
   of God now these many years and I, as pastor of this Church, have had
   to mourn over many and many for its faults, but still, there is no
   people like God's people, and of His House I will say--

   "Here my best friends--my kindred--dwell. Here God my Savior reigns!"

   Some of the best and noblest spirits that ever lived have not been
   ashamed to associate with their fellow Christians, though they
   perceived their errors. They have rather cast in their lot with them,
   poor and despised as they were, and have accounted it even their honor
   if they might but be numbered with the redeemed among men.

   34. Think not that Iam come to sendpeace on earth: I came not to
   sendpeace but a sword. The ultimate result of Christ's mission will be
   peace. Swords shall be broken into plowshares, and the spears into
   pruning hooks, but on the way to peace there will be war. On the way to
   universal peace there will be a general confusion. When true religion
   comes into a man's heart, it at once makes him a warrior. He begins to
   contend against evil--to contend against contention. He fights for
   peace, though it may seem strange that it should be so.

   35. 36. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
   the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
   mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
   They will drive us back

   when they perceive that our face is set towards Heaven. When you see a
   fish swimming with the stream, it is a almost always a dead one. The
   living fish goes against the stream--and the true child of God has to
   go against the current of mankind, and oftentimes the hardest push in
   life is to go against father, mother, brother, sister, for Christ's
   sake and the Gospel.
     __________________________________________________________________

Growth in Faith

   (No. 3384)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H, SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
   DECEMBER 12, 1867.

   "The Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith." Luke 17:5.

   THE Apostles said this. I have sometimes thought that Paul's speech at
   Lystra, when he forbade the multitude to worship him and told the
   people that he was a man of like passions with themselves, has need to
   be repeated in the ears of many modern Christians, for there is a
   tendency in the Christian Church to set up the Apostles and other
   eminent saints upon a platform high above the level of ordinary
   humanity! I do not say to worship them, but rather to hold them in
   extraordinary esteem than to regard them as models for imitation.
   Brothers and Sisters, our Lord Jesus Christ would have us to know that
   we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with a feeling of our
   infirmities. He would have us be certain that He, Himself, was tempted
   in all points like as we are. With equal certainty would He have us to
   know that the chosen twelve, the leaders of His host, who went forth
   from Him, were men of like passions with ourselves. We are not to look
   upon them as though they were unapproachable heroes, a sort of Divine
   character, or as though they were free from our infirmities and our
   troubles. They were as we are--and if they excelled us it was by Divine
   strength, alone, by strength which we also may receive--by Grace which
   is as free to us as it was to them. If they were here, they would still
   have to struggle with unbelief and, conscious of their unbelief, would
   say again, "Lord, increase our faith."

   The Apostles said it and the Apostles said it to Jesus. They went to
   the Strong for strength! It is idle to go elsewhere. In vain would they
   have said it to one another. In vain would they have searched the whole
   world to find some eminent saint to whom to address the petition! They
   would have been like those foolish virgins who said to the wise, "Give
   us of your oil," and they would have had the same answer, "Not so, lest
   there be not enough for you and for us." The virgins went to those that
   sold and bought for themselves. The Apostles went to Christ, the
   Lawgiver, the Author and Finisher of their faith and, lifting up their
   hearts to Him in the prayer, "Lord, increase our faith," they, before
   long, gained a comfortable answer and became strong in faith, giving
   glory to God!

   Now, I shall need your attention at this time to five or six
   observations about faith as a growing thing. The first observation is
   this--

   I. THE TEXT THROWS A LITTLE LIGHT UPON WHAT FAITH IS.

   This is not altogether a dark subject, but still it is one upon which
   there has been a great deal of controversy. You are aware, perhaps,
   that in the first flush of the Reformation it was asserted by most
   Divines that saving faith was full assurance, or, at the least, that
   full assurance of salvation and of a personal interest in Christ
   entered into the essence of saving faith--and this has been maintained
   by a very large number of Divines and is still maintainedby many
   Christians that to personallybelieve that Christ died for me is saving
   faith.

   Now, we believe this to be an error. We prize full assurance beyond all
   price. We count it to be a gem beyond all earthly values, but we think
   it is a distressing Doctrine to some of the weak ones of the flock to
   say that full assurance is necessary to salvation! We believe it to be
   necessary to deep joy, necessary to edification, necessary to
   usefulness--but necessary to salvation we do not believe it to be! We
   believe there are thousands on the Rock of Ages who sometimes fear they
   are not there--and tens of thousands who will enter Heaven whose faith
   never reached beyond the simple reliance upon Christ--which we hold to
   be the essence of saving faith.

   The persuasion that Christ died for me comes after the exercise of
   faith and is an outgrowth of that faith. It is faith in full bloom, but
   it is not necessarily the essence of faith in Christ. Some of those who
   teach that to believe that Christ died

   for me is faith, teach at the same time that Christ died for everyone!
   Now, it will strike your mind at once that this kind of faith which
   they teach is nothing but the belief of a very simple truism, for if He
   died for everyone, then He must have died for me--and my believing that
   he died for me may, as far as I can see, be a simple intellectual
   operation--having nothing to do with the heart--and certainly not
   requiring the assistance of the Holy Spirit, for anyone can believe
   that since as long as Christ died for everyone, he died for me! Faith
   of that sort is a very simple thing and although every Christian is
   also to perceive that Christ died for him, finally, yet if you begin
   with that, you begin at the wrong end and you may be guilty of
   presumption instead of exercising the faith of God's elect!

   What, then, is the essence of saving faith? It is this--trust in
   Christ--dependence, reliance upon Him. It is a belief that Jesus Christ
   is the appointed Savior of the world. That He is also the Atonement for
   sin. But it is more than that--it is a trusting in the work of Christ
   to save you. As to whether Christ has died for you in particular or
   not, that you shall find out, by-and-by, but faith is coming
   empty-handed and accepting Christ's fullness. To come naked and take
   His righteousness to be your glorious dress. To go, vile, to the
   Fountain which He has filled with blood, to be washed therein-- in
   fact, to have done with all self-confidence and to put your whole
   reliance in the Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever has this is saved--whatever
   else he has not, he is saved! And neither death nor Hell shall ever
   destroy a man who in simple, honest confidence depends on what Christ
   has done for the salvation of sinners. If you lay hold upon Christ to
   be All in All to you and if you say, "Nothing but Jesus do I know--what
   He has done is all my rest and all my rejoicing," then you have God's
   promise for it, "He that believes on Him has everlasting life." And you
   have it and you, therefore, shall never perish!

   This, then, is saving faith, and this is the very soul, and essence,
   and substance of it! It is not, in itself, full assurance, but full
   assurance grows out of it. In the Helvetic Confession, faith is said to
   be "a most firm confidence in Christ"-- another little mistake! A most
   firm confidence in Christ is faith and is strong faith--but there may
   be faith where there is no "most firm confidence," though this may be a
   very valuable evidence. Faith, however, may sometimes be mixed with
   unbelief. But where any amount of reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ
   exists, there is the evidence of true faith, although that reliance may
   not amount to a happy, comfortable, delightful persuasion of one's own
   personal salvation. Yet it is faith, saving faith, and will save the
   soul of him who has it! Let that stand as the first observation.

   II. Secondly, FAITH, WHEREVER IT IS, IS CAPABLE OF GROWTH.

   The Apostles said, "Lord, increase our faith." Faith is the gift of God
   and it is given us by degrees. Faith is not always the same in degree,
   even at the time of the new birth. All children are not alike strong
   when they are born into the world. All faith is not alike strong at
   first. Sometimes those who are first at the beginning, get last
   afterwards--and sometimes those who are last at the beginning, outstrip
   the others! God does not give us all the same endowment of faith when
   we commence. Some of us are very tender, much troubled and find it very
   difficult to lay hold even upon the least of God's promises. But the
   faith is all of the same nature--though it is not all of the same
   quantity and degree--it is all the same quality. A diamond is a
   diamond, though it is no bigger than a pea or the point of a pin--it is
   precisely of the same character as the Koh-I-Noor, though it is not so
   large. So with faith. Faith as little as a grain of mustard seed is
   just as much the faith of God's elect as if it were as large as a
   mountain! It is still living faith. It is the same, though smaller in
   amount. It is not always the same in quantity when we receive it, but
   after we have received it, it grows.

   This is proved by the later lives of the Apostles themselves. Take
   Simon Peter as an instance. At one time poor Simon, indeed--how he was
   to be pitied! He sat down to warm his hands at a fire in the High
   Priest's palace and, as he was sitting there, a pert servant girl said
   to him, "You, also, were with Him." And so weak was Peter's faith that
   he actually denied his Master! But not many weeks after that, the Holy
   Spirit descended on Simon Peter and now the same man who blushed with
   fear before the flippant maid is standing up before thousands in the
   streets of Jerusalem and delivering himself with the greatest bravery
   on behalf of the Gospel of the Crucified Christ! There is now no fear,
   or trembling, or unbelief in Simon Peter, for Pentecost has come and he
   is made strong and bold by the Holy Spirit! How wonderfully has he
   changed! You might almost have thought that there were two Simon
   Peters, rather than one, so marvelously has he grown in faith and
   courage!

   Further, that faith grows is very clear from the fact that there have
   been and are thousands of other persons who have evidently had more
   faith than you or I ever had, and yet who have found that their faith
   was not always strong. Look at the martyrs--how they went to their
   deaths singing hymns on the road. How many of them triumphed in the

   amphitheater when wild beasts tore them to pieces! How they were thrown
   into damp, reeking dungeons, where they laid until the mildew grew upon
   them and there they were left to starve--and yet how there they died
   with joy in their hearts and songs on their lips! Those were men and
   women of faith whose shoelaces you and I are not worthy to
   unloose--they were far, far greater than we! And yet if you had spoken
   to any of them, they would have said that they were no better than we
   are when they began, but that God had, by His Grace, nurtured and
   tended their faith until it had become what it was. Do you know what
   this growth in faith is? We never become nursing fathers and mothers to
   any of our Brothers and Sisters or our hearers until we have this
   growth in faith. I bless God that I have seen many of you grow in
   faith--and my earnest prayer is that everyone of you may grow to the
   full assurance of hope unto the end, so that I may have to say of you
   all, "Your faith grows exceedingly, and your love unto all the saints."
   Yes, Brothers and Sisters, we do see faith grow in others quite as
   plainly as we have ever seen the shrubs and the plants growing in the
   field!

   Moreover, I think you and I are conscious that our own faith has grown.
   I know mine has. I know it is weaker, sometimes, for we may grow
   backwards. Yet I am conscious, taking the run of the years, that my
   faith is stronger than it was.

   I will tell you how faith grows. Sometimes it grows in intensity. You
   believe the same things, but you believe them more firmly. A child has
   a pearl in its hand. Yes, but now the child has grown up into a man and
   he has the same pearl, but how differently he holds it! When, as a
   little child, he held the pearl, then you might, perhaps, have taken it
   away from him. But now that he is a man, see how he doubles his fists
   and grasps the treasure! So it is with the man who grows in faith. He
   gets such a grip upon eternal Truths of God that you cannot take them
   from him! He has learned to stand firmly. He is not carried about by
   every wind of doctrine. He keeps the helm of his soul fixed right to
   the port where he is bound--let the wind blow and the storm howl and
   moan as it may!

   Faith also grows not only in intensity but in extent, so that you
   believe more than you once did. At first we believe a few great Truths
   and then knowledge comes to our assistance and instead of only three or
   four great majestic Truths of God, we learn ten--and as we advance
   further we learn a hundred! Sometimes, however, we grieve to confess
   that as our faith grows in extent, it diminishes in intensity, which is
   a very poor gain. But if we believe more and believe all with the same
   intensity as we did at first, then is our faith growing, indeed, and we
   are advancing after a most healthy and happy fashion!

   Faith does grow--we know it does--in these two respects, for we have,
   some of us, been conscious of the growth in ourselves. Beloved, it
   would be a very strange thing if faith did not grow. It was a great
   miracle when Joshua made the sun stand still because that day the sun
   was the only thing in all the world that did stand still! Everything
   else was moving. It is part of God's law that every star shall
   revolve--that there shall be nothing inert. Even the great sun, itself,
   rolls round and is constantly going on its mighty way. The sun was the
   only thing that day that stood still and, therefore, it was, indeed, a
   miracle! Now, if faith did not grow, it would be the only thing in the
   Christian that stood still and did not grow--for everything else in the
   whole man certainly grows.

   Does not Christ teach us this, again, by His talking of, first, the
   blade, then the ear and then the full corn in the ear? At another time
   we are told that we are children and that we think as children, and
   speak as children--but that when we shall become men, we shall put away
   childish things. In other places something is said about little
   children, then about children, and then about young men and then about
   the fathers. I will not quote all the instances--they are too
   numer-ous--in which both by metaphor and by plain speech, we are taught
   in God's Word that the whole Christian grows and, therefore his faith,
   which is as his right arm, must surely grow, too!

   Faith, then, is a matter of growth. And now thirdly--

   III. GROWTH OF FAITH IS VERY DESIRABLE. I said at the first that the
   very least faith is saving, but then it is

   not desirable that we should only have the very least faith. It is
   exceedingly desirable that we should get the greatest possible faith!

   Growth in faith is desirable and it is so, first of all, because
   unbelief is a very great sin and where there is little faith there is
   evidently lurking unbelief and, consequently, sin--and no true
   Christian would like to be easy while he is daily committing sin. It is
   not possible for us to be weak in faith without transgressing. Weak
   faith may bring us a blessing, but weakness in faith is an evil--and to
   indulge weakness in faith and not to struggle out of it would only be a
   willful increase of guilt!

   Brothers and Sisters, I do not think that we ever estimate aright what
   a bitter and an evil thing our unbelief is. It is a question, really,
   whether there is any other sin which makes so direct a stab at the
   Truth of God as this does! It is a question whether there is any sin
   more defiling to us, or more dishonoring to God. Brothers and Sisters,
   we ought to daily aspire to the highest faith in order that we may
   expel unbelief--and so be delivered from constant sin!

   Growth in faith also is necessary for our sanctifcation. It is by faith
   that sin is kept down and that all our Divine Graces grow. Unless faith
   is vigorous, we cannot expect to be making progress towards perfection.
   Sanctification is a daily and unceasing thing. It is carried on in our
   thoughts and hearts by the Holy Spirit, but faith in the precious blood
   is the great means He uses for that sanctifying.

   We overcome sin through the blood of the Lamb applied to us day by day
   by the hyssop of faith. Brothers and Sisters, if you neglect your
   faith, you will soon find that, struggle as you will, to advance in
   other Graces, your struggles will be all in vain. Faith, faith,
   faith--this is the reservoir and if this is not well filled, the pipes
   will soon run dry!

   Again, growth in faith is necessary to our comfort. Little-Faith goes
   to Heaven, but his feet are sore on the road. He gets into the Kingdom,
   but it is like a leaky vessel that has cast its precious cargo
   overboard and only just manages to get into port--it almost founders at
   the harbor's mouth. Little-Faith stumbles at a straw, but Great-Faith
   is very full of comfort. His mind is stored with grateful recollections
   of past mercies and his eyes beam with the fond anticipations of
   mercies yet to come--and so Great-Faith makes a Heaven for itself here
   below--and goes towards the songs of Glory rehearsing some of them on
   the road! Give me strong faith in God and I need ask for nothing else,
   for strong faith will turn poverty into wealth, weakness into strength,
   deep sorrows into lasting joys and monster difficulties into marvelous
   triumphs! More faith and you shall have plenteous comfort. It is always
   feast days and feast nights--it is a merry Christmas all the year round
   to a soul that has an unstaggering faith in the promises of the blessed
   God!

   Strong faith is also very necessary to our usefulness. If we go to our
   work timidly, scarcely knowing our own interest in Christ, we may have
   a blessing, but it is not likely to be a great one. But when we know
   whom we have believed and have tasted and handled that the good Word of
   God is assuredly ours, then what we speak will come with Grace and
   power--and under the varying unction of the Holy Spirit there are more
   probabilities of our success when we work with faith than when we work
   with doubting! Indeed, it is to faith that the blessing comes! I
   question whether our preaching in unbelief is of much service, but if
   we preach believing that souls will be saved, then they will be saved!
   If we preach relying on God's promise that His Word shall not return
   unto Him void, it will notreturn void, but there shall be fruit for the
   sower according to the assurance of our faithful God!

   Brothers and Sisters, I cannot now speak to you at length upon a topic
   so important, but I leave it with you, being assured that you cannot
   think too much of it. To have your faith growing exceedingly is
   desirable above all things. Seek for it, I pray you, and may the Lord
   grant it to you according to His fullness of mercy. But now let us
   ponder the joyous truth, that--

   IV. GROWTH IN FAITH IS OBTAINABLE.

   The Apostles would not have asked for it, would not have been allowed
   to ask for it, if it had not been possible to receive it! They did ask
   for it, they did receive it and, therefore, you and I may ask for it
   and receive it. They exhort us to obtain it--at least they practically
   do so by their example--therefore we may obtain it. It is always a sad
   thing and greatly depressing to Christian growth when you picture in
   your mind's eye great and eminent saints as being far above anything
   that you can ever be. Brothers and Sisters, let me beseech you, when
   you read the life of such a man as Dr. Pay-son, do not say, "He is such
   a spiritually-minded man! I shall never be like he!" You shallbe like
   he by God's Grace! When you turn to the life of Whitfield, young man
   who is about to enter the Christian ministry, let not the Evil Spirit
   say, "You cannot be so devoted and so seraphic in earnestness as he
   was." Why not? Where Whitfield fell short of being perfect, you fall
   short with him and you will be short, indeed--but why not be as he? The
   same Master who made him has also put you upon the wheel. The same
   Spirit who kept him fervent and faithful has promised to dwell in you!
   Why should not the same results be produced? I know that you sometimes
   look up to those who are more advanced in the Divine Life than you are.
   You who have lately been united to the Christian Church envy them--you
   do not think that you can ever reach their standard. Ah, Beloved, be it
   your prayer to reach the best in the Church, that if it is the Lord's
   will, you may feel yourselves to be less than they are and yet to be in
   reality far fuller of God's Grace and love, and every good thing than
   any of them! Aspire, my Brothers and Sisters--do not despair, but
   aspirefor God's Glory, to prove to this

   wicked world that Christianity has not lost its vigor--that it is still
   possible for us to be as simple-minded and as heroic as the Apostles
   were. Aspire to what they obtained! Ask for an increase of faith, as
   they asked for it--and when you have it, be not content even with that,
   nor think that you cannot by any possibility be as full of faith as
   they were!

   I know that the enemy will tell you that you are placed in a position
   where you cannot possibly be so full of Divine Grace. Tell the enemy
   that he is a liar from the beginning! You may be in a position where
   you cannot be extensively useful. You may be where you are neither
   called upon nor expected to do many of the works which others perform.
   But circles are admired and praised not because of their largeness, but
   their roundness! So you will have honor from God, not according to the
   size of your sphere, but according to the completeness with which you
   fill it, doing as unto the Lord who requires of you according to His
   will and through His Grace. A nursery maid having the care of two or
   three children, teaching them the sweet story of the love of Christ and
   seeking to bring their hearts to Jesus may be more faithful than I am
   with a large congregation continually listening to me. She may do all
   her work--it will be hard for me to do all mine. You with a little shop
   and much labor to make both ends meet--and with a large family to bring
   up in the fear of God--may have more honor from the Master, at last,
   than many a man whose name is blazoned before the world!

   It is not where you are, but whatyou are. And it is not how you are
   seen, but how you live in the sight of God. That is the thing that
   matters! Ah, dear Friends, it is possible that in the sphere where you
   are, to excel as much in faith as Paul did when preaching at Athens! Or
   Peter, standing in the midst of Jerusalem before the Parthians, Medes
   and Ela-mites! Let nothing deter you. Believe that you would not be
   taught to pray, "Lord, increase our faith," if God would not answer the
   prayer--and that He will answer it and give you the highest faith that
   ever man had--even you, so that on the sickbed, or in the midst of
   poverty you may be as illustrious an example of faith as the best known
   Believer who has ever adorned the annals of the Church. But to
   proceed--as this growth in faith is obtainable, so, in the next place--

   V. THERE IS A PROPER MEANS FOR OBTAINING IT.

   If I might advise you, the first means I would lay down for making
   faith grow would be that which the Apostles adopted, namely, prayer
   They said, "Lord, increase our faith." Pray much that your faith may
   grow. Oh, I am afraid in this naughty age in which we are so busy with
   a thousand cares, that we are only too deficient at the Mercy Seat and
   this accounts for the fact that there is so much superficial religion
   among us. If you would learn to believe God's promises, go with the
   promises to God and see them in the light of His Countenance! Plead
   them with solemn earnestness, not wavering before the Mercy Seat till
   you have a comfortable assurance that God will be to you what He has
   said. Let us have more prayer and there will be more faith!

   Next to that, search the Word more. The more we are familiar with God's
   Inspired Book, the more likely shall we be to believe it. If I want to
   believe a story which is current, I shall best strengthen my credence
   of its truthfulness by hearing it constantly repeated. When I begin to
   examine a Doctrine and I see that the Doctrine is clear, then I cannot
   help believing it. Now come to the Word of God, pure and unadulterated,
   and, as you read it, it will be its own witness. The glory which "gilds
   each sacred page, majestic like the sun," will flash before your eyes
   and you will then marvel that you ever could have doubted it. And let
   me tell you--many a promise which you have passed over before, or
   thought it to be scarcely worth attention, will shine out in splendor
   and delight your eyes and enrapture your spirit! Oh, how dead is the
   Word of God at one time, to what it is at another! You shall read it in
   the dark without the help of the Holy Spirit and it shall be to you
   like Christ in the eyes of the unregenerate world--"without form and
   comeliness." But at another time, when God shines upon it, you shall
   find it to be marrow and fatness to your soul and you will wonder that
   you have ever risen from perusing it, so delightful shall it be to your
   soul!

   Search the Word much! Seek to enquire into the facts and Doctrines of
   the Gospel. There are very few theological treatises issued now-a-days.
   You do not read theology. You do not care about it! I know what you
   read--three-volume novels and especially religious tales in magazines!
   I wish that we were rid of these religious tales. I like irreligious
   tales much better, for when they are downright irreligious, people will
   not read the trash--but when these tales are flavored with a little of
   the spice of godliness, they go down with them and their heads get
   stuffed up with the silly nonsense they read! And instead of being the
   better by what they read, they are rather the worse. I wish you would
   sit down and study some of the good old stuff which your grandmothers
   used to read. Some of those old men and women used to sit down and when
   they had put on their spectacles, would read through some treatise on
   the Doctrines of the Gospel. Those were the grand old women who, when
   the minister was unsound, soon let him know that they would hear no
   such old wives' fables, but would only have good Gospel Truth! And
   their husbands were of the same sort--they read and searched for
   themselves. Now-a-days I believe that if a man has only a glib tongue,
   he may preach very much what he likes. There are hundreds of our
   hearers who today would go after a Calvinist or even a hyper-Calvinist
   and tomorrow would go and hear an Arminian--and it would all be good
   because of the garnishing and because of the little sprigs and flowers
   all over the dish! God deliver us from such religion as this and give
   us to know the Truth of God by searching it out! Do, dear Friends,
   search out the Truth in God's Word. Seek to get a firm grip and deep
   knowledge of it. It were well for half the Christians in England if
   they would learn the Assembly's Catechism. They would get a world of
   knowledge even by that compendium, but getting the Truth by the Word is
   an even more profitable means of increasing our faith!

   Let me say again that faith is very frequently helped to grow by
   communion with the saints. Those of you who are younger will often be
   helped by talking with the more mature and advanced in the Christian
   life. Yes, the sickbeds of those who are tried and afflicted are often
   a school in which young disciples may learn lessons in faith! Here you
   may be enriched with pearls and gems which can be bought in no other
   market. And suffering saints--men and women who have been in the
   furnace and have the smell of the fire upon them, who have become like
   silver purified seven times, who can bear their witness to help given
   in days of poverty and of deep sustaining Grace in seasons of sore
   bodily and mental an-guish--these can greatly enrich and, through what
   they shall give, your faith shall grow!

   And your faith will also grow, no doubt, when God treats you as He has
   treated them, for, after all, other people's experience is not of half
   the value to us as is our own. It is when we feel ourselves in the
   pinch, when we begin to pass through the fire that we fly to the
   Eternal God and rejoice that "underneath are the everlasting arms." Ask
   for the sanctified use of affliction! Pray for the sanctified use of
   prosperity, too, and so by all Providential means your faith will grow.

   Remember, however, that the only real mode of growth in faith is by the
   power of the Holy Spirit As I said at the commencement of this
   discourse, Peter's growth in faith came upon him at Pentecost. And it
   was the same with the others of the twelve--they became new men because
   the Spirit's power rested upon them. Beloved, if we have more of the
   power of the Spirit of God, more exercise of His power within us, our
   faith will increase!

   Faith, then, is a growing thing. We ought to desire to have it grow. It
   can grow and I have told you some of the means by which it may grow.
   And now two or three minutes upon--

   VI. THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU CAN HINDER ITS GROWTH.

   I say only two or three minutes, though it is a very large subject. You
   can very easily hinder your growth in faith. You can do it by
   neglecting faith, by letting your Bible grow dusty, by leaving a
   ministry which is edifying, by despising the Holy Spirit. You can do it
   by not exercising what you already have. You cannot lose your faith if
   it is true faith, but you can lose much of its comparative power by
   worldly-mindedness, by giving yourselves up to covetousness, by
   forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of
   some--by falling into sin, by tampering with the flesh, by indulging in
   vanity--by anything which will grieve the Holy Spirit! You may also
   weaken your faith by dwelling far from the sun. Dwellers in lands of
   snow and ice soon grow cold, and so may it be with us by living far
   from God and the Sun of Righteousness. As by refraining from meat a man
   may soon grow weak, so by abstaining from spiritual food and soul
   nourishing, our faith will soon decay. As a long drought quickly makes
   the flowers of the garden to droop their heads, so if there is a
   drought of Divine influence upon you, very soon your faith will begin
   to wither. By living, however, close to God and simply looking up to
   Him for everything, your faith my continue to grow until it gets to be
   the full assurance of faith and, like Abraham, you are "strong in
   faith, giving glory to God." And here I shall close by saying, let it
   be one of the resolute pursuits of our life, that being saved we may--

   VII. SEEK AFTER THE HIGHEST DEGREE OF GRACE THAT IS OBTAINABLE.

   I have heard of a good woman--a widow--who was once in great trouble
   when visited by her pastor, but on a second visit she was found to be
   very happy. "What has happened?" enquired her pastor. "What has made
   you so cheerful?" She said, "I have been reading that precious word,
   'Your Maker is your Husband.'" "How has that comforted you?" he said.
   "Why," she answered, "when my husband was alive, I always lived up to
   his income. But now that my Maker is my Husband, I will try to live up
   to His income and oh, what a task I have got before me if I am to live
   up to the income of God that has no bounds and no limits and knows of
   no such thing as exhaustion! If I may draw upon Him to the utmost
   extent of His income, how richly I may live!"

   Well, now, let us adopt the good woman's policy and try to live
   according to the income of our blessed Husband, the Lord Jesus Christ!
   Then shall our faith grow exceedingly and our love and all our Divine
   Graces!

   Now I am afraid there are some here who have no faith, who have never
   trusted Christ. Then, dear Friends, it is our solemn duty to remind
   you, before we sit down, that without faith it is impossible to please
   God. You have come here, tonight, and I am glad you have--and some of
   you come often--and I am rejoiced. You are honest, sober, moral,
   amiable. This is all well, but you would like to please God, would you
   not? Well, but without faith it is impossible for you to please Him!
   You may do what you may, but without faith it is impossible to please
   God! God will never accept anything from any of us unless He sees the
   blood of His Son with it. If you do not go to Christ, it is no use
   going to the Father, for "no man comes to the Father," says Christ,
   "but by Me."

   What? You have forgotten to trust in Jesus? You have thought that
   something else would do? You have been trying your fancied good works,
   your prayers, your feelings? Now, dear Friends, remember what the
   Apostle Paul did. He went round about for many years to establish his
   own righteousness, but as soon as he trusted in Christ, he said, "Those
   things which were gain to me, I counted loss for Christ: yes,
   doubtless, and I count all things loss for the excellency of the
   knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord." Now, I will tell you. You may,
   perhaps, be a churchman and you feel very pleased to think that you
   have been so regular in your life. Or you may be a Dissenter and feel
   proud to think you are such a consistent Nonconformist. Now, if ever
   you are converted, these things which are gain to you now, you will
   count to be less than nothing! You, too, will count them to be loss as
   compared with Christ. Yes, and your prayers, your repentance, what you
   have given to charity and what you have done--this, and that, and the
   other--you will look upon them all as being less than nothing and take
   Christ to be everything to you! "What are you doing, now?" said a good
   old Divine to a Brother who was dying. He said, "I am doing, now, what
   I have done many times before in health--I am taking all my good works
   and all my bad works--indeed, they are so much alike that I can
   scarcely tell which is which--and I am tying them all in one bundle and
   throwing them overboard as fast as I can! And I am just clinging to
   Christ with all my heart and all my soul." This is the only way of
   safety. None but Jesus! Nothing of yours--not one brass farthing--but
   Christ, Christ, Christ--Christ at the top and the bottom, at the
   beginning and the end, first, last and throughout!

   You must have nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ! And if you do this
   night depend upon Him, why, my dear Friend, your sins are all forgiven!
   Just what Christ said to the poor grateful leper, I say to you in
   Christ's name--if you really do depend upon Him--"Your faith has saved
   you. Go in peace!" Though your past life may have been ever so vile and
   you have come in here without God and without hope, yet if you now
   believe in Jesus Christ and rely alone upon Him, none of your sins
   shall be mentioned against you any more forever. "I have blotted out
   your sins like a cloud and, like a thick cloud, your transgressions."

   May you have faith given you tonight and then another day, after you
   have faith, may you pray, "Lord, increase my faith." That is not your
   prayer tonight--be thankful if you have any faith at all! But you who
   have faith tonight, pray tonight, and pray always, "Lord increase our
   faith."
     __________________________________________________________________

The Savior's Thirst

   (No. 3385)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that
   the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst." John 19:28.

   THE early Christians were known to think and talk far more of our
   Savior than we do. Some of them were, perhaps, not quite so clear upon
   justification by faith as they ought to have been, but they were very
   clear about the merits of the precious blood. And if they did not
   always speak very clearly about the Doctrines of Grace, they spoke with
   wonderful power and savor about the "five" wounds--about the nail marks
   and the spear wound. I could wish that our religion would go back
   somewhat more to that personal apprehension of Christ than it does. By
   all means let us have dogmatic teaching, setting forth those most
   precious Truths of God that are our consolation, but better than all is
   the Person of Christ Himself--the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We
   should do well if we more often stood in meditation at the foot of the
   Cross and viewed His wounds, counted the precious drops as they fall
   and sought fellowship with Him in His sufferings. Some of those early
   saints wrote long treatises on the solitary wounds of Jesus--many of
   them passed whole days in contemplation of some minute part of His
   passion. We cannot imitate them in this respect--we have not the
   leisure. I am afraid we have not the mental application they possessed.
   Nevertheless, let us explore the sacred mystery as best we can. At this
   time would we get away to Calvary and there stand and hear our Redeemer
   crying, "I thirst," as He bears for us the guilt of sin.

   Very briefly we shall regard the text, first, as our Savior's cry, and
   as only such Secondly, we shall consider its relationship to ourselves.
   And thirdly, and sorrowfully, its relation to ungodly man. First, then,
   we will-- I. CONSIDER THIS CRY OF OUR SAVIOR--"I thirst."

   Is it not clear proof that He was certainly Man?Certain heretics sprang
   up in the early Church who asserted that the body of our Lord was only
   a phantom--that as God, He was here, but as Man He only exhibited
   Himself to the outward sense and did not actually exist in flesh and
   blood. But He thirsted. Now, a spirit has not thirst! A spirit neither
   eats nor drinks--it is immaterial and knows not the needs that belong
   to this poor flesh and blood! We may, therefore, rest quite sure that,
   "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,
   the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of Grace and
   truth"

   No better proof could we have of the substantiality of His Manhood than
   the cry, "I thirst." Herein, at all events, we can sympathize with Him.
   From the moment when He rose from the Communion Supper, saying, "I will
   not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I
   drink it new with you in My Father's Kingdom"--from that moment He had
   had no further refreshment, either of meat or of drink. Yet well He
   needed drink, for all through that long night in Gethsemane He
   sweated--we know what kind of sweat--as it were great drops of blood
   falling to the ground! Such toil as His might well have needed
   refreshment. Then He was hurried away to Caiaphas and afterwards to
   Pilate. He had to encounter the accusations of His enemies and a strong
   bridle He had to put upon Himself, that, like a sheep before her
   shearers, He might be dumb. There was a strain upon His system such as
   none of us ever have had to endure, or ever shall have--a strain such
   as we can never imagine--and yet not one morsel of bread, nor one drop
   of water crossed those blessed and parched lips! Well might He cry, "I
   thirst," when, after so many hours of wrestling with the powers of
   darkness, He was now about to die!

   You remember, also, the peculiar way in which our Lord was put to
   death. The piercing of the hands and the feet was sure to bring on
   fever. Those members, though far remote from the vital parts, are yet
   full of the most delicate and tender nerves--and pain soon travels
   along them till the whole frame becomes hot with burning fever! Our
   Lord's own words in

   the 22nd Psalm will occur to you--"My strength is dried up like a
   potsherd, and My tongue cleaves to My jaws; and You have brought Me
   into the dust of death." Those of you who have been afflicted with
   fever far less serious than this, will recollect how it parched you
   like a potsherd and dried up all the juices of your system and all the
   moisture of your body like the parched fields of summer! You had, then,
   a thirst, indeed! But your Savior had a double cause for thirst--long
   fasting without food or drink and then the bitter pangs of death!
   Sympathize with Him then, Beloved, and remember that all this was for
   you--and for you as His enemies--for you as if there were no others in
   the world! Though He suffered for all His elect, yet especially for
   each one of His people were the nails driven, for each one did He
   thirst and for each one did He take a draught of the vinegar and the
   gall. Come, then, and kiss those blessed lips and bow before your
   Savior in reverent praise!

   Further, my Brothers and Sisters, we are quite certain that our Lord,
   in saying, "I thirst," must have felt the extreme bitterness of thirst
   He was no complainer. You never heard a word come from His lips when it
   might have been withheld. He must have been driven to dire extremity,
   indeed, when He thus proclaimed to friends and foes that He was
   thirsting for a drop of water. Some have said that this cry, "I
   thirst," coming, as it does, after the far more bitter and awful cry,
   "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" was an evidence of a turn
   in the Savior's conflict--that during all the first part of our
   Savior's suffering He was taken up with such anxious thought and with
   such internal anguish that He could not think of the thirst, which,
   grievous as it was, was but a minor pain in comparison with what He
   felt when His Father in justice turned away His face from Him--and that
   now He begins to collect His thoughts for awhile and is able to fight
   with His own personal bodily pains. It may be so. Possibly that cry was
   an indication that the battle had turned and that victory was coming to
   the suffering Hero. But, ah, Brothers and Sisters, however there may
   have come a gleam of sunshine in this cry compared to the blacker
   darkness, you can never dream what a thirst that was that parched the
   Savior's mouth and lips! You will never feel such a thirst as He felt
   to its direst extent. Cold, hunger, nakedness and thirst may fall to
   your lot, but there was more of grief in His thirst than you can ever
   know! There was a bitterness here which my language cannot possibly
   bring out!

   Another thought rises up to my mind--I will not mislead you here. I
   feel thankful to our Lord for saying, "I thirst!" Ah, Brothers and
   Sisters, sometimes when we are sorely afflicted, or have some little
   infirmity, perhaps not anything vital or mortal, though it pains us
   much, we complain, or at least we say, "I thirst." Now, are we wrong in
   so doing? Ought we to play the stoic? Ought we to be like the Indian at
   the stake who sings while he is roasting? Ought we to be like St.
   Lawrence on the gridiron? Is stoicism a part of Christianity? Oh, no!
   Jesus said, "I thirst," and herein He gave permission to all of you who
   are bowed down with your griefs and your sorrows to whisper them into
   the ears of those who watch by the bed, and to say, "I thirst." I
   daresay you have often felt ashamed of yourselves for this. You have
   said, "Now, if I had some huge trouble, or if the pangs I suffered were
   absolutely mortal, I could lean upon the Beloved's arm. But as for this
   ache, or this pain, it darts through my body and causes me much
   anguish, though it does not kill me." Well, but just as Jesus wept that
   He might let you weep on account of your sorrows and your griefs, so He
   says, "I thirst," that you might have permission patiently, as He did,
   to express your little complaints--that you might not think He sneers
   at you, or looks down upon you as though you were an alien--that you
   might know He sympathizes with you in it all!

   He does not use language like that of Cassius when he laughed at Caesar
   because he was sick and said--

   "And when the fit was on him I did mark How he did shake-- 'tis true
   this god did shake-- His coward lips did from their color fly! And that
   same eye whose head does awe the world Did lose its luster--I did hear
   him groan! Yes, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans Mark him,
   and write his speeches in their books, Alas, it cried, 'Give me some
   drink, Titinius,' As a sick girl."

   And why should it not? He was but a man. He was but "as a sick girl,"
   and what is there in a sick girl to despise, after all? Jesus Christ
   said, "I thirst," and in this He says to every sick girl, and every
   sick child, and every sick one throughout the

   world, "The Master, who is now in Heaven, but who once suffered on
   earth, despises not the tears of the sufferers, but has pity on them on
   their beds of sickness."

   Jesus said, "I thirst." As our Lord used these words, may I ask you for
   a minute to contemplate it with wonder?Who was this that said, "I
   thirst"? Know you not that it was He who balanced the clouds and who
   filled the channels of the mighty deep? He said, "I thirst," and yet in
   Him was a well of water springing up unto everlasting life! Yes, He who
   guided every river in its course and watered all the fields with
   grateful showers--He it was, the King of kings, and Lord of lords,
   before whom Hell trembles and the earth is filled with dismay! He whom
   Heaven adores and all eternity worships--He it was who said, "I
   thirst!" Matchless condescension--from the Infinity of God to the
   weakness of a thirsting, dying Man! And this, again I must remind you,
   was for you. He that suffered for you was no common mortal, no ordinary
   man, such as you are, but the perfect and ever blessed God, high above
   all principalities and powers and every name that is named! He it was
   who, with this condescending lowness of estate, stooped and cried, as
   you have done, "I thirst!"

   Once more, in this cry of our Lord, "I thirst," I think I see a trace
   of the Atonement which He was then offering. The pangs of Christ upon
   the Cross are to be regarded as a substitution for the sins and sorrows
   of ungodly men--

   "He bore that we might never bear His Father's righteous ire."

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, a part of the punishment of the wicked in
   Hell is the deprivation of every form of comfort. Man refused to obey
   His Creator--the time will come when the Creator will refuse to succor
   man! Man refused to minister to God--the time will come when God's
   creatures will not minister to man! Remember those solemn words of the
   Master when He said that the rich man was without a drop of water to
   cool his tongue and was tormented in the flame? And yet the water was
   withheld from coming near the sinner who had died in willful rebellion
   against God! Oh, my dear Friends, if we had our due, we should have
   none of the comforts of life! The very air would refuse to yield us
   breath and bread, the staff of life, to yield us nourishment! Yes, we
   would find the whole Creation in arms against us because we are up in
   arms against God! The time shall come when those who stand up against
   the Most High shall find no comfort left them--and no hope of
   comfort--everything that can make existence tolerable shall be
   withdrawn and everything that can make it intolerable shall be poured
   upon them! For upon the wicked, God shall rain fire and brimstone, and
   a horrid tempest--this shall be the portion of their cup!

   Behold, then, when Emmanuel stood for us and suffered in our place, He,
   too, must thirst! He must be deprived of every comfort, stripped naked
   to the last rag and hung up on the Cross as though earth rejected Him
   and Heaven would not receive Him! Midway between the two worlds He dies
   in the most abject poverty! And because of our sin, He cries, "I
   thirst!" Beloved, never seek for companionship with any who would
   ignore the miseries of the Lord, for, depend upon it, in that
   proportion they lessen the glory of the Atonement. If it is but a light
   thing for the sinner to rebel against God, it was not a light thing for
   Christ to redeem him! It covered Christ with the greatest luster, for,
   after all, it stands out as one of His most resplendent works that He
   has redeemed us from going down into the Pit, having found a ransom for
   us! By so much the greater the love, by so much the greater is the
   salvation. Think not lightly of sin and its punishment, lest you come
   to think lightly of Christ and what He suffered to redeem you from your
   guilt! The cry, "I thirst," is part of the substitutionary work which
   Christ performed when He thirsted, because, otherwise, sinners would
   have thirsted forever and have been denied all the pleasure, joy and
   peace of Heaven.

   The meditation upon this cry as proceeding from our Lord invites one
   more remark. Will it be straining the text too far if we say that
   underlying those words, "I thirst," there is something more them a mere
   thirst for drink?Once, when He sat upon the well of Samaria, He said to
   the poor harlot who met Him there, "Give Me a drink," and He got a
   drink from her--a drink that the world knew nothing about when she gave
   her heart to Him, obedient to His Gospel. Christ is always thirsting
   after the salvation of precious souls and that cry on the Cross that
   thrilled all who listened to it was the outburst of the great heart of
   Jesus Christ as He saw the multitude, and He cried unto His God, "I
   thirst." He thirsted to redeem mankind! He thirsted to accomplish the
   work of our salvation! This very day He still thirsts in that respect,
   as He is still willing to receive those who come to Him, still resolved
   that such as come shall never be cast out and still desirous that they
   may come! Oh, poor Souls, you do not thirst for Christ, but you little
   know how He thirsts for you! There is love in His heart towards those
   who have no love to Him! Christ would not have you die. Christ would
   not have you cast into Hell! Give yourselves up, then, to the gentle
   sway of Him who for your souls' good, said, "I thirst." Oh, I wish that

   all we who love Christ knew more of this hungering and thirsting after
   the redemption of our follow men. The Lord teach us to sympathize with
   them! If He wept for sinners, may our cheeks never be dry! He was in
   anguish for their souls, and we will not restrain our anguish because
   they will not be saved, but ignorantly, carelessly, or resolutely
   despise the Gospel of Christ!

   Thus much upon this point, so far as it concerns our Lord, Himself.
   Turn not away your eyes, but look and listen as He cries, "I thirst."
   Very briefly, now let us notice--

   II. OUR RELATIONSHIP AND OUR BEARING TOWARDS THIS CRY.

   I shall address myself on this head to the people of God. And the first
   remark is this--Brothers and Sisters, because Jesus Christ said, "I
   thirst," you and I are delivered from that terrible thirst which once
   devoured us. We were awakened by the Holy Spirit, some of us, years
   ago, to perceive our danger. We had not known before what sin was--what
   a destroying fever it was. We had cherished it in our bosom, but when
   we began to discover our desperate position, we were compelled to
   thirst and cry for mercy. With some of us, our thirst was very
   great--we could scarcely sleep--and as for our meals, we left them
   untouched often in the agony of our despair. I do remember how my soul
   chose strangling rather than life! It seemed so hard to live under the
   frown of God, awakened to a sense of sin, but unable to get rid of the
   sin! Now at this moment that thirst has gone, for we have received the
   adoption, the salvation, the forgiveness! You came to Jesus as you were
   with all your thirst and you stooped down and drank of the crystal
   stream. And now you rejoice with unspeakable joy because your thirst is
   gone! Oh, clap your hands for very joy at the remembrance of it! Be
   humble that you should need His thirst to save you from thirst, but oh,
   be glad to think that the work is done and that you shall never thirst
   again as you did then, for, "he that drinks," says Christ, "of the
   water that I shall give him shall never thirst, for it shall be in him
   a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." Your insatiable
   desires are stayed! The horseleech within you that cried, "Give, give,"
   at last is satisfied! The cravings of conscience that had been awakened
   by the love of God are satisfied! Now, oh, joy, your sorrow is over!
   Your peace, like a river has come, and your righteousness is like the
   waves of the sea! Live happily, live joyously! Tell others what Christ
   has done for you. Eat not your morsel alone, but publish to the world
   that through the thirst of a dying Savior you have ceased to thirst!

   And as you have done with that first thirst of bitter agony, now seek
   to be filled with another thirst--a thirst after more of Christ!Oh,
   that sweet wine of His love is very thirst-creating--those who have
   once tasted it need more of it! Thirst after a closer walk with Him!
   Thirst to know more of Him! Thirst to be more like He! Thirst to
   understand more the mystery of His sufferings and to be more full of
   anticipation of His blessed Advent--

   "Nearer, my God, to Thee; nearer to Thee." Be this your cry. Open your
   mouth wide, for He will fill it. Enlarge your desires, for He will
   satisfy them all. Be eager after more of Christ! Hunger and thirst
   after more of righteousness. All your desires shall be supplied you. Do
   not, therefore, stint yourself by narrowing them. Oh, that you could
   ask more at His hands, for--

   "All your capacious powers can ask, In Christ do richly meet"

   Were your imagination to stretch her wings and soar ever so far beyond
   the narrow bounds of space, she would weary long before she reached the
   fullness of God which dwells bodily in our Lord Jesus Christ!

   Let me also invite you to cultivate another thirst--a thirst like that
   which we read our Lord thirsted with--for the conversion of our souls.
   Give us but a score of men that hunger and thirst for the conversion of
   others and we shall see good work done! But oh, we are so cold, callous
   and sleeping, though men are perishing every day! Behold the mass of
   people gathered in this Tabernacle! We can never all meet again. Some
   of us will probably be in eternity before another Sabbath shall have
   dawned--and of those who shall have departed this life, some will,
   perhaps, have gone down to the Pit. And yet we have no tears for them!
   Oh, God, strike our hearts with a rod more powerful than that of Moses
   and fill our eyes with sympathetic tears! Think what it is that your
   own child could be lost, that your own relative could perish! Oh, wake
   yourselves up to passionate prayer, to longing desire and to constant
   effort--and never, from this moment on, cease to thirst with a
   passionate desire, which, like that of your Lord, shall fill you and
   compel you practically to say, in the industrious application of a
   spiritual life, "I thirst!"

   My last point is a very heavy one. I could wish it has not to be
   delivered. It is addressed--

   III. TO UNGODLY MEN AND WOMEN.

   If the Lord Jesus Christ thirsted when He only carried the sins of
   others, what thirst will be upon you when God shall punish you for your
   own sins?Either 'Christ must thirst for you, or you mush thirst
   forever, and ever, and ever! There is but one alternative--Justice must
   be vindicated through a Substitute, or it must be glorified in your
   everlasting destruction! Think what it will be to have your sweet cup
   and your flowing bowl all put away from you, and not a drop of water to
   cool your tongue--to have your dainty meat and your gay festivals
   forever abolished--no light for your eyes, no joy for any one of the
   senses of your body and your souls made to suffer unutterable woe!

   I shall not stay to picture, even in Christ's own words, the agony of
   lost spirits. But I bid you keep this on your minds. If Christ, who was
   God's Son, suffered so bitterly for sins that were not His own, how
   bitterly must you, who are not God's sons, but God's enemies, suffer
   for sins that are your own? And you must so suffer unless Christ, the
   Substitute, stands for you! He was no Substitute for all, but only for
   His own people. You say to me, "Did He stand for me?" I can tell you if
   you can answer this question, "Do you trust Jesus Christ? Will you now
   trust Him?" If so, a simple childlike faith in Jesus will bring you
   salvation! Now, remember, if you believe, all your sins are laid upon
   Christ and, therefore, they can never be laid upon you! If you believe,
   Christ was punished in your place and you can never be punished,
   because he was punished for you! Substitution--this is the groundwork
   of our confidence! Because He was accursed, we cannot be accursed, for,
   if we believe in Him, all that He suffered was for us--and we stand
   absolved before the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Lord give you this
   simple faith in the Redeemer this very night! And then He will see in
   you of the travail of His soul and the thirst of His great heart will
   be satisfied! The Lord bless you. Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: PSALMS 51; 32; MATTHEW26:59-68; LUKE 23.

   Let us read two Psalms of penitence. Repentance and faith go hand in
   hand all the way to Heaven. Repenting and believing make up a large
   measure of the Christian life. First, let us read the 51st Psalm,
   penned by David after his great sin with Bathsheba, when, by the
   instrumentality of Nathan, he had been led to repentance. What if we
   have not fallen into any gross open sin? Yet, perhaps if we could see
   our hearts as God sees them, we should be as much ashamed as the
   Psalmist was when to the music of his sighs and groans, he poured out
   this Psalm.

   Verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness.
   According unto the multitude of Your tender mercies blot out my
   transgressions. What delicious words those are! "Your l oving
   kindness." I have sometimes felt glad to be a Saxon, that I should
   speak a language that had such delightful words in it. "Loving
   kindness," "tender mercy." Now, the eye that is quickest to see the
   tenderness of God is the eye of repentance, for the sinner who feels
   condemnation in his own heart looks so keenly after everything that may
   make for his comfort, and his eyes light on the tender mercies and
   loving kindness of God. The prayer is for pardon--no, it is for
   purification, as well as pardon!

   2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
   Take out this plague spot. I cannot bear it any longer. Oh, cleanse me
   from every trace of it, my God, I beseech You!

   3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is always before me.
   I tell it to You because it haunts me. It is always present to my mind.
   It seems painted on my eyeballs. I cannot but see it, turn whichever
   way I may.

   4. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your
   sight: that You might be justified when You speak, and be clear when
   You judge. He had sinned against his people, setting them an evil
   example--sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah--but he sees the whole evil
   concentrating itself, as it were, upon his God. He felt that the virus
   of the whole thing was that he had done dishonor to the name of the
   Most High, whose servant he was.

   5-7. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother
   conceive me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts: and in the
   hidden part You shall make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and
   I shall be clean: wash me. and I shall be whiter than snow. "Behold,"
   he says, as if to go to the bottom of it, and to show that sin was not
   an accident with him, but that he, himself, was sinful. It was a grand
   faith--it was an Abrahamic faith--that when a man had such a sense of
   sin as David had, he at the same time could believe in the cleansing
   power of the blood! For you who do not know what sin is, and who have
   never groaned beneath the burden, to talk about the pardoning
   blood--oh, it is easy enough and there is nothing in it! But for a soul
   that knows the guilt and feels it and is burdened by it, still to
   believe in the power of the atoning Sacrifice--this is faith indeed!
   David had seen the priest take the bunch of hyssop and dip it in the
   warm blood of the goat or the bullock, and then sprinkle it--and he
   says, "Lord, do the same with me--with that richer blood of Divine
   Atonement!" That blood which, in David's day, was yet to be shed!
   "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
   whiter than snow."

   8-10. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which You have
   broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out allmy
   iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; andrenew a right spirit
   within me. Lord, the mischief lies deep! Strike at the root of it. I
   would not have You to wash out only a spot, but go to my heart and
   renew that, that I may sin no more.

   11-14. Cast me not away from Your Presence and take not Your Holy
   Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold
   me with Your free Spirit Then will I teach transgressors Your ways: and
   sinners shall be converted unto You. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O
   God, God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your
   righteousness. In that verse there is one of the surest marks of
   David's sincere repentance, namely, that he calls his sin by its right
   name--"bloodguiltiness." I have no doubt that he had said to himself
   that Uriah died by accident, and pleaded very much to excuse and
   extenuate his guilt. But now he outs with it. That is the
   word--"blood-guiltiness." It is no use trying to apologize and excuse
   yourselves before God. As long as that is done, no pardon will ever be
   applied to the conscience. But when the sin is seen in its true colors,
   then shall those colors be washed away and we shall be whiter than
   snow. "Then will I teach transgressors Your ways." He felt that if God
   would pardon him, he would be the man to tell of God's way of mercy to
   others. And I trust, dear Friends, if we have tasted that the Lord is
   gracious, our witness will never be silent about the goodness and the
   mercy of the Lord. If you have never spoken to others, begin tonight!
   Teach others the ways of God to you!

   15-19. O Lord open You my lips; andmy mouth shallshow forth Yourpraise.
   For You desire not sacrifice, otherwise would I give it You delight not
   in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken
   and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good
   pleasure unto Zion: build the walls of Jerusalem. Then shall You be
   pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and
   whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon Your altar
   Sure to be good times when men are under a sense of pardoned sin. None
   serve Him so well as those whose sins are washed away--who feel the
   same within.

   Now, we will read the 32nd Psalm.

   Verses 1-5. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
   covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity,
   and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silent, my bones
   waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Your
   hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of
   summer Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto You, andmy iniquity have I not
   hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD, and You
   forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Soon over. Once poured into
   Jehovah's ear out of a contrite heart, and the transgression was gone
   forever! May it be so with you, dear Hearer. If Your sin has never been
   forgiven you till tonight, may you this night obtain pardon through
   confession of sin.

   6, 7. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto You in a time
   when You may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall
   not come near him. You are my hiding place. You shall preserve me from
   trouble. You shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

   MATTHEW26:59-68; LUKE 23. Verses 59-60. Now the chiefpriests, and
   elders, andall the council, sought false witness against Jesus, toput
   Him to death; but found none. Neither for love nor money.

   60. Yes, though many false witnesses came, yet they found none.That is,
   none that agreed--the lie that one man spoke was refuted by the next!

   61. At last came two false witness, and said this They did not say any
   other word, as if they did not know any word in any language vile
   enough for Him. "This"--our translators have very properly put in the
   word Fellow.

   61. Fellow said, I am able to destroy the Temple of God, and to build
   it in three days. He never said anything of the kind! It was a most
   wicked misrepresentation of what He had said. If men wish to find an
   accusation against us, they can do it without any materials.

   62-64. And the high priest arose and said unto him, Do You not answer?
   What is it which these witness against You? But Jesus held His peace.
   And the high priest answered and said unto Him, I command You by the
   living God, that You tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of
   God. Jesus said unto him, You have said it: nevertheless I say unto
   you, Hereafter shall you see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand
   of power, and coming in the clouds of Heaven. He binds them over to
   make their appearance before Him when He becomes the Judge and they
   shall take the place of the criminal.

   65, 66, Then the high priest tore his clothes, saying, He has spoken
   blasphemy! What further need have we of witnesses? Behold, nowyou have
   heard His blasphemy, What do you think?He looks round upon the seventy
   elders of the people who were sitting there in the great council and
   "They answered and said, He is guilty of death." Probably Joseph of
   Arimathea and Nicodemus were not there--they were the only two friends
   the Lord had in the Sanhedrim.

   66, 67, 68. They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Then did
   they spit in His face, and buffeted Him; and others smote Him with the
   palms of their hands, Saying, prophesy unto us, You Christ, Who is he
   that smote You?This ended the regular ecclesiastical trial of Christ. A
   little time was spent before Pilate, the judicial ruler, was ready to
   see Christ, but soon as the dawn was come, they dragged Him before
   another tribunal. We shall now turn to Luke 23.

   Verse 1, 2, And the whole multitude of them arose and led Him unto
   Pilate. And they began to accuse Him, saying, We found this Put in what
   word you like--villain--scoundrel--our translators could not find a
   better word than that inexpressive-expressive word, "fellow." "We found
   this Fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to give tribute to
   Caesar, saying that He, Himself is Christ, a King." They shift the
   charge, you see, now! Before, it was blasphemy, now it is sedition.

   2, 3. Fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to
   Caesar saying that He, Himself is Christ a King. And Pilate asked Him,
   saying, Are You the King of the Jews? And He answered him and said, You
   said it Another of the Evangelists tells us that He first asked Pilate
   what he meant by the question, explaining that He only claimed the
   kingdom in a spiritual sense.

   4, 5. Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find
   no fault in this Man. And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirs
   up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to
   this place. When Pilate heard them say Galilee, he caught at that--he
   did not wish to displease the multitude.

   6, 7. When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the Man was a
   Galilean. And as soon as he knew that He belonged unto Herod's
   jurisdiction, he sent Him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem
   at that time. So away the Master goes--He must be dragged through the
   streets again to a third tribunal! Oh, You blessed Lamb of God! Never
   were sheep driven to the shambles as You were driven to death!

   8. And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad, for he was
   desirous to see Him for a long season, because he had heard many things
   of Him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him. But the
   Lord never worked miracles to gratify idle curiosity! He who would have
   worked a miracle to heal the poorest beggar in the street would not
   work a wonder to please the king in whose power He was!

   9. Then he questioned Him in many words: but He answered him nothing.
   "No," says good Christopher Ness-- "John Baptist was Christ's voice and
   Herod had killed him--there Christ would not speak--as if He would say,
   'No, no,' you did cut off John Baptist's head, who was My messenger,
   and since you have ill-treated My ambassador, I, the King of kings,
   will have nothing to say to you."

   10. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused
   Him.The original word is "made nothing of Him"--made Him as nothing.

   11. 12. AndHerod with his men of war set Him at nothing, and mocked
   Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate.
   And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together; for
   before they were at enmity between themselves.Two dogs could well agree
   to hunt the same prey! And sinners who quarrel on other things will
   often be quite agreed to persecute the Gospel.

   13-16. And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and
   the rulers and the people, said unto them, You have brought this Man
   unto me, as one that perverts the people, and, behold, I, having
   examined Him before you, have found no fault in this Man touching those
   things whereof you accuse Him. No, nor yet Herod; for I sent you to him
   and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto Him. I will therefore
   chastise Him, and release Him. Ah, that word, "chastise," slips so
   glibly over the tongue! But you know what it meant, when the Roman
   lictors laid bare the back and used the terrific scourge! "I will
   scourge Him," said Pilate. Perhaps he thought that if he scourged Him,
   His suffering would induce the Jews to spare His life.

   17-20. (For of necessity hie must release one unto them at the feast).
   And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this Man, and release
   unto us, Barabbas! (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and
   for murder, was cast into prison). Pilate, therefore, willing to
   release Jesus, spoke again to them. He seems to have gone backward and
   forward many times, desiring to save the life of Christ, but not having
   the moral courage to do it.

   21-26. But they cried, saying, Crucify Him, crucify Him! And he said
   unto them the third time, Why? What evil has He done? I have found no
   cause of death in Him: I will therefore chastise Him, and let Him go.
   And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that He might be
   crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed.
   And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. Andhe
   released unto them him that for sedition andmurder was cast into
   prison, whom they had desired. But he delivered Jesus to their will.
   Andas they ledHim away, they laidhold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian,
   coming out of the country, and on him they laid the Cross, that he
   might bear it after Jesus
     __________________________________________________________________

Christ Our Peace

   (No. 3386)

   A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1913.

   DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
   JANUARY 19, 1868.

   "He is our peace." Ephesians 2:14.

   THE true minister of Christ is not satisfied to be long away from his
   main theme. There are many things which it is very proper for him to
   speak upon in your hearing. We dare not forget the Doctrines of the
   Word of God, or the precepts, or the experiences of God's people. But
   recognizing the claims of all these, God forbid that we should glorify
   save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! It is the preaching of
   Christ which is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Therefore,
   wherever we may wander around the circumference, we always feel a
   drawing in of our soul toward the center, which is "Christ in you, the
   hope of Glory."

   And if the preacher feels that he cannot go on long in the pulpit
   without preaching up his Lord and Master, I am quite sure that all the
   saints of God feel that they cannot be long content without this theme.
   They must constantly have Christ. As often as the table is spread in
   our homes, we need bread. We do not care to have the same meats and
   drinks in the morning, at mid-day and at the evening meal. We like to
   have a frequent change of food, but we always want the bread--and the
   table is badly furnished, let it have what it may upon it, if there is
   not there the bread which is the staff of life! So the Believer
   delights in the variety of God's Word and there is no Truth which is
   not precious to him. He counts the very shavings of truth to be like
   the dust of diamonds. Let every particle of it be gathered up and
   treasured, yes, so treasured that men may be ready to die for the
   slightest fragment of a Truth of God! But still, the purest diamond,
   the Koh-I-Noor of the whole, is the Doctrine of the Savior suffering
   for our sins--and if we do not hear much concerning the Lamb of God, if
   this is not the big bell that is rung most often, we feel that none of
   the others can make up for the lack! If this silver trumpet of Jubilee
   is not blown, the year is dull and dreary, and the service of God's
   sanctuary becomes an empty thing. Christ, Christ, Christ! Oh, that we
   may always make Him the sum and substance of our ministry and that you
   may always desire Christ as the Water of Life to your souls--your
   All-in-All, without whom you cannot be at rest! We come then, at this
   time, to our dear theme, praying God the Holy Spirit to take of the
   things of Christ and show them to us. It is His office--may He tenderly
   consider us and fulfill that office in our souls--here and now!

   There are only four words in the text and, therefore, four things may
   suffice us for tonight. The first great word, or, at any rate, the
   second greatest, is the word, "peace," and we shall think for a little
   while upon that, considering--

   I. IN WHAT SENSE WE ARE TO REGARD THE EXPRESSION, "HE IS OUR PEACE."

   The text compels us to begin with the thought, the Lord Jesus Christ is
   peace between the Jew and the Gentile. There was an old enmity between
   these two, an enmity on both sides. The Jew looked down upon the
   Gentile. He said, "I am of the seed of Abraham, the friend of God--ours
   are the oracles, ours the true God and the Covenant--as for you
   Gentiles, you are an idolatrous seed whom God has left, as He did your
   father, to carry out the devices of your own hearts and to perish in
   your uncircumcision." The Jew called the Gentile a dog, thought him
   unclean, would have no friendly dealings with him, considered that
   uncircumcised men were little better than beasts and scarcely to be
   written down in the same list as the seed of Israel.

   And the Gentiles, with equal earnestness and intensity, returned the
   enmity, for if the Jew taunted the Gentile with uncircumcision, much
   more did the Gentile ridicule the Jew because of his circumcision! The
   most severe edicts, especially under the Roman Empire, were passed
   against the Jews. Some of the Emperors expressed themselves as
   believing them to be the most detestable of all races! One of them said
   that he had seen the heathens of Sarmatia and had beheld the barbar-

   ous tribes of the North, but he had seen all vices and all wickedness
   outdone among the Jews! It was not true--it was a gross lie--but it
   shows what was the enmity of the Gentile mind generally against the
   Jew, for the fact was that in those days the Jew was looked upon as
   unsocial. He never mingled with other nations. He could by no
   possibility be absorbed into other tribes, but held firmly to his
   nationality and would not be reckoned among the people. Hence there was
   a perpetual conflict. But my Brothers and Sisters, no sooner did the
   Lord Jesus Christ display the fullness of the Gospel in the Pentecostal
   effusion of the Holy Spirit resting upon the Jew, than the Jew began to
   preach to the Gentile! There was a little tug in Peter's heart at
   first. He hardly liked it, but still, God gave him a vision and
   immediately he went to preach the Gospel among those whom he had
   counted to be common and unclean! As for Paul, though a Pharisee of the
   Pharisees, though one of the strictest of Jews, yet he seems to have
   taken naturally to preaching among the Gentiles as soon as he was
   converted. He immediately went to these despised people and began to
   declare unto them the unsearchable riches of Christ! Now, in Christ
   Jesus, what fraternity there is, my Brothers and Sisters, between the
   seed of Israel and the Gentile stock! How we all feel that we are one!
   How many of the Jewish people has the Lord called! I hear it sometimes
   said that He called a larger proportion of the Jews than He has of the
   Gentiles, for, remember, the seed of Israel is but small, while the
   Gentiles at the present time number, I suppose, a thousand millions at
   least, so that a small number of Christian Jews make a large proportion
   to the bulk! But wherever you meet with a converted Jew, a true
   Believer, there is no more hearty lover of the Gentiles, no one more
   desirous to see the Gentiles saved!

   And when you meet with a genuine, converted, instructed Gentile, how
   his heart goes out toward the seed of Israel and how rejoiced he is
   when he hears that some of the Lord's Brothers and Sisters, according
   to the flesh, are converted to the faith in the crucified Jesus! Yes,
   there is now no longer enmity. It is all over. Nothing can be more
   un-Christian than for a Christian to despise a Jew! Nothing is more
   unlike the spirit of our Master than when you laugh at the Jew and
   speak of him with contempt. Remember that the King of kings was a Jew!
   The Lord Jesus Christ, Himself--whom we adore as true Deity--came in
   our humanity as of the stock of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, a
   Hebrew of the Hebrews. Let there always be love and concord between
   us--and when the Lord shall be pleased to take the veil from Israel's
   eyes--then shall be our happy time as well as theirs. The Lord send it
   soon that He may be glorified.

   Enough, however, upon that. The Lord Jesus Christ is our peace in a
   second sense, namely, in making peace between nations. That there are
   wars in the world at the present time is not the consequence of
   anything that Christ has said, but of the lusts of our flesh. As I
   understand the Word of God, I always rejoice to find a soldier a
   Christian, but I always mourn to find a Christian a soldier, for it
   seems to me that when I take up Christ Jesus, I hear one of His Laws,
   "I say unto you, resist not evil. Put up your sword into its sheath; he
   that takes the sword shall perish by the sword." The followers of
   Christ in these days seem to me to have forgotten a great part of
   Christianity. How many of you would go tomorrow into a court of law
   and, if you were called upon to do it, would take an oath, whereas if
   there is anything taught in Scripture, it is expressly taught that you
   are not to swear at all, neither by Heaven, nor by earth, nor by any
   other oath! If Christ ever delivered a plain precept, it is this--and
   yet all denominations of Christians seem to have cast it to the winds,
   with the exception of the Society of Friends. And so with regard to
   this matter of war. Our Apostle does not mince matters when he says,
   "Whence come wars? Whence come fights? Come they not from your own
   lusts?" That is the top and bottom of it, but, wherever true
   Christianity prevails, war becomes less frequent. It is owing to
   Christianity that war is far less common--though still too
   frequent--than it used to be. The length of human life has been much
   increased by the prevalence of peace--and wars, devastating wars,
   though, alas, they still break out--are not so constant as once they
   were and we are confidently looking forward to the time when the
   Messiah shall wield His blessed scepter and wars shall cease to the
   ends of the earth! Then shall men--

   "Hang the useless helmet high, And study war no more."

   Then shall the shrill clarion of the battlefield yield to the pipe of
   shepherd's plaintive melody. Then shall the weaned child play upon the
   hole of the asp and the lion shall eat straw like an ox. Oh, that the
   Prince of Peace would come and establish His empire upon a firm
   foundation! Then could we, indeed say, "He is our peace!"

   But, Brothers and Sisters, there is another meaning in the text. The
   Lord Jesus is the great cause of peace between man and man. As soon as
   you become a Christian, you cannot hate anybody. To be angry without a
   cause is a sin to you as soon as you are a Believer in Christ! Unless
   you are a fearful hypocrite, you then forgive every man his offenses
   and you

   continue to forgive your brethren even unto 70 times seven, once you
   become the sincere disciple of Jesus. It is utterly inconsistent with
   Grace in the heart to harbor malice against your fellow man. Through
   our infirmity we may be, and sometimes are, quick of temper and
   sharp--and this we ought to regret and mourn over--but to carry in our
   soul any enmity against any man is contrary to the spirit of the Lord
   Jesus Christ! Give me your hand, my Brother, my Sister, for the sake of
   Him who died for us! We cannot quarrel at the foot of the Cross! We
   cannot look up and see the streaming wounds and then break the King's
   peace! I mean the peace that the bleeding, thorn-crowned King has made!
   Especially among Christians, there must not be anything like a shadow
   of division or discord. And I do pray you, as I have often done, if you
   would be followers of Christ, be you as little children and lay aside
   everything like enmity, hatred, variance, strife and jealousies! You
   will have to live in Heaven together, I hope. Oh, live like heavenly
   ones together here! You profess to have one Lord, one faith, one
   Baptism. You say that you are filled with the Holy Spirit--then let no
   root of bitterness springing up trouble you, lest thereby many are
   defiled! May that sweet and holy dove, the Spirit of Christ, rest upon
   all mankind, so that each man may see in his fellow man a Brother or a
   Sister. May divisions between sects and par-ties--and especially
   between nations and men of different colors--be laid aside and may we
   all rejoice in one universal confraternity. May the day soon break when
   there shall be true liberty the world over and fraternity established
   everywhere after Christ's own model!

   Still, Brothers and Sisters, these are only secondary applications of
   the text. The great peace which Christ has made is between God and man.
   There was war between man and his God. Man offended and loved to
   offend. God would have him return and be obedient, but man would not,
   for his heart was set on mischief. Man had so offended the Divine Law
   that punishment was inevitable! Jesus Christ came in and bore "the
   chastisement of our peace," suffering an equivalent for what His
   redeemed would have suffered!

   Now, God can with strictest justice pardon human transgressions.
   Righteousness and peace have kissed each other at the Cross of Christ.
   God was merciful and yet was just in our forgiveness--and now, between
   Him and those who are in Christ Jesus--there is no difference, no
   division, no strife, no war! Therefore, being reconciled by His blood,
   "we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord." We are brought
   near by the blood of the Atonement. The chasm is bridged, the mountain
   is removed! Do you enjoy this peace, my dear Hearer? Can you look up to
   God, the great God, and feel that there is no alienation between
   you--that what He loves, you love? That the object of His heart is the
   supreme object of yours? That if there has been any idol set up,
   contrary to Him, in your heart, you desire to have it thrown out? Oh,
   if it is so, then bless God that He has given you Christ to be your
   peace!

   And then, Brothers and Sisters, there follows from this peace between
   man and God peace between man and himself for man is as much at war
   with himself as he is with God, and until Christ comes in, he enjoys no
   rest. "There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked." Some of you
   know experimentally what it is to have a strife and a warfare going on
   within--and you will never get a deep and settled calm until Christ
   comes into the vessel of your soul and says to the winds of your fear,
   and to the waves of your sins, "Peace, be still."

   He that has Christ has a peace that passes all understanding! He that
   has Christ has great peace and nothing shall offend him. But he that
   has no Christ has no solid peace. He may say, "Peace, peace," where
   there is no peace, and daub his wall with untempered mortar, but the
   hail shall sweep away all his refuges of lies! And after his false
   peace there shall come a terrible alarm. Oh, my Hearer, have you had
   peace made between God and you by the precious blood? If so, then you
   are now at rest! But if you are tossed to and fro between one thought
   and another, you have nothing to rest upon! I pray you listen carefully
   to what I have to say concerning the Lord Jesus, and may the Holy
   Spirit bless it to you! Thus much upon that priceless gem, that blessed
   word, "peace."

   The next great word in the text worthy of our adoring thought is that
   little one of two letters only, the pronoun "He." "He is our peace."

   II. WHO IS SAID TO BE "OUR PEACE"?

   What are we to understand by the Lord Jesus Christ being our peace? I
   want you carefully to notice that it does not say that His work on our
   behalf is the sourceof our peace. That, of course, is true, but here it
   says, "He is our peace." He, personally--HE--Christ Himself, is the
   peace of His people! It does not say that He makes our peace, or that
   He brings us peace. That is very true, most true, but it is a greater
   Truth that He, Himself, is our peace!

   Now, I beseech you, Believer, to look at this Truth of God very
   carefully, and you, Unbeliever, too! The unbeliever thinks that in
   order to get peace, he must perform good works. But see, Man, your good
   works are not your peace! If they had been, God would have said so
   plainly, "Your good works shall be your peace." But not so, "He is our
   peace." It is not that you are to be a peace unto yourself, nor does it
   say that your repentance, or tears, or prayers can give you peace.
   These are good and they are to be used, but the ground of your peace
   must never be, "I have prayed. I have re-pented"--but He--He is our
   peace! There are many things that you may do and that you shalldo by
   the power of the Holy Spirit, but I tell you that none of these things
   are to be the basis of your comfort! Your soul's fountain of crystal
   comfort is to be Christ and Christ alone! He, He, He--HE is our peace!
   Nothing in you, nothing you can do, nothing you can feel, but Christ,
   to whom you must look or perish. He must be your peace!

   Now, Believer, look this in the face. Christ is to be your peace--not
   your communion with God, nor your high and holy experiences. All these
   are very precious and I wish we could always be on Tabor's brow. It
   were well for us if, like, Enoch, we always walked with God, but still,
   our communion must never be looked upon as the ground of our peace with
   God. It is Christ and Christ, alone, that is our peace! Though you
   could mount as high as Gabriel and soar aloft through Heaven, as on a
   wing of fire--like the swift archangel, your rapid flight must not be
   your comfort, nor all the glorious service which you could render to
   your God, but Christ, Christ, Christ and Christ, alone, must be your
   peace. Beloved, it is all in vain for any of us to look back and try to
   find peace in what we have done!

   It is a very great comfort to us, in some respects, to have been called
   by Grace in early youth--to have been enabled to preach the Gospel year
   after year with success--and I know what it is to think of all the
   souls who have been converted under my ministry. I know what it is to
   remember how many times I have addressed immense crowds of people. But
   I also know what it is to think, "Well, I may do all this and only be
   more condemned for it! I may do all this and yet be found out to be a
   miserable hypocrite, after all." Therefore, there is no abiding comfort
   to be found in this. It is not our doingfor Christ, but Christ,
   Himself, that is our peace! Now, some of you have been in the Sunday
   School, today, and you do not feel that you have got on well with the
   children. Well, I am glad if you have a passionate yearning for the
   salvation of the children's souls, but do not begin to lose your hope
   and confidence in Christ because you do not succeed! If you had
   succeeded, you would have been very mistaken had you taken it as an
   evidence of your redemption! And if you fear you have not succeeded,
   have spoken in vain and spent your strength for nothing, do not be
   greatly cast down by it, for your peace does not lie either in your
   service, or in your success--it lies entirely in Christ!

   I like the remark that was once made by a poor bricklayer who tumbled
   from the top of a house. A clergyman went to see him and, as he thought
   the man was dying, he said to him, "My dear Fellow, you must try to
   make your peace with God." "Ah, Sir," said the man, "you do not
   understand it, I can see. Make my peace with God? Why that was made for
   me in the Eternal Covenant before the world began! That was made for me
   on Calvary's tree of shame, when Christ laid down His life. If Christ
   had not made my peace with God, I know I could not make it!"

   So put all the things you have done and can do, into the scale,
   Believer, and when they are all there--kick them all out again--for
   they are not worth a single ounce of weight in your soul's salvation!
   Christ must be there! And Christ alone!

   One of the occupations of the dying saint must be the tying up of his
   bad works and of his good works in one bun-dle--for they are
   wonderfully much alike--and throwing them all overboard, every one of
   them, and floating to Glory on the plank of Free Grace in the Person of
   the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is our peace! HE is our peace! If
   Believers would always remember this, they would not be so often
   depressed and distressed. Ah, I have often heard this cry, as I told
   you this morning, "I do not grow in Grace as I could wish. I do not
   serve my Lord as I should. I live at a great distance from Him. I am
   afraid I dishonor His holy name." I like to hear that! That is all
   good, very good, but then they go on with this--"I am afraid that I
   shall perish, after all"--and that is all wrong, very wrong, for if the
   question is put, "Do you trust in Christ?" and if the answer is that
   you do, well then, if God is true, you cannotperish! If all your help
   comes from Him who made Heaven and earth, and who died upon the bloody
   tree for your sins, then Heaven and earth may pass away and shall, but
   His promise cannot! He has given you two immutable things, wherein it
   is impossible for God to lie, that you may have strong consolation if
   you have fled for refuge to Christ Jesus! Do you believe in Jesus? Do
   you hang upon Christ wholly and entirely? Then are you saved and God's
   Word is pledged to bring you safely home at the last! Sanctification
   must never be put in the place of justification--when we do so, we
   shall miss sanctification, as well as jus-

   tification. When Believers say, "I cannot grow in Grace as I would, and
   therefore I doubt," do you see what they do? It is as though they said,
   "Here is a plant that will not grow and therefore it shall not have any
   water." It is impossible for any one of us--for you--to get
   sanctification through doubts! Your doubting takes away the water which
   alone can nourish the roots of your sanctity. If, in the teeth of all
   your sins, you still believe in Christ--believe over the head of all
   your shortcomings and your negligence--then your belief will breed love
   and admiration! And then your love of Christ and your admiration of Him
   will breed imitation--and so there will come holy living to the glory
   of God! Love is the forceful mainspring of a gracious life, but doubt
   makes it grow limp and feeble. Doubt snaps the string of your bow,
   takes off the edge of your sword, makes you languid and powerless and
   causes all your Divine Graces to flag. Therefore, keep to it,
   Christian, keep to it and let not the devil, himself, drag you from it!
   "He is our peace"--my peace--not myself, nor anything that is in me,
   but Christ Jesus alone!

   I have thus put the negative of it, but now let us take the positive.
   "He is our peace." By this is meant, first, that the Person of Christ i
   s our peace. He is God. I rest on Him. I have perfect peace, then, for
   He is Almighty, He cannot fail me. He is inimitable--He will not leave
   me. He is Truth itself--He will not belie His word.

   Jesus Christ is also Man, and if Man, then He sympathizes with me,
   being touched with a fellow feeling for me in my infirmities. Then with
   such a heart of tenderness, He will not throw up the work of Grace, but
   He will bear with my ill manners and be my "Brother born for
   adversity," even to the end. So, then, the complex Person of Christ, as
   God, as well as Man, is the peace of the Believer when he trusts Him.

   In the next place, the perfect righteousness of Christ is another part
   of our peace. In a delightful little book upon the Person of Christ by
   good Mr. Bonar, he speaks about our sins as though they were so many
   mud creeks--our sins of unbelief, neglect, lack of love and so on.
   Well, but wherein we have failed, Christ has not failed--every duty in
   which we have come short, He has fulfilled! For every sin that we
   commit, you will always find an opposite virtue in Christ. Well says
   Mr. Bonar, "Then Christ is the flood tide which comes up and fills all
   these creeks and covers all the mire--and there is not a little creek
   nor a great bay but what this tide of Christ's glorious merits fills
   all!" Perhaps this thought may give you the meaning of the text, "Your
   peace shall be like a river and your righteousness like the waves of
   the sea"--the many waves which come up and cover all the sands and the
   mire of our iniquities till God sees no sin in us, because He sees the
   righteousness of Christ standing for us--and looks upon us, not as we
   are separately, but as we stand in Him--and so He makes us to be
   "accepted in the Beloved." Oh, Believer, if you can wrap the
   righteousness of Christ around you, you can feel, then, the sweetness
   of the truth of our text, "He is our peace."

   Yet once more. After His person and His righteousness, there comes His
   precious blood. Oh, Beloved, there is no balm for the soul like the
   Cross! Sometimes I like to sing to myself, when I get a little
   fluttered in my soul, that precious hymn--

   "Sweet the moments, rich in blessing, Which before the Cross I spend!
   Life and health, and peace possessing, From the sinner's dying Friend!
   Here it is I find my Heaven, While upon the Cross I gaze. Love I much?
   I'm more forgiven-- I'm a miracle of Grace."

   I have sometimes used this simile and will use it again. If you ride
   through London, mile after mile, mile after mile, and see the great
   swarms of people, you say to yourself, "I cannot make out how all these
   people are fed. I cannot see how there is always a meal for these four
   millions and more." But go off tomorrow morning and make a round of the
   great markets--the cattle market, the meat markets, the fruit markets
   and I know not what besides--and now you say, "I cannot make out where
   the people can be found to eat all this! How does such a tremendous
   mass of provisions of all kinds ever get consumed?"

   You change your note directly. When you only looked at the people's
   needs, you thought, "How can they all be supplied?" but when you look
   at the supply, you say, "How can there be needs great enough for all
   this?" So you look at your sins and you say, "How can there be merit
   enough to put all these sins away?" But if you will but look at the Son
   of

   God dying on the Cross for sinners, you will change your note and you
   will say, "Where could there be sinners great enough to demand such an
   immense Sacrifice as the giving up of the life of the Son of God to
   redeem men from their iniquities?" You must go to the Cross if you want
   to have peace concerning your sins, for "He is our peace."

   Further, Beloved, the ever-living Christ is always our peace. The
   thought that there beats a heart in Heaven that is always loving us,
   that there moves a tongue in Heaven that always pleads for us, that
   there is an arm in Heaven that always fights for us and that there is a
   foot in Heaven that will be swift to run for our defense--oh, this is a
   precious consolation! If faith can but perceive that Jesus Christ is
   within the veil at the Father's Throne, with His heart full of love
   towards those who trust in Him, then will He be to us our peace!

   I shall not, however, enlarge farther upon that point, though it is a
   very fruitful subject. But I must say that the more you know of
   Christ's Character and work, the deeper will be your peace. Ignorant
   professors who do not know that Jesus Christ "is the same yesterday,
   today, and forever," are sometimes afraid that the promises will not be
   fulfilled. But they must be fulfilled, for He is not only full of
   Grace, but of Truth! Know Christ and trust Him--and you need not be
   afraid. Poverty shall not make you poor, sickness shall not make you
   diseased, death shall not make you die! You shall triumph over all
   these in your inmost soul and come off more than conqueror through Him
   who has loved you and is your peace!

   We have only as yet handled two words, but they are two big, colossal
   words. "Heis our peace." But we must now speak briefly upon those two
   diamond rivets which fasten Christ and peace together. So we look now
   at--

   III. WHOSE PEACE IS HE?

   Notice that word, "our." "He is our peace." To whom, then, is this
   splendid peace given? Every man that has Christ as his Savior! I have
   half a mind to ask those who have trusted Christ to be their peace, to
   say aloud, here and now, "He is our peace." There is a gray-headed man
   here, and if he were to rise and lean on his staff, he could say, "Yes,
   blessed be God, without doubt I can say that He is my peace." There is
   a valiant soldier of Christ yonder, and he would declare boldly, "He is
   my peace." But I daresay there is some timid Hannah here who would wipe
   the tears from her face and quietly say, "Yes, He is my peace." And
   there are some youngsters here, whom the Lord has but lately brought
   in, and they can say, tremblingly, but yet meaning it from their inmost
   souls, "He is my peace."It is all the same, whether we are old or
   young, whether we are advanced in the Divine Life, or are only just in
   the beginning of it--we have no other peace except the Lord Jesus
   Christ!

   But who are these people who have Christ to be their peace? Well, they
   are those who could not get peace anywhere else, for we never come to
   Christ until we are driven to Him by stormy weather. He is such a
   blessed port that we might all wish to cast anchor in Him, but yet we
   are such fools that we keep out at sea as long as we can--and only when
   we feel our sins to be like hurricanes howling in our ears, do we fly
   to Christ! Well, if you have nowhere else to go and you come to Him
   with all your hunger and nakedness--and trust in Him--whether you sink
   or swim, then shall He be your peace!

   I cannot delay upon that, however, for our time is gone and, therefore,
   I must take that other word--"is."

   IV. WHEN IS HE OUR PEACE?

   I know the world says, "I hope He will be my peace." Dear Hearer, do
   not be satisfied with that! Never be content with "may be," but seek
   after a present salvation! I was soundly enough asleep the other
   morning when, about half-past three my bell rang very sharply, and then
   rang again. And when I put my head out of the window to see who was
   there, I heard someone say, "Oh, if you please, Sir, there is a poor
   man dying, and he wants to see you badly! Do come." "Oh, yes, where
   does he live? I will be there as quickly as I can." And away I went.

   The dying man said to me, "I beg your pardon, Sir, for sending for you
   at this time of night, but it is very hard for a man to go out of this
   world and not know where he is going. Do tell me the way I may be
   saved." I was glad enough to tell him about Him who is our peace, but
   how I wished and wished again that he had not needed to be told about
   it then! As I said to those who were round about him, "Now see, he has
   enough to think of with his dying pains, without having to think of
   finding a Savior now! Oh, the rest of you seek Him while you have
   health and strength!" And I now say that to you! You will find other
   work when you come to die without having to search for a Savior!
   Besides that, what a joy it is to get Christ now--to say, "He is my
   peace." Why, there are some of us who are as happy now in Christ as we
   could well wish to be! We find that our religion is no misery to us. It
   is not a chain, but like the wings of a bird and it helps us

   to mount! We feel at perfect peace with God right now, and if Death
   were to come tonight, or tomorrow, or while we are sitting here, I
   trust we should not think of him as an adversary, but our Father's
   servant, sent to take us into our Father's Presence! Oh, my dear
   Hearers, some of you, when you come to dying, will, perhaps, have to
   think, "I used to attend a Sunday school. I used to go to a place of
   worship, but I gave it all up when I came to London. When I got into
   business and had a family, I thought I needed Sunday for recreation,
   and so I neglected my soul, and now where am I? Far off from God!" Oh,
   I hope I shall not have to come and tell you in your extremity about a
   Savior, but may you now receive Him! All that He asks of you is to
   trust Him--and that He gives you! My poor friend said the other night,
   "I cannot think, Sir. I cannot settle my thoughts." Yes, but you can
   think now and, therefore, now, before the evil days come and the dark
   night draws on, turn, turn! May God turn you! May effectual Grace lead
   you to see my bleeding Master with His five streaming wounds, with the
   crown of thorns about His brow, mocked and despised, and spit upon for
   us, that we might escape the thorn and not have to be wounded with the
   arrows of death, but might live through Him! May the Lord Jesus Christ
   be to everyone of you your peace tonight, that you may take the text
   and say, "He is now, even tonight, our peace."

   God grant it for His name's sake! Amen.

   EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOHN11:27-46.

   Our Lord's greatest miracles were always the reward of faith.

   Verse 27. She said unto Him, Yes, Lord I believe that you are the
   Christ, the Son of God, which should come unto the world.By which she
   as good as said, "I believe that and I believe everything else. I have
   an implicit faith in You. Whatever You say, whatever You have said or
   shall say, I am prepared to believe it all, for I believe in You. I
   believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into
   the world."

   28. And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her
   sister secretly. Because she knew that the Jews hated the Savior. She
   could not tell what would come of it if they knew of His coming, so she
   whispers to her--

   28-30. Saying, The Master is come, and calls for you. As soon as she
   heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto Him. Now Jesus was not yet
   come into the town, but was at that place where Martha met Him. Their
   cemeteries were outside the town and probably the Savior was near the
   very grave where Lazarus slept.

   31-32. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted
   her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out,
   followed her, saying, She goes unto the grave to weep there. Then when
   Mary was come where Jesus was, andsawHim, she fell down at His feet,
   saying unto Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother hadnot died.
   Her thought was the same as the thought of Martha, but she did not say
   as much as Martha. She never did. Martha had a dialogue with the
   Savior, but Mary bowed at His feet.

   33. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping
   which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and
   said, Where have you laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see.
   Jesus wept Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And some of
   them said, Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have
   caused that even this man should not have died? Jesus, therefore, again
   groaning in Himself came to the grave. Many have asked why Christ
   groaned. Why, Brothers and Sisters, it is the way in which He gives
   life--by His own death! We sometimes say of one who does a great
   action, "It took so much out of him." So it did out of the Savior. He
   must groan that Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus may rejoice. It is not
   without the stirring of His very life that He gives life to the dead!

   38-39. It was a cave and the stone lay upon it Jesus said, Take you
   away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, said unto Him,
   Lord, by this time he stinks: for he has been dead four days. "It were
   a pity to roll away the stone."

   40-41. Jesus said unto her, Said I not unto you, that if you would
   believe, you should see the Glory of God? Then they took away the stone
   from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes,
   and said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. That is grand
   praying, is it not? Sometimes we ought to say, "Just so." "Father, I
   thank You that You have heard me."

   42-44. And I knew that You hear Me always, but because of the people
   which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that You have sent Me.
   And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come
   forth! Andhe that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave
   clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. He probably
   slipped himself off from the ledge in the tomb upon which he been laid
   and there he appeared before them bound so that he could not move
   farther.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [1]42:25

   Exodus

   [2]8:8   [3]21:5-6

   Numbers

   [4]6:23-27   [5]24:17

   Deuteronomy

   [6]32:11-12

   2 Samuel

   [7]23:5

   1 Kings

   [8]18:41

   2 Chronicles

   [9]33:12-13

   Nehemiah

   [10]2:12

   Job

   [11]16:20

   Psalms

   [12]22:2   [13]26:12   [14]36:6   [15]40:17   [16]56:3   [17]84:11
   [18]118:16   [19]144:15

   Proverbs

   [20]24:30-32

   Isaiah

   [21]2:17   [22]28:24   [23]50:10   [24]61:3   [25]61:3   [26]61:3

   Lamentations

   [27]1:12

   Ezekiel

   [28]9:8

   Micah

   [29]5:4

   Matthew

   [30]11:28   [31]12:42

   Luke

   [32]7:37-38   [33]8:18   [34]17:5   [35]23:39-43

   John

   [36]11:40   [37]13:17   [38]14:26   [39]19:28

   Acts

   [40]16:24-34   [41]24:15

   Romans

   [42]5:5   [43]7:13

   1 Corinthians

   [44]4:1-2   [45]11:26

   2 Corinthians

   [46]8:9

   Galatians

   [47]6:6

   Ephesians

   [48]2:14

   Colossians

   [49]1:13

   1 Timothy

   [50]1:16

   Jude

   [51]1:21
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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